Pete Volk

Hi! I'm Pete. I'm an editor and writer with over a decade of experience in digital media in entertainment and sports. I'm available for freelance and consulting work, including internal work like production notes. Here is a collection of just some of my work!

PV Guide •

Izzy Roland on her new movie D(e)ad: 'It felt like we had been working on this family project for my whole life'

Comedian, screenwriter, and Dropout star Izzy Roland’s new movie D(e)ad is a true family affair. Roland wrote the script, produced the movie, and stars as lead Tillie, Roland’s mom Claudia Lonow directed and stars as Tillie’s mother, and Roland’s step-father, grandparents, and husband Brennan Lee Mulligan all play roles in the movie. There are other familiar faces for Dropout fans, too, including Vic Michaelis as Tillie’s sister, and Zac Oyama as a particularly eager doctor. The movie plays in l...
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20 great movies from the past 20 years: Speed Racer

I’m counting down to the 2025 best-of-the-year season by recommending 20 of my favorite movies from the past 20 years. Here are the previous entries, if you want to catch up:

2005: Caché2006: Undisputed II: Last Man Standing2007: Sunshine

When my partner and I got married six years ago, it was in a tiny ceremony outside the National Portrait Gallery in DC. We only wanted our immediate family there, but we also wanted to celebrate with our friends and other loved ones. So we held a joint bachel...
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Alice Wu reflects on love and Saving Face with new Criterion release

Alice Wu’s heartfelt 2004 debut Saving Face was added to the Criterion Collection this August, with a new director-approved blu-ray filled with special features. The rom-com follows a young Chinese American surgeon (Michelle Krusiec) navigating falling for her new dancer girlfriend (Lynn Chen), the unexpected pregnancy of her unmarried mother (Joan Chen), and the cultural stigmas around each.

Wu originally wrote the script while working at Microsoft and taking a screenwriting class at the Unive...
Rogue •

I’m finally playing most single-player games on easy mode, and I couldn’t be happier about it

My epiphany first happened while playing Metaphor: ReFantazio. I was many hours into the game, completely gripped by the story, art design, characters, and banger soundtrack, when it was time to fight Sogne the Icebound, an ice dragon that appears well-past Metaphor’s halfway mark. Sogne is the single biggest difficulty spike for a mandatory boss in the campaign, and I was struggling – failing repeatedly, and getting frustrated with a game I had, so far, been extremely invested in.

So I gave up...
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20 great movies from the past 20 years: Sunshine

I’m counting down to the 2025 best-of-the-year season by recommending 20 of my favorite movies from the past 20 years. Here are the previous entries, if you want to catch up:

2005: Caché2006: Undisputed II: Last Man Standing

For my 2007 pick, it’s time for one of the great sci-fi thrillers of the century: Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s Sunshine. The two first collaborated on The Beach, an adaptation of Garland’s novel directed by Boyle, but the duo’s next team-up – 28 Days Later – made an even...
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Baby Assassins 3 review: Pure action comedy bliss

My favorite modern movie franchise has returned and upped the ante once again, with another ridiculously fun installment that delivers on the breezy tone, compelling character relationships, and fantastic action design built by the first two movies. Baby Assassins 3 is now out on digital and Blu-ray, and is one of the standout new movies of 2025.

The Baby Assassins movies feel like crime thrillers turned upside-down in the best way possible, as if a pair of fun side characters from an Elmore Le...
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20 great movies from the past 20 years: Undisputed II Last Man Standing

I’m counting down to the 2025 best-of-the-year season by recommending 20 of my favorite movies from the past 20 years. We started last week in 2005 with Michael Haneke’s terrific movie Caché. This week, we move onto 2006 and a very different kind of movie: Undisputed II: Last Man Standing, starring martial artists Michael Jai White and Scott Adkins.

Undisputed II is technically a sequel to the 2002 prison boxing movie Undisputed. There is some carry-over: Michael Jai White technically plays the...
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20 great movies from the past 20 years: Caché

The annual rush of best-of-the-year lists each December is one of my favorite times of the year. I’ve been making frivolous lists of things I like since I was a small child, pulling together (seemingly random) lists of historical baseball players. And I particularly enjoy BOTY season because it combines my lifelong passion for lists with the opportunity to better understand other people’s tastes and learn about titles I should check out myself.

In preparation for this year’s BOTY season (and th...
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Everything I’ve been certain would kill me since watching the Final Destination movies

One of the great movie-watching highlights of my summer has been watching all the Final Destination movies in preparation for the HBO Max arrival of the newest installment, Final Destination: Bloodlines. The new one getting good reviews played a factor, but I’m generally always in for an excuse for a franchise watch or rewatch, for the same reason I like watching different adaptations of the same source material – seeing how different creative teams tackle the same or similar story beats in diff...
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The Things, ranked

I haven’t seen Fantastic Four: First Steps yet. Despite the checkered history of Fantastic Four movies, I’m actually looking forward to it, because of the surprisingly positive reviews and because of a recently found fondness for the Fantastic Four (I was more of an X-Men and Spider-Man kid growing up).

That fondness comes from reading Jonathan Hickman’s Fantastic Four run a few years ago, after a lengthy and passionate recommendation campaign by my pal and former Polygon colleague Joshua River...
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Ghost Killer review: A hilarious, electric action comedy with a ghostly gimmick from the team behind Baby Assassins

The all-star team behind the excellent Baby Assassins franchise is back with another banger, the ridiculous and entertaining supernatural action comedy Ghost Killer, from writer Yugo Sakamoto (who wrote and directed the Baby Assassins movies) and director Kensuke Sonomura (who designed the action on those movies). Featuring terrific action choreography, likeable characters, and a lead actress with superb control over every part of her performance, it’s a great time that is now available for digi...
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Polygon Exit Interview: Christina Gayton, social video producer

Welcome to Polygon Exit Interviews, a series of chats with my excellent former Polygon employees who were laid off (along with me) when Valnet purchased the website from Vox Media May 1. We’re talking about how these talented people got to Polygon, what they did in their time there, and what they hope is next.

Next up: Christina Gayton, who was a social video producer at Polygon. Christina made short-form videos for Polygon’s TikTok and Instagram, in addition to co-hosting streams and appearing...
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Cloud review: A searing action thriller about our increasingly digital world

The internet has a funny way of making us feel insulated from the consequences of our actions. Anonymous user names, private browsing, digital avatars … the sheer intangibility of the virtual world can make everything that happens online feel like it’s less real.Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa is deeply interested in this phenomenon, and exploring it through his work. The Japanese horror master delved into this topic in Pulse, one of the scariest horror movies of the century, in which ghosts invade th...
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Dirty Laundry co-hosts Lily Du and Grant O’Brien talk the Dropout show’s new look and their dream guests

The season five premiere of Dirty Laundry aired Tuesday night with a new, art deco-inspired look for Dropout’s drinking game show and a cavalcade of new, ridiculous stories to gab over. I talked to co-hosts Lily Du and Grant O'Brien about the changes, the show’s evolution from season one, Lily’s first season as a Dirty Laundry executive producer, and who their dream guests would be.I wanted to start, Lily, by congratulating you on getting the hero edit of the Game Changer episode “The Drinking G...
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Polygon Exit Interview: Chelsea Stark, Executive Editor

Welcome to Polygon Exit Interviews, a series of chats with my excellent former Polygon employees who were laid off (along with me) when Valnet purchased the website from Vox Media May 1. We’re talking about how these talented people got to Polygon, what they did in their time there, and what they hope is next. I’ll publish most of these in the next few weeks, which will likely result in a higher-than-usual cadence for this newsletter this month.

Next up: Chelsea Stark, who was a key part of Pol...
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PV Guide's best of the year so far

My favorite movies, action movies, TV, and video games of the first half of 2025

I’m going to do a whole big Best of the Year series at the end of the year, but seeing as we’re a little past the midway point of 2025, let’s check in on the best new releases so far. Below are some early “so far” best-of 2025 lists from me – movies, action movies, under-the-radar movies, TV seasons, and video games – as well as a little bit about each title.

A note: I don’t go to theaters much these days, so I ha...
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Jason Mantzoukas Taskmaster interview, part 2: “Taskmaster Series 19 will undo Brexit and undo the 2024 US election”

Good morning, PV Guide readers! This is part two of my interview with Jason Mantzoukas, the hilarious actor, podcaster, and comedian who recently starred on Taskmaster Series 19. You can read part one here, and you can watch the season on the Taskmaster YouTube channel.Let’s jump right into it.I have to ask about the haunted painting you put up as a prize task, especially because you have two like it behind you. You ended up winning that episode. Do you still have the painting?Yes, of course I h...
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"I feel like my best mode is chaos." Jason Mantzoukas on his heel turn in Taskmaster, one of his favorite shows

While each Taskmaster series features large personalities, few contestants have been able to make an impression on the same level as Jason Mantzoukas. The first American-based contestant on the British panel show, Mantzoukas burst onto the series with his signature comedic style, sowing a path of chaos and destruction wherever he went.Mantzoukas is also one of the rare contestants to ask to be on the show, rather than vice versa. A long-time fan of the series, Mantzoukas took his shot and reache...
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Rematch creative director on making a sports game for everyone

I’ve loved sports games my whole life, but lately, they’ve been largely restricted to two categories: AAA simulators like NBA 2K or Madden, or glorified-Excel-sheet management simulators like Football Manager (note: I say this with love and an embarrassing number of hours played). There are exceptions, to be sure, but the market is dominated by games trying to replicate the real thing as closely as possible, which inevitably results in shortcomings when you see the seams of the simulation. (Find...
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Ally Beardsley and Siobhan Thompson talk life on an airship in Dimension 20’s Cloudward, Ho!

After years of watching Dropout’s comedy shows, I was drawn into the world of Dimension 20 with their action-movie focused campaign Never Stop Blowing Up. In that season, a group of video store employees find themselves magically pulled into the over-the-top world of a 1980s action movie, a premise that turned out to be an excellent match for the players’ penchant for outrageous hijinks.After a couple of sequel campaigns to previous adventures and a wrestling-focused one that looks neat but is n...
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Lost Bullet director Guillaume Pierret on shooting real fireworks at a real helicopter in the action trilogy’s final entry

The Lost Bullet trilogy, from director Guillaume Pierret and streaming on Netflix, knows exactly what you want from action movies featuring cars. While the movies also deliver tense, fast-paced crime narratives and brutal melees, the trilogy excels on the road. Each movie features some of the most intricately choreographed vehicular action you’ll ever see, with high-speed chases, inventive new gadgets, and a tangible authenticity and sense of danger that many green-screen heavy Hollywood blockbu...
Polygon •

John Wick’s director breaks down how he got to design action on Lazarus, ‘the funnest job’ he’s ever done

Chad Stahelski: I had talked to Joseph Cho, who’s a producer on it. I’m very fascinated by animation. We’re trying to do one of our own right now as well. So we had been going back and forth with Joseph, who became a good friend, and knew my love of anime, and he just happened to be a producer on Lazarus. Every time somebody interviews me for John Wick, I always bring up anime and what I love about it, from Ghost in the Shell to one of my biggest influences, Cowboy Bebop, and obviously Samurai C...
Polygon •

‘It was real cat wrangling’: Alex Horne and Greg Davies on Taskmaster’s ‘chaotic’ series 19

Horne: That’s a good question. There’s a spreadsheet which me and the director and the producer constantly play with as we’re recording ’em, thinking, OK, that could be an opener for the series, that could be a closer for the series. And then you sort of slot them in thinking, Well, we’ve got one in the garden, so we should have one inside next. So it is boring location stuff and then thinking, Well, this is really high-energy, good to have a low-energy one next, or This one’s artistic, it shoul...
Polygon •

Saloum director’s new thriller is so relevant in 2025, he’s not sure how to feel

After taking the world of genre cinema by storm with 2022’s cult hit Saloum, director Jean Luc Herbulot is back with another fascinating genre experiment filled with surprising twists and turns and a radical political message. His new movie Zero, out in theaters and available on VOD this week, is one of 2025’s most explosive new movies — and not just because its premise involves quite a few bomb vests. Part Crank, part Phone Booth, part odd-couple buddy comedy, part unusually relevant action mov...
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