The Review Show

Episode 159. We're starting another monthly series covering one show through to its conclusion, talking about season one of Netflix's German sci-fi drama Dark! It's 2019 and a small rural town is struggling after the disappearance of a local boy. Tensions rise as more kids disappear, and we see how this has happened before in 1953 and 1986. There is a time travel portal hidden in a cave in the woods, with mysterious forces trying to use it to change the past or maintain it as it was. Characters' lives intersect and loop, and there are as many interpersonal secrets as there are metaphysical mysteries.

Click here to watch a video of this episode.

Episode 158. We watched the 2020 movie The Kid Detective, a very dark comedy from writer and director Evan Morgan. Abe Applebaum started a detective business out of his treehouse when he was a kid, and successfully solved over 200 cases… but couldn't solve the disappearance of his secretary, fellow middle-schooler Gracie Gulliver. He's never forgotten about that case, even now as a struggling man in his 30s. The town that once loved him has lost all interest in him and he's hired for only the most menial of mysteries, until a young girl asks him to help investigate her boyfriend's brutal murder.

Click here to watch a video of this episode.

Episode 157. We watched the new Netflix original movie The Mitchells vs. The Machines, from some of the creative team that brought you Into the Spider-Verse and Gravity Falls. Katie Mitchell loves her family but has never quite fit in with them, and she's excited to go to film school and be surrounded by people who understand her. The family tries to bond during a road trip across the country bringing Katie to college, but there's one major roadblock: an army of robots programmed by a scorned AI is capturing every human and launching them into space.

Click here to watch a video of this episode.

Episode 156. We watch the 2018 anime film I Want To Eat Your Pancreas. It is an emotional tale about a boy who befriends a girl is his class who is dying. The story focuses on the relationship that blossoms between them and the lasting effect it has. This one will make you cry.

Click here to watch a video of this episode.

Episode 155. We read the first two volumes of the the comic book The Unwritten by Mike Carey and Peter Gross.The world is obsessed with a book series about boy wizard Tommy Taylor, and this has made a minor celebrity out of Tom Taylor, the author's son and supposed inspiration for the literary hero. He becomes the center of a media storm when he's both accused of being a fraud and announced as the real magical Tommy destined to save everyone. As he looks into his past, he finds clues to the real legacy his father left him, and learns that truth and fiction can bleed together with dangerous results.

Click here to watch a video of this episode.

Episode 154. We're concluding our monthly series on Halt and Catch Fire with its fourth and final season! It is now 1993 and teenage Haley has inspired Gordon and Joe to create a search engine website that users can make into their home on the internet -- but Donna's investment firm is working on the same idea. Cameron's video game career is faltering and she is trying to find new professional and personal paths as she reconsiders her romance with Joe. When tragedy hits, the group's personal relationships become more important than ever and they need to find a new way forward.

Click here to watch a video of this episode.

Episode 153. We watched Guillermo Del Toro's 2013 movie Pacific Rim. Huge monsters are suddenly rising out of the Pacific ocean and wreaking havoc on coastal cities. Humanity bands together and creates equally huge robots known as jaegers to fight against the kaiju, piloted by cybernetically linked partners. A veteran whose brother died while linked to him and the adopted daughter of the jager program's commander, inexperienced but determined to fight, team up and form a bond strong enough to pilot one of the few remaining jaegers in a last ditch effort to stop the source of the kaiju for good.

Click here to watch a video of this episode.

Episode 152. This week we listened to the audio drama horror story In Another Room, presented by The Violet Hour and adapted from E3W's immersive theater experience. Paranormal investigator Wendy Morrow stays the night in an infamous haunted mansion and becomes trapped there, seeing over 130 years of ghost stories play out in front of her -- and the ghosts can see her too. Each episode focuses on a historical haunting in a different room of the house as Wendy attempts to find the origin of this house's malevolent energy and what she can do to help bring peace to the ghosts.

Click here to watch a video of this episode.

Episode 151. In honor of our 151st episode, we're revisiting our childhoods this week watching Pokemon: The First Movie, Mewtwo Strikes Back! Mewtwo is a new Pokemon engineered by Team Rocket scientists, cloned from a fossil of the ancient Mew. He awakens to incredible psychic power and an existential crisis -- why was he made? what is his purpose? how does he fit into the world as a clone? He invites several trainers to his fortress, including Ash and friends, and attempts to clone their Pokemon for a tournament to prove the strength and value of clones and why they should inherit the world.

Click here to watch a video of this episode.

Episode 150. We're back for more relationship drama and crooked business dealings in Halt and Catch Fire season three! Mutiny is growing in San Francisco and Cameron and Donna see conflicting paths for the company, which could derail further progress if they don't find a way to compromise. Joe's new company is launching its own anti-virus software, built on programming that should be credited to Gordon, and he experiences unforeseen challenges in trying to make it free to the public. A young programmer leaves Mutiny and approaches Joe with big ideas, and this secret side project could mean disaster for people at both companies.

Click here to watch a video of this episode.