Movies & TV

By Justin D. Williams In 2016, something unusual began happening in a small South Carolina community. Children reported seeing mysterious clowns hiding in wooded areas, and what initially sounded like an unbelievable story soon developed into something much bigger. As reports of similar sightings surfaced across the country, fear began spreading through neighborhoods, schools, and eventually the national media. Police departments became involved, schools implemented safety pr

By Justin D. Williams When I first heard that Mattel was making a movie based on Matchbox toy cars, I was curious about how they would turn something so simple into a feature-length film. After watching Matchbox: The Movie, I can say that I had a genuinely good time with it. This is an old-fashioned popcorn action adventure that knows how to entertain, even if the screenplay occasionally takes the easy way out. It isn't reinventing the action genre, but I don't believe every

By Justin D. Williams Netflix’s East of Eden is very different from the kind of series I usually cover on Watchlog, and that actually made it more interesting for me. This is a sweeping period drama built around family, resentment, jealousy, love, betrayal, and the way emotional damage can travel from one generation to the next. It is not driven by spectacle or constant twists, so the series has to rely on its characters and performances to keep you invested, and for the most

By Justin D. Williams The V/H/S franchise has always worked because it gives filmmakers room to experiment without completely abandoning the grimy, unpredictable found-footage identity that made the series stand out in the first place. Every installment has its hits and misses, but there is usually that feeling that you are watching footage you were never supposed to see. V/H/S/Mixtape wants to push the franchise further than ever before by using music as its central theme, a

Posted by Justin D Williams Grand Scheme is pleased to announce that the documentary film Bot Love from writer/director Tyler Funk (Anything for Fame) will receive its world premiere on Wednesday, October 21st at 9 pm (9:30 pm NT) on CBC and CBC Gem as part of The Passionate Eye. Bot Love is a character-driven documentary exploring sex, loneliness, and a question at the center of a rapidly changing world: if artificial intimacy feels real, what does that mean for human connec

By Justin D Williams I went into Get Jiro! expecting something stylish, violent, and maybe a little ridiculous. What I did not expect was to burn through all ten episodes almost immediately. By the time the season ended, what stuck with me was not simply the action or the food obsessed premise. It was how much personality this world has, how well the characters are written, and how committed the voice cast is to making the entire thing work. The basic setup is already strange

By Justin D Williams There is nothing wrong with a horror movie taking its time when the atmosphere is strong enough to justify that patience, and Never After Dark understands that. The film follows Airi, a traveling medium whose work involves helping restless spirits move beyond the world of the living. Her latest assignment brings her to an isolated property where what initially appears to be another haunting gradually becomes something far more complicated. Never After Dar

By Justin D Williams After watching the first two episodes of JAY-Z In 8, I’m not entirely convinced I would call this a documentary series. HBO may be presenting it that way, but what I watched feels much closer to a filmed podcast. Jay-Z sits across from Rick Rubin and talks. There isn’t a constant narrator guiding us through his career, there isn’t an overwhelming amount of archival footage filling in every chapter of his life, and the series doesn’t seem particularly inte

By Justin D Williams HBO’s Youth gets off to a very strong start with its first two episodes, introducing us to Alex, a 50-year-old divorced mother trying to figure out what she wants from the next stage of her life while seemingly everyone around her still needs something from her. She is balancing work, dating, aging parents, the physical changes that come with being in her 50s, and a college-age son who is technically grown but does not always act like it. I was only provi

By Justin D Williams I have always felt like Resident Evil has had a rough history when it comes to live-action adaptations. There have been several attempts to bring the games to the big screen, but most of them either moved so far away from the source material that they barely resembled Resident Evil anymore, or they leaned so heavily into action that the horror got pushed to the side. Going into this movie, I was not asking for a perfect recreation of any one game. I just

By Justin D. Williams Sunny Dancer is the kind of coming-of-age drama that could have easily become overwhelmingly sentimental, but instead finds a surprisingly effective balance between humor, teenage awkwardness, friendship, fear, and the complicated experience of trying to move forward after cancer. The story follows Ivy, played by Bella Ramsey, a 17-year-old cancer survivor whose parents send her to Children Run Free, a summer camp for young people whose lives have been a

By Justin D Williams There is a lot about Na Hong jin’s Hope that I genuinely admire. The direction is excellent, the performances are strong, and the movie knows how to create chaos on a massive scale. Unfortunately, underneath all of that technical ambition is a film that left me constantly wanting more from its characters and its world. Hope gives us plenty to look at and plenty to question, but rarely gives us enough information to become emotionally invested in what is h

By Justin D Williams The Runner is one of those movies where I can see exactly why the concept probably sounded good on paper. Gal Gadot leads a race-against-the-clock thriller that essentially asks one simple question: how far would a mother go when her child's life is being controlled by someone on the other end of a phone? The film takes that idea and turns Gadot loose across London, constantly running from one location to another while following a series of instructions.

By Justin D Williams Romantic comedies are at their best when they understand that chemistry and charm matter just as much as the story itself. Finding Emily does exactly that. It is not a movie that reinvents the genre, and in truth, you can probably figure out where it is heading long before it gets there. What won me over is how enjoyable the journey is. The movie has an easygoing personality, a likable cast, and just enough sincerity to make its familiar setup feel refres

By Justin D Williams The Robot Chicken Adult Swim Special is a fun celebration of twenty-five years of Adult Swim, bringing together characters and references from different generations of the network in one stop-motion crossover. The setup is actually pretty clever, with various Adult Swim personalities gathering aboard a cruise ship before everything inevitably goes wrong and Harvey Birdman becomes involved in sorting through the aftermath. I liked the idea because it gives

By Justin D Williams Netflix’s S&X is one of those shows where the title and premise immediately tell you that it is going to deal with subjects that television sometimes struggles to discuss seriously. A drama centered around a sex therapist could easily become overly provocative, uncomfortable for the sake of being uncomfortable, or rely heavily on comedy to get through its subject matter. What surprised me about S&X is how quickly it moves beyond that surface-level premise

By Justin D Williams DC has released plenty of animated Batman movies over the years, and while many of them have been entertaining, it has been a long time since one completely grabbed me the way Batman: Knightfall Part 1 did. This feels like DC animation rediscovering what made its best adaptations special in the first place. It respects the comics without simply recreating famous panels, understands the psychology behind the story, gives us an absolutely terrifying Bane, a

By Justin D Williams On paper, Ann Droid sounds like it could be another comedy built around one simple joke: an older woman gets stuck living with an incompetent robot carer, the robot misunderstands everything humans say, chaos follows. While the BBC series certainly gets plenty of laughs out of that premise, what surprised me is how much more there is underneath it. Ann Droid is funny, strange, warm and occasionally quite touching, with a story that uses artificial intelli

By Justin D Williams Star Wars: Visions Presents The Ninth Jedi takes one of the most memorable stories from the original Star Wars: Visions anthology and expands it into an eight-episode anime series. It continues Kara’s journey as she trains under Margrave Juro, searches for her missing father, and becomes involved in a growing conflict surrounding the future of the Jedi. After finishing the season, I came away impressed by the wonderful animation, exciting action, and Kara

By Justin D Williams The BritBox Original and ITV drama Gone takes what could have been a fairly standard missing person mystery and turns it into something much more psychological. Instead of relying on constant twists or dramatic reveals, the series focuses on behavior, trauma, control, and the assumptions we make when someone does not react to tragedy as we expect. I enjoyed the series overall. The mystery kept me interested, the performances were excellent, and I liked th