TV #35 of 2026: Doctor Who: Scream of the Shalka, season 1 Doctor Who’s so-called wilderness years of 1989-2005 saw a wide range of possible story continuations both on and off the screen, some more official (either contemporarily or in hindsight) than others. This six-part webcast falls directly in the middle of that continuum — …
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Movie #36 of 2026: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006) This Pirates sequel runs on an engine of pure vibes, offering a shallow but satisfying return to the historical fantasy world of its predecessor (and to a lesser extent, the ever-more-distant theme park attraction that inspired it). Don’t get me wrong: this is …
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Movie #35 of 2026: Sinners (2025) [Note: this is an updated version of my review from 2025.] Still just a phenomenal historical horror piece, and one that takes its sweet time establishing the setting and the characters before finally unveiling the vampiric threat. In fact, I originally found that initial stage of the film so …
Movie #34 of 2026: Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) Disney hasn’t always had the best luck turning its theme park attractions into movies, but the studio struck rare gold with this early 2000s smash hit, which launched a franchise and significantly revitalized its star Johnny Depp’s career. It used …
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Movie #33 of 2026: Doctor Who (1996) Objectively, there’s a lot about this TV movie — a continuation of the Classic Doctor Who run of 1963-1989 and failed pilot for further onscreen adventures — that doesn’t really work. The technobabble plot is difficult to follow and crams in unexplained references to things like Daleks that …
Movie #30 of 2026: Clerks II (2006) Probably nobody’s favorite Kevin Smith picture, but a perfectly cromulent film nonetheless. It’s a worthy follow-up to the writer-director’s 1994 debut, bringing back the characters of Dante and Randal for a repeat round of dead-end drudgery while they indulge in existential crises and vulgarity respectively in front of …
Movie #29 of 2026: Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001) It should be no surprise that a movie built around the stoner comic relief from Kevin Smith’s View Askewniverse turns out to be so slapsticky and crude, and if you can manage to get on that level, there are genuine laughs to be found …
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TV #28 of 2026: Classic Doctor Who, season 26 By certain metrics, what we now call the “Classic” iteration of Doctor Who had already gone on too long when it was eventually cancelled in 1989. Twenty-six seasons is far more than most TV shows get to have, and the program had passed through some dire …
Movie #28 of 2026: Dogma (1999) This was the first movie that I ever saw in Kevin Smith’s View Askewniverse series, and together with the novel Good Omens, it represented a fairly seminal text for an agnostic humanist kid from a Jewish-Unitarian household in my heavily Christian town — a way of grappling with the …
Movie #27 of 2026: Chasing Amy (1997) There’s a central tension in Kevin Smith’s third film, especially considered critically several decades on, which I think boils down to how much the audience is supposed to identify / agree with its main character. This is, after all, the tale of a man who confesses his love …
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