10.) Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time

 – It’s about time we received the final installment of the new Evangelion mini-series. That’s all I ‘ll say. Go see them.

9.) Brand New Cherry Flavor
 – An underrated mini-series on NETFLIX  based on the novel of the same name by Todd Grimson. The cast includes Rosa Salazar, Catherine Keener, Eric Lange, Manny Jacinto and Jeff Ward. The series premiered on Netflix on August 14, 2021. A mix of Clive Barker, Gregg Araki and David Cronenberg. Plenty of Body Horror and pyschological suspense and gore. It’s LA at night and drenched in neon candy. I was surprised by this a lot. A great throwback to 80’s horror when creators threw everything they could afford into the pot and unknowingly strike gold. I kind of wish there was a season 2.

8.) Midnight Mass (mini-series)
– Created and directed by Mike Flanagan and starring Zach Gilford, Kate Siegel, Hamish Linklater, Samantha Sloyan, Rahul Kohli and Henry Thomas. The plot centers on an isolated island community that experiences supernatural events after the arrival of a mysterious priest. It was released on Netflix on September 24, 2021. The best Stephen King mini-series not written or made by Stephen King. Mike Flanagan (Doctor Sleep, Oculus, Haunting of Hill House) is one of the best Horror directors we have here in the United States. The perfect alternative to all the trash coming out of blumhouse and such an homage of Classic Stephen King tropes. I highly recommend this. For fans of Salems Lot, Fright Night and 30 Days of Night.

7.) Godzilla vs Kong
 – directed by Adam Wingard. A sequel to Kong: Skull Island (2017) and Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), it is the fourth film in Legendary’s MonsterVerse. One of the highlights of the year. Basically, Kong is your protagonist and Godzilla your anti-hero. They are Kaiju beasts with motivations and conflicts. The humans are there only to progress the storyline. The fights are great and what you expect, a Godzilla movie with creature battles and destruction. I loved it.

6. )Blade Runner: Black Lotus 
 – If you want to explore the Cyber Noir world of Blade Runner then I suggest you watch this bridge between the original film by Ridley Scott and its sequel Blade Runner 2049. Animation is similar to REBOOT but, the environments and and lighting make up for the limitations of the animation choice. It is a co-production between Crunchyroll and Adult Swim. Black Lotus takes place in Los Angeles in 2032, 10 years into the aftermath of the Black Out, and centers on a female replicant protagonist.

5.) KATE
 – A marvelous modern cyberpunk action film filmed in Japan. A good time. Better action scenes than MATRIX 4. Yes, I said it.
directed by Cedric Nicolas-Troyan and written by Umair Aleem (Atomic Blonde). The film stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Scott Pilgrim, Death Proof), Miku Martineau, Woody Harrelson, Tadanobu Asano, Michiel Huisman, Miyavi, and Jun Kunimura. The film follows Kate (Winstead), an assassin, whose mentor and handler (Harrelson) assigns her to kill a high-ranking yakuza boss. During Kate’s final mission, she finds out that she has been poisoned and has at most a day to live, so she uses her last hours to get revenge and find out who set her up. SO CYBERPUNK.

4.)You’re Watching Video Music Box (documentary) 
 – A documentary directed by NAS and showcases the greatest HIPHOP tv show that still exists. The untold story of the world’s longest running video show, Video Music Box. A hip hop mainstay since 1983, VMB gave a platform to artists like Jay-Z, Nas and Mary J. Blige before they hit it big. Host Ralph McDaniels’ archives — amassed over 40 nearly years — reveal the show’s importance to numerous big-name musicians, as well as to the kids that grew up watching.Now streaming on SHOWTIME.

3.) Tokyo Revengers 
 – A mix of BACK TO THE FUTURE, and The Warriors. A young man with no motivation and no ambition goes back to 1990s Japan to save the people he loves by joining a juvenile delinquent Bōsōzoku gang in the past before they evolve into a major criminal syndicate. Lots of fighting, lots of delinquency and lots of heart.  I love it.

2.) DUNE
 – Although only 1/3 of a complete story. The scale and world building combined with exceptional acting and cinematography is out of this world. So far the best adaptation of FRANK HERBERTs vision and proof that director Denis Villeneuve is a master of cinema. I ‘m impatient and eager for them to complete PART 2.
For an in-depth assessment of DUNE go read my Movie Review here on New Retro Wave. directed by Denis Villeneuve and written by Villeneuve, Jon Spaihts, and Eric Roth. It is the first of a planned two-part adaptation of the 1965 novel by Frank Herbert, primarily covering the first half of the book. Set in the far future, it follows Paul Atreides as his family, the noble House Atreides, is thrust into a war for the deadly and inhospitable desert planet Arrakis. The ensemble cast includes Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Zendaya, David Dastmalchian, Chang Chen, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Charlotte Rampling, Jason Momoa, and Javier Bardem.

1.) VERZUZ: THE LOX vs DIPSET
 – The number one nostalgic event that happened this year was the Verzuz between THE LOX vs DIPSET. Nothing was talked about and hyped after the fact than this. Local radio stations across the country started playing LOX and Jadakiss songs in their rotation. More people actually started looking at bars and what it really means to be an MC after the dust was settled. And Nothing recaptured the feeling of being young in the late 80’s -90’s & 2000’s like this battle. At first glance it seemed mismatched when it was announced however, worthy of a viewing.
It was hosted in Madison Square Garden the mecca of HipHop with a packed house and streamed online for thousands. Dipset being the expected winners were easily dissected by The Lox; each member of D-block playing their parts like pieces on a chess board with no lip syncing with hit after hit after hit and the presence and energy that embodied NYC. The Lox and more importantly JADAKISS reminded the world who they were and what HIP HOP, especially NY Hiphop, is as a culture and artform.
A FLAWLESS victory and truly better than any movie, show, concert or event that happened in 2021.  

Okay. It’s late night and I’m in the beginning of an insomnia stretch.  After a few viewings of the new film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s DUNE directed by Denis Villeneuve on HBO MAX, I can finally sit here and review this bittersweet, epic of an incomplete retelling.

So you’re thinking – “Is it good?”

Well, yes and kind of yes. See it is a very well made film. The visuals are magnificent. I’m serious, the visuals are magnificent. The cinematography by Greg Fraser (Rogue One, Zero Dark Thirty) really does contribute to the world building and overall experience of this space opera about rival houses battling over dominion of the galaxy and the most precious resource to humanity the Spice Mélange.

House Atredeis and its patriarch Duke Leto Atreides, his concubine the Bene Gesereit Jessica and their son Paul Atreides have been gifted by the Emperor of the known Galaxy with the reins of Spice production on the only planet that produces it , the desert planet ARRAKIS. The previous overseers, House Harkonnen, were brutally industrialized and equally brutal on their workers. House Harkonnen’s base planet is Geidi Prime; a barren planet that earns its status in CHOAM with export made possible on the backs of slave labor. House Harkonnen is headed by the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen.
Duke Leto (Oscar Isaacs) from the very beginning is faced the obvious obstacle of being “fucked”. Meanwhile, the Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) is busy preparing her son, PAUL (Timothée Chalamet) for his future as the leader of House Atreides. After a meeting with Bene Gesserit Gaius Helen Mohiam, she has to hasten her training of her son for dangers that lie ahead of him on the new world of Arrakis; dangers such as fulfilling Spice Production Quotas, gigantic Sandworms, attempting to build a relationship with the Fremen, and terror attacks by remnants of House Harkonnen.

The film compared to the previous adaptations – the 1984 David Lynch film and the 2000 Sci-Fi Channel miniseries which in spite of a low budget wasn’t that bad. This film falls somewhere in-between.

The David Lynch film although deviated from the source material in many ways still tells a complete story; it just happens to be a bunch of exposition stuffed into two hours.

The television mini-series is the more complete translation of Herbert’s three books from Dune to Dune: Messiah and Children of Dune. The budget was lack luster and the costuming atrocious in the first 3 part DUNE mini-series but, Children of Dune the follow-up miniseries redeemed this years later. The special effects were primitive and resembled cut-scenes from a WING COMMANDER PC game. Paul Atreides was played by a noticeably older actor but, performed well.

The new film is a visual buffet of sound and images. It is marvelous. The casting was well executed and perfect. The film all just falls into place. The world building is without pretentions and paced so well. I love how technology is portrayed and the details and exposition are implied without being spoonfed to the viewer. Denis actually trust the audience to be intelligent and think about what they see, a quality that is lacking in 99% of Hollywood directors. But,….

The Negatives – The damn score is really distracting. There are times when I’m engaged with what is going on and salivating at the experience only to be thrown out of the movie by random throat singing and bagpipes in other scenes. The score is almost trash and self-indulgent. Hans Zimmer is accomplished and has delivered in his craft as a composer with films like Pirates of the Caribbean, Intersellar, The Dark Knight trilogy and Blade Runner 2049. Unfortunately, he falls short here. I tried watching the film for a second time but, couldn’t get passed the score. Finally it was the third try when I learned to just let it play and reexamine the film as it is.

Another negative is – The wait to see PART 2. I know the book is too much for one movie and the studio needed to be confident the franchise would turn a profit before signing off on a sequel. However, I do not understand why a script for a second film was done before or during filming. The film makers knew they wanted to finish the story. So why not have the second installment locked and in the chamber? It makes no sense to me. Now I have to wait two years for a DUNE part 2 of 2. This might’ve been okay back in the day when franchises like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter were built on frenzied fans lining up at theaters for every new movie. But, this is 2021 and audiences are accustomed to binge-watching and instant gratification. It all just seems like they jumped out the window to film and promote an incomplete film with no knowledge of if they’ll be able to finish it. Lucky for us the film performed very well this year, earning over $300 million dollars with part 2 already green lit and the director already being quoted in interviews as being interested in filming a third film based on Dune: Messiah and completing Paul Atreides story.

So far this film gets a hard 4.5 out of 5. Let’s see what they do next. Oh, wait Part 2 doesn’t premiere till late 2023 – Fcuk me right.

The spice is vital to space travel. The spice expands the mind. The Spice is life. The spice must flow. Keep your steps without rhythm and keep your finger on that damn REWIND button.

3500 years have passed since Leto II has taken it upon himself to merge with the sandworms of the desert planet Arrakis and rule humanity with an iron fist. In doing so, he has made use of the spice ‘melange’ to read the future, and his empire has taken root to save our species from inevitable destruction. The spice, and its rarity, constitute a looming threat of energy crisis, and the prescient powers it provides serve as a grave danger to the stability of human politics.

Leto II’s empire, designed along evolutionary lines, serves as a thesis on human development. All human hierarchies, the text argues, are off-shoots of evolutionary urges toward individual and group survival. God Emperor Leto employs a vast, professional army of women, his justification being that an army of men can not be trusted to be responsible with their power in the absence of enemies to fight; they lack the maternal instinct to provide direct care to those under their authority.




He keeps the spice, already in short supply, on an even more restricted output, thus robbing his chief enemies (the various Guilds that, before his reign, struggled against one another to define human destiny) of its valuable prescient and geriatric advantages. This restriction similarly limits interstellar travel, and Leto is content to have the majority of his subjects live as little more than agrarian serfs, confined to their own villages on their own worlds, never seeing the galaxy for what it is. This monopoly and limitation on such a valuable commodity also runs parallel to another of the God Emperor Leto’s efforts; to breed a new sort of human: one who does not show up in the prescient visions of a spice-user, an invisible human, so to speak, to those with the ability to see the future in all of its possibilities.

The linchpin to all these goals, seemingly at odds to some extent with one another, is that Leto intends for his empire to fall shortly after his death. For all his efforts are not merely to provide solutions to the incoming energy crisis, nor the invasion of human space by other intelligent entities with prescient powers, but to ensure that the human race is never subject to the threat to such disasters ever again. All his repression is meant to serve as a coiling spring, which, upon his death and the empire’s collapse, will launch humanity to frontiers never before braved. Keeping the entire race more or less imprisoned upon their own worlds breeds in them the intense desire to colonize outward and explore other parts of space. The spice supply will similarly loosen and allow for this, under Leto II’s successors, whom he spends the duration of the book convincing of his plans and urging to follow them when he is gone. His new breed of invisible person will populate human space until large clusters of humanity inhabit the galaxy, safe from the threat of a genocidal and prescient enemy whom Leto has foreseen, but can not name.

And our noble Leto II, this reluctant tyrant, truly bears the cost for what he has had to do. As it is revealed, the reason his father could not accept the necessity of this plan and left it to his son was that once the God Emperor falls, this hybrid of human and sandworm must live on in the sandworms, a flicker of consciousness that can never be extinguished. It is the horrible fate of needing to scream and having no mouth – forever.




God Emperor Of Dune is not only quite relevant within its own universe, but the entire series garnered a lot of attention for its relevance to our own world, as well. The spice has served as a stand-in, variously, for oil in the Middle East (owing to the desert environment of Arrakis), the poppy fields of Afghanistan, the cocaine trade, what have you. The political dimensions bear a certain similarity to the proxy war that occurred during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and Cold War geopolitics in general, from a more feudal perspective. Frank Herbert himself has talked at length that he writes so many tyrants and treats politics so ruthlessly so as to remind us who politicians really are, and what dangers a messianic figure can wreak upon civilization. In the case of God Emperor Of Dune, we see not a necessity forced upon humanity by Leto II, but one that was passed on by his father’s unsuccessful forays into ruling by prescience and religious demagoguery.

Take a step into the surreal and sober world of Dune for just a moment, you may find that Frank Herbert is trying to help us out more than he is trying to entertain us. No series has stood so high in the admiration of the science fiction community, and there’s a good reason for that.