TV #40 of 2024: Classic Doctor Who, season 14 Another strong year in the show’s Tom Baker era, notable for the exit of the Doctor’s companion Sarah Jane Smith (who’d been introduced during his predecessor’s tenure way back in season 11) and the debut of her replacement, the “savage” “primitive” Leela of the Sevateem. The …
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TV Review: Classic Doctor Who, season 13
TV #34 of 2024: Classic Doctor Who, season 13 Tom Baker’s second year as the Doctor — Elisabeth Sladen’s third as his intrepid feminist reporter friend Sarah Jane Smith — is a pretty good one, although it finds the series still shaking off the final vestiges of his predecessor’s era. This season gives us the …
Movie Review: Enchanted (2007)
Movie #16 of 2024: Enchanted (2007) Basically as delightful as I had remembered, and my 3y/o and 5y/o seemed to like it too, despite not being very into live-action stuff yet as a rule. This movie is so fascinating to me, because it rides a really fine line between lovingly mocking various Disney Princess tropes …
TV Review: Classic Doctor Who, season 12
TV #26 of 2024: Classic Doctor Who, season 12 A bright new era for the show, with incoming Fourth Doctor Tom Baker — still many viewers’ platonic ideal of the gallivanting Time Lord hero, who would go on for a record seven seasons in the role — making an immediate impression. This initial material doesn’t …
Movie Review: Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
Movie #13 of 2024: Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) This remains the very best action movie I’ve ever seen, although one that’s remarkable for plenty of other reasons besides. It would be reductive to describe the film as one long car chase, since part of its strength rests in how the script elegantly factors in …
Movie Review: War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)
Movie #11 of 2024: War for the Planet of the Apes (2017) [Edited version of my original review from 2017.] When I first came home from seeing this in theaters, I noted that it was “probably the best Planet of the Apes movie ever made.” Having had seven years to sit with that assessment, and …
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Movie Review: Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)
Movie #9 of 2024: Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) [Edited version of my original review from 2017.] After decades languishing as a punchline in the wilderness of popular culture, Planet of the Apes got a long-overdue update in this 2011 feature, which is best understood as a quasi-canonical reboot for the franchise. …
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Movie Review: Planet of the Apes (2001)
Movie #8 of 2024: Planet of the Apes (2001) The Planet of the Apes franchise went dormant in the 1970s after five films and two short-lived TV shows, but was brought back to the big screen for this Tim Burton production several decades later. It’s best understood as a reimagining of the first movie — …
Movie Review: Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973)
Movie #7 of 2024: Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973) A perfunctory conclusion to the original Planet of the Apes movie series, although the franchise would live on in television shows, comic books, an odd Tim Burton reimagining, and an eventual big-screen reboot in 2011 that’s still ongoing today. In this film, the …
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Movie Review: Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)
Movie #6 of 2024: Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) By this point in the initial Planet of the Apes series, viewers had seen a future world where our species had been overthrown, its apocalyptic destruction, and a tragedy wherein the only surviving refugees of that dystopia, having traveled back in time to …
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