By Roy Mathur, on 2026-02-02, at 02:59:25 to 03:42:45 GMT, for Captain Roy's Rusty Rocket Radio Show
It's no coincidence I started exercising right after rewatching the latest Superman films. I hurt, but I can't allow myself to become any more buggered than normal entropy allows.
2025 Superman is fun and Miller-ish Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and the marathon of Zack Snyder's Justice League (Batflecks) are serious, but okay. I do, however, hate the idea of evil Superman, dead Superman, or a distastefully rebooted origin story snatched from Invincible, but huzzah for a always great Lois actresses and allowing Cavill Kal-El's chest hair.
Based on Thomas Pynchon's Vineland, the 2025 film about modern American revolutionaries reminded me of a Neal Stephenson novel in terms of an unsettling underbelly of comedic conspiracy all around us. Trippy, DiCaprio and cast are good, but grimmer and less funny than the trailer makes out.
Over the years, I have read and seen all of It: the novel (1986), the Tim Curry TV movie (1990), I rewatched It (2017), and recently watched It Chapter Two (2019) and It: Welcome to Derry (2025).
I found It: Chapter Two yet much funnier film than it's predecessor, schlockier creature design and FX, a little long, but otherwise a fitting finale for the Losers Club. It: Welcome to Derry is a slick, period horror/SF 60s-set TV series prequel to the 2017 film, but I gave up about 20 minutes into it because small town racism struck too close to home.
Peacock's Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol, an adaptation of the Robert Langdon adventure, has evoked mixed reactions. When it was first released I was really enthusiastic, but concluded on its finale that it was, "average tomb raiding." Rewatching on 5 (UK) recently, I enjoyed it immensely, so ignore my inconsistency skewed by the sad ending.
I'm still watching, but dull until Nus reappears in 6.
Mackenzie Crook's (Detectorists) BBC comedic urban fantasy about grieving man discovers his father's grimoire for the raising of Paracelsusian homunculi, which he follows in order to divine the whereabouts of his lost partner.
A wizard (okay, alchemist, but that beard...) in a shed theme is right up my alley; so British, so Pratchett, so Doctor Who and deadpan Pearce Quigley is excellent. However, the series is too fluffy for such a deeply occult subject, which would have been more suited to a single miniseries with much longer episodes.