Steve Stebbing

Breaking down all things pop culture

What The Hell Should I Watch? – Sept 8th

stevestebbing

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September 8, 2022

New Releases:

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.

What The Hell Should I Watch? – Sept 1

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September 1, 2022

New Releases:

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.

What The Hell Should I Watch? – Aug 25

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August 25, 2022

New Releases:

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.

What The Hell Should I Watch? – Aug 11

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August 11, 2022

New Releases:

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 Horizon 4K – 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.

What The Hell Should I Watch? – Aug 4

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August 4, 2022

New Releases:

Bullet Train – As far as fun action flicks go, I have been looking forward to this new high-octane thriller ever since I saw the trailer because it stars a game-looking Brad Pitt who appears to be having the time of his life and it’s directed by David Leitch who hasn’t made a disappointing film yet in my opinion. It also has a killer supporting cast in it, pun intended, as they all appear to be playing dangerous assassins. Pitt plays Ladybug, an unlucky assassin determined to do his job peacefully after one too many gigs gone off the rails. Fate, however, may have other plans, as Ladybug’s latest mission puts him on a collision course with lethal adversaries from around the globe-all with connected, yet conflicting, objectives-on the world’s fastest train, that’s right, the bullet train. That aforementioned killer cast? It features Joey King, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Brian Tyree Henry, Hiroyuki Sanada, Michael Shannon, Bad Bunny and Sandra Bullock in a film that looks snappy with its script and bone-crushing with its action. Based on a Japanese manga that grew a following with North American readers, this might be a lowkey hit if it’s as good as it appears to be.

Prey – When it was announced that Disney+ through their Star division would start to do accompanying movies and shows based around some of the Fox-created properties that they had inherited in the merger, the internet came at it with bloodthirsty anger. I chose to give it time and see what products would come from this and got immediately excited when I saw that there would be a Predator-related story and it would be done by 10 Cloverfield Lane’s Dan Trachtenberg. The film is a way back prequel to the original Arnie-led film in the world of the Comanche Nation 300 years ago following Naru, a skilled female warrior who fights to protect her tribe against one of the first highly-evolved Predators to land on Earth. This movie is awesome from the cool title card on, featuring awesome Predator hunting and fight scenes with great blood and gore and a hero that we can really get behind. I loved every second of this new film and really found myself enamoured by the representation of it too. I hope everyone loves it so that this new Disney+ venture gains more steam.

Thirteen Lives – It was really a matter of time before the brave and intense rescue mission of the 2018 Tham Luang cave expedition that had a junior football team and their coach trapped there for eighteen days was adapted as a feature film. Personally, I would say to just check out the documentary The Rescue from Free Solo directors Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi because this version comes from Ron Howard whose last film Hillbilly Elegy left me as a seething pile of rage for glorifying the known douchebag J.D. Vance. The cast is what has me more interested than anything, as it features Viggo Mortensen, fresh off of a great Cronenberg movie, Colin Farrell, fresh off of his chameleon performance in The Batman and Joel Edgerton, fresh off of Obi-Wan, all three actors who are always a great selling feature. I do balk at the fact that there is an almost two-and-a-half-hour run time for the film but hopefully, Howard was able to reinterpret the incredible intensity that Chin and Vasarhelyi were able to capture in The Rescue.

Easter Sunday – Jo Koy is one of those phenomenal stand-up comedy talents that has been doing great work for years now but is only kind of known to the niche audience that gets deep in that scene or has watched a lot of Chelsea Lately when it was on the air. Now he’s about to hit a whole new medium as he has a brand new comedy feature that he gets to lead and it’s under the proven comedy chops of director Jay Chandrasekhar, a Broken Lizard member responsible for both Super Troopers movies, Club Dread, Beerfest and more. Based on Koy’s own experiences with his family, he stars as a man returning home for an Easter celebration with his riotous, bickering, eating, drinking, laughing and loving family, in this love letter to his Filipino-American community. The supporting cast is great, with Silicon Valley’s Jimmy O’ Yang, former teen Canadian legend Carly Pope, the hysterical Eugene Cordero, Lou Diamond Phillips and Tiffany Haddish, I have really great thoughts headed into this one and it’s refreshing to see a stand-up comedian’s first movie not helmed by Judd Apatow. This isn’t a knock on Judd but his films have a certain formula to them and this one looks like it avoids that.

Luck – AppleTV+ is playing their animated feature card for this summer with this new adorable-looking film from an animation filmmaker who has only really gotten to explore the direct-to-video market. Given this could also be considered a direct-to-video type of release, being relegated to a streaming service drop, there is something a little different with these, as explored by Disney+’s releases of Pixar’s Soul, Luca and Turning Red and by Netflix’s recent and awesome The Sea Beast, this can be considered, in my mind, a theatrical release. The film follows the story of Sam Greenfield, the unluckiest person in the world who suddenly finds herself in the never-before-seen Land of Luck where she must unite with the magical creatures there to turn her luck around. Being a huge Edgar Wright and Spaced fan since the beginning, being Shaun Of The Dead for me, I was delighted to see that Simon Pegg was one of the main stars in this and it gives me more incentive to watch it as I’m always looking for something to watch with the family. I feel like this one, although low-key in the advertisements, could be a little niche hit for family viewers who have subscribed to AppleTV+, a kind of low percentage streaming service unless you are addicted to Ted Lasso like I am.

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.

What Josiah Saw – Shudder has been releasing fantastic original films continuously without much fanfare but I will always be here to give the niche streaming service its flowers and it deserves it with this new release this week again. The film has a killer Terminator connection as it features one-time John Connor actor Nick Stahl as well as T-1000 actor Robert Patrick in a slow boil thriller that just drips with character build and atmosphere. The story follows Josiah and his youngest son, Thomas, all that remains of an estranged family that everyone in their small town knows about, residing in the haunted Graham Farm on Willow Road. After experiencing terrifying visions from beyond, Josiah decides they must change their ways to right a great wrong but, being away for over two decades, Eli and Mary, Josiah’s eldest children, are enticed to sell the property and reunite at the old farmhouse in hopes of closing this haunting chapter of their lives for good. This looks like a fascinating film of the sometimes real horror of family bonds and the haunting of past secrets and misdeeds that boil over the surface to destroy souls forever. The film is being praised for its brutal and unflinching nature and could be the introduction of a great new voice in horror with director Vincent Grashaw who impressed critics and audiences alike with his previous drama, And Then I Go.

Resurrection – This new horror drama got a soft release last week which flew outside of my radar for some reason but I get to bring it this week as it expands to more theatres and that satiates my fear of missing out big time. The film features lead performances from Rebecca Hall, who starred in a favourite of mine last year, The Night House, and Tim Roth, who featured in a film I loved this year, Sundown, so we’re already on a good track. Hall plays Margaret, a capable, disciplined, and successful woman whose life is in impeccable order. This is all thrown into disarray with the arrival of Roth’s character David, a man returning to Margaret’s life with all of the horrors of her path. The film is sitting at a Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes right now, with big praise for Hall’s leading performance that captivates and makes up for any unevenness that shows up in the story and script. Reviews like this make me excited, still, for a voice like writer and director Andrew Semans who only has two features to his credit including this one with his last film being released ten years before. For the record, that one, Nancy, Please, got stellar reviews as well.

Blu-Ray:

Cow – It was only just around a year ago that audiences were treated to the black and white feature documentary Gunda, which was a day in the life of a farm pig just after her babies had sadly been taken away. Now we get a whole lifetime with one cow from the point of view of a filmmaker who has always been gifted with capturing pure unfiltered life, Andrea Arnold. Having given us great films like Fish Tank and American Honey, she goes through farm life in this documentary that follows a calf from birth to the ultimate end in a shocking moment before the credits. This isn’t to act as a spoiler at all as all is just business and the circle of life on the farm but as a city boy myself still trying to get a foothold in the small town and, more to the point, the daily farm doings, it still caught me way off guard. This film is slow, dialogue-free and a hard sell for any casual viewer but I think the end result is very interesting even if you question why you’re there periodically during the film.

White Elephant – There has to only be a handful left of the films that Bruce Wills and his team used to pad up his bank account before his recently announced illness caused retirement and as much as I’d like to celebrate the one-time fan favourite, I’ll be happy when they are done. That said, this isn’t even his movie to lead as it hovers somewhere between Olga Kurylenko’s cop character and Michael Rooker’s violent former marine turned hitman but Willis is still present in a third billed sort of way. The story follows Gabriel Tancredi, an ex-marine turned mob enforcer (Michael Rooker), who is ordered by his ruthless mob boss (Bruce Willis) to eliminate any and all threats when an assassination attempt is witnessed by two cops. With an eager underling out to prove himself, rival gangs making moves and a rising body count, every step Tancredi makes threatens lives and it gets deeper when he starts to have a crisis of conscience. This movie has a plot going for it but finds itself riddled with holes by almost the mid mark of it, some that are absolutely insurmountable. I could watch Rooker in anything all day long but the whole thing is dragged down even more by bad fight choreography, terrible digital blood ad bullet wounds and the sad realization that Willis is losing what he has left in front of us on screen in a bad production. Time to rip the bandaid off, I think.

Steve‘s Blu-Ray Geek Outs:

The Book Of Eli – THis movie is actually a bittersweet one for me and I had to purchase it on blu-ray as it is the last film as a directing unit for Allen and Albert Hughes, collectively known as the Hughes Brothers, responsible for the films Menace II Society, Dead Presidents, American Pimp and the adaptation of Alan Moore’s Jack The Ripper graphic novel From Hell. I remember seeing this one in theatres, loving the casting of Denzel Washington and the counterpart of Gary Oldman, a casting that Denzel was responsible for. The story is set thirty years after nuclear war turned the world into a wasteland, following a lone warrior named Eli, played by Denzel, who marches across the ruined landscape, carrying hope for humanity’s redemption. Only one other man (Gary Oldman) understands the power of what he carries and he is determined to take it for himself. A peaceful man at his core, Eli risks death to protect his precious cargo, for he must fulfill his destiny to help restore mankind. This movie is exquisitely shot by Spider-Man and Forrest Gump cinematographer Don Burgess and just pops on the high-definition screen. I also really enjoyed the performance from co-star Mila Kunis, probably one of her best in my opinion.

DC’s Legends Of Tomorrow: Season 7 – Another piece of the setting sun on the Arrowverse within the DC Comics television universe comes to a close here and I regard this series as the goofy and fantastical heart contained within. The series is a great ensemble that features some of my favourite characters both in the comics and the series depiction of them like The Atom, Firestorm, Hawkman and Hawkgirl and even Constantine who was rescued from the cancellation of his own series. Loosely, from the beginning, the show had Doctor Who’s Arthur Darville as time-travelling rogue Rip Hunter who is tasked to recruit a rag-tag team of heroes and villains to help prevent an apocalypse that could impact not only Earth but all of time itself. Of course, the kicker is that he has grabbed the supes that would cause less than minor time ripples with their absence which adds a fun underdog quality to the show that I still think remains in place. This show is so much fun and a nice breather from the darkness of a couple of the included shows in this universe and I’m kind of glad that it got such a long run to play around with its weirdness, something that is totally rare in regular network television.

Television:

Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99 (Netflix) – As a MuchMusic generation kid, I remember being glued to the screen in 1999 watching as one of the biggest music festivals I had ever known was television worldwide. It was all meant to be good, peaceful and loving, a representation of what the generation before us got to experience and a chance for us to break off a piece for ourselves. This is definitely not what happened. Instead, the audience was driven mad and aggressive under a hot sun, water was overpriced and damn near unobtainable and the worst of the worst dudes started to circle women and other men itching for violence. It was all a powder keg that exploded the second night of the festival and caused it all to be burned down on the third night. This docuseries takes you back, following the timeline of the weekend as well as bringing you back to the development times, budget cuts and corporate greed that ultimately served to create the mess that was to come. This series was so fascinating and, though I know a lot of what happened, it was pretty insane to sort of renew my interest in it.

Industry: Season 2 (Crave) – The theme of this week’s television section of the blog should be “shows that I’m late to the game on” but this one should be considered for everyone because I had never even heard of it until my PR person at Crave included it in their monthly releases email. It should be an easy sell for a larger audience because for me it plays like Euphoria meets high-stakes finance and trading but it even goes beyond that as a series about young people losing their souls with money that isn’t theirs. The series follows graduates from all walks of life who compete for a limited number of available full-time employment opportunities at Pierpoint, a top investment bank in London. The graduates include Harper Stern, a Black upstate New York native who uproots her life in pursuit of success, despite having lied about the university she attended, Hari Dhar, a state-school graduate and child of Hindi-speaking immigrants, Augustus “Gus” Sackey, a gay Black British graduate of Eton and Oxford, Robert Spearing, a white working-class Oxford graduate who is eager to please, and Yasmin Kara-Hanani, a privileged, well-connected child of Lebanese parents with an underachieving, drug-addled boyfriend.The show comes from a couple of new and unproven showrunners with Mickey Down and Konrad Kay but the directorial heavyweights in Showtime, AppleTV+ HBO’s roster are present with Lena Dunham even doing the pilot. I was hooked very early by this series and I think it takes one or two for that to happen. 

The Bear (Disney+) – A few weeks after it’s release on American television, we finally get the first two episodes of what critics and audiences are calling the best debut series of 2022 in Canada and I couldn’t be more excited. The series stars former Shameless star Jeremy Allen White and it’s really funny that the actor can’t escape shows set in Chicago as this one takes place in the Windy City as well. The series follows White as Carmy, a brilliant young chef from the fine-dining world who is forced to return home to run his family sandwich shop, the Original Beef of Chicagoland, after a heartbreaking death in his family. A world away from what he’s used to, Carmy must balance the soul-crushing reality of trading in Michelin star restaurants for the small business’ kitchen filled with strong-willed and recalcitrant staff and his strained familial relationships, all while grappling with the impact of his brother’s suicide. From the symbolism of the first scene to the chaos of the first lunch rush in episode one, I was so onboard, looking at an authentic vision of a well known and established world for many. Just seeing so many career chefs and kitchen workers praise this show got my appetite for it running and I say, as a layman, this show doesn’t disappoint and has amazing potential.

The Sandman (Netflix) – This show isn’t even out yet and it’s getting immediate hatred from comic book gatekeepers and Netflix production haters alike but I would like to point out that the subject matter is already heady with deep lore so it would have been divisive anyways. I would liken it to The Witcher which felt like it was dripping with an already established and fully built world right from the beginning but at least The Sandman tries a bit of back story with its first episode. Based on the popular Vertigo comic from creator Neil Gaiman, the story follows a wizard attempting to capture Death to bargain for eternal life and traps her younger brother Dream instead for leverage. Fearful for his safety, the wizard kept him imprisoned in a glass bottle for decades until his grand escape a century later. After his emancipation, Dream, also known as Morpheus, goes on a quest for his lost objects of power and to restore his once powerful and beautiful kingdom. I have to say that this show looks gorgeous, the cross-pollination of Warner Bros. DC Comics television division and Netflix has made a giant of a potential mountain. I love Gaiman’s writing style and have been impressed with the page-to-screen transition of it so far.

The Outlaws: Season 2 (Prime Video) – This is a British produced little gem from out of nowhere that I feel upset that I’m just learning about it now, especially because it stars and comes from the mind of The Office, Extras and Hello Ladies creator Stephen Merchant and it has Darren Boyd and the legendary Christopher Walken in the cast as well. I have to think that the direct initial comparisons to Misfits had me biting for it but there’s no superpowers to be had in this one, just questionable decisions. The show is a multi character mosaic that follows seven strangers from different walks of life forced together to complete a community payback sentence in Bristol. When the actions of one of the community service workers puts a huge duffel bag of cash in front of them, they must band together to protect against the real owners of the small fortune to save their lives as well as their loved ones. This show is so awesomely written and so well put together with each character being immediately interesting and intriguing. I feel a deep binge for this show coming on as I prepare for the brand new season.

Mike Judge’s Beavis and Butt-Head: Season 1 (Paramount+) – The renewal of this nineties classic comedy was given with the recent Paramount+ movie Beavis And Butthead Do The Universe, a hilarious new adventure that brought the horny television-watching slackers to the present day and now creator Mike Judge can give them a modern age series like, well, some of us wanted. Yes, the iconic animated duo are back and dumber than ever to resume their duties to confound common sense, torment each other, and showcase some of the dumbest comedy imaginable. My personal grievances is that instead of watching music videos, the duo will be making fun of viral YouTube videos but maybe my anger comes at the fact that we really don’t have a music video station like what MTV or MuchMusic used to be. My rage is all so misdirected, much like these two. Damn, we are so alike.

What The Hell Should I Watch? – Jul 28

stevestebbing

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July 28, 2022

New Releases:

DC League Of Super-Pets – Just months 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’m also giddy at 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.

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 looks fantastic. 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 radio host 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 trailer is hysterically funny, lampooning a lot of the southern opinions and beliefs which are so very close to the truth. The film is getting a lot of good attention from critics so I’m predicting a sleeper hit and hopefully more films from this phenomenal writer.

Honor Society – Having just finished the latest season of Stranger Things, when I saw this new high school teen comedy that featured Gaten Matarazzo, I was immediately geared to watch it because I just adore Dustin. This one isn’t his leading film though, that heavy lifting belongs to The Nice Guys and MCU Spider-Man movie actress Angourice Rice who has always been impressive to me with everything she’s done. She plays Honor, an overachieving teen whose sole focus is getting into Harvard. Willing to do whatever it takes, she concocts a plan to take down her top three competitors, until things take a turn when she unexpectedly falls for her biggest competition and ends up improving the lives of her competition immensely, giving herself a change of heart in the process. The young cast is so good and charming in this movie that it sometimes makes up for the failings of the script or the bland and one-note cardboard cutouts that all of the adults seem to be. I feel like it borrows a lot from more successful movies and hit television shows, with a heavy leaning into Glee at one point, but the movie largely works and I do like that they kept some swearing and crudeness in it for texture. Nothing that will blow you away but an enjoyable hour and a half.

My Old School – I’ve been a fan of Alan Cumming since I saw him as the tech geek bad guy in the first Pierce Brosnan-led James Bond film Goldeneye, a charming, boisterous and flamboyant Scotsman that brightens every project he’s in. What I didn’t expect for him was a smartly informative and touching documentary slash drama that would totally warm my heart. The film is set in 1993 and follows sixteen-year-old Brandon Lee enrolled at Bearsden Academy, a secondary school in a well-to-do suburb of Glasgow, Scotland and the events that followed over the next two years. Oh, and the twist is that Cumming plays the teenage Brandon as well. Crazy, right? You don’t even know the half of it and I want to keep spoilers to a minimum on that but I will say that Cumming’s performance, as usual, is the glowing part that keeps it all going. The film is a thought-provoking story that involves home school, a “fish out of water into a new pond” feeling, the grieving process and so much more that was totally unexpected. Again and again, I found myself actually saying “wow” out loud and I consider that some high praise.

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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0nCxBQiQLMthe 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.

Blu-Ray:

Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness – The Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first film of 2022 rolls out this week onto the 4k and blu-ray format and it definitely will play in more of the story that will affect this current phase of the expanded Marvel story and what’s to come because it once again, after Spider-Man: No Way Home, plays with the ever-growing multiverse and the consequences of that film. I was initially bummed that the director of the first film, Scott Derrickson, stepped away from this project but I think they put it in great hands with the incredible Sam Raimi. To put this in a spoiler-free nutshell, the synopsis is that Doctor Stephen Strange has cast a forbidden spell that opened the doorway to the multiverse, including alternate versions of himself, whose threat to humanity is too great for the combined forces of Strange, Wong, and Wanda Maximoff leading them to gather a few more helpful combatants like the debuting America Chavez, a comic character that was really neat to see in live-action form. I definitely have some issues that left a sour taste in my mouth on this film with it;s creative and plot decisions but there are completely unpredictable storylines in the film and the universe or multiple ones that Strange exists in are so visually fascinating and rife with those trademark Sam Raimi camera beats. It’s hard to talk about this movie without giving deeply spoiler moments but I will say that this was only slightly above average for me but there are still a lot of things I enjoyed about it.

The Lost City – Sandra Bullock has a good penchant for picking good co-stars to feature in her comedies which is a genre she fits in best because, well, Sandy is always charming. I feel like her characters are always just a millimetre away from the true lady. While the movies aren’t exactly ones that stick in your memory, like The Proposal with Ryan Reynolds, they are always entertaining at the time and I expect the same from this new film with Channing Tatum in the co-pilot seat. Bullock plays an adventure romance writer who is kidnapped by a young and ruthless treasure hunter played by Daniel Radcliffe. This prompts the cover model of her books to prove that he is a real-life hero to her and heads into the jungle to rescue her. The trailers for this honestly look pretty funny, relying on the two stars’ onscreen chemistry and proven acting chops to get the audience a satisfying film that will remind us of the Michel Douglas and Kathleen Turner film Romancing The Stone and the sequel Jewel Of The Nile. Also, I have to mention that Brad Pitt is in this too and looks hilarious in a long hair action hero spoof role.

The Duke – An easy way to get a great true story British comedy-drama out there is to cast some total heavyweights in the lead and that’s exactly what director Roger Michell did in what sadly would be his final film as he passed away in 2021. These lead roles were given to the great character actor Jim Broadbent and the amazing Dame Helen Mirren and, really, they carry the whole thing on their back. The story takes place in 1961, following sixty-year-old Kempton Bunton who has stolen Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London. He sent ransom notes saying that he would return the painting on condition that the government invested more in care for the elderly, notably the licences that the government charges all of them just for the simple pleasure of watching the BBC. What happened next became the stuff of legend and is an uplifting true story about a good man who set out to change the world and managed to save his marriage. Broadbent just shines in every scene he’s in and the dynamic in which he plays off of Mirren makes you wish that they had done more movies together. I love these films about the inspiring everyman and Michell framed such a great story of exactly that as his final gift to us in film. It’s sad that he never lived to see the release of this because, judging from the other reviews too, he would have been really proud.

Green Lantern: Beware My Power – A brand new DC animated story hits blu-ray and high definition this week and as a lifelong comic book fan, I have to give it some of the spotlight. This is also a property that Warner Bros. has had more than a little trouble with in live-action form because we all remember the Ryan Reynolds Green Lantern film, but in an animated form, they do pretty well. The film features the upcoming Black Adam star Aldis Hodge as John Stewart, a former marine dealing with severe PTSD who is given the power of the Lantern Corps and thrust into the middle of a galactic war. New to his powers and responsibility, he must learn everything on the fly as he teams with Green Arrow and Hawkgirl to save the remnants of Thanagar, restore Oa and save the universe at the same time. This film, clocking in at less than ninety minutes, has some incredible action sequences but definitely skimps on the depth or a good and memorable script, something that is starting to fail these films in the last couple of years. I’m not getting bored of them but I’m hoping that some of the writing improves in the future.

That Dirty Black Bag: Season 1 – It’s fitting that I’m finishing up my second round of the AMC series Preacher, starring Dominic Cooper, a fantastical series about the battle between, well, not too good and ultimate evil in a sometimes dusty and western setting, because this show has Cooper doing some real western this time and playing the bad guy too. Something that really makes me laugh about this show is, Cooper included, most of the cast of the show is from the British Isles, like lead actor Douglas Booth and Game Of Thrones alum Aiden Gillan. The series is a story told over eight long days that describes the encounter and clash between two men, McCoy, an apparently incorruptible sheriff with a dark past, and Red Bill, a dirty, taciturn bounty killer trapped in a desire for vengeance that cannot be fulfilled. The dirty black bag that the title alludes to also happens to be full of the heads of Red’s bounties which is such a cool additional element for me. This show is so badass, a heightened western story with no white knights, just black hats doing everything just to survive, for a daughter or out of bloody vengeance. The stoic nature of the cast, the explosions of violence and the unpredictability of the story consistently keeps you on the edge of your seat until the very end. I had only fleetingly heard of this show but I think it should get a lot more attention.

The Gilded Age: Season 1 – There has definitely been a void existing in the last few years that Downton Abbey has been off the air and the movies, although very welcome and successful, really weren’t enough to satisfy those fan appetites. Creator Julian Fellowes felt that collective pain it seems and has teamed with the powerhouse of HBO to give a new story set in the late 1800s but this time it is across the pond in the supposed “Land of Opportunity”. This new series follows the wide-eyed young niece of a conservative family who embarks on a mission to prove the doubts about her enterprising abilities and infiltrate the wealthy neighbouring clan dominated by ruthless railroad tycoon George Russell, his rakish son, Larry, and his ambitious wife, Bertha. The cast is fantastic, featuring veterans like Cynthia Nixon and Christine Baranski, a young talent like Tassia Farmiga and one of my favourite character actresses today, Carrie Coon. After inhaling the first episode, I was so impressed by the layered setup of each character and the establishment of hierarchies and how they can crumble over the course of the series. The only hope now is that it has the longevity of Downton and the power of Gosford Park.

Steve’s Blu-Ray Geek-Out:

Ip Man: The Awakening – Being a sucker for martial arts films, there is more of a draw to these Ip Man movies for me is that they are based on the man who taught Bruce Lee everything he knows, arguably the greatest to do it on a Hollywood level. That said, the quality of the films has dipped a bit since original star Donnie Yen left the franchise and even he had some questionable entries, like the one with Mike Tyson that only seemed to be playing up to the big fight between them. I try to go into this one with more faith and always they look good on the Blu-ray format, hence my posting of it right here. We go for a young Ip Man who, while visiting Hong Kong, intervenes in a kidnapping attempt, unintentionally igniting a turf war with a ruthless human trafficking ring. In retaliation, the gang kidnaps one of Ip Man’s close friends, leaving him with no choice but to challenge the group’s notoriously brutal boxing champion head-on. If you like some good fight sequences then this might be right up your alley but take it in the same vein as you would have with a Chuck Norris film in the eighties or a Best Of The Best sequel in the nineties. Cool fights and action but not much of an actual film in between. Still very cool on the high-definition side of everything.

Television:

City On A Hill: Season 3 (Crave) – Kevin Bacon is absolutely fascinating in this Boston law enforcement series with a dirty cop edge from the same guys who put the spotlight on Baltimore in Homicide: Life On The Street. Bacon plays Jackie Rohr, a sleazy and corrupt FBI agent who reminisces about the more abusive times in policing when you could knock around perps and witnesses. He latches on to the new assistant D.A. with an axe to grind, the two looking to make a difference in a city they both want to see excel. The show suffers here and there with some of the tough-guy bravado writing that harkens back to a different era of television but when this show hits its stride it is a totally effective and engaging show. The second season fully solidified Rohr as one of my favourite anti-heroes on television currently and Aldis Hodge, who plays ADA DeCourcy Ward, is about to have a hell of a 2022 with him playing Hawkman in the upcoming Black Adam with The Rock but hopefully, that impending rise won’t cut this show’s run short because it is so fantastic. Chuck MacLean is a hell of a creator and I still can’t believe this is his debut in the medium.

The Most Hated Man On The Internet (Netflix) – The seedy and disgusting existence of revenge porn is front and center in this new fascinating Netflix docuseries that introduced me to the knowledge of an evil human being named Hunter Moore who I feel better off not knowing about. Being the father of two daughters, a story like this hits me deep in my heart and the show was unrelenting in that and I may have yelled at my television screen a few times. This series is from the point of view of the mother of one of the victims who decided to stand up to Moore, the self-proclaimed “professional life ruiner,” after photos of her naked daughter were posted online and once that was dealt with, she took it upon herself to help the others who had been humiliated by the website. This show is another bombshell of horrifying ways that the internet has been used to exploit and destroy the reputations of innocent women through illegal measures and computer hacking. As infuriating as it is a cautionary tale for those sick bastards out there looking to do the same thing.

Paper Girls (Prime Video) – After the sad cancellation of the adaptation of Brian K. Vaughn and Pia Guerra’s landmark graphic novel Y The Last Man I was really hoping that networks or streaming services hadn’t soured on his work. Now one of my favourites of his works has gotten the series treatment and when I started reading Paper Girls, I knew it was destined for a live-action version. Definitely playing for that Stranger Things crossover crowd, the series is set a few hours after Halloween night in 1988 and follows four twelve-year-old girls who have to face a dangerous mission that has them trapped in a complicated conflict where they will travel in time to save the world. The main cast is young and fresh but it also has some stellar actors jumping in for supporting roles like a podcast friend of mine, Nate Corddry, and comedian Ali Wong, as well as being the first show led by Toy Story 4 writer Stephany Folsom. I have really good thoughts about this series having read the comic books thoroughly so I hope that it catches on with the broader audience.

Harley Quinn: Season 3 (Crave) – Kaley Cuoco has to be the most successful of the former Big Bang Theory cast members as she secured an Emmy and Golden Globe nomination for her HBO Max series The Flight Attendant’s first season and may earn another one for the current season too. She also has the added benefit of this animated and crudely adult DC Comics series that airs on the same streaming service and it is easily one of my current favourite shows. She is the title voice, a crazy character we all are familiar with, now striking out on her own without her longtime beau, the homicidal clown, The Joker. With her best friend, the Daria like Poison Ivy, voiced by Lake Bell, she has assembled her own team of misfits, which includes King Shark, voiced by Ron Funches, Clayface, done by Alan Tudyk who does multiple voices throughout the show run, and Tony Hale as Dr. Psycho. This show never fails to make me laugh hard and I love all of the DC in-jokes as well as its over-the-top and often brutal and gory violence. It’s like they went into my mind and pulled out exactly what kind of show I wanted to see as a comic fan! Perfect!

What The Hell Should I Watch? – Jul 21

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July 21, 2022

New Releases:

Nope – I know I generally say these things week to week but this is one of my most anticipated films of 2022, the return of Jordan Peele with his third feature film and one that had been very secretive with its story up until the last few weeks. The trailer that first dropped was so ambiguous but intriguing, giving me all sorts of room to speculate on what kind of terror Jordan was delivering this time. Even if you look up a synopsis anywhere, the write-ups are all so secretive as well only saying that the film follows caretakers at a California black-owned horse ranch who encounter a mysterious force that affects human and animal behaviour. My theories on the title seem to be validated as I think it’s an anacronym for Not Of Planet Earth because there are clearly flying saucers in the new ad but beyond that, Peeleis an incredible filmmaker, he reteams with Get Out actor and Academy Award winner Daniel Kaluuya and has a solid cast around him with Keke Palmer, Steven Yuen and veteran Michael Wincott. Needless to say, I’m so damn excited for this movie.

The Gray Man – Captain America is back under the direction of his many-time directors Anthony and Joe Russo but this time he’s playing the bad guy and Ryan Gosling gets the protagonist role in this highly expensive-looking Netflix action thriller epic. Lots of inflammatory statements are being made about the war between theaters and streaming by the filmmakers but I’m going to skirt that just to talk about the anticipation for the film itself which looks like the kind of action flicks that I’ve loved for decades. The film follows Sierra Six, the CIA’s most skilled operative whose true identity is known to none who accidentally uncovers dark agency secrets leading a psychopathic former colleague to put a bounty on his head which sets off a global manhunt by international assassins. I know people are steaming mad about the bloated budget of a seemingly brainless action film but these are the movies that got me into theaters big time and, unfortunately in my small market town of Penticton, I have to rely on my own home theater to get my bombastic experience but I am really looking forward to it.

This Is GWAR – One of the coolest heavy metal acts in the last four decades finally gets their flowers with this biopic documentary and the only thing that upsets me about it is that original creator, singer and banner frontman Oederus Orungus or Dave Brockie was not alive to see the film come together. Having seen GWAR live and been bathed in the blood and viscera of their stage show, I will say that there is no other show like it so I’m happy to see a documentary that illustrates the process of that and maybe give some insight to the people who have heard of the insanity of their performances but never seen it first hand. The film is a deep dive into the powerful story of the most iconic heavy metal, art collective and monster band in the universe, as told by the humans who have fought to keep it alive for over thirty years, even through the shocking and tragic death of the mind behind it all. The effect the band has had on pop culture, horror fans and even popular movies like Empire Records is all so fascinating to re-immerse myself in and I loved every second of it. To see Ethan Embry talk about it all these years later is really cool as well.

The Day The Music Died: The Story Of Don McLean’s American Pie – We aren’t done with the music documentaries this week as Paramount+ is throwing a new one into the ring and it seems fascinating and based around an iconic piece of music because I feel, no matter what age you are, you know the song American Pie. The song held the record for almost 50 years for being the longest song to reach number one before Taylor Swift’s All To Well recently beat that, has been covered famously by Madonna and John Mayer and was a plot point feature in the recent films Black Widow and Finch. The song seems to be forever relevant and much like the Lenord Cohen Documentary Hallelujah did last week, this film looks at the career of singer and songwriter Don McLean’s career through the prism of his most lasting hit and magnum opus. I think the song’s basis, the “day music died”, referring to the death of Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and The Big Bopper in a tragic plane crash, is a fascinating event to extrapolate from and I think it kind of gets lost a bit in the enjoyment of the song for generations. To hear it all from MacLean’s point of view has me very intrigued.

Fire Of Love – I had no idea what I was getting into when I put my screener on for this new documentary, probably something dry when I saw the logo for National Geographic pop up on the screen. I definitely wasn’t prepared for the love story of two odd and pretty opposite ducks who just happen to share the same passion for magma bubbling under the earth and then exploding all over the world, a long metaphor for volcanoes which also plays into their little romance brilliantly. Narrated by actress and filmmaker Miranda July, this is the story of intrepid scientists and lovers Katia and Maurice Krafft who died in a volcanic explosion doing the very thing that brought them together: unravelling the mysteries of volcanoes by capturing the most explosive imagery ever recorded. Using all of their hours and hours of footage from expeditions around the world, the film paints a vivid portrait of a pragmatic and mousy individual in Katia and a boisterous and witty showman in Maurice which made quite a compelling coupling that the French media adored. With mesmerizing shots of lava flows, violent geysers and exploding volcanos, I was so hooked into the imagery and the human connection of it all felt secondary until I really started to like these two. The tragic end of that is exactly that and I definitely dreaded it once I got halfway.

Blu-Ray:

The Bad Guys – Based on a series of best-selling kids’ books, I knew nothing about this new Dreamworks animated movie but my daughter seems to know everything so when it comes to the subject of this new film I will just defer to being a fan of the voice casting in this. Led by an always charming Sam Rockwell, this film also has Marc Maron, Awkwafina, Richard Ayoade, Craig Robinson, Anthony Ramos, Zazie Beetz and many more, which would make a great adult comedy so why wouldn’t that work in a kid’s flick? The story follows notorious criminals Mr. Wolf, Mr. Snake, Mr. Piranha, Mr. Shark and Ms. Tarantula who are finally caught after a lifetime of legendary heists. To avoid a prison sentence, the animal outlaws must pull off their most challenging con yet, becoming model citizens. Under the tutelage of their mentor, Professor Marmalade, the dubious gang sets out to fool the world that they’re turning good. The animation style looks very cool and original, playing on a noir style almost with a dynamic shading to it which now looks confusing as I’m writing this but it really gives it a unique style. I’m sure that Dreamworks is hoping that this strikes with the reader fan base and, in a post-pandemic release, did better than expected so I think it’s entirely possible that we could see more adventures and heists with this crew.

The Northman – Following his incredible films the VVitch and The Lighthouse, this new feature film from writer and director Robert Eggers was easily one of my most anticipated films of 2022. The atmosphere and the approach to the subject matter are always one of a kind from Eggers and the simple fact that he is tackling the Viking era with this film and a cast that is familiar to him and some outstanding new additions were enough to get my anticipation to a fever pitch. The story follows Prince Amleth, played by Alexander Skarsgaard, who is on the verge of becoming a man when his father is brutally murdered by his uncle, who kidnaps the boy’s mother. Two decades later, Amleth is now a Viking who’s on a mission to save his mother, kill his uncle and avenge his father in a viscerally violent art film that commands with the styling of the time period but also operates with an underlying tone of an eighties revenge action flick. With a cast around Skarsgard featuring Anya Taylor Joy, Willem Dafoe, Ethan Hawke, Claes Bang and even Bjork, this is one hell of an experience that is viscerally violent, beautifully shot throughout and gives Skarsgard infinite room for character development. I was also so deeply fascinated with the spiritual core to the story that beats along with it like a lifeline headed to an abrupt end. This one is a treasured Blu-ray release that I will watch over and over again.

The Bob’s Burgers Movie – It’s been fifteen years since The Simpsons made their one and only big leap onto the big screen for a movie I adored but, albeit less successful in comparison but just as good if not better, in my opinion, Bob’s Burgers made their silver screen debut a lot quicker. This is exactly what all the fans have been waiting for, featuring the voices of stalwart voice-over actors H. Jon Benjamin, Eugene Mirman, Kristen Schaal, Dan Mintz and John Roberts. The story has the Belchers trying to save the restaurant from closing as a sinkhole forms in front of it, unearthing a murdered carny in the process. The kids try to solve the mystery which puts the owner of their neighborhood, Calvin Fishoeder behind bars, an act that could save their family’s restaurant. To many non-fans, this movie might come off as a big glossy version of a television episode but as a fan, I loved that it opened up the world of the Belchers and their neighborhood in a bigger way than the series ever could and it also is able to subvert itself to be a fun whodunnit along the way. Many may feel that this is not a movie for them but if you love side-splitting laughs, why would you pass on this one?

Drive My Car -With Academy Awards nominations, which notched a win for Best Foreign, and critical acclaim from so many renowned film reviewers worldwide, the bar was set pretty high for this Japanese drama. This is no flinching matter for writer and director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, who not only netted the Best Foreign Oscar award but the Best Adapted Screenplay nomination as well, which puts him in the arena against favourites like Jane Campion, Denis Villeneuve and Maggie Gyllenhaal but I don’t think he’s worried because his film is that good. The story follows Yusuke Kafuku, a renowned stage actor and director, who receives an offer to direct a production of Uncle Vanya at a theatre festival in Hiroshima just shortly after the tragic passing of his wife. There, he meets Misaki Watari, a taciturn young woman assigned by the festival to chauffeur him in his beloved red Saab 900. As the production’s premiere approaches, tensions mount among the cast and crew, not least between Yusuke and Koshi Takatsuki, a handsome TV star who shares an unwelcome connection with Yusuke’s late wife. Forced to confront painful truths raised from his past, Yusuke begins, with the help of his driver, to face the haunting mysteries his wife left behind. This film is made with such rich performances and a beautiful scope that reminded me of the serene qualities of a Hikaru Korreda film, a dramatic director who prefers stories about quiet solitude. I don’t want to give too much of this movie away but it is a real crowd-pleaser that will be remembered long afterwards and goes down avenues of grief and processing it through art.

Dual – With just three films under his belt now, Riley Stearns has risen to be one of my favorite filmmakers and a creative mind I follow on social media for nuggets about what he’s going to tackle next. He’s made subversive and intriguing stories about many sociological issues like religious and cult indoctrination in his thriller Faults, toxic masculinity in his dark comedy The Art Of Self Defense and now takes on a whole new set of issues in a movie he made in the midst of the COVID lockdown. The film stars Guardians Of The Galaxy’s Karen Gillan as a woman who opts for a cloning procedure after she receives a terminal diagnosis but when she recovers her attempts to have her clone decommissioned fail, leading to a court-mandated duel to the death. The concept of this film is incredible and opens with a duel between a man and his clone that totally sets the tone. The film is a bit of a character-building slow burn but once the gears lock in, you are in for one hell of a ride and a biting dialogue that made me chuckle darkly multiple times.

Minamata – Now that the whole Amber Heard and Johnny Depp trial is over, the fallout has occurred, Depp has moved on to record an album and Heard is… well.. we don’t know but we can start to move on, right? I hope we can because I feel like this movie definitely needs people to see it and Johnny is a big reason why I enjoyed it. Based on a true story, Depp plays war photographer W. Eugene Smith who travels back to Japan, a company that already put him into a life-ruining bender from his experiences, where he documents the devastating effect of mercury poisoning in coastal communities. This movie is very much a people versus the establishment type of story and draws you in so deeply with the injustices forced upon the people in the surrounding areas and their families for generations to come. Beautifully shot at all times, the story is so deeply compelling and, although extremely cantankerous for a good portion of the film, Depp gives Smith a really interesting depth that you want to see through. I was totally surprised and blown away by this film.

Reno 911! The Hunt For QAnon – Sometimes you need a vapid, mostly improved and dumb comedy to give you some good belly laughs and Reno 911 has been a dependable go-to for that for me since 2003. The cast is always great, led by creator and star Thomas Lennon’s Lieutenant Jim Dangle and the supporting cast of co-creator Robert Ben Garant, Cedric Yarbrough, Niecy Nash, Carlos Alazaqui, Mary Birdsong, Kerry Kenney and Wendi McLendon-Covey. She has since become a pretty big star since the show’s start. This full-length movie follows the deputies of the Reno Sheriff’s Department as they hunt for Q, the one behind all the QAnon conspiracies and infiltrate a QAnon convention booked on a not-so-luxury cruise at sea. I know this movie is not going to be a lot of people’s thing so the litmus test is if you enjoyed the run of the series as well as the first feature-length film, Reno 911!: Miami then I can’t see you not enjoying this. It’s kind of like the South Park Paramount+ movies in keeping consistent in what you saw before it. I adore these guys and hope they keep making more because the possibilities are kind of endless.

Good Burger – It may be a totally generational thing but Kenan and Kel’s leap to the big screen in this goofy little Nickelodeon comedy from 1997 hit cult status somewhere in the last fifteen years and, thanks to Twitter, I see it brought up very often. It’s ridiculous and slapstick fueled but it has some really bold and funny performances from our lead actors, Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell and I’d have to say that it probably served as a pretty good Saturday Night Live audition tape as well. The story follows a dim-witted teenager and his new coworker trying to save the old burger joint they work for from failing after the opening of a brand new burger restaurant across the street, which’s planning to put them out of business. For me, I remember this film fondly as the first time I ever saw Linda Cardellini, pre Freaks And Geeks, but upon receiving this glorious steelbook anniversary edition, I threw it on and found myself laughing harder than I did the first time I saw it. Did the aging of it help my enjoyment? Possibly but it might be me getting over my jaded teenage years and getting out of my own way to enjoy something new. Now I’m with that age group that says this film is an absolute classic.

Steve’s Blu-Ray Geekouts:

Raya And The Last Dragon – I recently picked this one up on blu-ray at Walmart for fifteen dollars for the express purpose of geeking out on it here so let’s run that old review back. This movie was released at a time when I definitely had been missing the movie theatres and sadly this film would have played beautifully on that silver giant screen. Originally slated to arrive in theatres as a pre-Christmas, November release, this dazzling Disney film follows a lone warrior named Raya whose mission is to track down the last dragon to finally stop the Druun, sinister monsters that turns all life to stone and have broken apart humanity into different tribes who hide to keep their pieces of an ancient dragon artifact that keeps the enemy at bay. The only chance for a future lies in the unification of all these pieces that will restore the balance of the world. Featuring an all Asian cast including Star Wars star Kelly Marie Tran and the hilarious Awkwafina, I loved every moment of this film and so did my family, a breath of fresh air in the Disney animated films that fell like another piece in their iconic original stories that could stand shoulder to shoulder with movies like Aladdin and The Lion King.

Television:

Primal: Season 2 (Adult Swim) – One of the greatest creators in the game, Genndy Tartokovsky is back with the second season of another incredible epic that he can put alongside Samurai Jack and beam with pride. A decidedly violent tale, this series follows a caveman at the dawn of evolution as he forms an unlikely friendship with an almost extinct dinosaur. Again, without a single word of dialogue, the series is a painting come to life, relying solely on music and graphic imagery to tell the story of two unlikely allies as they navigate through a treacherous world and, after bonding over unfortunate tragedies, they seem to become each other’s only hope of survival against a common enemy. The show is mind-meltingly beautiful in a way that Tartokovsky has the utmost command over and The emotional resonance of even the first episode had me bursting into tears with how heavily it was handled and the fact that it relies on just visuals without any dialogue. I think he has released yet another masterpiece that will be celebrated for years to come, just like the legend of Samurai Jack and each episode resonates with me so much. I can’t wait for these new episodes.

What The Hell Should I Watch? – Jul 14th

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July 14, 2022

New Releases:

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.

Paws Of Fury: The Legend Of Hank – Probably looking to be crushed under the box office weight of Gru and his Minions, I can’t say the outlook is great for this new animated feature that seems to be borrowing just a little bit from Kung Fu Panda but I’m willing to give it a chance. I probably hinge it all on the fact that Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World star and Canadian treasure Michael Cera is the voice of our titular character but that certainly doesn’t mean it will be good. Even so, Cera lends his vocal talents to Hank, a loveable dog with a head full of dreams about becoming a samurai, who sets off in search of his destiny, to be trained by a martial arts master named Jimbo. The cast around Cera is really solid, including the legendary and identifiable voices of Samuel L. Jackson, Mel Brooks, George Takei and Ricky Gervais but the animation definitely looks a bit subpar in comparison to any Pixar film for sure but even week against an Illumination Entertainment film like its current duelling foe, Minions: The Rise Of Gru. I have to say that for adults the jury is still out on this but I have no doubt that the kids will love it.

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.

Tammy’s Always Dying – Felicity Huffman seems to be persona non grata after her legal troubles and subsequent prison sentence that she’s since served but can she make a film that redeems her for moviegoers or, in this instance, regular movie streamers? Well, it’s in the hands of a Power Ranger and most notably the Pink Ranger as Amy Jo Johnson helms this in her second feature film and the advanced buzz behind it is solid making a really well-received filmmaker to date, a feat that is sometimes hard to pull off. The film features Canadian actress Anastasia Phillips as Catherine, a young woman forced to care for her embarrassing alcoholic mother, who decides to flee her life of poverty and appear on a sleazy talk show after her mother is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Phillips is an unproven lead for me but it’s Huffman’s stalwart performance that gives this film its drive, coupled with an outstanding supporting performance from Clark Johnson who led Amy’s last feature film. This is definitely an actor’s film and it relies on all of these performances to make up for the story’s shortcomings.

Don’t Make Me Go – When I saw this one pop up as coming soon to Prime Video, I geeked out a fair bit because I had the privilege of meeting filmmaker Hannah Marks in an ill-fated interview with showrunner and writer Max Landis who had her tag along to the interview. Needless to say, I was more interested in talking to her as the disastrous meeting with Landis continued, have loved the last two films she put out and am really excited to get my eyeballs on this one, especially because it stars JohnCho, fresh off the sadly cancelled Cowboy Bebop adaptation on Netflix. The film follows Cho as a single father who is diagnosed with terminal cancer and takes her on a road trip to find the mother who abandoned her years before while simultaneously trying to teach her everything she might need over the rest of her life. The heart of this movie just swells in the trailer and Cho has been in some of the best low-key indie films, with Koganada’s Columbus being a giant on that mountain of great work. The film was penned by This Is Us writer Vera Herbert so you know it will have a deep well of emotional depth to it and it was shot by Jaron Presant who did The Rock’s video game adaptation Rampage, not a big selling feature, but he also did the mockumentary horror Behind The Mask: The Rise Of Leslie Vernon, making his inclusion a big win in my department.

Persuasion – Jane Austen is definitely not my strong suit or a preferred adaptation for me at all, yet I always find myself watching them for review and, aside from Joe Wright’s Pride And Prejudice or Whit Stillman’s Love And Friendship, none of them have managed to convert me to an Austenite. They always seem to have a draw with great casting and this new one, Last adapted fifteen years ago with Sally Hawkins, has Dakota Johnson in the leading role and I’m a newly minted fan of hers. The story is about Anne Elliot, a nonconforming woman with modern sensibilities who lives with her snobby family that is on the brink of bankruptcy. When Fredrick Wentworth, the dashing man she once sent away, crashes back into her life, she must choose between putting the past behind her or listening to her heart when it comes to second chances. Well, the results are not good for this film despite a great performance from Dakota and, for me, a lot of it is due to the fatigue of this kind of Austen story. The film seems like a mish-mash of actual lines from the novels and a modernizing and pandering that doesn’t cohese at all. It all comes across as a drab and dry romantic comedy that brings nothing new to the table besides a pretty face.

Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey – I feel like I’ve seen so many documentaries on legendary and dark Canadian crooner Leonard Cohen but to be honest I’ve never really been bored in them because his life and influence is so fascinating. I also think it is because I’m getting older that I can relate more to his music, his headspace and his plight but there is a certain quality to seeing Cohen with such joy as he performs the songs if front of an audience and ending each one with a sly smile that transcends age and love for the genre. This documentary is more focused than all of its predecessors as it explores the life of singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen as seen through the prism of his internationally renowned hymn, Hallelujah. It digs into all of the artists that have covered it since, like Brandi Carlile, U2’s Bono, Eric Church and even John Cale and Rufus Wainwright who had duelling versions of the song, vying to be in the Dreamworks animated film Shrek in a pivotal sequence. What really got me was the focus on Jeff Buckley’s version which appeared on his one and only album Grace and catapulted the artist to the top of the charts after his tragic drowning in the Mississippi River. I really love a good music documentary but more than that I love a deeply human story and this one is about connection through writers that transcends multiple decades and genres and explores the same voice in different filters. There is no denying Hallelujah’s effect on pop culture and music as even my ten-year-old daughter knows the song.

Blu-Ray:

The Beatles: Get Back – Master filmmaker Peter Jackson is known for a plethora of reasons in the film world. At first, he was an originator in schlock horror, making splatter films in New Zealand for years. Then he was the Tolkein guy, adapting both the Lord Of The Rings trilogy and The Hobbit and also did a great job of King Kong in my opinion. Finally, he pivoted to documentary filmmaking with a hell of a World War I film called They Shall Not Grow Old. Now he’s made a Beatles fan like me overjoyed with this three-part docu-series that follows the Fab Four as they regroup to record and rehearse fourteen new songs that would become the album Let It Be and prepare for their unforgettable rooftop concert at London’s Savile Row, their first live performance in two years. As a person that holds this group so close to his heart, as does the rest of my family, this series is so special and it’s jaw-dropping to see this footage restored to look like it was recorded yesterday. I’m grateful to Jackson and his team and I feel like other Beatles fans will be as well.

Montana Story – A generational talent like young actress Haley Lu Richardson is a one-of-a-kind talent and while other actresses of her generation are getting their well-deserved flowers, like Florence Pugh, Hailee Steinfeld and more, she hasn’t risen to that level quite yet. Again and again, turning in performance after performance like in Koganada’s Columbus, which I mentioned earlier, Edge Of Seventeen and, recently, the hot button film Unpregnant, she is consistently underrated and this new drama falls into that category too. Co-starring It’s Owen Teague, the story follows two estranged siblings who return home to the sprawling ranch they once knew and loved, in the process confronting a deep and bitter family legacy against a mythic and majestic American backdrop. I think it’s my love for Yellowstone that has stoked my thirst for ranch set dramas but even still, this movie has a great brooding script that leaps off the screen thanks to two powerful performances. I’m surprised that the word of mouth on this film isn’t louder as it is one of the better films I’ve seen this year.

The Twin – Shudder releases are generally a mixed bag of low-budget, foreign releases and classic revamps but this one hits the higher profile because it stars Teresa Palmer, who is the lead star in a Prime Video and Shudder co-produced show, A Discovery Of Witches. Well, Tez is heading back to a supernatural-infused story again but this one plays into family lineage in a decidedly creepier way. This film opens during the aftermath of a tragic accident that claimed the life of one of their twins, with parents Rachel and Anthony relocating to the other side of the world with their surviving son. What begins as a time of healing in the quiet Scandinavian countryside soon takes an ominous turn when Rachel begins to unravel the torturous truth about her son and confronts the malicious forces that are trying to take hold of him. The initial reviews on this film are really strong with a great sense of mystery and atmosphere enveloping it to make it an edge-of-your-seat nailbiter. There’s something about emotional fol horror that always lands with me and this film seems to have it written all over.

Rugrats: Season 1 Volume 1 – This one made me really happy to receive because I had already been given the complete series of the original series, one that I grew up watching for sure, and makes my collection of nostalgia and newly rebooted memories complete. Well, not totally compiled as I am missing the series All Grown Up from 2003 until 2008 but I’m not going to let that harsh my Nickelodeon buzz because there is a lot of good stuff here. This new reboot fleshes the animation out a lot more with a 3D computer-generated animation but all of the goodness of Tommy, Chuckie, and the Rugrats crew is still present with the best o the best in the voice cast including Bart Simspon herself, Nancy Cartwright, E.G Daily from the Powerpuff Girls and, on of the all-time greats, Inspector Gadget’s Cree Summer. This was a fun watch for an adult reminiscing about his past and watching the animation of a group of imaginative toddlers as well as a really cool thing to get the younger kids interested in. This is my conduit to being able to show the original series to my daughter. Can’t wait.

Star Trek Lower Decks: Season 2 – The second season of the animated and comedic version of Star Trek is now available to own 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.

Batwoman: Season 3 – I’d been waiting a long time for a live-action onscreen version of Kate Kane aka Batwoman to be made and finally we got it and I thought the casting of Ruby Rose is kind of incredible as she already invoked many of the character traits right out the door. Then, only a year later, Rose departed the role and left the producers scrambling for their unpredicted new direction and for rightful reasons according to everything that Rosepostedon her Instagram. For those not in the know, Kane was inspired by Batman to use her resources to fight crime in Gotham as well under the moniker of Batwoman, but is a woman of Jewish descent and is also a lesbian, something that was a hard pill to swallow for the mainstream. Now the new actress that has stepped in is Javicia Leslie, star of the cancelled series God Friended Me, as Ryan Wilder who steps into the cowl in Kate’s absence. With all of the problems I outlined at the start, it’s a wonder that this show was only shown the cancellation door at the end of this season because the bad blood, bad press and producer overreaches are all so public now. Hopefully, we can see this character in a better way down the line but this one felt doomed very quickly.

Steve’s Blu-Ray Geekouts:

Monty Python: Not The Messiah – When I saw this blu-ray for cheap I just had to snap it up in my attempt to have everything Monty Python related but I will give a warning straight away before this entry as it is the Python crew but without John Cleese. To be fair though, this was more of an Eric Idle side project that Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones jumped on the ride for and it all has to do with the success of Spamalot, a musical that rose from the bones of Monty Python And The Holy Grail. To be to the point, what this is is a comic oratorio inspired by Life of Brian this time around and filmed at its only European performance at the Royal Albert Hall in October 2009 to celebrate forty years of Monty Python. No touring, no reproductions or recreations, just one night only, one and done. Idle is such a gifted songwriter and it is all on display here and to see the charm and wit of Palin, the added oomph of Jones, may he rest in peace, and the devilish smile and demeanour of Gilliam, just makes this purchase all the more necessary in my opinion. I love it.

Giant 4K – When the name James Dean gets brought up it is usually just in praise of his performance in Rebel Without A Cause and because of that everything else gets overshadowed, like this western from 1956 that featured him alongside the Hollywood power couple of Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson. You would think it would have had more clout to it as well generationally as legendary director George Stevens, the man behind Shane and A Place In The Sun just to name a couple, won his second Academy Award for the film. The film is a sprawling epic covering the life of a Texas cattle rancher and his family and associates, an ambitious Texas-style scale saga that traces the rising and falling fortunes of two generations of Texans. It is rumoured that while making this film Rock Hudson and James Dean did not get along, although later rumours would suggest that Dean had rejected a pass from Hudson, with most sources reporting that each had little respect for the other’s approach to acting, and Hudson resented what he considered Dean’s unprofessional behaviour, a trait that would follow Dean to his death which happened late in production. It should be noted that none of the issues involved Taylor, who had a notoriety for being difficult over her career but I really wonder through what kind of a lens these stories were told using.

Television:

Tuca & Bertie: Season 3 (Adult Swim) – There’s not much I can preface this little blurb with except the disclaimer being that this show is incredibly weird and comes from the mind of a main writer on Bojack Horseman but definitely isn’t the same. That said, if you hated Bojack or didn’t get far enough into that series to see the diamonds lodged in its writing then this one is definitely not for you. Featuring the voices of Tiffany Haddish and Ali Wong, the show is simply about a free-spirited toucan named Tuca and a self-doubting song thrush named Bertie who are best friends and birds who guide each other through life’s ups and downs, with Bertie being a little more pragmatic but a push over and Tuca being problematically self-centred. With both of the previous seasons already streaming on Netflix to give you a taste of what it’s all about, this show may be a hard sell as it really likes to go off on tangents quite a lot but I am enamoured with the bold chances it seems to love taking. If you’re a fan of either of these ladies, who both have so many great comedy specials, I recommend this to you and you only.

South Park: The Streaming Wars Part 2 (Paramount+) – With the reach of Paramount+ the minds behind South Park, notably Trey Parker and his muse Matt Stone, were able to rework a deal that put them as an exclusive on the streaming service and without the vague censorship of Comedy Central. Being over twenty seasons deep in the series, the enthusiasm must wane in making episodic seasons so they signed a multi-movie deal which gives them the ability to make these epic stories as they did with the Pandemic Special, the Vaccination Special, the two After COVID movies and the first part of this Streaming Wars story. The first part had Cartman locking horns with his mom in a battle of wills, something I’m sure she’s used to over the years, while an epic conflict unfolds and threatens South Park’s very existence. This second film picks up in the aftermath of that conflict, resulting in a catastrophic drought that has taken over the Colorado town. Look, if you haven’t been sold on this show from when it came out in the late nineties, then nothing I say here will get you on board but I know there are many out there that will stream this immediately which is ironic.

The Rehearsal (Crave) – Canadian comedian Nathan Fielder is a national treasure who hasn’t totally hit the big time but I feel if people just gave his show Nathan For You a chance, he would be a household name. Well, it’s been a while since that “man on the street” style Comedy Central show and now HBO has wisened up to his genius because they’ve given him the platform for this new also unscripted scripted series. As in his other show, Nathan likes to give back and this explores the lengths he will go to reduce the uncertainties of everyday life. With a construction crew, a legion of actors, and seemingly unlimited resources, Fielder allows ordinary people to prepare for life’s biggest moments by “rehearsing” them in carefully crafted simulations of his own design. Hysterically funny and always cringe-inducing with his irreverence, Fielder has another bonafide hit on his hands and I really hope to see more because if this is a one-and-done show, I will be so disappointed. I say it again, this dude is a national treasure.

What We Do In The Shadows: Season 4 (FX) – Following up yet another fantastic season that capitalizes again and again on great story foundations and characters, we have been not so patiently waiting for the return of our favourite vampire roommates. Created by the star of the original film, Jemaine Clement, this show follows a different cast than people who have only seen the movie are used to, led by the brilliant Kayvon Novak and one of my favourite current British comedic actors Matt Berry. The story simply follows three vampires and their night lives living on Staten Island, their home for a century in, by far, one of the most clever new comedies on television and their return is so welcome at this depressing end of the summer season that has us all feeling that step into autumn ennui. The stand-out always for me is Colin, a seemingly human “Daywalker” that is an “energy vampire” something so hilariously relatable and I can’t get enough of it. This isn’t to undersell anyone else in this show as it is one of the best cast comedies on television today.

Resident Evil (Netflix) – The road has been rocky for everything Resident Evil as the Milla Jovovich series, for however campy and entertaining it always felt like a sci-fi riff that never understood the game and while Welcome To Raccoon City got everything right in look, atmosphere and casting it failed in everything else that makes a movie work. For this reason, I headed into this series adaptation of the popular video game series with a serious chip on my shoulder. The series operated as its own thing and takes place nearly three decades after the discovery of the T-virus and after an outbreak reveals the Umbrella Corporation’s dark secrets. Following the daughter of company man Albert Wesker, we are taken through her story of survival in a barren wasteland overrun by zombies and also back to the origins of Earth’s final days through flashbacks. The Wire and John Wick’s Lance Reddick plays Wesker and does it with that amazing gravitas he brings to all of his roles and, to my amazement, I’m really loving this series and I hope that it gets an additional season. No spoilers but there is room for it to happen.

What The Hell Should I Watch? – Jul 7th

stevestebbing

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July 7, 2022

New Releases:

Thor: Love And Thunder – After the hilarious work that writer, director and co-star Taika Waititi did with the last Thor movie Ragnarok, I have been really excited to see the next installment and it is already getting stellar reviews. 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 evident in the trailer, as is the mind-bending gorgeous cinematography and we see colourful new worlds, bold new characters and, from what I hear, the clear direction of where the Marvel Cinematic Universe is going afterwards. I’m really excited about this movie and think it will exceed expectations.

The Sea Beast – Netflix has been pulling in a lot of big studio animated features since the beginning of the pandemic and that trend isn’t going away since we have seemingly emerged from the isolations as this was definitely meant for the big screen but gets its streaming debut instead. The production comes from good stock as the creators of it have been behind great Disney animated features like Big Hero 6 and Moana but that might set the bar a little high for this new adventure. The film follows a little girl who stows away on the ship of a legendary sea monster hunter as they launch an epic journey into uncharted waters to make history by capturing the biggest sea creatures unknown to man. The film looks incredible and impeccably animated with a solid voice cast including The Boys’ Karl Urban, Downton Abbey’s Dan Stevens and Chernobyl’s Jared Harris. ‘m a sucker for some high seas adventures and since we are never getting any Pirates of The Caribbean movies again, this will have to tide me over, pun intended I guess.

Apples – Coming from writer and director Christos Nikou, a Greek filmmaker who had some experience working under the wing of acclaimed The Favorite, The Lobster and The Killing Of A Sacred Deer writer and director Yorgos Lanthimos, I had my expectations for this new movie nestled in the bar I had set for one of my favourite idiosyncratic storytellers today. I couldn’t be further from the mark because I believe that the debut work of Nikou as a feature filmmaker lies more closely to the works of Ingmar Bergman than a film like Dogtooth or Alps. The story is set amidst a worldwide pandemic that causes sudden amnesia, following middle-aged Aris who finds himself enrolled in a recovery program designed to help unclaimed patients build new identities. The film has such deep things to say about identity and being lost in a sea of questions when you are stripped of that. The lead actor, Aris Servetalis, gives a charming but almost blank performance that allows the viewer to try and fill in the blanks more than the story will give but it all still feels oddly rewarding in the end. Anything pandemic related automatically comes with a warning label but this film manages to hold that feeling and not make it cheap or exploitative.

Blu-Ray:

Ambulance – Looking to blow things up in the biggest ways possible with the story usually being a secondary motion, Michael Bay is back on the scene with this new action thriller that snagged my attention because of the lead stars of Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul Mateen III who are always incredible on screen. I used to be into the “Bay-hem” of this action pioneer but have been dulled down by too many Transformers films and the cacophonous noise of his style but I will say that the low bar worked out in my favour. The film follows two desperate men who pair for the biggest bank heist in Los Angeles history with a take of $32 million. Of course, things go wrong and they hijack an ambulance with a wounded cop clinging to life and an ace EMT on board, played by Baby Driver’s Eiza Gonzalez. With it being a Michael Bay film, besides explosions, it is full of insane camera twirling, sunkissed shots of the Los Angeles cityscape and more of his trademarks but it also has some incredible drone shots that keep you speeding alongside the action of the film, almost feeling like you are a part of it. I also really liked how character-driven Bay made this movie, something that isn’t usually his forte but he pulls it off here quite nicely. The movie also happens to be a remake of a 2005 thriller out of Denmark as was Gyllenhaal’s previous film, The Guilty, which is fantastic and on Netflix right now.

Everything Everywhere All At Once – After the insanity and soulful beauty that was Swiss Army Man, a must-see film for any arthouse fan, I’d been waiting for the next collaboration between the two-headed creation team which is Daniels. Always idiosyncratic and entirely on their own path, the films that they created separately have been wildly original as well so they are seemingly on a constant hot streak in my opinion. For their new mind-bender, they’ve enlisted Michelle Yeoh, Jamie Lee Curtis and former child star Ke Huy Quan for this story about an aging Chinese immigrant who is swept up in an insane adventure, where she alone can save the world by exploring other universes connecting with the lives she could have led. Yes, it might be reminiscent of the sci-fi action flick The One with Jet Li from the early 2000s but Daniels gives this story a whole new spin and one that is also deeply rooted in the family culture of the Chinese and their chasing of the American dream on all levels. The film is jaw-droppingly mesmerizing in its scope and consistently finds a way to surprise the audience with twists and turns that you will never see coming. I had deep emotional reactions to this movie and fell in love with it immediately. This is still my number one for 2022 and with so many great films this year, that is saying a lot!

Memory – We’re going from the highs of multiverse bending martial arts epics to this new geriatric action flick and don’t worry, Liam Neeson, the star, calls them that too. The only good thing heading into this is that it was directed by Martin Campbell who is usually very reliable given that he’s also done some kick-ass Bond movies. Co-starring the beautiful Monica Bellucci in a villain role, the story follows Neeson as Alex Lewis, an expert assassin with a reputation for discreet precision who is caught in a moral quagmire, refusing to complete a job that violates his code. Quickly, he must hunt down and kill the people who hired him before they and FBI agent Vincent Serra, played by Memento’s Guy Pearce, find him first. Alex also suffers from a rapidly deteriorating memory as he tries to piece together what is real and what isn’t. Again, because Neeson seems to bring the exact same energy to everything, this movie starts out on a high note and gets dulled down as it progresses. He has really carved out his own niche with these movies but are they really drawing the audience levels to sustain them?

Zero Contact – Anthony Hopkins seems to be stretching out his direct-to-video legs these days as I feel like his Anson Mount-led thriller, The Virtuoso was just a few short months ago and now we have this sci-fi thriller which definitely didn’t have any theatrical push to it. The film has the added Canadian bonus of having Aleks Paunovic co-star in his, fresh off his villain role in Marvel’s Hawkeye, but, like I mentioned above with Apples, it plays in a sandbox of trigger warnings that we might not be ready for. Produced in seventeen different countries virtually during the 2020 global pandemic, the film follows five characters based all over the world, connected only by their devotion to the late founder and tech titan Finley Hart, played by Hopkins. Forced to work together, their goal is to shut down Hart’s most secret invention, a machine that is either the solution to mankind’s problems or the end of life on earth. The premise is interesting but sadly nothing is done with it as I try to figure out if anything actually happens in this movie. We get roped into the Zoom generation as it has been coined over the last couple of years but this comes off as just dull or a conference call at your place of work rather than a high-tech thriller, which is what it is trying to be. Sadly, this film is just easy pay cheques made in the comfort of a home and a sort of vapid piece of fluff that could make less of an impression.

Monstrous – After the first hit season of the Showtime series Yellowjackets, lead actress Christina Ricci, an actress I’ve had a crush on for decades, is back on top in a big way. This new Shudder-produced film won’t make waves as big as that series did but it might get some more eyeballs on it than it would have before. The story centers on Ricci as a traumatized woman fleeing from her abusive ex-husband with her seven-year-old son but in their new, remote sanctuary they find they have a bigger, more terrifying monster to deal with. Ricci’s performance is fantastic but the constraints of this PG-rated monster movie often bog it down and at times it feels really dull and lifeless. It might be due to its mislead as a creature feature when it wallows more in the psychological horror of the situation but it’s interestingly shot in a very dreamlike way and has its goodness that shines through from time to time.

Okja – Bong Joon Ho has been catapulted to the top of cinema choices since his film Parasite astounded audiences and did a pretty good pull during awards seasons but there have been films of his that were easier accessible than Parasite was and some were as close as Netflix. Debuting almost five years ago on the streaming service, the film has now earned its way to a Criterion Collection release and it really earned it with a great biting satire and a warm heart that beats underneath it. The film follows young Mija, a girl who has been a caretaker and constant companion to Okja, a massive animal and an even bigger friend, for ten years at her home in the mountains of South Korea. Everything changes when family-owned, multinational conglomerate Mirando Corporation takes Okja for themselves and transports her to New York, where an image-obsessed and self-promoting CEO has big plans for Mija’s dearest friend. With no particular plan but single-minded in intent, Mija sets out on a rescue mission in a film that is impeccably shot, as are all of Bong’s films but features such idiosyncratic performances from Jake Gyllenhaal, Paul Dano and Tilda Swinton in a dual role. Gyllenhaal was the standout for me, playing a Jack Hanna-like on-screen zoologist and off-screen douchebag who is prone to ego and alcohol-driven temper tantrums. This movie was an absolute delight to watch for me but I doubt it is everyone else’s cup of tea.

Steve’s Blu-Ray Geek Outs:

Transformers – Remember when Michael Bay brought his bombastic form of self-coined “Bayhem” to the Hasbro toy and cartoon battle between Autobots and Decepticons to the big screen? Well, that was fifteen years ago this week and it’s a great reminder of how great this film franchise started but also a stark memory of how hard it’s fallen and all with Bay at the helm. The film is pretty simple, an ancient struggle between two Cybertronian races, the heroic Autobots and the evil Decepticons, who come to battle on Earth, with a clue to the ultimate power being held by a teenager, the fun Sam Witwicky, played perfectly by Shia LeBeouf. This is also the first time we saw the lovely Megan Fox and Bay knew how to shoot her in the perfect sun-kissed way, like a Ford or GM ad because he has discovered that ability to commercialize cinema and make it bombastically entertaining, perfecting this staple as his own art. It’s a really long-winded way of saying this movie holds up.

Men In Black & Men In Black II – It’s a big week for this Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith-led sci-fi comedy as they hit the milestones of twenty-five years and twenty years respectively and I think both films still hold up pretty well. Barry Sonnenfeld is the other Tim Burton, in my opinion, a filmmaker with an idiosyncratic direction to him which is evident in both of his Addams Family movies as well as these two installments, an edge that is missing from the third film but these two are still great. The first film follows a police officer who joins a secret organization that polices and monitors extraterrestrial interactions on Earth while the second film picks up with that officer, now named Agent Jay, being sent to find Agent Kay and restore his memory which was erased at the end of part one after the re-appearance of a case from Kay’s past. If you’ve never had the pleasure of seeing both of these great sci-fi adventures, this is the perfect week to do it.

The Amazing Spider-Man & Spider-Man: Homecoming – I’m combining Spider-Man anniversaries this week as it is ten years since Andrew Garfield did the Peter Parker slash Spider-Man thing for the first time and it is also the five-year mark of when Tom Holland got his first solo movie. As many reservations as I have about Amazing Spider-Man, I really love Garfield’s iteration of the character even if the film isn’t great on the other hand, Holland’s movies all rock without question. I will say that the solo Sony-produced Spider-Man films didn’t have the leverage of having the Marvel Cinematic Universe backing it as it does now but there are some solid scenes in it and even if we weren’t celebrating them this week, they would both still be very worth rewatching. Maybe not Amazing Spider-Man 2 though, I have a really hard time defending that movie at all.

Television:

Boo, Bitch (Netflix) – With the third season of Never Have I Ever bringing the series to an end in mid-August, I know I’m going to be in need of some Netflix high school melodrama with an edge and hopefully, this show will fill that void. The only known star I see in it is Lana Condor who played a pretty solid Jubilee in a terrible X-Men movie but it was enough to give me some hope. The show has her playing one-half of two senior best friends make a last-ditch attempt to be seen, attending their first house party and even getting the attention of the dream boy in school. Things get supernatural when one of them becomes a ghost, she’ll need to really live her best life and make her life amendments while she can. This series has some good snark to it but is lacking that voice that Mindy Kaling has given Never Have I Ever and as much as I loved creator Lauren Iungerich’s other series, the MTV comedy Awkward, this show doesn’t strike as hot as that one did in the first few episodes. Even still, I’m more than willing to give it a full-season chance.

Black Bird (AppleTV+) – Based on true events crime stories have an appeal that will never go away because the sickness of a killer’s mind will never fail to intrigue audiences but with so many out there, it is sometimes hard to settle on one that garners enough attention for a full series run. This one got my interest very quickly with the casting of Rocketman’s Taron Egerton and BlackkKlansman standout Paul Walter Hauser who puts on that chameleon-like ability to slip into the skin of a real psychopath. The story follows Egerton as Jimmy Keene, a conman who is sentenced to ten years in a minimum-security prison that cuts a deal with the FBI to befriend a suspected serial killer. Keene has to elicit a confession from Larry Hall, played by Hauser, to find the bodies of as many as eighteen women from his murder spree. For me, I’m just glad that we are not watching yet another Ted Bundy story or an iteration of a serial killer’s story that we already know implicitly. Even better than that, this show is actually fantastic, really well written by the mind behind The Town, Mystic River, Shutter Island and more, Dennis Lehane, and it comes from a memoir I hear is just phenomenal. This may be a slow-burn word-of-mouth show for AppleTV+ that could get a big following behind it.

What The Hell Should I Watch? – Jun 30

stevestebbing

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June 30, 2022

New Releases:

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 and there are probably parents out there that are bracing for the visual nails on the 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. The expectations for this film are 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.

The Forgiven – There’s something about the McDonough 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 McDonough’s is fantastic dialogue with incredible casts and that is what is evident here with this drama that seems as elusive in its tone as is the truth of its 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.

Dual – With just three films under his belt now, Riley Stearns has risen to be one of my favourite filmmakers and a creative mind I follow on social media for nuggets about what he’s going to tackle next. He’s made subversive and intriguing stories about many sociological issues like religious and cult indoctrination in his thriller Faults, toxic masculinity in his dark comedy The Art Of Self Defense and now takes on a whole new set of issues in a movie he made in the midst of the COVID lockdown. The film stars Guardians Of The Galaxy’s Karen Gillan as a woman who opts for a cloning procedure after she receives a terminal diagnosis but when she recovers her attempts to have her clone decommissioned fail, leading to a court-mandated duel to the death. The concept of this film is incredible and opens with a duel between a man and his clone that totally sets the tone. The film is a bit of a character building slow burn but once the gears lock in, you are in for one hell of a ride and a biting dialogue that made me chuckle darkly multiple times.

Marcel The Shell With Shoes On – If there has ever been a palate cleanser of great design and scope, it really has to be this new wondrously imaginative feature film that blends stunning stop motion with the “reality” of a documentary feel. The movie is based on a popular web series created by Dean Fleischer-Camp and voiced by his wife at the time, Jenny Slate, I feel robbed that I didn’t know about this series earlier but I feel fulfilled now in having seen the big-screen version. The story follows our title character, an adorable one-inch-tall shell who ekes out a colourful existence with his grandmother Connie and their pet lint, Alan. Once part of a sprawling community of shells, they now live alone as the sole survivors of a mysterious tragedy. But when a documentary filmmaker discovers them amongst the clutter of his Airbnb, the short film he posts online brings Marcel millions of passionate fans, as well as unprecedented dangers and new hope at finding his long-lost family. This movie is heartwarming at all times and deals with some heavy subject matter in parts, like the ending of relationships, Separation and even the death of a loved one or family member, but does it through the prism of precious naivete that comes off so beautifully. It was refreshing to see an animated film without a goal other than giving its simple story and not aiming for a franchise or toy sales. Marcel is exceptional, perfect and utterly must-see.

Blu-Ray:

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore – I headed into this second sequel in the spinoff prequel of the Harry Potter franchise with a few mixed emotions. The first Fantastic Beasts film I found to be really fun with some great characters and storytelling but the second film, The Crimes Of Grindelwald, felt way too much at once being shoved into a single movie which grew tedious as the story moved on. Now we return to the world of wizarding with Dumbledore, played by Jude Law, at its head. With the knowledge that Grindelwald, now played by the great Mads Mikkelsen, is intent on seizing control of both sides of the world, both magic and ordinary, Albus must enlist Magizoologist Newt Scamander to lead an intrepid team of wizards, witches and one brave Muggle baker on a dangerous mission, where they encounter old and new beasts and clash with Grindelwald’s growing legion of followers. The good thing is we get a little more of a return to what made the first movie so entertaining and they don’t feel like they cram in and rush little storylines that come to fruition later but it sadly never meets up to the magic of the original Potter films and likely never will in the prequel setting. As much as I love Mads, he didn’t seem to equal what Johnny Depp had already brought to the role and I feel like Ezra Miller is so problematic in real life that it is really hard to watch him on screen now.

Firestarter – Making a Stephen King adaptation 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.

The Worst Person In The World – A Best Foreign Academy Award nominee that now has a beautiful new Criterion Collection edition, when one of my studio publicist contacts emailed me about this new well-received drama I jumped at the chance to watch it, and the next masterpiece from writer and director Joachim Trier who has not only not mad a sub-par film but has yet to make one that was any less than amazing. All over film Twitter, people had been going crazy for this movie and I can say that I agree with them and furthermore call it a must-see for 2022. The film is a modern dramedy about the quest for love and meaning in contemporary Oslo, chronicling four years in the life of Julie, a young woman who navigates the troubled waters of her love life and struggles to find her career path, leading her to take a realistic look at who she really is and make decisions that could paint her to others as a horrendous human being. Lead actress Renate Reinsve is absolutely electric in this movie, giving her journey resonance and purpose, putting us on an odyssey of finding her perfect center which includes a mind-bending mushroom hallucination that could be one of my favourite scenes I’ve seen this year. This is a special movie and, damn the subtitles, people need to watch it.

Mothering Sunday – If you’re in the mood for some post-World War I British romance then this is a damn good week for you because this film ticks all the boxes plus it features Colin Firth and Olivia Coman in supporting roles which is the setup to an actor’s dream showcase. The film also features actress Odessa Young in the lead role, looking for some redemption after The Stand, opposite Josh O’Connor who swept television award shows recently for his portrayal of Prince Charles in the Netflix series The Crown. The story follows a maid living in England after the war who secretly plans to meet with the man she loves before he leaves to marry another woman in a clash of familial relationships and societal politics. This film is driven by fantastic performances that are subdued and seemingly bubble just under the surface. Aside from the few episodes, I saw of the Prime Video series Hanna that director Eva Husson had directed, I wasn’t familiar with her work until this movie and was totally blown away by how studious her craft was alongside Moffie cinematographer Jamie Ramsey. This film won’t have a lot of mainstream buzz around it but it is definitely worth the watch.

See For Me – As far as thrillers go, it feels like the blind girl dealing with intruding assailants trope mostly belongs to the Terence Young film Wait Till Dark with Audrey Hepburn and Alan Arkin but this Canadian film is making a run at being in that conversation. Starring the actually visually impaired Skyler Davenport in her feature film debut and directed by Randall Okita in the follow-up to his first narrative film, the movie has flares of originality that caught me off guard. The story follows Davenport as Sophie, a blind former skier who is cat-sitting in a secluded mansion when three thieves invade for the hidden safe. Sophie’s only defence is army veteran Kelly, who is her remote visual aid consultant, who helps her defend against the invaders and survive until the police arrive. The film has its narrative gaffs here and there but still manages to make a compelling thriller that uses the character’s disability as a trapping that we can really get behind in a situation like this and root for her survival. Okita gives the film an excellent sound design and does some great camera angles that I found fascinating.

Boomerang – It seems like all of Eddie Murphy’s heyday era films are getting their blu-ray update releases recently and I was pleasantly surprised to see this one in my mailbox, a solid film from Reginald Hudlin that features an early performance from Halle Berry. The film is also noteworthy for being unique as it was the most expensive movie with an all-Black cast and production crew for its time in 1992, costing $40 million to make and making $130 million at the box office, which was rare for an all-Black cast and crew film. The film was a from com that follows a successful executive and rampant womanizer who finds his lifestyle choices have turned back on him when his new female boss turns out to be an even bigger deviant than he is. The film was lambasted by critics at the time and got slammed with bad reviews but watching it now it exhibits all the tropes of Murphy as a film star that we loved and has such a fun side to it. The film doesn’t feel like we have to take it all that seriously and more wants to play on the gender angle which works for the most part.

The First Wives Club – It was a big get in the mid-nineties to have Goldie Hawn, Bette Midler and Diane Keaton in the same film billed at the top for a large part of moviegoers, a woman-led comedy with some star power. The same billing would most likely not garner the same attention today but at its time it had everything going for it plus it had the stalwart filmmaker Hugh Wilson coming off of Guarding Tess to guide it in the right direction. The story follows three wives of husbands who they have helped climb the ladder of success that have been dumped for newer, curvier models. The trio decides to use their pain as motivation to destroy their exes and come up with a cleverly devious plan to hit them where it really hurts, in the wallet. The film was fun and a hit at its time and from what I’ve read, the cast wanted to make a sequel to it but the studio considered the success of the movie a fluke and balked at doing more. What I will say that the lasting effect of the film was is it introduced us to the great Timothy Olyphant who make his debut in the comedy.

Scooby-Doo And Guess Who?: Season 2 – Scooby-Doo got some reinvention in this new series but with some of the tested and true pieces sticking around with Matthew Lillard continuing to be the best Shaggy ever since Casey Kasem retired, and Grey Griffin and Frank Welker keeping up their duties as Fred and Daphne and a perfectly cast Kate Micucci voicing Velma. The show has a different guest star every week which ranges from Batman himself, voiced by the best Batman Kevin Conroy, Sia, Weird Al Yankovic and even the late Alex Trebek in the first season and this season goes way out there with Axl Rose, Kacey Musgraves, Macklemore and more. This is a great new revival of classic characters and the love for the source material shows.

Television:

Only Murders In The Building: Season 2 (Disney+) – Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez return for the second season of their series that debuted on Disney+ through the Star side of things last year and became one of the most talked-about shows on the entire streaming service. The series is also produced by the stars and I will say that it’s really not hard to immediately adore it. The story follows three strangers who share an obsession with true crime and suddenly find themselves wrapped up in one. When a grisly death occurs inside their exclusive Upper West Side apartment building, the trio suspects murder and employs their precise knowledge of true crime to investigate the truth. Perhaps even more explosive are the lies they tell one another. Soon, the endangered trio comes to realize a killer might be living among them as they race to decipher the mounting clues before they possibly become victims themselves. The anticipation for this second season has been large, especially on my Twitter feed as a lot of the people I follow are huge fans of it and there is some great guest casting coming up in it but I’m not going to even start to give spoilers on that.

Westworld: Season 4 (Crave) – It’s been over two years since we’ve seen anything from this incredible mysterious show that emanated from a 70s Michael Crichton movie and now it is back with an almost unexpected new offering and to be honest, if I had known it was coming I would have had it on my list for the most anticipated releases of the year. The favourites are all back including Evan Rachel Wood’s Dolores, Jeffrey Wright’s Bernard and Thandie Newton’s Maeve and takes place seven years after the outside the park world of season 3’s events but what is this season about? Well, showrunners Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan are keeping everything secretive but what we do know is that the story will head back to the park and that just adds to the intrigue for me.

Stranger Things 4: Volume 2 (Netflix) – We have the second half of the fourth part of this Netflix series event and after the things that we saw in the first four episodes I am chomping at the bit to dig in and they didn’t even give me the courtesy of an advance screener! The audacity! For those who haven’t caught up with this season yet, Eleven and Will live in sunny California and are not fitting in well but in Hawkins, a new evil called Vecna is dispatching kids Nightmare On Elm Street style and the only ones who can save everyone is the only people in town that have gone through this before. I can’t even say where my expectations lie because the creators The Duffer brothers annihilate them every time. Hell, they’ve even created a new character per season that becomes my fresh new favourite every time. Get ready because this will set up the final season as well.

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