Robocop is a tale of corruption and dehumanization. The film examines what it means to suck the humanity out of something, replace it with a mix of technology and greed, and witness the grim results when what’s left takes hold. It is an action-packed polemic against prioritizing private profits above the public good, escalation above restraint, and lead and steel above flesh and blood. But as I discussed on The Serial Fanaticist Podcast, it’s also a paean to the resilience of the human soul, unquenched and undeterred by whatever self-serving, nest-feathering malevolence may have been permeati ..read more

  Note: This review pertains to the director’s cut of Dark City and contains MAJOR SPOILERS for the film. What is it about the 1990s that gave us so many films like this one? Whether it’s Dark City, or City of Lost Children, or even The Matrix (which I bet had the word “city” in the title at first), the decade was awash in reality-questioning, green-tinted stories about chosen one saviors breaking through confusing and oppressive systems. As I discussed on The Serial Fanaticist podcast, each of these movies offers the same sense of grime-ridden trippiness, the same sort of heady themes w ..read more

[CAUTION: This review contains MAJOR SPOILERS for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker] The Rise of Skywalker never stops. From minute one, it is utterly relentless, bringing back major characters, leaping across time and space, and blowing through plot point after plot point at breakneck speed. Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy recently speculated that if director J.J.  Abrams had known he would be spearheading this final installment back when he originally signed on for The Force Awakens, he would have saddled up and directed the whole damn trilogy. The Rise of Skywalker bears that out, if only ..read more

The strange thing about Attack of the Clones is that there’s the ghost of a better movie within it. Its script is atrocious, and the visuals all but sink the film as its scenes grow progressively uglier. But buried within that mess is a noble effort to cultivate the root causes of Anakin’s turn, a solid mystery adventure for “Obi Wan Kenobi: Space Detective”, and even a minor bit of political intrigue. Its weaknesses far outnumber its strengths, but the best thing you can say about Episode II is that in different hands, or under different circumstances, it could have been great. That said, A ..read more

There’s a refreshing simplicity to the plot of Predator. You can boil it down to “Alien hunter picks off mercenaries in the jungle.” Technically, there’s a little more to it than that, with the mildest of ruses and a minor mission misdirect to contend with, but the gist of the film fits into an eight-word description. That seems remarkable right now in an age where every blockbuster and explosion-fest needs to have some convoluted conspiracy, twist upon twist, and a grand mystery to keep the audience interested. Predator, by contrast, banks on the basics of its premise to carry the day. That ..read more

There’s a tension at the heart of The Matrix. The film frames its machine-forged digital ecosystem as a prison, as a lie intended to keep humanity docile. It’s the work of an authority that means to tame us. But the Matrix itself is also a world of unlimited possibility, one where you can look cooler than the real world would ever allow, do what no flesh-and-blood human ever could, and see and feel and experience things that simply aren’t possible outside of this virtual space. The film quickly establishes a tug-of-war between the true but meager subsistence the real world offers and the bli ..read more