Blue Blood Burns Blue Media

22/06/2024

12/03/2023

Back from the dead, just in time for the end of the 2022 awards season:

2022’s long gone, my tenure as a critic may have faded, but you’d be all the way wrong if you thought I wasn’t going to compile my top movie picks of the past twelve-ish months, just in time for th…

31/03/2022

Too long in the making, the Best of Film 2020 & 2021 is finally live...

As we all well know, the Big C-Vid fudged up the film ecosystem, cutting the distribution and volume of new releases into funkily-shaped chunks. The quantity of movies over the last two years wasn’…

28/01/2022

Reviews: is a loving, sometimes ugly ode to the art of performance through performance, while tells a bittersweet story about the building pressures of procrastination.

If 2021 wasn’t the year for musicals, I don’t know what it was. Here’s the closing chapter to the many dang good entries that made up that list.

18/01/2022

Reviews: is an enigmatic collection of misshapen gears and grinding joints while 's folkloric premise is stretched beyond its narrative tensile strength.

I just had to give myself time to think back on this enigmatic pair of horror films, Titane and Lamb, before being sure of what I was going to write on them. Several months later, I’m still only ki…

12/01/2022

Review: " is as mesmerizing as it is upsetting, like watching the inevitable downward trajectory of a missile blasted off on farts."

There’s a decrepit air to Red Rocket that aches atmosphere from every corner of its small time rural setting. Industrial smoke stacks inescapably loom over the baby blue daytime and deep purple eve…

12/01/2022

Review: "Beneath a sunny facade, is deceptively more ambiguous than the standard PTA film, all pluses and minuses that entails."

I feel I’ve always had to admire Paul Thomas Anderson from afar. Boogie Nights, Phantom Thread, The Master—the man does what he wants, his films usually driven with the wryest tinges of zero-ducks …

03/01/2022

Review: "The resigned satirical approach of is so blatant, but also so dry in trying its commentary shrivels up like a fossilized raisin."

New year, same problems. Mo’ problems, even. And they just keep piling up. Adam McKay very well may have been the funniest man on Earth for a spot of years, but there’s nothing humorous about the r…

31/12/2021

Reviews: 's grand story teeters under its even grander length, and packs two phenomenal performances in a biopic from the screenwriting GOAT.

Two more reviews for potentially Oscar-contending films from 2021, with a familial twist.

29/12/2021

Review: " is an ass-kicking, aggrandized political cartoon riffing on the absurdity of the bureaucracy that shaped true historical events."

Looking at posters for The King’s Man has to have been one of the funniest running gags I’ve been witness to over the last two years. As a victim of the Disney/Fox merger, COVID-19, and almost a do…

28/12/2021

Reviews: is fun, albeit barebones entertainment, a snappy breath of fresh air, and a vaguely rhythmic collection of word soup.

Admittedly, I got a bit lazy with the Disney reviews this year. But what better way to arrive late to the party than with a thorough collection of what the Mouse had to offer in 2021? Spoilers: it …

26/12/2021

Review: "Not one narrative thread is given as much focus as it needs to really pop, but is nothing less than a good time full of holiday cheer.” +

Years in the waiting, Black Widow and Hawkeye were blessed with their own solo projects in 2021, and for the near decade of buildup after The Avengers, they both hit the spot pretty well. For my mo…

24/12/2021

Review: "After getting off to a very strong, balls-tripping start, is a film built on almosts."
https://sandiafilmjournal.wordpress.com/2021/12/24/exhumed-to-undoom-the-matrix-resurrections-review/

Ah, I can’t quite say I even respect the The Matrix trilogy. The road through Reloaded is bumpy but kind of wins out thanks to the film’s subversive progressions on the first. But come Revolutions,…

22/12/2021

Review: " is a scintillating psychological noir rooted in a story about a dude trying to be some kind of man against destiny’s doom."

It’s almost kind of a shame Guillermo del Toro built his name off horror films. Almost. It’s left certain expectations about his filmography going forward, leading to the unfortunate tanking of the…

21/12/2021

Review: " gets lost in the muck of plain heinous dialogue and insipid fan service lacking any sense of subtlety or tact."

If it’s got well-blocked action, witty writing, or even potentially tries to aim for something greater in the cultural landscape, I’ll defend any superhero media. As well anyone should. And though …

15/12/2021

Review: "Spielberg's is the real deal, the visionary returning iconic, the master director smack dab in the middle of his wheelhouse once again."

I really thought Spielberg had lost his touch. Ten years of movies for dads (and one splatter of CGI chaos I’ll never believe he actually directed) nearly had me convinced. And when it was revealed…

11/12/2021

Reviews: tells a fascinating, if jumbled true story, questionably digs into a royal's fictional true life, and Kenneth Branagh's impresses as one of the best films of the year.

Yeah, yeah I’m back, I’m back. After a quick vacation and an annoying stint with COVID, here’s three big biopic (kind of) reviews as awards season 2021 ramps up.

24/11/2021

Review: " blankly speedruns through the disturbing mystery of the video game series’ first entry and the progressively nightmarish survival horror of the second."

On an only adjunctly related note, there was an embarrassing period of time where I thought Paul Thomas Anderson and Paul W. S. Anderson were one and the same. Do with that little ha-ha what you wi…

20/11/2021

Review: "The nostalgic blanket swaddles itself up in isn’t just a little too sincere for its own good, it's flavorless, four-quadrant-appeasing (sort of) fun."

Hear me out before you hang me out to dry: Ghostbusters was a mistake. Or, at the very least, an anomaly, an accident. Due to and entirely, only because of a few scenes featuring colorful lasers an…

12/11/2021

Review: " is a pitch-perfect paradise of word-liness."

Under certain meaningful circumstances and conditions whose details I won’t go into here, my parents were very likely, at a certain period and place in time, to have come one shoulder bump, one mea…

06/11/2021

Review: " is a snooze fest of a road trip until its climax gives it a spicy bump of intrigue going into its finale."

About the nicest thing I can say about Marvel’s Eternals is that I wanted to take a big ol’ chomp out of its eponymous heroes’ space ship. It’s like a gigantic, dark chocolate, lemon-accented Kit K…

04/11/2021

Review: " is a powerfully empathetic thrill ride (presumably) encapsulating all the terrors of being a young woman."

More than anything else, films are about empathy—generating, synthesizing, and fostering it into greater understanding for others. I thought I had some appreciation for the vulnerability young wome…

04/11/2021

Review: " is merciless in its vision of a desecrated Pacific Northwest, and while not quite cohesive, an impressively, oppressively upsetting time."

Antlers is a prickly motherducker. Scott Cooper’s direction totally resigns to despair, every scrap, word, and moment wallowing in a gross, grayed world out of balance. The film’s pieces fit fairly…

29/10/2021

and are two of the best films of 2021. Ready why here:

Apart from being really freaking good, the only thing these two films have in common is me arriving one to three minutes too late to my showtimes in an effort to skip twenty minutes of movie traile…

28/10/2021

Review: "I could watch Denis Villeneuve’s forever. Words are but wisps in describing the majesty the director breathes into Frank Herbert’s world."
https://sandiafilmjournal.wordpress.com/2021/10/27/the-sleeper-has-awakened-dune-part-one-review/

CURRENT FILM AND TV REVIEWS

22/10/2021

Review: " strives to examine an elusive and debated little pocket of history: a woman’s place in the romantic chivalric code. The results? Mixed, but still good."

Getting a medieval movie in any given year is a rare treat these days. And two? Ooh, baby, that’s a cause well worth celebrating. David Lowery and crew knocked The Green Knight out of the park just…

16/10/2021

Review: " is a pointless, very messy, if novel sidetrack on the road to a more significant conclusion."

Flashback to three years ago: “Halloween 2018 ties John Carpenter’s ’78 film up perfectly with a bow that should never be touched again.” I think it was only a few days later, max, that Blumhouse a…

11/10/2021

Review: " ties a ribbon around Craig’s fifteen-year era of 007 with finesse, fulfillment, and a sense of bittersweet finality."

Smashing through the Daniel Craig Bond films back-to-back is a very good, but never quite great experience. There isn’t even close to a full-on dud in the bunch, yet as interesting as it is seeing …