Tag Archives: Neal McDonough

Review: Justified (by Graham Yost)

Posted on by Arleigh

“You do a good job of hiding it. And I suppose most folks don’t see it. But honestly? You’re the angriest man I have ever known.” — Winona Hawkins (describing Raylan Givens)

Justified is one of those rare TV shows that feels like a perfectly aged whiskey—smooth, rich, and with a kick that lingers long after you’ve finished a glass. Adapted from Elmore Leonard’s stories featuring the sharp-shooting, quick-witted U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, the FX series is a masterclass in character-driven storytelling, sharp dialogue, and the kind of moral ambiguity that makes you question who you’re really rooting for. At the heart of it all is Timothy Olyphant as Raylan, a man who carries the weight of his past like a well-worn leather jacket, and Walton Goggins as Boyd Crowder, the charismatic, Bible-quoting criminal who might just be the most compelling villain—or antihero—you’ve ever seen on screen.

What makes Justified stand out in a sea of crime dramas is its refusal to take itself too seriously, even when the stakes are life-or-death. The show thrives on its dialogue, which crackles with the kind of wit and rhythm you’d expect from Leonard’s work. Raylan’s dry, understated humor is a constant delight, whether he’s trading barbs with a suspect, outsmarting a room full of criminals, or just trying to keep his cool in the face of his own family’s dysfunction. Olyphant delivers every line with a mix of charm and menace, making Raylan feel like a man who’s seen it all but hasn’t lost his sense of humor—or his moral compass, however bent it might be. There’s a scene early in the series where Raylan gives a criminal 24 hours to leave town, and the way Olyphant sells the quiet intensity of that moment is a testament to his ability to command the screen without raising his voice. He’s the kind of hero who doesn’t need to shout to be heard.

But as good as Olyphant is, Justified might just belong to Walton Goggins as Boyd Crowder. Boyd is the kind of character who could’ve been a cartoonish villain in lesser hands, but Goggins turns him into something far more fascinating. A former coal miner turned criminal mastermind, Boyd is equal parts philosopher, showman, and cold-blooded killer. He quotes the Bible one minute and pulls a trigger the next, all while delivering monologues that somehow make his twisted logic sound almost reasonable. Goggins’ performance is electric, and his chemistry with Olyphant is the kind of alchemy that elevates the entire series. Their dynamic is a dance—sometimes a waltz, sometimes a knife fight—where neither man is entirely sure who’s leading. Boyd isn’t just a thorn in Raylan’s side; he’s a dark reflection of him, a man who also grew up in the same rough-and-tumble world of Harlan County, Kentucky, but chose a different path. Their rivalry is the backbone of the show, and every scene they share is a masterclass in tension and subtext.

Then there’s Ava Crowder, Boyd’s sister-in-law and a force of nature in her own right, portrayed with fierce intelligence by Joelle Carter. Ava’s relationship with Boyd is a rollercoaster of love, hate, and everything in between. Their dynamic is just as compelling as the one between Raylan and Boyd, filled with a volatile mix of loyalty, betrayal, and an undeniable connection that neither can fully shake. Ava’s journey from a woman trying to escape her family’s criminal past to a power player in her own right is one of the show’s most compelling arcs. She’s tough, resourceful, and just as morally complex as the men around her, and her interactions with Boyd crackle with the same energy and tension as his showdowns with Raylan. Whether they’re working together, scheming against each other, or caught in some messy in-between, their relationship adds another layer of depth to the show’s already rich tapestry of characters.

The supporting cast is just as strong, filled with characters who feel like they’ve been lifted straight out of a Leonard novel. There’s Art Mullen, Raylan’s boss and the closest thing he has to a father figure, played with gruff warmth by Nick Searcy. And let’s not forget the various criminals, informants, and eccentric locals who populate Harlan County, each one memorable in their own right. Whether it’s the hilariously unhinged Dickie Bennett or the stoic, loyal Limehouse, the show’s roster of side characters ensures that every episode is packed with personality.

What’s so refreshing about Justified is that it never feels the need to over-explain itself. The dialogue is sharp and efficient, often delivering character development and plot twists in the same breath. The show trusts its audience to keep up, and it rewards that trust with some of the most satisfying writing on television. The banter isn’t just clever—it’s purposeful, revealing layers of the characters and their relationships without ever feeling like exposition. And the action? It’s as tight and precise as Raylan’s aim. The shootouts are sudden and brutal, but they’re never gratuitous. Every pull of the trigger feels earned, and the tension leading up to those moments is often as gripping as the violence itself.

The setting of Harlan County is almost a character in itself. The show paints a vivid picture of a place where the law is more of a suggestion than a rule, and where family loyalty often trumps justice. The rugged, coal-dusted landscape mirrors the moral grayness of the stories being told. This isn’t a world of clear-cut heroes and villains; it’s a world where everyone has their own code, and where the line between right and wrong is as blurry as the smoke from a freshly fired revolver. Raylan himself is a product of this environment, and his struggle to reconcile his past with his present is one of the show’s most compelling threads. He’s a man who left Harlan to become a marshal, but Harlan—and its ghosts—never really left him.

One of the show’s greatest strengths is its ability to balance humor and darkness. Even in its grimmest moments, Justified never loses its sense of fun. The writers have a knack for undercutting tension with a well-placed joke or a bit of absurdity, and the result is a show that’s as entertaining as it is thought-provoking. Whether it’s Raylan’s deadpan reactions to the chaos around him or Boyd’s theatrical antics, there’s always a moment to lighten the mood, even when the stakes are at their highest. This balance keeps the show from ever feeling too heavy, and it makes the darker moments hit even harder when they do arrive.

If there’s one thing Justified doesn’t get enough credit for, it’s its consistency. Over six seasons, the show rarely misfires. The writing remains sharp, the performances stay top-notch, and the stories continue to surprise. Even when it dips into more serialized storytelling in its later seasons, it never loses sight of what makes it special: the characters and their relationships. And when the series finally reaches its conclusion, it does so in a way that feels both satisfying and true to everything that came before. There are no easy answers in Justified, no neat bows tied around its themes. Instead, it leaves you with the sense that life—and justice—is messy, complicated, and often unfair.

At its core, Justified is a show about men and women shaped by their pasts, trying to carve out a future in a world that doesn’t always make it easy. Raylan Givens is a hero, but he’s not a saint. Boyd Crowder is a villain, but he’s not without his own twisted sense of honor. Ava Crowder is a survivor, navigating a world where loyalty is a currency and trust is a luxury. The beauty of the show is that it lets these characters exist in all their complexity, never forcing them into boxes they don’t fit into. And with dialogue that snaps like a twig underfoot and performances that bring every word to life, it’s a series that’s as rewarding to revisit as it is to experience for the first time. If you’re a fan of stories where the characters are as rich as the plot, and where every line of dialogue feels like it’s been polished to a shine, then Justified is the kind of show you’ll want to savor. It’s a modern classic, plain and simple.

Review: Minority Report (dir. by Steven Spielberg)

Posted on by Arleigh

“Sometimes, in order to see the light, you have to risk the dark.” — Dr. Iris Hineman

There’s a particular pleasure in revisiting Minority Report now, decades removed from its 2002 release, because it’s aged in the strangest possible way: it hasn’t dated so much as it’s caught up to us. Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s short story plays like a glossy, big-budget action thriller on the surface, all sleek gestural interfaces and Tom Cruise sprinting across rooftops, but underneath that polish is a film that’s quietly become one of the most unnervingly accurate predictions of how surveillance, data, and policing would actually evolve in the real world.

The premise is simple enough to fit on a poster. In a near-future Washington D.C., a special police unit called PreCrime uses three psychic “precogs” to see murders before they happen, allowing cops to arrest people for crimes they haven’t committed yet. John Anderton, played by Cruise with a kind of haunted, grief-soaked intensity, is the unit’s star detective, a true believer in the system who lost his son years earlier and has thrown himself into the work as a substitute for healing. Then the precogs name him as a future murderer, and the rest of the film is Anderton on the run, trying to prove his innocence inside a system explicitly designed to make innocence irrelevant. It’s a clever structural trick because it forces the audience to watch the hero discover, in real time, all the holes in a system he’s spent his career defending.

What makes the film work as more than just a stylish chase movie is how seriously Spielberg and his screenwriters, Scott Frank and Jon Cohen, take the philosophical rot at the center of the premise. PreCrime isn’t framed as a dystopian villain organization; it’s framed as something genuinely good and genuinely popular, a program that’s driven murder rates to near zero and that ordinary citizens are grateful for. That’s the unsettling part. The film isn’t asking you to be afraid of an obviously evil system. It’s asking you to be afraid of aSteve Harris system that works, that delivers real safety, and that nonetheless requires you to accept punishment without due process, fate without appeal, guilt assigned before the act. Cruise’s Anderton spends the film discovering that the machinery he trusted contains exactly the kind of ambiguity and abuse it was built to eliminate, and the film never lets you forget that the most dangerous systems are the ones that feel necessary.

Visually, this is one of Spielberg’s most distinct collaborations with cinematographer Janusz Kamiński, who bleached the color out of nearly every frame to give the film a cold, overexposed, almost silvery look. It’s a future that feels lived-in and grubby rather than chrome and gleaming, which was a deliberate choice; Spielberg and his production designers consulted with actual futurists and technologists to imagine a 2054 that felt plausible rather than fantastical. That’s part of why the gestural data interfaces Anderton uses, swiping and conducting evidence in midair like an orchestra conductor, became such a cultural touchstone; they didn’t feel like science fiction gadgetry so much as a believable next step from where computing was already heading.

And that brings us to the part of the film’s legacy that’s only grown more pointed with time. Minority Report arrived in June 2002, less than a year after September 11th, and it’s impossible to separate the film’s anxieties from that specific American moment. This was the period when the Patriot Act had just been signed, when warrantless surveillance and preventive detention were being normalized in the name of safety, when the entire architecture of American security policy pivoted toward stopping threats before they materialized rather than responding after the fact. Minority Report dramatizes that exact logic and then methodically exposes its flaws, showing a security state so committed to preventing harm that it’s willing to imprison the innocent, manipulate evidence, and treat dissent as a structural malfunction.

It’s worth situating the film alongside the other two movies Spielberg made in the years immediately following 9/11, because together they form a loose, unofficial triptych about post-9/11 American fear. War of the Worlds, his 2005 alien invasion film, restaged the trauma of a sudden, incomprehensible attack on home soil, with Tom Cruise again playing an ordinary man trying to shepherd his children through a landscape of falling ash, mass panic, and faceless threats descending from above, imagery that’s hard not to read as a direct echo of lower Manhattan that morning. Munich, released the same year, dug into the moral wreckage of a state’s decision to respond to terrorism with a covert campaign of targeted assassination, asking hard questions about whether vengeance dressed up as justice actually makes anyone safer or just perpetuates the cycle. Minority Report is the third leg of that stool, the one concerned not with the attack itself or the retaliation but with the surveillance and preemption apparatus built in the name of preventing the next one. Together, the three films trace a kind of emotional arc through American anxiety in that period: the shock of the unknown threat, the morally compromised vengeance that follows, and the paranoid, technologically enabled security state erected to make sure it never happens again. None of the three films name 9/11 directly, but all three are unmistakably shaped by it, by a culture suddenly suspicious of the outsider, willing to trade liberty for the promise of safety, and uncertain whether the institutions built to protect them could be trusted.

What’s remarkable is how much more relevant the surveillance angle feels today than it did in 2002. Predictive policing software is real now, with departments across the country having actually used algorithms to flag individuals or neighborhoods as high risk for future crime, often with the same built-in biases and feedback loops the film gestures at. Data brokers and advertising networks track movement and behavior with a granularity that makes the film’s retina-scanning ad billboards look almost quaint by comparison. The conversation about predictive algorithms making consequential decisions about people’s freedom, hiring, credit, and policing based on probabilistic models of future behavior is now a mainstream policy debate rather than science fiction. Watching the film now, the gap between its imagined 2054 and our actual 2026 feels uncomfortably narrow, less a futuristic warning than a documentary about tendencies we’re already deep inside of.

That’s what makes Minority Report so achingly prophetic, not just in its prediction of our tech, but in its prediction of our mindset. We live in a world now where predictive policing algorithms are actually being used, where social credit scores are a reality in some places, and where the debate over privacy versus security is a constant, exhausting hum in the background. We’re not at the level of precogs, but we don’t need to be. We have big data, machine learning, and a populace that’s been slowly conditioned to accept that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. The film is a warning shot across the bow of that complacency. It asks us to consider the cost of a crime-free society, and it suggests that the price might be our very souls. Spielberg, ever the optimist even in his darkest films, ultimately comes down on the side of human fallibility. He prefers a world with crime and free will to a world of perfect, totalitarian peace. And watching it today, in an age of deepfakes, biometric tracking, and algorithm-driven justice, that preference feels less like a luxury and more like an urgent, desperate necessity. It’s a hell of a ride, with more twists than a pretzel factory and a car chase that still holds up, but the real thrill of Minority Report isn’t the action—it’s the haunting feeling that we’re not watching a dystopian future anymore. We’re watching the news.

Review: Band of Brothers

Posted on by Arleigh

“A lot of those [German] soldiers, I’ve thought about this often, that man and I might’ve been good friends. We might’ve had a lot in common. We might’ve liked to fish, you know, he might’ve liked to hunt. You never know. You know. Of course, they were doin’ what they were supposed to do, and I was tryin’ to do what I was supposed to do. But, under different circumstances we might’ve been good friends.” — Darrell “Shifty” Powers

When we look back at the landscape of modern television, it is easy to take the concept of cinematic TV for granted. We live in an era where massive budgets, sweeping orchestral scores, and A-list Hollywood talent are regularly deployed on the small screen. But if you trace this golden lineage back to its true modern genesis, all roads inevitably lead to a singular, towering achievement: the 2001 HBO mini-series Band of Brothers. Produced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, this ten-part masterpiece did not just recount the harrowing journey of Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division during World War II; it fundamentally altered the DNA of television storytelling. Watching it today, a quarter-century after its initial broadcast, the series remains as potent, heartbreaking, and visually stunning as it was when it first shocked audiences. It exists as a perfect bridge between the classical Hollywood war epics of old and the uncompromising, gritty realism of twenty-first-century media. By committing to an unprecedented budget and an absolute refusal to sanitize the psychological horrors of combat, Band of Brothers set a high-water mark that few series have ever managed to touch, let alone surpass.

To understand the visual language and visceral power of Band of Brothers, one must first look at the cinematic earthquake that preceded it three years earlier: Steven Spielberg’s 1998 masterpiece Saving Private Ryan. That film rewrote the rules of how cinema captures warfare, abandoning the steady, heroic, brightly lit panoramas of mid-century studio pictures in favor of a terrifyingly immersive, chaotic style. Spielberg utilized desaturated colors, shutter-angle manipulation to create a jittery, hyper-real sense of motion, and handheld cameras that made the audience feel like they were ducking bullets in the surf of Omaha Beach. When Hanks and Spielberg pivoted to television to adapt Stephen E. Ambrose’s non-fiction book Band of Brothers, they brought this exact aesthetic blueprint with them. The impact of Saving Private Ryan on the mini-series cannot be overstated; it acts as the structural and aesthetic godfather of the entire project. Directors like Phil Alden Robinson, Richard Loncraine, and David Nutter utilized the same bleach-bypass film processing techniques to strip away vibrant primaries, leaving a color palette dominated by icy blues, muddy browns, and sickly olive drabs. This was not just a stylistic gimmick; it was a psychological tool that pulled the viewer out of the comfort of their living rooms and dropped them into the frozen, unforgiving forests of Bastogne or the smoke-choked ruins of Carentan. The camera became a participant in the war, getting splattered with mud, shaking violently during artillery barrages, and refusing to look away from the gruesome reality of what high-explosive shrapnel does to human flesh.

Yet, while it shared a visual vocabulary with Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers achieved something that a two-and-a-half-hour feature film simply never could, owing entirely to the expansive canvas of the mini-series format. A film must ultimately compress its narrative arc, often relying on archetypes and rapid pacing to reach a resolution. Over the course of ten hours, Band of Brothers allows its characters to breathe, change, harden, and break. Crucially, some of the show’s most powerful, lasting stories have absolutely nothing to do with active battles, but rather unfold in the quieter moments between the chaos. We do not just see these men in the heat of a firefight; we watch them suffer through the mundane, soul-crushing basic training regime of Camp Toccoa under the tyrannical eye of Captain Sobel, played with a brilliant, tragic insecurity by David Schwimmer. We sit with them in the agonizing, silent darkness of C-47 transport planes, listening to the vomit hitting the floorboards and watching the sheer, unadulterated dread on their faces before the jump over Normandy. We freeze with them in foxholes during the long, static winter in the forests of Bastogne, sharing the psychological numbness of isolation and the simple, desperate human desire for a dry pair of socks or a warm cup of coffee. This structural patience transforms the viewing experience from simple passive entertainment into an emotional marathon. We have known these men through their triumphs and their absolute lowest points, making their losses hit with the weight of personal bereavement.

While these quiet stretches build a deep, slow-burning empathy, the absolute biggest gut punch of the entire series arrives in Episode 9, titled Why We Fight. Throughout their march across Europe, the men of Easy Company—and by extension, the audience—have become somewhat cynical and battle-weary, numbly pushing forward simply to survive and get the job done. That numbness is completely shattered when a patrol stumbles across an sub-camp in the woods near Landsberg, which itself was part of the larger Dachau concentration camp complex. Up until this point, the war had been about geopolitical strategies, territory, and survival; suddenly, the men are brought face-to-face with the industrial scale of Nazi atrocities. The direction in this sequence is devastatingly restrained. There are no swelling orchestrations or heroic monologues, only the bewildered horror of soldiers looking at skeletal survivors wandering the camp in striped uniforms. Watching tough, battle-hardened paratroopers like Captain Nixon and Major Winters reduced to breathless, disbelieving silence as they uncover the truth of the Holocaust anchors the narrative in an entirely different tier of tragedy. It is an episode that completely recontextualizes the title of the series, showing that their ultimate purpose transcended military victory; they were liberating humanity from an unimaginable nightmare.

The casting of the series is another stroke of absolute genius that looks even more miraculous in hindsight. The producers deliberately avoided casting massive, distracting superstars for the main roles, opting instead for relatively unknown British and American theater and character actors. This decision was crucial for maintaining the show’s documentary-like authenticity; if Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt had been jumping out of those planes, the illusion would have been instantly shattered. Instead, we got Damian Lewis as Major Richard Winters, delivering a performance of quiet, stoic, and deeply principled leadership that serves as the moral anchor of the entire narrative. Alongside him was Ron Livingston as Captain Lewis Nixon, embodying the weary, cynical, and battle-fatigued intellect of a man seeking refuge from the horrors of war in a bottle of Vat 69. The ensemble is a treasure trove of talent, featuring early-career appearances from actors who would go on to become household names, including Tom Hardy, Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy, Simon Pegg, and Michael Cudlitz. Because the show focuses on an entire company, the perspective shifts naturally from episode to episode. One week we are viewing the war through the eyes of a terrified replacement medic in Bastogne, and the next we are embedded with the cynical, battle-hardened sergeant Carwood Lipton in The Breaking Point. This shifting focus ensures that the series never feels like a traditional Hollywood star vehicle, but rather a collective portrait of brotherhood where the company itself is the true protagonist.

The emotional resonance of Band of Brothers is amplified tenfold by the brilliant inclusion of interviews with the actual surviving veterans of Easy Company at the beginning of each episode. Kept anonymous until the very final moments of the series, these elderly men sit in simple chairs against dark backgrounds, their voices trembling and eyes misting over as they recall events that occurred more than half a century prior. There is a heartbreaking disconnect between the frail, weathered men on screen and the vibrant, muscular young actors portraying them in the dramatization. These interviews ground the cinematic spectacle in an undeniable, sobering reality. They serve as a constant reminder that the explosions, the blood, and the impossible acts of bravery we are witnessing were not the inventions of a Hollywood writers’ room, but the actual lived experiences of ordinary boys who were plucked from small-town America and dropped into the middle of the apocalypse. When the real-life winter veteran Dick Winters quotes his friend’s letter at the end of the series—saying, “Grandpa, were you a hero in the war? And Grandpa said no, but I served in a company of heroes”—it is impossible not to be moved to tears. It is a rare instance where a piece of media successfully honors historical figures without falling into the trap of cheap, unearned sentimentality or jingoistic propaganda.

Beyond its historical and emotional triumphs, the legacy of Band of Brothers is woven directly into the fabric of what we now refer to as prestige television. Before 2001, television was largely viewed as cinema’s lesser sibling—a medium defined by low budgets, procedural structures, and compromised production values meant to fit the square dimensions of old cathode-ray tube television sets. HBO had already begun to challenge this status quo with groundbreaking dramas like The Sopranos and Oz, but Band of Brothers was the project that proved television could match, and perhaps even exceed, the scale and artistic ambition of Hollywood blockbusters. With a staggering budget of over one hundred and twenty million dollars, it was the most expensive television miniseries ever produced at the time. The immense financial gamble paid off spectacularly, demonstrating to network executives and creators alike that audiences were hungry for complex, serialized, and visually uncompromising narratives that demanded to be treated as high art. The success of the show cleared the path for future cinematic television epics, directly inspiring sister projects like The Pacific and Masters of the Air, while setting the production standards that would later allow shows like Game of Thrones, Chernobyl, and Succession to flourish. It proved that the small screen was capable of housing massive, global historical narratives without losing the intimate character dynamics that make long-form storytelling so uniquely compelling.

Ultimately, Band of Brothers stands as a definitive milestone because it perfectly balanced the macro-scale horror of global warfare with the micro-scale beauty of human connection. It stripped away the romanticized myths of World War II to expose the sheer, terrifying randomness of survival, while simultaneously validating the profound love and loyalty that can only be forged in the crucible of shared suffering. It did not glamorize combat; instead, it illuminated the heavy, permanent psychological toll extracted from those who survived it. Through its hyper-realistic visual language inherited from Saving Private Ryan, its impeccable ensemble casting, and its revolutionary impact on the medium of television, the series achieved a timeless quality. It remains a definitive piece of cultural touchstone media that demands annual rewatches from millions of viewers around the globe. It is not just a historical chronicle, nor is it merely a well-executed piece of premium television; it is a monument to the human spirit, an artistic triumph that continues to remind us of the immense sacrifices made by an ordinary generation of heroes who stood together when the world was falling apart.

Check out this Trailer for JIMMY (2026), the Untold Story of James Stewart!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

Jimmy Stewart is one of the great actors of all-time, and he’s personally one of my very favorites. I did not realize a movie had been made about him until I stumbled across this trailer today. Check it out!

Horror Review: Ravenous (dir. by Antonia Bird)

Posted on by Arleigh

“Morality… is the last bastion of a coward.” — Colonel Ives

Ravenous remains one of the most fascinating and thematically daring horror films of the late 1990s—a layered meditation on hunger, morality, and the consuming appetite of empire disguised as a tale of survival. Set against the punishing winter backdrop of the Mexican-American War, the film centers on Lieutenant John Boyd, a soldier burdened by cowardice and guilt, sent to an isolated military outpost in the Sierra Nevadas. When a frostbitten stranger stumbles into camp with a horrifying tale of survival, the line between the living and the devoured—and between humanity and monstrosity—begins to blur.

At first glance, Ravenous is a dark horror film about cannibalism in a remote frontier fort. What distinguishes it is the way it transforms that premise into a meditation on civilization and consumption. The screenplay, written by Ted Griffin, draws inspiration from historical accounts such as the Donner Party and Alfred Packer—stories of pioneers who resorted to cannibalism to survive brutal winters. Griffin threads these historical horrors into a broader allegory about 19th-century American expansionism: a national hunger for land, power, and progress that consumes everything in its path, including its own humanity.

The mythological backbone of Ravenous lies in the inclusion of the wendigo, a spirit from Native American folklore. In Algonquin and Ojibwe tradition, the wendigo is born of greed and gluttony, a monstrous being that grows stronger and more grotesque with each act of consumption. The tale served as a warning against selfishness, warning that those who devour others—figuratively or literally—lose their humanity in return. Bird and Griffin seamlessly integrate this legend into the film’s themes, using the wendigo to mirror the psychological and cultural costs of empire. The story implies that the wendigo is not confined to mythic forests but lives in the blood of every nation that feeds on others to survive.

The fort where the story unfolds functions as both a stage and symbol: an outpost of civilization planted in the wilderness, claiming righteousness while sustained by exploitation. As starvation and moral decay take hold, the soldiers’ pretense of order crumbles. The isolated setting reflects the broader American project—civilization advancing through conquest yet losing its moral center in the process. The Native nations displaced and destroyed during expansion, reduced to resources or obstacles, become the unseen victims of this devouring drive. The film reframes cannibalism as a metaphor for Manifest Destiny itself—the act of consuming people, land, and spirit under the guise of progress.

That central metaphor gains power through the film’s performances. Guy Pearce delivers a subdued yet deeply expressive performance as Boyd, embodying the moral paralysis of a man trapped between guilt and survival. His silences, glances, and hesitations speak louder than any dialogue, conveying an internal conflict between virtue and instinct. Through him, the film explores how the will to endure can erode the boundaries of conscience.

Robert Carlyle, as Colonel Ives, stands in vivid contrast—charismatic, witty, and terrifyingly self-assured. He plays the role with the infectious energy of a man liberated by his own monstrosity, wearing sin as philosophy. For Ives, cannibalism is not horror but a revelation—a means to transcend weakness and embrace dominance. His eloquent justifications turn atrocity into ideology, echoing the rationalizations of expansionist politics. It is no coincidence that his confidence parallels Boyd’s doubt; the two men form mirror halves of a single corrupted ideal.

Director Antonia Bird’s touch elevates Ravenous from a historical thriller to a surreal moral fable. She handles violence and absurdity with equal precision, oscillating between grim horror and deadpan humor in a way that keeps viewers uneasy yet enthralled. Her direction never treats the horror as spectacle alone—every moment of gore carries weight, testing the limits of empathy and survival. Moments of unexpected humor punctuate the brutality, serving as a reminder that even atrocity can become ordinary when normalized by power.

While the fusion of dark comedy and horror lends the film its originality, it may also unsettle some viewers. The tonal shifts—helped by Michael Nyman and Damon Albarn’s strange, minimalist score—create an atmosphere that feels intentionally dissonant. This mix may challenge those expecting a traditional horror film, but it reinforces Bird’s vision of moral chaos. The unease generated by those shifts mirrors the absurdity of history itself: how horrors can coexist with banality, how laughter can accompany destruction.

The wendigo myth binds all these elements together. Bird portrays it less as a creature and more as a condition—one that spreads through ideology, greed, and the illusion of progress. The spirit of the wendigo thrives wherever ambition turns men into predators and justifies their violence as destiny. In this sense, every character becomes a reflection of national hunger, caught in a metaphorical cycle of consumption. The act of eating flesh becomes a stand-in for the broader devouring inherent in colonization: of land, of native culture, of moral identity.

By framing the frontier as an arena of both physical and spiritual starvation, Ravenous reimagines American history as a feast of self-destruction. It suggests that survival is often indistinguishable from conquest—both are rooted in the urge to consume. Even at its most surreal or ironic moments, the film refuses to let its viewers forget that the hunger at its center is not merely for sustenance but for dominion.

Though underappreciated upon release, Ravenous has since earned recognition as a rare film that wields gore and satire to expose deeper truths. Bird’s control of tone, Griffin’s allegorical writing, and the actors’ opposing energies fuse into something that transcends genre. The result is a story that both horrifies and compels, holding a cracked mirror to the myth of progress.

The wilderness of Ravenous is vast, beautiful, and pitiless—a perfect reflection of the American spirit it depicts. It is a land that promises renewal but demands devouring, a landscape haunted by the ghosts of all it has consumed. The film endures not simply as a parable of survival, but as a meditation on empire, appetite, and the fragile line separating civilization from savagery.

Both grotesque and profound, Ravenous gnaws not only at flesh but at the conscience, forcing us to confront what happens when hunger—whether for life, for power, or for victory—becomes the only morality left.

I Watched Forever Strong (2008, dir. by Ryan Little)

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

Rick Penning (Sean Faris) is the captain of his high school rugby team and the team’s highest scorer.  He’s also the son of the team’s coach (Neal McDonough).  Coach Penning is obsessed with winning at all costs and refuses to tell his son that he’s proud of him.  Coach Penning believes that emotion equals weakness and that only losers brag about doing their best.  After a loss to the Highland High school rugby team, which is coached by Larry Gelwix (Gary Cole), Rick and his teammates blow of steam by drinking, driving, and crashing a car.

Rick is sentenced to juvie but his case officer (Sean Astin) can see that Rick needs rugby in his life so he arranges for Rick to play with the Highland Team.  At first, Rick resents the new team and doesn’t want to follow Coach Gelwix’s advice on or off the field.  Coach Gelwix makes the team do community projects while they’re not training and Rick says that’s not his thing.  Rick just wants to score points and he doesn’t care about teamwork.  But the team and the coach eventually win Rick over and, once Rick gets over being selfish and starts playing for the team instead of just himself, Highland High starts winning games and Rick becomes the team’s newest captain.  But, when Rick gets paroled from juvie, he’s sent back home to his father, who expects Rick to reveal all of Highland’s secret plays and weaknesses.  When Rick refuses to betray Coach Gelwix, his former teammates frame him and get him sent back to juvie.  Rick ends up playing for Highland again, just in time for the state championship and a chance to lead Highland against his father’s team.

Forever Strong had a good message but, from the first minute, I know what was going to happen and how it was going to all end.  The story was pretty predictable and the movie seemed to assume that everyone watching would already know everything that they needed to know about rugby.  At my high school, athletics pretty much meant football.  I don’t think we even had a rugby team.  (If we did, we never cheered at their games, which I feel bad about.)  Whenever everyone in the movie was arguing about the right way to play rugby and which position on the team was the most important, I was lost.  I did like Gary Cole as Coach Gelwix.  He was the type of coach that every parent should hope coaches their child’s team.

Load up with the trailer for Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

Posted on by Leonard Wilson

It looks like Sony released a trailer for Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, starring Kaya Scodelario (Crawl) as Claire Redfield, Avan Jogia (Starz’ Now Apocalypse) as Leon Kennedy, Hannah John-Kamen (Ant-Man and the Wasp) as Jill Valentine, Robbie Amell (The Babysitter) as Chris Redfield, Tom Hooper (The Umbrella Society) as Albert Wesker and Lily Gao as Ada Wong (Kin).

Director Johannes Roberts (The Strangers) looks like he’s bringing in elements from Capcom’s Resident Evil remake (originating back in 2002 on the Nintendo Gamecube), as well as Resident Evil 2. We have Lisa Trevor from the original and William Birkin (played by Band of Brothers & Ravenous‘ Neal McDonough), though it seems to be more of a mashup.

Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City premieres in Theatres on November 24th.

Enjoy!

Playing Catch-Up With The Lesser Films of 2015: Get Hard, Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, Pixels, The Wedding Ringer

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

SPOILER ALERT!

One or more of the films reviewed below will appear on my list of the 16 Worst Films of 2015!  Can you guess which one(s)?

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Get Hard (dir by Etan Cohen)

Will Ferrell is funny and Kevin Hart is funny and you would think that putting them together in one movie would be especially funny but … nope.  Get Hard, which I watched on HBO a few weeks ago, is incredibly not funny.  Ferrell plays a hedge fund manager who is convicted of fraud and embezzlement and it’s a sign of how haphazard this film is that I was never really sure whether he was supposed to be guilty or not.  Anyway, Ferrell is terrified of going to prison but fortunately, he runs into Kevin Hart.  Hart is playing the owner of a car wash here, a mild-mannered family man who simply wants to be able to afford to send his daughter to a good school.  However, Ferrell assumes that, since Hart is black, Hart must be an ex-con.

So, Ferrell hires Hart to teach him how to survive in prison and Hart agrees.  And, to be honest, this is not a terrible idea for an edgy satire but the film pulls it punches and never really exposes or challenges the racism that led to Ferrell hiring Hart in the first place.  Instead, it’s more interested in making homophobic jokes about prison rape (there’s a particularly long and unpleasant scene where Ferrell attempts to learn how to give a blow job that feels like it was lifted from a deservedly forgotten 90s film) and eventually, it devolves into a painfully predictable action film.

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Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 (dir by Andy Fickman)

I know what someone out there is saying.

“YOU’VE NEVER EVEN SEEN THE FIRST PAUL BLART: MALL COP!!!  WHO THE HELL ARE YOU TO REVIEW THE SEQUEL!?”

Well, listen — it’s true.  I’ve never seen the first film and the only reason I watched the second one (on HBO at a friend’s house, which means that it literally cost me nothing) was because I had heard how terrible it was and I figured that I should see it before making out my list of the worst films of the year.  But, even with that in mind, I think I can still give this film a fair review.

(At the very least, I’ll try.  Dammit, I’ll try.)

Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 is one of those films that is so forgettable that you forget about it while you’re watching.  Kevin James plays Paul Blart, a mall security guard who goes to Las Vegas for a security guard convention and ends up getting involved in thwarting a big heist.  It’s a comedy, though I can’t think of a single time I laughed.  Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 was not quite the abomination that I had been led to expect.  It was, in no way, comparable to Birdemic, April Rain, or Man of Steel.  Instead, it was just an incredibly empty and soulless film.  It was a zombie movie that existed only to eat money.

One thing that is frustrating about a film like Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 is that Kevin James seems like he could actually survive appearing in a good film, if he could just get a chance to make one.  He’s likable and he’s got an everyman quality about him.  But, for now, he seems to be trapped in films where he either plays Paul Blart or he’s surrounded by talking animals.

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Pixels (dir by Chris Columbus)

Speaking of Kevin James, he’s also in Pixels!  He plays William Cooper.  When he was a kid, he was obsessed with playing video games.  Now that he’s an adult, he’s the President of the United States!  And he still keeps in contact with his best friend from childhood, Sam.  Sam, needless to say, will never be President.  When Sam was a kid, he was traumatized when he lost a national video game championship.  Now that he’s an adult, he installs home-theater systems and he’s played by Adam Sandler…

When Earth is invaded, it turns out that the aliens are under the impression that video games are real!  So, they recreate a bunch of classic video game characters and send them off to do havoc.  Who better to stop them than the President and Sam?  And who better to help than a nerdy conspiracy theorist (Josh Gad) and Eddie Planet (Peter Dinklage), the same guy who cheated in order to defeat Sam at the video game championship….

If you’re thinking that sounds like way too much plot for a silly comedy about video games coming to life, you’re right.  Pixels has some cute moments (though, based on the comments and occasional laughter of the middle-aged people in the theater around me, I get the feeling that a lot of the film’s video game-themed humor was a bit too “before my time” for me to fully appreciate) but oh my God, it was such an unnecessarily busy movie.  The idea behind Pixels had some potential but the film refused to take advantage of it.

I’ve said this before and I always get some strange looks but I honestly do think that — if he would actually break out of his comfort zone and stop doing movies that mostly seem to be about finding an excuse to hang out with his friends — Adam Sandler could be an acceptable dramatic actor.  Check out his work in Punch-Drunk Love, Funny People, Reign Over Me, Spanglish, and even the first half of The Cobbler.  (Tarantino even wrote the role of Donny Donowitz in Inglourious Basterds with Sandler in mind.)  The fact that Sandler could be doing good work makes his continual bad work all the more frustrating and annoying.

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The Wedding Ringer (dir by Jeremy Garelick)

And speaking of Josh Gad…he’s also in The Wedding Ringer!  For that matter, so is Kevin Hart.  Hart plays a guy who, for a sizable fee, will pretend to the lifelong best friend (and best man) for grooms who do not have enough real friends to fill out a wedding party.  Hart refuses to get emotionally involved with his clients but that all changes when, despite himself, he becomes friends with Josh Gad, who is on the verge of getting married to Kaley Cuoco.

The Wedding Ringer got terrible reviews but it also was very popular with audiences and I imagine a lot of that had to do with the relationship between Hart and Gad.  Both of them give very sincere performances that elevate some otherwise unpromising material.  The Wedding Ringer wasn’t good (it’s predictable, it’s portrayal of Kaley Cuoco’s character verges on misogynistic) but, at the same time, it wasn’t as bad as it was made out to be.  In the end, it was pretty much a typical January film.

I'm so excited! I'm so excited! I'm so ... wait a minute, am I just here because this is a post about bad movies?

I’m so excited! I’m so excited! I’m so … wait a minute, am I just here because this is a post about bad movies?

Which of these four films will make my list of the worst 16 films of 2015?  The answer shall be revealed soon!

 

 

Review: Marvel One-Shot “Agent Carter”

Posted on by Arleigh

AgentCarterEver since Thor was released on video (DVD/Blu-Ray) the people over at Marvel Studios have added as a special bonus to the video’s extras a small short film they’ve dubbed “Marvel On-Shot”. So far, they’ve either been about the adventures of fan-favorite SHIELD agent Phil Coulson or a brief look at a post-Avengers New York. The short films were cute, but nothing to really write home about.

With the release of Iron Man 3 on DVD and Blu-Ray we get a new Marvel One-Shot and it looks like the creative minds at Marvel Studios have decided to work a tad harder on making this new short film much better. It’s a flashback moment to one Agent Peggy Carter who is still grieving a year after Captain America (aka Steve Rogers) supposedly died trying to save New York from a HYDRA bomber full of tesseract-fueled bombs.

We see how she’s been relegated to doing paper work and kept from doing the field work she’s more adept at. This one-shot film actually shows in it’s short running time how even someone as skilled and heroic as Peggy Carter must still navigate and deal with a male-chauvinistic society that dismisses whatever accomplishments she’s earned in the past and seen more as a sort of “affirmative action” hire.

The film doesn’t try to force-feed this theme, but instead tries (and does so successfully) to blow-up the damsel-in-distress stereotype by showing Agent Carter at her best. And what she does best is doing the sort of field work that earned her not just the respect of the soldiers she worked with during WWII in Europe, but those of Captain America himself.

“Agent Carter” stars the original Peggy Carter in the form of British actress Hayley Atwell and she does a fine job of helping continue her character’s growth. She continues to show that she’s just as useful and skilled as Captain America which she showed in the film of the same name. In this one-shot we’re reminded of it and it also does an interesting thing in making it plausible to create a spin-off around her character.

Marvel has intimated that it’s something they’d be interested in doing and if the quality of this one-shot is anything to go by then a series (tv or web-based) starring Ms. Atwell as Agent Carter would be well-received by fans everywhere. This short film also showed that Marvel Studios has a new secret weapon to keep DC at bay. This was the first one-shot that truly belonged as a prologue to a feature-length Marvel film on the big-screen. Here’s to hoping that attaching future one-shots to full-length features not on video but in the theaters becomes an idea that Marvel Studios allow to happen.