By Roy Mathur, on 2025-10-01, at 23:47:24 to 00:54:27 BST, for Captain Roy's Rusty Rocket Radio Show
2025 horror by Barbarian's Zach Cregger in which a small town's children Naruto-run off into the middle of the night, leaving their teacher suspect. Is she the Pied Piper? Are the children vampires roosting in that mysterious house with papered over windows? Is an evil clown or an evil witch responsible? What about those zombie maniacs attacking people?
There are unnecessary stylistic references to Salem's Lot, It, etc., though I appreciated the King-like delve into the town's dark underbelly. An entertaining, gory, multi-viewpoint story, with a good splash of mystery, at least until the Alex's backstory, though even that is well done. It's better than Barbarian.
A 2022 drama-horror-comedy about the fall of a world class conductor, Lydia Tar, after an ex-student and love interest commits suicide when she is blacklisted by Tar. Stars Cate Blanchett as the abusive, nightmare plagued conductor.
Blanchett shines, but it's a dry film and the character she plays is awful, though I enjoyed how she dealt so inappropriately with her child's bully. Hilarious in its last minutes as Lydia Tar comes apart; tearing at a poster of Mahler, maliciously playing the accordion to annoy her landlord, tackling a rival (Mark Strong in a stupid floppy wig) to the ground, and disgraced, begins to rebuild her career conducting an orchestra for a sci-fi geek event.
2025 Stephen King sci-fi adaptation by Mike Flannagan, I originally wanted to see at Odeon MK over the Summer, but missed out on. Flannagan regular Rahul Kohli has a minor part.
Chuck is an ordinary kid, with a talent for dance, who chooses an ordinary life as a husband, father, and accountant.
A light, thought provoking film, not as schmaltzy as I've heard other critics whine, but it takes too long to get to the big reveal; that the cupola in his grandparent's house predicts with one hundred percent certainty only death. What I found extraordinary and terrifying wasn't that, but unlike simulation theory proposing reality a computer program, one's imagination is real; containing a fully populated working universe filled with real people, and all that ends when you die.
Anya Taylor-Joy stars as a young dirt-poor aristocratic wife brought to Amsterdam by her new wealthy merchant husband, largely orchestrated by his socially climbing sister. The 2027 adaptation of 2014 gothic novel by Jessie Burton becomes intriguing when the wife engages the titular character to make accessories for her doll house, a gift from her husband.
When the plot has the merchant middle-manning a sugar deal, I suddenly realised the story's connection to my own. That sugar was probably from Mauritius, where it was introduced as a cash crop by Dutch colonial plantation owners and cultivated by their slaves. Unsurprisingly, it's still an issue in Mauritius.
Our coverage in 590 didn't mention the best kills were at the poshos' party in ep. 2. Since then, Wendy becomes the MCP and a xenomorph whisperer, Morrow the cyborg is compelling because of the actor portraying him, rather than his psychopathy, and the zoo of alien vampire leeches, metal eating flies, and a sentient eyeball are Doctor Who-level science fiction horror weird.
Given the continued lousing up of the world by tech bros, this ultimate projection of that is depressing and the characters are mostly awful. With androids, human-android hybrids, and cyborgs, the series has been compared to Blade Runner, but it is the humans who seem the most mechanical, hive-like, and servile for submitting to such a miserable world. Good-looking, creative creature design, moments of pure horror, but ultimately a downer.
Continuing our coverage from pod 590, by the end of the season the goth girl is Epsteined, Dexter manages to dispatch the some of the serial killer club; the Gemini twins (David Dastmalchian) and host Leon Prater (Peter Dinklage), Harrison meets a quirky hot chick at crime college, Angel Battista's interference does not end well, and Dexter ouroboroses back to the beginning by dumping body parts from a boat.
It ends with a snide remark straight to camera that the audience is somehow addicted to Dexter, a violent serial killer. No, I don't enjoy a serial killer who kills serial killers. It is terribly presumptuous and reductive of the scriptwriter to stereotype us as a baying, bloodthirsty, bread and circuses fandom. If fact, I feel sad Dexter's warped by his past to become a monster, caused the deaths of innocents, his sister, and murdered his own brother. I like the show because the hunt and evasion aspect is thrilling and because Dexter is likeable.
Season 3 continues; see pod 590 for my run down of episodes 1--5.
Kirk is acting captain of the Farragut in episode 6 as Enterprise is swallowed by a mythical monster ship, Ortegas's little brother's documentary hatchet job on Star Fleet swings in the opposite direction after he witnesses the crew's compassion for a weaponised alien in 7, the crew is medically altered for an away mission and out-Vulcan Spock in 8, Ortegas befriends a Gorn in 9 (poor Gorn), and in 10 Patel becomes an angel and Pike's fate is changed, so that we can look forward to his return in season 4 in 2026. 10 also had Pelia saying, "Remind me to tell you of the time I spent with a time travelling doctor I once knew." Much as I love DW, please, no. It's bad enough Star Trek has transporters and the galactic barrier!
I don't like the flip-flopping between comedic and dramatic episodes. Overall, I find SNW good, but not compelling. Admittedly, I feel the same way about most of the sequel series because I am primarily a TOS Trekkie.
9 episode Apple TV 2025 miniseries thriller, loosely based on a real maniacal fireman, starring Taron Egerton and Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine (Dexter: Resurrection), about a fire investigator investigating himself moonlighting as a serial arsonist.
The deliberate quirkiness sits uneasily upon the compelling thriller and you are going to lose any remaining respect you may have for coppers and firemen.
Why do British actors toothily grimace their way through American accents?
I can't remember why I revisited Bandasnatch and it's loose sequel Plaything. Some combination of nostalgia and techno fetishism, relating to Imagine's mythical semi-vapourware, crude 3D graphics, the Sinclair Spectrum, the 80s, parallel universes, insanity, and of course Twine.