‘Red Dead Redemption 2’ and the End of the New Left
It’s 1899 in America and the West is dying. Cowboys, rustlers and outlaws of all types are falling to the thresher of progress and westward expansion. Federal law enforcement isn’t yet a thing, but agents for the Pinkerton detective agency are hunting the remnants of America’s criminal gangs to... Read more
No Nazi Zombie Movie Should Be as Boring as ‘Overlord’ Is
Nazis and the occult are like peas and carrots—they just go well together. From Return to Castle Wolfenstein to Dead Snow, there’s a grand tradition of the undead Third Reich trampling through American pop culture. There’s been multiple movies about Nazi zombies, but none with as high a budget... Read more
Nuclear Arms Control as Metaphor in ‘The Expanse’
This post contains spoilers for all three seasons of The Expanse. The United States pulled out of Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and kicked off a new nuclear arms race. America and Russia are modernizing their arsenals by reducing the number of warheads and reshaping what remains into far more... Read more
Video Games Have Always Trivialized Violence and ‘Fallout 76’ Is No Different
The world established in the video game series Fallout isn’t one any of us would want to live in. In an alternate timeline where the 1950s never ended and nuclear technology took prominence over miniaturized electronics, China and America fought a great war that ended in nuclear hellfire. It’s... Read more
‘Assassination Nation’ Digs Up the Roots of America’s Second Civil War
Teenage girls catch a lot of shit today. Turn on YouTube, go see a hacky comedian, or read any number of blogs and you’ll turn up a bunch of bad opinions about how teenage girls are the patient zero of modern society’s perceived narcissism epidemic. Men with fedoras swirl... Read more
Vets With PTSD Save the Day in ‘The Predator’
Face it. All Predator movies are bad. That doesn’t mean I don’t love me some Predator. I’ll never get tired of hearing Arnold Schwarzenegger yell “get to the choppa,” seeing an alien perform first aid in an old woman’s bathroom or watching Topher Grace and Walton Goggins traipse around... Read more
‘Peppermint’ Is the Shittiest Punisher Movie I’ve Ever Seen
In 2012, Thomas Jane starred in Dirty Laundry—a 10-minute short film where he played Frank Castle, the Punisher, and brutalized criminals with a Jack Daniels bottle. It’s fun. This was a full eight years after Jane had played Castle in a pre-Marvel Cinematic Universe version of The Punisher. The... Read more
In ‘Operation Finale,’ Everybody Shits
The thing about keeping a captive war criminal hidden in a safe house while you wait to escape South America is that, at some point, the war criminal is going to need to shit. Pooping is at the heart of Operation Finale’s best scene. Operation Finale is a new... Read more
‘BlackKklansman’ Nails the Comedic Terror of America’s White Supremacist Movement
When white supremacist leader Jason Kessler rose from the metro station at Unite the Right 2 in Washington, D.C., I had a hard time processing how tiny he was. For all his hateful rhetoric and bluster, Kessler is a small man. As his assorted crew of masked miscreants walked... Read more
The Fictional Nuke Film That Won the Oscar for Best Documentary
This story originally appeared on May 29, 2015. It’s a little after 2:00 p.m. in Kent — an English county east of London — and the doctor is making an emergency visit. He’s escorted by two Civil Defense volunteers, a man and a woman. He checks in on his... Read more

Matthew Gault

Contributing Editor