I feel so long past my days of taking in sixty-one films like I did during my first time at the festival as I was free and clear to watch movies twenty-four seven for the over two-week festival plus the prep time beforehand and now I sit at just ten movies total to wrap up the fest. My vow is to do my damnedest to attend the next festival in person and hopefully equal some of the better totals that I have achieved but do it rubbing elbows with the patrons, just the way the cinema gods intended. That said, here is my thoughts on the last five of VIFF 2022.
Carajita – One of my favourite things about taking in Vancouver International Film Festival’s lineup is the unpredictability of some of the titles I choose to watch. It’s always unpredictable and the more international you go, the more stories are some that you have never been privy to and sometimes they line up with amazing films you have seen before. This is the first Dominican Republic-produced film I have ever seen and it follows a girl and her nanny that have forged a bond beyond their separation in class. When a tragic accident happens one night, it leads to a secret that changes their relationship in explosive ways that will impact the rest of their lives. This film reminded me a lot of Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma in the division of classes but the human sorrow that runs as a thread until an impactful scene on a beach of crashing waves made its way into my psyche where it will rest for a while.
The Hermit Of Treig – This is a fascinating little character documentary, filled with hard choices and resolute decisions and it’s hard to not reflect on yourself and the material-driven choices we make every day. My fascination definitely comes with filmmaker Lizzie MacKenzie who would periodically look in on the life of elderly man Ken Smith, a man that has lived in seclusion for forty years after deciding to give up everything, including the love of his life, something he seems to be a little wistful about. Now in declining health, in body and mind but never spirit, the choice of coming back into society is the most forefront as it has always been but does he make the choice to just fade into the nature that he has now become part of, living with the ghosts of his past and the bare bones of a beautiful shack he had created that burnt to the ground, haunting his for his remaining days? The whole process is amazing and being the first documentary I saw at the festival this year, it set a tone.
Leonor Will Never Die – Being a guy who loves international films but is very unversed in cinema from the Philipines, I was really looking forward to checking this one out as I heard many great things about it. What I didn’t expect was a tie to eighties action films that would play as such a main theme for the story. The story follows a retired filmmaker who is suddenly struck with the inspiration to finally finish a revenge action thriller script she had been working on in her past just before a television strikes her in the head. In a hospital bed, deep in a coma, she wakes to find herself actually in the movie itself with the characters she has created in a blur between fantasy and reality where all of her familial and personal problems act as a metaphor. The film is really inventive with its framing and themes and the emotional bursts in it are so unpredictable and goes right for the heart. This is the first film from writer and director Martika Ramirez Escobar and I can’t wait to see what she has next as her cinema soul is something she seems to wear on her sleeve.
Last Flight Home – The changes and restrictions that COVID put on us as a society for two years and still, to some degree, have been held in place are something that has kept us all safe but has also led to some isolation that has advanced sicknesses, diseases and disorders and that rapid deterioration is really the catalyst for this documentary to me. The film follows the story of Eli Timoner, a bedridden family man who has reached the end of the rope with his pain management and being cared for by others and has decided to end it all in the comfort of his own home. For three weeks leading to the day he leaves his mortal coil, he is visited by friends, family and caretakers as they all take their moments to say goodbye and we are given the story of Eli’s extraordinary life of service to his family and his community. The humanizing that is experienced in this film of pre-grief but also the celebration of one man’s life is truly heartwarming and heartbreaking all the same. To see Eli, still very much in pain but full of love and uplifting positivity for all those around him was truly special to watch.
Maigret – It’s not a Vancouver International Film Festival without a Gerard Depardieu film, is it? It’s kind of fitting that I went out with this as my final film is a sadly short program from me this year but it’s even sadder as I really didn’t like this one and it’s kind of a usual thing with me and this French legends films at the festival. The film has Gerard as the titular Commissioner Maigret, who is tasked with finding the murderer of a young girl in a classy evening dress found in a Parisian square, leading him through the rich aristocratic side of the city. Without going into much detail, I will just say that the film lacks a lot to be desired in a murder mystery, whereas even recent Hollywood films like Knives Out and even Branagh’s Murder On The Orient Express lead to more excitement in plot. I will also say that the rigid moroseness from Depardieu does nothing to aid in this problem and may have been the final straw for me and this movie.
It’s the greatest time of the year in the lower mainland and it definitely isn’t Christmas or at least for the non-movie-hungry public. Yes, it is the glory of the Vancouver International Film Festival, a place where I have had the most fun in my entire life but, sadly, I am unable to attend in person this year. Having to adjust to covering this virtually again, it is a relief that I am still able to give some reviews as I have already seen some incredible features and I’m kicking it all off here with my first five viewings of the festival.
Triangle Of Sadness – Those who are veterans of the Vancouver International Film Festival know that entering a viewing of a Ruben Ostlund film is like no other and that firebrand of satire is exactly what we get again. The mind that brought us the marital doom of Force Majeure and the lampooning of the art world, the Swedish filmmaker is here to take on the one percent and he’s coming with a kill shot. The film, through the conduit of a model/influencer couple in the midst of a spat, tells the story of an ill-fated cruise that has a Russian oligarch, his wife and his mistress, an elderly couple living off the riches of being weapons manufacturers and so many more questionably wealthy individuals, under the command of a captain battling with his ideals, alcoholism and an unhealthy dose of nihilism. Once the snowball starts rolling on the chaos of this film, nothing and nobody is safe from being taken down more than a peg, leading to an utterly unpredictable third act.
Broker – Nothing is more calming to my cinema center than a Hirokazu Koreeda film and with his last film Shoplifters so recently in my glowing books, I was really wondering how he would follow that up. The decision he made was to pair with actor Song Kang-ho, now internationally known for Parasite, for another quietly reflective drama that puts the human condition in the front seat at all times. The film follows a young woman, played with deftness by Ji-eun Lee, who, after abandoning her baby on the steps of an orphanage, decides to find a home for the child instead with the help of two former orphans. As the journey through South Korea continues, the small group starts to bond and become more of the family that they are pretending to be from time to time as a cover all the while two detectives trail them for a crime the young woman may have committed. I fell hard in love with this movie, one that warmed my soul and solidified that, yes, even if I’m not in Vancouver right now, I am still at VIFF.
The Beasts – Denis Menochet, for me, is mostly known for that incredible opening of the Quentin Tarantino film Inglourious Basterds but his intensity is something that has made me take notice of anything he has done since. This is what drew me to this simmering drama, a film that I had no previous knowledge of which served for the best experience of it. The film follows Menochet as a French farmer who has moved to the Spanish countryside of Galicia to harvest their dreams. When the two vote against the installation of windmills in the area, it puts them at odds with the town but mostly with their neighbours who request the local drinking hole and start to bully him in an escalating fashion. As he fights back to document the terrorizing that these men are doing to him and his farm, the urgent nature of the situation careens out of control leading to an incredibly shocking moment. The way this story is told really took me aback and I was really fascinated by how terrifyingly menacing these people could be. I also have to give some love to actress Marina Fois as Menochet’s wife who does so much heavy lifting in the third act.
Aftersun – With a splash of A24 across the screen I sank deep into my comfort zone, knowing I was about to watch something special. What I didn’t know was that I was going to experience something that had an atmosphere on it’s surface that I would relate to along with a wistfulness that comes with age that would resonate with me. Told through the prism of a woman reminiscing through old vacation videotapes, this tells the story of a preteen Sophie who goes on a vacation with her father, played by Irish actor Paul Mescal, to a picturesque resort. A sort of autobiographical film from debuting writer and director Charlotte Wells, this has to have been a long thought of production because it unfolds on screen with the prowess of a filmmaking veteran. The exploration of character along with beautiful shots and a soulful drive makes Wells a director that I will be looking for whatever comes next. This is one of the top films of this year’s festival.
Klondike – The timing of this new Ukrainian film couldn’t be more important with the conflict between that country and Russia being at the forefront of the news for almost all of 2022 but this story is inspired by true events from 2014, a just as pivotal time. Knowing nothing about this film, I had no idea what I was heading into and just how deep the devastation would go. The film follows a Ukrainian farmer and his pregnant wife living on the borderlands between Russia and Ukraine who are getting ready for the imminent arrival of their first child. Just as they are about to leave, a plane crashes which subsequently rips the side off of their house. Rebels, separatists and family members all try to convince the couple to leave, some finding a possibility to make the incident political or something of their cause while the army just sees it as leverage to take what little these two have left. This film is gripping and deeply emotional with a final couple of scenes that left me in a heavy ugly cry for about fifteen minutes. I have been able to stop the tears since but this will stick with me for the rest of my life, easily.
Amsterdam – I am going to preface this little blurb here by saying that I don’t think writer and director David O. Russell is a good dude as there have been many documented incidents of bullying cast, crew and extras on his film by him. Still, I will say that he really does have a handful of great movies on his resume but he also has Joy and American Hustle on that same list, his last two efforts, and I downright detested the former of those two. This film has a killer cast, as he usually assembles, featuring Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington and so many more, which makes this all the more enticing. Set in the 1930s, the film follows three lifelong friends who witness a murder, are framed for it, and then uncover one of the most outrageous plots in American history attached to it. The trailer has me so pumped for it and maybe that is just the use of the Ten Years After song I’d Love To Change The World and snappy editing but I guess we’ll find out in theatres. Like Scorcese loves to use Rolling Stones in his film, Russell opts for Led Zeppelin but I have no idea how that fits in a thirties film but who knows.
Lyle, Lyle Crocodile – Shawn Mendes is one of the hottest acts on the planet as far as pop stars go so why not make the leap to the big screen and play a giant singing crocodile while he’s at it? This movie looks like it was made for the families who dug the big screen version of Clifford The Big Red Dog which honestly did okay at the box office for being a quasi-post-pandemic family release. Starring Constance Wu, Scoot McNairy, Winslow Fegley and an odd-looking Javier Bardem, the film follows the title reptile who lives in a house on East 88th Street in New York City. Lyle enjoys helping the Primm family with everyday chores and playing with the neighbourhood kids but one neighbour insists that Lyle belongs in a zoo. Mr. Grumps and his cat, Loretta, do not like crocodiles, and Lyle tries to prove that he is not as bad as others might first think. The trailer gives you the entire tone of the film and it looks like more of an avenue for Mendes to release more original music as I think he is also a producer on the movie. I feel like it will definitely hit its demographic.
Werewolf By Night – To my recollection, Marvel Studios hasn’t done a one-off short movie yet in their existence, aside from the shorts that accompanied some of their early blu-ray releases but that all changes this week. Coming from a director that usually scores films, like the J.J. Abrams Star Wars movies, Michael Giacchino is a recognizable name that gets to bring some of Marvel Comics’ darker characters and I’m excited for everyone to check it out because it is so much fun. The story follows a secret cabal of monster hunters who gather at Bloodstone Temple following the death of their leader. In a strange memorial to the leader’s life, the attendees are thrust into a mysterious and deadly competition for a powerful relic–a hunt that will ultimately bring them face to face with a dangerous monster. Done in black and white, the approach to the filmmaking is that of a sort of Hammer Horror production which brings a whole new genre mash to a cinematic universe that continues to reinvent itself with each different project and hero. Without getting into any spoiler territory, I will say that I hope some of the characters that debuted in this hour-long special presentation have a life beyond what we’ve seen because I know them well from the comics and they are pivotally important in that universe.
Triangle Of Sadness – When you sit down for a movie by writer and director Ruben Ostlund you have to know that you are in for something unpredictable and sometimes as scathing as having a bucket of cold water thrown in your face. He’s taken on marriage dynamics in Force Majeure, and the volatility of the art world in The Square but this time he has the 1% and influencers in his crosshairs and it is very “shoot to kill”. The initial story follows a celebrity model couple named Carl (Harris Dickinson) and Yaya (Charlbi Dean), who are invited on a luxury cruise for the uber-rich, helmed by an unhinged boat captain (Woody Harrelson). What first appeared “instagrammable” ends catastrophically, leaving the survivors stranded on a desert island and fighting for survival. Ostlund is going for the throat in an even spicier version of his firebrand and as soon as the story starts to slide down the slope of chaos it is unrelenting into a totally unpredictable third act. Not everyone is loving this movie as much as I am but it hit me in all the right spots even if it is massively stomach-churning in certain places.
Catherine Called Birdy – This film kind of snuck up on me as it only started getting reviews recently and the advance word on it was absolutely stellar. I understand that it probably will get shunned by a large population of viewers because it is written and directed by Lena Dunham, a sort of people-repellant in some regard, but her track record is sound with a phenomenal debut in Tiny Furniture and a long-tenured show on HBO with Girls. Easy for me to admit that I’m on board for this film starring the young Bella Ramsey playing a fourteen-year-old girl in medieval England who navigates through life, avoiding potential suitors her cash-strapped father has in mind to help pull them out of the decline into poverty their family is in. The film is based on a book by Karen Cashman, and, from what I’m hearing, Dunham’s approach and resolute faith to the source material is felt in every frame and the cast assembled around Ramsey is really deep with former Doctor Who companion Billie Piper, brilliant character actor Andrew Scott and the man of Taylor Swift’s midnight, Joe Alwyn. With such a short turnaround from festival to streaming, I don’t see this getting any broad appeal but those in the know will be streaming it as soon as possible on Prime Video.
Deadstream – Sometimes with horror films, especially in the indie market, we hear the buzz on films but it takes a while for them to get picked up in any streaming deals or a physical release and that’s the deal with this one. Thanks to Shudder, this genre festival favourite gets to stream on the perfect platform for it and the reviews for the horror with a comedy spin have been absolutely glowing. The story follows Shawn, a disgraced internet personality who attempts to win back his followers by live-streaming one night alone in a haunted house. Unfortunately, when he accidentally pisses off a vengeful spirit, his big comeback event becomes a real-time fight for his life and who knows if he will even survive to see redemption. Written and directed by Joseph Winter, he takes the triple duty by playing the lead role of Shawn in a film that can mask its low budget by being a handheld Blair Witch-style shocker and it absolutely knows where the strengths lie in that storytelling trope. Add to that some insanely good creature effects, a snappy script and some great slapstick humour and you have a solid and original film to kick off your horror month.
Blu-Ray:
DC League Of Super-Pets – Just weeks before he’s set to take the stage in the long gestated debut of Black Adam, The Rock is giving back to the kids through DC Comics properties and is dragging his buddy Kevin Hart along for the ride. These are some deep cuts to put on the big screen but Dwayne is kind of the best choice to voice the dog of Superman, Krypto, which is probably the only one that your comic layman will know off the bat, no pun intended. The story of the film follows Krypto as he forms a team of shelter pets who were given superpowers when the Justice League are captured by Lex Luthor. On that squad is a hound named Ace, who becomes super-strong, a pig named PB, who can grow to giant size, a turtle named Merton, who becomes super-fast, and a squirrel named Chip, who gains electric powers. See, Chip is another one I know from the comics as he is an actual Green Lantern Corps member but it is obviously being played in a different way here. I also really love the fact that this film has Keanu Reeves voicing Batman which really works on so many levels. John Wick is now Batman in some sort of way. I will be honest that I set my bar low for this one, believing that it would play exclusively to the kids but it has a lot of value for an older comic lover like myself and the comedy charisma that Rock and Hart hold together as a team is very much evident here too. If you want to have some animated fun, this movie is definitely worth the time.
Dead For A Dollar – Westerns in modern Hollywood have gotten a rough ride recently because most of the time they aren’t backed by a big studio, the money in production seems fleeting and fewer and fewer of them are getting released as the days go by. This one had promise all over it as it features Christoph Waltz in his second western behind Django Unchained, one of the greatest actors ever in Willem Dafoe and is directed by Walter Hill, the man who did 48 Hrs, Another 48 Hrs, The Warriors and so many more. Good pedigree there. The story is really basic western 101, following a famed bounty hunter who runs into his sworn enemy, a professional gambler and outlaw that he had sent to prison years before while trying to collect the reward of a kidnapped woman from her scheming husband. As basic as the plot is, the production of the film is even more frustratingly basic with terrible editing and cinematography that lacks any imagination at all. Even if style could have saved the film, the script never would hold any sort of dramatic water no matter what actor you have delivering it and the film just kind of coasts by without anything memorable. At almost eighty years old, it was more of an indication of the cinema world leaving old Walter behind and that he should think more about just being a producer on things or just retiring altogether.
Watcher -Ever since I experienced the low-budget horror feast that was David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows, I have been enthralled with everything that came from it, including his weird follow-up Under The Silver Lake. Another discovery from It Follows was the brilliance of lead actress Maika Monroe and the depth that she gives her horror. This is why I am so interested in Shudder’s new offering this week, a film about a young American woman who moves with her husband to Bucharest, and begins to suspect that a stranger who watches her from the apartment building across the street may be a local serial killer decapitating women. It is definitely that sort of Maniac mixed with Rear Window storyline that solidified the deal for me with Monroe being perfectly cast but it also features another woman in horror behind the camera with writer and director Chloe Okuno following up her segment in V/H/S ’94 with her first full-length feature. It also doesn’t hurt that this movie is trending at a Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, no small feat for a film of this genre.
Steve’s Blu-Ray Geek-Outs:
She’s Out Of My League – There are so many rom-coms from year to year that a lot of them slip through the cracks and I really believe this to be one of them. In the two-year crunch that saw him starring in the ensembles of Knocked Up and Tropic Thunder, proud Canadian Jay Baruchel was cast as the lead in this funny film from writer Sean Anders, just after his raunchy comedy Sex Drive, and it worked plus it gave hope to us skinny nerdy types, or at least at the time. Jay plays Kirk, your average everyday dude who meets the perfect woman, but his lack of confidence and the influence of his friends and family begin to pick away at the relationship. A funny cast is assembled around Jay like T.J. Miller and Hayes MacArthur, but it’s the star turn of actress Alice Eve and her chemistry with the lead star that makes this movie memorable in my opinion. I think it’s really funny that they had Kirk be a Pittsburg Penguins fan when, in reality, Jay is a massive Montreal Canadians fan which has never been a hard thing to find out.
The Lost Boys4K – This movie is one that I have to credit for putting me on the path to being a horror fan. The cast was my conduit and, as you could guess, it was the two Coreys, Haim and Feldman, that made me so interested at first and definitely the Feld Man as he played one-half of the vampire-hunting Frog brothers. For those who have been under a rock for decades, the story follows a mother, played by Dianne Wiest, and her two sons (Haim and Jason Patric) who move to a small coast town in California, that unknown to them, is plagued by bikers and some mysterious deaths. The younger boy makes friends with two other boys who claim to be vampire hunters while the older boy is drawn into the gang of bikers by a beautiful girl which leads to an intense “initiation” that starts to make a change in him physically. From legendary filmmaker Joel Schumacher, this was a generation definer with so many iconic and memorable moments as well as an insane musical number featuring a muscled-up saxophone player, a part that everybody remembers. I love this movie so much.
Poltergeist4K – Speaking of movies I love, this one is going to be a bit of a rehash but it’s on 4K now and it deserves it. This is one of the classic ghost stories on film, a movie released forty years ago this year that will always have a place in many people’s hearts but will also always be a cautionary tale in filmmaking as it has so many dark clouds over it. First off, there’s always the debate on whether Tobe Hooper directed this as he is credited or if producer Steven Spielberg did the heavy lifting and the second one is the use of real human skeletons which may have cursed not just this movie but the subsequent sequels to come. It’s really fascinating to dig into. The film follows the Freelings, a young family who are visited by ghosts in their home. At first, the ghosts appear friendly, moving objects around the house to the amusement of everyone but then they turn nasty and start to terrorize the family before focusing on the youngest daughter, one who has an astral connection with them. This movie oozes style and the effects were groundbreaking at the time. It also illustrates how different a tie it was when it was released as the film would have probably gotten an R-rating these days just for the bathroom mirror scene with Marty alone.
Television:
Let The Right One In (Crave) – Just a couple of weeks ago I had some harsh words about Americans remaking foreign horror films but we may have come across the one exception with this horror IP right here. Originally a phenomenal Swedish film from director Tomas Alfredson, it was remade by Matt Reeves with Chloe Grace Moretz, a film I lashed out at before it came out and it ended up totally astounding me. This is why I’ll give this series version more than a chance and the fact that it is led by the great Demian Bichir softens it a bit for me. The series follows a 12-year-old girl who lives a closed-in life after turning into a vampire, only able to go out at night. Her father does his best to provide her with the minimal amount of human blood she needs to stay alive, acting almost as her personal Renfield, which is a definitely play on the source material. The series is run by Penny Dreadful writer Andrew Hinderaker who used this series to get over the heartbreak of the cancellation of his space series Away at Netflix but, just judging from the trailer, think he was right to put his efforts into this show.
The Midnight Club (Netflix) – After numerous movies and three hit shows, Mike Flanagan is back to put the chills into us once again and I had no idea that I had read the source material as a teenager until halfway into the first episode. It pulls from some good stuff too as this series is based on a book by Christopher Pike, a writer that cornered the young adult horror genre, along with R.L. Stine. The show follows a group of five terminally ill patients at Brightcliffe Hospice, who begin to gather together at midnight to share scary stories, almost like a terminal version of the Are You Afraid Of The Dark crew. From moments in, Flanagan is so gifted at making your hairs stand on end with creepy imagery, foreboding moments and jump scares that are totally earned at all times. It also has A Nightmare On Elm Street’s original final girl Heather Langenkamp in it as well which was such a delight to find out. I’m loving it all so far.
Bros – With all of the big Hollywood romantic comedies always being a heterosexual love affair, it’s really refreshing to see this new big Universal Pictures-backed film from producer Judd Apatow and they’ve picked the perfect person to lead it in Billy Eichner. The long-time Billy In The Street host who has found viral fame through Funny Or Die on Youtube and shared constantly on social media, he brings his comedy stylings, minus the erratic shouting, into the pantheon of filmmaking that had given star lifts to Seth Rogen, Amy Schumer and Pete Davidson. The film follows Eichner as a serial dating gay man with a fear of commitment who finds what he believes is the perfect partner for him but he also has the same commitment phobia that keeps him from moving to the next step. The two decide to cast their fears to the wind and adventure in a serious relationship together, complete with all the pitfalls that follow. The film co-stars Luke MacFarlane, a favourite of mine from back in his television days on Brothers & Sisters so there is a lot going for this movie because I adore Eichner too so much. The great news is the film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival with fantastic reviews so I think we may have a hit on our hands here.
Smile – Seeing the trailer over and over again before all of the spooky films I have gone to over the last three months, I have to say that they really didn’t do anything for me. Sure, there is a lot of creep factor to it with the unsettling smiles that the victims or infected people exhibit are effective but it all sort of came off to me as a J-horror style thriller like The Ring or The Grudge. The film stars Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgewick’s daughter Sosie Bacon as psychiatrist Dr. Rose Cotter who starts experiencing frightening occurrences that she can’t explain after witnessing a bizarre, traumatic incident involving a patient. Rose must confront her troubling past in order to survive and escape becoming the latest victim in a terrifying phenomenon. As the film got closer to release, praise started to be heaped on the film by horror critics everywhere, stating the writer and director Parker Finn’s debut film is original, deeply disturbing and will leave a mark on you for days after. All of this is great hype to a genre fan like me and I honestly can’t wait to take this in for myself. It might even make me smile during it.
Hocus Pocus 2 – Almost thirty years after the Sanderson sisters and their hijinx delighted audiences and became many young girls go to movie at Halloween, Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy are back to slip into these fun roles and it still fits them like a snug little glove. I have to say that there was worry that this long anticipated and gestated sequel was going to be a brazen cash grab but that notion quickly dissipates. This new story finds three teen girls who accidentally bring back the Sanderson Sisters to modern-day Salem and must figure out how to stop the child-hungry witches from wreaking havoc on the world. With all the great physicality that these three bring back to these characters, it’s a marvel to think that Midler is seventy-six years old but still looks like she can slip in and out of a character she only did once, albeit perfectly. I will also go on record saying that Sarah Sanderson is Parker’s greatest character in her career and the fun she has with it is absolutely palpable. I must close by mentioning that Doug Jones returns as well for another portrait of the mummified Billy Butcherson and it is still as great as always. I’m so happy that this movie was so enjoyable because it keeps my faith in these Disney+ productions alive.
The Greatest Beer Run Ever – My introduction to director Peter Farrelly was through the work that he and his brother Bobby did bringing us unforgettable comedies like Dumb And Dumber, There’s Something About Mary and Kingpin but Green Book came along and won him an Academy Award and now he is kind of in a different ballpark. For his new film, it seems to skew to both eras in his filmmaking career as it is, essentially, a film about boys being boys and a real story rooted in real history. Starring Zac Efron as Chickie Donohue, a guy just looking to support his friends deployed across the globe in the midst of the Vietnam War. His idea is to do something drastic, to travel to the frontline by himself to bring the soldiers a little piece of home, their favourite can of American beer. However, what started as a well-meaning journey quickly turns into the adventure of a lifetime as Chickie confronts the reality of this controversial war and his reunions with his childhood buddies thrust him into the complexities and responsibilities of adulthood. In supporting roles, Efron is in good company with Russell Crowe and Bill Murray popping up here and there but it’s a great opportunity to have the actor round out his resume more with a good character story which is fantastic because I think he has done some excellent work in the last few years. The critics are really behind this one but I think the general audience might pick up it.
The Good House – The name of the game with this new comedy-drama is definitely likable because how can you not be intrigued by a film that has Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver leading it? Beyond that, it also has the husband and wife team of Maya Forbes and Wallace Wolodarsky writing and directing it, the same people who did the loveable Infinitely Polar Bear. The film follows Weaver as New England realtor Hildy Good whose life begins to unravel when she hooks up with an old flame of hers from New York. Becoming dangerously entwined in his reckless behaviour and igniting long-buried emotions and family secrets, including being a descendant of the Salem witches, Hildy is propelled toward a reckoning with the one person she’s been avoiding for decades, herself. From the initial reviews I’m finding, the standout here is Sigourney who brings that charm and gravitas that has made her a star for decades now and I definitely will always have a spot in my heart for her, an original crush since I first saw Ghostbusters and was deepened when I finally got to see Alien and Aliens. This is definitely a character movie at its core and who better to do it than her and the great Kevin Kline?
Dead For A Dollar – Westerns in modern Hollywood have gotten a rough ride recently because most of the time they aren’t backed by a big studio, the money in production seems fleeting and fewer and fewer of them are getting released as the days go by. This one had promise all over it as it features Christoph Waltz in his second western behind Django Unchained, one of the greatest actors ever in Willem Dafoe and is directed by Walter Hill, the man who did 48 Hrs, Another 48 Hrs, The Warriors and so many more. Good pedigree there. The story is really basic western 101, following a famed bounty hunter who runs into his sworn enemy, a professional gambler and outlaw that he had sent to prison years before while trying to collect the reward of a kidnapped woman from her scheming husband. As basic as the plot is, the production of the film is even more frustratingly basic with terrible editing and cinematography that lacks any imagination at all. Even if style could have saved the film, the script never would hold any sort of dramatic water no matter what actor you have delivering it and the film just kind of coasts by without anything memorable. At almost eighty years old, it was more of an indication of the cinema world leaving old Walter behind and that he should more think about just being a producer on things or just retiring altogether.
Blu-Ray:
Thor: Love And Thunder – After the hilarious work that writer, director and co-star Taika Waititi did with the last Thor movie Ragnarok, I was really excited to see the next installment and get more of the zaniest and sillier side of the Marvel Universe, to the chagrin of many out there. The perfect addition to the Thor character was Taika’s silly approach to it which gave the God Of Thunder a douche bro vulnerability that Chris Hemsworth plays so well. This new film finds Thor in his retirement which is quickly ended when a galactic killer known as Gorr the God Butcher emerges and seeks the extinction of the gods. To combat the threat, Thor enlists the help of King Valkyrie, Korg and ex-girlfriend Jane Foster, who, to Thor’s surprise, inexplicably wields his magical hammer, Mjolnir, as the Mighty Thor. Together, they embark upon a harrowing cosmic adventure to uncover the mystery of the God Butcher’s vengeance and stop him before it’s too late. The comedy is obviously evident, being a Waititi joint, but with that comes the mind-bending gorgeous cinematography as well as we see colourful new worlds, bold new characters and a little tease of the direction of where the Marvel Cinematic Universe is going afterwards. having watched this film a few times now, my love for it and its predecessor or even more present and I kind of resent all the haters who get gleeful about their hatred of this new direction. Things like this are why we can’t have nice things.
Sound Of Metal – Riz Ahmed has astounded me multiple times with his talent, most recently with his role as a British Pakistani rapper in the drama Mogul Mowgli which played at a virtual version of the Vancouver International Film Festival during the pandemic and definitely this one, another deep character piece that now deservedly earned its place in the Criterion Collection. In this film, he plays a heavy-metal drummer and former heroin addict whose life is thrown into freefall when he begins to lose his hearing. Believing that there can be a solution, he fixates on an experimental but expensive procedure to “cure” his hearing loss in a sort of desperate hope. This is an impactful film about the state of denial and desperation a person must feel when they lose something that we take for granted, really. Director and writer Darius Marder beautifully creates an experience that seems to transcend the sensory experience and put you right into Ahmed’s character’s plight in such an incredible way. It’s truly stellar.
The Munsters – If you talked to me in the mid to late 2000s you probably would have found a guy pretty susceptible and excited for rock star and grittily technicolour horror filmmaker Rob Zombie taking on a classic like The Munsters. His career in the genre started out so well, with House Of 1000 Corpses, The Devil’s Rejects, his Halloween reimagining and even Lords Of Salem. That said, his films like 3 From Hell and 31 left a lot to be desired so this news of a classic spooky family reboot gave me a slight cringe. The story gives this television landmark group a rebooting, telling the story of how Herman came to be, how he met Lily and the start of their romance, years before Eddie was even born and even before they made the move from Transylvania to Hollywood. The cast is filled with Zombie’s usual cast, headed up by his wife Sheri Moon as Lily, Jeff Daniel Phillips as Herman, Daniel Roebuck as The Count and Richard Brake as the mad scientist who gets the ball rolling. The vision is there, and the colours pop off the screen but everything feels so dreadfully undercooked, as is the problem with all of his later work. It all serves to totally bum me out as a fan as I just want a return to that fresh Rob Zombie we got in the beginning but it all feels like a saturation of his lesser qualities.
Mean Girls – One of the greatest high school teen comedies of the 2000s gets its blu-ray dues this week as the Plastics are now in steelbook and you can relive this fantastic Tina Fey-written comedy over and over again. Really, this is an appreciation post of a young Lindey Lohan who had phenomenal comedic timing before the fame and excess shoved her out of Hollywood, along with her terrible family. It kind of reminds me of how Amanda Bynes was amazing too. For those who have never seen this brilliant piece of comedy, Lohan plays Cady Heron who is an immediate hit with The Plastics, the A-list girl clique at her new school, until she makes the mistake of falling for Aaron Samuels, the ex-boyfriend of alpha Plastic Regina George. In a totally relatable story of class statuses facing off, stars were made beyond Lohan as Canadian actress Rachel McAdams got his first spotlight to shine as well as Amanda Seyfried in a breakout role. I seem to have a penchant for high school comedies and as crazy as it sounds, I reiterate that this is one of the best.
The War Of The Worlds/When Worlds Collide4K – Classic science fiction gets its chance to shine in the highest of definitions as Paramount has paired these two in a brand new edition, remastered in 4K. Released in 1953 and 1951 respectively, these films dazzled audiences in the theatres and blew minds with the capabilities of special effects at the time, a far cry from where they are now. The War Of The Worlds is that same classic H.G. Wells story that was once read and directed by Orson Welles, about a small town in California that is attacked by Martians, kicking off a worldwide invasion. When Worlds Collide, a predecessor, follows a small group of survivalists who frantically work to complete the rocket which will take them to their new home as a new star and planet hurtle toward a doomed Earth. These films are the epitome of a genre classic and have the foundation of what the whole sci-fi theme was born from. As a film buff like myself who has a real blindspot for films before 1965, I find them fascinating.
The White Lotus: Season 1 – One of the breakout hits this year was this dark comedy-drama that is so well cast from top to bottom with Jennifer Coolidge, Steve Zahn, Connie Britton as well as young stars like Alexandra Daddario, Fred Herschinger ad Sydney Sweeney but the important thing is it comes from one of the most gifted writers in Mike White. On the heels of picking up ten Primetime Emmys recently, it’s the best time to get immersed in this critic and audience darling as it hits DVD this week. Set in a tropical resort, it follows the exploits of various guests and employees over the span of a week, whose stay becomes affected by their various dysfunctions. With the mountain of awards that came this past week, the big ones were for White’s writing and the series itself but we also saw Coolidge win a long-deserved award as well as the celebration of a new name in the zeitgeist, Murray Bartlett, who plays a pivotal role that I can’t even begin to describe. With season two just around the corner, it’s time to get on the hype train for this HBO series and see what the hype is about.
Mayor Of Kingstown: Season 1 – The reach of Taylor Sheridan’s genius extends beyond his creation of Yellowstone and its spin-off shows 1883 and 1923 because he has reteamed with Wind River star Jeremy Renner for this brand new series on Paramount+. The show also features Friday Night Lights’ Kyle Chandler, veteran actress Dianne Wiest, Game Of Thrones and The Wire alum Aidan Gillen and Headstones frontman Hugh Dillon, a Yellowstone cast member who also is the co-creator of this. The series follows the McLusky family who are power brokers tackling themes of systemic racism, corruption and inequality in Kingstown, Michigan, where the business of incarceration is the only thriving industry. I really love how gritty Sheridan’s writing is and it doesn’t relax one bit in this show at all, just puts it into a whole new avenue, away from the farm life. With season two just around the corner, I trying to binge my way through it myself in preparation.
Kung Fu: Season 2 – It’s been a long time since David Carradine roamed the streets of Western America as Shaolin Monk Kwai Chang Caine in the original series Kung Fu, which ran from 1972 to 1975, a movie in 1986, then rebooted in 1993 to run for another four seasons. Well, The CW, who are no strangers to rebooting popular shows, has made it past its first season and now has made its way through the second as well, survived the extensive cuts that Warner Bros. made to the network and we are geared for a third season. Does it go beyond that? Who knows. Starring Legacies actress Olivia Liang, she plays a young Chinese-American woman named Nicky Chen who, after a quarter-life crisis, decides to drop out of college and go on a life-changing journey to an isolated monastery in China. She returns home to find her hometown overrun with crime and corruption and vows to use her martial arts skills and Shaolin values to protect her community and bring criminals to justice while searching for the assassin who killed her Shaolin mentor and is now targeting her. Much like the Walker, Texas Ranger reboot, this show plays in the corny sandbox but it still has all of those nods to the original that will make you smile and remember Caine and how he was here to help us plus it was filmed in the lower mainland and seeing my old haunts here and there makes me really happy and nostalgic.
Steve’s Blu-Ray Geek-Outs:
Peacemaker: Season 1 – Following James Gunn’s revamping of The Suicide Squad in the summer of 2021, he took one of the characters and the consequences of his specific actions to the small screen and directed a handful of the episodes himself. Yes, the douchebag and murderous version of Captain America, Peacemaker, played by John Cena, gets a chance at redemption and his mission extended. I won’t go into the spoilers of The Suicide Squad, which is available to stream on Crave now, but this series delves into the things that make up this character, his intentions and his destructive past and familial relationships and how he can form himself and rebuild himself to be an actual hero. I really loved Cena in this role and this series just cemented him as unforgettable in only eight episodes and I really can’t wait for more, which has already been confirmed. Also, my friend did the set decoration for his trailer so I have a lot of pride in that too as just Peacemaker’s trailer alone is a treasure trove of easter eggs and funny references.
Television:
11 Minutes (Paramount+) – While I definitely think it is in bad taste to capitalize on tragic events with a docuseries, I am nonetheless drawn to watching all of them and reliving all the horror that unfolds within. That is why I was immediately drawn to this new show even though it is completely and shamelessly vapid in making buzz-worthy Twitter moments out of the sadness that befell many families on one night in Las Vegas. The series is told through emotional first-hand accounts and never-before-seen archival footage and immerses viewers inside the largest mass shooting in our country’s history, a story of survival at what was supposed to be a festival celebrating country music on a hot Vegas night. I’m curious to see how the killer is framed in this series and just how they will address him going out in a hail of bullets and what footage of the whole thing they have. It’s morbid and sort of sick but I’ve watched through so many serial killer documentaries so, really, what’s the difference?
Entergalactic (Netflix) – I’m a huge fan of Kid Cudi’s work, both as a music artist and as an actor, but this puts him in a whole new avenue as a creator and showrunner but he has the knowledge of executive producer Kenya Barris, responsible for shows like Blackish and the movie Girls Trip to guide his vision. The series is bound to be dazzling as well as it happens to be an animated one as well. Featuring the voices of Cudi, Timothee Chalamet, Vanessa Hudgens, Macaulay Culkin, Keith David and so many more, this series follows Jabari, a charming, streetwear-clad artist on the cusp of real success who has a chance run-in with his cool new photographer neighbour, Meadow, and has to figure out whether he can make space for love in his life of keep chasing the dream. The animation, to me, is reminiscent of the work that was done on Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse and really seems to pop off of the screen. It’s vibrant and the characters feel richer and, at times, almost ethereal as a result. I think this will be a show released in segments so embrace episode one and let’s enjoy some discourse before the sophomore episode hits.
The Mighty Ducks Game Changers: Season 2 (Disney+) – So many people are looking forward to the second season of the continuation of a story we all adored and most of the fans drooling for it are my age and, yes, I can definitely be included in the ravenous waiters but I will admit that the show is made for kids. Before heading full-on into this description I will say that, yes, the loss of Emilio Estevez from the cast puts a huge damper on things but COVID made us all a bit crazy with protocols and, really, that’s all I’ll say about that. The show follows twelve-year-old Evan who, after failing to make the cut to join the now powerhouse Mighty Ducks junior hockey team, is encouraged by his mother to form a new team of underdogs with help from Gordon Bombay, the Ducks’ original coach who is now operating a rundown ice rink and, for some reason, hates hockey entirely. Now, after the events of the last season, we know that the team has earned back the name of the Mighty Ducks but how do they write out the most pivotal character in the series and does it mean that Lauren Graham’s character will be the new coach? One of the main plot points of last season was how she was unable to do the job in a competitive nature and the team was lacking because of it so it almost seems that the Emilio less series kind of has bigger overarching issues than we thought. Even still, I’ll watch every episode like a psychopath.
Don’t Worry Darling – The big release this week comes on the heels of a toxic behind-the-scenes reveal that has put the star of the film, Florence Pugh, at odds with the director and co-star, Olivia Wilde, has involved the, at one point, star of the film Shia LeBeouf and the apparently subpar performance of Harry Styles and this was all revealed months before the release date. As a fan of Pugh’s work and Wilde’s previous movie Booksmart, I want to believe that this could be good as the trailer is solid but, alas, the advance reviews are leaning toward disaster. The story has Ms. Flo as a 1950s housewife living with her husband in a utopian experimental community who begins to worry that his glamorous company could be hiding disturbing secrets. It’s sad that something as publicized as on-set drama could immediately tank a film’s expectations so much but this is a prime example of personal relationships and politics overshadowing the final piece. The chilling Stepford Wives angle still has me fascinated and I will head into the film hopefully with a lesser chip on my shoulder from hearing all of these background rumblings but I can’t see the casual audience making the same allowances. I think the damage may have already been done and this one will bomb into obscurity.
Blonde – Biopics are a tricky thing to get right and especially one as delicate as the subject matter, one pulled off greatly by the performance of Michelle Williams in My Week With Marilyn but not so much the movie around her. I felt like it was in damn good hands when it was announced the Assassination Of Jesse James director and many-time collaborator with Nick Cave, Andrew Dominik was taking on the story and had cast one of the “it girls” of right now, Ana De Armas in the main role. The film boldly reimagines the life of one of Hollywood’s most enduring icons, from her volatile childhood as Norma Jeane, through her rise to stardom and romantic entanglements all while suffering through the duality of her real self and her career and the heartbreaks that tragically led to her death. The cinematography is exquisite and De Armas does a fine job masking her accent to create the breathiness of Marilyn but Dominik heads down a Terrence Malick Tree Of Life-like existential meandering that takes you completely out of the movie periodically. There is a deeper message about mental health and controlling studio heads that hammers you over the head to say “are you paying attention?” and even when it feels like we are, it bludgeons you some more. Ultimately, this is Dominik’s most disappointing venture but it came from such a place of promise.
Lou – I’ve always been saying that Allison Janney needed some grittier and juicier roles, especially coming off of the sitcom life she endured for close to a decade on the CBS series Mom and now it looks like someone heard my call into the universe. She also has the young star in Birds Of Prey’s Jurnee Smollett-Bell to share the spotlight and have some of her veteran craft rub off on and I really hope to see more of Janney in this vein. The film has her as a mysterious loner living in the woods who is forced to join a young mother in the search for her kidnapped daughter as a vicious storm rages on. Janney is definitely the name in this game, turning in an epic performance that would be at home with the scowl of Clint Eastwood behind it. The film was directed by stalwart television helmer Anna Foerster, known for her work on shows like Westworld, Outlander and Jessica Jones but I hope she does more features as this is a film far better than her debut, an Underworld sequel called Blood Wars. Maybe she and Janney can team up for a full-out action film next time, I’d be all over that.
Avatar – I probably don’t need to say a lot about this one but I saw the ultimate edition of this on sale for just twenty bucks a while back, had to get it, and now it is getting another chance to play on the big screen ahead of the sequel in December. Let’s be honest, this is the best way to experience it, the greatest 3D immersion I have ever seen and it is honestly where James Cameron’s films play best. Yes, this is essentially him ripping off Ferngully by combining it with the Dances With Wolves storyline but it was one of my favourite in-house screenings of my life and one of those cinema moments that I will cherish until my dying day. For those new to this movie, it follows a paraplegic Marine who is dispatched to the moon Pandora on a unique mission, put into the bodies of the native creatures, the Na’Vi, to obtain resources but becomes torn between following his orders and protecting the world he feels is his home. Cameron knows how to give us breathtaking action sequences and amazing imagery but his script is sometimes lacking. With The Way Of Water so quickly on the horizon after years of waiting, this may be the best way to get reacquainted with the world of Pandora and the people living on it.
Blu-Ray:
The Black Phone – Another pandemic rescheduled film, this new horror from writer and director Scott Derrickson was on my most anticipated movies list for a long time, ever since I saw the trailer, and it is rooted in the uber-creepy performance from a masked Ethan Hawke. It also is because Derrickson is a master of scaring you out of your seat, as is evident in one of the scariest films of all time, his chiller Sinister. The story follows a thirteen-year-old boy who is abducted by a child killer and locked in a soundproof basement with only a broken phone in the corner on which he starts receiving calls from the killer’s previous victims. Adapting the work of acclaimed writer Joe Hill, the son of the master of horror literature, Stephen King, Derrickson and co-writer Robert Cargill have cooked up something special and wildly original that consistently sends shivers down your spine in the story reveals and twists with scares that don’t feel forced and contrived. I also have to praise all of the kid actors who are just phenomenal in this film, as the youth can sometimes be a make or break to these horror thrillers.
Vengeance – A long-time writer for The Office as well as a cast member, B.J. Novak is such a gifted creator so I’m honestly surprised that it’s taken so long to get to his first directed feature but it was definitely worth the wait. This new comedy also hits a little close to home as Novak plays a podcaster in it, which really shows how far the medium has come along. The film follows a writer from New York City who attempts to solve the murder of a girl he hooked up with for a forgettable evening and travels down south to investigate the circumstances of her death and discover what happened to her. The cast formed around Novak is impressive with Boyd Holbrook, Ashton Kutcher and Issa Rae to name a few and the final result is really funny in a fish out of water sense, showing a lot of the southern opinion, beliefs and misconceptions through the prism of a city boy who has never gotten the grit of small-town Texas under his fingernails, besides a trip to Austin for South By Southwest. This film is brilliantly written, shows the division of the Americas in a very focused way and really keeps you guessing until the end which had a moment that totally shocked me.
The Reef: Stalked – As a horror fan, I’ve got a real soft spot for monster movies, especially sort of reality-based monsters like wild animals and because of my affinity for Steven Spielberg’s Jaws for as long as I can remember loving movies, sharks are a major selling point. Well, this week Shudder is getting into the game with an at-sea horror thriller and the poster for it is amazing, I recommend finding that one alone. The film is a quasi-sequel to the 2010 thriller The Reef and follows a woman named Nic, her younger sister and two friends who seek solace through a Pacific island kayaking adventure after her sister’s murder. Hours into the trip the women are stalked by a shark and must band together, face their fears and save each other. I’m very aware of the hit-and-miss nature of these types of films, looking directly at the sequel for 47 Meters Down, but sometimes these movies pull through like the terror in the film Open Water or Blake Lively taking on a toothy monster in The Shallows. For these reasons, I will always give a movie like this a shot and I’m still sold over the great poster. Seriously, it’s a frameable one.
Batman: The Long Halloween4K – After the finish to possibly my favourite Batman detective-style story ever came out last summer, thanks to the incredible minds and creators at the DC Comics animated film division of Warner Bros, I was hoping that they would do like they did with Year One and release it in 4K. Better than that, I was also hoping that they would put both part one and part two together, which they did to my excitement. The story begins with a brutal murder on Halloween that prompts Gotham’s young vigilante, the Batman, to form a pact with the city’s only two uncorrupt lawmen, police captain James Gordon and District Attorney Harvey Dent, to take down The Roman, head of the notorious and powerful Falcone Crime Family. When more deaths occur on Thanksgiving and Christmas, it becomes clear that, instead of ordinary gang violence, they’re also dealing with a serial killer that, with each conflicting clue, grows harder to make a suspect list for. Few cases have ever tested the wits of the World’s Greatest Detective like the mystery behind the Holiday Killer, told with a great animation style and a great voice cast that includes Jensen Ackles, Titus Welliver and the late Naya Rivera, my usual gripe with both of these movies is that they are a little too short and seem to cut some corners storywise to make those time constraints but this restructuring alleviates that problem. I know a lot of the DC Comics animated films like to make sure they clock in at an hour and fifteen minutes but maybe that template needs to be re-evaluated for the story’s sake and this is an acknowledgement of that.
The Equalizer: Season 2 – I’m really kind of surprised that this series adaptation of a movie that was adapted from a classic TV series got the renewal for a second season let alone heading into a third one but people seem to be into Queen Latifah coming through to take Denzel’s place in the lead chair as this property. Latifah is Robyn McCall, an enigmatic African American woman with a mysterious background who uses her extensive skills to help those with nowhere else to turn. McCall comes across, to most, like an average single mom who is quietly raising her teenage daughter but to a trusted few, she is an anonymous guardian angel and defender of the downtrodden, who’s also dogged in her pursuit of personal redemption. The series takes off on the original Edward Woodward show from the late eighties as each episode seems to be reworkings of the older plots to get things going that, to me, have yet to find their footing but I really like Tory Kittles who is the supporting character for McCall, an actor that has done a lot of great work on the small screen.
ATHF: The Complete Collection – This was a late arrival but I’m so happy it made it to my house on time to be included this week because this right here was my introduction to the Adult Swim network and what a glorious time that was. In Canada, our exposure was through Teletoon and in the year 2000 my expectations for adult cartoons changed with this show from creators Dave Willis and Matt Maiellaro with each episode clocking in at a jam-packed ten minutes long. The premise is simple, the misadventures of a milkshake named Master Shake, an order of fries named Frylock, a meatball named Meatwad, and their retired next-door neighbour, Carl, in the suburbs of New Jersey. People died, aliens invaded and Glenn Danzig even moved in next door across the seven volumes, two reboot series and one feature film that span the twenty discs of this ultimate box set. As an uber fan, this whole thing just makes me giddy.
Steve’s Blu-Ray Geek-Outs:
Green Zone – A powerhouse team through most of the 2000s with the Bourne franchise, a beloved love letter to Robert Ludlum’s fantastic character, most people forgot that director Paul Greengrass and star Matt Damon also made this military thriller as well, lost in the shuffle of 2010 big budget action films. In reality, it was well reviewed but I still believe it to be pretty underrated as seemingly no one has seen it, a vague recollection in the memories of other Damon films. The film follows him as a U.S. Army officer who goes rogue in the light of discovering covert and faulty intelligence, putting him on a search for Weapons of Mass Destruction in an unstable region. Based on the book Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone, this movie should be remembered way more than the ill-conceived return for both director and star to their franchise in Jason Bourne as the film is thrilling, utterly fascinating and is filled with more of that mistrust in the military and governing bodies that bring us back to the cinema. It also features Jason Isaacs, a character actor who is always a memorable piece in the films he appears in.
Television:
Reboot (Disney+) – Given that the wife and I are currently going through a binge-watch of the ten-season-long ABC series Modern Family right now and loving it, I was really excited to see that co-creator Steven Levitan has this brand new series debuting on Disney+ and it gets really meta because the streamers American counterpart, Hulu, is at the heart of it. Pulling off of the penchant for rebooting everything, the show is lampooning all the best things at the right time and it has the perfect cast to do it with Keegan Michael Key, Judy Greer, Johnny Knoxville, Rachel Bloom and Paul Reiser. The show follows an early 2000s family sitcom called Step Right Up that Hulu has rebooted and its dysfunctional cast that must deal with their unresolved issues in today’s fast-changing world. Old grudges over the lead star leaving to do more serious work, complicated sexual relationships, rehab stints and child actor issues all come to a head in a series that is a lot of fun immediately and has some of that great dialogue that made Modern Family a hit but without the constraint of being PG. The first episodes are fantastic and I really hope that it catches on with audiences because the story has definite longevity.
The Kardashians: Season 2 (Disney+) – It probably looks ridiculous that I’m even covering the return of this series but still I’m not scared to admit something that I would have been petrified of years ago and that is a simple fact that I kind of enjoy this show. Breaking away from the mould of their E Network series, this version of their reality show feels way better in its approach and feels a lot less scripted and acted than the show that established them. For those who are thankfully oblivious to the Kardashians, the show follows them as they celebrate new ventures, businesses and relationship statuses and navigate through their new normal. With all of the insanity between Kim and her ex-husband Kanye West and the budding relationship and overly PDA-prone Kourtney and drummer Travis Barker, there was a lot that I couldn’t stop watching on this show. Plus, I think Kendall Jenner is a stoner and I kind of relate to her a bit.
Andor (Disney+) – Disney+ and Star Wars are taking a little bit of a gamble here because after The Mandolorian, Book Of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi, they are venturing out with a series that is rooted in these worlds but won’t feature a lightsaber at all, let alone a Jedi master or Sith lord. The cool thing is it explores the earlier life of the doom-fated Cassian Andor from Rogue One and the Resistance storylines are definitely things that have fascinated me in the past. All set before one of my favourite films in the whole franchise, this show, so far planned for two seasons, follows Diego Luna as Cassian before he joined the Rebels, on the run from an Imperial investigation after the death of two guards by his hand. The series also features Genevieve O’Reilly returning to the role of Mon Mothma, which makes me geek out, but it also has Stellan Skarsgard in an enigmatic role that I am absolutely loving, having got the privilege of seeing the first four episodes in advance. I will say it’s a slow burn of a story so you need to have a little patience with it. Trust me, the rewards are there.
The Woman King – Viola Davis is not staying in the office this time for an action feast as she did as Amanda Waller in the Suicide Squad movies. This time she is in the battle, alongside a hell of a cast with No Time To Die’s Lashana Lynch and Star Wars star John Boyega so she is in very good company for this based on a true story epic from Love And Basketball filmmaker Gina Prince_Bythewood. The film is the story of the Agojie, the all-female unit of warriors who protected the African Kingdom of Dahomey in the 1800s with skills and a fierceness, unlike anything the world has ever seen. Davis plays General Nanisca as she trains the next generation of recruits and readies them for battle against an enemy determined to destroy their way of life. This movie looks awesome and totally deserving of the toughest performance from Viola who has had some very formidable roles in her past. The initial reviews for it are glowing and the word is that the film will stick with you, beyond the running time, which is always a great thing for cinema.
Goodnight Mommy – I definitely have my worries about this new horror thriller as it is a remake of an Austrian film from 2014 by the filmmaking duo of Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz who made a hell of an experience that had me gripping my seat in the press screening. Can this one keep that feeling? Well, it does have Naomi Watts leading it who has had successful remakes of foreign thrillers with The Ring and Funny Games so I’m more than willing to give it a shot. The story follows twin brothers who arrive at their mother’s country home to discover her face covered in bandages after plastic surgery and they immediately sense that something doesn’t add up. She sets strange new house rules, smokes in her bathroom, and secretly rips up a drawing they gave her, things their loving mother would never do. As her behaviour grows increasingly bizarre and erratic, a horrifying thought takes root in the boys’ minds, that the woman beneath the gauze, who’s making their food and sleeping in the next room, isn’t their mother at all. There are key sequences in the original film that still send chills down my spine when I think of them and I really am hoping that director Matt Sobel, in just his second feature, is able to make something just as harrowing but in a fresh and different way. I know I will be watching this American-made version for sure but I highly recommend watching the original which is available on Shudder right now.
Pearl – After seeing the seventies-style brilliance that was the horror film X from Ti West, there was a rumour I read online that there was a second film, a prequel to that story that was written and filmed by West and lead actress Mia Goth during the COVID quarantine in New Zealand which doubled for a hot and dusty Texas. Having loved everything I saw in X I was so curious to see even a trailer for Pearl which was apparently only shown in American cinemas, screwing us Canadians. You’ve had a few months to watch X on blu-ray now so I will play with a few spoilers here but the story of this film follows the story of Pearl, the old lady who murdered all of the main characters in X, in her back story of how she got there. Goth proved herself to be a bonafide leading star in X and I can not wait to see her stretch her legs again in an even darker role as I suspect she did the dual role of the predecessor as Pearl under heavy aging makeup. Yes, I’m bringing another horror film this week and probably no one is happier about it than me.
The Silent Twins – As much as I’ve heard that actress Leticia Wright has been problematic on the Black Panther 2 set with her anti-vax views, all rumoured at this point, as far as I know, it doesn’t mar the fact that she is really great at her craft and a true story film like this just cements it even more. Adding to the mix of acting prowess, the visual glory of this film is in the hands of Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Smoczynska whose astounding mermaid fantasy drama with a horror twist, The Lure, put her on the map in my opinion. The story follows Wright and Tamara Lawrance as identical twins June and Jennifer Gibbons who grew up in Wales and became known as “the silent twins” because of their refusal to communicate with anyone other than each other. This eventually got the two incarcerated in a mental hospital for years of their lives as they created their own art and writings together in a volatile sisterhood. This movie is incredible in its imagery as it transitions between their imaginations and the harshness of their reality and the performance between Leticia and Lawrence brought me to tears more than a few times. I don’t know what the awards campaign is behind this film but I think it needs to be on the ballot somewhere, a truly original vision of two interesting characters in history.
Clerks III – Being a long-time fan of the works of writer, director, editor, producer and star Kevin Smith, I have a reverence for anything Clerks and Jay and Silent Bob related so to say that the anticipation for this sequel, coming more than fifteen years after the second movie, is at an all-time high is even an underselling of my passion. Clerks was a piece in the mosaic of why I love movies and Smith is a big inspiration for me being on the radio now so this is like a cinematic golden gift for me and fans like me and no matter what we get, I’m predestined to love it. We go super meta with this installment as Randall suffers a heart attack and with his near-death experience, he makes it his mission to gather his friends Dante, Elias, and Jay and Silent Bob to make a movie about the Quick Stop as his lasting legacy on the planet. I love that Kevin is incorporating his own journey into a film that, from what I’m hearing, gives the most heart, emotion and resonance of his entire career. These are the words coming from a critic that is not a die-hard View Askew fan so that has me even more riled up to see this. Being in a small town, it won’t get to me for a while but I am more than ready. Let’s f***ing go, already!
Do Revenge – Following on the hotness of the fourth season of the Netflix juggernaut hit Stranger Things the streaming service knows that there are great people contained in the cast and have doubled down on that by casting Maya Hawke in this new dark comedy. To pad up a great cast, the film also features formidable Game Of Thrones actress Sophie Turner and Riverdale star Camila Mendes but I’m really excited that the film was written and directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson in her sophomore release and after her series, Sweet/Vicious was cancelled by MTV after just one season which, to me, is really sad. The film feels like a riff on that series as it follows Mendes and Hawke as two students on the opposite ends of the popularity scale. Drea (Camila) is at the peak of her high school powers when her entire life goes up in flames after her sex tape gets leaked to the whole school, seemingly by her boyfriend and king of the school, Max. Eleanor (Maya) is an awkward new transfer student who is angered to find out that she now has to go to school with her old bully, Carissa (Turner) who started a nasty rumour about her in summer camp when they were 13. After a clandestine run-in at tennis camp, Drea and Eleanor form an unlikely and secret friendship to get revenge on each other’s tormentors. I love these Mean Girls-type stories, a hold back from all the films of the 80s and 90s that played almost on repeat in my VHS or DVD player so I have a certain expectation for it. Given the players that are involved, it seems like a winning battle to me.
Flux Gourmet – With the brand new thriller with a comedy edge The Menu just playing the Toronto International Film Festival and getting comparisons to a cross between Succession and the Saw franchise, Shudder is striking while the frying pan is just heating up with this culinary-related thriller. To me, it also has the added bonus of featuring former Game Of Thrones actress Gwendoline Christie in a main role just after she magnificently played Lucifer in the Netflix adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman. This film, also exhibiting a comedic smile to it, is set at an institute devoted to culinary and alimentary performance, following a collective that finds themselves embroiled in power struggles, artistic vendettas, and gastrointestinal disorders in order to be at the top of their class. The film was created by writer and director Peter Strickland who, in my opinion, has made some of the most underrated and compelling thrillers of all time with the sound-based and paranoia-inducing Berberian Sound Studio and the fashion-motivated chiller In Fabric so I really expect nothing short of gold from this one. I think it is a big score for Shudder to nab such an impressive debut and it just speaks to how the horror-centric streaming service is growing.
Moonage Daydream – With the ill-advised biopic Stardust in our rearview, a film unapproved by the estate of David Bowie and dreadfully scripted and put together, it is a breath of fresh air to get this documentary on one of the greatest rock stars of all time, a man who’s death left me in tears for weeks. Even better, the film is written and directed by Brett Morgen who is no stranger to music-driven films of this ilk as he is the guy who put together the Kurt Cobain film Montage Of Heck among other projects. Fresh off of its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival, the documentary promises to be a cinematic odyssey exploring David Bowie’s creative and musical journey in ways that have never been done before. The acclaim is already pouring in for it and if you’re a Bowie fan then this movie was made directly for you, an intimate portrait of a man that was bigger than life, bigger than this planet and maybe the universe-spanning in his artistic scope. His life and music had a profound effect on me and it’s great that the estate opened up to give us something like this because we know now a biopic will never happen without a full blessing.
Blu-Ray:
Elvis – I have to be honest, I am not the biggest fan of the works of filmmaker Bz Luhrman but the more I saw the trailers for this new biopic of the original King Of Rock n Roll the more interested in it I became. It isn’t for Tom Hanks either, who kind of looks and sounds bizarre in it, but Once Upon A Time In Hollywood actor Austin Butler who takes on this infinitely iconic role and is seemingly doing a great job of it. The film takes on the story from top to bottom, from his childhood in Tupelo, Mississippi to his rise to stardom starting in Memphis, Tennessee and his conquering of Las Vegas, Nevada, as Elvis Presley becomes the first rock ‘n roll star and changes the world with his music. The look of the film is absolutely gorgeous, something that Luhrmann always has going for him, but I also put that in the hands of Mulan cinematographer Mandy Walker who worked on his last movie Australia as well. The movie, at least for me, has a really bumpy start and feels almost too big and grandiose for a character even to the bigger than life quality of the King but once it settles into the story it starts to calm down in an interesting way and Butler is absolutely mesmerizing the whole time. Hanks probably gives one of his hammiest performances o his career which works less than half of the time but this is a star vehicle for Austin Butler and now landing the villain role in Dune from the reception of this movie, the sky is the limit for him.
Lightyear – The amount of promise that this new Pixar film has amassed since it was announced is very interesting because I didn’t really see the appeal when the idea was first proposed but this cast alone has got me going. Chris Evans is taking over the iconic role from Tim Allen, a replacement I’m more than fine with but it also has the added boost of Nope’s Keke Palmer and the great Taika Waititi to join him on his brand new adventure. This is a prequel adventure that follows the real and non-toy Buzz as he is marooned while spending years attempting to return home and encounters an army of ruthless robots commanded by his arch-nemesis Zurg who are attempting to steal his fuel source. Being a Pixar film, I did have an ascertained level of expectation for this movie but, given its source material, it had to be delivered through a canon of predetermined things around this character to be fully satisfying. The fascinating approach to this movie is that it was the movie that Andy saw that made him want to buy the Buzz Lightyear toy ad on that premise it feels like a misstep as the movie is fun and enjoyable but falls short of being a franchise making blockbuster. If you let all of that damage go to the wayside. it has some great supporting characters around Buzz including a robot cat named Sox who I am convinced would be a more popular toy than Buzz himself. There I go digressing from the positivity again though.
Where The Crawdads Sing – There’s something about this new drama mystery that has me absolutely disinterested and I have to say it stems from the pretty lacklustre trailer that I saw in theatres for it. Maybe it is also the fact that this ad screened before a showing of Lightyear in front of a bunch of kids, including my own, and I thought it was a bit inappropriate. The film is based on the popular novel by Delia Owens and follows a woman who raised herself in the marshes of the deep South that becomes a suspect in the murder of a man she was once involved with. The selling point for me is that it stars the breakout leading actress of the recent dark comedy thriller Fresh, Daisy Edgar Jones. Still, beyond that, I’m really unfamiliar with director Olivia Newman’s work and not a lot else in the film really draws me in. Who knows, it may surprise me and it does feature a new song by Taylor Swift.
The Forgiven – There’s something about the McDonaugh brothers, Martin and John Michael, that sets them apart from other filmmakers and the odd thing, unlike the Coens, the Farrellys, the safdies and others, they never make their films together but they still have a distinct feeling about them. The definition line for the McDonaughs is fantastic dialogue with incredible casts and that is what is evident here with this drama that seems as elusiv in it’s tone as is the truth of it’s characters. The story takes place over a weekend in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco, and explores the reverberations of a random accident on the lives of both the local Muslims, and Western visitors to a house party in a grand villa and the ramifications but sociological and psychological that happens to our main man, Ralph Fiennes in the result. This film has two main threads of reluctant redemption and excessive classism that makes it a heavy narrative with a lot of food for thought. I can’t say it would be broadly compelling but as a fan of great character driven work on an ensemble level, I really liked this one.
Sniper: The White Raven – There something really worldly and totally relevant about getting this brand new action flick because it comes from the Ukraine and it has them taking on a formidable Russian foe which seems really satisfying right now. I automatically gave it a negative feeling because I thought it was a continuation of the Tom Berenger and Billy Zane direct to video action franchise Sniper but it really isn’t connected to that at all. The story follows a Ukrainian physics teacher living off the land with his pregnant wife who is murdered at the hands of invading soldiers in Donbas and he is left for dead, prompting an unyeilding need for revenge. Recieving training from the local militia, he sets his sights on an elite Russian sniper whose elimination could change the tide of the conflict. THis movie was entertaining as heck, stemming from a very eighties flick feeling revenge action that is rooted with soul and unfathomable tragedy. I really loved the training sequences as he goes from a strict pacifist to a total marksman and the realism is felt entirely. It is also beautifully shot and the sniper warfare sequences are totally exhilerating. I have to say that this one was a total surprise.
Fatal Attraction4K – Glenn Close became one of the most terrifying women in Hollywood for a while after this Adrian Lynne classic and I think it took her a long time to shake that stereotype ad pigeonholing but I feel that’s a testament to how good she was it this thriller. A definite cautionary tale of one of the extreme downfalls of screwing around in your marriage, it’s interesting that this didn’t cause a stigma in lead star Michael Douglas’s career as well but that’s silver screen sexism for you, I guess. He plays seemingly happily married New York lawyer Dan Gallagher who has an affair with his colleague Alex, and the two enjoy a love weekend while Dan’s wife and kid are away. Unfortunately for Dan, Alex will not let go of him, and she will stop at nothing to have him for herself but just how far will she go to get what she wants? Let’s just say, the family pet doesn’t make it to the end credits and it is an unforgettable rollercoaster of a thriller that has aged beautifully in my opinion. These are two stars that were, and still largely are, at the top of their game. It’s disappointing that writer James Dearden hasd only one other notable film beyond this, the lesser mystery A Kiss Before Dying, which he directed as well.
Friday The 13th4K – Alongside Halloween which was released just a couple years before it, this film is one of the biggest heavyweights in horror and spawned one of the most popular subgenres within that, the slasher film. We all know this story by now, right? Counsellors return to open the summer spot of Camp Crystal Lake which was closed due to a horrific tragedy when a young deformed boy named Jason Voorhees drowned due to negligence. One by one, each teen is picked off by a vicious killer in all sorts of inventive ways and the reveal of who is behind it is still pretty iconic because it’s not who you think. Heck, the wrong answer got Drew Barrymore killed in Scream. Now celebrating it’s fortieth anniversary, this new edition comes in a beautifully crafted steelbook and I have a real love for those. That said, if you already picked up the full blu-ray collection, you already have this movie, like me, but if you are a total completionist then you need to get the 4K. It’s for the ultimate fans.
Magnum P.I.: Season 4 – Against all my beliefs that they could work, CBS has managed to reboot a handful of their classic line up from decades ago and has made them work. Hawaii Five-O has just ended their run a while backand actually featured this show’s main character, MacGyver has been sort of a runaway hit and, really, Magnum has done good numbers for them as well, especially in that aforementioned crossover, palling around with McGarrett and Dann-O. Not sporting the Selleck mustache for this, Jay Hernandez steps into the role of Thomas Magnum with a gender switch for his sidekick Higgins in Ready Player One’s Perdita Weeks as it follows the ex-Navy SEAL as he returns from Afghanistan to use his military skills to become a private investigator in Hawaii. It’s your basic procedural, as you would expect it, and Hernandez kind of makes the show his own. I see it getting another few seasons as it’s doing well in the demographic.
Seal Team: Season 5 – Even though the series ended fifteen years ago I will always see David Boreanaz as the brooding vampire with a soul Angel from the Joss Whedon created Buffy spinoff and that’s even after twelve seasons as Seeley Booth on Bones. His new series is going very well though, a series that follows the lives of an elite Navy S.E.A.L. team as they train, plan and execute the most dangerous, high-stakes missions for the American government. Created by first-time showrunner Benjamin Cavell, this series has compelling characters and has the potential to get better in this vein if they can steer away from being a mission by mission procedural. I have now thoroughly enjoyed every season that Paramount sent me and I think that the show has gotten even better after the shift to Paramount+ meaning that it can go way harder in content which makes it that much more believable. Honestly, network television rules would drown this show.
Lucifer: Season 6 – The show that the fans keep having the ability to revive finally reaches it’s conclusion on it’s own terms and now is available to finish off your collection on DVD. The show has since been given a sixth season after it performed so well on Netflix with an all-new vigour following this season which focuses on Lucifer’s lineage, his past and those close around him getting the truth of what he has revealed to them. There is also a killer guest spot of 24’s Dennis Haysbert showing up as, wait for it, God himself and, yes, I’m so behind President David Palmer portraying the thing that makes people do the stupidest things when people use it to embolden their stances on politics and human and ethical rights. Okay, dialling back the ire here, but I will conclude by saying that this series has made lead actor Tom Ellis a bankable star and in a role originally written by Neil Gaiman who also has another version of Lucifer currently on Netflix with Gwendolyne Christie playing the role on The Sandman. The funny thing is both shows are phenomenal which just gives more boost to how awesome Gaiman is as a creator.
Steve’s Blu-Ray Geek-Outs:
Men – In just his third feature, it feels like this twisted new film from writer and director Alex Garland, a personal favorite of mine, just came and went just a few months ago and no one payed attention. Well, cinephiles and people in the know had the wherewithal to celebrate the film and we were rewarded with a total mindf*** that was unrelenting and made us want to slowly get into the fetal position as each harrowing moment passed. The film stars the outstanding Jessie Buckley and the underrated Rory Kinnear and follows a young woman who goes on a solo vacation to the English countryside following the grisly death of her ex-husband. However, a brief exploration of the lush local landscapes reveals strange happenings as uncomfortable encounters thwart her ambitious plans to bounce back and heal. THe less said about the plot beyond that is for the best as, like last week’s release of Barbarian, the best way to go into this is blind. Even the trailers seemed to know this as they were the definition of ambiguous. Even with it being on blu-ray for a few weeks, the audiences haven’t rushed to see it but I’m trying to give it some love here.
Young Sheldon: Season 5 – With the main series of The Big Bang Theory long in the rearview now, this piece of the Chuck Lorre created series with this spin-off about the childhood years of Sheldon Cooper, a show that Jim Parsons narrates naturally and has been doing great ratings for CBS for two straight seasons even standing apart from the show it spawned from. This show could have been a real bust but a weird thing happened after I watched a few episodes and that was a simple notion that I was enjoying it and Annie Potts plays his “MeeMaw”! Sold! The four seasons the preceeded this proved that this show is beyond a flash in the pan sophomore hit as it takes that groundwork laid out by the original series and puts it in an almost Wonder Years-like filter and now it can continue its Sheldon Cooper lore without any new encumbrance or retcon. Even bigger than that, this season contains the coveted one hundredth episode which is a beautiful milestone that any show would love to do.
Pinocchio – In a kind of surprising move from Disney, their brand new live-action update of an animated classic, done by ImageMovers’ creator Robert Zemeckis and starring Tom Hanks, gets the Disney Day release on their streaming service and no theatrical release. After watching the film, it is even more surprising because it would have looked gorgeous on the big screen and I felt a few of the sequences were meant to be in 3D. The story is exactly the same as the 1940 original, the beloved tale of a wooden puppet who embarks on a thrilling adventure to become a real boy. Hanks stars as Geppetto, the woodcarver who builds and treats Pinocchio as if he were his real son and Joseph Gordon-Levitt is Jiminy Cricket, who serves as Pinocchio’s guide as well as his “conscience”. The film basically hits everything in the original animated feature beat for beat but it’s the little hidden easter eggs, like in Gepetto’s shop with all the varied cuckoo clocks and even some of Honest John’s dialogue, delivered by the hilarious Keegan Michael Key, that changes it up a bit. Still, this is a great way to introduce the kids to the origins of big theatrical animated stories.
See How They Run – With a cast like this and the era it takes place in, a post-World War II West End of London, I had great faith that this would be a diamond in the rough that is the usual dead month of September theatrically. Featuring Sam Rockwell, Saoirse Ronan, Harris Dickenson, Ruth Wilson, David Oyelowo and Adrien Brody, the film has got all the right players in place and the writing is immediately delicious, intriguing and hilarious, all the best staples for a great murder mystery. Set at the one-hundredth performance of Agatha Christie’s Mousetrap, the development of plans for a movie version of a smash-hit play come to an abrupt halt after the detestable American director (Brody) is murdered. When world-weary Inspector Stoppard (Rockwell) and eager rookie Constable Stalker (Ronan) take on the case, the two find themselves thrown into a puzzling whodunit within the glamorously sordid theatre underground, investigating the mysterious homicide at their own peril. This movie had me laughing at the great actors playing to their strengths with a fantastic script, Dickinson being the standout for me with a fantastically pompous performance as Richard “Dickie” Attenborough. The simple fact that he was playing a well-known actor and giving it such a believable twist got me in the heart. This is a great crowd pleaser of a movie that was really reminiscent o a Robert Altman film with a tinge of the Coen brothers.
Barbarian – The buzz of this movie right now, as a horror fan, has got me at a fever pitch to see what it is all about and the fact that it has Pennywise The Dancing Clown actor Bill Skarsgard and genre semi-regular Justin Long in it just adds to the quirk factor. It also comes from the mind of Zach Kregger who, up until his feature film, was largely known as one of the guys behind the sketch comedy group, The Whitest Kids You Know. Without going into much detail and in an attempt to keep me in the dark before heading into my screening of it, the synopsis states that it is a story about a woman staying at an Airbnb who discovers that the house she has rented is not what it seems and something malevolent lurks in the basement. With filmmakers like Edgar Wright and creators like Stephen King already praising the movie, it gives me a deep need to call this a genre hit already and something that all of us horror fans need to band together and celebrate so we get more studio-made fresh ideas that give us thrills and chills at the cinema.
Medieval – In keeping with my honest nature, I will begin here by saying that I had very low thoughts about this movie and definitely judged it by its low-level marketing and the fact that VVS Films is the distributor who has put me through many bad Liam Neeson movies in the last couple of years. What I should have read into was the fact that Ben Foster finally got the lead in a quasi-action flick and it was the stone and blood style of broadswords and shields that was at the forefront of it. The story is inspired by the true story of Jan Ika, one of the greatest warriors in history and takes place during the Holy Roman Empire after the death of its reigning emperor which plummets it into chaos while feuding brothers King Wenceslas of Czech and King Sigismund of Hungary battle for control of the empty throne. Ika is hired by Lord Boresh to kidnap the powerful Lord Rosenberg’s fiancée, Lady Katherine, to prevent Rosenberg’s rise to power alongside the corrupt King Sigismund but that is really only the beginning of the inevitable fight for his life and that of the kingdom he serves, for better or worse. While the film does suffer from the trappings of a sad and morose lead character cliche more often than not, the action scenes and incredible cinematography keep you well invested in the plot. I believe this to be the intent more than the historical story so, while it won’t be the full and bodied Braveheart that we want it to be, it is a means to an end for a visceral and brutal final act.
Obi-Wan Kenobi: A Jedi’s Return – With the six-episode return of Ewan McGregor as the best version of the legendary Jedi, Obi-Wan Kenobi is behind us, an enjoyable continuation of the character’s story, a decade after the final battle between master and apprentice. I really love that Disney+ does these documentaries about not just the making of the series but the development and the press tour as well. It for sure wasn’t easy for Hayden Christiensen to come back to the fold of the Star Wars world as a large part of the fandom made that totally undesirable so it will be interesting to see it all from his point of view. It makes me wonder if the toxic fandom side of it all will be addressed because actress Moses Ingram found herself as a target within the first two episodes of the show debuting so I think it would be great to hear from the studio heads like Kathleen Kennedy on it as well as showrunner and director Deborah Chow. All of that aside, I’m really excited, as a film nerd, to see all of this.
Blu-Ray:
Minions: The Rise Of Gru – The kids are all most likely chomping at the bit for this new entry into this really popular animated franchise from Illumination Entertainment to finally hit the home theatre market and there are probably parents out there that are bracing for the visual nails on a chalkboard that these films are for them. I am on the more positive side of the fence for the Minions although I will say that the first of their spin-off films was a bit pointless but now they’ve brought Steve Carrell’s Gru back into the mix for his origin story. The film follows Gru, growing up in the seventies, idolizing his favourite supervillain group, the Vicious 6, his inspiration for evil. Gru hatches a plan to become evil enough to join them and, luckily, he gets some mayhem-making back-up from his loyal followers, the Minions, Kevin, Stuart, Bob, and Otto, a new Minion sporting braces and a desperate need to please. Together they deploy their skills as they and Gru build their first lair, experiment with their first weapons, and pull off their first missions. This film is really kind of the same as every other film that we’ve gotten after the first one because they all deliver on somewhat the same level. All I know is there is a repeat of the constant nonsense these little guys spew from my kid for at least four weeks afterwards but as for an animated film with any sort of resonant substance, you won’t find it in any of the Illumination films or at least I haven’t found any yet.
Mrs. Harris Goes To Paris – I love Lesley Manville and have for a very long time, an incredible character actress that steals the films that she’s in, usually as a supporting character. She almost stole Phantom Thread from Daniel Day-Lewis and more recently became the memorable adversary in the Kevin Costner and Diane Lane thriller Let Him Go but now she gets the very deserving leading role in this new comedy-drama. She plays the title character, a widowed cleaning lady in 1950s London who falls madly in love with a couture Dior dress and decides that she must have one of her own, sending her on a whirlwind trip to the heart of fashion in Paris, France. The film comes from writer and director Anthony Fabian who gives this film such a whimsical look with cinematography for Felix Wiedemann that just pops off the screen. This will definitely be a hit with the older generation and the Downton Abbey fans but I hope it goes broader and puts Manville in the minds of a mainstream audience.
Paradise Highway – My Lionsgate home release section is usually a lot more woeful than it is rewarding, something that can become monotonous and frustrating, but even still, when I saw Juliette Binoche’s name toplining this new drama thriller I was still excited. How could I not, knowing her incredible body of work, mostly her international cinema? She is probably one of the most gifted actresses working today and the next in line to the throne of Isabella Rossellini. She stars alongside Morgan Freeman and Frank Grillo as Sally, a truck driver who has been forced to smuggle illicit cargo to save her brother from a deadly prison gang. With both good and bad forces hot on her trail, her conscience is challenged when the final package turns out to be a teenage girl named Leila. Sucked into the human trafficking game, As Sally and Leila begin a danger-filled journey across state lines, their only hope may be a dogged FBI operative played by Freeman. Sadly, this movie embraces the middle of the road in quality, with great performances that are tainted by a script that is sometimes hard to make work. It feels like anytime it tries to get gritty with realism and shock value in its subject matter, it eases off the gas and makes it feel inconsequential in its mellow drama. I feel like a story like this needed far more weight and these stars deserved better. Well, maybe not Freeman because his last few films have me thinking that he’s padding up his retirement fund like Christopher Walken is.
Happening – With the current warfare of women’s rights over their own bodies raging on in the States, and the abolishment of Roe V. Wade and the fight to restore and codify it, a film like this new French-made drama becomes more and more important every day. This is the sophomore film from writer and director Audrey Diwan who is boldly adapting the erotic adventures of Emmanuelle in a modern reboot as her next project and I think she is leapfrogging after a really solid and resonant story here. The movie is an adaptation of Annie Ernaux’s novel of the same name that looks back on the author’s experience with abortion when it was still illegal in France in the 1960s. This film was a big winner at the Venice film festival with Bong Joon Ho being a major member of the journey and it was shot so beautifully by cinematographer Laurent Tangy. This film is an uncomfortable watch, but I believe that is where its strengths lie in the end. Nothing was ever learned from the easy route and Happening will never make it simple and never shies away from its truth.
Star Trek: The Original Motion Picture 6-Movie Collection 4K – Just last year Paramount put the first four of the films with the original cast of Star Trek on 4K and blu-ray with a beautiful update that included director’s cuts from both The Motion Picture and Wrath Of Khan but now they have upped that set with something better. Now, with this new set, they’ve included Star Trek V: The Final Frontier and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, with the latter film being a favourite in the franchise. My reasoning is it features an incredible performance from the legendary Christopher Plummer who plays possibly the second greatest theatrical villain in Star Trek history. Heck, he even delivers Shakespearian monologues and soliloquies in a way that only the great Canadian could. This is truly special and a must-acquire for any Star Trek fan.
NCIS Hawai’i: Season 1 – The net of the Naval Command Investigation Service has grown once again and now heads to the same place where the Five-O reigned and the Magnum continues to roam on the procedural powerhouse that is CBS. Vanessa Lachey is the only known star that I can recognize but it’s all about the culture, the seaside locations and, of course, the terrorist acts that need to be taken down. Lachey is the first female Special Agent in Charge of NCIS Pearl Harbor and it starts from the beginning of her tenure, as she balances her duty to family and country, investigating high-stakes crimes involving military personnel, national security, and the mysteries of the island itself. For cut-and-dry procedurals like this, you are either into the criminal of the week type storyline or you’re not. There isn’t really an in-between on this.
Steve’s Blu-Ray Geek Outs:
Adventures Of Don Juan – Digging deep for a geek out to start the week off and it became pretty easy when this release from Warner Archive landed on my doorstep, another film from an era that is still a total blindspot for me. The era in question for this film is post-World War II Hollywood featuring one of their greatest, Errol Flynn. Co-starring Vivica Lindfors, this story is set at the end of the Seventeenth Century, with Don Juan de Marana repatriated from London to Madrid after a serious diplomatic scandal caused by his affair with a British fiancée on the Eve of her marriage with a Spanish noble. The Spanish ambassador in London Count de Polan sends a recommendation letter to his friend Queen Margaret to give him an opportunity in the court to rehabilitate Don Juan from the gossip and rumours about his love affairs, and he is hired as an instructor of the art of fencing in the Spanish Academy. He secretly falls in love with Queen Margareth, setting off a possible love triangle with her irresponsible and weak husband, King Phillip III. It is interesting to note that Flynn was only 38 at the time of filming this but was already in a health decline that would take his ability for any strenuous physicality. The film would go on to be nominated for two Oscars, winning one for Best Costumes.
Naomi: Complete Series – With the house burning going on at Warner Bros. through their Discovery division, most of the CW-produced DC Comics shows had been thrown out with the bathwater and it was an easy prediction that this one would be too because the source material is very new and hasn’t built up a huge fan base yet. Maybe it’s that it feels unconnected to anything else in Superman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman or even Green Arrow’s world or the unproven nature of lead actress Kaci Walfall but I actually really liked her in this and hope she lands on her feet. The series follows the titular character, a cool, confident, comic book-loving teenager pursuing her hidden destiny when a supernatural event shakes her small hometown of Port Oswego. With a little help from her fiercely loyal best friend Annabelle and the support of her adoptive, doting parents, veteran military officer Greg and linguist Jennifer, Naomi sets out to discover the origins of the event and how it’s connected to her own abilities. The critical response could have really driven some viewership if audiences were paying attention because the show was getting great word on its stylish nature, attention to character and the unpredictability of the plot. Undersights like this are a large part of the reason that we don’t get nice things on network television.
Television:
American Gigolo (Crave) – Jon Bernthal is stepping into a role that gave Richard Gere a stepping stone to success and with the reach of a Showtime series adaptation I feel this story could go further than the original Paul Schrader film did and if you know anything about my love for Schrader’s work, you know how big those words are. The show was put under the eye of showrunner David Hollander who worked for years on the series Ray Donovan, a show that is nothing but fantastic character work so this is all good news. The show follows Bernthal as Julian Kaye after his wrongful conviction release following fifteen years in prison as he struggles to find his footing in the modern-day Los Angeles sex industry and navigates his complicated relationships. Being such a fan of his, I kind of wish that Schrader had been involved in this as a sort of consulting producer but I also feel that he might have been on a lot of cocaine at the time of the original and wanted to put it behind him entirely. Just look at Cat People for reference. I expect this show to be a steamy and lurid affair that would best be suited to be watched after dark, like an old episode of Red Shoe Diaries.
Cobra Kai: Season 5 (Netflix) – It’s so crazy to think that the bad guys from the Karate Kid movies have come full circle in the last few years and transitioned to fantastic new series with an all-new breath of life. After two seasons running as a YouTube original and a third and fourth season that saw the high profile and bigger budget release on Netflix to bump it up to the next level and one of the most talked about shows of the year, the much anticipated fifth season is here. Featuring a lot of the original cast from the movies, including William Zabka, Martin Kove and even Daniel-san, Ralph Macchio, this Emmy-nominated series takes place decades after our mains have had their 1984 All Valley Karate Tournament bout, following a middle-aged Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence who at first found themselves as renewed martial-arts rivals and now are allies in a fight against the ridiculously over the top Terry Silver, played brilliantly by Thomas Ian Griffith. It’s once again time to sweep the leg, never give up, never surrender and check out Zabka’s bitchin’ Firebird again, a consistency that I adore. Also, give it up for Zabka, who knew how great he was going to be in this?
Cars On The Road (Disney+) – Just a handful of weeks after the uber cute Guardians Of The Galaxy miniseries of short films I Am Groot and a couple months after the Baymax series of little films for those wanting more Big Hero 6, Lightning McQueen and Mater are jumping into the game for some short film fun themselves. Owen Wilson and Larry The Cable Guy return to voice these characters as well because after three movies it would be so strange for Disney not to shell out some cash and instead have two knockoffs of these now iconic voices. The story is straightforward as Mater enlists his best pal to take a road trip across the county to go meet his sister. That’s right, a lady Larry. Along the way, the two adventurers come across a circus of cars, a forgotten monster truck looking for renewal and even a Mad Max: Fury Road-like part of the country which I thought was really quite clever. None of these episodes will really linger in your memory but they are a lot of fun, bringing those known Cars and Pixar energy and the kids will love every moment of it.
Spider-Man No Way Home: The More Fun Stuff Edition – It was pretty damn cool to head into the end of last year with the biggest Marvel movie of 2021 and a film that changed the landscape of that cinematic universe for the next phase and now we get to experience an expanded edition in a dead month theatrical wise. There was so much speculation heading into this film, one that brings the multiverse into the equation and we knew from the trailers that Alred Molina’s Doc Ock, Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin and Jamie Foxx’s Electro appear but the big question was do Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s Spideys drop in as well? Well, the new poster for this version spoils that fact entirely so I guess the secret is out. The film takes up just after Spider-Man’s identity was revealed, forcing Peter to ask Doctor Strange for help. When a spell goes wrong, dangerous foes from other worlds start to appear, forcing Peter to discover what it truly means to be Spider-Man. For those who haven’t checked it out yet, this is possibly one of the most entertaining films in the whole Marvel universe and proves not just how great of a Spider-Man Tom Holland is but just how damn good Willem Dafoe is as well. There’s a reason that he is consistently my favourite actor in everything he does and I’m really excited to see what has been expanded and added on to make this the more fun stuff edition. It can only mean great things to me.
Honk For Jesus. Save Your Soul – If anything needs to be lampooned today, aside from the MAGA Gollums and evil Republicans, it is definitely evangelicals and the ridiculous lifestyles of Mega Church-owning pastors. Danny McBride has done it with his HBO series The Righteous Gemstones and now debuting writer and director Adamma Ebo is taking a crack at it. Starring Sterling K. Brown and Regina Hall, the story follows pastor Lee-Curtis Childs and his first lady Trinitie Childs as they attempt to rebuild the congregation of their Southern Baptist Mega Church in the aftermath of a huge scandal. Hiring a documentary crew to follow their story of redemption, it more shows the still present problematic qualities of their personality and marriage in a comedy that comes off with the realism and cringe that you would find in an episode of The Office. This film comes off as hilariously satirical but still believable because it is a blind fever that runs through America like a lifeline. Will audiences buy into the message that this film shares as we see the Childs flaunt their riches that were given to the church as an offering to God? Probably not but I enjoyed the journey myself.
Who Invited Them – I love these creepy little mystery films that Shudder is releasing in their low-key sort of way but, for us subscribers, Thursdays become the day of anticipation for these to drop. Not really big stars in this one but it does feature Ryan Hansen who played Dick on the wildly popular series Veronica Mars and he is the big reason I’m drawn to the film. The film is set at a couple named Adam and Margo’s housewarming party which has been a glowing success. One couple lingers after the other guests, revealing themselves to be wealthy neighbours but as one night cap leads to another, Adam and Margo suspect their new friends are duplicitous strangers looking to cause them some serious harm. This movie is already being applauded for its great use of tension, which has me really fascinated as I love a good slow burn thriller. I’m also excited to see the emergence of a new writer and director in Duncan Birmingham who got his major start in writing for the Patrick Stewart comedy Blunt Talk and the brilliant FX series Maron.
Blu-Ray:
The Phantom Of The Open – This is a lucky week for character acting because we get a Mark Rylance-led film and based on a true story underdog tale with a character that features all of the Oscar-winning actor’s best qualities. Charm is the name of the game in this one as it also has the immeasurably great Sally Hawkins as Rylance’s wife in the film so the points it automatically earns are off the charts. The film has Rylance playing Maurice Flitcroft, a dreamer and unrelenting optimist, who managed to gain entry to The British Open Golf Championship Qualifying in 1976 and subsequently shot the worst round in Open history, becoming a folk hero in the process. Based on a novel by author Scott Murray, written by Paddington 2’s Simon Farnaby and directed by the immensely talented actor turned filmmaker Craig Roberts, this film is so endearingly funny and all has the brimming heart of its star and co-lead to rub off on all the other elements of the film. I loved the cinematography of it, done by Eternal Beauty’s Kit Fraser, which gives the whimsy of Flitcroft’s wonderful imagination in some really key scenes. The best part is that you don’t need to be a golf fan or even a casual viewer to really sink your teeth into it. The film feels broad in its appeal and I think it will spread through word of mouth.
Mr. Malcolm’s List – I don’t think it’s a far stretch of belief for me to tell you that I’m not really a Jane Austen genre fan at all, as they generally come off really predictable and totally stuffy while it does its thing. Something that can sway me into watching it is a good cast or notable actors in the cast and that’s what this film did with this by having Slumdog Millionaire’s Frieda Pinto, The Haunting of Hill House’s Oliver Jackson Cohen and British actress Zawa Ashton. While not directly Austen, it can be said that the story derives from some Austen tropes as the story follows a spoiled woman looking to win the heart of the most sought-after suitor in town, Mr. Malcolm. When she fails to meet an item on his list of requirements for a bride, she enacts a plot of revenge and convinces her friend to play the role of his ideal match. OF course, love and hijinx ensue and people end up in matches that weren’t perceived at the beginning of the story in a very Jane Austen fashion but the performances are so good that I was able to look past the things that would generally make my eyes roll. If that isn’t an inkling of a good review then I don’t know where I went wrong.
1883: A Yellowstone Origin Story – With the massive success that Yellowstone has gotten in the four seasons it has been on, it is only reasonable these days to think that Paramount+ would want to capitalize on that and make a spinoff project. Well, that is exactly what this is here but instead of spinning off to the side or ahead, we are going back to some origins. Creator Taylor Sheridan is giving us the beginnings of the Duttons in the late nineteenth century as they flee poverty in Texas and embark on a journey through the Great Plains to seek a better future in Montana. The show features real-life couple Tim McGraw and Faith Hill in the leading roles and also has stalwart western legend Sam Elliott to lend all of his gravitas to this new show that landed as a hit with its first episode. Unsurprisingly, the series got picked up for a second season already and also paved the way for an additional prequel series, that one being 1932 which is set to star Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren.
Blue Bloods: Season 12 – I have a traditional procedural to add to the television releases this week for those who love them, as I now move onto more primetime crime dramas with this Tom Selleck and Donnie Wahlberg-led show that has well over two hundred episodes now. Basically, for those uninitiated into this police show, this is like the Charles Bronson series of made for television movies A Family Of Cops but told much better as we have Tom Selleck as the patriarch of the family and also the commissioner of police, his sons Wahlberg and Will Estes as a detective and police sergeant respectively. The cast rounds out with Bridget Moynahan as the sister, an assistant DA, and the great Len Cariou as the grandpa, a former commissioner himself, the show is actually very solid and its long tenure is indicative of that. I know that when I post on social media that I have it, fans come out of the woodwork to like it.
Steve’s Blu-Ray Geek Outs:
The Frisco Kid – I definitely geeked out about this movie when I received it, as did my father-in-law because this is just a phenomenal western comedy at it came at a time when lead star Gene Wilder hit a little lull point between Silver Streak and Stir Crazy but Harrison Ford was a hot commodity after Star Wars just before heading into the sequels. That said, the marketing for it pushed Wilder and said really little about Ford’s involvement which I find weird and counterintuitive. The story follows Wilder as a Polish rabbi who wanders through the Old West on his way to lead a synagogue in San Francisco. On the way, he is hijacked and has to work his way across the country with all of his resources plundered and ruined. On the way, he meets up with a bank robber and they form a friendship and have many adventures, both good and bad, including being captured by Native Americans, a situation that could lead to the quick finish of their journey. This movie is so great and has such great chemistry between a legend like Wilder and a fresh-faced Ford just starting out his career. It’s interesting to note that the film was originally supposed to star the Duke himself, John Wayne, in the Ford role, which would have changed everything drastically. Only being offered half his quote and the pain of stomach cancer made that option a no-go.
Television:
The Patient (Disney+) – Fans of Dexter are going to be all over this new FX series brought to us by those great people at Disney+ and I had no idea that it would draw in this sort of television viewer until I got a good way into it. The two main leads will already get people’s interest as it features usually funnyman Steve Carrell in a serious role and has him opposite the excellent Domnhall Gleeson, most known for the thriller Ex Machina. The story follows a recently widowed psychiatrist who is kidnapped by one of his patients and held in his basement, chained o the floor and unable to escape. There is a method to his captor’s madness as he is actually a serial killer looking to tap into why he has his urges to kill and is bent on stopping them at their core. The concept is so intriguing to me and gives insight into the mind of a sociopath in an interesting way I really adore both actors, two really compelling character performers. The series was created by Joseph Weisberg who is no stranger to duplicitous minds and actions as he was behind the Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell thriller series The Americans so I expect good things beyond the few episodes I have seen already.
The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power (Prime Video) – Prime Video has bankrolled a lot of Jeff Bezo’s billions to do a big series version of the classic J.R.R. Tolkien books so a lot is riding on this return to Middle Earth that really has my interest if I’m being honest. With big shoes to fill having Peter Jackson’s version so beloved in our memory, I do already like the cast that has been put in place as Morfydd Clark was incredible in Saint Maud, and Peter Mullan has been amazing in British films for decades now and there are so many others that you may recognize from shows like Game Of Thrones, Homeland and Power. For those who want to get clued in on how they’ll tackle this story the synopsis that I have been given states that this show is set thousands of years before the events of Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and follows an ensemble cast of characters, both familiar and new, as they confront the long-feared re-emergence of evil to Middle-earth. I know a lot of the internet community is throwing a lot of shade at this, strictly saying to not even “hate watch” it to give any analytics to Amazon but I am too optimistic to not give it a chance.
Me Time – If I’m being totally honest, Kevin Hart has been working at a 50/50 for me with his Netflix original movies. I adore his work on the comedy drama Fatherhood, a sweet and endearing story about a suddenly single father dealing with a newborn baby but The Man From Toronto was a bland mess of an action comedy that could have borrowed way more from the chemistry department that The Hitman’s Bodyguard did. Now he’s teaming with the star power of Mark Wahlberg for this new comedy that follows a stay at home dad who gets to finally cut loose for a weekend when his wife and kids head out of town and reconnects with an old friend that makes his days off complete chaos. The film comes from writer and director John Hamburg who has done films like I Love You, Man, which is one of my favorite “bromantic” movies ever made and that simple reasoning has me really positive towards this one. I could be wrong but the track record has already been laid out.
Three Thousand Years Of Longing – Mad Max: Fury Road is a hell of a move to follow up and the good news is that director and creator George Miller is currently in production with a prequel to that movie. Still, before that hits the post-production slate, he has this new film with an adult twist on an old fable and he’s paid with two of the best actors in modern cinema, Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba. The story follows Swinton as a lonely scholar who happens to encounter a Djinn, played by Elba, while in Istanbul attending a conference which offers her three wishes in exchange for his freedom. This presents two problems, the first being that she doubts that he is real and second, because she is a scholar of story and mythology, she knows all the cautionary tales of wishes gone wrong. The Djinn pleads his case by telling her fantastical stories of his past and eventually she is beguiled and makes a wish that surprises them both. Miller is a king at making visually stunning tales and I really expect no difference for this which has quickly become one of my most anticipated films at the end of the summer of 2002. This one could be really great.
Samaritan – Sylvester Stallone is reserving the end of 2022 for his big projects as he not only has this brand new Prime Video original film but a new series debuting soon on Paramount+ called The Tulsa King which was created by the red hot Taylor Sheridan, the mind behind Yellowstone and it’s spinoffs. This new film reminds me of a more ultra-serious take on the Will Smith film Hancock and I’m really hoping it all pans out better. Stallone plays Mr. Smith, the reclusive neighbor to thirteen-year-old Sam Cleary who suspects that he is actually a legend hiding in plain sight. Twenty years prior, Granite City’s super-powered vigilante, Samaritan, was reported dead after a fiery warehouse battle with his rival, Nemesis and while most believe he perished in the fire, some in the city like Sam, have hope that he is still alive. With crime on the rise and the city on the brink of chaos, Sam makes it his mission to coax his neighbor out of hiding to save the city from ruin. The film comes from filmmaker Julius Avery who gave us the insane World War II Nazi horror flick Overlord last time out so I’m kind of hyped on what he can do with this story.
The Invitation – I have to be totally honest, this movie looks like a complete dud to me. I feel like too much is given away in the trailer, we now know it’s a vampire film and it really looks too close to the horror comedy Ready Or Not but without the levity. This is big I think for a horror fan to be completely disinterested in a big studio genre release but it’s an uphill climb for me to just get a little into it. The film follows Fast And Furious franchise star Nathalie Emmanuel as Evie, a woman grieving the loss of her mother with no other relatives who takes a DNA test and discovers a long-lost cousin she never knew she had. Invited by her newfound family to a lavish wedding in the English countryside, she’s at first seduced by the sexy aristocrat host but is soon thrust into a nightmare of survival as she uncovers twisted secrets in her family’s history and the unsettling intentions behind their generosity. As I said, the trailer lays way too much out on the table so I suggest you ignore it but I do like that it comes from a woman writer and director in Jessica M. Thompson because this genre needs a female voice more and more any day. This one may surprise me but right now it feels ultra bland.
The Good Boss – As I was watching this new Javier Bardem dark comedy drama, I found myself looking up the filmography of writer and director Fernando León de Aranoa and realized that he was the man behind a Vancouver International Film Festival favorite of mine, A Perfect Day, from my first couple years of covering the event. It made sense that this filmmaker languishes in human stories surrounded by darkness and not only does he love to hang out in that mood, but he also excels in it. This film has Bardem playing the owner of an industrial scale manufacturing business who tries to resolve any problems from his workers as the company is awaiting a visit by a committee that could give them an award for excellence. This causes mounting strife in his own life as choices as the dominoes fall into place with each move he makes to solve other people’s issues. Bardem brings that same great gravitas to the role as he always done but it is the layered script that really propels this story and won me over in the end.
Watcher – Ever since I experienced the low-budget horror feast that was David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows, I have been enthralled with everything that came from it, including his weird follow-up Under The Silver Lake. Another discovery from IT Follows was the brilliance of lead actress Maika Monroe and the depth that she gives her horror. This is why I am so interested in Shudder’s new offering this week, a film about a young American woman who moves with her husband to Bucharest, and begins to suspect that a stranger who watches her from the apartment building across the street may be a local serial killer decapitating women. It is definitely that sort of Maniac mixed with Rear Window storyline that solidified the deal for me with Monroe being perfectly cast but it also features another woman in horror behind the camera with writer and director Chloe Okuno following up her segment in V/H/S ’94 with her first full-length feature. It also doesn’t hurt that this movie is trending at a Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, no small feat for a film of this genre.
After Ever Happy – This is a weird one for me to report on as I have honestly never seen a single one of these young twenty-somethings romantic drama film franchise entries which is now four movies deep with this addition. I’d have to say that the pandemic probably helped out with the success of these films, which is an odd thing to say, but the series started in 2019 and then released its subsequent films during the lockdown period which saw a huge shift in theatrical releases from big studios. What is this movie about? The story follows the main two lovers, Hardin and Tessa, as they discover the shocking truths about each other’s families. Discovering they are not so different from each other, the hard realization is that Tessa is no longer the sweet, simple, good girl she was when she met Hardin, any more than he is the cruel, moody boy she fell so hard for. These films feel so dull and formulaic and without a big star to lead them, as Ralph Fiennes son Hero Fiennes Tiffin is just at the start of his career and I only know Josephine Langford from Amy Poehler’s directorial debut, Moxie. These movies aren’t really my bag anyways.
Blu-Ray & DVD:
Murder At Yellowstone City – With all of the movies and television that I check out from week to week, sometimes I cringe at the direct-to-video releases as they might boast a big cast but the action scene in the first scene with a big and terribly CGIed explosion gives a clear indication into that. So, then you adopt a “well, it might get better” attitude until it inevitably does or doesn’t and in the case of the recent release Hot Seat it didn’t and I couldn’t bring myself to talk about it. This one has the upper hand of being a western, a genre I love, and has a damn good cast with Gabriel Byrne, Thomas Jane and Richard Dreyfuss, just to name a few. The story follows a former slave who arrives in Yellowstone City, Montana, a desolate former boomtown now on the decline, looking for a place to call home. On that same day, a local prospector discovers gold and is murdered, making the new town resident suspect number one until more killings happen while he is incarcerated. This film has a rough start but slowly develops into a western story that borrows a bit from the murder mystery side of things and pulls it off in an entertaining degree. This isn’t to say that the film isn’t predictable in a large way, especially when our murderer is revealed, but it manages to keep the character work going enough so that you don’t notice how cheap the production is.
NCIS Los Angeles: Season 13 – Well, It looks like it’s that time of the year again when all the previous seasons of television hit DVD and I get all of the naval crime shows that are still miraculously going, like this Chris O’Donnell, and LL Cool J led spin-off and this is just the beginning of the yearly install of NCIS shows in my home release reviews. They play key agents in the Office of Special Projects branch of the organization which puts them undercover to crack cases, utilizing their backgrounds as street kids. I’m fully aware of the dime-a-dozen nature of crime procedurals but I will admit something about this particular one and that is that I kind of like it and, really, at the end of the day it needs to be somewhat good to make it far past the initial double digits and now into season fourteen, right? Holy crap, that’s a lot of episodes and most of them I have to look up on Paramount+ now as I do not have the earlier episodes.
Steve’s Blu-Ray Geekouts:
Rapid Fire – With The Crow being one of my favorite films ever made and one of the big reasons that I’m as big of a film fan as I am now, it’s easy to assume that I had a love for everything that Brandon Lee did in his tragically short career, including this action flick that I rented over and over again from the video store. Aside from Lee, it also features a couple of character actors I would learn to appreciate later in my movie watching life with Powers Boothe and Raymond J. Barry. The film follows Lee as student Jake Lo who witnesses a murder and finds himself caught between two feuding drug lords. After trying to get the authorities involved he is set up by federal agents and the only person he can trust is Ryan, played by Boothe, a Chicago cop who reminds Jake of his deceased father. As a kid, I was totally obsessed with movies like this so it’s easy to see why it was such a pivotal movie in my young watching patterns. It’s also great evidence of the fine track Lee was on in the genre, paving a career that could have even eclipsed his father’s.
Hit & Run – Being a kid that grew up on Smokey And The Bandit and its sequel, Dax Shepard was definitely playing to that crowd when he wrote and directed his action comedy feature debut. Now, ten years after its release, it never really received the warm welcome it should have, shoved into theaters in a small limited opening and then immortalized on blu-ray. The story is about a young couple, played by Kristen Bell and Dax, who risk it all when they leave their small-town life and embark on a road trip that may lead them towards the opportunity of a lifetime. Their road trip grows awkwardly complicated and hilarious when they are chased by a friend from the past, in a hilarious performance from Bradley Cooper, a federal marshal and a band of misfits. Giving this movie another watch, I’m really sad that more people don’t know about it as it represents a really great era of filmmaking and Dax has definitely learned all the right movies to make a great and entertaining movie. He did get to meet Burt on the set of Without A Paddle so this had to be a long gestated creator venture.
Patti Cake$ – This was a film that caught my eye seemingly out of nowhere in a time when Fox Searchlight was the studio place to go for great indie films out of the Sundance Film Festival. Now to put that in context, this film is now only five years old but sadly the acclaim never really came from it. None for brilliant lead star Danielle Macdonald nor for writer and director Geremy Jasper but there is still time to give it the love it deserves. Australian actress Macdonald gives a hell of a New Jersey performance as aspiring rapper Patricia Dombrowski, a.k.a. Killa P, a.k.a. Patti Cake$, who is fighting an unlikely quest for glory in her downtrodden hometown in the Garden State. I fell hard in love with this movie, a slacker film that embraces a comedic side of an 8 Mile and Eminem like story and does it so well. This was also my introduction to actor Siddharth Dhananjay who I have loved in everything since.
Television:
House Of The Dragon (Crave) – Many have been waiting for this prequel to Game Of Thrones and many are shunning it due to the final season of it’s predecessor but I know one thing, I am damn excited to see the family history of the Targeyrrens played out because we only got Dany and Visyrys in the original show and it is a fascinating lineage. The cast has former Doctor Who, Matt Smith, and Hot Fuzz actor Paddy Considine but the actors aren’t the draw, it’s the story and one headed by creator George R.R. Martin who says he was way more hands on and into the production than he was before. Set two hundred years before the first episode of Game Of Thrones, this show looks like it will exclusively focus on the family of dragons rather than being a multi storied look at the people of Westeros and with the cancelling of the other planned spinoffs that might be my only gripe. On the other hand, with all of the HBO Max cancellations recently, it has made me far more grateful for the things that we haven’t had taken from us yet. I will end off, without spoilers, saying that episode one was fantastic and I can’t wait for Sunday’s new episode.
See: Season 3 (AppleTV+) – Jason Momoa returns to lead the final season of this Campbell River shot sci-fi series set in a dystopian future about the human race, years into the future, which has lost the sense of sight and society has had to find new ways to navigate the world and survive as a society. Of course, when a set of twins are born with the ability to see everyone’s world is blown wide open, setting off new wars, new alliances and this season brings the big bad of Momoa’s character’s brother, played by the great Dave Bautista in the last season to set up the final conflict here. This show obviously features a lot of local talent, like my friend Josh Blacker, but beyond those reasons to get on board, the show is actually pretty damn great and had me engaged entirely from episode to episode. The appeal to me for story elements is that the show makes use of the freeform of Apple’s platform and is gory as hell. It might not be everyone’s cup of tea but I think it is a hit with me and the ceiling of possibility is so huge. It’s crazy that we’re far enough in the gestation of AppleTV+ originals to see the end of one of their tentpole series.
Mike (Disney+) – The tale of former heavyweight champion and dangerous and ferocious boxing icon Mike Tyson has been begging for a series or film imagining and we finally get it through Disney+, even if the subject of it feels totally robbed of giving any creative input. That said, I will still be watching, with all apologies to Iron Mike, and I really love the casting of Moonlight star Trevante Rhodes as the title character. The series will explore the wild, tragic and controversial life and career of Tyson, one of the most polarizing figures in sports culture and the extent of the depths it goes through are unclear at this point. Sadly, the reviews right now are as polarizing as the opinions on the man itself but it is a good precursor before the big screen version in which Jamie Foxx is portraying Iron Mike hits theaters. I think he actually approved that one too.
Star Trek Lower Decks: Season 3 (Paramount+) – The third season of the animated and comedic version of Star Trek has now started to beam onto PAramount’s streaming service and it comes at the perfect time as lead voice actor Jack Quaid is riding the tidal wave of the third season of the Prime Video series The Boys and anything he touches seems to be gold at the moment. I’m looking directly at my copy of Scream from this year as I say that. For those uninitiated into the “Final Space” -ing of Star Trek that this show is, the series is about the support crew serving on one of Starfleet’s least important ships, the U.S.S. Cerritos, following them as they keep up with their duties, often while the ship is being rocked by a multitude of sci-fi anomalies. The supporting cast with Quaidis great, including Jerry O’Connell, Space Force’s Tawny Newsome, Loki’s Eugene Cordero and fellow podcaster Paul Scheer, and I’ve really enjoyed my dive through the series and I’m looking forward to the forthcoming season three. It lacks a little of the consistency of the heavyweights like South Park but it is still a solid show with some great Trek references always.
Day Shift – I guess Jamie Foxx had signed a multi-picture deal with Netflix because we already got the sci-fi action flick Project Power in 2020, co-starring Joseph Gordon Levitt and directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman who coincidentally directed the next film on this list. Well, Foxx is back for more action mayhem but is instead swapping out the sci-fi edge for some horror-tinged mayhem. In this film, he plays a hard-working, blue-collar dad who just wants to provide a good life for his quick-witted eight-year-old daughter working a mundane San Fernando Valley pool cleaning job. The reality is that this is a front for his real source of income which is hunting and killing vampires for a secret union. Looking to make some more money and become a full-fledged member, he is forced to bring along a pencil pusher looking to grade every move, played by Dave Franco. This movie is fun and wildly entertaining with some great chemistry between Franco and Foxx but it is painfully underwritten in the scripting department and almost comes across as a teen idea that came to fruition years later. I was definitely into it but I was aware of how hollow it all was.
Secret Headquarters – After seeing young Walker Scobell absolutely kill it in the Netflix sci-fi action adventure The Adam Project alongside Ryan Reynolds, I really had some high hopes set for his next sci-fi adventure, this time for the Paramount+ platform, the precursor to his debut on Disney+ in the new Percy Jackson series adaptation. Needless to say, the kid is super busy. The film has Scobell as Charlie who, along with his friends, discover the headquarters of the world’s most powerful superhero hidden beneath his home while hanging out after school. As it turns out, his father, played by Owen Wilson, is the powerful hero The Guard and they must guard the base of operations for him when villains descend on it, looking for the secrets of the hero’s powers. While Adam Project seemed to play more to all ages, this film felt like a lesser Spy Kids movie without the charm of Robert Rodriguez’s mind. The film comes from the directing duo of Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman who usually deliver fun and energetic adventures but this one just fell totally flat for me.
Bodies Bodies Bodies – Slasher horror comedies are very much my jam so I had been waiting for this new A24-produced film to get some sort of a release for months after hearing stellar reviews of it at film festivals across America. The film is the sophomore release from director Halina Reijn whose last film, Instinct, while well received, never made it to any sort of wide release and is still impossible to track down. Hopefully, that will change if this one is successful. The movie follows a group of rich twenty-somethings who plan a hurricane party at a remote family mansion. Things get way out of control when a party game turns deadly in this fresh and funny look at backstabbing, fake friends, and one party went very, very wrong. The cast is young, fresh and possibly the future of the industry as it features Amandla Stenberg, Maria Bakalova, Pete Davidson and the proven star strength of Lee Pace and, as a horror fan, it’s been on my list of anticipated genre films. It definitely has the added studio allure for me and I think it’s really funny that the whole premise is derived from an improv game. Makes perfect horror fodder.
Emily The Criminal – For many, when they see Aubrey Plaza they may think of the deadpan and straight-up mean secretary April Ludgate from the series Parks And Recreation and not for any real dramatic roles but I think that anyone that gets their eyes on this new thriller will be taken for a wild ride. Co-starring Sons Of Anarchy’s Theo Rossi and written and directed by first-time feature filmmaker John Patton Ford, this may be the most low-key best movie of the year with the most dramatic shift from a comedy actress than I have seen in years. The film follows her as Emily, a down-on-her-luck transplant to Los Angeles saddled with insurmountable student debt who gets involved in a credit card scam that pulls her into the criminal underworld of the City Of Angels, ultimately leading to deadly consequences. The intensity of this film is brimming to overflow from the first scene of this film as it has Emily in a disastrous job interview, digging up her past felonies, and it never lessens its grip on the viewer. By the time the credits hit, I knew it was one of the best of 2022 but also that there wouldn’t be a huge push on its advertisement, so this is my due diligence in saying to you, my reader, see this movie!
Fall – As a fan of thrillers, something that I really love as a subgenre is the survival thriller and the more ridiculous you go, the more I am on board. Something that pushes my buttons deep in my core is anything that involves heights and the possibility of falling a great distance to your death. I know, the horror guy has this affliction but I can’t shake it, it gives me the shivers. This new film plays right into my insecurity as it follows best friends Becky and Hunter who find themselves trapped at the top of a two thousand-foot radio tower. Even worse, it was an expression planned by Becky to get her friend over the tragic death of her boyfriend who dies at the beginning of the film in a climbing accident. All implausibilities aside, this movie grips you with the crushing fear of falling to your death and I’m sure that it all plays beautifully on the big screen, more than it did with my home screening but, you know, I still got vertigo from it all. What doesn’t work for me was the pretty badly written script which, through actresses like Annabelle: Creation’s Grace Fulton and Marvel’s Runaways’ star Virginia Gardner just didn’t have enough to give it enough conviction. Obviously, this movie isn’t about the script, just the action, and it pulls through well there thanks to writer and director Scott Mann.
Blu-Ray:
Downton Abbey: A New Era – The Downton Abbey fan base is large and dedicated but I think we may have come to the end of the lucrative times for the series, the characters and their story as this film feels like a step down from the events of the show and the last movie and more like a fluffy wrap up to it all. I think it is all well and good because HBO now has the series The Gilded Age from creator Julian Fellowes which I’m bold enough to say might be better. This new film takes the Crawley family out of their British estate lands and on a grand journey to the South of France to uncover the mystery of the dowager countess’s newly inherited villa. It’s simple, to the point and, as I said, more of a celebration of the show and where it’s come and gone, to give a well-rounded send-off for fans. In Breaking Bad terms, I would call this movie the “El Camino” of the franchise. It’s fun to watch but doesn’t have a lot of deeper resonance as the show did.
Sonic The Hedgehog 2 – If you ask my daughter what the biggest movie of the year is she will without hesitation point to this film, the sequel to the best movie of 2020 just before we headed into the shutdown of the pandemic. Video game adaptations are more often than not completely awful but the first film was well constructed, brilliantly cast and made with the same love that the fans have for this beloved SEGA character. This film picks up right after the first film with Sonic embracing his newfound hero role when the manic Dr. Robotnik returns to Earth with a new ally, Knuckles the Echidna. Together with his new ally Tails, the blue and speedy hedgehog had to take down not just his old enemy but an unpredictable foe that is very similar to himself. This movie picks up on the world it has already created for itself in the first movie and expands it to the delight of the fans, adding two more integral game characters and fan favourites while also setting up more to come in the future because, let’s face it, this is now a sizable franchise given that they have done it correctly up till now. Carrey is doing the best work of his career and all the voices are so spot on, especially Colleen O’Shaughnessy who has done Tails voice for years now.
Crimes Of The Future – Cronenberg is back in a big bad way and I really can’t contain my excitement because he is back to his body horror ways and it seriously messed people up in its festival run and confused many in its theatrical run too. Of course, my guy Viggo is in the film as well but the Canadian auteur also has Kristen Stewart and Lea Seydoux on board for it, easily two of my favourite actresses working today and definite future Oscar winners. The film takes place in a future reality where the human species adapts to a synthetic environment and their bodies undergo new transformations and mutations. With his partner Caprice, Saul Tenser, a celebrity performance artist, publicly showcases the metamorphosis of his organs in avant-garde performances and Timlin, an investigator from the National Organ Registry, obsessively tracks their movements. This is when a mysterious group is revealed with an intent to use Saul’s notoriety to shed light on the next phase of human evolution. Yes, this one is deliciously disturbing and totally up my alley as a ravenous fan of all of David Cronenberg’s work. It also operates in a terrible avenue of being a cautionary tale because, really, nothing that happens in the film feels that improbable as a future. With the consistent industrialization of the world, it is not far-fetched to believe that human bodies will develop an evolution of this nature as well. Less than a wacky sci-fi, maybe this is Cronenberg’s thesis on humanity’s future?
Vivo – Lin Manuel Miranda’s musical genius is back on display for those Hamilton die-hards and people that championed last year’s offering In The Heights or tick, tick, Boom but this one is for the whole family and the parents who have probably seen Moana in the triple digits by now. Well, hopefully, you can give Maui and “You’re Welcome” a rest for a bit as this new animated feature, originally slated to come out in theatres from Sony Animation which was taken over from Dreamworks, is available on Netflix for the easy repeat viewings at home. The story follows a one-of-kind kinkajou, also known as a rainforest “honey bear”, who spends his days playing music to the crowds in the bustling town square with his beloved owner Andrés and, though they may not speak the same language, the two are a perfect duo through their common love of music. When tragedy strikes shortly after Andrés receives a letter from the famous singer Marta Sandoval, inviting her old partner to her farewell concert with the hope of reconnecting, it’s up to Vivo to deliver a message that Andrés never could which is a love letter to her, written long ago, in the form of a song. To get to Marta, who lives on the other side of the world, Vivo will need the help of Gabi, an energetic tween who bounces to the beat of her own offbeat drum, to fulfill his owner’s wishes. The film is lively, vibrant and full of catchy tunes that threaten to make me far less of the musical hater that I think I am. I so love that the film also has Zoe Saldana, Bryan Tyree Henry and Michael Rooker in main roles.
Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts – If the Friends reunion proved anything, it has to be that reunion shows are the new hotness and, especially on a streaming service where you can rewatch it time and time again, it does a lot of business. Well, HBO Max has cornered the market on it now and has both that fan favourite sitcom love affair and all the muggles who adore the Harry Potterverse in addition to that but, you know, without the J.K. Rowling terf herder. Just as I’m sure many fans wanted, cast members from all the “Harry Potter” films reunite in a retrospective special to celebrate the anniversary of the first film, including interviews and cast conversations which include behind-the-scenes reveals and a look into the friendship between the three main characters. I also like that the unrequited love that Emma Watson had for Tom Felton was finally revealed. It’s so adorable.
Nitram – Without knowing anything about the story, I was drawn to this film solely for character actor Caleb Landry Jones who excels in every project I’ve seen him in, sometimes elevating the subject matter more than it already is. This is another deep character drama for him to sink his teeth into and I learned fully about the real-life story after watching it and it shook me even more than the film already did. The film follows him as Nitram, a dude definitely on the spectrum of autism who lives with his mother and father in suburban Australia in the Mid 1990s. He lives a life of isolation and frustration at never being able to fit in but unexpectedly finds a close friend in a reclusive heiress, Helen. However when that relationship meets a tragic end, and Nitram’s loneliness and anger grow, he begins a slow descent that leads to disaster and ultimately unspeakable violence. This film is based on the lead-up to the 1996 Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania in which 35 people were killed and 23 others were wounded by the hand of Martin Bryant and his semi-automatic rifle. Director Justin Kurtzel frames this film in an unflinching and rough way that drags us along in a slow descent into the dark paths of a broken mind. There are many trigger warnings in this but I felt myself so compelled by it, a fantastic film.
Back To The Beach – Just turning thirty-five years old this week, this movie is a harkening back to a simpler and carefree time and, more to the point, the beachy fun that is Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello. Beyond that, this movie also serves as a total time capsule of who were the notable and sought-after television stars of the time as well. The story is simple, following Frankie and Annette who are now grown up and have kids in the midwest. They return to Los Angeles to visit their daughter who is secretly shacked up with her boyfriend and trying to hide that fact. They begin to have marriage problems when Frankie runs into Connie, who has erected a shrine to him in her night club and their punk son has joined up with the local surf toughs with things all coming to a head when the toughs challenge the good guys to a surfing duel. Is there any substance to this movie? No, definitely not but it is a movie that features two original superstars and has Gilligan himself, Bob Denver, in his last film appearance as well as an early appearance of a childhood favourite of mine, Pee Wee Herman. Surf music, sand and sappy songs are the prescriptions to not getting a sunburn in the comfort of your own home.
Event Horizon4K – One of my favourite sci-fi horrors of all time and possibly director Paul W.S Anderson’s greatest cinematic achievement ever now gets a killer 4K restoration and a gorgeous steelbook thanks to those awesome people at Paramount. I knew there was a good reason to hold off on getting the Shout Factory collector’s edition and this is it. The story is set in the year 2047 and follows a group of astronauts who are sent to investigate and salvage the long-lost starship “Event Horizon” which disappeared mysteriously seven years before on its maiden voyage. With its return comes even more mystery as the crew of the “Lewis and Clark” discover the real truth behind its disappearance, that it disappeared in a black hole and something even more terrifying returns with it, bent on breaking this new reality it exists in. This film I’ve always considered a sort of H.P. Lovecraft in space and it was one of my biggest recommendations for horror or science fiction, as it does justice to both beautifully. It also features an amazing performance from Sam Neill that really needs to be witnessed as he’s a total treasure.
Steve’s Blu-Ray Geek-Outs:
Firestarter – I’m going to do something a little different this week and do a cautionary post or a “don’t pick this up” thing, just saving your time. Making Stephen King adaptations is really dicey at any time because, in this avid reader and huge fan’s mind, they haven’t had the best transition time from page to screen and some of them have gone beyond being disappointing and gone to the depths of being downright awful. This adaptation has the benefit of being one I’ve read but haven’t had the deepest connection with at the time, although the father and daughter bond at the center of it has sentimental value to me now, decades after I initially read it. For those who didn’t get to read this or see the eighties Drew Barrymore film, the story follows parents Andy and Vicky who have been on the run for more than a decade, desperate to hide their daughter Charlie from a shadowy federal agency that wants to harness her unprecedented gift for creating fire into a weapon of mass destruction. Andy has taught Charlie how to defuse her power, which is triggered by anger or pain but, as Charlie turns 11, the fire becomes harder and harder to control. After an incident reveals the family’s location, a mysterious operative is deployed to hunt down the family and seize Charlie once and for all but, of course, she has other plans. The was promising, with Zac Efron playing Andy and Indigenous actor Michael Greyeyes as the formidable assassin bearing down on them and director Keith Thomas gets his shot at this big-budget Blumhouse feature after his outstanding debut, The Vigil but sadly it all amounts to mediocrity. This film seems to completely throw away its subject material early on and gives us characters that are confusing in their motivation and bland in their delivery all leading to a finale that is a complete mess that rings hollow and totally bland. This film was an utter waste of time.
Television:
Never Have I Ever: Season 3 (Netflix) – From producer Mindy Kaling comes the final season of this smart, funny and John McEnroe-narrated teen comedy-drama that I fell in love with quickly into the first season. Maitreyi Ramakrishnan leads this show about the life of a modern first-generation Indian American teenage girl navigating love, friendship and sexuality, all based on the formative years of the show creator, Kaling. The second season had Devi now involved in a real relationship with the boy of her dreams, the dream boat Paxton, but with that comes a whole new set of insecurity problems. I absolutely love the writing in this show that constantly makes me laugh and smile but also can bring the real drama, the power of loss and grieving and the simple notion that Will Smith taught us all those years ago and that’s the fact that parents just don’t understand.
A League Of Their Own (Prime Video) – An absolute favourite from the early nineties starring Geena Davis, Madonna, Tom Hanks and more and made under the charm of beloved and very missed filmmaker Penny Marshall, A League Of Their Own was a movie about baseball that I think we could all enjoy, even if we hated the sport. Now Prime has tapped into making a series version of the movie and it is hitting in the great way that the source material did, with great casting. For those who never got the great privilege of seeing the original film, the story follows the journey of the World War II era All-American professional women’s baseball league players as they travel across a rapidly changing the United States, facing sexism, racism and classism the entire time. I really adore this cast as it has Broad City’s Abbi Jacobsen, The Good Place’s Darcy Carden, Nick Offerman and so many more plus Jacobsen also is the showrunner along with Will Graham who was responsible for The Onion News Network, a criminally underrated show. I think this has the potential to blow up into a Marvelous Ms. Maisel-sized hit but I may be totally biased.
I Am Groot (Disney+) – Looking for something cute, set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and starring the voice of Fast And Furious star Vin Diesel? Well, that last part might seem like a bit of a swerve but he is the voice of one of the Guardians Of The Galaxy, namely the big living tree himself Groot but this one is a little different because he’s pitched up to sound like the Baby Groot we saw in the second film. Told in a bunch of shorts that will take a total of twenty minutes to binge through, the basis is to show Baby Groot as the mischievous toddler he was, growing up and getting into trouble among the stars, visiting planets and interacting with their ecosystem. None of these little episodes have any sort of bearing on the MCU as a whole but it’s so cute to see this character, only always relegated to three words, do his thing and make us go “awwwww” constantly. It was a beautiful break from the usual doom and gloom of almost everything else, to be honest.
Steve Stebbing 