Dylan Roth May 5, 2022. 8 minute read
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is Classic Trek, for Better and Worse
Ever since Star Trek was relaunched on streaming television in 2017 with the glossy serialized adventure series Star Trek: Discovery, the franchise has been expanding in multiple new directions, each a bit further afield from the familiar. The latest new series, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, has been pitched as…
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TV/FILM
Dylan Roth Apr 7, 2022. 8 minute read
‘Ambulance’ Review: If Less is More, Just Think How Much More More Would Be
Michael Bay. You know his deal, right? He’s the maximalist music video director-turned-action cinema auteur responsible for a handful of canonized action flicks, one good Transformers movie, four unwatchable Transformers movies, one cult classic, and two thrillers about troops that I haven’t seen and you probably haven’t seen either. Bay…
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TV/FILM
Dylan Roth Apr 4, 2022. 5 minute read
‘The Contractor’ Review: Taking Care of Business
On first glance, it’d be easy to mistake The Contractor for a run-of-the-mill military action-thriller. The movie poster features a blue-eyed movie star wearing tactical gear, standing in front of an American flag — it doesn’t get much more generic than that. The trailer outlines the story of a desperate…
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TV/FILM
Dylan Roth Mar 29, 2022. 11 minute read
Should You Watch Star Trek: Discovery? A New Viewer’s Guide
Star Trek: Discovery might be the most divisive series in the storied science fiction franchise. Premiering in 2017 after a 12-year drought for Trek television, Discovery was the first Star Trek series to debut behind a streaming paywall, a controversial enough move on its own, but it also marked a…
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FEATURES
Dylan Roth Mar 25, 2022. 5 minute read
‘The Lost City’ Review: Desperately Seeking D
The Lost City, this week’s new adventure/comedy/romance starring Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum and directed by Aaron and Adam Nee, used to be called The Lost City of D. Paramount elected to remove the sexual innuendo from the title before promoting the film, leaving it with a much more forgettable…
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TV/FILM
Dylan Roth Mar 22, 2022. 7 minute read
Everything Everywhere All at Once Review: Instant Classic
In 2016, after completing their debut feature Swiss Army Man, filmmakers Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (collectively known as “Daniels”) began composing their ambitious follow-up, an outlandish action comedy in which an ordinary person travels the multiverse and explores the unfulfilled potential of their life. Six years later, the multiverse…
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TV/FILM
Dylan Roth Mar 17, 2022. 9 minute read
Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 Episode 13 “Coming Home” Review
At its best, Star Trek: Discovery is a thrilling, emotionally-charged space drama that deeply invests in its lead character’s path to becoming a righteous space hero. At its worst, it’s a cloying, self-important product that is mortally afraid of hurting its audience’s feelings. Discovery’s fourth season finale, “Coming Home,” contains…
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TV/FILM
Dylan Roth Mar 10, 2022. 7 minute read
Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 Episode 12 “Species Ten-C” Review
For weeks, Star Trek: Discovery has been building towards the fateful first contact between the United Federation of Planets and the mysterious extragalactic beings they call Unknown Species 10-C. Now the moment has finally come, but are Captain Burnham and company ready for its Arrival? That’s right, this week’s episode,…
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TV/FILM
Dylan Roth Mar 4, 2022. 8 minute read
‘The Batman’ Review: The World’s Greatest Detective
When Warner Bros. announced that they would be rebooting the Batman franchise once again to tell the story of a young Dark Knight at the beginning of his career, I was not excited by the prospect. The movie studio seems to have a very myopic view of the character, ignoring…
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TV/FILM
Dylan Roth Mar 3, 2022. 8 minute read
Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 Episode 11 “Rosetta” Review
This week on Star Trek: Discovery, Michael Burnham gets bad vibes from an alien graveyard, Ruon Tarka kidnaps a respected stand-up comedian, and Keyla Detmer gets a traumatic backstory of her very own. “Rosetta” is a strong episode that inches us closer to the season’s climactic confrontation but loses points…
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TV/FILM
Dylan Roth Feb 28, 2022. 7 minute read
‘Cyrano’ Review: Everything, Yet Naught
Cyrano de Bergerac, Edmond Rostrand’s 1897 French-language stage romance loosely based on a real-life warrior poet, has been adapted by Hollywood a number of times. Direct adaptations of the play have mostly been reserved for the French themselves, whose 1990 version starring Gérard Depardeiu is the gold standard. The rest…
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TV/FILM
Dylan Roth Feb 24, 2022. 8 minute read
Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 Episode 10 “The Galactic Barrier” Review
When Paramount announced last month that Star Trek: Discovery would be picked up for a fifth season, they were explicit that this next batch would consist of ten episodes, rather than thirteen or fourteen. Fans have speculated that this is due to Discovery no longer being co-financed and distributed by…
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TV/FILM
Dylan Roth Feb 22, 2022. 4 minute read
‘Strawberry Mansion’ Review: Pure Imagination
Often, when absorbing a movie, a song, a live performance, etcetera, I find myself contemplating the distinction between “art” and “entertainment.” Your own ideas may be totally different from mine, but here’s how I tend to define the terms: Art is something that an artist creates out of the desire…
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TV/FILM
Dylan Roth Feb 17, 2022. 9 minute read
Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 Episode 9 “Rubicon” Review
This week’s episode of Star Trek: Discovery fires on all cylinders, as Captain Michael Burnham finds herself locked in a deadly battle of wills with the love of her life. “Rubicon” is another high water mark for the season, packed with high emotion, stunning space action, and an affirmation of…
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TV/FILM
Dylan Roth Feb 15, 2022. 9 minute read
‘Marry Me’ Review: Return to Tradition
When Jennifer Lopez vehicle The Wedding Planner was released in 2001, major studios habitually released a new romantic comedy in theaters every other week, and in all sorts of tones and subgenres, ranging from Bridget Jones’ Diary to Kate & Leopold to Shallow Hal. That fall also saw big nerdy…
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TV/FILM
Dylan Roth Feb 10, 2022. 9 minute read
Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 Episode 8 “All In” Review
Back in the days when Star Trek was episodic television, each individual series would feature a variety of different flavors of stories. Even on Deep Space Nine, the darkest and most grimly serious of the classic Trek shows, the heavy material would be contrasted by light, pointedly silly comedy episodes.…
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REVIEWS
Dylan Roth Feb 9, 2022. 7 minute read
‘Moonfall’ Review: Fuck the Moon
Hollywood has been threatening the Earth with big rocks from space for half a century. None of us who lived through it will ever forget the harrowing summer of 1998, when directors Mimi Leder and Michael Bay, respectively, threw a comet and an asteroid at us in the span of…
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REVIEWS
Dylan Roth Feb 3, 2022. 5 minute read
A Conversation with ‘Star Trek: Prodigy’ Creators Kevin and Dan Hageman
Back in November 2021, I reviewed the two-part series premiere of Star Trek: Prodigy, the first Star Trek series specifically aimed at kids. It follows the adventures of a group of young people who escape imprisonment aboard the USS Protostar, a derelict vessel with an experimental engine built by some…
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FEATURES
Dylan Roth Jan 28, 2022. 10 minute read
Highlights from the 2022 Virtual Sundance Film Festival
On January 5th, just two weeks before opening day, the leadership of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival announced that they would cancel all of their in-person events and hold all of their premieres and screenings virtually for the second year in a row. This is unquestionably a wise safety measure,…
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REVIEWS
Dylan Roth Jan 14, 2022. 7 minute read
‘Belle’ Review: Online Onscreen
This weekend sees the long-awaited US wide theatrical release of Belle, the latest animated feature from writer-director Mamoru Hosada, five-time winner of the Japan Academy Film Prize for Animation of the Year. The film was a tremendous hit at the Japanese box office last year, following a 14-minute standing ovation…
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REVIEWS