Steve Stebbing

New Releases:

Asteroid City – Following a writer on his world-famous fictional play about a grieving father, who travels with his tech-obsessed family to the small rural town of Asteroid City, to compete in a stargazing event. Only to have his worldview disrupted forever.

Expectations: Wes Anderson returns for what looks like one of his most, uh, Wes Anderson-like movies yet and I’m already so enamoured with it, only having just seen the trailer for it. This looks like a different film from The French Dispatch, which was a step down from The Grand Budapest Hotel but I love all of his work so I’ll be patiently expecting a Criterion for it anyways. I don’t see Anderson winning new fans with this one but the ones he already has will be delighted.

No Hard Feelings – In the enigmatic town of Montauk, New York, Maddie, a struggling Uber driver facing dire financial circumstances, stumbles upon an intriguing Craigslist ad. Responding to the cryptic posting, she enters into an unconventional arrangement with secretive parents who harbour concerns about their introverted 19-year-old son, Percy. In a secret pact, Maddie agrees to immerse herself in Percy’s life, delving into a world where dating and intimacy are foreign concepts. Little does she know the enigmatic path that awaits her as she embarks on this mysterious journey to guide Percy toward adulthood while grappling with her own uncertainties.

Expectations: I am really all for JLaw doing a raunchy comedy but I do have to address that if the gender roles were reversed in this story, well, we would all have a problem with it. That said, there is something really fun to seeing Lawrence as a sexpot who also happens to be a bit of a piece of crap and having Good Boys’ director Gene Stupnitsky is the perfect fit I think. I also can’t get over Matthew Brodericks terrible yuppy mullet in the trailer, it just sets up the idea of a helicopter parent so well.

Blue Jean – England, 1988 – Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government is about to pass a law stigmatizing gays and lesbians, forcing Jean, a gym teacher, to live a double life. As pressure mounts from all sides, the arrival of a new girl at school catalyzes a crisis that will challenge Jean to her core.

Review: This is a perfect movie to be released in Pride Month during a time that is a bit freer and a bit more accepting. Rosy McEwen delivers an incredible lead performance, playing a character so desperate to keep her sexuality secret that she ends up sabotaging more lives than just hers. It’s tragic to see this era represented on the screen and to see how vicious the government and the citizens were about it. The film is a stunning and deep character drama from writer and director Georgia Oakley in her debut feature and I look forward to what she does next.

World’s Best – A12-year-old mathematics genius Prem Patel, in the midst of navigating the tumultuous hardships of adolescence, discovers his recently deceased father was a famous rapper and immediately sets out to pursue a career for himself as a rap superstar. While his actions may appear reckless and the quickest way for him to lose everything, Prem, empowered by imaginative hip-hop music-fueled fantasies where he performs with his father, is determined to find out if hip-hop truly is in his DNA. As his father always used to say, “The world’s best never rest”.

Review: I didn’t know a lot about this movie heading in but I really enjoyed writer and director Roshan Sethi’s debut feature film 7 Days, a pandemic-set romantic comedy, and the story for this was really intriguing. Young star Manny Magnus carries this film beautifully on his shoulders with some solid help from a favourite of mine, Utkarsh Ambudkar, who has appeared in Free Guy, Never Have I Ever and Blindspotting. This is a great family story about a multi-faceted prodigy that will surely win audiences over with its charm and grow from word of mouth.

Blu-Ray:

Avatar: The Way Of Water – Pandora, 2170. Having found meaning and purpose in the heart of the extrasolar Garden of Eden, formerly paraplegic Marine veteran Jake Sully and his fierce warrior princess companion Neytiri enjoy peace and prosperity after the life-altering events of the first film. But happiness is fleeting. And when the unsightly ghosts of Sully’s past emerge, sixteen years after the all-out Assault on the Tree of Souls, the human Toruk Makto and the Na’vi must fight back. Now, Jake and the Omatikaya clan have no choice but to pick up where they left off to defend their home. In the upcoming war against the unstoppable Sky People, will blind revenge destroy everything Sully holds dear?

Review: Nobody does a film like Jim Cameron and it was one to experience on the big screen in the full immersive 3D world he has created, the ultimate and best way to do it. On your screens at home, I will admit that the first film paled a bit so I expect some of the lustre to be washed off when it gets to the smaller screen but there are still so many breathtaking wonders to behold in this story and the sheer artistry contained within and the imagination of it all can’t really be dulled. This is blockbuster cinema at its core and no one does it better or in his own way like Cameron.

Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant – The story follows US Army Sergeant John Kinley (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Afghan interpreter Ahmed (Dar Salim). After an ambush, Ahmed goes to Herculean lengths to save Kinley’s life. When Kinley learns that Ahmed and his family were not given safe passage to America as promised, he must repay his debt by returning to the war zone to retrieve them before the Taliban hunts them down first.

Expectations: Guy Ritchie releases his second film in 2023 after his Jason Statham action comedy Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre skipped Canadian theatres altogether and landed on Prime Video last month just like this one but I have to say that this film doesn’t even look like one of his productions. It looks fairly standard, a one-man army rescue and survival story but Gyllenhaal absolutely delivers and he and hs co-star, Dar Salim, create characters you want to see survive this insurmountable challenge. While I do miss Ritchie’s gangster flicks of the past, this new team of writers he has paired with on The Gentlemen, Wrath Of Man and Operation have produced some really solid and entertaining movies.

Skinamarink – Two children wake up in the middle of the night to find their father is missing, and all the windows and doors in their home have vanished. To cope with the strange situation, the two bring pillows and blankets to the living room and settle into a quiet slumber party. They play well-worn videotapes of cartoons to fill the silence of the house and distract from the frightening and inexplicable situation. All the while in the hopes that eventually some grown-ups will come to rescue them. However, after a while, it becomes clear that something is watching over them.

Review: This is a film that took audiences by storm when it was released on Shudder at the beginning of the year and it had the horror world so buzzed that it even spilled over into mainstream film chatter. Everyone loves a mysterious film and that is exactly what writer and director Kyle Edward Ball crafted here. It gets even more heightened as the conduit in which we see this story is the eyes of children which ramps up the horror and elevates the stakes big time. No exaggeration here but this film actually chilled me to the bone in many parts.

I Am T-Rex – After a power-hungry dinosaur from outside the valley attacks the king of dinosaurs by surprise, a young T-Rex escapes and begins to train, vowing never to return until he is the biggest and bravest in all the land—and finally strong enough to challenge the evil Fang and restore peace to Green Valley.

Review: This is an odd one, a fully animated prehistoric adventure film out of China, something that was reminiscent to me of the Disney non-Pixar animated film Dinosaur which came out in the year 2000. There aren’t any stars that you know of but the animation is pretty slick and the runtime isn’t over bearable, clocking in at a good portion under an hour and a half. I can’t see it getting a lot of press so my little page might be the only place you see it mentioned.

Criminal Minds Evolution: Season 16 – An elite squad of FBI profilers analyzes the country’s most-twisted criminal minds, anticipating the perpetrators’ next moves before they can strike again. Each member of the “mind hunter” team brings his or her expertise to pinpoint predators’ motivations and identify emotional triggers to stop them. The core group includes an official profiler who is highly skilled at getting into the minds of criminals, a quirky genius, the former media liaison who manages to adeptly balance family life and the job, and a computer wizard.

Review: This is long celebrated and loved procedural mystery right here and even without my original draw to the show, Mandy Patinkin, still in the cast I find this series so damn great and am happy it was resurrected. The revival being on Disney= through Hulu also helps the show considerably as they don’t have to conform to the network ratings and can be more, um, untethered. This means more violence, more bloody crime scenes, more deranged characters and more, leading to a wickeder story at its core.

Steve’s Blu-Ray Geekout:

Looney Tunes Collector’s Choice: Volume 1 – From deep inside the Warner Bros. vault comes an anthology chock full of animation gold! Restored, remastered and uncut, the shorts in this set have been carefully selected for discerning fans. Enjoy the finest and funniest golden-era cartoons with the brilliance of high-definition audio and video. These treasures feature A-listers like Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Sylvester the Cat and Porky Pig, just to name a few. Even better, included among these 20 shorts are classics that have never before been released on home video. Whether you grew up with them or you’re introducing them to a new generation, these timeless and iconic characters will keep fans of all ages young at heart.

Review: Not much to say about this collection of classics other than you are a Looney Tunes person or you are simply not. This is a collection of some of the most iconic little shorts that Cuck Jones and company put together and the springboard and inspiration for many other creators. I think it’s pretty awesome that Warner Archive is releasing them in a restored fashion.

Television:

Glamorous (Netflix) – Marco Mejia, a gender non-conforming high school graduate who lands the gig of a lifetime interning at a cosmetics company whose products he panned on YouTube. Madolyn Addison, CEO, entrepreneur and founder of Glamorous Cosmetics and former supermodel, built one of the top companies in the world from the ground up. However, something’s happening of late. The company isn’t just slipping, it’s plummeting, like it’s being sabotaged from the inside. Not about to let that happen, Madolyn hires Marco right out of high school to be her summer intern. She has a plan, she wants him to be her eyes and ears, to make friends and find out what’s going on behind her back, to discover “what they’re hiding and what they’re stealing.” In exchange, she’ll teach Marco everything she knows, but she warns him “This business isn’t all glitter and glamour and neither is life”.

Review: So this is what Ms. Samantha Jones is up to while she isn’t being a major player in the Sex And The City revival. Kim Cattrall was definitely made for this role but as a first-timer to YouTube star Miss Bunny in their debut role, I was definitely charmed by their leading performance a lot. I have to say that this series probably owes something to a favourite series of mine, Ugly Betty, as well as the Meryl Streep fashion film, The Devil Wears Prada. So far so good on this though and I’ve enjoyed what I’ve seen.

The Righteous Gemstones: Season 3 (Crave) – Well into the second generation of a grand televangelist tradition, the world-famous Gemstone family is living proof that worship pays dividends in all sizes. Patriarch Eli, the man most responsible for the tremendous success of the family’s megachurch, is in mourning over the loss of his wife. Jesse, the eldest of the three grown Gemstone siblings, looks to lead in his father’s footsteps but finds his past sins jeopardizing the family ministry. Next in line comes middle sister Judy, who secretly lives with her fiancé and dreams of escaping the Gemstone compound. Rounding out the dysfunctional trio is pseudo-hipster Kelvin, the youngest of the preachers and a thorn in Jesse’s side. As the family battles numerous threats to their renowned religious empire, they continue to spread the good word… and make a solid buck doing so.

Expectations: Ever since creator Jody Hill and co-creator and usual star Danny McBride debuted ten years ago in the comedy Foot Fist Way they have been churning out abrasive comedy gold ever since. That said, this may be their crowning achievement and an evangelical lampooning that seems to be coming at the perfect time in this political and religious-dominated time. The cast is phenomenal, with the breakout star going to Edi Patterson who I adore, and I feel like it will just get better with Steve Zahn coming in to antagonize our characters this year. This is definitely a most anticipated series and after the exit of Barry, we need more solid HBO comedy on our TVs.

Secret Invasion (Disney+) – In Secret Invasion, set in the present-day MCU, Fury learns of a clandestine invasion of Earth by a faction of shapeshifting Skrulls. Fury joins his allies, including Everett Ross, Maria Hill, and the Skrull Talos, who have made a life for themselves on Earth. Together they race against time to thwart an imminent Skrull invasion and save humanity.

Review: This series is exciting to me just based on it featuring an original MCU character in Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury and it having so much history contained within the storyline, which is deeply rooted in the fibre of this cinematic universe as well as being a huge event in the comics that same the emergence and exits for many characters. The first two episodes are electric with intrigue and espionage and I’m really looking forward to what they do with the central villain, played by One Night In Miami’s Kingsley Ben-Adir. I know a lot of people are burnt out on the whole Marvel thing but I’m definitely still all here for it.

I’m A Virgo (Prime Video) – A coming-of-age joyride about Cootie, a 13-foot-tall man, who escapes to experience the beauty and contradictions of the real world; he forms friendships, finds love, navigates awkward situations, and encounters his idol named The Hero.

Review: For those who haven’t had the mind-twisting please of experiencing Sorry To Bother You, it’s really hard to explain the energy, drive and straight-up insanity of a project from writer and director Boots Riley but it really must be seen to be believed. The sheer fact that Prime Video has believed in his vision enough to give him this incredibly original limited series is an absolute gift for any fan of his or just a fan of weird cinema in general. With the celebration of Everything Everywhere All At Once this year, a film that had hot dog fingers, I hope audiences are now ready for the mind of Boots because it is wild.

And Just Like That…: Season 2 (Crave) – The new chapter of “Sex and the City” follows Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte as they navigate the journey from the complicated reality of life and friendship in their 30s to the even more complicated reality of life and friendship in their 50s.

Expectations: I honestly thought this was just going to be a one-season companion piece but when Carrie and the gang return, so do the fans and, of course, we were going to get more. The show has skirted the scandal that was the Chris Noth allegations and dealt with it handily which now opens the door for one of my favourites of Carrie’s exes, Aiden, played by John Corbett. I can’t say I was favourable on the first season but this development makes me more invested for the new episodes plus I’m hearing there is a return for Ms. Samantha Jones as well.

The Walking Dead: Dead City (AMC) – Maggie and Negan travel into a post-apocalyptic Manhattan long ago cut off from the mainland. The city is filled with the dead and denizens who have made New York City their own world.

Expectations: While a spin-off series featuring Maggie and Negan doesn’t feel like a necessary story to be told, I’m definitely here for it because I will watch anything Jeffrey Dean Morgan does and I really love both characters. What intrigues me further is that the show is run by first-timer Eli Jorne, a guy who isn’t a stranger to the Dead world, having written and produced on the mothership but he is also a producer on the FX comedy Wilfred, an underrated gem that everyone should see. But back to this show? Episode one was fun and I like Zelko Ivanek as a villain.