I read Dune last summer and enjoyed it (the world building is exceptionally good), but I was definitely not left with a burning desire to read the sequels, especially after browsing some wikipedia summaries and learning that the rest of the series seems to spend a lot more time diving into the first book’s deeply…

I’ve never been the biggest fan of Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye, less because of anything in his performance and more because the character has always been severely underwritten and bore no relationship to the comic book character he is nominally an adaptation of, so I’ve had low expectations for this show despite…

I don’t know that I fully buy Nate’s heel turn because it is so out of character with the guy we met in Season 1, but I think there’s a lot of truth in the idea that some people who feel lonely and insecure, when they are finally given the love, dignity, and acceptance that they’ve always wanted, spurn it and lash out…

As long as it’s being done safely (e.g. cycling off roids completely for extended intervals, regular blood tests to check for early warning signs of organ damage, hopefully being administered or at least overseen by a medical professional) I really don’t care if actors use steroids to get a certain look for a role,…

I (not a doctor) suspect this would be the case. The Expanse, which typically tries pretty hard to get the mechanics of living in zero G mostly right, had a whole subplot in both the books and the TV show about the aftermath of a mass casualty incident in which artificial gravity is not immediately available to…

Colter was good but if they bring him back as Luke Cage I hope they completely change his backstory. Making him a former cop and all around boy scout was a bizarre choice - the writers of the Netflix show seemed to go out of their way to make him a less interesting and nuanced character.  

I would quibble with the idea that Stewart was at the top of his game when he left The Daily Show in 2015. I think he had been burnt out for years and had hit a wall somewhere toward the end of Obama’s first term in office where he just didn’t have anything new or funny to say about the cruel absurdities of modern…

I have mixed feelings on The Last Jedi. I thought that the stuff with Luke, Rey, and Kylo Ren was fantastic. It really felt like Rian Johnson was the only creator involved with Star Wars since Disney bought the franchise who was interested in pushing things in a new direction. The rest of the movie really doesn’t work…

I get it - I have little doubt that same-day streaming release, whether it’s for no additional cost like HBO Max or for a premium like Disney+, undermines box office to some extent and it’s completely reasonable for someone whose paycheck is determined at least in part on box office returns to be furious about that.…

I feel for Jodie Whittaker, because I thought she brought a lot to the role and deserved better writing than she got, but on the whole I think it’s past time for a wholesale reinvention of Dr. Who. It hasn’t felt like appointment viewing to me since probably Matt Smith’s second season and has just generally felt like…

Do they? I think that the audience for this, Marriage Story, Divorced, etc. is in reality a fairly small population of overwhelmingly white, upper middle class people who, through their gross overrepresentation among film and TV critics, pop culture websites, and Twitter super-users create a mirage that this shit is…

The Force Awakens was fun, if derivative, but it set up a problem that neither of its sequels could overcome, which is that the basic premise is “Hey, remember the Star Wars characters you know and love, who were such an important part of your childhood and lived happily ever after at the end of Return of the Jedi?…

Yeah I think most war movies are lazy and cliched, and it’s a pleasant surprise when one has something new and interesting to say about either the experience of war or war as a metaphor. Like, Da 5 Bloods had something unique to say about the Vietnam War because it focused on black veterans in a way that no mainstream…

Eh. I get that divorce happens and that it’s a big, emotional, disruptive life event for people, but there’s a very specific type of story about divorce - middle class, liberal white people who either live in a city or the wealthy suburbs of a city discovering that middle class American life isn’t all it’s cracked up…

Here I am in the comments section of the AV Club, the website where people famously only comment on things that they have seen and enjoyed.

Holy shit I’m so sick of Gen X’ers making movies and TV shows (or, in this case, remaking older movies) about their divorces. No one cares! Your take on marriage is not new or interesting, and your navel-gazing midlife ennui is probably the reason why your ex-spouse stopped loving you!

I think that’s been clear since at least the second episode. It’s been stated again and again that the Time Keepers (so far as the worker bees at the TVA know) are not just making sure that things happen according to some divine predestination but are in fact deciding what the best timeline is and shaping it to that…

Eh. First, it was one of the most wildly uneven TV shows I’ve ever watched, and if HBO couldn’t work with the creators to figure out how to stabilize the writing quality across episodes then I don’t think it deserved a second season. Second, I thought it told a complete story that didn’t necessarily need followup, and…

Pass. I enjoyed Good Omens but I thought that it really dragged even at just 6 episodes, so I can’t imagine that making 6 more episodes would be that compelling. 

Yep - it’s probably Chris Evan’s best performance as Cap and Scarlett Johansson’s best performance as Black Widow, and it is HANDS DOWN the best pure action movie in the MCU. I was really hoping Falcon and the Winter Soldier would ape more of The Winter Soldier, but it really only managed to hits those heights at a…