TV Reviews - Doctor Who 908: The Zygon Inversion

TV Reviews - Doctor Who 907: The Zygon Invasion

TV Reviews - Doctor Who 905 and 906: The Girl Who Died and The Woman Who Lived

TV Reviews - Doctor Who 904: Before the Flood

TV Reviews - Doctor Who 903: Under the Lake

TV Reviews - Doctor Who 902: The Witch's Familiar

TV Reviews - Doctor Who 901: The Magician's Apprentice

Movie Reviews - The Last Airbender

So, there is a rumor going around that some moron somewhere is allowing M. Night Shyamalan to make The Last Airbender 2. My move is finished, and I can take time to update my sites again, so I figured that in honor of this awful, awful possibility, I would review the first "film", a movie which gouged an eye out of one of my favorite franchises of all time.

Movie Reviews - Fantastic Four (2015)

Uuuggghhhhh.

Movie Reviews - Terminator Genisys

I saw the first Terminator movie when I was probably too young to see it, but I enjoyed it. I saw the second movie not long after, and I loved it. It was just a spectacular movie, with great effects and action, and a really fun dynamic between the three leads. I've followed the franchise (the movie side of it at least) since. I liked Terminator 3, and I enjoyed things about Terminator: Salvation, but I always considered the second film to be the definitive installment, encompassing everything that made the franchise fun to begin with. This movie wasn't better, but I really feel like it gave the second movie a run for its money.

Warning: Reviewing this movie does sort of demand a certain number of spoilers, so spoilers ahead.

Movie Reviews - Inside Out

When I first saw trailers for this movie, I was genuinely worried. It reminded me of a movie from several years ago, Osmosis Jones, which was about a white blood cell cop who does impossible things to save the human that he lives in, with the help of a cold pill, which, in the movie, is like a kind of Robocop-esque guy. It is an interesting enough movie, and kind of fun, but these characters do things which are biologically impossible, because white blood cells and cold pills aren't sentient. They don't have their own free will, or a desire to do better and try harder. I was worried that this movie would be the Osmosis Jones of psychology. I know enough psychology to know that our individual emotions don't have their own agency beyond the fact that we sometimes can't help feeling them. Our emotions are dependent on our experiences, and they work for us whether we always realize it or not. Thankfully the movie sticks to this truth, and does it very well while telling a very good story about the human condition.

Movie Reviews - Jurassic World

I saw this movie a week ago, and I have been trying to decide how to go about reviewing it since then. Not because it is something special, or something profound, but because it really is a big nostalgia trip, with many similarities to the original movie. This isn't to say that I didn't like it, because I did. I just don't know how to talk about this movie without comparing it to Jurassic Park. So that's just what I'm going to do.

Movie Review - Tomorrowland

Welcome to the world of tomorrow! I'm going to be entirely honest, when I saw the trailers for Tomorrowland, from Disney, it felt someone was teasing a new theme park attraction. I still stand by that. The trailer did one thing well, though, and it took the Roland Emmerich approach and told us very little about the movie itself. Minimalism builds intrigue, and I certainly was intrigued, enough that I looked forward to seeing the movie. I didn't, however, let my expectations get too high. On one hand, I'm glad I didn't. On the other hand, I feel like those expectations could have been inflated a bit, because this movie was actually quite good.

Movie Reviews - Avengers: Age of Ultron (SPOILERS)

Nothing, nothing, will ever recapture what made Avengers so great. It wasn't Citizen Cain or anything, but before Avengers, no one anywhere believed 100% that a crossover story like this could be done, that stars from multiple series of films could come together as supporting players in a new story and work so well together. Afterward, no one anywhere believed anymore that they couldn't. It was a groundbreaking, triumphant study of the strength of human perseverance, driven by great writing that made the villain as likeable as the heroes. Avengers: Age of Ultron was a little different.

Movie Reviews - Cinderella (2015)

I have made no secret of the fact that I love fairy tales. I am pessimistic a lot of the time in my real life, so I find it comforting in my writing and entertainment choices to break out of that a little bit. Besides, ya know, magic. I like magic. Normally when I think about my favorite fairy tales, Cinderella isn't the first that come to mind. Usually I think of Beauty and the Beast (Holy Christ on a Bicycle, Emma Watson is playing Belle in the remake, squee!) or Sleeping Beauty (Maleficent is a BAMF), but this movie has me reconsidering that.

TV Reviews - Doctor Who Christmas Special 2014: Last Christmas

So I’m basically throwing my very recently decided-upon schedule out the window by now, but at least I’m adhering to the spirit of the schedule by updating when I can. So yeah, Last Christmas by Steven Moffet.

Movie Reviews - Into the Woods

It's a little late, but here, finally, is my weekend review!

I mentioned in a recent post that I really enjoy musicals. One of my favorite movies is Mary Poppins. I have a favorite musical, Disney’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks. I cried heroic manly man tears both of the times that I saw Les Mis in theaters. I don’t get the chance to see musicals on stage nearly as often as I’d like, but I have seen stage productions of Fame and Les Mis and loved them both. I also desperately want to see Wicked. As a fan of musicals, I openly acknowledge that there is a stark difference between a musical made for the silver screen, and musicals adapted to the silver screen from the stage. After the success of Les Mis, I expect to see a resurgence of movie adaptations of stage productions, and while I’m looking forward to this, I accept that this is sometimes going to be a bad idea.

I also love fairy tales. I am a dude, and I am proud that I love fairy tales. On these notes, Into the Woods.

Follow-Up Awesome - Gotham

So hey, guys, I'm back doing stuff, and just in time for the new TV viewing period! So rather than what I was going to post today, which I totally didn't irresponsibly not write down and then forget what it was or forget to work on it at all (probably), let's talk again about Gotham.

Something Awesome #36 - Mark Reads

*Apologies. It seems that after I wrote this Monday I forgot to publish it. Whoops.*

As I haven't done a real, full-length Something Awesome in a while and have said on many occasions recently that I have had many ideas for weeks...it makes sense that I decided to instead discuss something which I only discovered a few days ago, while referencing the subject in the intro! Intrigued? Then it's time for AwesomeJohn22 to talk about Mark Reads.

Overview - The Twelfth Doctor

So I know I said that this was coming a long time ago, and then I put it off, and put it off, and put it off. I just couldn't find my voice on this one (I'm also lazy...). No matter the things that I disliked about this latest Series of the long-running scifi adventure show, I found it difficult to talk negatively about the Doctor in any real way, and spoilers: there will be negatives in this overview, very strong ones. Finally, however, any other projects which have been vying for my attention have been relegated to the back of my mind, and I have come up with what I think is a pretty concrete way to analyze the character of the Doctor in any of his forms. I call it The TARDIS Test.