Charlie Ridgely

To this point, the people bringing GI Joe to life have seemingly...not ever watched the cartoon. I mean I'm sure they have but it doesn't ever seem like that based on the movies that get made. GI Joe is thoroughly silly and over the top. They shoot lasers and Cobra puts the Joes through deadly funhouses and all kinds of weird shit. The movies are all "we gotta stop the nukes for the president" and it's just way too literal of a take for what should be a lot wackier. Think about creatives like Lord/Miller or Daley/Goldstein. Those are the kinds of voices needed to make GI Joe really work.

This is kind of a rhetorical question because the answer is obviously the legwork that was done long before GoT was on HBO, but the comparisons between Stranger Things and Game of Thrones really got me thinking about it. Well that and the premier of Knight of the Seven Kingdoms on the horizon. Game of Thrones completely botched its ending and spent the better part of two years disappointing the majority of its fan base, whereas Stranger Things had a pretty bad final season that concluded what many consider a pretty great finale. Yet here I sit, feeling the opposite about the two franchises overall. Despite that awful ending, I have still clung to everything GoT has thrown at me since. House of the Dragon is excellent and I can't wait for Knight. When I think about Stranger Things, though, I'm not sure I can find a single give-a-damn in my body for a spinoff show. Maybe there's not any other answer here to dig into, but I'm curious what others think about it. What has made Game of Thrones so lasting for so many of us? How did the franchise manage to keep us locked in despite being known for the most disappointing ending in TV?

Best part about Horrified is you can play just one person if you really want. So there are always opportunities to dive into it.

Not a video game but my big goal for 2026 is to begin DMing a D&D campaign at some point. I've been playing a lot but I really want to build a homebrew world for some friends and actually run it.

I like the new season so far but not quite as much as Season 1. That's not really a complaint necessarily because it was a high bar.

Really anything in Community because I was in college when it first came out and there is so much about that show I didn't get/fully appreciate at the time. But I also think about some of the big Game of Thrones episodes that had not only me but everyone I knew totally captivated there for a few years. I'd probably single out "The Winds of Winter" (S6 finale). The opening of that episode with everything in King's Landing and Cersei's plan all coming together with Ramin Djwadi's "Light of the Seven" playing over the whole thing -- that's about as riveted as I can remember being by an episode of television.

Wondering everybody's thoughts on the Fallout Season 2 premiere. There's been so much build up getting to the Mojave and New Vegas, curious if you all liked how things kicked off.

Matt Wood. Bit of an unknown but he played Belushi in Saturday Night and if you watch that movie, you'll see the Wolverine poking through.

15 years ago today, NBC aired Community's "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas," which I'll tell anyone who will listen is the greatest holiday episode in TV history. That's probably a "me" thing more than a consensus, so I'm curious what others think.

This feels like the right place to say Home Alone is a Christmas movie in the same way that Die Hard is. Christmas is central to the plot but it's also not about Christmas. To answer the question you're actually asking probably Long Kiss Goodnight?

Nothing has topped Fallout 3 for me. That's partly because most of that was my last year of high school and throughout college, so I had a lot more free time. But still nothing has come close.

There are probably a lot of these I'm forgetting but when thinking about direct sequels the first thing that come to mind is Pacific Rim: Uprising. Such a wet fart of a follow up to a genuinely amazing movie.

Magpie would make a lot of sense and feels like a very Matt Reeves type of character. But if I could have any wish here, I wanna see Nora Fries. Flip Victor and Nora's roles for Freeze and let me see how Reeves can spin a villain like that.

I think my biggest issue is a broad one, and it's just that everybody seems to continue taking the wrong lessons from every success within the genre. Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool in that first movie was pitch perfect. Instead of inspecting what actually made that film work (true emotional stakes, chip on your shoulder approach, great direction from Tim Miller), they pushed all their eggs into the "Reynolds quip at the camera" basket. The overall MCU with the multiverse is a similar situation. No Way Home and, to a lesser extent, Deadpool & Wolverine pulled off some big returns/appearances because they were in service of something bigger than a moment or even a single movie. Neither film is perfect but their gimmicks had real purpose and weight to them. So often that isn't the case. Despite how many theater reaction videos go viral on TikTok or how many skins and dances get purchased on Fortnite or whatever, people still want authentic storytelling and characters they can connect with. Comic book movies aren't exempt from that, even if some studios got away with it for a bit. Guardians of the Galaxy wasn't good because Howard the Duck popped up on screen, it was good because it's about a group of flawed individuals learning to be vulnerable and fighting against their programming to become better people. At the end of the day that's all I need from these movies, and it's frustrating how rare that seems to be.

See I think Multiverse of Madness actually pulled off the character work where so many others don't. Yeah it had too many superfluous alt reality bits, but at its core the film is a two-hander. It's Strange and it's Scarlet Witch, and they both had so much to chew on throughout. Whereas Brave New World I'm fully with you, they had too many characters and also failed to really do justice by the ones that mattered. Which has absolutely been the biggest issue plaguing the MCU.

I think I could survive a single Scream movie, but I definitely couldn't make it through a sequel. I think I could slide into a Randy Meeks situation for one movie and get kept around because my love for movies could be used as bait to paint me as a potential suspect. But once that novelty is gone in a second movie I'd be toast.

I prefer weekly almost always with any title. But I'll take the batches over a full season binge drop any day.

It's Raph for me, mainly because of the original live-action movie. That said, across all versions of TMNT, Splinter is my favorite character. He's not a turtle so not really a valid answer to the question, but hey while I'm here I might as well shout out one of my favorite movie/TV dads. As great as he is in that first live-action film, he might be even better in Mutant Mayhem.

Not to be the lame/basic one here but I mean it's gotta be Joker, right? Any version but specifically Leto's, for reasons we all know from the BTS stories.

MOUNTAIN DEW PITCH BLACK. That limited comeback from a couple years ago was absolutely terrible.

There are several I revisit just about every year but the only one that is actual clockwork for me is Home Alone. It's always been one of my all-time favorite movies but my first kid was born on Dec 1 and our first night in the hospital we turned on the TV and it was playing for the start of Freeform's 25 Days of Christmas. Kinda felt like our first family movie night so my wife and I go back and watch it every year on the little guy's birthday.

Finally watching The Long Walk now that Lionsgate's 4K has come out (really wanted to catch it in theaters but we had a baby in July and getting out has been more challenging). It just got me thinking what everybody sees as the best Stephen King adaptation. I think The Shining is probably the best movie based on King's works but obviously he has feelings about how much Kubrick veered from the material. What are your top picks?

I don't think we'll get another thing like Stranger Things for a while. And while it has hit the zeitgeist in a special way, it's not the biggest Netflix hit from a pure viewership numbers standpoint. The truth of the matter is the overall streaming quality has gone down while the subscription prices have skyrocketed, leading to a smaller overall audience. When Stranger Things hit, we all had a Netflix subscription. The number of Netflix subs has apparently increased over the years, but it seems like fewer and fewer people are actually super invested in what the service is putting out. And Netflix's own models have changed. As much as they want franchise tentpole stuff, they have been much more profitable working on shows like Virgin River. Even Squid Game and Wednesday had a lot less hype around their returning seasons, while the more affordable shows that can film on a regular schedule are gaining viewership. If there's a staple streaming show to come, only Apple and HBO have the ability to grab that level of attention. It's strange because Apple TV isn't nearly as big as the others but the shows have such a great reputation that they're able to bring viewers in. Look at Ted Lasso and Severance. And HBO has the network name to carry prestige and quality. TLDR: There's no new Stranger Things coming, I don't think. We're about to see a pivot back to more sustainable TV ideas with lower budgets and longer episode counts. I believe we're more likely to see another Yellowstone-esque cable drama hit than another Stranger Things.

Marty Supreme. That trailer felt like everything exciting about this current film wave A24 has spearheaded while also feeling like the kind of movie we all remember renting numerous times at the video store and our dads falling asleep to while it was on TNT. It looks like a timeless kind of movie that we don't get much of anymore and I hope the film itself captures that.

As the year winds down I've started to gather some thoughts on the best physical media releases in 2025, and I wanted to see what other collectors enjoyed most this year. Any 4K restorations from studios, boutique stuff (like Criterion, Arrow, Shout), or even new releases that just really captured your attention? I'm interested to see if there are any releases I missed this year that people have a lot of love for. Personally, Sony's Monty Python and the Holy Grail 50th Anniversary 4K has been unparalleled for me. There's a lot of great work being done with these restorations, but taking a movie that is almost known for looking bad and mining the original beauty out of it is something you don't see very often. Some honorable mentions include: Dark City (Arrow), Rocky Horror Picture Show (Disney), Sinners (WB), Lilo & Stitch animated restoration (Disney), Frailty (Lionsgate Limited).