Category: Articles

I took my daughters to see Trolls Band Together, the third film in the series revolving around the multicoloured, pint-size, music gremlins. Since my house’s Spotify has had “I Will Get Back Up Again” on repeat since 2016, this seemed like a good choice.   The film was a lot of fun, revolving around gruff isolationist…

As the Dad of three young girls, I’ve just watched the trailer for the new kid’s movie “Wish.” It’s… ok, I suppose. The central conundrum of the film is the evil king who only grants wishes that are in the best interest of the kingdom, versus the young idealistic apprentice who wants all wishes to…

I’ve been seeing lot of ads for the new Cyberpunk 2077 expansion, and while films and games are making the genre cool again, I cannot forget a mid-90s sci-fi schlockfest that showed how absolutely crazy cyberpunk can be. You want hitmen with laser whips coming out of their thumbs? You want 90s rappers throwing flaming…

My wife and I were talking about shlock movies today – you know, the kind that aren’t just awful, but gloriously awful to the point where you just can’t look away. While some of these are easy to identify (I am still on the lookout for a copy of 1995’s Cutthroat Island if anyone can…

My daughters have been throwing themselves into creative writing recently; I couldn’t be prouder, but it has created some interesting conversations about the nuts and bolts of creating a story. One of our latest conversations has been about subtext, in particular how to stretch out the tension of a scene by having the characters communicate…

I was cleaning out the garage today and found a box of DVDs, which I’m glad I held onto given how spotty streaming can be for classic older films. There was one DVD in the collection that really caught my eye, and I was already humming the bluesy tunes when I called my girls and…

Hi everyone, I want to give a shout out to a fellow author from the Archive of Odd’s Aibophobia Anthology, a series of non-narrative horror stories. Monica Joyce Evans’ “Nature and Mechanics of Causality: A Graduate Seminar (PHYS 631)” is a fictional university course for aspiring time travellers, and I loved every word of it.…

I’ve been reading my eldest girls Terry Pratchett’s books for a while now, starting from The Colour of Magic and most recently about to finish Moving Pictures. While some of the jokes are a little dated, my girls have loved every minute of it, and already have their favourite characters to barrack for (namely Death…

My wife and I loved Guardians of the Galaxy 3, and after looking through James Gunn’s filmography we found he was one of the writers of the 2001 horror movie Thirteen Ghosts. Visually stunning but considered a commercial flop, let’s see if Thirteen Ghosts still chills after more than 20 years. This is going to…

Cube. This is one of those 1990s films that everyone seems to have watched at some point, but no-one can remember many of the details outside of “Saw but with a single room.” The film was a commercial flop yet remains beloved by fans of sci-fi horror. Why? And does it still stack up after…