I am a freelance film critic and podcast host from Vancouver Canada! I am a co-founder of the Cascadia Film & Television Critics Association, and a voting member of the International Film Society Critics, Pandora International Critics, and the Online Film & Television Association.
I maintain bylines at Exclaim!, Awesome Friday!, That Shelf, ForReel, Movies We Texted About, KeithLovesMovies, and I can be heard regularly on the Contra Zoom Podcast and The LAMBCast.
The first film of the late Val Kilmer, was chosen as the MOTM after being suggested by Jeanette Ward from “The Mundane Adventures of a Fangirl” blog. Almost two years ago she promoted “Real Genius” to MOTM status. It appears that Jeanette has a thing for Mr. Kilmer. After watching…
From Wall-E and RoboCop to Short Circuit and I, Robot, we are well-served with stories of robots built to serve that develop distinct personalities and humanity, and then eventually save the day. Apple TV+‘s Murderbot, the latest entry in this subgenre, mashes up several versions of this story into something that straddles the line between the familiar and the…
The Lambcast is back and we have a big one for you to kick off the Summer season. The MCU seems to have been in the doldrums for a while and the characters in this movie have apparently been watching because they are all depressed as well. Maybe a new…
Black Mirror is the successor to series like The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits, using science fiction narratives to expand and expound on themes of our everyday lives and make us think deeply about the world around us. It’s incredibly well produced and has given us some of the finest science fiction stories…
The first episode introduces each of the couples as they are arriving at the lake house. The initial moments are light and fun, and set up the group dynamics almost immediately as a group of old friends who know almost, but not quite, everything about one another. The first night…
Sequels and prequels are individually difficult. The former have to carry on story threads and push characters into new places in satisfying ways, the latter have to thread the needle of being their own entity while directly leading into the events that viewers have already witnessed. Andor season two then…
This past Wednesday, April 16th, was 2025 National Canadian Film Day! To help celebrate, I contributed to this list of great Canadian films you should totally watch. All the films on the list are great, but the two I chose to write about are Last Night and The Red Violin,…
We continue our series going through the entire catalog of A24’s films. On this episode Dakota and Matthew are looking at 2021’s Val directed by Leo Scott and Ting Poo. The film is a documentary using actor Val Kilmer’s extensive home video collection to cover his life and career up to his diagnoses…
It took four swings at the poll to finally win, but Lisa Leaheey of the “Pictures and Conversations Podcast” was never in doubt about her “Final Destination”. The April Movie of the Month has traditionally been a Franchise lookback and this year is no different. Starting in 2015, we did…
Doctor Who has been running forever and has delved into every genre in every conceivable way. Recasting the main role every few years means that there have been fun doctors, dour doctors, weird doctors, and everything in between. The one thing that holds the show together, though, is the most basic premise of…
Growing up can be hard. There’s no way around it; the journey from young to old, naive to wise, and irresponsible to responsible has bumps in the road for all of us. For some people, the process is thrust upon them, and others avoid it like the plague, but it’s a…
There’s a particular balance that biopics have to strike. On the one hand, major points in their subject’s life need to be covered in order to be complete, and, on the other hand, the story needs to be told from a unique perspective in order to be dynamic and engaging…
Clive Barker is famous for scaring people. Whether it’s demons from the underworld or malevolent spirits, his films have provided some of the best scares of the last few decades, and now his formula has been adapted to a story for kids. Yes, you read that right: Night of the…
There’s nothing more exciting in film than a big, ambitious swing for the fences. This might mean assembling every hero in the stable to fight against the odds, gambling on a big twist that recontextualizes the entire movie, or — as in the case of O’Dessa— a musical genre mashup made…
Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man, starring Christopher Abbott, Julia Garner, and Matilda Firtharrives on home video this week. The film received mixed reviews from critics (including our Manuel São Bento), but a UHD Blu-ray release is always a reason to celebrate, and this one is no exception. So, let’s take a closer look at Wolf Man on UHD Blu-ray.…
The March Movie of the Month is an exploitation thriller that doubles as a disaster film. If there are consistent threads in the 70s wave of disaster pictures it was that Irwin Allen Produced them or Charlton Heston starred in them. The outsized producer is absent this week but we…
Where even to begin with The Electric State? The latest film from the Russo Brothers features an all star cast and is set in a 1990s-influenced retro future full of pop culture references, but fails at almost every turn to be anything interesting at all. Let’s not mince words here,…
Jay and Mark are joined by Matthew Simpson from Awesome Friday (@SMatthewAF and @awesomefridayca on X) to discuss “Untimely Jam” the 11th chapter of DBS. In this episode, they also talk about big waves, helicopters in creature features, and Renny films that should be in the Criterion collection. Enjoy! This week,…
Before the days of Disney+, Marvel Studios struck a deal with Netflix to bring several of their street-level heroes to the small screen. There were several, but the first of them was Daredevil, a master acrobat and vigilante who wears a red combat suit adorned with devil’s horns and who is,…
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Two coworkers, one a little uptight and by the book and the other perhaps a little too loose for their own good, have their fates and jobs intertwined by happenstance. Then, hilarity—with a dash of honesty and vulnerability—ensues. This is the tried-and-true setup…