The Zachtastic Movie Blog

Ad Astra was written and directed by James Gray, a filmmaker primarily known for The Lost City of Z . It originally was supposed to be released back in May but was later delayed to September 20 after the Disney-Fox acquisition finally closed earlier this year. The cast of Ad Astra consists of Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga, Donald Sutherland, and Liv Tyler. The film’s page on IMDB lists this as the official synopsis: “Astronaut Roy McBride undertakes a mission across an unforgiving solar system to uncover the truth about his missing father and his doomed expedition that now, 30 years later, threatens the universe.” For my full thoughts on this particular movie, click the link above for my review on YouTube. The video is nearly 11 minutes long. Otherwise, read on for a short summary of my thoughts on Ad Astra ! One of the most underrated films of 2017 was The Lost City of Z . It may have a bit longer and more introspective than most audiences would ca...

Rambo: Last Blood was directed by Adrain Grunberg from a screenplay that resulted as a collaboration between Sylvester Stallone, Dan Gordon, and Matt Cirulnick. This serves as the fifth and supposedly final installment of the Rambo franchise that has been ongoing since 1982. Last Blood was released in theaters on September 20, 2019. The other movies were released in 1982, 1985, 1988, and 2008 respectively. The cast of Last Blood consists of Sylvester Stallone as John Rambo, in addition to Paz Vega, Sergio Peris-Mencheta, Adriana Barraza, Yvette Monreal, Genie Kim, Joaquín Cosío, and Oscar Jaenada. The film’s page on IMDB lists this as the official synopsis: “Rambo must confront his past and unearth his ruthless combat skills to exact revenge in a final mission.” This review is a bit different than most that I do as full, dedicated pieces on movies. Rather than isolate my thoughts on Last Blood , I thought that it might be fun to rank all five Rambo movies together...

37 years ago, Jim Henson wrote and directed a dark fantasy puppet film called The Dark Crystal . Fast forward to today, and Netflix teamed up with The Jim Henson Company to resurrect the series. What resulted from that partnership is the 10-episode-long The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance . All episodes were made available on August 30, 2019, and were directed by Louis Leterrier. The main voice cast consists of Taron Egerton, Anya Taylor-Joy, Nathalie Emmanuel, Simon Pegg, Mark Hamill, Jason Isaacs, Donna Kimball, Victor Yerrid, Caitriona Balfe, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Benedict Wong, Andy Samberg, Awkwafina, Lena Headey, Mark Strong, Bill Hader, and Helena Bonham Carter. The show’s page on IMDB lists this as the official synopsis: “Returns to the world of Thra, where three Gelfling discover the horrifying secret behind the Skeksis' power, and set out to ignite the fires of rebellion and save their world.” If you would like to hear my full thoughts on this series, chec...

You may or may not have noticed that I haven’t been posting my monthly recaps/movie rankings for quite a while. The last time I did this was for the May releases. A simple explanation for this is that I lagged behind on the films I wanted to see in June, which would have resulted in me getting that video out in late July. A similar thing would have also happened for the months of July and August. Because of all these delays, I decided that I would try to approach my rankings in a slightly different way. Instead of making more videos with less effort, I figured that the better thing to do would be to release fewer videos that otherwise boast of greater polish, focus, and a stronger voice. With that, I will summarize the quality of releases by movie season, which is 2-3 months at a time. Since June through August hadn’t been covered up to this point, they will all be mentioned in this video that examines the 2019 summer movie season. These past few months certainly have bee...