Jason Brown – Google

A cinematic masterpiece to be sure but certainly not for everyone. As everyone says it looks glorious and that largely holds up in the 21st century. The ideas here may be elusive, particularly upon 1st viewing, but they're impactful especially as we hurdle toward AI influencing everything in our lives. I suggest a companion analysis immediately afterward to make sense of some of it. If you're looking for something bombastic, you're not going to find it here. This is meditative filmmaking that moves like a slug but that's where the beauty of it lies. The monolith is a brilliant and fascinating take on human evolution and possible alien life. The absence of a culprit who placed it makes it that much more eerily mysterious. The later sequences with HAL, the ship's AI, are unsettling and stick with you. The purposely mundane characters will bore some, as it did when it was first released but, oddly, that's the point. This all creates an atmosphere that draws you in and puts you off-guard; then suddenly you are blindsided not by some sort of explosion of violence but by something else that isn't easy to define, something that lingers as you contemplate what you've just seen. Not many films can challenge you that way. This is often compared to Tarkovsky's Solaris. Some say it's Russia's answer to 2001, but Tarkovsky had few admirers in the Soviet nomenklatura. The bureaucracy sensored and ultimately banned much of his work. But, like Solaris, 2001 leaves ample space for subjective interpretation but is definitely more accessible for American audiences. Solaris made me wonder what I was watching and after it was over I couldn't help but think about it. I wasn't sure if I even enjoyed it in the traditional sense. 2001: A Space Odyssey hits similar notes and in that way they feel similar and years later I understand that's a great thing.

While never feeling much like Raimi's original, this remake does a solid job of paying tribute to it. There isn't an ounce of humor to be found but Alvarez's version creates truly horrific and gory visuals that feel somewhere between "torture porn" like Saw, more conventional slasher flicks, and super natural possession. The deaths and maiming of the characters wind up being quite fun and original in their own way. There always seems to be another satisfying trick up the demon's sleeve that keeps you flinching. The film looks great and it's disgusting in the best possible way!

Justified, I've finally come to understand, is my all-time favorite series, with some of the best writing, acting, and characters put on television. Olyphant is fantastic, as are the rest of the cast, but Walton Goggins as Boyd Crowder is absolutely fantastic and plays it with incredible nuance that is as memorable as any I've seen. It's the only show I've watched not twice but three times, which is why I now see it as my all-time favorite. A remarkable and truly excellent piece of pop culture that will be difficult to top. Well done to all involved!

This show has a few things going for it but that's largely undone by the half-baked, one-dimensional villains that just bark orders at people and whose motivations are cartoonish. On the other side--the kids--are depicted as pure beings that use language that often sounds like a toddler but none of them are. All this makes for a series that is simultaneously adult in ideas but cringe inducing, childishness in execution.

Clunky pacing, often poorly-written, and incredibly cheap production. The sci-fi elements were so hilariously generic I almost couldn't believe it. It feels like laziest Scyfy Channel show ever produced. It's pastiche, like a hazy interpretation of 80s film tropes that was made by someone who wasn't there and didn't bother to watch what it was borrowing from. I realize this is YA so if you're the target audience, this may have more appeal, but the execution was just not there. But hey, I think I'm the only person in the world that didn't like Stranger Things.

An interesting take on events during WW2; in this case the "proto" French resistance that started with smuggling intellectuals and artists out of occupied France and ended in the formation of partisan militias in reaction to the Vichy's collaboration and the increasing cruelty of the fascist occupiers. It's written with an almost whimsical tone that is rare in the genre. It's billed as a "screwball comedy" but it's not exactly funny in that you'll find yourself laughing out loud. It's a subgenre of depression-era cinema that's at time silly as opposed to funny. It's nice to see a focus on the complexity of the French partisans: the immigrants, ex soldiers, artists, radicals, etc. It's different, so know that going in. Well done!