Green Sline (1968) - I'm sure this is a real classic amongst all the teenagers who made out while it played at the drive-in. A pretty basic sci-fi premise that I'm pretty sure the crews of most Trek ships could solve in an episode with time to spare. The sound design and opening song are funnier than the film itself. -6/10
Helldivers 2: Machinery of Oppression - I think this moment, more than every other, was Helldivers firing on all cylinders. A dark mirror of the liberation of Super Earth, this time with a faction that is fun to fight. The cyborgs are a great addition to the sandbox, and the day-to-day push for the planet was fun to both watch from afar and to contribute to. 8.5/10
Battle Angel Alita - I'm glad I could read one of the ur-texts for the robot girl genre. Once the art stabilizes and the series finds its footing, it very deftly switches premises and status quo. The original ending does leave something to be desired, but there is a pretty direct remedy to that. It goes without saying that the art is gorgeous and the worldbuilding is well-paced. 8.5/10
X-Files (rewatch) - Trying to watch only the fun episodic mysteries became a progressively more frustrating endeavor every season. I don't know if there is a world where the myth arc resolved with a neat bow, but I can't watch any of the serialized episodes again now that I know it doesn't here. 6/10
The Orville (rewatch) - A brisk rewatch has revealed some pretty deft seeding of ideas and worldbuilding that becomes relevant later. It's no Babylon 5, but I see and appreciate it. While some episodes feel pretty flat, I love that it chooses when to kick current issues in the teeth with the self-assuredness that nu-trek can only dream of. 7.5/10
Frankenstein (1931) - I forgot to add these to my list last year, whoops! A classic for a reason, though the efforts to make it a more conventional drama seem kinda pointless. 7/10
Bride of Frankenstein (1935) - Get weird with it. Make the Creature smoke a fat stogie. Tiny people in jars! Framing devices! All the bits with the blind old man were heartbreaking, especially when contrasted with the scenes that mirror it in GDT's retelling. 7/10
Creature Commandos - The secret to comic book tv is to get weird and have fun with it, but also gut-punch you every 20 minutes to remind you that good comics have humanity and soul. Is making them monsters a deliberate choice for this reason? I mean, it's James Gunn, that's his whole shtick. Love the commitment to play up dilfy Rick Flagg so counterbalance the male gaze towards The Bride. Equality! 8/10
Predator Badlands - more violent than you'd expect a PG-13 movie to be, but I'm not sure the action was ever particularly shocking or violent. A descent action movie with a fun group dynamic and a kickass final act. The climactic full circle moment with the father wasn't quite the hit I felt it was building up to, but I think the movie more than earned a 7.5/10
Predator: Killer of Killers - You'd think that making an anthology where halfway through a predator shows up would get old, but it doesn't. Breaking up the more traditional warriors with a Floridian from the 1940's was a clever way to combat any potential viewer fatigue. The constant flow of action did end up dulling me somewhat, but every now and then, you'd get a quality setpiece. 7.5/10
War of Werewolf - Immaculate 'bad movie night' movie, something stupid happens frequently enough to riff, and the unexpected fixation on the romance plot gave us room to come up with dumb bits. China's filmmaking industry's hangups about everything being vaguely sciencey instead of magic or curses made the whole premise laughable. The two werewolf fights were pretty alright tokusatsu, but this war was anticlimactic. -7/10
2099: Soldier Protocol - NOTHING HAPPENS! At some point I scrubbed through and to our horror, he's basically in a room the whole movie. -3/10
The Adventures of Ford Fairland - A bad comedy from a few decades ago still clears because we so rarely get true screwball comedies these days. Just a gag-a-minute crass fun. It has that X-factor that makes me unsure whether to file this under good or bad movies. -7.5/10
Excalibur (1981) - Fucked up that Monty Python made a parody of this like 6 years earlier. I'm sure there have been plenty of films in this genre prior, but this kinda makes a lot of things click into place in terms of visual inspiration. 8/10
Primeval S1 - Certainly of an era of British television. The sleek office buildings and lighting give it away more than the dated CG that rarely interacts with the environment. I did find myself underwhelmed by the lack of development in the core mystery and the clumsy writing for the 'nerd' archetype. What I've seen of S2 doesn't exactly make me thrilled to keep going. 6/10
Casywn - Bro thinks he's Vegita. The dreamscapes are an interesting and underdeveloped concept. The dungeons would be cool if they lasted more than 5 minutes. Not really enough meat to form a positive or negative opinion. 5/10
Wishmaster - I appreciate the use of non-combat questing. I liked the direct mechanical rewards and tradeoffs that mods are usually afraid to make. The multiple solutions would be great, but I had a few bugs, like important NPCs being below the terrain. 6/10
In Search of the White Wave - A nice short diversion. I'd live an Elder Scrolls game that had 40 quests of this caliber. 6/10
Legacy of the Blades - Short and to the point. A pretty nice way to integrate a new armorset like its a trophy. The CC DLCs for Skyrim could learn a thing or two. 6/10
Leeches always Bite Twice - The leeches are cool as an addition, but the quest feels pretty perfunctory. It just kinda ends after kicking off a mystery. 4/10
Solar Opposites S6 - Recasting Roiland and tripling down on the gay alien dads thing was the best choice they ever made. As fun as this all-hitters season was, it felt like every other episode they implemented the status quo shifts meant for unproduced seasons. Everything tied together may be a little too quickly, but what do you do with two sub-series? I think The Wall had kinda run its course, but I would have loved being drip-fed more SilverCpops 80s-90s toy cartoon parodies for the next decade. 8/10
C.H.U.D. - A proceedural and multi-angle take on a monster movie could be fun, but this movie spins its wheels without art or momentum. Barely any monsters. -4/10
Mario Warfare - The ultimate 2012 time capsule, but yknow what? It's fun as hell. Visible constraints be damned, this miniseries had enough creativity and gags that I never got bored. I'd even go as far as to say, some of the fights were kinda rad. -9/10
Moses VS Godzilla - Funny, but even a joke trailer kinda ran out of steam. -5/10
Gemini Man - This would get top marks as a generic action movie with a casting gimmick. Competent action, consistent characterization, observation of the rule of threes, and a healthy level of cliché. Great to riff on, but nothing could have prepared us for the reveal of a goddamn Kamen Rider in the final action setpiece. He PARRIED A SHOTGUN INTO A FLIPKICK. -8.10
Hoppers - Not mind-blowing in the grand scheme of Pixar films, it has more of the juice than we've gotten lately. I think embracing a ridiculous premise supercedes the inclination to make a movie that feels saccharine or self-important. We do get a bit of that whistfulness, but there is enough funny beaver antics to not make me roll my eyes. Very It showed restraint and maturity to have the mayor, who wants to build an overpass, seem like a likeable guy who thinks he's doing the right thing for his community. It's just a matter of priorities. 7/10
Sinbad of the Seven Seas - An incredible movie night pick. A well metered flow of riffable camp and cool effects. I can't tell how in-on-the-joke the production was, but the result is a laugh riot. -7/10
Lost in Space (1998) - Plot-wise, a bit of a snore, but as a concentrated form of late 90's production design, this satisfied like a hearty meal. I have no prior history with Lost in Space, so I can't tell how much it owes to its predecessors. Maybe I'll give it a shot. 5/10
Judge Dredd (1995) - Remember costume design? Comic books movies lost something when they gave up on being accurate to the goofy design sensibilities and looks of their source material. Just great production design. 7.5/10
Time Runner - As low-budget sci-fi movies go, you could do a lot worse. Getting to do crazy car stunts in Washington state ends up being a double-edged sword since they end up overstaying their welcome. We ended up skipping in the end since this movie is in no hurry. 5/10
DanDaDan S2 - DamnDaDamn Daniel! The animation and direction feel less adventurous than the first batch, but the fun character beats will get you through anything. There is a certain freedom in shonen that has broken free of the constraints of needing an kinda goal or structure. 7.5/10
The Cat From Outer Space - It's a boring 70's Disney movie, but the occasional funny line or cat gag kept us from turning it off. -5/10
The Abyss - Yes, Big Jim! Make a thriller as an excuse to talk about your deep-sea toys! It'll have groundbreaking special effects and good direction and be GOOD! AS ALWAYS! 7/5/10
Star Trek Academy - I feel like I'd need to break this show down by episode-by-episode ratings. It metranomes between infuriatingly bad and kinda alright in such a frustrating way. The few episodes with a good dilemma or worldbuilding will be saddled with a scene or two of total cringe, and the dogwater melodrama episodes will hit you with an all-timer performance from a legacy actor at the end. A major issue is that the tone is entirely at the episodic director's mercy, and there's no sense of consistency. I think the foundation here has been compromised by demands for a CW-style drama that can't be carried by the inexperienced cast. I'm not the person to usually say an actor is 'bad'. I usually think it comes down to correct casting and direction, but a few of the actors give such awful, not flat, awful work that it tanks a load-bearing throughline of the show. My partner and I were incensed and baffled that it could have gone through production like this.
I want to like it for a few reasons: Much of the cast brought their A-game, the writers found good ways to integrate Star Trek staples in, all the side-character relationship drama was really cute, and it had a sense of hope and progressivism that wasn't as performative as NuTrek generally is. It even had a decent villain! I just can't defend it since the rest of it is just...embarrassing.
I don't think this will have pulled in a new audience as the execs might have hoped. My partner and I finished the season disappointed, yet she was totally engaged with S1 of Babylon 5, which I threw on as an apology on behalf of sci-fi. 3/10
Flight of the Navagator - Unfortunately, not the type of whimsy that tends to work on me. It's well made and all, but it didn't demand my engagement while I was working on something else. N/A
