Author: Matt Vetrano

Super Recaps: Halo Season 2 – Episodes 1 & 2

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

Halo the series is owned by Paramount Plus

Directed by Debs Paterson

I reviewed the first season of this show and thought it was pretty great, but I also know that my opinion was in the minority, and was unsure if we would even get a second season after the lukewarm reaction from everyone other than me. Thankfully, Paramount is willing to give this show another chance to find its audience and the last season gave us a great starting point to finally move us to the Halo ring and everything else that fans wanted to see in the series. Will season two finally get the ball rolling and bring the fans on board with what I thought made the first season so special? Let’s find out!

Our story ended with the Master Chief (Pablo Schreiber) and his fellow Spartans Kai, Vannak, and Riz (Kate Kennedy, Bentley Kalu, and Natasha Culzac) managing to escape from the Covenant with the artifact, but not without incurring losses. Makee (Charlie Murphy), the human adopted by the Covenant to activate the artifact, was shot down in the firefight and Chief was forced to let his AI partner Cortana (Jen Taylor) take full control of his mind and fry his personality to manage the escape. It’s some time later and while Chief is verbal again, he’s not the warm cuddly bear he was by the end of the last season. He’s taciturn and stiff with his fellow Spartans and his questions about his past and the ethics of the Spartan program no longer seem to be an issue. The Covenant have escalated their war efforts and are now destroying whole planets, including Madrigal which Kwan Ha and Soren (Yerin Ha and Bokeem Woodbine) fought for half of last season to liberate, and the entire planet of Reach has come down with a bad case of Blade Runner depression, though whether these changes are part of the story itself as humanity is starting to lose hope or are just a creative change is still unclear. To make matters worse, the UNSC seems to have turned whole hog into the Office of Naval Intelligence (the Section 31 of this franchise for those Star Trek fans out there), and not only did they take Cortana out of Chief without a proper explanation, they are going all in on the propaganda with the Spartans being treated more like props than warriors. All of this chicanery from the ONI has left Chief and his crew feeling useless while the Covenant are seemingly making moves that will undercut all of humanity’s defenses and turn the tide of the war in their favor. Can Chief and Silver Team figure out the Covenant’s secret plans despite ONI’s insistence on remaining in the dark? What does this escalation of violence from the Covenant mean for those either liberating themselves from the UNSC or choosing to live on the margins and stay out of the war entirely? Why is everything lit so poorly!? Did the UNSC lose all its funding?

“Can we open a window at least?”     “YOU GET SLIGHTLY OPENED BLINDS AND NOTHING MORE!!”
Continue reading “Super Recaps: Halo Season 2 – Episodes 1 & 2” →

Cinema Dispatch: Top 10 Best Movies of 2023

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

I’ve got to say that 2023 was not the easiest year to come up with a Ten Best list. Partly because I had to cram a dozen movies into December to have a well-rounded list, but also because the year itself just felt underwhelming. The continued move to streaming has started to take the spark out of the theater-going experience, and without the constraints of the theater, it feels like movies are filling space rather than inspiring and exciting. Still, even with all this noise and overabundance of content, there are genuinely amazing creatives out there working on fantastic movies and I’ve collected ten of them to talk about today! Let’s get started!

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Honorable Mention – Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Full Review

I gave this movie a lot of praise on its release, and the accolades it’s received are well deserved. However, 2023 ended up being the year that I got sick of movies that got halfway through their story before telling us to come back later for part two. Unlike a traditional sequel which promises a new story, these films dangle the conclusion of the current one over our heads in a way that doesn’t have me on the edge of my seat but makes me want to turn back the clock and just wait to watch the entire story once it’s finished getting made. Spider-Verse has a lot going for it and there is little doubt that the story will feel complete once part 2 is released, but until it is I don’t feel like putting it in a proper spot on this list.

Continue reading “Cinema Dispatch: Top 10 Best Movies of 2023” →

Cinema Dispatch: Top 8 films of 2023 That Need Improvement

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

It’s a cliché to talk about how bad a year had been in a retrospective like this, but 2023 was pretty rough for me; so much so that, for the first time since starting this website, I took an extended hiatus to try and get my house in order in this nightmare we call modern life. Still, I tried my best to catch up on the big releases right before the end of the year and have been stewing on this list for a month until I finally found time to get my thoughts on the page. The elephant in the room as always is that we are still in a post-pandemic world, or at least it would be if we weren’t still dealing with COVID and its massive impacts daily, so some of these movies can undoubtedly trace some of their problems to the disruption it caused in the entertainment industry. That’s why I try to keep this list constructive with good faith analysis and a limited number of cheap shots. Granted, the last few months have left me feeling a bit salty about things in general, but I’ve done my best to keep the unproductive dunking to a minimum. Let’s get started!

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Fool’s Paradise

Fool’s Paradise is owned by Roadside Attractions

Directed by Charlie Day

Frankly, I don’t want to come down too hard on a guy’s directorial debut, even if it’s someone like Charlie Day who has a reasonable amount of clout to throw around. Making movies isn’t easy and not everyone can make a graceful leap from actor to director; especially on their first attempt. That’s very much the vibe of the movie; something that was made with passion but not enough discipline. Everything from the obvious Hollywood satire to its homages of the silent era is not as clever as it thinks it is; nor as ambitious as its inspirations. The jokes have no wit to them and the story is held together with outdated caricatures of the Hollywood elite that still aren’t goofy enough to carry this silly premise and so the narrative bends over backward to try and make it work to with middling results. Also, while I wouldn’t call myself an aficionado of silent comedies, I’ve seen enough to know how half-hearted the slapstick is, and that lack of effort here compared to the immense effort and genius that went into crafting a lot of those classic films says a lot about this movie. It’s like reading the first chapter of a textbook and thinking you’re as knowledgeable as the professor, or assuming you can be a professional chess player after watching a few YouTube videos. By all means, follow your passions and be inspired by the talent of others, but maybe let the ideas cook for a little bit before presenting to the class.

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Super Recaps: One Piece – Episode 5

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

One Piece the live-action series is owned by Netflix

Directed by Tim Southam

The two-episode arc we just finished did start to show a few flaws in the formula as it strains to fit as much as it can into this first season, but I’m still very optimistic about this show and where things are heading. After all, we’re only four crew members in and Sanji was always a favorite of mine back when I watched the anime which gives me a lot of hope that they can pull him off in this. Will this be a better introduction to a crew member than we got for Usopp, or will this show ultimately buckle under the weight of the franchise’s lore? Let’s find out!!

With the Black Cat pirates roundly defeated and a brand new ship as their reward, Luffy and the Straw Hats set sail only to barely escape from an attack by Vice Admiral Garp and his crew of Marines. With their pristine ship now showing some wear and tear, they set anchor at a floating restaurant to get some R and R before figuring out their next move. Of course, nothing is as simple as that when it comes to the life of a pirate, and Luffy finds himself caught between the head chef Zeff (Craig Fairbrass) and his young protégé Sanji (Taz Skylar) who are butting heads over the menu; not to mention Zeff and Luffy’s fundamental disagreement on the efficacy of IOUs when it comes to paying for meals. Still, the rest of the crew get some time to relax and it’s nice to see them getting along as best they can! Oh, and also there’s a Vampire Pirate with a big sword trying to capture Luffy. Wait, what?

“The only things more precise than my blade are the angles on my mustache.”     “Yeah, how DO you maintain that? Is it a magic mustache or something?”     “My secrets are mine alone.”
Continue reading “Super Recaps: One Piece – Episode 5” →

Super Recaps: One Piece – Episode 4

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

One Piece the live-action series is owned by Netflix

Directed by Emma Sullivan

The last episode of this show was the first one to feel the strain of fitting an anime story arc into a relatively small package, but even with it feeling overstuffed and unfocused it still succeeded due to the charm of its cast and the attention to detail in bringing the cartoon world of One Piece to life. Now that the stage has been thoroughly set, will this episode pay it all off in a satisfying fashion? Let’s find out!!
With the beloved butler Klahadore (Alexander Maniatis) being revealed as the bloodthirsty pirate Kuro of the Black Cat Pirates, it’s up to the Straw Hat crew (Iñaki Godoy, Emily Rudd, and Mackenyu) to try and stop him and his two co-conspirators (Bianca Oosthuizen and Albert Pretorius) from killing Kaya and stealing her family’s fortune! Then again, Zoro got thrown into a well and Luffy ate himself into a poisoned-food coma, so maybe it’s up to Usopp (Jacob Romero Gibson) to save the day in real life instead of just in his made-up stories of heroism and adventure. Will Kuro’s grand scheme come to fruition even with this last-minute hiccup in his plan? Can Koby (Morgan Davies) and the Marines come to their aid against such an obvious foe, or will their pursuit of Luffy leave them oblivious to the threat standing in front of them? Is it just me, or does every show eventually do a Die Hard episode?

“Do you really think you have a chance against us acting like some sort of John Wayne cowboy?”     “What?  Screw that!  Errol Flynn all the way!”
Continue reading “Super Recaps: One Piece – Episode 4” →

Super Recaps: One Piece – Episode 3

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

One Piece the live-action series is owned by Netflix

Directed by Emma Sullivan

I’m sure all the One Piece fans out there can breathlessly explain the question I’m about to ask, but what did Usopp actually contribute to the crew? As I’ve stated before, I’ve only seen about the first forty or so episodes of the anime and while I remember Usopp being a fun character with a solid origin story, nothing really sticks in my mind after that and since then he’s kind of felt like the Yamcha of the group, to pull a reference from an anime I actually know what I’m talking about. I know this isn’t the case as the series goes along, but I’m interested in seeing what they do with him in this version and if his contribution to the crew will have a more lasting impact on me. Will this be a great introduction to the character or were the writers scrambling to find a reason for him to exist in this? Let’s find out!!

Having escaped from the dastardly Buggy, the Straw Hat crew is on their way to Syrup Island in the hopes of finding a proper ship by which to travel to the Grand Line as well as outrun the Marines who are hot on their trail. Luckily for them, they meet a young ship cleaner on the island named Usopp (Jacob Romero Gibson) who assures them that he can get them in touch with the owner of the ship-building company and can get them a good deal on the boat. As we will learn with everything Usopp says, there’s only a little bit of truth in what he says as the owner in question is not quite the owner yet, but is still a good friend of Usopp’s named Kaya (Celeste Loots). She is being mentored and protected by her butler Klahadore (Alexander Maniatis) who has no patience for Usopp’s tall tales nor the ragamuffins he’s brought around to Kaya’s stately manor, but despite his protestations, Kaya invites them to dinner and to stay the night. After all, it’s her eighteenth birthday and she’s about to inherit her late parents’ company which will set her up for life! It’s not like anyone close to her wants to take that for themselves, am I right? Will the Straw Hat crew be able to convince Kaya to give them the boat of their dreams as Usopp had erroneously promised? What evil machinations are working behind the scenes on the cusp of Kaya’s corporate takeover, and how will the Straw Hat gang be sucked into these wicked schemes? Can Usopp finally show us a skill he has other than looking really good in bandanas and open shirts!?

“See, my uncle works at Nintendo and he showed me how to give Mario a bazooka in level four.”     “Wow, can you show me?”     “Uh… It’s a trade secret.  Legally, I shouldn’t even be telling you this.”
Continue reading “Super Recaps: One Piece – Episode 3” →

Super Recaps: One Piece – Episode 2

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

One Piece the live-action series is owned by Netflix

Directed by Marc Jobst

Netflix’s adaptation of the long-running manga came out the gate swinging and delivered a fun opening episode that drew me in despite my apathy toward the franchise. Now that they’ve proven it can be done, will the rest of the season convince fans that it should be done? Let’s find out!!

The Straw Hat crew has barely escaped the clutches of the Marines stationed in Shells Town when they find themselves in yet another pickle! The famed pirate captain Buggy the Clown (Jeff Ward) has kidnapped our heroes and is demanding they turn over the map they stole from the Marines or they too will suffer a horrific fate much like the citizens of Orange Town who have also been captured by the ruthless Buggy. Luffy, Zoro, and Nami (Iñaki Godoy, Mackenyu, and Emily Rudd) have to find a way out of this terrifying, albeit whimsical, prison that they find themselves in and it may just require the power of friendship to do so! Will our heroes overcome their differences and put an end to the spooky clown’s reign of terror? What tricks does Buggy have up his sleeve, and can he possibly be a threat to the rubber man, Luffy? Is it everyone’s goal in Hollywood to one day become The Joker? I know that movie made a billion dollars, but it still wasn’t very good!

“What’s that?  You think Antonio Banderas should have won the Oscar?”     *GURGLE GURGLE*     “OH, SO NOW YOU’RE AN EXPERT ON METHOD ACTING!?”
Continue reading “Super Recaps: One Piece – Episode 2” →

Super Recaps: One Piece – Episode 1

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

One Piece the live-action series is owned by Netflix

Directed by Marc Jobst

Before we get into this, I should probably put my cards on the table and confess that I just don’t like the One Piece anime. I’ve seen maybe forty or so episodes back when it was originally airing on Saturday mornings, but it never stuck with me the way that Dragon Ball Z, Yu Yu Hakusho, or even Naruto had back when I was a kid. I love pirate stuff too, which you’d think would make it an easy sell, and yet every attempt I’ve made to watch it just ended with disappointment and apathy. It always felt lacking whenever I compared it to other Shonen anime that I liked and it never felt like more than the bare minimum clichés blown up to an entire series. That’s why I was interested when Netflix announced they were gonna attempt a live-action version since a fresh take on the material could be exactly what I need to truly enjoy this story, and the fact that it wasn’t going to be over a thousand episodes didn’t hurt either. Will this be a show worth checking out, even for those of us who didn’t get the anime’s appeal, or will this fail to be more than just a lesser copy of what we’ve been getting since 1999? Let’s find out!!

Monkey D Luffy (Iñaki Godoy) is not your everyday wannabe pirate. Sure, he has stretchy powers due to a magical fruit he ate as a young boy, but what really makes him special is his unyielding optimism and unflinching courage in the face of danger which he finds himself several times here as he searches for a crew and a ship to start his journey to becoming King of the Pirates! His first stop takes him to a port town ruled by a ruthless Marine Captain named Morgan (Langley Kirkwood) who has a mysterious swordsman named Zoro (Mackenyu) held prisoner and holds a map that both Luffy and a thief named Nami (Emily Rudd) have set their sights on. Will Luffy succeed in convincing these two outcasts to join his crew and find him a ship? What secrets will be revealed on this map that Morgan holds, and what forces will bear down on Luffy and his friends if they do manage to take it from him? I mean look, if you can work together to take out an entire platoon of soldiers within five minutes of meeting each other, you pretty much have to become a crew, right? It’s like an Anime Law or something.

“I’ll take the three on the right and you take out the four on the left.”     “My left or your left?”     “WE BOTH HAVE THE SAME LEFT!”
Continue reading “Super Recaps: One Piece – Episode 1” →

Cinema Dispatch: Cade: The Tortured Crossing

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

Cade: The Tortured Crossing and all the images you see in this review are owned by Neil Breen Films

Directed by Neil Breen

Neil Breen has been a curious figure in the recent cinematic landscape as critics and audiences alike are always on the lookout for the coveted So Bad Its Good movies and seem to have found a cash cow in the form of Breen’s bizarre and uncomfortably amateurish productions.  His latest feature, a sequel to his quasi-superhero flick Twisted Pair, has certainly garnered some buzz off of his reputation and the silly trailer he released, but the thing about Breen that makes him endearing is his clear earnestness and how fame hasn’t stifled his creative drive.  He could be out there on the Tommy Wiseau circuit and embrace the clownish reputation of his work, but he comes off as a sincere, if utterly incompetent and a little regressive, auteur who wants his movies to have genuine acclaim for their deep ideas and disturbing revelations.  Well, I plan to give him what he wants and to take this movie seriously.  No cheap shots, no, tired jokes, and no feigned bafflement at what we’re seeing.  We’re here to find out if Neil Breen has improved as a filmmaker and if his latest project is worth anyone’s time who isn’t in on the joke.  Will this be one step closer to Neil making his Oscar-worthy magnum opus, or has the king of bad movies somehow regressed further into incompetence?  Let’s find out!!

After the events of Twisted Pair where Cade Altair (Neil Breen) crushed the Cuzzx empire using his AI science-magic superpowers, he’s gone into philanthropy and has donated lots of money to a nearby mental asylum.  All is not as it seems, however, as the head doctor (Amy Solomon) is in cahoots with an evil corporation to perform horrible experiments and extract precious fluids from their patients.  A good doctor (Nicole Butler) is trying her best to make the situation better, but Cade is unimpressed when he realizes the terrors going on at this asylum and vows to help its patients become warriors of humanity and justice.  Seems straightforward enough, but what Cade doesn’t know is that his long-lost brother Cale (Neil Breen) has been hired by the corporation to kidnap patients and is trying to use the extracted fluids to make himself as powerful as his brother Cade once again.  Will Cade be able to save these patients from the dastardly corporation and bring justice to the world?  What does Cale have planned for Cade if he was to find out about his misdeeds, and is there any hope for him to turn his life around?  Is it just me, or does it seem that Neil Breen watched The New Mutants during the Pandemic and literally nothing else?

“I gave you clear blueprints for this place!  What the heck happened!?”     “Those weren’t blueprints, they were a stack of comic books with Bible passages glued over everyone’s face!”
Continue reading “Cinema Dispatch: Cade: The Tortured Crossing” →

Cinema Dispatch: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem and all the images you see in this review are owned by Paramount Pictures

Directed by Jeff Rowe

To be frank, I just never got the whole Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles thing. I like the original live-action movie well enough, but it’s not a franchise that I ever got invested in as it just felt like one of those Gen-X holdovers that overstayed its welcome. Well, now the joke’s on me as my childhood is now getting eye rolls from the Zoomers who also can’t escape the prevalence of their previous generation’s obsessions. It’s the circle of life I suppose, and TMNT is taking yet another stab at staying relevant to the youngsters. Will this be another hit for the franchise to go alongside Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or will we be begging for the Bay-Turtles to come back by the time this is over? Let’s find out!!

In the beginning, there was ooze; and said ooze landed on a quartet of cute turtles as well as a very paternal rat. The ooze mutated them to be humanoid, but their ninja skills came from their adoptive rat-dad Splinter (Jackie Chan) looking for a way to protect his kids from the outside world. The turtles are now teenagers named Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Donatello (Nicolas Cantu, Shamon Brown Jr, Brady Noon, and Micah Abbey) and while they can kick all sorts of butt with their ninja skills, they’re mostly used to get groceries and hide in the shadows; away from the scary humans who would surely reject them if they were to come out of the sewers. Sounds rather bleak if you ask me, but fortunately, they run into a high school reporter named April O’Neil (Ayo Edebiri) and she doesn’t immediately turn them in to the authorities to be dissected but instead comes up with a plan to make them heroes so that they can be accepted and go to high school, and she can get the scoop of a lifetime! Their mission is to take down the mysterious Super Fly (Ice Cube) whose been wreaking havoc all over the city with daring heists of top secret scientific hardware, and while the Turtles want nothing more than to live normal lives, getting closer to Super Fly also gets them closer to some very uncomfortable truths about themselves. What is this Super Fly after, and are his goals as evil as his means of achieving them? Is this a win-win scenario for all involved, or will the world never accept them even if they do save the day? Would we honestly be that shocked to learn of sentient turtles in the sewers who fight crime and eat pizza? I mean Congress had a hearing on UFOs and that barely lasted a day in the news cycle!

“I’m just saying, everyone thinking we’re from Krypton is gonna help us with our PR problem, and it’s not like they can prove otherwise! Heck, we don’t know where that Ooze came from! Maybe it’s from space!” “I think you’re stretching there, Mikey.”
Continue reading “Cinema Dispatch: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” →