By Dave B.

​I’m going to share three widely known facts with you: First, emus are terrifying creatures. Second, Timecop is better than Looper. And third, Jean-Claude Van Damme’s entire acting career was a cover for his secret agent activities. Now you know the premise of Amazon’s Original Series Jean-Claude Van Johnson. It’s wild, wacky, and wonderfully compact. I loved it. 

By Dave B.

​The Love Witch (2016, currently on Amazon Prime) tells the story of Elaine, a young woman who uses spells to make men fall in love with her, but whose loving is so powerful that the men go insane and then die. To be honest with you I don’t know what to make of The Love Witch. Despite it’s overtones of female empowerment, it’s hard to say that it’s overtly feminist, considering the negative light in which it portrays many of its female characters. At times it has the feel of a parody of 1960s and 70s exploitation flicks, but at other times, it seems to be taking itself too seriously for that. If I were forced to put it into a box, I suppose I would call it an exaggerated examination of male-female relationships through the lens of madness, magic, and narcissism. 

By Dave B.

​The premise of Circle (currently on Netflix) is simple: a group of 50 people is abducted and trapped in a room where they have to choose one person to die every two minutes. With a runtime of less than 90 minutes, I expected Circle to be terrible. It wasn’t. Flawed in some fairly glaring ways, yes. But not terrible. 

By Dave B.

​Evil Genius: The True Story of America’s Most Diabolical Bank Heist is aptly named. The four-episode true crime documentary recounts the details and subsequent investigation of a 2003 bank robbery in Erie, Pennsylvania where a pizza delivery man, Brian Wells, was allegedly forced to commit the robbery by perpetrators who threatened him by placing a bomb around his neck. When the robbery goes wrong and Wells is apprehended by police, the timed explosive detonates, killing him. 

By Dave B.

​Just to get this out of the way, I like Star Wars. As a franchise, it’s generally very entertaining (ignoring the obvious exceptions, of course). Solo: A Star Wars Story is short on plot and long on thrills. That’s great for a summer blockbuster, but Solo isn’t among the pantheon of great Star Wars movies because it’s even more thoroughly sanitized than most Star Wars movies have been since Disney acquired the franchise.

By Dave B.

I’ve heard it said that we’re seeing a Golden Age of strong female television characters recently. While that may be true in absolute numbers and public awareness of them, there have been more than few truly epic heroines and antiheroines over the past decade or two. Here’s a list, in order, of five of my favorites.

By Dave B.

​Cargo (Netflix), based on the short film of the same name, tells the story of a man attempting to save his child in an Australian outback this overrun by zombies. It’s complete garbage. I can’t understand how it currently has a critic score of 90% on Rotten Tomatoes. Not only is it boring, it also features one of the most foolish characters in the history of zombie movies, and that’s really saying something. 

By Dave B.

​It isn’t often that a movie sequel matches or exceeds the first installment, but Deadpool 2 (20th Century Fox, Marvel) does a pretty decent job of being at least as good as the original Deadpool film, if not better. Strong performances, a lot of humor, decent action, and legitimate stakes lead me to believe that Deadpool 2 will be even more successful than Deadpool. 

By Dave B.

​Before the world knew him as King T’Challa, Chadwick Boseman played another king, Jacob King, in Message from the King (currently on Netflix). Message from the King is a tale of revenge in which Boseman plays a South African with a particular set of skills, who journeys to Los Angeles in search of his sister.  Traditionally, revenge flicks need at least one of three elements to be successful: a novel setting/situation, a deep and compelling psychological insight into the protagonist, victim, and/or antagonist, or non-stop action. This movie tries to break with tradition by avoiding the adoption of any of those elements. The thing is, traditions often exist for a reason, and none of the positive things about this movie are ultimately enough to make it an unquestioned success. 

By Dave B.

​Collateral (Netflix/BBC) is a 4-episode miniseries described by Netflix as a show about a detective uncovering “a tangled conspiracy involving drug dealers, smugglers, and spies”. In reality, it is an English police procedural drama with a straightforward “conspiracy”, no mystery, and few thrills. Despite the misleading description, Collateral is pretty good for what it actually is.