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Mike Calls Saul on Better Call Saul
Better Call Saul has never had a more apt title than this week’s episode “Five-O”, because it’s here that someone finally “Calls Saul”. Jimmy McGill himself has never been more Saul-like than in this episode,… [more]
Descender #1: A Great Science Fiction Story Off to a Great Start
Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen’s Descender does what every successful comic does in its first issue: build the world, hook the reader, establish the themes and leave them wanting more. As space opera, it’s remarkably… [more]
Blind Swordfighting and Consumption: The Tale of Zatoichi
So Amazon is telling me that Gamera the Brave might not ship for months. Months! So while I’m waiting to finalize that particular series I thought I’d start another series I’ve been planning to review.… [more]
Rat Queens Returns!
We should probably play a bit of catch-up for this new issue of Rat Queens. After all, issue #8 ended on a cliffhanger (as did issue #7) but that was back in October. Now, here… [more]
Nameless #2: All Spaced Out
While the first issue of Nameless explored dream territory and the kind of dark modern-day occultism of Sandman or Constantine, the second issue literally takes right off into space, going to Event Horizon territory and… [more]
Nikkatsu Noir: A Colt is My Passport
Nikkatsu is Japan’s oldest movie studio. It was founded in 1912 but hit its peak from the fifties to the sixties. After that they started pushing pink films, basically Japanese soft-core. However before that slow… [more]
Better Call Saul vs “Slippin’ Jimmy”
Here we are, back in the world of Better Call Saul, where the themes of ethics and fraternal loyalty are firmly in the foreground. We learn a little more about Chuck’s specific medical condition, and… [more]
Honest Bees and a Critique of Capitalism: Jupiter Ascending
I loved the design of this movie. Jupiter Ascending feels like someone took Dune (the book) and mashed it up with every Tor book cover, then seasoned it with the kind of contemporary science-fiction design that rarely makes it into movies. [more]
A Look at Better Call Saul, The Comic Book
The first Better Call Saul comic book I’ve had the chance to read is an online comic, available freely from AMC, titled “Client Development”. It tells a story from the Breaking Bad days, covering scenes… [more]
Arrow Season 3 Episode 15 Review
The League of Assassins has loomed large over the third season of Arrow. Malcolm’s attempts to escape the death sentence he’s been saddled with has been the motivating factor for much of the season’s overarching… [more]
James Bond and Class Politics: Kingsman
Kingsman: The Secret Service is a killer action flick with a cool aesthetic, great actors, and a surprisingly vivid thematic bent. [more]
The End of Gamera
So not only is this the last of Kaneko’s trilogy it’s the last Daiei Gamera movie and the last Gamera movie distributed by Toho, all of which is sort of a big deal. So even if this isn’t the last Gamera movie I’ll review it’s still a bit of a milestone. [more]
Rasputin Comes to an End of Sorts in Issue #5
One of the questions with historical fantasy books like Rasputin or Manifest Destiny is how close they’re going to parallel the true recorded history. In the case of Manifest Destiny, they follow the general outlines… [more]
Ethics and Brothers in Better Call Saul Episode 4
Better Call Saul is going to be a show about ethics. At least, that was the prediction of some of my fellow Breaking Bad scholars that emerged from our conversations last week in Albuquerque. I… [more]
Don’t Underestimate Jimmy on Better Call Saul
It’s easy to forget, when watching Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman in action, that he’s one of the smartest guys in any given room. Jimmy’s street-tough use of language, his lack of “cool”, his too-formal suits all… [more]
Journey to the West Kicks Ass With a Giant Foot
There are fat suits and demons and cartoonish feet and attempts at actual emotion all scrambled together into one movie. [more]
Arrow Season 3 Episode 14 Review
Episodes that delve into the past are a dangerous business. They tread the same fraught ground that prequels tread, trying to find enough compelling, new story to justify an examination of a time that the… [more]
The Flash Season 1 Episode 14 Review
If there’s one thing you can say for The Flash, it’s not scared to swing big. The first season is just past the halfway mark and the series is already delving into time travel, nuclear… [more]
Spotlighting Underrated Films: Jennifer’s Body (2009)
I have a soft spot for brave-but-flawed movies that are rewarded for their efforts with Worst Movie of the Year awards. Jennifer’s Body has its problems, but it is one of the best “mainstream” films… [more]
Manifest Destiny #13: Bird is the Word
It’s good to be back on the river with Manifest Destiny. After a fairly obvious break in the action in the previous issue, the boat is moving again and the men (and women) of the… [more]
Southern Bastards #5-7: Changes of Character
Jason Aaron and Jason Latour are the George R. R. Martins of metaphorical realist fantasy comics set in the south. They aren’t afraid to take sudden dramatic right turns, to lose characters that you would… [more]
No Country for Old Men vs No Country for Old Men
A comparison of the Cormac McCarthy Novel and the Coen brother’s adaptation. Both are fantastic and unique works of art, but how successful an adaptation is the film? [more]
Mining for Meaning: A Review of My Bloody Valentine
Filmed in the formerly abandoned Princess Colliery Mine in Sydney Mines, Nova Scotia and infamous for having 9 minutes of the movie cut by the MPAA for violence and gore, My Bloody Valentine is a… [more]
Sex and Rotten Tomatoes: On The Counselor
So every single person on this planet of earth hated Ridley Scott and Cormac McCarthy’s The Counselor. The thing is they’re all just completely wrong. This movie is great and horribly underrated. [more]