TV #51 of 2025: Classic Doctor Who, season 21 Another bifurcated season of Doctor Who that I wish I could separate into its weaker and stronger parts — although here it’s particularly unfortunate that the former installments bookend the latter. The middle of this run delivers a fine span from RESURRECTION OF THE DALEKS through …
Author Archives: Joe Kessler
Movie Review: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales (2007)
Movie #16 of 2025: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales (2007) “Movie” is probably a bit of a misnomer here, as this title wasn’t initially intended to constitute a standalone feature at all. Instead it would be merely the first installment of a new Babylon 5 series pitched as an anthology of smaller-scale stories, in contrast …
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Movie Review: Jason Bourne (2016)
Movie #15 of 2025: Jason Bourne (2016) The first Bourne sequel, 2004’s The Bourne Supremacy, opens with its ex-assassin hero off the grid somewhere overseas, minding his own business until his former employers kill a woman that he’s close with, thereby bringing him back into the game and on the hunt for answers to a …
Book Review: One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig
Book #161 of 2025: One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig (The Shepherd King #1) I’m digging the sinister vibes here, along with the general premise of a heroine with the voice of an ancient monster secretly living in her head, a la Vespertine or Venom. Even better is the fact that, although this is a …
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TV Review: The Sopranos, season 3
TV #50 of 2025: The Sopranos, season 3 I’ve long heard that episode 3×11 “Pine Barrens” is one of the best individual hours that this show ever produced, and having finally now seen the Fargo-esque caper for myself, I can’t really argue with that designation. Unfortunately, however, the season around it is kind of a …
Book Review: Star Wars: The Jaws of Jakku by Cavan Scott
Book #160 of 2025: Star Wars: The Jaws of Jakku by Cavan Scott I picked up this audiobook-only Star Wars title in the hopes that its premise — following Rey, Finn, and BB-8 on a soul-searching mission back to the young woman’s homeworld after the events of The Last Jedi — would help smooth the …
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Book Review: The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
Book #159 of 2025: The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith (The Ripliad #1) Tom Ripley, as depicted in this 1955 crime thriller, its four sequels, and their various screen adaptations, is a pretty great creation. He’s insecure and sociopathic, with author Patricia Highsmith painting him as almost pedestrian in his casual amorality and petty …
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Book Review: The Unnatural Inquirer by Simon R. Green
Book #158 of 2025: The Unnatural Inquirer by Simon R. Green (Nightside #8) One of the blander adventures in this urban fantasy series, further hampered by a streak of sexism and unaddressed poor behavior from the protagonist. And look, I get that John Taylor is something of an antihero — the whole crux of this …
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Movie Review: The Bourne Legacy (2012)
Movie #14 of 2025: The Bourne Legacy (2012) The beginning of this piece is choppy and overwrought, doing little to sell the already-flimsy idea of telling a Jason Bourne story without Jason Bourne. It weaves in and out of the events of the previous film, The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), in a manner that’s alienatingly hard …
Book Review: Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers by Caroline Fraser
Book #157 of 2025: Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers by Caroline Fraser Interesting and well-written, and yet beholden to a bizarre structure that ultimately weakens the work. Essentially there are four threads that author Caroline Fraser develops here, interweaving them as she goes: 1) a true-crime history of American serial …
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