The Review Show

Episode 89. We used our winter break to watch the entire BBC series Sherlock, a contemporary take on the classic Sherlock Holmes mystery stories. Dr. John Watson is a returning solider trying to find his footing in London again, unsure if what he really wants is a quiet life or a new kind of exciting battle to wage. Sherlock Holmes is a private investigator and deductive genius who can't sympathiz...

It's our 4th birthday! Wow. It feels like it's been forever. Whether you have stuck around with us since the beginning, or are a new listener, thank you so much. We could not do any of this without you. Melissa and Kyle have been chugging along, Mick and Ignacio have joined the crew, and we even started a new show, Crossplay. Here's to four more years! Click here to watch a video of this episode....

Episode 88. For our final episode of 2019, we went with the holiday-themed comic The Last Christmas, by Deadpool writers Brian Posehn and Gerry Duggan. In a post-apocalyptic world where he hasn't worked in years, Santa has lost faith in himself, but there's still one little kid out there who believes in him. Santa tries to resurrect his giving spirit and stop a band of marauders and zombie mutants...

Episode 87. We watched Gremlins (1984) and Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990), from director Joe Dante, writer Chris Columbus, and producer Steven Spielberg. Billy receives a mysterious creature as a Christmas present and is warned to never expose it to bright light, never get it wet, and never feed it after midnight. When the rules are broken, the creature can turn into a destructive and chaotic gr...

Episode 86. We watched the 13-episode anime series The Devil is a Part-timer. Satan escapes his dimension of angels and demons through a portal that sends him to modern day Japan, but he's too weak to return home. He has to invent an identity, rent an apartment, and find a job to make a new living here. He's determined to be the most powerful employee that fast food restaurant MgRonald's has ever...

 Episode 85. We watched the mind-bending sci-fi movie Primer, a 2004 indie feature from writer/director/star/everything Shane Carruth. Two engineers accidentally invent time travel and start reliving their days over again, learning the limits of this technology as they cheat the stock market for the money they could never get from investors. Each of them has personal goals for this time travel, an...

Episode 84. We watched season one of Ben 10 a cartoon from 2004 created by Man of Action. Ben Tennyson is a normal boy on the worst summer vacation of his life when an alien device that crash landed on earth attaches itself to his wrist. The watch-like device gives him the power to transform into 10 different aliens, each with unique powers, for a short amount of time. So Ben does what any boy his...

Episode 83. We watched the new Netflix original series Living With Yourself, starring Paul Rudd and… Paul Rudd?! Feeling depressed and unsuccessful, Miles tries out a mysterious spa experience that promises to make him into a new man, but he is shocked to find they mean it literally. He's been cloned, replaced by a better version of himself, and he wasn't supposed to live to see it happen. Now the...

Episode 82. We watched season one of the British crime show Happy Valley. Catherine is a older policewoman trying to keep drugs out of her small town. She runs into a kidnapping gone wrong and finds that a personal enemy from her past is involved and could threaten her family. This is a violent story, but tight plotting and strong characters made it a rewarding watch for us! Click here to watch a...

Episode 81. To cap off October, we watched the British horror movie Ghost Stories, written and directed by Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman, based off their stage play. A paranormal investigator is contacted by his hero to debunk the three cases he could never solve himself. These tales of ghosts and demons make the investigator look into his own past, where nothing is what it seems. Click here to watc...

Episode 80. We read the first two volumes of horror comic Harrow County by writer Cullen Bunn and artist Tyler Crook. Decades ago, the townsfolk of Harrow killed a witch who threatened to return one day, and it looks like 18-year-old Emmy is her second coming. Emmy is frightened of her new powers but is determined overcome the looming monstrosity inside her. She may be a witch, but she's going to...

 Episode 79. We watched Paranorman, the 2012 family feature from the stop-motion animators at Studio Laika. A young boy named Norman can talk to ghosts, an ability that his family and the rest of his small New England town don't understand. But when a witch killed there 300 years ago terrorizes the town and brings the dead back to life, Norman is the only one who can talk to the witch, determined...

Episode 78. We read the first two volumes of Scott Synder's American Vampire comics. The outlaw Skinner Sweet is the first vampire made in America, and he possesses a set of powers unknown to the rest of his kind. We follow him through his origins in the Old West, to 1920s Hollywood where he turns a young actress into the second of these incredible new American vampires, and to 1930s Las Vegas whe...

Episode 77. To kick off October, the month of spooks, we watched Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula. In this lavish Gothic tale, Dracula traps young barrister Jonathan Harker in his castle and travels to London to win over Harker's fiance Mina, who he believes is the reincarnation of his dead wife from centuries ago. But when Mina's best friend Lucy falls under his vampiric spell, Dracul...

Episode 76. We read the first two volumes of Greg Rucka and Matthew Southworth's Stumptown comic, ahead of it premiering as a new TV show! Dex Parios is a Portland-based PI with a history of gambling debt, failed relationships with men and women, and a younger brother at home to take care of. She takes cases on a casino owner's missing granddaughter and a rock star's missing guitar as she tries to...

Episode 75. We watched the truly bizarre 2010 film Rubber, directed by Quentin Dupieux. A tire awakens to sentience and the ability to blow up living creatures with his mind. A group of spectators watch from the hillside with binoculars as he rolls around a small American Southwest desert community, murdering and falling in love. A sheriff struggles to keep control over the tire, the town, and the...

Episode 74. We read the first two volumes of Dan Slott's 2004 run on She-Hulk. The east coat's top law firm for superhuman cases wants Jennifer Walters on their team -- but not She-Hulk. Jennifer struggles to reconcile her straight-laced bookish old self with the bold green powerhouse she's become, as she wages battles in New York courtrooms as well as the wild reaches of space. Click here to watc...

Episode 73. We watched season one of AMC's historical horror show The Terror. This is an anthology series, so season one is a self-contained story! It's 1845 and two British ships are sailing through arctic Canada, trying to find a waterway between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. They become frozen into the ice, trapped for over a year, and need to start thinking about survival instead of discove...

Episode 72. This week we read volume one of Hip-Hop Family Tree by Ed Piskor. It's a non-fiction history lesson on the origins of hip-hop in 1970s New York, from house parties to the first record pressings, through to its introduction to mainstream audiences in the early 1980s. Educate yourselves, and go listen to the "Hip-hop Family Tree vol. 1" Spotify playlist that Kyle complied to accompany th...

Episode 71. We watched Annhilation, a 2018 sci-fi/horror film from director Alex Garland. A meteor hits a lighthouse on the coast of Florida and the area around the crash site becomes a growing bubble of stunning and strange mutations, known as the Shimmer. Lena's husband went into the Shimmer on a military mission and wandered out a year later with no memories. Lena, with her own history as a sol...

Episode 70. We read the first two volumes of a manga called I'm in Love and It's the End of the World by Taamo. Mahiru Yanase has always lived in the shadow of her more popular twin sister Mayo and is resigned to being "the other Yanase." She believes that she is destined for disappointment and if anything good happens to her, something bad is sure to follow. It's her first day at a new high schoo...

Episode 69. There was only one choice for Episode 69: we read the first two volumes of the comic Sex Criminals by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky. Suzie and Jon can both stop time when they orgasm and believed they were the only one with this power -- until they slept with each other. They're young, they're in love, they believe they're unstoppable, and they're going to rob a bank. But where there...

Episode 68. We watched the first season of the DC Universe exclusive show Titans. Dick Grayson is a detective trying to distance himself from the Robin identity, Rachel Roth is a young girl haunted by a demon spirit, Kory Anders has no memories and is trying to piece together her past and her powers, and Gar Logan can turn into a tiger but he has never bitten anybody. Together they need to fight t...

Episode 67. This week on The Review Show we watched Sweetness & Lightning, a 12 episode anime all about good food. Kohei's wife has recently passed away and he isn't much of a cook. He doesn't have much time either being a full time teacher and having to care for his daughter. His daughter, Tsumugi, is in kindergarten and is just starting to tire of frozen and boxed meals. When one of his stud...

Episode 66. We watched Metropolis, a 2001 anime film based on a manga by Osamu Tezuka, written by Katsuhiro Otomo and directed by Rintaro. Metropolis is a city full of robot workers who are mistrusted by their human neighbors, and the top industrialist has secretly commissioned a highly advanced robot duplicate of his deceased daughter. He plans for her to be a leader of the city, but his adopted...