Movie #18 of 2025: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) I’ve long held that this second Indiana Jones feature is the worst of its series (or of the original trilogy, at least), which in consequence has meant that I’ve probably seen it the least often. And though I tried to approach this rewatch …
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Book #163 of 2025: Doctor Who: Empire of Death by Scott Handcock I enjoyed author Scott Handcock’s novelization of the recent Doctor Who episode 73 yards, but it turns out that when he has weaker material to work with, the output is correspondingly worse. (And let’s not let him off the hook entirely there either, …
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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 #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 #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 #156 of 2025: So Thirsty by Rachel Harrison I appreciate that this vampire title is less straightforward than author Rachel Harrison’s earlier werewolf novel Such Sharp Teeth, but as it turns out, unpredictability doesn’t necessarily translate to a stronger work. Although I didn’t know quite where the plot was going, its tale of two …
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TV #48 of 2025: Crusade, season 1 A pretty underwhelming spinoff to Babylon 5 following the events of the TV movie A Call to Arms, which ended with an alien plague infecting everyone on earth. That’s an effective cliffhanger, and its resolution was supposed to be provided by the characters on this 1999 series, who …
Book #144 of 2025: Curious Tides by Pascale Lacelle (Drowned Gods #1) I like the worldbuilding and the initial premise of this fantasy novel, in which a student is returning to her magical school for the new semester after her best friend and several classmates tragically died. (It turns out they were pursuing some sort …
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Book #130 of 2025: Doctor Who: Cat’s Cradle: Witch Mark by Andrew Hunt (Virgin New Adventures #7) A continuation (and end) of the Cat’s Cradle arc solely in that the TARDIS remains largely out of commission while it finishes its repairs, thereby stranding Ace and the Seventh Doctor in modern rural Wales. There they proceed …
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Book #129 of 2025: Oathbound by Tracy Deonn (The Legendborn Cycle #3) It’s rarely a good sign when an author revises the projected length of a series midway through to tack on some additional volume(s). This particular YA fantasy story, for instance, winds up taking quite a lot of pages and yet accomplishing very little …
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