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Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025) Review

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 "Our lives are not defined by any one action.  Our lives are the sum of our choices." -Luther Stickell With the world on the brink of nuclear war, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team are the only people who can find a way to stop the Entity, a rogue AI system, from destroying everything and prevent everyone else from trying to control it. Spoilers below!  In short, this is a weaker entry in the Mission: Impossible franchise due to it's ridiculous length and dull first half, but it picks up in the second half with some incredible action. What Works: The best performance of the movie comes from Ving Rhames, who plays Ethan's best friend Luther and is the only actor besides Cruise to appear in every entry.  Luther doesn't have a ton of screentime because he is killed off pretty early, but his performance is very emotional, especially the message he leaves behind for Ethan.  It's a really nice way to end the movie and seemingly the franchise. The bi-plane sequen...
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Community: Season 2, Episode 6 "Epidemiology" Review

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 "Hi, Kevin can't come to the phone.  He's on a spaceship with me, George Takei.  Please leave a message." -George Takei "Epidemiology" picks up at Greendale's Halloween party in the library.  Dean Pelton (Jim Rash) provides food in the form of taco meat that he got from a military surplus store, which causes Pierce (Chevy Chase) and others to get sick.  Annie (Alison Brie) gets help from Dr. Rich (Greg Cromer) to treat the sick partiers. Troy (Donald Glover) and Abed (Danny Pudi) attend the party as Ripley and a Xenomorph from Aliens  respectively.  Troy "saves" some babes from Abed's Xenomorph and tries to ask them out, but they are very unimpressed, which makes Troy self-conscious about becoming a nerd instead of being a jock.  He decides to change costumes and dresses as a "Sexy Dracula" and calls Abed a nerd. Rich thinks the illness is food poisoning until Pierce bites Star-Burns (Dino Stamatopoulos), who starts showing the s...
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Community: Season 2, Episode 5 "Messianic Myths and Ancient Peoples" Review

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 "I always thought that Jesus just walked on water and told people not to have abortions, but it's so much cooler than that." -Abed Nadir "Messianic Myths and Ancient Peoples" picks up in Anthropology class with Professor Duncan (John Oliver) and the rest of the class just watching funny, YouTube videos instead of actually looking into anthropology.  Pierce (Chevy Chase) doesn't understand any of it and Shirley (Yvette Nicole Brown) is offended by some of the videos and gets sad when she realizes people are far more interested in these videos than Christianity.  She decides she wants to make a Christian movie to appeal to the youths and asks Abed (Danny Pudi) to help.  He refuses at first, but after reading the New Testament, he agrees and pitches his idea to Shirley.  His pitch is complicated, meta, and compares filmmakers to Jesus and God.  Even the title is ABED .  Shirley doesn't like it and decides to rescind her offer to Abed, which just makes hi...
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Survivor 48 Finale "Only One of Yous Can Win" Gameplay Analysis

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 "I do think I deserve an Emmy." -Kamilla Karthigesu Well, that was certainly a season of Survivor.   I was really enjoying this season until the slog of the Star and Mary boots.  Those were painful to sit through.  It got better with the Shauhin episode, but the finale was a very mixed bag for me.  There were some enjoyable moments and Kyle absolutely deserved the win, but I spent a good deal of the final just feeling annoyed and I wasn't very invested in who won.  I'm glad we're moving on from this season.  I'm sure they're all super nice people, but they didn't make for very compelling television a lot of the time.  Anyway, let's get into who played well and who sucked starting with the Final 5 round of play. Who Played Well: The only person I have in this category for the Final 5 is Kyle.  I believe he should have been the person voted out here.  Everyone would have benefitted from Kyle going home, so I'm going to give him credit for...
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Survivor 48, Episode 12 "Icarus Time" Gameplay Analysis

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 "They should be in a museum." -Shauhin Davari Finally!  Something happened on this season that I can make sense of.  Shauhin going out may not have been the most optimal move, but at least it makes some sense and is interesting.  My stomach nearly dropped out of my gut when I saw that second Mitch vote.  I was going to lose it if we went through all of this just for Mitch to go home, but luckily that wasn't the case.  Let's get into who played well and who sucked. Who Played Well: Joe won Immunity, which prevented any treachery against him specifically.  Now, where things get murkier is everything with Shauhin.  Going to Dad-mode with another grown man wasn't the best idea.  I'm sure Shauhin will remember that if Joe makes it to Final Tribal Council.  And while Joe did fall for what Kyle and Kamilla were selling, we have to remember that not all of it was a lie.  Shauhin was scheming against him and Eva.  Taking out Shauhin is...
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Clown in a Cornfield (2025) Review

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 "Never fuck with Frendo." -Daryl Quinn Maybrook (Katie Douglas) and her father move from Philadelphia to the small town of Kettle Springs, Missouri.  She quickly falls in with a group of kids who are considered bad news by the locals.  At a barn party, a murderous clown emerges from the cornfield and Quinn and her new friends have to fight to survive. Spoilers Below.  There's a lot more going on in this movie than you would think and the only trailer I saw didn't really give anything away.  I can't say much about this movie without getting into spoilers, but it's a really solid horror movie that is a lot smarter than I was expecting.  I really hope it gets a sequel.  Horror fans, go see this one before it gets spoiled for you. What Works; This movie is setup to be a pretty standard slasher/whodunnit and, to some extent, that's what it is.  It does a solid job with those elements, which are the focus of the first half of the film.  We get a c...
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Community: Season 2, Episode 4 "Basic Rocket Science" Review

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 "Hard to believe I'm not really not really in space." -Leonard Briggs "Basic Rocket Science" picks up with an emergency Greendale school board meeting called by Dean Pelton (Jim Rash).  Word has gotten out that Greendale's rival, City College, is launching a space simulator program, which could increase their enrollment to the point that it wipes out Greendale.  The Dean suggests launching their own space simulator program using an old machine that had been in a local museum, "The Kentucky Fried Chicken Eleven Herbs and Space Experience."  It's in bad shape, but the Dean puts together a crew to clean it. The crew ends up being the study group because the design they submitted for the school flag competition was "secretly" a butthole.  They had submitted it anonymously, but one of the study group members had ratted them out after the flag won and became the official school flag.  Annie (Alison Brie) is blamed as she was vocally agains...
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