Thanks to those who have offered suggestions for future columns. I will begin fulfilling requests on a “first come, first serve” basis starting in January 2024. As always, I am open to suggestions for future topics. Feel free to leave a comment below or on Discord! “The religions of ancient Greece and Rome are extinct. The so-called divinities of Olympus have not a single worshipper among living men.” So writes […]
The low-hanging fruit first: Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is complete garbage as an Ant-Man movie. 2015’s Ant-Man and 2018’s Ant-Man and the Wasp are two of the most perfectly-matched films in the vast corpus of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, now arriving at its 31st feature film, providing almost identical experiences, and in their offbeat way, maybe the most distinctive experience the MCU has been able to offer. In a […]
The Woman King suffers from only one seriously unanswerable flaw, in my estimation, and it is unfortunately a pretty significant one given what the film is. Namely, its scenes of 19th Century warfare, using a mixture of guns, traditional African tribal weaponry, and what I greatly suspect are some weapons much too fanciful to be “traditional” in any sense other than that ’70s Hong Kong kung fu movies are a […]
When the Walt Disney Company dabbles in family-friendly science fiction, catastrophe follows. Around the turn of the 1980s, they tried to get in on that Star Wars action, with The Black Hole and TRON in 1979 and 1982. Soon after both flopped, the company was taken over in a hostile coup, as the animation division underwent the industry-redefining birth pains of The Black Cauldron, which suffered the most acriminous and […]
A review requested by Harold, with thanks to supporting Alternate Ending as a donor through Patreon. Do you have a movie you’d like to see reviewed? This and other perks can be found on our Patreon page! We cannot say of the 2002 miniseries Dinotopia that it has small ambitions. Packed into its three parts, totaling over four hours, it attempts to create an entire alternative society full of CGI […]
To have come so close to losing the rights to the Hellraiser brand that one must quickly rush out a sequel for contractual reasons is sloppiness. To have done this twice begins to feel like deliberate sabotage. And yet, seven years after Hellraiser: Revelations was (barely) released in 2011, Dimension Films once again had to hustle out a new film. The result, a certain Hellraiser: Judgment, is at least better […]
This week’s episode is coming to you a week late, and for that we apologize. Though, fiesty-ness levels are high due to lack of sleep and new-phone-setup drama, so maybe we’re not sorry. From just plain defining “aliens” to just generally attacking each other for our alien preferences, the episode gets a little snappy. But we’ll let you decide, are Avatar’s really aliens? Is Yoda just a really old human? […]
In a series on bad French cinema, I couldn’t possibly overlook the multitude of live-action adaptations of Franco-Belgian comics or bandes dessinées (BDs). Your typical BD is a slim hardback of coffee table dimensions covering all genres on any conceivable subject. Owning one or several hundred is a sign of general culture. The mascot of this tradition is a two-headed Janus with Hergé’s Belgian adventurer Tintin on one side and […]
There are a few different ways we can make sense of the title of Mad God, a new stop-motion animated feature that’s also not very new at all: with some footage dating back to 1989, it’s one of the longest-in-production films to have ever been released. But probably the simplest explanation is the one we encounter first: God exists, and He is Mad at us. This film, which will spend […]
Lightyear, the 26th feature film produced by Pixar Animation studios and easily the worst one that has no talking cars in it, opens with two title cards relaying the following information: “In 1995, a boy named Andy got a Buzz Lightyear toy for his birthday. It was from his favorite movie. This is that movie.” It’s almost subtly done; Toy Story is never mentioned by name, and while these cards […]
With Lightyear having come out this weekend, bearing the baffling premise that it’s the Star Wars-style movie that inspired the cartoon character that inspired the toy that Andy loves in Toy Story (we think?), Tim, Carrie, and Brennan (subbing in this week for Rob) have decided to discuss their childhood favorites! Brennan Top 5: The Little Mermaid X2: X-Men United Airplane! Bartok the Magnificent Big Fat Liar Carrie Top 5: […]
It’s summertime at the movies, and you know what that means: time for all the biggest sequels, brand extensions, spin-offs, and nostalgic cash grabs. In other words: movie franchises! And with one of the all-time biggest franchises preparing to come to an end (till next time) with Jurassic World: Dominion on June 10, we thought it would be a great opportunity to take a look at some of our favorite […]
