There has historically been a one-to-one relationship in the Underworld films between Kate Beckinsale being onscreen and the films being even a little bit palatable to watch. In the fifth and very probably final entry in the series, Underworld: Blood Wars, we see less of Beckinsale than in any of the others besides the 2009 prequel Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, in which her character didn’t even exist. I assume […]
There are films about which we say, “people have mixed reactions”, because there are things that are generally liked and things that are generally disliked, and it’s hard to feel much more than a profound ambivalence about it when taken as a whole. And then there are films about which we say, “people have mixed reactions”, because of the gaping gulf between the people who love it and the people […]
Star Trek: Nemesis was built, more or less explicitly, to be the final story to feature the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation, trumpeting its overbaked finale-ness in everything from the first scene (excluding a prologue) to the climactic death of a main character which, in best mainstream sci-fi tradition, is implied near the end to maybe be not quite so permanent as all that. It is big and […]
I genuinely don’t know if Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan saved the Star Trek franchise, or forever condemned it. Hopefully, that doesn’t come across as heresy: like pretty much else willing to concede the existence of Star Trek movies prior to 2009, The Wrath of Khan is my ready pick for the best feature film in the franchise, and quite the equal of all but the very best […]
I weep for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, as I would for a brother. Honestly. Rechristened by audiences as The Motionless Picture almost from the instant it opened in December, 1979, it has never once shaken the reputation of being a joyless slog, neither pleasurable in its own right nor remotely successful as a big-screen followup to the 1966-’69 TV series Star Trek, and subject to the worst indulgences of […]
This month’s topic comes to us thanks to Brian Fowler. I am grateful it is not about wrestling (but Bergman would have been nice). If you too would like me to investigate a movie of your choice, I am always open to suggestions. Sometimes I even take them. Once upon a time I was an undergrad at the University of Notre Dame. My tenure there overlapped with the opening of […]
This month’s topic comes to us courtesy of Isaac Oliver. As always, I am open to suggestions for future topics. Next year (2025) is already half full! It’s rare that I get to talk to work colleagues about movies. Very few people I know offline are regular moviegoers, much less serious cinephiles. I jump at the chance to talk about film any time one of them shows the slightest interest […]
Dune: Part Two is as much the payment of a debt as it is a movie. In 2021, director Denis Villeneuve and his co-writers Eric Roth and Jon Spaihts presented us with an adaptation of Frank Herbert’s genre-defining 1965 science fiction novel Dune – which I guess we now ought to formally start calling Dune: Part One, which is after all what it said onscreen – that very recklessly told […]
Greetings and welcome back to Raspberry Picking, where we look back at Golden Raspberry Award winners and decide whether they really deserve to be called the worst movies ever. This month, we’re looking at Howard the Duck, nominee for seven Razzies, winner of four including Worst Picture, and permanent blemish on the otherwise spotless, stainless, and sinless career of George “Feast Your Eyes on All My Gungans” Lucas. 1987 was […]
If anything makes me happy about the existence of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, a bloated and dour attempt at nostalgia-scraping that primarily demonstrates that there really probably wasn’t any artistically valid reason to give the swashbuckling archaeologist his third consecutive “grand farewell tour” in a series that only runs to five films, it’s that I have to assume that in the wake of this cinematic pile of […]
The defining fact about 1989’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is that it isn’t Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. On its own, this fact is hardly distinctive. Many, if not indeed most, movies are not Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The key difference is that Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is the only movie I know that is specifically repudiating Temple of Doom, which […]
MANY thanks to Mahnaz Rokni, who gave me permission to view her film Forgotten and share stills from it with all of you (including the one in the header). You can check out her other work at her official web site. As always, I am open to suggestions for future topics and grateful to those who have made such suggestions. Feel free to leave a comment below or on Discord! […]
