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The Jericho Mile (1979, Michael Mann)
The Jericho Mile plays a little like a truncated mini-series. The first hour of the film introduces the characters, the ground situation, and does an entire arc for six characters. There’s a minimal subplot about prison psychologist Geoffrey Lewis trying to convince seemingly super-fast-running inmate Peter Strauss to open up in therapy. Lewis then gets… 📖
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Werewolf by Night (1972) #25
I can’t imagine Werewolf will keep it going, but somehow they find themselves this issue. I mean, it’s Doug Moench’s surfer bro pulp and Don Perlin’s “what if I just page layout like it’s 1952” penciling and inking, but still. They’re in sync here, and it’s… fine? Or at least closer to fine than I’d… 📖
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Catwoman (2002) #4
And here’s how you do a comic book. I was wondering when Catwoman was going to click and level up, and it’s this issue. It’s not just Darwyn Cooke’s pencils, though he’s got dozens of great panels in the issue. Pretty much everything except Selina fighting Clayface Y2K’s muck is great. The muck stuff is… 📖
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Shadows on the Grave (2016) #6
Shadows has a nice rally this issue. It works out even when the stories are too long (or too slight). They’ve all got eight pages, but creator Richard Corben and (especially) first story writer Mike Shields pace them out beautifully. Also, there aren’t any stories on repeat this issue, which is nice. Although, that first… 📖
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Legion of Super-Heroes (1980) #260
Writer Gerry Conway finds his tone for Legion of Super-Heroes and it’s Silver Age homage. The issue has Joe Staton and John Calnan on the art; it’s not great, but it doesn’t have to be for a Silver Age homage. Obviously, the costumes are different, and it’s hard to imagine Wildfire having his temper tantrum… 📖
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Hansan: Rising Dragon (2022, Kim Han-min)
About half of Hansan is a naval battle. The second half. The first half is a combination history lesson, period espionage and turgid war thriller, and naval warfare theory symposium. The film’s about Admiral Yi Sun-shin, who kicked the invading Japanese navy’s ass in the sixteenth century. Despite being in command, lots of folks questioned… 📖
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Tomb of Dracula (1972) #27
Great art in this issue. Like, top five Gene Colan and Tom Palmer Tomb of Dracula so far. Not just the strange variety of things—seventies British romantic thriller, zombie vampire movie, Ray Harryhausen picture. It’s a lot, and it’s glorious. Unfortunately, writer Marv Wolfman goes overboard with his religiously-tinged script. He started it last issue… 📖
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Hereditary (2018, Ari Aster)
For better or worse, once the film proper starts, Hereditary doesn’t have a single wasted moment. Every little thing is important in the end, whether it’s how dead grandma wanted favorite grandchild Milly Shapiro to be a boy or Toni Collette’s justified fears of hereditary schizophrenia. I mean, the title’s Hereditary and she’s got a… 📖
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Elmer Gantry (1960, Richard Brooks)
Elmer Gantry is all about possibilities. Possibilities for the plot, for the performances, for the film. Director (and screenwriter) Brooks watches the film along with the audience, specifically the performances. Everyone’s just waiting to see what Burt Lancaster, Jean Simmons, and Shirley Jones are going to do next. Sometimes, Brooks emphasizes the performance with quick… 📖
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Dan Dare (2007) #5
Writer Garth Ennis has a good issue with this Dan Dare, but artist Gary Erskine seems to be struggling to keep up. The issue downshifts the series a bit, with Dan and newly appointed companion Ms. Christian butting heads with the Royal Space Navy or whatever they’re called. Back on Earth, Home Secretary and former… 📖
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My Life Is Murder (2019) s03e10 – Killer Fashion
Killer Fashion is a peculiar episode. It’s a peculiar season finale, but it’s also just weird. It’s more about its guest stars than a season finale ought to be, and then there’s the whole fashion angle. Lucy Lawless and Ebony Vagulans are both obsessed with the fashion world, though Lawless won’t admit it. Other than… 📖
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Werewolf by Night (1972) #24
I’m losing my resolve for Werewolf by Night. I was mostly prepared for Don Perlin—there aren’t any good panels this issue, but there are some where inker Vince Colletta adds so many lines they compensate for whatever was there before. It works with the villain, a Jekyll and Hyde-type scientist who maybe can cure Jack’s… 📖
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Enola Holmes 2 (2022, Harry Bradbeer)
Enola Holmes 2 runs a long two hours and nine minutes, but the movie actually leaves a bunch on the table. For example, antagonist David Thewlis has history with both Sherlock (Henry Cavill) and Mama Holmes (Helena Bonham Carter), seemingly separately, but the film never gets into it. Thewlis is phoning it in, gloriously biting… 📖
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Catwoman (2002) #3
There’s a lot of great Darwyn Cooke “good girl” art in this issue as Selina goes undercover to find the john who’s been killing all the girls, which I suppose could kick off an interesting discussion of how male gaze works in a non-realistic styles like Cooke’s. But it doesn’t make for a great issue.… 📖
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Legion of Super-Heroes (1980) #259
I actually did a quick Google, and nothing came up (despite the image results showing the very obvious covers side-by-side), so I’m going to assume this detail isn’t an undeniable fact: Legion of Super-Heroes #259 looks ridiculously like Whatever Happened to the Man on Tomorrow a couple of times. I didn’t even realize the covers… 📖
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Stoker’s Dracula (2004) #4
The issue ends with an afterword from Dick Giordano talking about finishing the Dracula adaptation thirty years after he and writer Roy Thomas started it. He confirms my suspicions they didn’t actually have it plotted out; rather, they did that work thirty years later. Or twenty-eight or whatever. Plus, it sounds like artist Giordano did… 📖
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See How They Run (2022, Tom George)
Sam Rockwell can do an English accent. See How They Run occasionally has him use it but mostly has him stone-face while sidekick Saoirse Ronan amiably chatters away. The movie only asks Rockwell to act once or twice; he can do it with the accent. He’s not really a stunt cast because the movie doesn’t… 📖
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Shadows on the Grave (2016) #5
Creator Richard Corben’s got some co-writing help again on this issue of Shadows and it doesn’t work out. The whole issue just never quite works out, including the Greek epic, which bums me out. The issue starts okay, with a one-page romance comic gag. Nice art too. The issue’s got excellent art from Corben throughout—including… 📖
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Tomb of Dracula (1972) #26
I’m not sure if this issue’s Marv Wolfman’s best Tomb, but it’s his most ambitious. He weaves the story—which involves a missing magical statue, a dead shop owner, Frank Drake and Taj being shitty dudes, a Kull-related flashback, and Dracula’s familiar, Shiela, meeting a British witch—through Old Testament verses. The shop owner’s Jewish, and his… 📖
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Dan Dare (2007) #4
I’ve never read any Dan Dare besides this series. I assume it’s some British Silver Age book about British derring-do in a sci-fi setting. So I don’t know if writer Garth Ennis is doing some homage with the pacing of this issue or just the plotting of the series in general. Here’s what the first… 📖
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Werewolf by Night (1972) #23
Reading this issue, I kept having to remind myself writer Doug Moench doesn’t want Jack Russell to sound like a jackass, quite the opposite. Moench writes Jack’s narration as a combination of hard-boiled detective, beatnik, and, I don’t know, Charles Atlas advertisement text. It’s the purest obnoxious surfer bro Jack’s gotten in two dozen plus… 📖
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Catwoman (2002) #2
Darwyn Cooke owns this issue. It begins with an action sequence: Catwoman breaking into Gotham PD to get a look at the autopsies on the dead streetwalkers. Cooke breaks each page into a dozen or two panels, sometimes splitting a horizontal frame, more often zooming in on one particular aspect of the action. All in… 📖
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Infinity 8: Volume Five: Apocalypse Day (2018)
Apocalypse Day’s agent, Ann Ninurta, is the most reliably badass agent since the first volume. There are other comparisons between Ninurta and the first volume’s lead, like being blonde, midriff-revealing, and obsessed with babies. The first volume’s lead wanted to have a baby, Ninurta’s got a baby. Well, a toddler. Ninurta’s taking her to daycare… 📖
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Stoker’s Dracula (2004) #3
Like all faithful Bram Stoker’s Dracula adaptations, Stoker’s Dracula has hit the point where the source material’s bad writing is causing problems. Or, at least, lazy plotting. But it’s not writer Roy Thomas’s fault; it’s all on Stoker. The most obvious example is someone screwing with Van Helsing’s plan to save Lucy’s soul. Last time… 📖
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Shadows on the Grave (2016) #4
Okay, so this issue’s the best so far. In addition to the three strong stories (with guest writer Jan Strnad again contributing, this time a better tale), the issue’s got three one-pagers. Inside covers, back cover. Basically a pin-up punchline with a small panel setting it up, Mag the Hag narrating. They’re all good. The… 📖
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Red Room: Trigger Warnings (2022) #4
Creator Ed Piskor ends Trigger Warnings with his most impressive writing on Red Room so far, and there’s been a lot of excellent writing. He does the issue as an anthology, skipping around an assortment of characters. Some are returnees, like Levee, the hacker from the first series. Before the narrator (the Cryptokeeper, who I’ve… 📖
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American Gothic (1995) s01e07 – Meet the Beetles
I’m not sure what iteration of “Make Bruce Campbell Happen” his guest appearance on “Gothic” fits in, but I was expecting more of a showcase. Campbell’s a state cop come to town at the behest of his sister (Derin Altay); her husband’s missing, and she’s convinced he’s been running around with Brenda Bakke. When sheriff… 📖
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Dracula (1979, John Badham)
This Dracula adaptation takes place in 1913, which is only important so leading lady Kate Nelligan (battling and sometimes winning her English accent) can be a suffragette, and her beau, Trevor Eve, can drive a motorcar. So there can be a car chase. Or three. The film begins already in England. A ship is having… 📖
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Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes (1977) #258
Is Legion supposed to be camp? I’m not sure what else makes sense, given writer Gerry Conway’s actually quite good plot and his reliably insipid exposition. Quite good plotting after tricking me in the opening—I thought the splash page said the issue was jumping away from R.J. Brande’s bankruptcy plot, but I just hadn’t reread… 📖
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Tomb of Dracula (1972) #25
Unfortunately, there’s much to talk about this issue, like writer Marv Wolfman’s use of a racial slur, which was indeed “Code approved.” It’s not clear if the speaker is supposed to be a bad guy for being a racist, which sadly tracks given Wolfman’s Werewolf by Night Black neighbor character. The issue’s all about private… 📖
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My Life Is Murder (2019) s03e08 – Gaslight Sonata
This episode seems to be setting up “My Life Is Murder: Season Four,” with Lucy Lawless unexpectedly getting an adorable niece played by Nell Fisher, who is apparently not related to anyone in “Murder” but is appearing in the next Evil Dead movie. Lawless is married to one of the producers or executive producers or… 📖
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All Creatures Great and Small (2020) s03e06 – For Whom the Bell Tolls
In the way it has come for so many British television shows, movies, radio plays, and so on, war has come to “All Creatures Great and Small,” specifically the beginning of World War II. Or at least the King’s Speech beginning of World War II. The family gathers around the radio and everyone gets their… 📖
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Dan Dare (2007) #3
It’s an absurdly good issue, starting with Dan Dare having a showdown with the little shitheels currently calling themselves British officers. He and companion Digby are on a desert planet, trying to evacuate the civilians before they and the garrison have to shoot it out with literal monsters, and some officers are whining about their… 📖
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Werewolf by Night (1972) #22
New writer Doug Moench continues to put his mark (of the Werewolf) on Night. By soft-booting the thing back to issue three or four. This issue starts with Jack going to see forty or fifty-something best friend Buck Cowan, who’s known Jack’s been a werewolf for a while now, but they never, ever talked about… 📖
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Catwoman (2002) #1
I’ve meant to go back and reread Brubaker’s Catwoman for literal decades now. The last time I tried, I started the post about Catwoman #1 pointing out it proves Ebert’s “no masks in noir” rule from his Batman Returns review wrong. I’ll never be able to top that one, though it’s impossible not to think… 📖
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The Favourite (2018, Yorgos Lanthimos)
Essentially, The Favourite gives each of its three stars an act to shine. Rachel Weisz gets the first act, Emma Stone the second, Olivia Colman the third. They all appear throughout, but the script’s surprisingly segmented with its narrative perspective. Surprisingly because it means the first-act protagonists (Weisz and Stone) are accessories in the third… 📖
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Stoker’s Dracula (2004) #2
Stoker’s Dracula collects and then continues Roy Thomas and Dick Giordano’s seventies novel adaptation, which ran in the black and white horror magazines, Dracula Lives! and Legion of Monsters. Thomas and Giordano only did six entries back then, and since they’ve only got one chapter of new material in this issue… they stopped before they… 📖
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Shadows on the Grave (2016) #3
And now Shadows on the Grave is doing the very bizarre thing where the subsequent issue does what I said it should do; only it’s years later. In this case, creator Richard Corben does differing page lengths on the horror stories and lets the Greek story be the feature with the most pages. It’s twelve… 📖
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Red Room: Trigger Warnings (2022) #3
Technically, this issue’s outstanding. Creator Ed Piskor takes Trigger Warnings somewhere unpredictable and incredibly thoroughly realizes it. But as a story, it’s all about the punchline, and it’s a long, long time to get to the punchline, going through an entirely unnecessary flashback to a supporting character. Now, the supporting character’s essential, the comic opens… 📖
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My Life Is Murder (2019) s03e07 – Breaking Bread
Dollars to sourdough loaves (it’ll make sense), I think this episode of “My Life Is Murder” is the best-plotted mystery of the season. So far, obviously, but I think it’ll go the distance. It’s an outstanding whodunit, plus Lucy Lawless gets to be petty about her baking. The episode opens with Ebony Vagulans and Joseph… 📖