Josh Pearce

Capitalism, in fiction and in real life, depends on expendable (that is, cheap) labor. Slaves, serfs, indentured servants, children, undocumented migrants, gig workers, (now science fiction and real life start to blur) robots, assembly-line automation, “AI.” Mickey 17 extends logically next to clones, which are worked literally to death and then simply reprinted in fresh bodies for their next job.

Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) signs on to a colony ship ...Read More

Salem’s Lot is the latest entry to the already extensive set of remakes, revisitations, spin-offs, and so on that are based on decades-old Stephen King stories. The list of these kinds of titles is substantial, and it includes 2017 film It with 2019 film It Chapter Two followed by upcoming prequel It: Welcome to Derry; 2019 film Pet Sematary and 2023 film Pet Sematary: Bloodlines; the admittedly very ...Read More

Cuckoo is an indie horror creature feature, relying heavily on its isolated location and small cast to effectively create an atmosphere of paranoia and dread. A teenager named Gretchen (Hunter Schafer) moves to a German mountain resort town with her father, stepmother, and stepsister where she meets an eclectic collection of characters—including the owner of the hotel, Herr König; a physician at the nearby hospital, Dr. Bonomo; several half-dressed, vomiting ...Read More

As Alien: Romulus opens on a stunning starscape and clever title sequence, the Weyland-Yutani corporation is up to its usual tricks, recovering something foreboding from deep space and whisking it away for further study/experimentation.

Sometime later, a mix of six friends and family conspire to escape the dismal conditions of a company-controlled mining colony. Unable to break their employment contracts with Weyland-Yutani, and facing deadly work environments, they hatch a ...Read More

Josh: First off, holy shit.

Arley: I agree. This movie was GREAT. They started with unusual characters. You don’t see a lot of movies where the star is a disgraced suicide pilot, for example. Grounding the story with in interesting, relatable characters makes it so that you can actually capitalize on the horror aspects of Godzilla. Viewers can get engaged with the horror that is Godzilla, rather than just being ...Read More

Since their inception in the ’80s the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have seen many iterations, most of them unremarkable. This one is more than a basic rehash or cash grab; it is, perhaps, a geek love letter, wearing a spike belt and a chain necklace. The broad strokes are familiar (you know: turtles, radiation, mutation, and villains). But these strokes are rendered with interesting details that infuse what could have ...Read More

There have been some excellent science fiction movies that feature a single, isolated character, like Sam Rockwell in Moon. There have also been some pretty good ones, such as Gravity with Sandra Bullock—and others, not-so-great, like the Brad Pitt-centric Ad Astra. Here we have an entry that falls near the upper end of that scale: No One Will Save You is a one-woman show, focused almost exclusively on ...Read More

If you’re looking for a high-production, visually slick science fiction movie that isn’t tied to an existing IP monstrosity, The Creator might be the film for you. However, if you’re tired of machine uprisings and AI paranoia, you might want to skip this one.

Broadly, The Creator follows Sgt. Joshua Taylor (John David Washington) on a near-future journey through “New Asia.” The Americans want to kill or capture Nirmata, the ...Read More

Kids these days! With their loud music and TikToks and demonic possession! Talk to Me, an Australian horror movie, focuses on a group of teens who use a talisman (supposedly a psychic’s amputated hand) to summon the dead and invite them to take over their bodies. It’s a neat party trick and, apparently, quite a rush.

Arley: I found this to be very effective, like probably one of the ...Read More

Imagine a mix of Us and Sorry to Bother You — a movie where you’re not sure at first where things are going, and then suddenly you take a left turn and find yourself in the middle of (literal) underground government experiments. That’s They Cloned Tyrone. The cloning isn’t a surprise — it’s in the title, after all — but it’s also not the end of the science fiction ...Read More

Miles Morales aka Spider-Man (aka Shameik Moore) is back! He’s a little bit older, and this means he’s developed his spider skills a bit more. It also means he’s dealing with a lot of the issues kids his age deal with, like figuring out his place in the world, and navigating the shifts in his relationship with his parents. When a new villain named Spot (Jason Schwartzman) pops up, Spider-Man ...Read More

The usual suspects assemble for another adventure: Drax (Dave Bautista), Mantis (Pom Klementieff), Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper), Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel), Nebula (Karen Gillan), and Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) are hanging out in their space pirate cove within the hollowed-out skull of a dead celestial being. Everything’s been going great lately. They’ve redecorated, they’re enjoying music, and they’ve made a bunch of new friends including a telekinetic Soviet ...Read More

Sword-and-sorcery fantasy is on an upswing. TV series, movies, and spin-offs of multiple properties are everywhere: Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, The Witcher, and The Wheel of Time all have recent (and future) adaptations, so it’s no surprise that Dungeons & Dragons — a name that everyone recognizes, whether they’ve played it or not — struck while the iron’s hot.

And this time they did ...Read More

Jung_E frontloads a pile of fairly unnecessary background worldbuilding, but the important bits are that they’ve developed the means to put human brains into robots, and that two major factions have been at war for 80 years. When Yun Jung-yi (Kim Hyun-Joo), one of the best, most inspiring fighters gets killed in action, of course they build a robot that looks exactly like her: Jung_E; and of course they put ...Read More

Plenty of other killer robot and creepy doll movies to make comparisons to—take your pick—and from the trailer you can pretty much predict the arc of the plot. But there’s something about M3GAN. It seems to have taken on a life of its own.

M3GAN is constructed from very basic building blocks: Orphaned girl’s (Violet McGraw) aunt (Allison Williams) gives her a robot (Amie Donald/Jenna Davis) as a replacement ...Read More

Actor, poet, activist, and musician Saul Williams writes and co-directs (with Rwandan filmmaker Anisia Uzeyman) Neptune Frost. Variously described as an Afrofuturist-cyberpunk-scifi-musical*, the film certainly defies expectations and easy categorization.

Neptune Frost connects to Williams’s “Martyr Loser King” multimedia project—originally envisioned as a graphic novel and stage play—which also includes his 2016 studio album. The plot centers on Burundi coltan miner Matalusa (Bertrand Ninteretse), who forms a romantic relationship ...Read More

Wakanda Forever follows the events of the original Black Panther as well as some of the other Marvel titles, but importantly, it also follows the real-life event of Chadwick Boseman’s death – the actor who played Black Panther/T’Challa. The opening of the film is a tribute to Boseman, as well as the way he embodied the title character. Making effective use of silence, sound, imagery, and the raw emotions of ...Read More

Today’s major-brand superheroes have an onscreen lineage going back at least to the ’40s, including iconic serials starring Superman, Batman, and Captain America. But Marvel and DC aren’t the only cinematic superhuman universes. During the great superhero revival of the 1980s, wedged between memorable Christopher Reeves films Superman and Superman II, came 1981 television series The Greatest American Hero. Standing alongside the tradition of filmmakers and TV showrunners ...Read More

This South Korean movie blends magic, time travel, robots, aliens, alien robots, spaceships, and shapeshifting cats all into 140 minutes of action, comedy, horror, and even a lil bit o’ luv. Something for everyone! In fact, it’s hard to take any two still frames from Alienoid and believe that they’re from the same movie, but the fun is in the bridging of genres. Not to give too much away, but ...Read More

Josh: I hyped up the previous Predator movie because it was so over-the-top and ridiculous, just straight out campy fun. Prey is a completely different pace, and I actually enjoyed it a lot more.

Arley: We were talking about how Nope is a departure in vibe from Jordan Peele’s previous movies, and I felt like this was a departure in vibe from the usual Predator movie. Especially the first third ...Read More

When was the last time we had a properly decent UFO movie? Was it The X-Files movie from 1998? Close Encounters of the Third Kind? All the way back to 1953’s The War of the Worlds? It’s hard to imagine anyone coming up with a fresh take on such an old trope,* but in keeping with his work on Get Out, Us, and even The Twilight ...Read More

Picking up after Thor: Ragnarok and Avengers: Endgame, the fourth Thor standalone film reunites the God of Thunder (Chris Hemsworth) with his scientist ex-girlfriend Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), his rock-alien-monster friend Korg (director Taika Waititi), and the fresh king of New Asgard, Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson). After a stint of adventuring with the Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor is shocked to discover that normal Earth mortal Jane has somehow reassembled ...Read More

Finney and Gwen (Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw) are siblings in 1978 Colorado. Finney is a shy boy who wants to be tougher than he is, including wishing he had the nerve to get between his tougher younger sister and their physically and mentally abusive alcoholic father. The kids have to navigate their relationship to each other while dealing with bullies at school and the potential psychic abilities Gwen seems ...Read More

It’s the third major movie this year premised on a fundamental misinterpretation* of quantum theory! (We also reviewed this one and this one, and there’s at least one more scheduled for later in 2022.) It’s also the third comic book/superhero movie we’ve reviewed this year (with many more on the way), and a sequel to a pretty average film in its own right. So, does Doctor Strange in the Multiverse ...Read More

When a rupture threatens the multiverse, ordinary mother and laundromat owner Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) is recruited by a shadowy organization. They tell her that only she can save the multiverse… but can they be trusted, is any of this real, and besides all of this, can she really help? Evelyn has to figure it out fast – and sort out her taxes at the same time, or the IRS ...Read More

Batman was first introduced in Detective Comics #27 in 1939, and this year’s The Batman tries to bring him back to that super-sleuth tradition: showing up at crime scenes, looking for clues, outwitting criminals and police alike. There’s nothing fantastical, futuristic, or even particularly outlandish about this story — without the Batman name on it, it could be any other crime story. There are explicit Chinatown influences in the length ...Read More

There are always a number of film reviewers who plaster their reviews with quotable hyperbole, regardless of the quality of the film itself. Perhaps because they want to keep getting free movie tickets. Or perhaps because they hope to see their quote floating over an action snippet in a TV commercial.

In the case of Spider-Man: No Way Home, you can believe the hype.

Peter Parker’s secret identity as ...Read More

And… we’re back! Neo (Keanu Reeves) and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) are still stuck in the Matrix. Versions of Morpheus and Agent Smith return, played by new actors (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Jonathan Groff, respectively). There are new characters, such as Bugs (Jessica Henwick) and the Analyst (Neil Patrick Harris). Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith) and the Merovingian (Lambert Wilson) reappear, though their characters are essentially unrecognizable.

That’s about it. It’s The ...Read More

Josh: Here’s one that I think deserves a little more attention than it got. It got delayed a couple of times, was in and out of theaters really quick, and didn’t make a lot of money.

Arley: I’d been waiting a while to see this one! I’m a horror fan, and this was a solid horror movie.

Josh: Definitely a horror movie, but it ended up being more sad than ...Read More

Thousands of years ago, the godlike Celestial Arishem (voiced by David Kaye) sent a squad of immortal, humanoid Eternals to Earth to hunt down alien monsters called Deviants, and to provide humanity with guidance and assistance in developing civilization, from Babylon all the way through to the modern world.

In the present day, believing that the Deviants were eliminated 500 years earlier, the Eternals mostly settle into human-seeming lives, getting ...Read More

Reporter Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) is washed up. Worse, he and his alien symbiote, Venom (also Tom Hardy), aren’t getting along too well. In classic serial killer movie fashion, incarcerated murderer Cletus Kasady (Woody Harrelson) declares that he’s willing to reveal where the bodies are buried but will only talk to Brock, who seizes the opportunity to try to get his career back on track. During one of their visits, ...Read More

A motley crew of costumed characters with highly questionable morals is compelled – upon pain of death – to undertake a covert military mission in the “island nation of Corto Maltese.” What they uncover is much larger than any of them expected….

The Suicide Squad is exactly the over-the-top bloody, just-ridiculous-enough not-a-superhero movie you need. It’s pretty rare for sequels* to be better films than the originals, but James Gunn’s ...Read More