B Smith

As a huge Stephen King fan, I am all too familiar with the roller coaster ride that is his movie adaptations which usually only seem to be either excellent or horrible, with the latter being the majority of such films, so, when it was announced that there would be a TV series based on the IT universe without having any King source material to pull directly from, I was more than a little hesitant to get excited, and aside from that gruesome opening which helped to alleviate those fears if only a brief moment, the series has been a huge disappointment only two episodes in. The series has two central plot lines, the first centers around a new band of kids who are supposed to be terrorized by Pennywise, except he is no where to be found, and the second more ridiculous arc centers around an insanely large Air Force base that for some reason exists near Derry despite there being no mention of any such base before in the movies. It’s fairly obvious what they are doing there since there is literally only ONE reason to include the military in a show like this, and this is revealed to the applause of no one at the end of the 2nd episode, that’s right ladies and gents, they are trying to find Pennywise. No, you didn’t read that wrong, the United States Air Force, is searching for Pennywise the Dancing Clown. That’s all you really need to know about this show. Now, you can stick around for the rest of the series if you want, because I’m sure you will be treated to some weird/creepy monsters and a few jump-scares, but I’m out. I don’t care to sit through another 6 or however many episodes, just so I can watch a storyline that completely contradicts all of the King lore established over the past 40 years. Adults are searching for Pennywise, that’s all you really need to know.

Task reveals its hand to the audience much too early, eliminating any of the intrigue that made writer/director Brad Ingelsby’s last show (Mare of Easttown) so entertaining. There is no mystery this time around, just a typical crime drama where some money is stolen, and then the chase is on. Ingelsby tries to add family dysfunction to the mix to make the characters more complex, but where it actually makes sense to the story line in Mare of Easttown, it feels forced and unnecessary with Task, having no real impact on the characters whatsoever. Mark Ruffalo is a conflicted FBI agent dealing with the fallout from his wife’s death, but it never actually affects his ability to be an FBI agent or to do his job, serving only as filler material to extend the show to its nearly 60 minute episode runtime. There are some surprises along the way, but the final episode felt so predictable and anticlimactic that it left me disappointed with the experience as a whole. Task is good enough to watch I suppose if you have nothing else on your watchlist, but I’m starting to trust HBO less and less with it’s crime dramas, especially after watching back-to-back mediocre attempts with True Detective season 4 and now Task.

Very rarely does a game deserve the highest honors possible and that of course applies to the 1 star reviews as well, especially with Hades 2 which has a hilariously large amount of undeserved low scores. That is how these amateur reviewers treat things though, is it not? They use these review sections as their own personal diary of hate or biased favoritism, with reviews residing on opposite ends of the spectrum in either overwhelmingly support or unfounded hate. Do the people hate SuperGiant games? Are they mad that Hades 2 is much better than its competitors and is the much more logical choice for the same GOTY award that the original game won back in 2020? If I had to guess, and this is purely speculative, but I would be willing to bet that any hate being leveled against Hades 2 is coming from Silksong, Expedition 33, and to a lesser degree, the Silent Hill F fanboys who know deep down that Hades 2 is the much better game overall and will most likely beat out their chosen game for yet another GOTY award. And as someone who has played Split Fiction, Expedition 33, Silksong, Hades 2, and all of the other fringe games that could qualify as a GOTY contender, I can say with 100% certainty that Hades 2 is the best of the bunch, and it’s really not even that close to my surprise. There are also the creepy falsely labeled “gamers” who review bomb movies/shows/games because of their hatred for women or POC in main roles, but honestly, their opinion means nothing, it never has and it never will, because what type of so-called “gamer” would intentionally avoid playing the best game of 2025 because they are insecure males? Moving on… Hades 2 manages to somehow improve upon almost every single aspect of the 1st game which at the time of release was SuperGiant’s greatest effort in a longline of great releases. Hades really was that good of a game that I didn’t believe it could possibly get better, but here we are 5 years later and SuperGiant has somehow managed to release yet another sure fire GOTY. Hades 2 is simply a game that must be played to believed, because nothing I say will give it the justice that it deserves.

For a game that was in production for the past 7 years, Silksong feels a little too similar to its predecessor but in all the wrong ways, and while the world is indeed familiar, I found many of the levels to lack the same personality that separated the different stages in Hollow Knight. That’s not to say that the visuals are not undeniably gorgeous and moody, they just all seem to bleed into the background instead of standing out like in the previous game. The combat is also noticeably different for what I believe to be the worse. For people who wanted faster combat from Hornet, they certainly get what they hoped for; I on the other hand, found that she is almost too fast for the screen, often zooming off of the side of levels into pit traps or into yet another quick responding enemy just waiting to drain you for the whopping two hit points that the devs decided to implement as the new damage reduction. While the increased speed makes for easier travel time, it does not exactly transition well into combat as you are required to slow things down dramatically in order to land hits on enemies, especially major bosses. This is only a 2D platformer after all and not an open world 3D game, making the need for speed not really all that necessary. Beyond dashes and double jumps, I rarely ever needed to use Hornet’s sprinting ability because I felt like I might miss some special item hidden somewhere. The combat isn’t nearly as crisp as the previous game either, one example being the parachute that happens to be bound to the jump button and how almost every single time I attempted to do a horizontal attack while jumping, the parachute would open 9/10, leaving me open to enemy attacks. Most of my deaths in game resulted from various actions being attached to a single button which would then produce the action that was not intended. These frustrating deaths have happened a lot, and commonly result in my having to backtrack through what feels like miles of unmapped territory because the mapmaker is nowhere to be found. This is another aspect of Silksong that I highly dislike - the unknown location of the mapmaker. I have over an hour in certain locations that are still not mapped out simply because I have no idea where the map maker is at. I have spent insane amounts of time trying to find the map maker, only to then unintentionally spawn a boss fight because I have no idea where I am and then die because I was completely unprepared. This creates an unfortunate choice where I either leave my collectibles behind at the spot where I died in order to continue my search for the mapmaker, or go collect my stuff and spend the next 30 minutes trying to beat a boss I’m not ready for. Silksong is full of these head scratching moments which often left me feeling defeated instead of motivated to retrace my steps for the thousandth time that hour. Overall, Silksong is a game that just feels difficult for the sake of being being difficult, making it a game that is rarely enjoyable.

I trust FX more than any other Network, more than HBO, more than AMC, more than any of the other top dogs that exist in 2025, so when it was announced that FX would be responsible for bringing the Alien franchise to TV, I had as much trust as I possibly could in its potential success given how few failures the FX network have produced over the years. Yet, the first episode of Alien: Earth introduces us to an all-too-familiar concept, one that has been reused repeated - an unstoppable alien is released into general population by an android that betrays the very people it was built to serve and chaos ensues, except this time, it’s on a planet in a heavily populates area. Naturally, the Marines are called upon to take care of business, except these aren’t the foul-mouthed, jacked, alien ass-kickers that we have grown accustomed to, these Marines look like they were literally pulled directly from an 8th grade home room, and even then, that feels like an insult to most 8th graders. Now, I don’t care how incendiary or stereotypical that comment sounds, because there is just no way that any soldier would look like they barely weigh 110lbs soaking wet, except of course, this is Disney’s version of Alien, which fits their vision perfectly, regardless of how ridiculous it looks. Disney has proven dozens of times over that they will continue to double down on their failed approach to action franchises and that no matter how many times the audience says “we don’t want that”, Disney will without a doubt go in the opposite direction apparently out of spite. There are some new things that have been added to the series, namely the transference of a dying girls consciousness to a new robot body, and the introduction of new super-corporations in competition with Weyland Corp, but that’s really it, at least so far. The major problem with prequels always has been the fact that you already know what the future holds which reduces the stakes significantly, this means that the writers need to be on point, the actors need to be exceptional, and in the case of a horror series, it needs to be scary, and Alien: Earth does not do any of those things particularly well. It is still early so perhaps Disney will surprise me, but if the past 5 years is any indication of the direction the show is moving in , I will most likely be disappointed.

Avowed is the most recent effort from Obsidian (Fallout: New Vegas, The Outer Worlds) and what I believe to be their best effort since New Vegas released nearly 15 years ago. I had more fun with Avowed than any RPG title of the past 10 years with the main reason being its addicting combat which never got old even after 25+ hours of logged time. There are 5 classes to choose from, I picked fighter because it is the class I choose for literally any and every RPG game, and I can’t imagine playing the game any other way. I built an absolute tank of a character, a beast who soaked up damage like it was nothing while shredding enemies with twoi-handed swords and axes, or with maces and muskets. Initially, I thought having a character with a 0 intelligence level would eventually become problematic, but having a party of characters who compensated for my shortcomings and who could reach areas I would not be able to otherwise, quickly alleviated any tensions that I had about having an incredibly dumb fighter. Avowed is a beautiful game and the most colorful and vibrant setting since playing Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. The game is separated into 4 locations, each with its own ecosystem and unique terrain to navigate. Each location also introduces new enemies with it, adding some variety to the enemies fought. I have noticed a lot of people complaining about enemy types and it is clear that those people did not play beyond the hour mark, because had they played more than a measly 60 minutes, they would have encounter new enemy types. Avowed has an interesting and engaging enough story, although I would say that it’s the choices you make and how they affect everyone around you that really makes the stakes feel higher. The actual premise of Avowed is the standard good vs evil, except you aren’t exactly sure which is which, making your decisions all the more difficult as you will without a doubt harm someone in the process. By the end of the game, I was surprised more than a few times as I really believed I had made the correct decision, except it is never so simple, there are always two-sides to each story, always. Avowed is a terrific game and something to finally justify Microsoft spending billions on studio acquisitions a few years ago. Even if I wasn’t able to play Avowed on Game Pass, I would gladly spend the $70 to buy it.

Growing up during the 80’s and 90’s, I remember those times fondly specifically for the sci-fi genre and how most movies during that time were created with one single intention - to entertain. The acting was rarely good, the storylines were usually over-the-top and full of holes, but the writers/directors never took themselves too seriously and the audience benefited from it, but in modern day cinema, everything must be a 10/10 masterpiece or else it is not worth watching, fortunately for me, I remember a better time in our existence when movies were allowed to have fun and that is exactly what you get with “In the Lost Lands”, a whole lot of fun. The action sequences, the acting, the soundtrack, the visuals, everything is turned up to 11 in this self-aware post-apocalyptic action movie that fuses fantasy and western together, and hilariously so. Make no mistake, this is not a great or even a good movie, but it is absolutely entertaining and as long as you maintain an open-mind, you should have a great time watching Milla Jovovich and Dave Bautista traverse the wasteland as the most unlikely of duos: a wasteland cowboy and a witch who is tasked with turning someone into a werewolf. What follows is the two action star veterans grunting and yelling as they slice and blow up enemies, burn strange monsters, and slow-mo kill everything in between, and I am here for all of it. Don’t take yourself too seriously and maybe you will have as much fun with this movie as I did.

WARNING!!! Do NOT watch Opus!!! I repeat! Do NOT watch Opus!!! Normally, I would provide at least 3-4 reasons as to why a movie is good/bad, but with Opus, I just refuse to dedicate any more time than is necessary considering how awful it is. Like Troll 2, Winnie the Pooh, One Missed Call and Jaws 2 before it, Opus truly is one of the WORST horror movies that I have ever seen, it is easily the worst of this year and it might just be the worst horror movie of the 2020’s. You can believe the 5 star reviews if you like, but you will regret it and you will wish that you listened to me. There are no funny moments, no scary moments, no entertaining moments, Opus is just a straight up bad movie with bad writing and bad acting. Avoid at all costs.

Spoilers: It is impossible to categorize Sinners because it infuses so many different genres into the 2 hour and 17 minutes runtime, its just unfortunate that it doesn’t do any of those things particularly well. Sinners is a horror movie that isn’t scary because it doesn’t dedicate nearly enough time into the immersion process, it is a romance movie that feels rushed in those areas because it is in too much of a hurry to also be a musical, a drama, and an action movie all at the same time. The only thing we know for sure about any of the characters is that they are all sinners, which is the one and only constant theme to be found in the entire movie. By the time the horror elements are introduced nearly an hour into the film, I had already began asking “what is the point of it all”? I was never quite given an answer, mostly because of the various plot lines that were pointlessly introduced and never again addressed. Why were the Vampires there for the preachers son? Why were Native Americans introduced as the Vampire hunters for less than 5 minutes and never shown again? Why were the Vampires associated with local racist leaders? Why, why, and why? Sinners is a self-gratifying movie that will no doubt be praised by critics, but for all of the wrong reasons.

Anyone who grew up an 80's or 90's kid and who loved watching horror movies has asked the question "I wonder what Jason is doing in the woods", or "I wonder how Jason catches up to the kids so fast"? Lucky for us slasher lovers, the film In A Violent Nature (IAVN) provides us with some answers, even if they are fairly unremarkable. As it turns out, it is pretty much exactly what we expected, he is walking, a lot, a lot a lot! The slasher in IAVN is called Johnny and he might as well be Jason in a parallel universe, because his story is ALMOST identical to the source inspiration, and that is in no way a bad thing considering how this is a gushing love letter to the slasher movies that have clearly inspired both writer and director. IAVN follows Johnny from the moment he is unintentionally resurrected by some unsuspecting teens, all the way to the IAVN's conclusion. Some people will be incredibly bored with a slasher's process, and I completely understand that, but I found it very fulfilling to see a movie that fills in the blanks when it comes to killers' downtime, and how they spend their time in between their stalking of victims. If you can sit through some of the scenes that drag on, you will be treated to some truly gnarly and original kills; the scene on the cliff edge alone is worth the price of admission. Overall, IAVN is an amazing slasher movie from the POV of the killer, gleefully reinventing those tired tropes that made people want to move on from slashers in the first place.