Movie #11 of 2019: Cooties (2014) Even by the standards of low-budget horror schlock, this zom-com is pretty bad. There’s potential in the premise of elementary teachers fending off their infected pupils, but too much of the intended humor relies on nothing but gross-out gore effects and the inherent transgressiveness of violence to and by …
Tag Archives: one star
Book Review: The Dog Stars by Peter Heller
Book #161 of 2019: The Dog Stars by Peter Heller I didn’t have much patience for this generic post-apocalypse story about a widower living in rural isolation with his dog and his somehow-more-misanthropic neighbor. (That guy shoots anyone who tresspasses into their compound. Our narrator does too; he just feels bad about it.) The tone …
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TV Review: iZombie, season 5
TV #29 of 2019: iZombie, season 5 iZombie has been a bit lifeless for a while now, and it finally shambles to a rest here. I hate to say it about a series that I once loved, but the last season of this zombie-cop comedy is just awful. The case-of-the-week stuff occasionally still delivers, but …
Book Review: Kill the Farm Boy by Delilah S. Dawson and Kevin Hearne
Book #25 of 2019: Kill the Farm Boy by Delilah S. Dawson and Kevin Hearne (The Tales of Pell #1) This novel aspires to be a tongue-in-cheek fairy tale sendup a la Discworld or Shrek, but it doesn’t have anywhere near the heart or cleverness to pull that off. Instead it reads more like just …
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TV Review: ReBoot: The Guardian Code, season 2
TV #46 of 2018: ReBoot: The Guardian Code, season 2 I ultimately gave the first season of this show a 2-star review, feeling that although it was significantly worse than the original ReBoot cartoon, it had occasional flashes of quality that showed promise. Unfortunately, I can’t be as generous to this second season (which was …
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TV Review: The Mindy Project, season 6
TV #30 of 2018: The Mindy Project, season 6 I know I’ve been complaining about this show’s inconsistent characterization and plotting for its entire run, but this abbreviated final season somehow makes those issues even worse. Everyone feels two-dimensional, there’s no emotional core to any of the story developments, and Hulu’s budget has apparently required …
Book Review: Star Wars: So You Want to Be a Jedi? by Adam Gidwitz
Book #66 of 2018: Star Wars: So You Want to Be a Jedi? by Adam Gidwitz This junior novelization of the second Star Wars film is a significant step down from The Princess, The Scoundrel, and the Farmboy, which was author Alexandra Bracken’s similar take on A New Hope. Whereas Bracken splits her story into …
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Movie Review: The House (2017)
Movie #5 of 2018: The House (2017) This comedy about yuppie parents running an illegal casino to pay for their daughter’s college tuition is more memorable for some gross blood spurt effects than for any particular cleverness in its writing. The cast is great, but they aren’t given much to work with; Jason Mantzoukas ends …
Book Review: Out of Orange by Cleary Wolters
Book #49 of 2018: Out of Orange by Cleary Wolters The Netflix prison dramedy Orange Is the New Black began as an adaptation of a true-life memoir, with the character Alex Vause based on a figure from author Piper Kerman’s past. Out of Orange is that woman’s own account of her time as a smuggler-turned-prisoner, …
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Book Review: Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
Book #35 of 2018: Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe This classic man-versus-nature castaway novel has been hugely influential, but it’s pretty rough for a modern reader. 300 years after its initial publication the plot feels threadbare and glacially slow, with little to distract from the author / narrator’s racist views on the inferiority of Africans …
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