The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Is Riveting Television

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance may be the ideal form of bringing back a beloved property in a modern-day reboot/continuation. A Netflix TV show prequel to the 1982 Jim Henson/Frank Oz directorial effort The Dark Crystal, Age of Resistance takes place thousands of years before the events of the original movie. This extensive amount of time in between the two stories allows the saga of Age of Resistance to really stand on its own. Though they take place on the same planet (Thra) and share some characters, Age of Resistance will work just fine for newcomers and is interested in telling a good story and pushing the boundaries of puppetry-based filmmaking rather than just relying exclusively on callbacks to the original Dark Crystal movie.

Terminal Is All Weirdness All The Time And The Results Are Yawn-Inducing

Watching a piece of art prance around under the assumption that it's as strange as can be while actually being incredibly mundane and even boring is such an uncomfortable experience. It's like the cinematic version of listening to a guy at a party ramble on and on about his conspiracy theories about the Illuminati like he's cracked the code on how the world works when he's just regurgitating the same o'l nutty codswallop people with tinfoil hats have been saying for years. So it is with Terminal, a motion picture that fancies itself as something like a provocative slice of abnormality but it's really just predictable more often than not and ends up being the last thing any of these type of movies want to be called: lame.

The Spectacle Is Pushed Into Overdrive In The Exceptionally Exciting Mission: Impossible - Fallout

22 years after the first Mission: Impossible came out, you'd think this series would have run out of creative reasons for Tom Cruise to run really fast, but not only is this franchise still going on, its last two entries have been its strongest. Christopher McQuarrie's Rogue Nation and especially Brad Bird's Ghost Protocol were the two strongest installments in the Mission: Impossible saga yet with both carrying all kinds of inventive action sequences that put one at the very edge of their seat. The newest Mission: Impossible entry, Fallout, see's McQuarrie back in the director's chair and while the results aren't quite as good as Rogue Nation and Ghost Protocol, Fallout still finds this series in superb form and delivering the kind of thrills so many blockbusters can only dream about.

Set Phasers To Awesomeness For Star Trek Beyond

Each of the Star Trek movies that have emerged since 2009 seem to have taken direct inspiration from different noteworthy motion picture. That first feature in this rebooted franchise was very much inspired by the success of then recent reboots like Batman Begins and Casino Royale while Star Trek Into Darkness was an obvious attempt to mimic how most second films in major blockbuster franchises (think The Empire Strikes Back) are the "darker" story. Now Star Trek Beyond arrives very much as a post-Guardians Of The Galaxy Star Trek adventure. Colorful looking aliens have a greater presence than they did in the last two Star Trek movies, tunes from the 80's surface at critical moments, there's a greater emphasis on the dynamic of the main group of characters and new character Jayllah (Sofia Boutella) and her trait of not quite understanding certain aspects of the English language bear a notable similarity to Drax The Destroyer.

Franchise Frenzy: Ice Age

Welcome to Franchise Frenzy! Every other week I post a column analyzing the quality and pop culture impact of a certain Hollywood franchise. This week, I put on a winter coat in July in order to make my way through the Ice Age franchise.

In 2002, CGI animated films were scarce, with DreamWorks only having released two of them at that point, Disney Animation doing only one and even PIXAR only having four of them under their belt at that point. Aside from the occasional Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, the landscape for CGI animated features was vacant. Enter Blue Sky Studios, whose first feature Ice Age became the cornerstone of the company. They've very rarely stepped outside of that franchise comfort zone (pity too, as aside from Rio, their other non-Ice Age movies range from diverting to endlessly charming), but if every single entry in this series was as strong as the original, I doubt any of us would complain. 

Classic Write-Up: Hot Fuzz Review

At this point, my respect and admiration for Edgar Wright is far beyond most artists in the entire world, let alone just ones in the film industry. The man, along with frequent collaborators Joe Cornish and Simon Pegg, has this ability for being able to incorporate hefty subject matter like growing up and letting go of the past into stories that are full of laughs and excitement. I've seen most of the directors works, but one major work of his that I somehow hadn't seen was Hot Fuzz. Now that that's changed, I can honestly say I regret not seeing such an utterly exquisite movie earlier than I did.