Tech

Snake Eyes film review: More like “G.I. No”

Henry Golding, seen here doing one of many unnecessary combat-adjacent poses in Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins. Earlier this year, I gave a tepid recommendation to Mortal Kombat‘s latest theatrical reboot. What I didn’t know at the time was how quickly I’d feel nostalgic for its quality and pacing. That’s how I felt after Snake […]

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Black Widow review: ScarJo’s sendoff is MCU’s best standalone film yet

Natasha (Scarlett Johansson) and Yelena (Florence Pugh) meet after a long separation in this week’s Black Widow. [credit: Marvel Studios ] This week’s Black Widow may have put a new hit Marvel franchise in motion. It’s intimate, aggressive, funny, and brutal in every PG-13 sense possible. It’s an Eastern European Marvel superhero tale that gives […]

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Fast 9 film review: Fast and furious enough, but buckle up for potholes

Every Fast & Furious film has at least one stand-out car-brand showdown, and in Fast 9, that honor goes to Dodge (left) versus Ford (right). [credit: Universal Pictures ] A few months ago, ahead of this week’s launch of Fast 9, I began pulling myself out of the wreckage that was the COVID-19 pandemic by […]

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Mortal Kombat film review: Bloody enough, not fun enough

You can probably hear the title being screamed upon seeing this image. [credit: WarnerMedia ] Mortal Kombat‘s third live-action movie, launching this week after over two decades of cinematic silence, is a weird one. It’s not good. You wouldn’t mistake this for a classic action or martial arts film, and it borrows clumsily from genre giants […]

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Godzilla vs. Kong review: Kaiju greatness that lives up to its absurd title

Recently, I’ve heard the phrase “pandemic fatigue” come up in terms of people getting antsy about returning to “normal.” I don’t know how long we have left to go (though Ars has plenty of articles on the topic), but I can say that even through my vigilance about safety and health, my own patience sometimes […]

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Bad Girls: Grindhouse chills, thrills, and kills shot on a $16K budget

“Thank heaven for little girls,” Special Agent Cannon sarcastically declares off-screen as we get our first look at the Bad Girls. [credit: Films Colacitta ] You’ve probably never heard of the underground film industry in Columbia, South Carolina—which is understandable, since it has only produced three films in the last 10 years or so. Two […]