Streaming Wars - There Were No Gods Left

There Were No Gods Left

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Streaming Wars

A collection of 26 posts

People We Meet on Vacation

People We Meet on Vacation

These two are one Christmas setting away from stumbling onto a full Hallmark set.

Good News

Good News’ black comedy cuts with both edges of its katana.

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery

Toronto International Film Festival 2025

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery

Just like fruit, the longer franchises persist, the greater chance they have of spoiling.

Star Trek: Section 31 — Olatunde Osunsanmi

Star Trek: Section 31 — Olatunde Osunsanmi

The Star Trek franchise has finally delivered its first truly unwatchable feature film

INTERVIEW: Director Kelsey Egan on ‘THE FIX’ and Engaging with Criticism

INTERVIEW: Director Kelsey Egan on ‘THE FIX’ and Engaging with Criticism

"YouTube and TikTok are the demise of cinema"

Trigger Warning — Mouly Surya

Trigger Warning — Mouly Surya

If you watch Trigger Warning, Netflix’s latest big-budget action movie, with captions turned on, you may notice the phrase “terrorist, in Arabic” in the film’s opening scene.

Interview: Rebel Moon VFX Supervisor Marcus Taormina

Interview: Rebel Moon VFX Supervisor Marcus Taormina

Enjoy this glimpse into the creation of Rebel Moon.

Netflix's 'Ripley' — Caravaggio, queer glances, and pictorial piazzas

Netflix's 'Ripley' — Caravaggio, queer glances, and pictorial piazzas

Patricia Highsmith's confounding Tom Ripley is no stranger to screen adaptations. The mysterious and perhaps repressed bisexual con man has been front and center of several interpretations. From the great French actor Alain Delon's libertine Tom in 1960's "High Noon" to Matt

Ashes — Erdem Tepegöz

Ashes — Erdem Tepegöz

That hunk in the romance novel you’re reading — what if he was real and ready to mingle? That’s the entertaining and confident premise of Ashes, the newest film from experienced Turkish director Erdem Tepegöz. A pretty, married woman reads a smutty book and scopes out the patisserie where

Badland Hunters — Heo Myeong-haeng

Badland Hunters — Heo Myeong-haeng

Ma Dong-seok does it again in Netflix’s Badland Hunters. Like most of his notable roles post-Train to Busan (2016), he plays a haymaking Byronic hero with a pained past, this time around as the star of the very loose sequel to last year’s Concrete Utopia. The post-apocalyptic landscape

Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire (2023) dir. Zack Snyder

Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire (2023) dir. Zack Snyder

Snyder’s inviolable picture bids for a better Hollywood. If we’re lucky, it might even be a taste of what’s to come.

The Archies (2023) dir. Zoya Akhtar

The Archies (2023) dir. Zoya Akhtar

Zoya Akhtar is one of my favorite working directors. Along with her brother Farhan Akhtar, an actor-writer-director mostly known for his work as a leading man, she has made a series of effectual, transcendental films. This is both her greatest asset and her biggest criticism: the films of Zoya Akhtar

Netflix's Kill Boksoon and Wicksploitation

Netflix's Kill Boksoon and Wicksploitation

Netflix’s most recent South Korean action assassination flick, Kill Boksoon, will inevitably be compared to the John Wick franchise. Indeed, it already has. To quote The Hollywood Reporter, who seem somewhat confused about the difference between then and than, “If John Wick were a middle-aged single mom whose teenage

Thoughtful Streaming on a Budget

Thoughtful Streaming on a Budget

Netflix: $19.99 (premium). HBO Max: $14.99 (no ads). Disney Bundle: $13.99. Amazon Prime: $14.99. Paramount Plus: $10 (premium).

Missing Shows Screenlife is Here to Stay

Missing Shows Screenlife is Here to Stay

Screenlife is here to stay, thanks to Timur Bekmambetov. A Kazakh-Russian director and producer, Bekmambetov is responsible for what’s likely the most outstanding formal innovation in filmmaking in decades. Quite simply: he’s uncovered and propagandized a new way to present motion pictures—in which the viewer sees everything

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Story Deserves Your Attention

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Story Deserves Your Attention

Picture this: you’re halfway through a theatrical showing of Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery and the screen begins to flicker with a green overlay on the borders of characters and other moving objects. An easily identifiable digital projection error. Obviously, parts of people shouldn’t be flickering in

Netflix Needs More Films Like The Wonder

Netflix Needs More Films Like The Wonder

The Wonder, a Florence Pugh-studded period drama with perfectly boring cinematography, is precisely the type of film Netflix needs more of: a truly memorable low-budget film with true artistic merit that’s performance- rather than star-driven. It’s a film that fully leans into what makes it work. They need

'Seoul Vibe': Takes Inspiration in 'Extreme Job' and 'Baby Driver'

'Seoul Vibe': Takes Inspiration in 'Extreme Job' and 'Baby Driver'

Unfortunately, Seoul Vibe’s action isn’t as slick as Baby Driver; nor is it as funny as Extreme Job.

Give Me More: 2022 Releases in Review So Far

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Give Me More: 2022 Releases in Review So Far

'Luck' and the Unlucky Trend

'Luck' and the Unlucky Trend

The last three films I watched, in order, would be Bullet Train (2022), Final Destination (2000), and Luck (2022). By happy coincidence, all three concern the theme of luck, or more accurately, bad luck, from a similar perspective: it’s just random happenstance and our interpretation of the happenstance that

'The Sea Beast' doesn't live up to its hype

'The Sea Beast' doesn't live up to its hype

In a society in which Minions: The Rise of Gru has taken over the youngest minds while simultaneously managing to somehow make Twitter a worse place, the divide of quality in kids’ movies becomes all too clear. With the decline of Pixar and the relatively stagnant Dreamworks Studio, Laika Studios

Another Dumb Netflix Romance

Another Dumb Netflix Romance

Yeah… I should have known this would be a cookie-cutter romance movie. But for some reason, I hoped Shailene Woodley (as Jennifer Stirling), who has surprised me with interesting roles like Lindsay Mills in Snowden and one of the better performances in the 2010s Young Adult dystopian novel adaptation surge

"Oslo" Muddles Style as much as Politics

"Oslo" Muddles Style as much as Politics

Even the film’s narrative focus on the Oslo Accords seems a little self-serving to the “white savior” complex since– spoiler alert– they end up failing even in the short-term.

"Cruella" has Surprising Directorial Energy

"Cruella" has Surprising Directorial Energy

Cruella is an ostentatiously over-directed female-centric movie centering on two successful women in the 1970s London fashion scene rifle with popular tunes. Had it not been made by Disney and necessarily attached to pre-existing material, it would be the type of film hyped by the Academy. If “Oscar adjacent” earns

The Disciple (2020) dir. Chaitanya Tamhane

The Disciple (2020) dir. Chaitanya Tamhane

A beautiful Netflix original that takes seriously religious mysticism, in a Hinduism variety, The Disciple (2020), through its pairing of seraphic visuals with hypnotic music and sounds, navigates the ephemeral and enchants the view in the process. Unfortunately, the studio doesn’t seem to have placed much confidence in the