There’s a surprisingly diverse range of opinions on it, from “one of the worst movies of all time” to “actually pretty darn good, just looks bad in comparison to arguably two of the greatest movies in the history of the medium.”

There’s usually a lot of discussion about whether Scorsese’s gangster movies “glamorize” the criminal lifestyles they’re documenting, but I always found The Godfather to be a much more appealing view of the criminal world than the classic Scorsese films. Obviously, the Godfather movies are meant as tragedies, and…

The first season could have worked perfectly well without the Sentient Evil Polar Bear - it’s a great story even without the supernatural element. This season is much more tied to the supernatural, which isn’t an inherently illegitimate choice, but the show has never succeeded in tying the supernatural element to any…

I think this episode crystallized one of the biggest problems I’ve had with this season, which is that it never really takes advantage of the setting.

And the other half are poets!

Apart from Simone’s coma hypothesis, Jason’s immediate move to kill Derek (with Mindy’s glint-eyed encouragement) raises once more the thought that the test for the four initial humans has never really ended. Which would be bad news for Jason.

Breaking Bad had a ridiculous-sounding premise and it turned out to be extraordinary. Better Call Saul was met with all kinds of justifiable skepticism and it turned out to be great. I think I’m going to assume that this will be good until Gilligan and Company give me a reason to doubt them.

Yep. Disney wants/wanted nothing to do with the endless debates over where to draw the lines and who to suspend and whether this tweet is hateful or that tweet is satirical - that’s just a quagmire. A bunch of articles with the words “Disney,” “Twitter” and “white supremacist” is basically a corporate PR nightmare. 

Vox has a weird combination of truly excellent content - our old pal Emily, David Roberts’ climate pieces, Ezra Klein’s columns - and eyeroll-inducing pablum.

Hey, good for Quake. 

(Who’s the real monster? Still the torturing rapists, Rob.)

I rather liked the spirit realm half of this episode, and Natsuki Kunimoto was great. But the overarching problem with this season is that Chester is such a yawning sinkhole of a character, and everything without him is infinitely better than everything with him. 

I did like the joke late in the show’s run where he’s dating Aisha Tyler, and he says, “I mean, I could still win a Noble Prize. Although the last two papers I’ve written were widely discredited.”

I ended up coming down on the positive side (there are a couple genuinely great episodes in the season’s back half), but I think someone else could reasonably argue that it never really cohered into anything more than some compelling images and moments. Definitely not going onto my “Best TV of 2018" list.

The first season of Castle Rock turned out pretty well, more or less, but it invested a lot of time at the beginning to build up the show’s tone and setting before really diving into the actual plot. I’m curious to see if the second season can start more confidently without the need to play the “See how spooky it…

I wasn’t a huge fan of Fire and Blood, because I didn’t think it had particularly interesting or three-dimensional characters (a consequence of Martin’s framing device). Also, I totally got all the Targaryens confused within a few chapters. But I’m absolutely on board with a TV show - it could easily fix the character…

This isn’t meant as a shot at Dowd, who’s a wonderful critic, but I’m always struck by how little impact “It’s funny” actually has on most critics’ judgement of a work.

God, the tone of this website can be exhausting sometimes. 

This image made me laugh pretty hard, so kudos. 

“Honey, I promise you I didn’t mean to accidentally run over your dog when I was backing out of the driveway this morning. And I’d like nothing more than to express my sincerest regrets for that mistake, but I love you so much, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to ruin that by saying ‘sorry.’”