A solid reboot of the Batman franchise, The Batman breaks new ground in several ways. It eschews the "Marvel-style" glossy, fun thrill ride in favor of a gritty noir style - it's firmly (and unrelentingly) dark, serious, and bleak. And Goth AF. It thankfully skips committing

Roland Emmerich movies are almost always ridiculous extravaganzas. Most of them are ludicrous enough and/or dumb enough to break my suspension of disbelief right away, so I'm not a fan in general. 2012 is an outlier for me: it's definitely ridiculous but it's

I've enjoyed many shows and movies by Mike Flanagan over the past few years. I didn't know him by name after watching The Haunting of Hill House or Doctor Sleep although I loved both of those shows, but after watching Midnight Mass Mike Flanagan was solidified

This new Netflix post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie runs a tight ship. Things get going immediately with a handful of space colonists landing on Earth hundreds of years after they left it. The first act is pure action: fast, furious, and compelling. The second act transitions into interesting drama as we learn

I joined the trial version of "AMC+", a streaming service, just so I could watch Near Dark, a 1987 dark "neo-western" vampire movie that I've been wanting to watch but never had. Notable elements: * It was released a year after Aliens and stars three

Inhuman Kiss is a Thai supernatural horror movie with a bit of a tragic love story to boot. Set in rural Thailand of the 1940s, it tells the story of a young woman who is a regular girl by day but unwittingly turns into a demon called a krasue at

After seeing a preview a while back, Freaks fell off my radar. It just popped up as iTunes' Movie of the Week so I gave it a try on AppleTV. Vaguely similar to 10 Cloverfield Lane, the protagonist of Freaks is a little girl whose father has always kept

Dracula is a mixed bag. The Good It's definitely a fresh take on the old story and it contributes some interesting new ideas to the evolving mythos. It has the signature mysterious feel and mind-bending twists of series co-creator Steven Moffat (Sherlock, Doctor Who). The lead heroine, Sister

Knives Out is written and directed by Rian Johnson, who also wrote and directed The Last Jedi - a controversial and divisive movie which I was unhappy with. So for Knives Out I was skeptical of the direction, the writing, and the star-studded cast, which often signals an artsy, goofy