After Wonder Woman and Spider-man Homecoming, Thor: Ragnarok seems to prove that we’ve hit a good patch of superhero movies at the moment. Starting out with a tongue-in-cheek, fourth-wall-breaking monologue fakeout, I was having a good time with the charming humour right from the start — which didn’t let up all the way to the…
Category: Sci-fi
Fall TV 2017 – New Shows
After a pretty unexciting summer movie season, it would have been nice to come home to some exciting new shows this fall. Alas, so far some aren’t too promising despite a strong pedigree, and others are downright terrible. Good thing there are still a number of returning shows to keep us satisfied (I’ll get to those…
2017 Summer of Sitcom Binge-watching
From my lack of reviews over the summer, it may be obvious that I, like critics and audiences everywhere, think this was the worst summer movie season ever. I only got out to a couple of movies in the theatre, so what have I been doing to satisfy my pop-cultural cravings over the summer? I’ve…
2017 Fall TV Preview
Netflix and streaming keeps changing our idea of TV seasons, when they begin and end, still we recently concluded the 2016-17 network TV season. This is also the time when the networks give us a peek at their fall schedules. For myself, there weren’t any tough cancellations — even one show that I would have…
Alien: Covenant – Movie Review
One thing that disappointed me about the prequel Prometheus was that it started to open up the Aliens mythology (with the Engineers, and a Lovecraftean backstory), but in the end the story was reduced to another space crew finding a primitive version of the Alien xenomorph, and being slaughtered. I was hoping that Alien: Covenant…
Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2 – Movie Review
The “Marvel Cinematic Universe” has become something of a beast, weighed down by continuity, history, and the expectations of big budgets and big fandom. However, a new Guardians of the Galaxy movie comes out to remind us that there are still fun adventures to be had in the MCU. One of the advantages that the…
Oscar Schmoscar 2017
Each year, when I do these quickie reviews of Oscar nominees that I’ve seen, a few of them are marginal categories — like sound editing, or costume design — but this year I think I’ve got a better slice. I still may not necessarily love the winners, but I’m glad that doing my Oscar-viewing “homework” gets me to…
More Midseason TV 2017
Didn’t I tell you that there’s a lot of TV to watch? It’s been a month since I last posted about the new shows in January and there have been a whole slew more. TV programmers seem to take more chances on the weird stuff (that’s the sci-fi/fantasy genre to us fans) in midseason, so…
New Year, New TV 2017
Streaming has really changed the way we watch TV, and what would have (over the last few years) been considered “midseason” — I.e. the time when networks bring out new/returning shows to replace the ones that have already been cancelled or taken an early break — is now a bit more free-flowing. Netflix (and other…
Alvin's Adventures in Pop Culture 