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Max Schindler

2930 Posts
25 May

The 15 Weirdest Ways 2000s Movies Tried to Seem “Cool”

Max SchindlerNew DVD release
The 2000s had a very specific idea of what looked cool. If a movie had leather jackets, slow-motion walking, aggressive editing, neon lighting, nu-metal soundtracks, or endless attitude, Hollywood often assumed it had cracked the formula. The problem was that trying too hard usually aged faster than anything else. Many films chased trends instead of building timeless style, stuffing themselves with edgy visuals, forced swagger, and overdesigned action meant to feel modern and rebellious. Some still became cult favorites (albeit ironically), but others now feel like time capsules of manufactured ‘cool.’ These movies did everything possible to look stylish, only…
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24 May

Spider-Noir: Should You Watch it in Black and White or Color?

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Spider-Noir may be about a guy who can shoot webs fighting people with electrical powers and super-strength, but it is fundamentally a riff on noir films. Literally “dark film,” film noir was the term that French critics applied to the crime movies that Hollywood made from the 1930s and through the early ’50s, movies such as The Third Man, Double Indemnity, and The Big Heat. A cursory look at the trailers for Spider-Noir emphasize the show’s connection to those movies. Even when he’s wearing a mask, Ben Reilly a.k.a. the Spider (Nicolas Cage) keeps his fedora and trench coat on,…
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23 May

Rivals Season 2 Puts Its Female Characters Front and Center

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The following contains spoilers for the first four episodes of Rivals season 2. The first season of Rivals rightfully generated a lot of buzz for its scandalous sensibilities — the series opens with a couple joining the Mile High Club in an airplane toilet as a champagne bottle overflows outside and pretty much just proceeds from there. It was full of attractive male leads, most of whom all took their shirts off at various points during its run. It unabashedly embraced the idea that television is — and should be — fun. Now the buzzy bonkbuster is back for another…
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23 May

Vought Rising Trailer: The Greatest Generation Gets The Boys’ Treatment

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The disappointing fifth and final season of The Boys suffered from a myriad of problems. According to creator Eric Kripke, one issue was that the series was just too darn timely. How could he have guessed that the absolutely absurd moment when Homelander has a gaudy vision that convinces him he is God would be trumped by the President sharing an AI image of himself as the divine? The first trailer for The Boys prequel series Vought Rising seems to promise a series devoid of such issues. The show goes all the way back to 1950, and seems to present…
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23 May

Mandalorian and Grogu: Star Wars Forgot Why the Cantina Scene Matters

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This article contains minor spoilers for The Mandalorian and Grogu. At the climax of The Mandalorian and Grogu‘s first act, the odds stack up against Din Djarin. A horde of monsters floods into the gladiatorial arena to which he’s been sent, forcing Mando and Rotta the Hutt, the shockingly ripped son of Jabba the Hutt, to fight against a giant lizard in a leather vest, some unsettling worm thing, a gloopy dude with giant eyes, and other beasties. At first, the fight scene just sucks, one of many indifferently-shot action sequences in The Mandalorian and Grogu. The monsters have neat…
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23 May

Directive 8020 Isn’t Living up to The Dark Picture Anthology’s Hype 

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Supermassive Games’ Dark Pictures Anthology series takes on heavy themes about the darker aspects of humanity, free will, and morality. Players learn to make decisions for survival on the fly and deal with the outcomes of those decisions, sometimes impacted by choices of characters centuries before them.  The first game of the franchise, Man of Medan, was released in 2019, and the world has since expanded across five games of pure terror, with fan-favorite narrator, The Curator, walking players through numerous puzzles and questions in hopes of finding out the central mystery that connects back to the mysterious narrator himself. …
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22 May

Ranking Every Season of The Boys

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This article contains spoilers for The Boys season 5. The future of The Boys is in the past. Now that the show is over, we can look forward to a prequel series called Vought Rising that will explore the adventures of Soldier Boy, Bombsight, Liberty, and a host of other new characters in the 1950s, but until then, we can also look back at The Boys itself, as season 5 has marked the end of the mothership show on Prime Video. Butcher and the gang gave us five seasons of absolute chaos to treasure forever, along with endless memes and…
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22 May

14 Actors Who Chose Quality Over Quantity

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Actors, like any other person, need to work to pay the bills. Sure, a lot of them have a lot more money than the average person, but that isn’t true for all performers, much less at the start of their careers. And yet, there are a few actors that, once they gained some renown, decided to be more picky on the films they starred in. Not all of the films they chose were instant classics, but that’s not why they chose them. These are actors clearly working their craft to the best of their ability, searching for roles that challenge…
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22 May

David Suchet Is Still the One True Poirot

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To be a television fan in the year of our Lord 2026 means forcing yourself to accept the fact that we live in an era of reboots, revivals, and remakes. And with new takes on everything from Scrubs and Malcom in the Middle to Little House on the Prairie and The Forsytes hitting screens this year, it’s pretty much only a matter of time before it’s your beloved favorite’s turn. But sometimes, the idea of a reboot is so egregious that it seems worth it to wonder: What on Earth are we doing here?  Case in point: The BBC is…
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22 May

All The Young Dudes: The 500K-Word, Million Dollar Story That Reshaped Fanfiction

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Harry Potter is a pioneer of internet fanfiction. With over 600,000 stories written by contributors on Archive of Our Own (AO3), nearly 200,000 on Wattpad, and close to 75,000 posts under the #HarryPotterFanfic hashtag on TikTok, fans have created a unique storytelling subculture that extends the Wizarding World narrative far beyond J.K. Rowling’s original novels. Recently, publishers have recognized the commercial potential of this enterprise and have churned out repackaged Harry Potter fanfiction novels such as Alchemised, Rose in Chains, and The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy – all Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy romance stories featuring rebranded…
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22 May

New Lifestyle Sim Paralives Is Answering Sims Fans’ Prayers 

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Paralives has released the first look at its gameplay, providing a new world for life simulator players to exercise their god complexes on. The game, created by Paralives Studios, started as a solo passion project by creator Alex Massé. With the help of his team of 10, they are now set to launch one of 2026’s most anticipated life simulation games.  The indie title’s early access gameplay looks promising for the launch, garnering excitement for a fresh take on the genre.  The Sims players, in particular, are excited about the game’s promise of creative freedom, transparency, and features that fans…
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22 May

That A Court of Thorns and Roses Adaptation May Still See the Light of Day

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It appears that all hope may not be quite lost for fans of Sarah J. Maas’ blockbuster romantasy series A Court of Thorns and Roses who’ve been hoping to see the genre-defining saga adapted for TV. The series may yet find its way to another streamer, as Maas has reclaimed the rights to her works and, per Puck News, is “reportedly shopping the project elsewhere”.  Fans have been waiting an awfully long time to see the world of Prythian come to life. Tempo optioned the film rights to the series all the way back in 2015 – before the romantasy…
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22 May

The Odyssey and Troy Debate Reveals Surface Level Understanding of Homer Online

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Beware of Greeks bearing gifts. This timeless bit of wisdom doesn’t technically come down to us from Homer—a version of the phrase first appeared in Virgil’s The Aeneid, a quasi-retelling/sequel to the Trojan War and its aftermath written by a Roman more than 700 years after The Iliad and The Odyssey were committed to paper—but its potency remains. When you have reasons to doubt the kindness or intentions of others, maybe keep your perspective when those same folks offer a proverbial wooden horse to worship. That should’ve gone for old King Priam of Troy 3,000 years ago, and it definitely…
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21 May

Supergirl Will Have a Bigger Role in the DCU Than First Thought

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By this point, everyone knows that in addition to Big Blue, the Man of Steel, and the Last Son of Krypton, one of Superman’s nicknames is the Man of Tomorrow, thanks to the title James Gunn has chosen for his Superman sequel. Even though the appellation could also refer to co-lead Lex Luthor, the term usually applies to Clark Kent, thanks to the sci-fi elements of his origin story, with its exploding planets and babies in rockets. But with some modifications, the term can also be applied to his cousin Kara Zor-El, especially in the new DCU. Variety has revealed…
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21 May

Damon Lindelof Reflects on Being Fired From Star Wars

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As Lucasfilm rolls out its first Star Wars movie for seven years, The Mandalorian and Grogu, all eyes are on the struggling Disney franchise to see if this new outing from a galaxy far, far away can make a splash at the box office. Various Star Wars movies have been in the works since the release of The Rise of Skywalker back in 2019, but most have lingered in development hell before being nixed. Only the aforementioned theatrical debut of the franchise’s live-action TV series and a forthcoming Ryan Gosling movie called Starfighter have entered production to date, and the…
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21 May

Fans React to The Boys Series Finale

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This article contains spoilers for The Boys season 5 finale The Boys has finally come to an end. The series finale is now streaming on Prime Video, and no matter how you feel about the journey the show has taken us on, it’s certainly been one hell of a ride. In the last ever episode of Eric Kripke’s violent, irreverent superhero satire, Butcher and the gang stormed the Oval Office and took down Homelander while he was in the middle of threatening America as the country’s new god. Unfortunately, killing Homelander wasn’t quite enough resolution for Butcher, who had never…
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20 May

The Mandalorian Could Have Been the Savior of Star Wars but Lost The Way

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In the very first scene of The Mandalorian, a silent stranger follows a homing beacon into some remote saloon. He goes straight to the bar, ignoring the chattering and boasting of the toughs around him. Finally, the stranger reaches a breaking point, dispatching the heretofore intimidating customers with relative ease before revealing the purpose of his visit. He’s come for a sniveling blue guy and to collect the bounty on the criminal’s head. When the blue guy tries to barter his way out of it, the stranger speaks his first lines. “I can bring you in warm,” he declares, pulling…
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20 May

Video Games That Punished Players for No Reason

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Gamers love difficult video games, that isn’t something new. But something being satisfyingly difficult instead of unfairly punishing is hard to pull off, with many games being remembered for the wrong reasons. Some players still love to be punished like that, sure, but for general audiences, it can get to be too much. As such, we have games in infamy instead of fame. These games might not be bad, but they are punishing enough that many players have stopped engaging with them. If you’re looking for a fun time when gaming, avoid these titles. IMDb Pathologic Pathologic constantly drains the…
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20 May

Dutton Ranch: Natalie Alyn Lind on Becoming a Cowboy… and Art the Clown

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For an actor, every day is like Halloween. But few have embraced the spirit of the holiday better than Natalie Alyn Lind, star of the latest Yellowstone spinoff Dutton Ranch. Lind plays Oreana Lynn Jackson, the strong-willed daughter of local tough Rob-Will Jackson (Jai Courtney). But before joining Taylor Sheridan’s massive TV franchise, Lind also appeared in Gotham, The Gifted, and The Goldbergs. And one Halloween, she even played Art the Clown, the murderous mime from the Terrifier series. All of those parts required some training, especially getting ready to be part of the rough and tumble world of Dutton…
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20 May

Netflix Unveils an Impressive Summer Anime Roster

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The summer season is upon us and as fun as it can be to go and catch some rays at the beach, there’s sometimes nothing more satisfying than beating the heat with a new anime and cranking the volume and air conditioning all the way up. More than half of Netflix subscribers are watching anime and the streamer has made sure that fans have their bases covered this summer.  Netflix’s diverse summer anime slate includes high-stakes sports showdowns, the Straw Hat Pirates’ intensifying chaos on Whole Cake Island, and the conclusion of an extraterrestrial assassination shonen epic. It’s always the…
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