Review: "Deadpool & Wolverine"

In this the third Deadpool outing, Ryan Reynolds’ meta-comedic antics remain amusing, if a bit tarnished by their lack of novelty. The pairing with Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine-as-straightman creates an odd couple dynamic that is entertaining, but falls somewhat flat. Nor does it help that all this is set in a cinematic universe that is, at this late stage, utterly played-out and still scrabbling frantically for a second wind in the deflationary wake of the Infinity Wars saga.

Though Reynolds/Deadpool declares himself “Marvel Jesus”, simultaneously destined to save the in-world multiverse and the real-world cinematic universe franchise, this declaration is unconvincing in either reality. The story has too many factors undermining it to allow it to rise to the level of significance needed to matter much at all.

Read more

Review: Amazon's "The Rings of Power"

Customarily I am careful to avoid spoilers, or at least to provide ample warning to protect those who wish to have a pure experience of a work. In this case there is no need, because the work under review is already spoiled. The first half of the first episode of Season 2 of “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” put to rest any vestigial notion that there is in it anything worthy of associating with Tolkien, or of consumption for mere entertainment’s sake—even in the idle desperation of severe boredom.

Read more

The Task Before Us

The task before conservatives, is not to conserve. Whatever we thought we were conserving, it has already been lost. Our task is to rebuild.

Observe, for instance, the Rule of Law. It may be obvious to conservatives that as far as the law is concerned, the task is to preserve the influence of the common law tradition, while holding the line on the only sensible method of interpreting constitutional and statutory law: to decipher, based on the text and the historical time in which the text was written, its original meaning, and to regard this meaning as the law’s only binding sense. But in fact, this understanding of the law was already lost 50 years ago when the court made abortion legal.

When the great Justice Antonin Scalia restored true interpretation to the court, he was not conserving anything. He was rebuilding.

We must do the same.

As we rebuild, we must remember that what was lost can never be recaptured as it was. We can never go back. A man cannot return to his mother’s womb to be born again, and at the entrance to paradise lost there stands and angel barring our return with a flaming sword.

What we rebuild, we build new. But if we build rightly, and well, we can perhaps breath into the nostrils of this new thing the life of the lost, so that it is animated by the same life-giving spirit.

Review: 'Thor: Ragnarok'

Fun, funny, with moments of aesthetically pleasing badassery (like the slow motion assault of the Valkyries on the Goddess of Death, Hela), set to classic tunes, 'Thor: Ragnarok' applies the winning formula of 'Guardians of the Galaxy' to select members of the more mainstream fighting team, Avengers, with fantastic results. Handily bests all of the recent Avengers flicks.

Read more