jskotz

I really used to enjoy the alternate story lines of the What If comics growing up as alt-history allows for a lot of creative story telling. These three seasons of What If have mostly been disappointing. Season 1 was fun, 2 had some interesting stories, but 3 was a waste of time.

Other than the Darcy & Howard the Duck story, S3 just served to try and create the biggest over the top spectacles without any real creativity. We were so bored by the season finale it was brutal to finish.

I understand sticking to the MCU stories and plot lines, but the writers had so many interesting grounded stories they could have told and instead went down the easy route of just adding more and more and more.

"Late Night with the Devil" takes us back to 1977, where it envisions a fictional fourth commercial broadcast network competing against the reigning king of late-night talk shows, Johnny Carson. The rival host, Jack Delroy (played by David Dastmalchian), is a local Chicago talk show host who gets bumped up to the national level. The film opens with a five-minute prologue that sets up Jack's backstory, including a key biographical fact that hints at the movie's eventual outcome.

During sweeps week-a quarterly event when networks try to boost ratings by airing their most outrageous content-Jack and his producer, Leo (Josh Quong Tart), decide to take their Halloween broadcast up a notch. They invite a psychic named Christou (Fayssal Bazzi) and Carmichael the Conjurer (Ian Bliss) to the show. Things take a dark turn when bestselling parapsychologist Dr. June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon) interviews Lilly (Ingrid Torelli), the sole survivor of a satanic cult's mass suicide.

The film expertly balances absurd dark humor with eerie horror elements, with a perfect mix of 70's tone and atmosphere. Dastmalchian's performance as Jack Delroy is fantastic, and the practical effects add to the overall creepiness.

However, the movie stumbles in its execution. The insistence on being a "found footage" film built around a buried broadcast creates unrealistic expectations for everything that follows. While the gooey practical effects are impressive, the movie doesn't always feel beholden to the visual conventions of circa-1977 American late-night talk shows. Perhaps this departure from realism is intentional, but it can be jarring for viewers expecting a more consistent tone.

And then there's the ending. Unfortunately, it's a complete shift that destroys the atmosphere the rest of the movie worked hard to establish. The terrible CGI undermines the tension, leaving viewers disappointed. It's a shame because "Late Night with the Devil" had the potential to be a really good movie, but that awful ending prevents me from wholeheartedly recommending it.

This might have been a 8-9 but that ending drops it to 6-7.

Just left a first showing of Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. Fantastic job of world building and character development for an original storyline based off the first trilogy without relying on selling out the franchise just to make money. Set 300 years after the story of Ceasar this builds off that mythos but doesn't require that you've seen Rise, Dawn, and War (even though you should).

Being vague without being a spoiler, I didn't care for the last scene of KOTPOTA. It was all implied by the actions of another character and I didn't feel like it needed to be shown. That character should have ridden off and left that plot point open.