1. Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)2. Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020)3. Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991) Overall rating: ★★★☆☆ Previously on Film Franchise Fridays:
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Movie Review: Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020)
Movie #27 of 2025: Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020) A fun but muddled legacy sequel, picking up with the titular dudes several decades after their previous adventures. Overall I would say this movie is better than I expected it to be, and easily stronger than Bogus Journey (1991). It just could have benefited …
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Book Review: The Sapling Cage by Margaret Killjoy
Book #194 of 2025: The Sapling Cage by Margaret Killjoy (Daughters of the Empty Throne #1) I’m not blown away by the generic fantasy setting or the one-dimensional villainous motivations here, but as a personal story rooted in its protagonist’s gender identity, it’s certainly a more distinctive entry in the genre. Sixteen-year-old Lorel is someone …
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Book Review: Star Wars: The Last Order by Kwame Mbalia
Book #193 of 2025: Star Wars: The Last Order by Kwame Mbalia This Star Wars title has definite potential, but it unfortunately doesn’t live up to it in my opinion. The action unfolds across three different timelines, one of which at least should have automatic appeal for any fan — it’s canonically the latest story …
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Book Review: The Boy Who Followed Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
Book #192 of 2025: The Boy Who Followed Ripley by Patricia Highsmith (The Ripliad #4) Two observations I made earlier in this series continue to prove fruitful in shaping my understanding of Mr. Thomas Ripley: that his adventures can be as ludicrous as those of Dexter Morgan on TV, and that he’s best read as …
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Book Review: A Hard Day’s Knight by Simon R. Green
Book #191 of 2025: A Hard Day’s Knight by Simon R. Green (Nightside #11) This isn’t the worst entry in its urban fantasy series, but it might be the most generic. Our protagonist received the legendary sword Excalibur at the end of the previous volume, and in this one, he has to return it to …
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Movie Review: Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991)
Movie #26 of 2025: Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991) One of the strangest genre pivots for a sequel that I’ve ever seen, swapping the time-travel shenanigans of the first movie for the afterlife experience of this installment’s title. Things here start out fine: the last film established that a utopian future was somehow built …
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Book Review: Silverlock by John Myers Myers
Book #190 of 2025: Silverlock by John Myers Myers This 1949 novel is a quaint picaresque adventure tale, similar in plot and spirit to a work like Gulliver’s Travels, except that the foreign land our titular protagonist visits is populated by existing characters of literature and myth. (He even encounters Gulliver’s own talking horses and …
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TV Review: The Sopranos, season 5
TV #57 of 2025: The Sopranos, season 5 There’s a strong sense of inevitable fatalism running throughout this penultimate run* of The Sopranos, ultimately rendering it my favorite season yet. I love it when TV is structured around a single cohesive storyline for the year, and while serialization leads to the typical open ends here, …
Book Review: The Last Dragon on Mars by Scott Reintgen
Book #189 of 2025: The Last Dragon on Mars by Scott Reintgen (The Dragonships #1) A fun little blend of Ender’s Game, Red Rising, and Fourth Wing, all age-appropriate for the middle-grade audience. Dragons exist in this setting as avatars of every planet and moon, and they each choose one human rider in a generation …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 