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Mickey 17 seems like it was green-lit because of Bong Joon Ho's Oscar-winning film Parasite (the first non-English language film to win Best Picture); and though the guy's certainly a man with a vision, it seems like he got a little too off-the-rails in campiness for some American audiences out there. I didn't mind it though; it kind of evoked parts of Red Dwarf (with the industrial mining ship), Empire Strikes Back and Interstellar (with the snow planet setting), and of course there were even strong elements of Joon Ho's own Okja (circa the aliens).

This film kind of shows that Parasite is Bong Joon Ho's most grounded work in recent memory. And of course Mickey 17 definitely feels like Hollywood's attempt to try and build a practical 'production bridge' with South Korean film and television filmmakers. Will it work in the long run? Considering this film flopped at the box office, I'd say the over-budgeted approach is certainly dead, but the more modestly funded productions are (hopefully) safer bets. Hollywood NEEDS more co-productions outside the UK alone (Harry Potter, James Bond and Christopher Nolan's movies have spoken for the the UK-USA co-production side of things); South Korea is definitely a hotbed for unconventional ideas and tonal cocktails that have proven themselves with the likes of Parasite and Netflix's Squid Game. And Mickey 17 is another underrated but well-meaning entry in South Korea's growing entertainment sector.

Mickey 17 is good fun, but it deserved better promotion leading up to its release courtesy of Warner Brothers probably deeming it a 'burner film' compared to the rest of its 2025 slate. At 2 hours and 17 minutes it could have been trimmed to a 2-hour sharp affair and it wouldn't have lost what it was trying to say story-wise. And maybe SOME of the monologues could have been trimmed down too.

Mickey 17 is a 7/10 film. 3.5/5 stars. It's a fun space adventure that could have been trimmed slightly and it would have been more focused and faster paced too. At over 2 hours, it could have been an easy 1-hour-30-min or 2-hours exact experience.

Sinners ticks off all the boxes 'original film nuts' can possibly crave: an original screenplay populated by strong characters and stylistically strong imagery, good music and some great action sprinkled with geo-mythical-and-social commentary packed throughout its runtime.

For a 'horror movie', it's selling the film short by labelling it under that genre alone: it's also a thriller-musical and some psychologically driven stuff too; but it is most definitely a Gothic fantasy film taking place in the 1930s, centring on twin brothers who happen to be World War One veterans living in a very bitter Jim-Crow-era America.

Ryan Coogler was known for Creed and Black Panther before this one, and Sinners was shot on IMAX-65mm and Ultra Panavision 65mm film cameras. So Coogler's joined the IMAX-65mm ranks of Christopher Nolan, Damien Chazelle, Jordan Peele and even Michael Bay. It's nice seeing modern Hollywood talents still utilising 70mm celluloid in an increasingly homogenised industry honing in on mostly digital cameras and projection. Honestly more filmmakers should be utilising BOTH digital and analogue film cameras. Regardless, Sinners is an achievement of genre fusion and a technical treasure too, thanks to it be in an inevitable IMAX-darling for future re-releases.

It's not all that often where a great director gets to sign off on a passion project that's NOT based off any iconic books or IP, and considering Sinners cost near $100-million to make, it's heartwarming to know the film's also become a hit and might become something of a 'four-quadrant' film in the years to come. The whole 'we want original films' cry so many audience members make to Hollywood isn't just hyperbole: Sinners shows that when done right, it's like an overdue reward for something we didn't know we wanted in the first place.

Sinners gets 4.5/5 stars. 9/10 IMDbs. Easily one of the year's strongest films.

Blake's 7 is good fun, in spite of the shoestring budget and effects making classic Star Trek effects look like 2001: A Space Odyssey or Star Wars, and the writing was groundbreaking in making space adventures feel like stakes-driven dramas that the BBC could finally explore outside Doctor Who. In the years since its 1978 debut, Blake's 7 is still a cult classic and a showcase of British science fiction television.

The reviews for this show have basically been somewhere between honest reactions of viewers and lite history lessons on the show's somewhat mixed response initially; some loved it (Doctor Who devotees), some hated it (like Clive James' infamous "classically awful" critique of the show), and some wrote it off as 'discount Star Trek (or) Star Wars'. I think these reactions were fun to learn about even if some of them didn't reflect my liking this show very much.

Also, Blake's 7 inspired the likes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Babylon 5, and may have even influenced the Battlestar Galactica reboot. So this underdog space opera certainly left its mark on sci-fi television as a whole.

Blake's 7 gets 9/10 IMDbs. 4.5/5 stars. It's BBC sci-fi at its best and most ambitious. And like classic Doctor Who there's a lot of endearing qualities in it too.