Geeky Catholic Dad

My wife and I recently finished Season 1 of The Chosen , a new multi-season show about Jesus and the apostles. I was blown away by how good it was and how powerfully it spoke to me. If you haven't heard of this show - or if you've heard of it but haven't made time to watch it yet - here are five reasons you should give it a chance.

WARNING: This review will be full of spoilers, so do not continue until you have seen Avengers: Endgame . So first, go see the movie. I'll wait. Did you see it? Okay, great!

Last weekend, I braved a winter storm to go see Captain Marvel . I absolutely loved it, and I have a bunch of things I want to say about it. If you haven't seen the movie yet, don't worry. I start off with a spoiler-free review. After that, there's a spoiler warning and a poster of Goose the Cat you'll have to scroll past before I get into any spoilers.

Back in December of 2017, The Greatest Showman was released in theaters. At the time, I paid very little attention to it (because I was busy watching, rewatching, and digesting Star Wars: The Last Jedi ). Fast forward six months to June of 2018, when I finally had the chance to see it. And it blew me away. I’ve been thinking about it ever since, and listening to the soundtrack over and over again. It got me wondering - what was it about this movie that grabbed me? How was it able to deliver such a sense of joy?

I don't know if you heard, but another Star Wars movie came out last weekend. "Didn't they just do one back in December?" Yes. "Do we get to find out what happens to Rey in this one?" No. "Should I just skip this one?" No, go see it. WARNING - FULL SPOILERS FOR  SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY  AHEAD. PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK. If you have seen it, keep reading. If not, go see it, then meet me back here.

This post will contain full spoilers for Avengers: Infinity War . Go see it, then check back here. I have a crazy theory you'll want to read after you've seen it. (I'll post this again on my Facebook page in a few weeks, so you can always follow me there.) You have been warned...

WARNING: Do not read this post until after you have seen Star Wars: The Last Jedi . If you haven't seen it, go away and come back later. Okay, have you seen it yet? Good. I know when you walked out of the theater you had one burning question: "What did Matt think?" Well, I'm glad you asked.

Let me just start out by answering some questions you might be asking yourself. No, you're not the only one who read the title of this post and tried to fit it into the meter of the song "Mr. Blue Sky." And no, it doesn't quite fit; there are a few too many syllables. Okay, with that out of the way, this review carries a huge spoiler warning, so you won't want to read past this paragraph. In fact, I'm not sure if "review" is the most accurate term. The purpose of this post isn't to inform the reader so they can decide whether or not to go see the movie, but rather to discuss what we already saw. If you're looking for my recommendation, it's this: you should go see this movie. You don't need to have seen any of the other Marvel movies to watch this one, but it helps if you've seen the first Guardians of the Galaxy (obviously). The humor is a bit crude for the younglings, so you might want to leave them at home. (Although I don...

I will conclude my trilogy of Firefly -related posts with a board game review of Firefly: The Game. After I started getting into tabletop games (see my post Adventures in Tabletop Gaming ), I started listening to a board game podcast called Meeple Nation (find out more at their website ). One of the board games they mentioned frequently, and featured on one of their episodes, was Firefly: The Game. As a huge fan of all things Firefly (see my reviews of Firefly and Serenity ), and a growing fan of board games, this game sounded right up my alley. I added it to my Amazon wish list, but didn't think I would necessarily buy it any time soon. One day, I saw it being sold for less than half the retail price, so I quickly ordered a copy. I'm glad I did.

Back at the end of February, I published a post about the TV show Firefly - a space western that was tragically canceled before its time. As I mentioned in the post, the strength and loyalty of the show's fandom was such that Universal Studios green-lit a movie to continue the story, and that movie was called Serenity . In today's post, I'll take a look at that movie.

I was introduced to a lot of new things in college. Oh sure, I gained a new appreciation for my faith, and I learned how electricity worked, and I met my future bride. But I'm not going to write about those things today. Thanks to a Netflix account and some fellow geeky engineering students, I discovered a show called Firefly . Between the show, the movie Serenity , and a Firefly board game my wife and I have greatly enjoyed, there's too much for me to write about to fit it all in one post. Today's post will focus chiefly on the television series, and I'll cover the other material in subsequent posts.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about my introduction to the Rocky series, and I discussed Rocky and Rocky II . Today I'd like to continue the story with Rocky III .

I recently watched all of the Rocky movies - and 2015's  Creed - on Amazon Prime. It was only my second time seeing Rocky , and my first time seeing the rest of them. So admittedly, I am late to the party here. These movies are fantastic, and after seeing them I just had to write about them. I was originally going to write about all seven films, but once I got started, I ended up writing a lot more on each movie than I'd planned. So we'll just keep it to Rocky  and Rocky II . This post will have spoilers, but I figure that's not a huge deal, because these movies are over 30 years old.

To a lot of Star Wars fans, any detail about a new movie constitutes a spoiler, so I'm not even going to try to make this review spoiler free. If you have not seen Rogue One yet, stop reading and go see it. Then come back and read this. Last warning. Okay, here we go...

Reading the title of this blog post, you might be thinking, "What on earth does that mean? I must click through to find out!" Well, maybe the first half. What I'm talking about is the board game (technically card game) Smash Up, which describes itself as "the shufflebuilding game of total awesomeness!"

Jess and I went to see Doctor Strange on Friday, and I absolutely loved it. Sitting in the theater while the credits were rolling, I felt like I had to write about it. Since it just came out this weekend (in the States, at least), I don't want to spoil the movie for anyone. So I'll keep things spoiler free in my main review, and put anything spoiler-ific at the end (with a warning).