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362. Halloween Kills – All-o’-Ween (#—)

Posted on January 13, 2024 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn, Darren Mooney and Joey Keogh, this week with special guest William Bibbiani, The 250 is a weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released Saturdays at 6pm GMT.

This year, we are running a season looking at the films in the Halloween franchise. So this week, David Gordon Green’s Halloween Kills.

Michael Myers has returned to Haddenfield, and the town is not prepared. As Laurie Strode is rushed to hospital, fire fighters scramble to extinguish the flames consuming her house. However, something more primal is unleashed. As the serial killer murders his way through the suburbs, Haddenfield descends into an all-consuming madness that might prove just as dangerous as any masked killer.

At time of recording, it was not ranked on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: america, brutality, crisis, horror, Jamie Lee Curtis, joey keogh, laurie strode, masculinity, mob, nihilism, podcast, slasher, streaming, The 250, violence, western, william bibbiani | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On How “Secret Invasion” isn’t Marvel’s “Andor”…

Posted on June 15, 2023 by Darren

We’ll be running weekly reviews of Secret Invasion at The Escapist. But first, a review of the episodes that were previewed for press.

For months, the gossip has been that Marvel Studios have seen Secret Invasion as their answer to Andor, a show that could revitalise interest in a franchise that has been in something of a slow and steady decline, with disappointments like Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Unfortunately, Secret Invasion really doesn’t live up to that potential. It offers glimpses of a show tht aspires to push the shared universe outside of its comfort zone, but lacks the necessary killer instinct.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Television | Tagged: andor, disney, marvel, Marvel Studios, secret invasion, streaming, the escapist | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On How “Strange New Worlds” is a Relic of an Older Form of Television…

Posted on June 13, 2023 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist yesterday. We’re doing a series of recaps and reviews of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which is streaming weekly on Paramount+. The second season will premiere later this week.

Strange New Worlds is an inherently nostalgic piece of Star Trek, a throwback to a kind of franchise storytelling that was inexoribly rooted in the realities of nineties television. Indeed, given the decline of the franchise during Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Enterprise, there is a solid argument to be made that this mode of storytelling was specifically tied to the medium of syndicated mass media broadcast television during the nineties, which makes it an awkward and uncomfortable fit for the modern age of streaming media.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Star Trek | Tagged: Broadcast, format, medium, star trek, star trek: strange new worlds, strange new worlds, streaming, televison | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On the Third Season of “The Mandalorian”…

Posted on March 3, 2023 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the premiere of the third season of The Mandalorian this week, it seemed as good a time as any to consider the long-delayed return of Disney+’s flagship streaming show.

After nearly three years off the screen, The Mandalorian returns with three very different objectives: to reassure viewers that it is still the same show, to fill in viewers on how much has changed since The Book of Boba Fett and to set up a new status quo and a new over-arching plot. It’s a fairly ambitious piece of television, just in terms of logistics, both rebooting the show and also attempting to maintain a strong sense of internal continuity. It doesn’t entirely work, but it also works better than it should.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Television | Tagged: disney, jon favreau, star wars, streaming, structure, the mandolorian, writing | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On the Pre-Packaged Cult Appeal of “Cocaine Bear”…

Posted on March 1, 2023 by Darren

We’re launching a new column at The Escapist, called Out of Focus. It will publish every Wednesday, and the plan is to use it to look at some film and television that would maybe fall outside the remit of In the Frame, more marginal titles or objects of cult interest. This week, we took a look at the release of Cocaine Bear, which is an obvious attempt to manufacture a cult hit.

On one level, it seems like a fool’s errand to try to build a movie with the express purpose of making a cult hit. After all, cult hits only grow organically, often over years and through home media or television. However, changes to the industry – including the collapse of home media and the decline of linear television – make it very difficult for movies to find that sort of niche. Cocaine Bear feels like a movie designed with that understanding in mind, a film very consciously pitched towards streaming virality as much as theatrical box office.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: cocaine bear, cult, cult hit, cult movie, film, home media, Movie, rental, streaming, Television, universal, video stores | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On How “Willow” Was a Perfectly Average Streaming Series…

Posted on January 14, 2023 by Darren

I am doing weekly reviews of Willow at The Escapist. They’ll be dropping every Wednesday evening while the show is on, looking at the legacy sequel as it progresses from one episode to the next.

With its season finale, Willow revealed that it was basically the statistical mean of Disney’s streaming shows built around existing intellectual property, even more than their Marvel of Star Wars shows. At various points in the season, Willow felt more like a checklist of familiar narrative beats than it did a cohesive story, and that was particularly true of the season finale, with its non-deaths ands its beams of multi-colour energy.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Television | Tagged: disney, finale, Season finale, streaming, streaming shows, willow | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On How “Willow” Found Itself Adrift “Beyond the Shattered Sea”…

Posted on January 8, 2023 by Darren

One of the both interestign and frustrating aspects of Willow is the way in which the show feels very much like an archetypal streaming show. It hits all of the marks and rhythms of the emerging medium, particularly in how it structures its story. There are several points in the season where the larger mechanics of the season arc become transparent. Wildwood was one such example, and Beyond the Shattered Sea is another. The second-to-last episode of the season very quickly entangles itself if doing all the necessary set-up for the looming season finale.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Television | Tagged: beyond the shattered sea, fantasy, penultimate episode, season, streaming, the escapist, willow | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On Netflix’s Cancellation of “1899”…

Posted on January 6, 2023 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. This week, it was revealed that Netflix had cancelled 1899, their prestigious and high-profile mystery drama series. It’s especially notable because the announcement didn’t even come from Netflix, but fits a pattern for streaming services.

Streaming is not like regular television. It adheres to different rules and conventions. In particular, streaming shows don’t operate according the same real-time conveyor belt as conventional broadcast television, where it is possible for a network and a production team to react to audience response in real-time. As a result, the only space that these shows have to grow is in between seasons, and that becomes increasingly difficult in a climate where many streaming companies are cancelling these shows after just a single release.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Television | Tagged: 1899, cancellations, in the frame, netflix, renewal, seasons, shows, streaming, the escapist | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On How the Bad Batch Are the Worst Part of “The Bad Batch”…

Posted on January 4, 2023 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist last week. With the release of the second season of The Bad Batch, it seemed like a good opportunity to review the series.

The Bad Batch is an interesting series. It is essentially a spin-off from The Clone Wars, but one that rejects the anthology nature of that show for a fixed central cast and a linear series of episodic adventures. This is somewhat frustrating, as it strips the most compelling part of The Clone Wars in favour of a generic riff on The A-Team or Kung Fu. Still, when the show gets out of its own way, The Bad Batch is a surprisingly compelling and thoughtful addition to the Star Wars universe, a meditation on what happens to soldiers at the end of a Forever War.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Television | Tagged: clone wars, disney, escapist, star wars, streaming, Television, the bad batch, the escapist | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On the Modesty of “Kaleidoscope”…

Posted on January 2, 2023 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. This weekend saw the release of Kaleidoscope, Netflix’s big interactive heist drama. The hook is that the viewer’s experience of the show is randomized, with different viewers watching in different orders.

It is a very modest experiment, particularly when compared to something like Bandersnatch from a few years back. Kaleidoscope is much more interesting on paper than it is in execution, a high concept that feels somewhat half-executed. There is something about streaming as a medium that lends itself to experiments like this, to viewing experiences that are truly singular and unique, where each viewer ultimately consumes their own version of the media in their own way, in a way that challenges the idea of mass media as a communal experience. Kaleidoscope isn’t quite that, but it hints at the possibility.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.