During a time of crisis you would think that disaster movies would be the last thing anyone wants to watch right now. For some, this may be true, for me I find too much pleasure in watching entirely unrealistic scenarios threaten the safety of the world. It’s weirdly thrilling!

Back to the Future 3 places me into an odd mindset 30 years later. In its innate nostalgia for the western, Back to the Future 3 took me to a place of examining the things that my father embraced as a young man, the kinds of things I thought that I had rejected in creating a personality separate from my father. In this review/essay, Back to the Future 3 will be the vehicle with which I will examine maturity, childhood, identity and my relationship with my father, abstractly of course, I would need a therapist to tackle the subject directly.

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read.

Looking back at the cinema history, it’s easy to sneer at sequels as just mediocre cash cows to successful films, however, there’s still several sophomore features that manage to equal, or even overshadow their predecessors’ excellence. James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgement Day stands out as a vivid example. It inherits the legacy of the iconic original movie, telling a story of a catastrophic future occupied by androids eradicating the human race, but in a more fascinating and powerful delivery.

What we predicted has come true: Disney, with its unlimited resources, has created the Callback Masterpiece in Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker. This film’s callback game is so deep, it calls back other franchises. It is like Scary Movie, only with Star Wars. There is a callback to Avengers that makes me cringe. This being the last film in a trilogy of trilogies, Rise calls back to every film in the series, bringing together eight movies into one. It could come off as the Remember When? Reel if not so brilliantly realized by JJ Abrams. The trick here is to refer to the callbacks without spoiling any details from Rise. That’s easy, as long as we avoid any mention of new material, of which there is a considerable amount. I will attempt to mention any callback that occurs in chronological order, starting from New Hope, Empire and Return, then Menace, Clones and Revenge, and finally Awakens and Last Jedi. Let us use the Episode numbers to keep track. And in case you are wondering, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker follows the Yellow Flick Road like a zealot.

Dark Fate: Dorothy saves the World

Captive State is an alien invasion movie that barely has any aliens in it. Don't be expecting a ton of action in this alien invasion caper movie. There's a ton of intrigue as the many players don't know who to trust. It's definitely a very different change of pace for an alien invasion movie. Unfortunately, despite the intrigue of most of the movie the ending is rather predictable through the not so subtle foreshadowing throughout the movie.

Beyond Skyline has showed up on my Netflix suggestions for quite some time. I didn't quite know if I wanted to see it or not. The premise of the movie was right up my alley but I usually like watching higher budget science fiction movies. My mind has been changed recently because I've seen a bunch of low budget science fiction movies on Netflix and they've impressed me. So I decided to take the dive and see what it was all about.

Brief synopsis: After her divorce, a woman takes her young daughter and moves into her old vacant family home in rural Mississippi. When strange things start happening and her daughter disappears, she is the local sheriff’s number one suspect. The woman fights to not only clear her name but also to find her daughter.

Every few years there's a new virus that makes everyone fear for their lives. This year it's the new Coronavirus. So I guess the writers of Contagion discovered this trend when they recognized how much SARS and H1N1 freaked us all out.

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this before but I'm a huge sci-fi fan. People have asked me in the past:

Do you hate war, pollution, or hard pizza rolls? You would love the 1969 science fiction/satire "The Monitors". This motion picture is based on a science fiction novel of the same name written by Keith Laumer and published in 1966. The story is about a group of friendly aliens coming to Earth and taking over the planet and its governments. The movie was produced by the Second City comedy troupe and co-produced by the Bell and Howe Corporation. This film was shot on location in Chicago, Illinois with the intention it would become a center of movie and TV production. The Monitors is minutes 92 in length and premiered on October 8, 1969, in New York City.