Just the Ticket

Article by Sean Wilkinson, a.k.a. The Animeister. In my neck of the woods (a phrase that is biologically impossible, if not also psychologically scarring to imagine in a literal, body horror sense, especially if you take into account the arboreal hydra that would be given shape by multiple points of view, but I dye grass when I'm overcaffeinated), I can breathe the smoky flames of Canada as we speak. But I did not choose this Anime Spotlight update for July because of some future-sighted state I achieved by tapping into a parallel Hell dimension; rather, it was because July is the month of independent rebellion (in at least two countries), which we celebrate with fireworks. Fireworks, Fire Force ; it was as simple as that. And then I started watching the third (and final?) season of Fire Force , and was reminded of the rebel authority role that Company Eight has in the series and how the themes of the new season comment on modern government, politics, and culture. So Fire Force f...

Article by Sean Wilkinson, a.k.a. The Ticketmaster. Yes, I'm reviewing Superman (2025) for Bastille Day week in 2026. I know that I'm a year late to the conversation (which, I am painfully aware, was mostly conducted by sentient neckbeards, cyborg monkeys, angry Snyder apologists, and self-brainwashed, self-reporting grifters who think prometheotic bigotry equivocates to credible criticism), and that by virtue of my tardiness, there isn't much, if anything, approaching novelty that I can say about it. Aside from the Donner Superman films, Man Of Steel , the Burton / Schumacher and Nolan Batman films , the DCAU , Teen Titans ( but not Go! ), The Batman ( the cartoon , not the movie ), the broadcast seasons of Young Justice , Gotham   (until my priorities shifted and I lost interest), and the Arrowverse (through "Crisis On Infinite Earths"), I am more of a Marvel fan, and if my Retrospective / Omnibusted series isn't a big enough clue, my imprint of ...

Article by Sean Wilkinson, a.k.a. The Ticketmaster. Happy Birthday to my America, Ticketholders! I guess you'd call me a liberal, or "left-wing," if you had to put me in a binary box, but the one conservative hope I have is that we as a country can get back to a time resembling what we had before this past decade of insanity, hate, and fear, because twelve score and ten years ago, our founding fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. And then women, eventually, once all the witchcraft paranoia got hung out to die and one of them made our flag. It took a lot longer than four score and seven years to even approach that equality, and a mere handful of years, plus at least as many acts of upheaval to affect a frankly superficial level of social change before the next manufactured boogeyman of the month instigated a mass fear response of, by, and for the wrong people to ge...

Article by Sean Wilkinson, a.k.a. The Ticketmaster Who Doesn't Know What You Did Last Summer. I did not like these movies, Ticketholders! I mean, I liked the first two when they came out almost thirty years ago, which is why the third one disappointed me so much that I only ever watched it once and didn't even want to watch it for this review (but I watched the Children Of the Corn franchise and most of The Curse movies, so it's nothing by comparison). The second time I watched the first two movies, I thought the core four were unsympathetic, the villain reveal came out of nowhere, the second movie was obvious and stupid, and Julie James was the worst final girl of all time. But has my opinion changed with time, book knowledge , and exposure to eight hours of Amazon-produced zoomer torture ? Let's find out, and then check out this year's legacy sequel to see if it's as bad as everyone says. Directed by Jim Gillespie ( Joyride —not to be confused with Joy Ri...

Article by Sean Wilkinson, a.k.a. The Ticketmaster Independence Day is on a Friday this year, and I've been devoting the majority of my review months to the films of Maniac Cop director William Lustig , so as you can probably figure out from the thumbnail, I'm reviewing the 1996 holiday slasher, Uncle Sam . It's not the first "killer dresses in holiday mascot costume and uses silly, thematically appropriate means to depopulate small-town America" movie (from the 70s to the early 90s, just about every holiday—especially Christmas and Halloween—got at least one), and with low-budget fare like Thankskilling and Bunnyman , revival-era mysteries like Valentine , and the fairly recent Grindhouse trailer adaptation, Thanksgiving , it certainly wasn't the last. But it was definitely one of them. Uncle Sam is at once an obscure relic of the 90s that somehow feels dated in its own decade, an after-school special PSA about domestic violence and war fanaticism, a Willi...