If You Was a Pedant You’d Understand
Enjoying pointless endeavors like encouraging the correct use of language and finding fault with years-old internet video essays
The Right People
About the return of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and the creepy complexities of nerd ownership
Cyber-Hot Take Strike Force 2017: The Reckoning
Reports from an alternate timeline where the sky’s the color of a television tuned to a dead channel.
Harambe of Darkness
Kong: Skull Island is a focus-grouped action movie franchise launch, but it’s clever and artistic enough to avoid being disposable and forgettable.
The Road Not Taken
Playdead’s “Inside” is a beautiful and horrible masterpiece, but it also feels like it reveals a hard limit on what video games are capable of. Spoilers throughout, so please don’t read this until you’ve finished the game.
City of Infuriatingly Charismatic Stars
Reporting back from a movie-filled weekend. Some spoilers for the relentlessly charming La La Land, and a review of Rogue One inspired by Thumper the rabbit
Violent Delights
The end of Westworld’s first season has felt like a series of reveals for the sake of having reveals. This post is packed full of unmarked spoilers.
No Insight To Be Had Out There
Shallow takes on “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” are a perfect example of faux-progressive pop cultural simplification for the Twitter generation
Now They Set Their Clocks By Mine
Moana is a by-the-numbers Disney princess movie that keeps going off-script to transform into something inspired.
Some-maj
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is at its best when it’s at its darkest and weirdest.
Electric Sheep
HBO’s Westworld is as much of a post-millennial meta-textual exercise as the original was a 1970s fear-of-technology thriller. That doesn’t mean it has nothing to say, though. Spoilers for the first three episodes.
1984 Upside Down, or, Use Your Allusions
Stranger Things would still be pretty great if it were just a shameless pastiche of 80s movies, but it ends up transcending that.