Episodes
Feb. 2, 2019
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019) | Dean DeBlois
Hiccup is now into adulthood, young but now the leader among the Dragon-rescuing Vikings of their island fortress village of Berk. Though the Vikings have lived in Berk for generations, Hiccup soon sees that they’ve outgrown their small island, especially with the overcrowding of the Dragons there as they rescue more of them, eyeing the mythical sanctuary on the edge of the world to guide these magical beasts. Meanwhile, love may be in the air, with Hiccup perhaps on the verge of marriage with A...
Jan. 31, 2019
The Kid Who Would Be King (2019) | Joe Cornish
THE KID WHO WOULD BE KING involves a young boy in London named Alex, who spends his days bullied at school, primarily because he sticks up to those bullies – Lance and Kaye – to protect his bullied friend Bedders. In the heat of one of those skirmishes, Alex stumbles upon a ‘sword in the stone’ like the one in his book on King Arthur left to him by his absent father, and he manages to pull it out from the concrete block that had been its home. Knighting Bedders with it, the boys are soon visited...
Jan. 27, 2019
Vice (2018) | Adam McKay
Written and directed by Adam McKay, who impressed in his last effort from 2015, The Big Short, Vice is specifically a biopic of sorts about former Vice President of the United States under George W. Bush, Dick Cheney — both of whom were seen as responsible for the policies that brought about the stock market crash covered so well in McKay’s prior film. McKay covers Cheney’s rise from drunken slob, to shaping up by entering Wyoming business and politics, to becoming a power player in the Republic...
Jan. 21, 2019
Glass (2019) | M. Night Shyamalan
Glass serves as a sequel to two films from M. Night Shyamalan, 2000’s Unbreakable and 2018’s Split, the latter of which tied itself to the former with the post-end title stinger. Bruce Willis makes his return as the ‘unbreakable’ security company owner David Dunn, who, along with his adult son (and sole employee) Joseph, is trying to track down a crazy roaming the streets of Philadelphia who is abducting teenage girls. James McAvoy continues his portrayal of Kevin Wendell Crumb, aka The Horde, a...
Jan. 10, 2019
Leave No Trace (2018) | Debra Granik
Ben Foster’s war vet Will, widower father to the young teenage girl with the boy’s name of Tom (Thomasin McKenzie), is suffering from some sort of Post Traumatic Stress from his time in the service, living out in the woods, completely off the grid, roughing it in that public park in Oregon. Director Debra Granik combined these elements with the story of a man who raised his daughter off the grid in their own cabin in Oregon, wanting her to learn from nature and books rather than live her whole l...
Jan. 6, 2019
Bumblebee (2018) | Travis Knight
This time out, the character of Bumblebee ends up going back to his original look from the toy line and cartoon series of a Volkswagen Beetle, when he arrives on Earth back in 1987 as part of a last-minute escape plan for the Autobots on Cybertron to find an inhabitable planet as theirs is about to be destroyed in an all-out civil war with the Decepticons. Bumblebee ends up emerging in California, where his dormant state of the Beetle laying in rust in a junkyard, in hiding after being hunted by...
Dec. 31, 2018
BlacKkKlansman (2018) | Spike Lee
In this Spike Lee joint, we go back to the 1970s, where we find Ron Stallworth, the first black police detective working for the Colorado Springs Police Department. In one of his first assignments after laboring behind the scenes to test the waters as a file clerk, Ron is hired to go undercover to record a speech being given locally by black activist Kwame Ture (Corey Hawkins), formerly known as Stokely Carmichael, at a nearby college, in which the subject is black empowerment, racist law enforc...
Dec. 21, 2018
Aquaman (2018) | James Wan
The setting starts sometime in the 1980s, where we find Atlantean queen Atlanna (Nicole Kidman) coming up to the surface in the state of Maine to get away from an arranged marriage, seeking a bit of sanctuary and time to heal in a lighthouse run by a human named Tom Curry (Temuera Morrison). The two unlikely partners fall in love, eventually leading to a son, Arthur Curry. The kingdom of Atlantis is not pleased with Atlanna’s apparent defection to the land, sending out their soldiers to claim he...
Nov. 24, 2018
Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) | Bryan Singer
Bryan Singer directs this tribute biopic on Freddie Mercury and his stint with one of the most influential rock groups from the 1970s and 1980s, Queen. Electrifying performances, lavish stage costumes, and a peek into Freddie’s confusion and acceptance of his sexuality are in the mix of this loose-hanging look at one of the greatest rock-and-roll frontmen.
Nov. 14, 2018
Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch (2018)
Illumination Entertainment brings Dr. Seuss’ beloved story to the modern age with 3D animation and the vocal talent of Benedict Cumberbatch. The Grinch hates Christmas and plans to thwart the festivities of the Christmas-loving denizens of nearby Whoville, but after donning the Santa Claus outfit to steal their presents away, has to confront the wishes of a young girl who needs Santa’s help.
Nov. 7, 2018
The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018)
Mackenzie Foy stars as Clara, suffering through grief with her father and two siblings during their first holiday without her recently deceased mother, Marie. Clara receives an enigmatic and ornate Christmas gift, the last from her mother, a metallic contraption shaped like an egg with an elaborate keyhole that came with no key that might fit accompanying it. She is despondent that she cannot open it without ruining it, and it causes her to be depressed during the big holiday gala put on by her ...
Oct. 27, 2018
Bullitt County (2018)
BULLITT COUNTY is a small-scale dramatic thriller set in the late 1970s, where a bachelor party trip to Kentucky Bourbon country could prove lucrative when the quatrtet of friends decide to head off the beaten path to search for a cache of buried treasure on Bullitt family private property. Written, directed and co-starring David McCracken, the film echoes bits and pieces of ’70s character-driven thrillers mixed with more modern film-making takes from the likes of Tarantino and the Coen Brothers...
Oct. 22, 2018
Halloween (2018)
Jamie Lee Curtis returns as Laurie Strode in this sequel that ignores all others in the franchise after John Carpenter’s 1978 original HALLOWEEN. Michael Myers breaks from his prison existence to return to where it all started, in Haddonfield, IL, during Halloween. Esteemed filmmaker David Gordon Green directs and co-scripts this intriguing return to look at trauma-survivor Strode and the inevitability that predator and prey will once again battle it out for survival, even forty years later.
Oct. 15, 2018
Destination Wedding (2018)
Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder star as bickering travelers who just so happen to be going to the same destination: a wedding of her ex, and his half-brother, who neither of them particularly hopes is happy. Two unhappy people surrounded by mirth leads to a toxic concoction of feelings, but the two unlucky lovers find a bond in their despair that may be just as strong as that of initial attraction. “Mad About You” producer Victor Levin directs this anti-romantic comedy.
Oct. 8, 2018
Venom (2018)
The Marvel Comics villain gets the antihero treatment in this Spiderman-less origin story filled with grotesque body horror and lots of crazy CGI-infused action. Tom Hardy stars as reporter Eddie Brock, who finds himself the host of an alien symbiote he discovers within a hi-tech laboratory he’s investigating. That alien needs live organs to feast upon, which means Eddie’s if he can’t find other things for “Venom”, which is what the symbiote calls himself, to ravenously consume. Michelle William...
Sept. 24, 2018
The House with a Clock in Its Walls (2018)
Set in a small town called New Zebedee, in Michigan during the mid 1950s, we follow the adventures of a ten-year-old orphan named Lewis Barnavelt, mourning the recent loss of his parents to a fatal car accident, staying in the rickety and seemingly haunted Victorian mansion of his uncle, Jonathan. Jonathan is an eccentric warlock often visited by his neighbor, a witch named Mrs. Zimmerman, and the mansion he resides in is anything but mundane. A new home also means a new school for Lewis, who is...
Sept. 22, 2018
The Predator (2018)
Shane Black tries to do what no one has done thus far, and that’s to make a good follow-up to John McTiernan’s 1997 action classic, PREDATOR. Here, the Predators are back searching for their old technology, and possibly taking over the Earth, having to confront a rag-tag group of disgrace military vets in their way. Boyd Holdbrook, Olivia Munn, Thomas Jane, Keegan-Michael Key, Trevante Rhodes and Jacob Tremblay also appear.
Sept. 16, 2018
Searching (2018)
John Cho stars as a widower father whose life gets turned upside down when his teenage daughter goes missing. As he goes online to search for clues to her whereabouts, he discovers that the close relationship he thought he had with her may not have been as tight-knit as he was led to believe. Debra Messing co-stars as the missing-persons detective on the beat in this nifty thriller that sets all of its actions on the screens of a variety of computer devices.
Sept. 8, 2018
Won’t You Be My Neighbor (2018)
Won’t You Be My Neighbor? examines the life and work of Fred Rogers, aka Mr. Rogers, who was the creator and star of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” on public television (PBS) from the years 1968 to 2001. He invited children to come into his home, sing them a song, make them feel safe as he imparted life lessons, then whisked them off to the Land of Make-Believe to further explore metaphors of understanding before he saw them off to the rest of their day. Rogers followed the career path to televis...
Sept. 3, 2018
The Happytime Murders (2018) – A Podcast Film Review
In this puppet/human effort directed by Brian Henson, son of Muppets creator Jim Henson, Bill Barretta voices the top puppet character known as disgraced burnout Los Angeles-based private investigator Phil Phillips, who has to get to the bottom of a series of murders among the stars of a decades-old television show with a puppet cast of actors called, “The Happytime Gang”. Melissa McCarthy gets the top human role, playing police detective Connie Edwards, Phil’s former, now estranged, partner in ...
Aug. 26, 2018
Summer of 84 (2018) – A Podcast Film Review
RKSS return after their Turbo Kid to deliver yet another throwback to the 1980s in the mystery-suspense-horror flick, SUMMER OF 84. A quartet of boys go out in search of a serial killer of teenage boys (just like them) that they feel could be the cop that lives in their very own neighborhood, and seek to find the evidence needed to bring him to justice. The further they go out, however, the more exposed they are to becoming the next victim in their manhunt.
Aug. 19, 2018
Crazy Rich Asians (2018) – A Podcast Film Review
Constance Wu stars as Rachel Chu, who essentially serves as our best surrogate for the story, the daughter of a single Chinese immigrant mother, who rose above her station to become a professor of Economics at NYU. Her current boyfriend is a man names Nick Young (played by Henry Golding), who, for over a year since they’ve been dating, has never divulged to her that his family back home in Singapore is insanely wealthy. The cat has to be let out of the bag, however, when Nick asks Rachel to atte...
Aug. 15, 2018
The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018) – A Podcast Film Review
Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon star in this buddy comedy about two best friends who end up embroiled in a spy assassin plot when some terrorists come looking for them for information that Kunis’ most recent boyfriend, who she didn’t know was a secret agent, may have in his possessions. Laughs, thrills, and action are promised, but does it deliver?
Aug. 11, 2018
The Meg (2018) – A Podcast Film Review
A big shark and Jason Statham are the big draws to THE MEG, in which a rescue team of humans must try to survive, and eventually take on, a prehistoric shark of gargantuan proportions that threatens everyone off of the coast of China. Jon Turteltaub directs this PG-13 action-horror hybrid that some compare to the JAWS and JURASSIC PARK series, or, at least, its low-aiming sequels.