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The , but make it
11/02/2025

The , but make it

Whenever you think of Waterworld, the Kevin Costner-starring dystopian action movie that turns 30 this summer, chances a...
11/01/2025

Whenever you think of Waterworld, the Kevin Costner-starring dystopian action movie that turns 30 this summer, chances are you immediately think of the world “flop.” There are few films in Hollywood history that carry the stink of failure as potently as the movie where they gave Wyatt Earp gills behind the ears.

Indeed, Waterworld may be one of the film industry’s most notorious disasters, at least according to legend: the wildly expensive folly of its egotistical star that went stupendously over-budget while trying to create a realistic, err, world of water, only to then sink at the box office and become the new byword for industry disaster. Critics dubbed it “Kevin’s Gate” and “Fishtar,” alluding to two other legendary flops from New Hollywood’s heyday. Even now the film is talked about as a cautionary tale, a sign to never let insanity prevail in the face of a blank check. But all of that lore doesn’t quite tell the true tale of Waterworld.

By the early 1990s, Costner was one of the biggest stars on the planet. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves proved his box office prowess in spite of using a Californian accent in medieval Nottingham; JFK was a critical darling; and Costner won a slew of Oscars for his directorial debut, Dances With Wolves. He had the power to do whatever he wanted by 1995, yet he decided to sign on to a Mad Max rip-off featuring jetskis. Alongside his regular collaborator Kevin Reynolds, who directed Costner in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and Fandango, the star rewrote the script several times and signed onboard as star and producer.

Many industry figures joked that Costner was the real Kevin in charge of Waterworld’s production, and as the shoot became an overlong nightmare of health and safety violations with an increasingly inflated budget, Costner bore the brunt of the blame. Costner was on the set for 157 days and almost died when he got stuck to the mast of his character’s sinking boat. Filming took place in a large artificial seawater enclosure, which was plagued by inclement weather and the camera crew being pushed out of position by the currents. One of the majestic floating sets sank. Joss Whedon was flown out to do seven weeks of script rewrites, which he said mostly involved adhering to whatever Costner wanted him to do.

Still, this is not the Worst Film Ever Made, as it’s often labeled, nor is it an embarrassing mega-flop that forever stained Hollywood. There’s a lot to enjoy in Waterworld, especially if you yearn for the days when not every blockbuster was shot on a green screen or part of a 25-plus film franchise. Costner’s career is full of fascinating ambition and follies that didn’t always pay off, but there’s more to be proud of in Waterworld than ashamed of. Perhaps history will finally catch up with him when it comes to his time on the high seas.

Well, what do you wanna hear, man? Do you wanna hear that sometimes I think about writing a Lethal Weapon retrospective?...
11/01/2025

Well, what do you wanna hear, man? Do you wanna hear that sometimes I think about writing a Lethal Weapon retrospective? Well, I do! I’ve even got a special notebook for the occasion, filled with hollow points… Do the job right! Every single day, I wake up and I think of a reason not to do it, every… single… day. And you know why I don’t do it? This is gonna make you laugh The job. Doing the job. (No really, I have a full-time job at the moment – it takes up the majority of my time.)

So. The Lethal Weapon franchise. Martin Riggs, Roger Murtaugh, and a lot of dead bad guys. Given the body count these chaps tallied, I’m amazed they got through four films without someone looking into their particular brand of police detective work. I mean, you have to go through a review or something when you shoot just one suspect, don’t you? I can only imagine that the periods between films were filled with lengthy court proceedings and internal inquiries. No wonder they stayed sergeants for so long.

The franchise at least deserves kudos for refusing to feature an English baddie in any of the four movies. At a time when the majority of action films were using our clear and pleasant enunciation as shorthand for villainy, I always respected it for that. Gibson, of course, redressed the balance by kicking the s**t out of the English in Braveheart and then The Patriot. Thanks, Mel.

But back to Lethal Weapon. Which one is the best and which one, in this writer’s humble opinion, is the worst? Eeeny, meeny, miney… Hey, Moe!

In the 2022 A24 movie Talk to Me, teenagers discover a cursed plaster hand that allows spirits to possess anyone who gra...
11/01/2025

In the 2022 A24 movie Talk to Me, teenagers discover a cursed plaster hand that allows spirits to possess anyone who grasps it. Despite knowing that it leads directly to Hell, and despite knowing that opens them up to all sorts of evil, the teens grasp it anyway, leading to all sorts of horrible, horrible things.

Apparently, Talk to Me directors Danny and Michael Philippou are teenagers at heart, because they’ve decided to shake hands with Mark Zuckerberg and create a six-part sequel series to Talk to Me for Meta VR. According to Variety, the series will be shot entirely “in 3D, making for a fully immersive XR experience that will allow horror fans to feel like they’re living out the terror,” complete with what an announcement quoted in the article describes as “cutting-edge mixed reality technology to map viewers’ environments and immerse them in the story.”

Underneath all of the hype and techno babble, it’s hard not to feel disappointed about the Philippous’ decision. Yes, the New Zealand-born twins started their career making videos for YouTube, and it isn’t a huge leap from there to Facebook and Meta. But with Talk to Me and especially their follow-up Bring Her Back from earlier this year, the twins proved that they had the ability to create complex characters, not just gory shocks. Both films might have scenes of young people having truly unspeakable things happen to their faces (a rare and welcome case of cinematic childhood endangerment done right!), but they also craft well-observed and emotionally-rich protagonists to ground the grisly subject matter.

With that in mind, it is something of a relief to learn that the Philippous won’t actually be making any of the episodes of the series. All six will be written by Trent Atherton, who created the series with Darren Brandl, and will be directed by William Macneill. As of yet, there’s no word on the cast.

If you subscribed to the magazine Star Trek: The Official Fan Club in 1994, you already knew some spoilers about how Dee...
11/01/2025

If you subscribed to the magazine Star Trek: The Official Fan Club in 1994, you already knew some spoilers about how Deep Space Nine’s third season debut was going to change everything.

While 1994 is generally remembered as the moment when The Next Generation ended its TV run in May, and then launched a film franchise in November, what some fans might forget is that in between those events was the utter reinvention of Deep Space Nine. Before the internet, hardcore Trekkies had access to this information: the Starfleet insignia was changing, Odo’s uniform would look different, and—gasp—the space station-based Star Trek show was getting a new starship!

In fact, the launch of the USS Defiant in the third season two-part debut, “The Search,” utterly changed the direction of Deep Space Nine forever. And, in doing so, this episode also knocked forward more than a few dominoes that Star Trek canon is still grappling with today.

Consider this: There are only 30 episodes of the recent Trek series Star Trek: Picard, and those episodes represent wildly different tones and stories, with staggering revelations and events in each season. Deep Space Nine had already aired 46 episodes before getting the Defiant and solving the mystery of Odo’s elusive origin.

TV was of course very different back then, but what’s relevant here is that for some fans the introduction of the Defiant and the revelation that the Founders of the Dominion are shapeshifters is where the show truly begins. Just like with The Next Generation (and arguably, some other Trek shows too), most fans tend to agree that DS9 hit its stride in season 3, and that this was the moment where the show started on the path toward its true destiny.

But, what’s interesting, is that in rewatching “The Search,” the brilliance of the two-part story isn’t that it comes out swinging, but instead, it only fires its new, big guns, once. The rest is all character work.

"Obviously Van Damme was a huge inspiration not only for myself, but also Ed Boon and the creators. So I cherrypicked an...
11/01/2025

"Obviously Van Damme was a huge inspiration not only for myself, but also Ed Boon and the creators. So I cherrypicked and stole a few things from a lot of those guys, Harrison Ford, Stallone, and Schwarzenegger."

Karl Urban and the rest of the team take us inside a tournament like no other.

The Game Boy’s Super Mario Land is sometimes regarded as an oddity today. We argue that it’s actually a bit of a classic...
11/01/2025

The Game Boy’s Super Mario Land is sometimes regarded as an oddity today. We argue that it’s actually a bit of a classic...

Breaking Bad evolved into one of the darkest shows in TV history throughout its five seasons. Walter White (Bryan Cranst...
11/01/2025

Breaking Bad evolved into one of the darkest shows in TV history throughout its five seasons. Walter White (Bryan Cranston) sheds his goofy exterior from season 1 as he climbs the ranks of the drug game and obliterates his family’s hopes and dreams in the process.

It’s all utterly tragic and a haunting warning to those with giant egos and selfish ambitions to find other avenues for their misery than cooking m*th.

At the same time, the premise of creator Vince Gilligan’s show is a tad funny, don’t you think?

Walt’s lack of common sense, Jesse’s (Aaron Paul) clueless, yet good-natured inner core, and Saul Goodman’s (Bob Odenkirk) crooked criminal law firm combine for a cartoony outer shell that’s brought to life by actors who have tons of comedy experience throughout their careers.

11/01/2025

People forget: there’s no therapy once you’re a ghost.

In honor of his new film, If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, we asked Conan O'Brien to go through his rolodex of iconic late night characters — from The Interrupter to The Kayak Guy and more — and pick which ones would benefit from therapy the most. No easy feat.

Readers of a certain vintage may well recall the spectacular showdown of summer 1998.In the one corner, there was Mimi L...
11/01/2025

Readers of a certain vintage may well recall the spectacular showdown of summer 1998.

In the one corner, there was Mimi Leder’s thoughtful, more character-driven comet hurtling to Earth movie, Deep Impact. In the other, Michael Bay’s less thoughtful, less character-driven comet hurtling to Earth movie, Armageddon.

Both snagged decent reviews. Both snagged good box office. As the turn of the century approached, cinema audiences were clearly in the mood to watch the world being torn apart by seemingly unstoppable forces from outer space.

What’s perhaps less known though than one of the highest profile blockbuster battles of the 1990s is that originally, there was a third film in the mix. In much the same way that originally, three Robin Hood movies were due to ride into Sherwood Forest in the summer 1991 only for one to be crowded out of the running, so we never got to see a third comet flick, Bright Angel Falling.

As it turned out, this one was in development for a good numbers of years beforehand. And it was a project initiated by James Cameron.

Alan Rickman, in the space of a few years, committed to screen two of the finest movie villain performances of modern bl...
11/01/2025

Alan Rickman, in the space of a few years, committed to screen two of the finest movie villain performances of modern blockbuster cinema. It would be fair to say that both acted as a template of sorts for the standard British foe that would permeate big Hollywood movies for the decade that followed, and Rickman steered clear of villainous roles thereafter.

But sandwiched in-between the release of Die Hard in 1988 and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves in 1991 was an Australian western by the name of Quigley Down Under.

First released in 1990, although not making it to the UK until 1991 (some three months before Robin Hood arrived on UK cinema screens), it’s a western set in Australia, directed by Simon Wincer. Wincer won an Emmy for helming the acclaimed TV series Lonesome Dove, and would go on to direct Free W***y, The Phantom (yes!), and Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles.

Quigley Down Under, however, is a small treat. Certainly Wincer takes his time absorbing the gorgeous Australian landscape. And then he fashions a film that tells the story of an American sharpshooter who travels to Australia at the request of a not-very-nice rancher by the name of Elliott Marston. Three guesses where Rickman fits in.

The film at first feels like a vehicle for Tom Selleck, and he and his moustache are the lead characters here. When he arrives, I couldn’t help but think Selleck had nicked his wardrobe from Michael J. Fox’s look, back when Marty turns up in the Old West at the start of Back to the Future: Part III. But things soon settle down, and Selleck goes about playing Matthew Quigley, a man who’s basically American Sniper in Australia in Olden Times.

A sniper who also never seems to miss a shot.

Quigley has an experimental weapon (steady), which basically means he can shoot anything the camera is pointing at. And at first, this means he and Elliott Marston get on very well. Rickman plays Marston very much as an Englishman in the outback, and he’s also sporting a fine moustache (although not at Selleck standard). It doesn’t take long for Quigley and Marston to not see eye to eye, and it also doesn’t take too long for us to realize that Marston is a bastard. His plan basically involves genocide. What’s more, Rickman pitches Marston as slightly closer to the screen-gobbling Sheriff of Nottingham as opposed to Die Hard‘s Gruber. It’s interesting that of his three villain roles, the two that come across lighter are the ones involving a scene of attempted r**e (Robin Hood) and attempted mass murder. His coolest, most collected antagonist remains Hans Gruber, and he was just after some bearer bonds.

But to be clear, his turn in Quigley Down Under is excellent, as you’d expect. The downside is that we don’t get an awful lot of screentime with him here. This is very much a Tom Selleck vehicle, and quite a good one, but it does mean that the requisite dose of Rickman is found near the start and at the end of the film (although he pops up from time to time, at one point talking to a man with a red pompom on his hat).

They may be popular movies that we tune into whenever they're on cable or on streaming, but Rotten Tomatoes doesn't reme...
11/01/2025

They may be popular movies that we tune into whenever they're on cable or on streaming, but Rotten Tomatoes doesn't remember these 15 flicks as fondly...

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