With John Wick ready for retirement (his knees have voted), Ballerina arrives not as a simple spinoff, but as a necessary passing of the torch. Ana de Armas’s Eve brings the franchise back to the personal, gritty stakes that made it a hit, shedding the convoluted lore of later chapters. She fights with a clever viciousness that’s all her own, driven by a furious desire to get IN, not out. This is a triumphant return to what makes this world great: getting both mad and even. Read More …

Forget awkward holiday dinners. The Wolff brothers’ idea of family bonding involves dismantling a human trafficking ring, and I am here for it.

In my deep dive into The Accountant 2, I break down why this sequel is less about the “whodunnit” and more about the brilliant, action-packed story of brotherhood. I’ll explore how Christian and Braxton’s unique dynamic works, why their fight scenes are a form of therapy, and how the film argues that for some, love is a deliberate, difficult calculation. It’s a surprisingly heartwarming take on murder. Read More …

Nimona (2023) almost died when Disney shuttered Blue Sky Studios at 70% completion, but Netflix’s resurrection gave us something extraordinary. Chloë Grace Moretz delivers vocal shapeshifting mastery as the titular anarchic hero, while Riz Ahmed anchors perfectly as troubled knight Ballister. The film’s genius lies in using disarming pink aesthetics to explore othering, identity, and radical acceptance without preaching. Through a gut-punch scene showing how fear is taught, Nimona becomes a parable for LGBTQ+ struggles and societal displacement. It’s ultimately about friendship as shield against a world that misunderstands you—a pink-horned reminder that the most transformative stories fight to exist. Read More …

The Gorge: More Than Meets the IMDb Score? Why do some “average” movies resonate so deeply? My latest Scene & Unseen tackles “The Gorge.” Despite a modest IMDb rating, this Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy sci-fi thriller is a cult classic in the making. It’s not just guns and monsters; it’s an unexpected US/Russian armistice and a powerful story of connection. I explore how two opposing operatives forge a bond, challenging indoctrination and making us question who the real monsters are. Discover the surprising depth and genre twists that make “The Gorge” hit different. Read/watch the full analysis now! Read More …

2025 Edition. Despite Disney’s best efforts, there is Star Wars gold at the end of the rainbow. If you like reckoning with legacy, moral ambiguity, sacrifice, and found family, I’m here to make your Star Wars Day just as rosy as when A New Hope dropped way back in 1977… minus the bell bottoms we all pretend we never owned. Introduction People talk about Star Wars fatigue the same way they talk about superhero fatigue, as if it’s part of life now. Disney strip-mined Star Wars for all its joy in a relentless sequel churn. I’m positive one of the Bobs was to blame; they wanted shareholder value, but we wanted Star Wars. It doesn’t mean there aren’t chunks of good Star Wars left, though. To celebrate 2025’s Star Wars Day, I’m going to give you the best movie, series, video game, and book Read More …

The Future is Now, and It’s Not Great. Hello, valued consumer. I see you are engaging in anxiety brought on by literally everything. Would you like a soothing cup of tea? Good. Because today we’re panning for five golden things: Let’s begin. Sci-Fi, AKA the Original Horrible Prophecy Machine I finished Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Service Model, a book too close to prophecy to not be unsettling. There’s a lot this book made me think of, not least of which is that no one should ever call a robot Uncharles. Despite that, you should read Service Model. It’s charming, despite the doom. It’s funny, despite us all being dead. It’s prophetic, but the prophecy brings hope with it, and we all need some of that. Let’s begin. Science fiction has been a really good barometer of our future, and I’m not talking about flying cars or Read More …

Think LitRPG started with Ready Player One? Think again. Long before you could grind levels in a LitRPG novel, Dream Park and Guardians of the Flame showed us what it meant to truly play the game. Modern LitRPGs let you exploit the system, but these classics forced you to survive it. This is Part 1 of a 3-part series on LitRPG: its roots, how to write it, and why it keeps us hooked. Before LitRPG was a genre, books like Dream Park and Guardians of the Flame set the foundations for game-inspired storytelling. This is where it all began—long before stat sheets took over. Introduction LitRPG (short for Literary Role-Playing Game) is what happens when storytelling hooks up with game mechanics and produces a deeply nerdy lovechild. At its core, it’s about characters progressing through a structured game-like system, often complete with XP, stats, and level-ups. While it’s Read More …