Well, that didn’t suck! I’m a big believer that, one way or another, every year is a good year for movies. The studios might crank out a bunch of crap, the indies might produce the kind of thing that only the most annoying cineastes appreciate, yet there are always diamonds in the rough. Every year that movies are released we will get good movies, we might just have to look a little harder for them. Some years, there is an embarrassment of riches. 1939. 1982. 1999. I feel comfortable adding 2023 to that list, because holy hell did we get some good stuff! Yes, the DC Extended Universe ended... Read More

Sequels are hard, but you knew that already. Moviegoers have been pummeled by horror franchises, walloped by action franchises, and thrashed by sci-fi franchises. Through years of substandard crap, we’ve been trained that anything with a title that includes a Part Two/The Spawning/The Quickening or some usage of a colon probably sucks.  That’s not always the case, though. Done right, sequels aren’t simply a craven cash grab. They can illuminate aspects of the original, tell a story that’s more complicated, flesh out supporting characters, and even tell an aspect of the story a different... Read More