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Max Schindler

2930 Posts
30 May

Backrooms Is the First Horror Movie of the AI Era

Max SchindlerNew DVD release
This article contains spoilers for Backrooms. Early in the new A24 horror film Backrooms, furniture salesman Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) stops his exploration of the space attached to the basement of his store because he thinks he hears a monster coming toward him. Clark desperately crawls up an incline on one side of the room, to a tiny brown door adorned with three door knobs. To his dismay, Clark discovers that two of the knobs do nothing, and only one opens the door, finally allowing him to crawl through. Clark needn’t have run from the noise, and not just because—as we…
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30 May

House of the Dragon Season 3 Trailer Reminds Us That Ruling Is Harder Than Fighting

Max SchindlerNew DVD release
In the very first shot of the latest trailer for House of the Dragon season 3, the camera pans over a field of dead bodies, ending with Daemon (Matt Smith) battering some schmuck in the mud. We’re then treated to images of people being stabbed, squished, and torched alive by dragons. Yep, this is a Game of Thrones show alright. House of the Dragon continues the HBO franchise’s central theme, one straight from the George R. R. Martin books: the fight to rule tends to decimate those who would be ruled. But with its focus on best-friends turned rivals Rhaenyra…
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29 May

A24’s Friday the 13th Series Must Not Try to Fix the Timeline

Max SchindlerNew DVD release
It should be the easiest question in the world to answer. When does Friday the 13th take place? On Friday. The thirteenth day of the month. It’s right there in the title. But the Friday the 13th franchise can’t do anything the easy way, so if you thought that a series that took two and a half movies to establish its iconic killer would keep things simple, you thought wrong. The latest Friday the 13th entry, the A24-produced television series Crystal Lake on Peacock, is a prequel, and prequels always want to straighten things out, providing explanations for things that…
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29 May

15 Movies We Don’t Watch Because They’re Good

Max SchindlerNew DVD release
Taste is subjective, and all in all, that’s what makes us unique. Things that everyone likes we might loath, while stuff we adore can be despised by the general public. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that, although there is a subset of movies that are, if this were possible, objectively bad. And people still love them. It’s not that they are secret masterpieces, or that the people that enjoy these movies don’t see the mistakes; they see them, celebrate them, and love these films for them. If asked, the people that enjoy these movies will tell you that yes,…
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29 May

The Triumph of The Tick, Amazon’s Forgotten Superhero Series

Max SchindlerNew DVD release
In the premiere episode of the best superhero series on Prime Video, a spaceship falls on a father, crushing him in front of his young son. Out of the ship stumbles the members of the Earth’s greatest superhero team, their eyes bleeding because of weaponized syphilis. Before the heroes can recover, the supervillain arrives to shoot them in the head—well, only two get shot; the youngest simply has his hands crushed. The heroes murdered, the villain mocks the little boy before flying off, leaving him forever traumatized. Fans of The Boys might be scratching their heads after reading that description.…
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29 May

A Moriarty Series Could Change the Sherlock Franchise Forever 

Max SchindlerNew DVD release
The nemesis of Oxford Yard’s resident detective is getting his own series. James Moriarty will receive his own modern retelling at the behest of Fremantle, producers of Poor Things, and Archery Productions, who produced Operation Mincemeat. The series is set to be written by Chris Cornwell, known for the show A Discovery of Witches, and Oliver Lansley, Where’s Wanda?.  According to Deadline, this iteration of Moriarty will be a professor at Durham University, leading a double life as a mastermind behind the series of intricate criminal activities plaguing Northern England. Moriarty joins the police as a consultant to take down…
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29 May

007 First Light Is Already Dividing Gamers… And That’s OK 

Max SchindlerNew DVD release
IO Interactive has rewound time to give fans the origins of the most iconic figure in espionage, James Bond. The Hitman studio’s new game 007 First Light depicts a young, reckless, and developing Bond during his time in the MI6’s training program as the former naval air crewman trains to confront a global conspiracy. The game explores how the spy became who he is, developed a moral code, and became the magnetic figure known as Agent 007.  The game stars Irish actor Patrick Gibson (who previously played young serial killer Dexter Morgan in the Showtime series Dexter: Original Sin) as…
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29 May

X-Men ’97 Producers Tease the Return of a Fallen Fan Favorite

Max SchindlerNew DVD release
This article contains potential spoilers for X-Men ’97 season 2. The first trailer for X-Men ’97 season 2 was full of treats for fans. But for fans of the Ragin’ Cajun Gambit, the trailer was nothing but sadness. We get to see a little of Rogue mourning her beloved, but nothing indicating that he’ll do what the X-Men do best: come back to life. X-Men ’97 writers and producers Eric and Julia Lewald aren’t ready to say that Gambit will return. But they are willing to offer some hope that Remy LeBeau will be back. Season 1 ended with a…
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29 May

Daredevil: Born Again Can Finally Give Us the Cage and Iron Fist Team-Up We Want

Max SchindlerNew DVD release
This article contains light spoilers for Daredevil: Born Again season 3 based on set photos. Daredevil: Born Again hasn’t just been about the rebirth of Matt Murdock, the blind lawyer who spends his evening defending the streets of Hell’s Kitchen as Daredevil. It’s also been about the rebirth of the Netflix Marvel series that first introduced Charlie Cox as Daredevil and Vincent D’Onofrio as Wilson Fisk. Season 2 brought back Krysten Ritter as Jessica Jones and, in the final minutes, Mike Colter as Luke Cage. Set leak photos have already confirmed that the fourth member of the Defenders would also…
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28 May

Backrooms Review: A24 Expansion of YouTube Series Goes in Circles

Max SchindlerNew DVD release
I never liked fluorescent lighting. Often aggressively bright, the hum of the once ubiquitous mercury-vapor tube always felt like threatened cheerfulness. It’s a forced smile stretched across a pained face. Wunderkind YouTuber and now bonafide big-screen director Kane Parsons would seem to agree. For his feature-film debut at A24, Backrooms, the 20-year-old content creator returns to a late 20th century setting and variety of corporate luminescence that he’s probably too young to remember firsthand. And it is undeniably eerie, if intermittently so. The labyrinthine hell of Backrooms’ title exists in a liminal space of endless corridors and winding atriums which…
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28 May

Paddington 4’s Writer Selection Hints at Political Satire for England’s Most Famous Bear

Max SchindlerNew DVD release
As the world heads toward unprecedented corruption, governmental collapse, and extreme polarization, at least we have Paddington, an adorable protagonist and a shining light of optimistic apolitical escapism to turn to. Even that, however, may be changing with the arrival of his latest sequel, Paddington 4. Armando Iannucci, the cynical genius behind the hit show Veep and dark comedy The Death of Stalin, has been tapped to write the fourth installment of the critical darling Paddington series alongside his writing partner Simon Blackwell.  Satire has defined Iannucci’s career. His early time in radio and broadcast television established him as “the…
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28 May

X-Men ’97 Season 2 Trailer Breakdown: Apocalypse, New Costumes, and More

Max SchindlerNew DVD release
This article contains details from X-Men comics that could spoil X-Men ’97 season 2. It’s here, my X-Men! The first trailer for season 2 of X-Men ’97 has arrived, chock-full of the superhero soap opera goodies that made the first season such a sensation. Season 1 proved that X-Men ’97 wanted to be so much more than a nostalgic continuation of the original series, which ran from 1992 to 1997. More than just picking up storylines and adding elements from comics published in the intervening three decades, X-Men ’97 tackled pressing themes about oppression and genocide, portraying them through some…
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28 May

I Love Boosters Marketing Campaign? Boots Riley Tweets at You

Max SchindlerNew DVD release
“Gimme your address, I’ll look up the nearest showtime for you and find the best transit route to see I Love Boosters.” “You have to go see I Love Boosters ASAP. What are you waiting for? How can I move the needle for you?” “What the fuck Kansas City theaters??? How is no theater playing I Love Boosters???” These are just some of the posts on X, formerly Twitter, promoting writer-director Boots Riley’s newest film I Love Boosters. Instead of being posted by eager fans, however, these were all posted by Riley himself.  A quick scroll through Riley’s personal X…
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28 May

Spider-Noir Is the Ultimate Nicolas Cage Highlight Reel

Max SchindlerNew DVD release
This article contains light spoilers for Spider-Noir. As its name implies, the MGM+/Prime Video series Spider-Noir is many things. It is a story about Spider-Man, albeit as middle-aged private investigator Ben Reilly, who used to fight crime under the codename “the Spider.” It’s also a noir series, thanks to its postwar setting, its gangster baddies, and its nods toward classic films like Gilda. But most of all, Spider-Noir is the ultimate highlight reel for its star, Nicolas Cage. As private dick Ben Reilly, Cage gets to take on all sorts of personas, little bits that his character adopts to sneak…
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27 May

Florence Pugh’s Newest Project Is a BookTok Phenomenon That Could Be the Next Big Thing

Max SchindlerNew DVD release
An original BookTok relic The Midnight Library is being revived nearly six years after its film rights were sold. Florence Pugh will produce and star as the novel’s main character, Nora Seed, a woman who finds herself in a library between life and death and who reads alternative realities of her own life in the library’s vast catalog.  The Midnight Library was published August 13, 2020 and was a part of the first wave of #BookTok favorites alongside titles like The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Song of Achilles, and It Ends With Us. #BookTok is a TikTok hashtag that…
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27 May

The Success of Obsession’s Ending Came Down to Two Last-Minute Takes

Max SchindlerNew DVD release
This article contains spoilers for Obsession. Original horror movie Obsession has become a massive success at the box office, generating $60.7 million in North America. But director Curry Barker has now revealed that the film’s largely-praised ending was not what he originally had in store. In fact, Obsession’s conclusion shot not one, but two major last-minute takes that changed the impact of the final moments entirely.  In Obsession, protagonist Bear (Michael Johnston) uses a $6.99 toy called a “One Wish Willow” to wish that his coworker Nikki (Inde Navarrette) would “love him more than anyone else in the world.” Upon…
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27 May

House of the Dragon Star Finds Season 3 Inspiration in Gritty a Scorsese Classic

Max SchindlerNew DVD release
Even by Game of Thrones standards, House of the Dragon is old. Based on George R. R. Martin‘s 2018 history of Westeros, Fire & Blood, House of the Dragon takes place two full centuries before the events of Game of Thrones, pushing it even further away from our current time and place (though admittedly technology and culture seems pretty stagnant in Westeros). Yet, no matter how far and away into a fictional Medieval-style past the series goes, House of the Dragon is still made by modern actors, trying to appeal to modern audiences. So it shouldn’t be too much of…
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27 May

X-Men ’97 Prequel Comic Puts Two of the Most X-Treme Characters in the Spotlight

Max SchindlerNew DVD release
The X-Men debuted in the early 1960s, and the comic achieved its creative peaks throughout the late 1970s and the 1980s. But for most people, the X-Men are the ultimate ’90s comic book. During the ’90s they became the premier superhero franchise, expanding to not just several spinoff comics with teams such as X-Force and X-Factor, but also to television, with the hit animated series that ran from 1992 to 1997. The cartoon solidified the lineup with some characters forever associated with the 1990s, including Jubilee and Gambit. The first season of the sequel series X-Men ’97 brought these characters…
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27 May

Spider-Man: Alfred Molina Could Return as Doctor Octopus, But He Really Shouldn’t

Max SchindlerNew DVD release
Poor Peter Parker, he can never get rid of his worst enemies. Take Doctor Otto Octavius, a.k.a. Doc Ock. Since the green-clad baddie debuted in Amazing Spider-Man #3 way back in 1963, he has died a few times, once to be replaced by a young woman and again to swap bodies with Spider-Man. And yet, every time, Doc Ock comes roaring back—silver tentacles, green jumpsuit, and bowl haircut all intact. Given that history, it makes sense that the greatest actor to ever portray Otto would follow his character’s lead for an unlikely encore. “If they came knocking on my door…
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25 May

Spider-Noir Review: Spider-Man Does Whatever Bogie Can

Max SchindlerNew DVD release
This review contains light spoilers for Spider-Noir. We still haven’t fully reckoned with what a miracle of a movie Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is. That film introduced mass audiences to a new variation of Spider-Man who wasn’t Peter Parker, while putting the famously street-level, friendly neighborhood hero into a dimension-hopping story, one that also starred a Spider-Pig, a Spider-Robot, a Spider-Gwen, and a Spider-Gumshoe. Against all odds, Into the Spider-Verse not only gave us a delightful adventure with dazzling visuals and punchy gags, but it also managed to be a satisfying story about new kid Miles Morales. Yet, despite Spider-Verse‘s…
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