The X-Files is twenty years old this year. To celebrate, I’ll be spending Month X looking back at the first season. There was a time, around the third season, when The X-Files became the show. It had grown from the
I like Ghost in the Machine more than I really should. I mean, I know it’s a mess. The plotting is uninspired. The characters are thin. There’s a last minute link to the show’s overall conspiracy arc
Millennium feels destined to always be “the other Chris Carter show”, the younger and less successful sibling of The X-Files. The show had launched to considerable fanfare. Thanks to the cultural cache of Chris Carter and an impressive marketing
I think The X-Files is very nineties, because everything is left in doubt. There’s no closure, no answers. … Obviously it’s tapping in to something the nation wants. I think it has to do with
The Predator adopts the as-ambitious-as-it-is-counter-productive of smirkingly mocking big budget franchise films while also actually being a big budget franchise film. Shane Black’s sequel to the beloved eighties actioner is jarring, caught between two masters. On the one
At one point in A Star is Born, Bobby Maine outlines his brother’s approach to music for the benefit of Ally. According to Bobby, Jackson believes that all music can be broken down to “twelve notes between
Maniac is Inception meets Cloud Atlas, filtered through a prism of eighties retrofuturism. That is to say that Maniac will not be for everybody. Indeed, there will be very many people for whom Maniac will simply not work, seeming too weird, too strange
IN AND OUT OF THEIR ELEMENTS It’s no big secret that Pixar Studios has become the premiere powerhouse animated studio for nearly the past twenty-five years; producing some of the more memorable and beloved
DIAL “M.A.” FOR MILDLY ADEQUATE Archaeologist, historian, and adventurer are some of the characteristics that are commonly used when describing the fictional character of Indiana Jones. An icon in his own right and has
A “DEAD RECKONING” RINGER FOR GREAT SUMMER BLOCKBUSTER ACTION The Mission Impossible franchise has had a lengthy road, stretching from the small screen (all the way back from 1966 to 1973) to the big screen in