Steve Stebbing

Breaking down all things pop culture

What The Hell Should I Watch? – Dec 2

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December 2, 2021

New Releases:

The Power Of The Dog – When acclaimed writer and director Jane Campion returns to film after an over ten-year hiatus, you stop and take notice as a film fan. Granted, she made the excellent murder mystery series Top Of The Lake with Elisabeth Moss for BBC but there is something special with the cinematic scope of this Academy Award-winning filmmaker. Her new film is a western drama that follows Benedict Cumberbatch as charismatic rancher Phil Burbank, a severe man who inspires fear and awe in those around him. He can castrate a bull calf with two swift slashes of his knife and swims naked in the river, smearing his body with mud off his own land, a cowboy as raw as the hides he produces because all of Phil’s romance, power and fragility is trapped in the past and the dirt he stands on. When his brother brings home a new wife and her son, Phil torments them incessantly until he finds himself exposed to the possibility that his heart may not be as dead and buried as he thought. The film co-stars Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons and has a really rich character feel that is driven home by some stellar direction from a true master.

Wolf – It’s insane to think that actor George MacKay isn’t already a huge megastar like Timothee Chalamet or Tom Holland because the guy knocks it out of the park every time, like his performances in the Viggo Mortensen drama Captain Fantastic or the one-shot World War I epic 1917 but this arthouse film likely won’t get his name at the poster just due to its niche quality. That said, writer and director Nathalie Biancheri’s sophomore feature gives MacKay a new complexity to work with and he totally runs with it. He plays Jacob, a young man who fully believes he is a wolf trapped in a human body and eats, sleeps, and lives like one, much to the shock of his family. When he’s sent to an experimental clinic, Jacob and his animal-bound peers are forced to undergo increasingly extreme forms of ‘curative’ therapies. However once he meets the mysterious Wildcat, played by Lily-Rose Depp, their friendship blossoms into an undeniable infatuation and he is faced with the decision to renounce his true self for love or to give himself fully over to his baser nature. This movie is beautifully shot but all hinges on the performances of MacKay and Depp as well as their oppressor, the cold and surgical Zookeeper played by Paddy Considine. I was absolutely astounded by this film.

Diary Of A Wimpy Kid – Over a decade after this popular book series from kid’s novelist Jeff Kinney got the live-action big-screen adaptations, Disney Plus has netted them for an animated reboot and, showing how timeless these stories are, my youngest daughter is as excited for this as my oldest daughter was in 2010. The story follows Greg Heffley, an ambitious kid with a healthy active imagination with big plans to be rich and famous if he can survive middle school first. In contrast to Greg, his best friend Rowley just breezes through life without any hardship and just seems to be successful without too much effort and in time, our little protagonist learns the patience to wait for the good things in life as well as appreciate his real friends and the satisfaction of doing what is right. The kids eat these stories up ravenously in print so I feel like this will be possibly the biggest streaming film this weekend.

Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road – Fresh off taking in all eight hours of The Beatles: Get Back, this new documentary landed on my pile for the week and I thought it would be a really stellar companion piece. The Beach Boys have always been the American counterpart to the Fab Four with Pet Sounds being a knee-jerk reaction to Rubber Soul and Brian Wilson’s drive to outdo them, a competitive nature that created some of the best music ever. This film is a cool trip through a legend’s memories as Brian Wilson goes on an intimate journey through his legendary career, reminiscing with Rolling Stone editor and longtime friend, Jason Fine. Featuring a new song written and performed by Wilson and interviews with Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Nick Jonas, Linda Perry, Jim James, Gustavo Dudamel and Al Jardine, this was a fascinating film about an artist who fought through his personal and mental demons, learned to live with them and learned to create and continue to break boundaries in spite of them. It wasn’t quite the fly-on-the-wall spirit of Get Back but it felt special all the same.

Julia – CNN Films has a knack for making great biopics and true stories like the Ruth Bader Ginsberg movie RBG or the real-life mystery of genealogy, Three Identical Strangers, and now they turn their attention to one of the giants at the forefront of chef-inspired television, Julia Child. I don’t know a huge amount about Child, other than seeing Meryl Streep play her in that Amy Adams movie, so I was an open book and ready to learn. Simply put, the film tells the story of the legendary cookbook author and television superstar who changed the way Americans think about food, television, and even about women. Using never-before-seen archival footage, personal photos, first-person narratives, and cutting-edge, mouth-watering food cinematography, the film traces Julia Child’s surprising path, from her struggles to create and publish the revolutionary Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 1961, which has sold more than 2.5 million copies to date, to her empowering story of a woman who found fame in her 50s, and her calling as an unlikely television sensation. The film is a bit paint by numbers as a biographical documentary goes but it is studious in its delivery even without giving those in the know much more information than they already have.

Betrayed – Let’s get some foreign cinema into this week’s features and this is a sweeping historical drama as well, based on a true story from World War II. The film comes from Norweigan filmmaker Eirik Svensson who is still formulating his style over five different films but this is the first I’ve seen to get a full international release. The story follows the Jewish Braude family’s experiences when the Jews are arrested and deported from the camp Berg, on the ship Donau and down to the extermination in the concentration camp in Auschwitz. I thought it was odd that a director from Norway was taking this story on but this story actually focuses on the citizens of Norway that were taken, a side of the Nazi occupation I didn’t know. Svensson nails the tone and message of this story through so really exquisite filmmaking that may cement him as a true international auteur or at least get him a cushy next project to earn him bigger clout.

Love It Was Not – We’re doubling down of the Aushwicz related films this week but this one plays in the realm of being informative as it is a straightforward documentary from writer and director Maya Sarfaty who makes her feature debut in the format. The film is about the tragic love story of Helena Citron, a young Jewish prisoner in Auschwitz, and Austrian SS officer Franz Wunsch, who were caught in a forbidden relationship that destroyed both of them. Thirty years later, a letter arrives from Wunsch’s wife asking Helena to testify on Wunsch’s behalf. Faced with an impossible decision, Helena must choose to help or ignore the man who brutalized so many lives but saved hers. This movie is compelling from the start and keeps you on the edge of your seat with each new development, bordering on total suspense which is fascinating in the documentary world. Sarfaty lands with incredible filmmaking prowess and I’m excited for whatever comes next.

It Takes A Christmas Village – Sometimes, when a movie gets a theatrical release, it really baffles me entirely. This is one of those such movies because, for all express purposes that I can see, this movie looks like it’s a Hallmark holiday film or worse with the emphasis on the latter. The cast even lends more credence to that belief as it stars Brooke Nevin, of the Hallmark movies Crashing Through The Snow and Jingle Around The Clock, and Corey Sevier from Heart Of The Holidays and Northern Lights Of Christmas who also directs this as well. The story follows a mayor who deals with a road closure that threatens to close the town’s shops and offers a Christmas market to boost sales but she’ll have to convince the town recluse to host it at his family’s mill which reigniting old feuds and obviously sparking romance. This movie was a complete waste of time and I hated every second that I endured. I honestly could have made something up or scheduled a doctor’s appointment or a root canal instead of enduring it but, I don’t know, glutton for punishment or something.

Blu-Ray:

Shang Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings – It’s crazy to think that the pandemic created a huge rift in the releasing of the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies and we just got Black Widow a couple of months before this one which featured the first Asian superhero in his own film after a delay of about six months and Widow’s own delay of almost two years. It’s so cool to note that star Simu Liu got the ball rolling with this film just by shooting his show with Marvel on Twitter saying “Ok Marvel, are we going to talk or not?” with the hashtag Shang-Chi. The film follows the title character’s origins, a man who must confront the past he thought he left behind when he is drawn into the web of the mysterious Ten Rings organization, AKA The Mandarin who was already eluded to in Iron Man 3. Again, with the Marvel films pulling on strings of other genre movies, this one occupies the space of being a martial arts style story and takes that ball running for a beautiful slam dunk. The fight scenes are incredible, I really enjoyed all of the characters and there’s a scene of discovery in this film that has all the magical prowess of the Alan Grant seeing Jurassic Park for the first time moment in the first Jurassic Park. This is special Marvel right here and more people should have been talking about it.

Malignant – James Wan declined to direct the latest Conjuring flick because he wanted to do something a little bit different and he really has here, for better in my opinion but for worse in others’ minds for sure. My favourite thing is that he dipped into the Giallo pool for some fun which added a little more resurgence into that horror trope, something I really love. The film has Annabelle Wallis as a woman paralyzed by shocking visions of grisly murders which she soon discovers are not just dreams but are in fact terrifying realities. This movie goes all out in its insane script that doesn’t let up on the throttle for a mere second, art direction that was made by a deliciously grandiose but impractical vision and a twist and a third act that no one could see coming. This is one of my favourite movies this year but I’m understanding about people’s hate for it.

The Eight Hundred – I’m all about epic Chinese cinema and this film fits the criteria big time. It also helps that it was made by the director of Mr. Six, Hu Guan, a little film that I discovered almost by accident and it knocked me on my ass. For this feature, he has delivered a riveting war epic set in 1937 following eight hundred Chinese soldiers tirelessly fighting under siege from a warehouse in the middle of the Shanghai battlefield, completely surrounded by the Japanese army. The scope of the film is huge and looks insurmountable but Guan handles it all with such flair and point and constantly keeps you engaged with the characters, something hard to pull off in war epics. The film definitely dabbles in symbolism and metaphors that reflects our current struggles but does it in a way that doesn’t cheapen what the true story was. This is some fantastic Asian moviemaking here.

The Show – Watchmen, V For Vendetta and The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen creator Alan Moore has written a new film and I’m just finding out about it as it lands o Blu-ray this week? I’m astounded and agast as he is one of my favourite comic writers and rumoured warlocks and this new film looks pretty damn cool and skewed to his sensibilities deep down. The story joins a man’s search for a stolen artifact which leads him to the haunted town filled with Voodoo gangsters, masked adventurers, Depression-era private eyes and violent chiaroscuro women. The reviews for it are really positive which leans me to thinking that they may have finally done a Moore project that was worthy of his own legendary status. The film has a solid British cast with Mank’s Tom Burke, Nocturnal Animals’ Ellie Bamber and character actor Christopher Fairbanks and was made by director Mitch Jenkins who had a previous feature film Show Pieces that was from… checking the notes… Alan Moore. What the hell how did I not know about THIS now?

Mill Of The Stone Women – Some classic film through the prism of an Arrow Video Collector’s Edition hits shelves this week and it will pique some of the international film fans interests as it is an early sixties horror story from Italy, meaning that it will contain some elements of Giallo to it. It won’t be bat shit crazy like Malignant so you don’t need to brace for that. The story is set in nineteenth-century Holland following a professor of fine arts and an unlicensed surgeon who run a secret lab where the professor’s ill daughter receives blood transfusions from kidnapped female victims who posthumously become macabre art. The film comes from the perspective of Hans, a journalist who comes to write a story on the professor and soon becomes embroiled in the murderous affairs when he falls for the daughter in question. The film has a certain appeal as being a creepy body horror film with murder mystery undertones but you definitely feel the time period in which it’s being made but see the influence in the films to come afterwards of this genre. These collector’s editions feel like a cinema history but continue to flesh out that we’ve been too harsh on horror for too long. Yes, this is a protest.

Heaven Can Wait – Paramount hooks me up with some classics all the time but this one rings special to me, especially as an adult, as it is a comedy from the trifecta of lead star, writer and director Warren Beatty, co-writer Elaine May and co-director Buck Henry. It was also an Academy Award winner out of nine nominations but it didn’t win for one of the big categories but art direction. Even still, solid stuff. The film has Beatty starring as a Los Angeles Rams quarterback, you know, the first time around, who is accidentally taken away from his body by an overanxious angel before he was meant to die, and returns to life in the body of a recently murdered millionaire. This is definitely a beloved film for many and was named one of the fifty greatest comedies of all time by Premiere Magazine. Just to show how ballsy Beatty was with this movie, he turned down an original Paul McCartney song for this and it’s still a good film. Crazy.

Steve’s Blu-Ray & DVD Geekouts:

Straight Time – We’re getting the ball rolling this week with a given Warner Archive pick but it also has the legendary Dustin Hoffman in the lead role of a film that doesn’t get a lot of recognition anymore. To add even more clout to this one, Hoffman actually co-directed the film in an uncredited visit behind the camera with Belgian filmmaker Ulu Grosbard taking the full title. The film was actually a pet project that Hoffman was supposed to make solo in his debut but he was denied final cut by the studio and ended up suing Warner Brothers over their treatment of it. In it, Hoffman plays Max Dembo, a career criminal who is released on parole after six years in prison. Max wants to go straight but doesn’t like the restrictions of parole, much to the dismay of his parole officer, and the conditions, like living in a halfway house, not associating with past friends and associates, no driving, and no drugs, all may be more difficult than he imagines especially as his encounters with the guy in charge of his release become increasingly tense. I had never had the chance to see this film until now and was really impressed with it and Hoffman’s performance. It also features a young Theresa Russell, who looks phenomenal, Gary Busey, Harry Dean Stanton, M. Emmett Walsh and a really youthful Jake Busey in his debut movie. This is one that should be remembered more than a project that caused a rift between Dustin and the studio.

The Window – More Warner Archive to give you some time to revel in the classics but this one is a far older one than the previously mentioned late seventies character flick. We head back to the post-war times of the late forties for this noir drama thriller that was Oscar-nominated but for editing which is much more important than casual viewers will know. The story follows a nine-year-old boy named Tommy who has a knack for telling lies but when he witnesses a murder on a hot summer day the “boy who cried wolf” lesson catches up to him big time. He even sneaks out of the house and goes down to the police station but they don’t take him seriously leading Tommy to worry that the murderer may come for him to keep him silent. The film was made around young star Bobby Driscoll who was a loan from Disney and the most celebrated child actor at the time, fresh off of a juvenile Oscar win, something that hasn’t been awarded now for a very long time. It’s a beautifully pieced-together noir that plays with a great old adage.

Younger: The Complete Series – Darren Star is a guy known for producing huge hits like Beverly Hills 90210, Sex And The City and Melrose Place but with a long and storied career like his, many o his shows just sort of slip under the radar. I think that was the case with this one, an original series that played on the Paramount+ streaming service and I’m really just figuring it out myself. The show plays into his ensemble wheelhouse, following the main character, Liza, a suddenly single forty-year-old mother who tries to get back into the working world, only to find out it’s nearly impossible to start at the bottom at her age. When a chance encounter with a twenty-something guy at a bar convinces her she looks younger than she is, she tries to pass herself off as in her mid-twenties and, with the help of a makeover courtesy of her best friend Maggie she is now armed with new confidence which lands her a job as an assistant to the temperamental Diana. With life dominance on her mind, she teams up with her new co-worker and fellow twenty-something Kelsey (Duff) to make it in the career of her dreams. Led by relative unknown Sutton Foster, the co-starring Hilary Duff, Miriam Shor, Nico Tortorella and Debbie Mazar are definitely the draw to the show but beware, it is a Darren Star show so it has its vapidness.

Emily In Paris: Season 1 – Speaking of Darren Star, he has a hit show currently running on Netflix and, before the release of the second season later this month, you can get into the first season which was released on DVD through Paramount. This show starring Lily Collins has been more in the news this year for bad reasons as it started getting some really unearned awards clout that snubbed more of the diverse shows that are infinitely better like I May Destroy You on HBO but I digress. The series follows the titular character, an ambitious twenty-something marketing executive from Chicago that unexpectedly lands her dream job in Paris when her company acquires a French luxury marketing company. Emily’s new life in Paris is filled with intoxicating adventures and surprising challenges as she juggles winning over her work colleagues, making friends, and navigating new romances. I hate to get gender-specific on the target market of this show but I definitely the way it was leaning pretty much immediately. it doesn’t feel very fresh or new but I think it found its audience seeing as there is more of it now.

Kevin Can Fuck Himself: Season 1 – After the monster hit that brought a little bit of Canadiana to the masses of the world, how do you follow up the darling that is Schitt’s Creek? Well, in the case of Annie Murphy, she moved on to the big television studio of AMC for a new original series that has a name unpronounceable on network television as well as, you know, radio. The series follows the story of Allison McRoberts, played by Murphy, a woman we all grew up believing we knew, the prototypical “Sitcom Wife”. She’s beautiful, can take a joke, usually being the butt of them, and she’s married to a guy who must’ve won some sort of marriage lottery because she looks the way she does and he’s funny, I guess, but what happens when we follow Allison out of her husband’s domain? When she finally wakes up and revolts against the injustices in her life? This show is darkly hilarious and really different from Alexis Rose and lets the audience see Murphy in a brand new light. I really love it and can’t wait for season 2.

Television:

Lost In Space: Season 3 (Netflix) – This remake of a classic sci-fi series and a forgotten box office failure enters its final season and actually has a pretty solid following behind it. I think it’s cool that the series is locally shot here in British Columbia and definitely makes use of the scenery where it can with the help of a little CGI to make it otherworldly. In this update the Robinson family fight against all odds to survive and escape the hidden dangers and elements of an alien planet after crash landing. The series is anchored by beloved Canadian actress Molly Parker and former Bond bad guy Toby Stephens but it’s the gender swap of Dr. Smith that nabbed me because she is played by Park Posey, a personal favourite. Although I am sad to see this series go out with only three seasons, I do like that they are ending it on their own accord.

Money Heist: Part 5 (Netflix) – This Spanish crime drama series became a massive international hit almost out of nowhere and it wasn’t until about part three that I started paying attention to it but two installments later and now they have closed shop on it. Yes, this is the final season as creator Alex Pina has written it all to have this definitive closing and hopefully no fans with nudging him to renege on that commitment. The story follows a mysterious man called The Professor who aims to carry out the biggest heist in history and recruits a band of eight robbers who have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Five months of seclusion memorizing every step, every detail, every probability culminate in eleven days locked up in the National Coinage and Stamp Factory of Spain, surrounded by police forces and with dozens of hostages in their power, to find out whether their suicide wager will lead to everything or nothing. This show is action-packed, filled with intrigue and really solid character development that keeps you engaged with the whole standoff. It’s never too late to get into a good binge and if you can take the subtitles this is a great one to do.

What The Hell Should I Watch? – Nov 25th

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November 25, 2021

New Releases:

House Of Gucci – There’s something about this movie that looking at good reviews for it just doesn’t ring true in my mind and it might be all stemming from a poster that looks like a Saturday Night Live sketch. It may also be my wavering belief in Ridley Scott’s films these days that put the bar very low but the film has been praised for Jared Leto and Lady Gaga’s performances in this scandalous fashion biopic. The film follows “The Gaga” as Patrizia Reggiani, an outsider from humble beginnings that marries into the Gucci family and her unbridled ambition begins to unravel their legacy and triggers a reckless spiral of betrayal, decadence, revenge, and ultimately murder. The cast features Adam Driver, Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons in supporting roles and it is interesting to note that Martin Scorsese was originally lined up to direct with Robert De Niro possibly involved. Maybe this film will blow me away if I maintain the low expectations.

Encanto – Disney is back with another original animated feature film and I’m sure they’re looking to make up for the box office disaster that was Ron’s Gone Wrong late last month, which I think is a total bummer because it looks so cute. To be honest, though, this movie looks like an easy way to break that negativity as it is vibrant and magical just in the trailer alone. The film tells the tale of an extraordinary family, the Madrigals, who live hidden in the mountains of Colombia, in a magical house in a wondrous place called an Encanto. The magic of the Encanto has blessed every child in the family with a unique gift from super strength to the power to heal every child except one, Mirabel. When Mirabel discovers that the magic surrounding the Encanto is in danger, she decides that she, the only ordinary Madrigal, might just be her family’s saviour. The voice cast is a great line-up of Latino stars including Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Stephanie Beatriz, the veteran and always welcome John Leguizamo and many more and the reviews that have been pouring in have been glowing. Looks like Disney may have another hit on their hands and it has some cultural fair and relevance to it as well which is refreshing to see.

C’mon C’mon – Writer and director Mike Mills is a filmmaker with an impeccable record to me and it isn’t just because he has only made a small handful of movies in his career because this is an exercise in quality over quantity. He has brought such storytelling brilliance in his films Thumbsucker, Beginners and 20th Century Women with Christopher Plummer winning an Oscar for that middle one and now for his next outing he has the always magnetic performance of Joaquin Phoenix to lead it. He plays Johnny, a radio journalist who forms a tenuous but transformational relationship with his young nephew, played by newcomer Woody Norman when they are unexpectedly thrown together on a cross-country trip. Of course, that Oscar talk is bubbling up again for Joaquin as he proves again that he is one of the best on-screen right now but what should really be the story of this black and white shot comedy-drama is that Mike Mills is one of the best storytellers that you don’t remember the name of.

The Humans – With the buzz from film festivals and critics who got an early look at the film starting at the Toronto International Film Festival, I knew that this movie would be one of note but I didn’t want to know anything beyond that it was a Tony Award-winning play. This cast had me immediately on board, with Richard Jenkins, Beanie Feldstein, June Squibb, Steven Yuen and Amy Schumer, but the substance behind it is where it excels and I won’t tip the hat at all to what it contains. The film is set inside a pre-war duplex in downtown Manhattan and follows the course of an evening in which the Blake family gathers to celebrate Thanksgiving but, as darkness falls outside the crumbling building, mysterious things start to go bump in the night and buried family tensions begin to reach a boiling point. This movie goes from conventional drama to veiled horror in unpredictable moments and it is so crazily unexpected that I slowly felt myself falling in love with it. The acting hits a crescendo that solidifies it as one of the strongest of the year but it’s the puppeteering of writer and director Stephen Karam that brings it there. This may not be for everyone but I’m saying this is one of the year’s best.

Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City – When the first adaptation of Resident Evil hit theatres in 2002 I have to admit I was definitely a fan but I did feel like it wasn’t a close enough realization to the video game which is something I would love to see. I do see that it was more made as a vehicle for Milla Jovovich to have her own action franchise but I wanted something more faithful and we now have it with a film that explores not just the first game but the second as well. This one is set in 1998 and explores the secrets of the mysterious Spencer Mansion and the ill-fated Raccoon City which was once the booming home of pharmaceutical giant Umbrella Corporation. Now a dying Midwestern town, the company’s exodus left the city a wasteland with great evil brewing below the surface and when that evil is unleashed, the townspeople are forever changed into bloodthirsty creatures and a small group of survivors must work together to uncover the truth behind Umbrella and make it through the night. The film features Crawl’s Kaya Scodelaerio, Code 9’s Robbie Amell and Ant-Man And The Wasp’s Hannah John-Kamen as franchise favorite players and the mood, aesthetic and set pieces that look pitch-perfect but as a horror movie, it all falls flat. Nothing is scary, everything feels telegraphed and before you know it you’re in a rushed third act and a lacklustre finish. I feel so conflicted on this one and am still waiting for it to be done properly I guess.

Bruised – Let’s get this out of the way first. I really wanted to like this movie. It’s Halle Berry’s directorial debut, an Oscar-winning actress who I’ve always liked and even had the chance to meet when she was making the third X-Men film and was such a darling. This movie has her training in mixed martial arts, has a killer soundtrack featuring Saweetie, Cardi B and more and looks to be a kick-ass, lady-led sports flick. The story has her as a disgraced MMA fighter who finds redemption in the cage and the courage to face her demons when the son she had given up as an infant unexpectedly reenters her life as well as an opportunity to re-enter the octagon emerges. Now comes the bad news because this film is truly awful. It hammers down every cliche it can, tries to revel in emotional manipulation that is completely unearned and features the most frustratingly hamfisted script I have seen this year. I was so ready to love this movie but it doesn’t want it, just ridicule, so here you go.

The Last Rite – More horror? You’re damn right and I don’t use that epithet lightly as we got ourselves a good old-fashioned possession movie here which isn’t ever easy to pull off. The story follows Lucy, a study from home medical student and sleep paralysis victim who moves in with her boyfriend and finds out all is not as it seems when she falls prey to a demonic force hell-bent on ripping her apart from within. Torn between sanity and the unknown, Lucy is left with no alternative but to contact a local priest, Father Roberts for help and with time running out and the dark force consuming her from inside, he is forced to make a choice to do the right thing and get the church involved or help Lucy by conducting his own exorcism against the will of the church. Writer and director Leroy Kincaide does his film the ultimate justice by developing Lucy well as a character, which is rare in horror, and making her a fully rounded person that you feel the stakes in as her soul descends into hell. It makes the story more and more intriguing and gives a big message to other creators looking to do the same.

Bad Luck Banging Or Loony Porn – It’s undeniable to say that if this movie wasn’t an indie flick or from Romania as it is, with this title it would probably be one of the most talked-about films of the year but it very much is foreign and low budget so no one knows anything about it. The storyline should be buzzworthy too in this social climate as it follows Emi, a school teacher, who finds her career and reputation under threat after a personal sex tape is leaked on the Internet. Forced to meet the parents demanding her dismissal, Emi refuses to surrender to their pressure, culminating in a confrontation on both sides of the issue. The film is absolutely phenomenal and is totally unpredictable in not just its developments but the tone in which it’s told. I’m not a huge connoisseur of Romanian films but the few I have seen have blown me away and I still never think of them for compelling cinema.

Blu-Ray:

American Night – Seeing the name Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as the top-billed star in a film these days is a bit of a mixed bag. He’s not really A-list or B-list so it might be awful from the get-go or middling like Yakuza Princess which is really depressing because I really enjoyed the hell out of The Tudors. This film is a neo-noir crime thriller set in New York City’s corrupt contemporary art world where Meyers plays art dealer John Kaplan who goes head to head with the ruthless head of New York’s mafia, Michael Rubino in a fight for money, art, power and love. I really dig the cast around Meyers which includes Emile Hirsch, Jeremy Piven, Paz Vega and Michael Madsen but that’s as far as my adoration goes as the final product is a lacklustre ride that cuts corners, fails in its script and can insert even a little bit of cleverness into it’s plotting. Such a waste of actors that I assume came at a bargain.

Raging Fire – If it’s a martial arts film and it has Donnie Yen in it, well, it’s a pretty self-explanatory and easy sell. This one has the pre-excitement and added oomph of being called Raging Fire as well which may make the bar a little higher for it to clear. Yen plays an officer of the Regional Crime Unit who has worked in the front line and given his all for many years. His protege, a talented former officer who made a grave mistake while holding the badge, ended up serving time in prison and now leads a mysterious group of criminals, has now turned for a once-rising star into a furious man with a grudge, and the will to destroy everyone who had wronged him, including his former mentor. This movie absolutely rocks, pushing aside character development to go all-in on the action and it is worth every second. It is a single trope of good cop versus bad cop but you quickly forget about that with the ferociousness of the storytelling. I’ll be honest, the level of this movie was totally surprising.

Clerk – I am a Kevin Smith guy, through and through. I have loved everything from the man, seen him multiple times live and wouldn’t be a podcaster if it weren’t for the effect that he had on my life. One of my most anticipated upcoming films is his follow up to Clerks II more than fifteen years afterwards and while we’ll be waiting a little bit longer for that to hit theatres, his friend, director of Drawing Flies and Small Town Gay Bar and Canadian Malcolm Ingram, has something to tide us fans over. Simply put, this is a retrospective documentary that outlines the life and career of the indie filmmaking icon like only a close friend could and features interviews with friends, family, filmmaking peers, and fellow icons of the film, comedy and comic worlds while teasing the forthcoming movie. Kev screened this in Vancouver at the Rio, following it with a Q & A that I sadly missed but this is the next best thing and thanks to my pal Mark, I got it!

Phantom Of The Mall: Eric’s Revenge – When I was a kid, perusing the aisles of the video store as I always loved to do, the horror films were the titles and posters that leapt out at me, demanding my attention. One such poster was the one for this movie that fascinated me with the modernization of the Phantom Of The Opera story but in a mall. The story follows a guy called Eric who owns a huge house which becomes the target of some greedy investors who want to build a mall over it. So, obviously, they get someone to burn down his house in which Eric is badly burned but not dead, a nasty loose end for them, and a year later the mall opens. What they don’t realize is that Eric is living underneath the mall and he’s very angry and looking for some payback. This movie is pretty wild, even for a late eighties chiller, and has some horror royalty in Dawn Of The Dead’s Ken Foree, time-era bombshell Morgan Fairchild and is an early role for the Weasel, Pauly Shore. Is it good? Hell no! Is it entertaining in the campiest ways with an Arrow Video Collector’s Edition blu-ray crammed full of crazy features? Oh hell yes it is.

The Addams Family 4K – This is an early nineties classic that I have seen more than ten times within that decade and to get a brand new edition on hi-def 4K brought a big smile to my face. I honestly don’t think casting got much better than Raul Julia and Anjelica Huston as Gomez and Morticia Addams because it makes any other one, like the voice casting of the two animated films recently, look like dog shit. For those who never got the pleasure of this Barry Sonnenfeld gem, the film has the eccentric family dealing with a pair of con artists looking to fleece them for their fortune by having one of them pose as the long-estranged Uncle Fester. This movie has a great script, brilliant camera work and a style that oozes so well off of it that you would have thought Tim Burton directed it. I think there are probably people out there that actually think that to be honest.

Planes Trains And Automobiles – John Hughes has made so many movies that connect us through the ages whether it is Home Alone for the kids or Pretty In Pink, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Weird Science for the teens. One that connects us all as fans, which I learned very quickly after posting the cover of this beautiful edition, is this phenomenal Steve Martin and John Candy comedy that makes us laugh till our bellies hurt and also hits us like an arrow straight to the heart. For those who need to get a Hughes education immediately, it follows a Chicago advertising man who must struggle to travel home from New York for Thanksgiving with a lovable oaf of a shower curtain ring salesman as his only companion. This may be the best role from John Candy in his tragically shortened career and his chemistry with Martin was absolutely undeniable. The film is infinitely quotable and doesn’t pale at all on multiple rewatches. Heck, it should be a Criterion Collection film.

Steve’s Blu-Ray Geekouts:

Santa Fe Trail – Do I kick off the geekouts with Warner Archive stuff a lot? It feels like I do. Anyways, here we go again with a total genre classic from 1940 featuring Errol Flynn and Olivia De Havilland in a film that goes for as much historical accuracy as the studio would allow. The film, set in 1854, follows Jeb Stuart, George Custer and other graduates from West Point who are posted to Kansas to help pacify the territory before railroad construction to Santa Fe can resume. The movie would be the seventh of nine movies made together by Warner Brothers’ romantic couple de Havilland and Flynn but there was a rift between the two as the actor was completely snubbing his co-star due to her romance with James Stewart. Man, there was so much rampant jealousy and unprofessionalism then it’s a marvel that any filmmaking actually happened.

Star Trek II The Wrath Of Khan: Director’s Cut – This film is largely regarded as the greatest Star Trek movie ever made and it’s really hard to argue that because it is a personal favourite as well. I know I already cover the full set of films in the original cast box set of films but this film is a director’s cut and I had to give it some love. For those who are still under a rock, the story follows Admiral Kirk and his Enterprise crew who must contend with an old nemesis, Khan Noonien Singh, that is threatening the universe with the ultimate weapon, the life-generating Genesis Device. Ricardo Montalban is so awesome in this movie as Khan, probably one of the greatest sci-fi villains of all time and I have to say that this film still satisfies every time you watch it and the extra scenes just add to how fantastic it is. For anyone that still thinks that Star Trek is too science-based and fails to excite the viewer, this movie is exhibit A that it is not.

Sailor Suit And The Machine Gun – Let’s finish out this week’s geekouts with some weirdo Japanese cinema from Arrow Video, shall we? This one is decidedly apropos for the country as our main character is a schoolgirl, complete with the outfit, a very dirty little fantasy of Japanese businessmen everywhere. The film follows this teen from the wrong side of the tracks as she assumes control of her father’s arm of the yakuza and we all rejoice as we’ve landed another Japanese gangland story on this blog which is starting to become as regular as the horror films. Well, maybe not but it is a pretty consistent theme. This movie may just be for the hardcores as it was made in 1981 and definitely has its certain cheesiness to it. Enjoy at your own risk but Arrow picked it as a collector’s edition for a reason.

Television:

Masters Of The Universe Revelation: Part 2 (Netflix) – A man I consider my personal Gretzky, Kevin Smith, a driving force to me pursuing podcasting, then radio and movie critiquing, anything he puts his name on becomes very special to me and when it was announced that he would be executive producing this new He-Man series I was automatically intrigued. As a fan of the show and toys himself, Smith has the perfect reverence for the source material and he brings all of that with a great voice cast to this show that feels like it picks up where the original series left off with a tone that suits the time that has passed. The story pits our heroic warriors, He-Man, Orko, Cringer, and Man-At-Arms and guardians of Castle Grayskull against Skeletor, Evil-Lyn, Beast Man and the vile legions of Snake Mountain but after a ferocious final battle forever fractures Eternia, it’s up to Teela to solve the mystery of the missing Sword of Power in a race against time to prevent the end of the Universe. This show already hooked us in with an incredible first five episodes that made sure you knew that no character was safe from death and that the evolution of the rules has forever changed the landscape of Eternia. Just know that these next five episodes ups the ante even more and now I’m left waiting for another installment of five episodes so, Kev, hook a dude up!

True Story (Netflix) – Kevin Hart is really trying to bring the serious side of himself in 2021, especially on Netflix, as we already got the really great comedy-drama Fatherhood that had him struggling as a single father but this one is all serious but comes from a reality within him. The show follows him as a famous comic on a tour stop in his hometown of Philadelphia that becomes a matter of life and death when his older brother coaxes him into a wild night full of next-day consequences. The best thing about this show is that his brother is played by the great Wesley Snipes but at the end of the first episode I just felt that the show was careening towards predictability. Hart is solid and Snipes is charismatic as ever but it feels like we’ve been fed this story of an old life and attitude temptation and it feels less and less fresh every time it’s trotted out. At only seven episodes in this limited series, it has little time to course-correct but I’m still hopeful.

F Is For Family: Season 5 (Netflix) – Bill Burr is a fantastic stand-up comedian that pulls no punches, gives no apologies and is always on fire and, for me, his recent visit to The Mandalorian really opened up more of this man to me. That aside, at the end of the day, this animated series might be one of my favourite of his pop culture contributions. For those who don’t know about this Netflix original, Burr voices Frank Murphy, the patriarch of your quintessential family living in the seventies when kids played in the streets, dads always had a beer in hand and nothing came between a man and his TV. Yes, we’re getting a bit of an Archie Bunker vibe here but it’s played mostly as satire rather than celebrating the more insensitive and politically incorrect opinions of the time from white America. This show really hooked me during the third season and I absolutely love the cast around Burr which includes Academy Award winners Laura Dern and Sam Rockwell, Justin Long and Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul’s Jonathan Banks. This may turn off a lot of people but it found a soft spot in my love for things like King Of The Hill.

Hawkeye (Disney+) – It’s been a pretty awesome 2021 for Marvel-created television on Disney+ as we’ve gotten WandaVision, The Falcon And The Winter Soldier, Loki and What If as well as the Hulu contributions of M.O.D.O.K. and Hit-Monkey. It’s an embarrassment of riches really but the MCU train isn’t slowing down as we get to end the year off with the return of Jeremy Renner’s Clint Barton and the introduction of the comic fan favourite protege Kate Bishop, played by Hailee Steinfeld in a perfectly cast role. The two are forced to work together when a presence from Barton’s past threatens to derail not just his family time with his wife and kids at Christmas time but may end both of their lives in the process. The first two episodes are a little vague on what the big bad of the series is but Renner and Steinfeld have really great chemistry and, let’s face it, these characters are cool as hell. I’m on board totally but I probably am an easy target for all of it.

The Beatles: Get Back (Disney+) – 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.

What The Hell Should I Watch? – Nov 18

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November 18, 2021

New Releases:

Ghostbusters: Afterlife – The Ghostbusters have had a dicey ride through the reboot or continuation prism as the film from 2016 wasn’t well received at all, with many fans deriding it as destroying their childhoods and other such lame opinions. Now, the son of original director Ivan Reitman, Jason Reitman has continued the family legacy by making a film that looks like it continues and celebrates the franchise in all the best ways. This film follows a single mom and her two kids who arrive in a small town and begin to discover their connection to the original Ghostbusters and the secret legacy their grandfather left behind as a Doomsday level paranormal event starts to form under their feet. The film has an interesting cast to it that features the ever loveable and Sexiest Man Alive, Paul Rudd, The Nest’s phenomenal lead Carrie Coon and Stranger Things’ Finn Wolfhard and I feel that judging from the trailers, they have managed to give the same feel as the original films but in an updated way. I am beyond excited for this movie and am so happy it is finally here.

King Richard – Will Smith might be coming to join the Oscar race this year just judging by the trailer and it has been a long time since we have even considered this notion, which I gauge to be 2006’s The Pursuit Of Happyness. He has the Academy on his side as this is a biopic of Richard Williams, the father of tennis phenoms Venus and Serena Williams and the voting board eats those up. The film follows Richard as he nurtures his young daughters’ burgeoning talent, taking unconventional avenues to bring them to superstardom and against all the adversity they face for being young poor black Americans. The film has a great line in the trailer where Richard says he has not one but two of the next Michael Jordans. It makes me chuckle every time. I’m looking forward to this one.

tick, tick… Boom! – I’m going to put everything out on Front Street here with my latest Lin-Manuel Miranda opinion and that is that I wasn’t over the moon about In The Heights like everyone else was. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed it, the Miranda songs are catchy and Anthony Ramos is a total star but I thought it was a bit bloated and dragged here and there. That said, with his directorial debut here, he knocks a home run and Andrew Garfield is the MVP. The film follows Jon, played by Garfield, a young theatre composer who’s waiting tables at a New York City diner in 1990 while writing what he hopes will be the next great American rock opera. Days before he’s due to showcase his work in a make-or-break performance, Jon is feeling the pressure from everywhere, like his girlfriend Susan who dreams of an artistic life beyond New York City and his friend Michael who has moved on from his dream to a life of financial security all amidst an artistic community being ravaged by the AIDS epidemic. Garfield is incredible in this movie and his performance will be remembered for years to come, possibly his crowning achievement. There’s also a show-stopping number in the middle that had even a musical cynic like me in absolute delight. That’s a winner to me.

Blu-Ray:

Jungle Cruise – The Rock is getting his Johnny Depp style franchise film with Disney as he too is now part of the theme park-inspired movie with this new adventure that was supposed to come out last fall but because of the pandemic it all got delayed. Proving that he has such good chemistry with everyone they pair him with, he stars in this film alongside the loveable Emily Blunt who is on a continuous roll after the phenomenal A Quiet Place Part II which I’ll speak about later on. Playing wisecracking skipper Frank Wolff and intrepid researcher Dr. Lily Houghton respectively, the story follows Lily as she travels from London, England to the Amazon jungle and enlists Frank’s questionable services to guide her downriver on La Quila, his dilapidated but dependable boat. Lily is determined to uncover an ancient tree with unparalleled healing abilities–possessing the power to change the future of medicine and, thrust on this epic quest together, the unlikely duo encounters innumerable dangers and supernatural forces, all lurking in the deceptive beauty of the lush rainforest. But as the secrets of the lost tree unfold, the stakes reach even higher for Lily and Frank and their fate and mankind hang in the balance. This movie is so much fun with exhilarating action and great chemistry between The Rock and Blunt and Jack Whitehall is so great as the comedic foil brother. This one is well worth seeing.

Candyman – For horror fans, we were pretty much robbed of getting the renewal of the Candyman franchise last year due to the pandemic and the buzz around the film made the sting even more intense as it was produced by Jordan Peele and it comes from director Nia Decosta who booked a Marvel gig out of the deal with her now helming Captain Marvel 2 as we speak. That said, there are huge shoes to fill with this movie and the fact that Tony Todd doesn’t reprise his role in any shape or form is an immediate mark against it. This film is set in the present day, a decade after the last of the Cabrini towers were torn down, following Anthony and his partner who move into a loft in the now gentrified Cabrini. A chance encounter with an old-timer exposes Anthony to the true story behind Candyman and anxious to use these macabre details in his studio as fresh ideas for paintings, he unknowingly opens a door to a complex past that unravels his sanity and unleashes a terrifying wave of violence. I loved this film a lot which not only presented itself with such reverence for the original film but also built on it while creating new lore within that served its rebirth. The film acts quite a bit like an art-house film within the horror genre which may turn many casual viewers off but it hooked me in, pun intended. That final shot may also be my favourite this year.

The Protege – When I initially saw this trailer on the big screen before F9 I have to admit that it did nothing for me at all. You can tell me it’s from the producers of John Wick and use a cool version of Amy Winehouse’s You Know That I’m No Good but you can’t take the generic dime a dozen contract killer action trope out of it, I feel like I’ve seen it all before. The film has a pretty solid cast with Maggie Q, Michael Keaton and Samuel L. Jackson following Anna who was rescued as a child by the legendary assassin Moody, played by Jackson, and trained in the family business to become the world’s most skilled contract killer. When Moody is brutally killed, Anna vows revenge and is entangled with an enigmatic killer (Keaton with all his greatest nuances) whose attraction to her goes way beyond cat and mouse. This movie quite easily annoyed me as it is just as cookie-cutter as it looks and comes from an older world adage of the only way a strong female character like this can be made is to have her be a femme fatale. I’m so sick of this and it ruined everything about a film that, besides that, doesn’t have an ounce of originality and a dumb script to match it.

The Eyes Of Tammy Faye – With a tale as wild as televangelist couple Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, I’m really surprised that it took this long to get a biopic of God and money-driven power couple that had a storied rise and a scandalous fall. Now that it’s here, I have to address the boldness of Jessica Chastain taking the lead role alongside Andrew Garfield as Jim because I didn’t see how it could work and now, after seeing the trailers, I couldn’t unsee it. The film is an interesting move from The Big Sick director Michael Showalter who gives an intimate look at the extraordinary rise, fall and redemption of televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker. In the 1970s and 80s, Tammy Faye and her husband, Jim Bakker, rose from humble beginnings to create the world’s largest religious broadcasting network and theme park and were revered for their message of love, acceptance and prosperity. Tammy Faye was legendary for her indelible eyelashes, her idiosyncratic singing, and her eagerness to embrace people from all walks of life but it wasn’t long before financial improprieties, scheming rivals, and scandal toppled their carefully constructed empire. The film largely skates by on a fantastic performance from Chastain who carries the film on her back, which may earn her some awards praise. The issue is, much like Renee Zellweger’s turn in Judy that won her a few golden statues, the rest of the film isn’t that great. To be honest, it’s a bit bloated and could have tightened up a bit more as it drags in many spots.

Flag Day – Sean Penn returns to the director’s chair for the first time on a feature film since 2016’s The Last Face which was not well received. I’m hoping that he gets back to the form he was in for Into The Wild and this one is really interesting because it features his daughter Dylan as well who co-stars alongside him in pretty much the main roles. The film has the senior Penn as a father living a double life as a counterfeiter, bank robber and con man to provide for his daughter who struggles to rise above the wreckage of her past while reconciling the inescapable bond between her and her father. Unfortunately, as good as the performances are in the film, Penn keeps falling into the trappings that dogged his last one and that is just plain bad melodrama trying to adhere these talents into something cohesive. I’m still waiting for Penn’s directorial renaissance it seems.

Prisoners Of The Ghostland – It’s now common knowledge if you regularly read my blog, listen to me on The Shift or follow me on any of my social media accounts that I adore the talent of Nicolas Cage. I am aware of his bad films and others but the man takes chances and I love him for it, something he certainly does here. This film is from gonzo director Sion Sono he plays a ruthless bank robber who is sprung from jail by the wealthy warlord The Governor in the treacherous frontier city of Samurai Town to find his adopted granddaughter Bernice that has gone missing. The Governor offers the prisoner his freedom in exchange for retrieving the runaway and, strapped into a leather suit that will self-destruct within three days, the bandit sets off on a journey to find the young woman and his path to redemption. Co-starring The Kingsmans’ Sofia Boutella and The Devil’s Rejects’ Bill Moseley, this film is like a frenetic samurai art film inserted into a post-apocalyptic landscape. Some of it works, some of it doesn’t but you can tell that Cage is having a fantastic time and he has stated this in interviews about it already. If you enjoy the man’s work, you’ll appreciate this one.

Caveat – There is something about subdued and creepy little stories out of the United Kingdom that grab me and this year has had some beauties like Corinna Faith’s The Power and Prano Bailey-Bond’s Censor to chill you to the bone and just before we close out 2021 writer and director Damian McCarthy wants to have his say as well. His film follows a lone drifter suffering from partial memory loss who accepts a job to look after a psychologically troubled woman in an abandoned house on an isolated island. The catch to his new babysitting job? He must be secured into a security vest fixed with a chain to limit where he can go in the house and he can’t leave unless it’s unlocked. This film is freshly original, makes incredibly atmospheric uses of darkness and keeps you on the edge of your seat with fantastic sound design. McCarthy makes a riveting debut and I’m interested to see what his next project is.

Yakuza Princess – On the outside of this new action flick and comic book adaptation, it should be an easy and stylish slam dunk. Based on the indie series Samurai Shiro, this film comes from the guy who did the crazily fascinating horror Motorrad and features singer MASUMI, 13 Assassins actor Tsuyoshi Ihara, and lifelong bad life boy and middle-aged trainwreck Jonathan Rhys Meyers and, on paper, has a damn cool storyline. The plot follows an heiress to half of the Yakuza crime syndicate who forges an uneasy alliance with an amnesiac stranger that believes an ancient sword binds their two fates. With his help, she reluctantly must unleash a war against the other half of the syndicate who wants her dead. I wish the execution on this film was as good as the setup because the movement of this story always feels a little half-baked and not thought out and none of the action scenes feel that exciting or well shot no matter how many moments of good blood and gore that we get. I was left feeling very underwhelmed by this one.

Our Ladies – This new comedy-drama out of the United Kingdom has proven to be elusive because, as of the writing date right now, I have been unable to track it down for review which is frustrating as it looks like my kind of movie. Beyond that, it may have legs with a lot of North American viewers as it reminds me a bit of the Netflix show Derry Girls which has become a little bit of a hit here. Like that series, this film is set in the nineties but in Scotland and follows a group of Catholic school girls who get an opportunity to go into Edinburgh for a choir competition but they’re more interested in drinking, partying and hooking up than winning the competition. The film is said to be a bit misconstrued when it comes to its approach to sexuality but the casting is great, the script is punchy and fun and the friendships within are endearing and soulfully warm. I love British films and I don’t feel like I’d be misled for checking this one out if I ever can.

Steve’s Blu-Ray and DVD Geekouts:

Mad Love – My geekouts are a bit focused this week and they kick off with a classic from the vaults of the Warner Archive that has some star power to it with the leading man, Peter Lorre. The film is also cinematically notable as it comes from Austrian director Karl Freund who directed the original The Mummy starring Boris Karloff and was the cinematographer on the legendary Metropolis from Fritz Lang. This film is set in Paris and follows surgeon Dr. Gogol who falls madly in love with stage actress Yvonne Orlac and his forwardness about that disturbs her quite a bit when he discovers that she is married to a concert pianist, Stephen Orlac. Shortly thereafter, Stephen’s hands are badly crushed in a train accident and rendered beyond the power of standard medicine. Knowing that his hands are his life, Yvonne overcomes her fear and goes to Dr. Gogol to beg him to help. Gogol decides to surgically graft the hands of executed murderer Rollo onto Stephen Orlac, the surgery is successful but has terrible side effects and murderous consequences. It’s interesting to note that Charlie Chaplin called Lorre the best film actor after seeing this movie, which was his first performance in an American production. Peter Lorre was under contract to Columbia Pictures in the United Kingdom but agreed to be loaned out to MGM for this film if Columbia would do a film version of Crime and Punishment next with him in the role of Raskolnikov. This was fascinating trading from the early heavyweight studios.

The Loud House: Season 3 Volume 2 – Some crazy Nickelodeon cartoons for your children to feast their eyes on that also might drive you nuts as a parent has made its way down to the geekouts this week as we’re stretching here a bit. Well, let’s look at the voices and creators so we can have some sort of latching on point for the adults that suffer along in this show about Lincoln Loud, an eleven-year-old boy who lives with ten sisters and with the help of his friend Clyde to find new ways to survive in such a large family every day. Any voices you would know? Well, Batman The Animated Series’ Grey Griffin features in it as well as Bender himself, John Dimaggio but aside from quick guest spots by Wayne Brady, Phil Lamarr and the late and so great Fred Willard, that’s about it. The show was created by Chris Savino, a long-time writer on The Powerpuff Girls and Dexter’s Laboratory, so you can see where this show is aimed at.

Television:

Cowboy Bebop (Netflix) – Not being a major anime fan, there are still some titles that break into the mainstream pop culture like Akira, Ninja Scroll, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and this stylish little series. The casting couldn’t be any better too as the main character of Spike is portrayed by the deceptively young-looking John Cho and newcomers Mustafa Shakir and Daniella Pineda as Jet Black and Faye Valentine. The series is a space Western story that follows Spike Spiegel and his rag-tag crew of bounty hunters, or Cowboys, as they try to capture the galaxy’s worst criminals and survive the unexpected dangers they encounter throughout space, sometimes saving the world in the process but always leaving millions in damages. With a simmering jazz beat and stylish direction that is always giving nods to its source material, I’ve been enjoying the hell out of this show, against my usual distaste for anime. In my eyes, this one is a winner.

Star Trek Discovery: Season 4 (Crave) – Look, I’m not fully caught up on everything in this series yet so for my research I just went as spoiler-free and vague just so I wouldn’t spoil everything for myself but I will say that fans of Star Trek aren’t too happy with the series. I’m enjoying it so far as I’m not as invested in it as everyone else but I can get people’s issues with it. The show is set ten years before Kirk, Spock and the Enterprise, as the USS Discovery discovers new worlds and lifeforms with one main Starfleet officer learning to understand all things alien both about herself and those around her starting at the disadvantage of being an accused mutineer for her brash actions. Great casting, exciting adventures and inner politics and an infinite ceiling due to being on the CBS All Access streaming service, I like what they’re doing with this show and the possibilities are endless to where they can go. To gauge where I’m at for those who care, I’m just rounding the bend to the finish of season two.

The Great: Season 2 (Amazon Prime) – Elle Fanning, Nicholas Hoult and The Favourite writer Tony McNamara are back for the follow-up season of this great series that is filled from top to bottom with fantastic character work, beautiful set pieces and brilliantly dark humour that will tickle you if you liked McNamara’s Yorgos Lanthimos film as much as I did. The show follows a royal woman living in rural Russia during the 18th century who is forced to choose between her happiness and the future of Russia when she marries an Emperor. I love that this series takes the stuffiness out of the usual period piece and allows each character to breathe with dialogue that feels quick and sardonic. My question is how quickly will this earn the pick-up for a third season. Maybe it has already been greenlit and at this present writing time, I have no idea about it. That’s entirely possible.

The Wheel Of Time (Amazon Prime) – So many shows claim to be the next Game Of Thrones and it really almost feels exhausting at this point to even try and continually make these comparisons but here we go again because this new series is based on a beloved series of books from late author Robert Jordan, some of which I have read. The show is set in a high fantasy world where magic exists, but only some can access it, following a woman named Moiraine, played by Oscar nominee Rosamund Pike, who crosses paths with five young men and women that, together, sparks a dangerous, world-spanning journey. The series is the debut of Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Chuck writer Rafe Judkins as showrunner and it has that Amazon Prime money backing it so this might be very cool and a good tide over until the Lord Of The Rings series makes its debut.

Tiger King 2 (Netflix) – Remember when Tiger King became our must binge garbage television during the beginning of the pandemic? I certainly do and it feels like a lifetime ago that it happened but here we are at the start of another season of it. I remember thinking after I had completed the original series that there was nothing more to say but I was wrong. Within the first episode of this five-part follow up the wild real characters of the show are now dealing with the fallout, whether it’s the villainization of Carol Baskins, the newly created stardom of Joe Exotic or the questions regarding Jeff Lowe’s business operations, this is merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to new scandals being revealed in the community of big cat owners. Trash television is back again to fill the internet and workplaces with nonsensical banter and Joe Exotic will again be the redneck and flamboyant poster child for it. Save our souls.

What The Hell Should I Watch? – Nov 10th

stevestebbing

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November 10, 2021

New Releases:

Red Notice – I will admit that there is really nothing super original about this art stealing action flick that is full of cliches and predictable exposition dialogue but that’s not the point. What is the point is the fantastic chemistry between the three stars of this film, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Ryan Reynolds and Gal Gadot, because they really have it and you could tell they had so much fun making it. The film follows The Great One as the FBI’s top profiler John Hartley who is on the case to capture the world’s most wanted when an Interpol-issued Red Notice, the highest level warrant to hunt, goes out. His global pursuit finds him smack dab in the middle of a daring heist where he’s forced to partner with the world’s greatest art thief Nolan Booth (Ryan Reynolds) in order to catch the world’s most wanted art thief, “The Bishop” (Gal Gadot). This movie is without a lull point and is action-packed from beginning to end with exhilarating sequences and really funny and playful banter between all of the characters. The reviews are terrible for it but the audience score is high so take that as it is. I loved it.

Belfast – Kenneth Branaugh returns to work behind the camera with what looks like one of the most heartwarming masterpieces in years and, judging by my friend’s glowing reaction to it, my anticipation for it is at an all-time high. Filmed beautifully in black and white, the cast really has me too as it has Dame Judi Dench, Jamie Dornan and Ciaran Hinds just to name a few, stars who, in their native British Isles, always deliver in one way or another. The story is semi-autobiographical and chronicles the life of a working-class family and their young son’s childhood during the tumult of the late 1960s in the Northern Ireland capital. Everything about the trailer for this cries winner and future Best Picture winner, something totally off my radar when it came to my most looked forward to films of this year. It will be nice to get another special film this week to continue the streak from October.

Clifford The Big Red Dog – A film that has been, to be totally pun-filled, dogged by the pandemic, this adaptation of a beloved kid’s book has been constantly rescheduled, shelved and moved into what the studio thought would be a more profitable position. The fact that Paramount Pictures thought that this was going to be a runaway hit is a little telling in the smarts department, because I don’t think it will be, but they are protecting themselves a bit as it debuts on Paramount+ as well. The film is exactly as you know it if you got to read these books in school, following a girl and her family that adopt a little red dog who doesn’t stay little for long and grows to an enormous size and hijinx definitely ensue. The expectations are that the kids will love it and the parents will have a break for an hour and a half. I do like that British comedian Jack Whitehall is getting more work after Jungle Cruise, play the dad here, but director Walt Becker has made nothing but crap since his debut with Van Wilder.

Passing – Two powerful actresses come together from the debut of another fantastic actress’s writing and directing debut and it is a more perfect union than you can possibly imagine and it’s all done in black and white. Rebecca Hall takes her turn behind the camera in hopefully the first of many times with Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga giving two of my favourite performances of the year. Adapted from the novel by Nella Larsen, the story follows two mixed-race childhood friends who reunite in middle-class adulthood and become increasingly involved in each other’s lives and insecurities. While Irene identifies as African-American and is married to a Black doctor, Clare “passes” as white and has married a prejudiced, wealthy white man, a secret worn on the outside that is destined to destroy everything. This movie is incredible and beautifully shot but may alienate some viewers who want a more direct approach to the narrative. The film wears everything on its sleeve and relies on giving exposition just through the motions and emotions of the characters. I loved this movie so much.

Home Sweet Home Alone – If any film pissed me off to the point that it ruined my day then it has to be this tinsel-covered turd that had the audacity to piggyback off of one of the greatest holiday comedies of all time and a beloved John Hughes classic. It had everything going for it too with the casting of Jojo Rabbit’s Archie Yates and a solid comedy cast of Ellie Kemper, Rob Delaney, Pete Holmes and more but it takes a huge dump almost immediately. Yates plays Max Mercer, a mischievous and resourceful young boy who has been left behind while his family is in Japan for the holidays. When a married couple attempts to retrieve a priceless heirloom that was accidentally sent to the Mercer family’s home, it is up to Max to protect it from the trespassers, and he will do whatever it takes to keep them out. which I guess includes attempted murder because they basically made Saw for kids here. I hated every moment of this vile little exercise in forgetting what the original film was all about. I really feel like I should have known how bad it would get when I saw it was from the director of Dirty Grandpa.

Blu-Ray:

Respect – Another victim of the theatre shut down during the pandemic was this biopic that I felt everyone knew was coming after the death of legendary singer Aretha Franklin and just as sure was the casting of Academy Award-winning actress Jennifer Hudson in that very special role. It should also be known that Franklin herself hand-picked Jennifer Hudson to play her when the movie was in early development. The film looks to be your standard music biopic, following Aretha Franklin from a singer in her father’s church choir as a child, following her as she grows up to become an international musical superstar and an influential figure on all R&B singers to follow. This movie seems like total Oscar bait for Hudson to at least earn another nomination but I’m really curious about the casting around her that includes Forest Whittaker, Marlon Wayans, Audra MacDonald, Marc Maron and more. That is a seriously stacked cast.

Reminiscence – This is another one of those delayed films due to the pandemic but definitely a push back on not getting sued as the film comes from Westworld series creators Lisa Joy and her husband Jonathan Nolan who’s brother Christopher has left the Warner Bros. family over the release of his film Tenet and the streaming schedule. When you look at the trailer for this movie it looks like it commands a big-screen viewing and has a Tenet or Inception look to it as well. The film is a future-set sci-fi that follows a private investigator of a different sort that navigates the darkly alluring world of the past by helping his clients access lost memories. Living on the fringes of the sunken Miami coast, his life is forever changed when he takes on a new client that quickly moves from being a simple lost and found job to a life-altering obsession. The cast is so great in this with Hugh Jackman leading and Rebecca Ferguson and Thandiwe Newton in supporting roles but the movie comes through like a two-hour boredom fest where I couldn’t get engaged with any of the pretty cliche characters and I didn’t care about the mystery contained within. It feels like anytime there is an offshoot of Christopher Nolan in feature film form it turns out to be a disappointment. I’m looking directly at you, Wally Pfister’s Transcendence.

My Salinger Year – This is definitely one of my favourite films of the Vancouver International Film Festival last year and the crowning achievement for the director and screenwriter Philippe Falardeau whose last outing I saw at a previous festival was My Internship In Canada, an absurd comedy that I’d love to forget. Based on Joanna Smith Rakoff’s novel of the same name, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood’s Margaret Qualley plays Joanna as a young aspiring writer who lands a day job at J.D. Salinger’s literary agency in n New York City during the late nineties. While her eccentric and old-fashioned boss, played by Sigourney Weaver, tasks her to process Salinger’s voluminous fan mail, she struggles to find her own voice through romance, a crash course in the publishing world and communications with the reclusive writer that she knows as Jerry. This film is beautifully shot, wonderfully acted and leaves a resonance that will put a smile on your face.

Four Good Days – This movie surprised the heck out of me, mostly because I was led by very low reviews and audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes but it might have worked out in its favour. The work of reliable and legendary actress Glenn Close was never in question because even in a dog crap movie like Hillbilly Elegy she becomes the most interesting thing in it but her co-lead in this film, Mila Kunis, keeps up with her role in a big way. She plays Molly, a heroin-addicted mother who begs her own estranged mother Deb for help fighting a fierce battle against the demons that have derailed her life. Despite all she has learned over a decade of disappointment, grief and rage, Deb throws herself into one last attempt to save her beloved daughter from the deadly and merciless grip of addiction while conflicted by her own mistrust, hurt and guilt. The end result was poignant with a realistic optimism to it that didn’t feel Hollywood glossy. I really liked this one.

Coming Home In The Dark – This New Zealand-made horror-thriller came out of nowhere and completely knocked me through a loop, just proving a constant in cinema and that lesson is if it’s from the down under or the surrounding areas, you need to give it a chance. The film is the feature debut of writer and director James Ashcroft who has a road future ahead of him as he created a story that is harrowing and hits on all cylinders with acting, script, cinematography and production levels. The story follows a family’s idyllic outing at an isolated coastline that descends into terror when high school teacher Alan ‘Hoaggie’ Hoaganraad, his wife Jill, and stepsons Maika and Jordon unexpectedly come across a pair of murderous drifters, the enigmatic psychopath Mandrake and his hulking man-child accomplice Tubs, who thrust them into a nightmare road trip. At first, the family’s terror seems to be born of a random encounter with two sociopaths, but as the night drags on, Hoaggie and Jill realize that this nightmare was set in motion twenty years earlier. The best thing to do is not give any more of this film away and just say that it was one of the most edge-of-your-seat thrillers I have seen this year. People need to seek this one out, it is special.

Witch Hunt – We’ve got a what-if Elseworlds horror-thriller this week and you faithful readers know how much I love those! Not only that but it was a film that I headed into watching that had favourable reviews which is pretty rare in some regards. The film takes place in a modern America where witches are real and witchcraft is illegal, following a sheltered teenager who must face her own demons and prejudices as she helps two young witches avoid law enforcement and cross the southern border to asylum in Mexico. The premise is cool and the execution worked really well for me with Lost actress Elizabeth Mitchell turning in a strong supporting performance. I will say that the overarching horror element of the story involving witches is about as genre-driven as it gets because the film isn’t scary or suspenseful so don’t be seeking it out for a chiller night.

The Emperor’s Sword – Well Go USA hasn’t sent me anything in a little bit so I was pretty happy to see this film arrive in my mailbox as I was looking for a solid actioner. This one goes deeper into the martial arts lore too as it is a period piece as well that harkens back to Jet Li’s Once Upon A Time In China series. The film focuses on the titular weapon, a sword that bestows power upon its wielder which was divided and hidden from those who chose to use it for personal gain. A rebel seizes power and stages a massacre, leaving only one survivor leaving the daughter of a great general to be all that stands between a tyrant and his domination. This isn’t a groundbreaking film by any means but it is one that I thought was very entertaining with great action sequences and sweeping cinematography to it. The movie is the debut of filmmaker Zhang Yingli who approaches this story definitely from the inspiration of filmmakers like Zhang Yimou and John Woo and it definitely shows.

Batman: Year One 4K – A part of my Batman purchase spree from last summer, it really is that I’m given the opportunity to talk about one of the better pieces of the DC Comics animated universe. that is now getting a hi-def treatment in a commemorative edition. Again based on a graphic novel from the legendary ad and revered comic writer Frank Miller, this is the story of Batman’s emergence in Gotham City to rise and become the figure that the criminal element fears, all from the point of view of Commissioner Gorden, voiced in this animated feature by Walter White himself, Bryan Cranston. With beautiful animation, headed up by the director of a lot of these DC animated features, Sam Liu, I really liked this adaptation and thought it did a faithful job of bringing the darkness of Batman’s beginnings and Gotham star Ben McKenzie, who played a young James Gordon in that series, ironically voices the world’s greatest detective and Bruce Wayne in this one, a movie that was birthed from Darren Aronovsky’s failed live-action adaptation. I’m glad we got some semblance of this story.

DC’s Legends Of Tomorrow: Season 6 – Another piece of the still ever-growing Arrowverse within the DC Comics television universe that still continues on even though the flagship show has ended, 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. 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.

Snowpiercer: Season 2 – Adapted from Academy Award winner Bong Joon-Ho’s mind-boggling sci-fi thriller, his English language debut, I would usually start my write up on this by saying how disappointing it is that Americans have to pounce on popular foreign properties but this one is different and the first season immediately put my foot in my mouth where it belonged. With Bong on board as executive producer along with fellow Korean film master Park Chan Wook and horror director Scott Derrickson, this show has the immediate source material love and care I wanted for it and it shines, especially with Blindspotting’s Daveed Diggs as the lead, one of the best actors working today. For those who don’t know, the show is a post-fall of humanity story about a divided remainder of people, either the poor or the elite, that live on a train that constantly zooms around the frozen landscape of Earth. With Jennifer Connolly playing the opposition in this show, it can only get better. This show definitely already pulled in the views like crazy on Netflix but now you can watch it properly on a high-definition disc with optimum picture and sound.

Steve’s Blu-Ray & DVD Geekouts:

The Ghost Ship/Bedlam – It’s a bit past Halloween, I know, but the time is always good to check out a classic and especially one that stars Bela Lugosi. Well, Warner Archive has hooked us up with this great release that has not just one of these horror stories from the vault but two. The first film isn’t the one that the Dark Castle film of the mid-2000s was based on and follows Tom Merriam, a naval officer who signs on the ship Altair as third officer under Captain Stone. At first, things look good, Stone sees Merriam as a younger version of himself and Merriam sees Stone as the first adult to ever treat him as a friend but after a couple of strange deaths of crew members, Merriam begins to think Stone is a psychopathic madman obsessed with authority. He tries to tell others, but no one believes him, and it only makes Stone angry and more driven. Bedlam follows Nell Bowen, the protégé of Lord Mortimer, who wants to help change the conditions of notorious St. Mary’s of Bethlehem Asylum. Though she tries to reform Bedlam, the cruel Master Sims who runs it, played by Legosi, has her committed there, though ultimately, it’s the lunatics who’ve taken over the asylum. These are some building blocks for mystery thrillers and it’s cool to see them showcased on blu-ray now.

Walker: Season 1 – I find it so weird that Jared Padelecki has moved from something so beloved to a huge fan base like Supernatural to a series that comes from a fan base that is so right-wing and so fixed in its own zeitgeist, the lovers of Chuck Norris. Granted, I used to be a fan of the action hero but that was in the eighties when I was a kid not as a part of this horribly campy procedural. This is more a modern remake than a reboot that would see Norris return and follow the former Winchester brother as a widowed father who returns to Austin after one year, attempting to reconnect with his children, navigate clashes with his family, and find common ground with his new partner, while growing increasingly suspicious of his wife’s death. The show comes from creator Anna Fricke who isn’t new to rebooting or resetting shows as she already did with the Syfy remake of the BBC series Being Human which I enjoyed quite a bit. So far, so good on this one and Jared handles the lead role quite well.

Television:

Gentefied: Season 2 (Netflix) – A half-hour comedy-drama that I thought would do way better than it did, this series comes from showrunner Marvin Lemus and is based on his internet series of the same name about three cousins who band together to keep their Grandfather’s popular Boyle Heights taco shop in business as the neighbourhood becomes more gentrified. The cast is all unknown to me other than the grandfather who is played by Joaquín Cosio from the Del Toro FX series The Strain and Wilmer Valderrama who plays the building owner and it is well written and original and it looks like Lemus capitalized on the much higher budget from Netflix because this show looks great but I’m surprised about the second season renewal because I thought it flopped. Now that it’s here, I’m very interested to see how it progresses.

The Shrink Next Door (AppleTV+) – The People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive for this year, Paul Rudd, and one of the funniest men on the planet, Will Ferrell, had reunited after their Anchorman movies for a new AppleTV+ comedy-drama series that is based on a podcast. Being a long-time podcaster myself, I love to see that the medium is getting more legs in other media so this concept was pretty exciting to me. The show is the story of Marty and the therapist who turned his life around then subsequently took it over. When he meets Dr. Ike, Marty just wants to get better at boundaries but over 30 years, he’ll learn all about them and what happens when they get crossed. Is this button pushing to make Marty a better person or just a sick social experiment from a mad man? I love that these are the actors that are paired together for these very different roles and I can’t wait to see them traverse the decades as the show progresses. This might be the low-key hit of the week.

Dopesick (Disney+) – From executive producer and director Barry Levinson and writer and creator Danny Strong, this new limited series takes a deep look at the opioid crisis and how we got there through the epidemic that was caused by the miracle drug, Oxycontin. The series takes viewers to the epicentre of America’s struggle with opioid addiction, from the boardrooms of Purdue Pharma where salesmen are encouraged to use dubious methods to convince doctors to push a drug mislabeled as non-addictive, to a distressed Virginia mining community experiencing tragedy after tragedy, to the hallways of the DEA where the FDA’s blind push through of the drug finally hits a breaking point. The series has an incredible cast with Michael Keaton, Rosario Dawson, Peter Sarsgaard, Kaitlin Dever and more but each episode hits you like a ton of bricks and may cause a need for a breather after each one.

Dexter: New Blood (Crave) – The Sopranos used their chance to satisfy their fans who were let down by the infamous fade to black that angered many but I really loved with a prequel movie that kind of disappointed more people. Dexter gets to do the same thing now by kind of retconning the last terrible season of the acclaimed series or, who knows, maybe they keep it in place as a “screw you, we did it” sort of thing. The series is set ten years after Dexter Morgan went missing in the eye of Hurricane Laura at the end of the final season and he is now living under an assumed name in Upstate New York, Iron Lake, far from his original home in Miami. We definitely should assume his “dark passenger” is still along for the ride but what is his son Harrison like now and does he have his own darkness to satiate? Also, Jennifer Carpenter, who played his sister Deb, is in this revival as well and, given her fate in the series, what role does she play now? There are so many questions swirling around this new revisit to an old friend and I’m definitely excited to check it out.

Snoopy In Space: Season 2 (AppleTV+) – The bringing back of Snoopy has done some good for AppleTV+ who really needed something to give the parents and kids as a selling tool and it has to be both the pushing of beloved characters and putting it in the hands of people who exhibit a reverence for the Peanuts history. Having gone through all of the episodes with my daughter, there isn’t a single moment that feels false. The story follows Snoopy as his vision of becoming an astronaut turns into reality and he and Woodstock tag along with the Peanuts gang on a trip to NASA. Of course, they are chosen for an important mission to space and the chance to become heroes… in their own head. What can I say except if you have anything against Snoopy and the gang you are pretty much a monster and should be locked up.

What The Hell Should I Watch? – Nov 4th

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November 4, 2021

New Releases:

Eternals – It’s crazy to see, as we get closer to the reveal and origins of another super-powered team within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, some of the worst reviews that have come out of this franchise in its over ten year run. I have to say that I am totally skeptical of them as I have seen the review bombing of the film based on its inclusion of LGBTQ+ characters and it comes from Academy Award-winning director Chloe Zhao as well. The film directly follows the events of Avengers: Endgame when an unexpected tragedy forces the Eternals, ancient aliens who have been living on Earth in secret for thousands of years, out of the shadows to reunite against mankind’s most ancient enemy, the Deviants. The cast of this movie looks awesome with two Game Of Thrones cast members in Kit Harrington and Richard Madden, Atlanta’s Bryan Tyree Henry, the brilliant Barry Keoghan, the now totally jacked Kumail Nanjiani and the iconic Angelina Jolie and that’s definitely not everyone. I don’t care what anyone says, I’m excited for this one.

Finch – Tom Hanks has taken some serious genre opportunities this year as we have already gotten a great wester from him and Captain Phillips director Paul Greengrass in News Of The World and now we get a post-apocalyptic sci-fi drama from the guy who did that really dark Game Of Thrones episode from the final season that everyone complains about. Just know that Hanks once again gives it his all and I loved every minute of it. He plays the title character, a robotics engineer and one of the few survivors of a cataclysmic solar event that has left the world a wasteland that has been living in an underground bunker for a decade and built a world of his own that he shares with his dog, Goodyear. He creates a robot, played by Caleb Landry Jones, to watch over Goodyear when he no longer can and, as the trio embarks on a perilous journey into a desolate American West, Finch strives to show his creation, who names himself Jeff, the joy and wonder of what it means to be alive. Their road trip is paved with both challenges and humour, as it’s as difficult for Finch to goad Jeff and Goodyear to get along as it is for him to manage the dangers of the new world. This movie is brilliant with each character being so endearing and well fleshed out, the humour is ever-present, and the peril of survival. At the time of writing this, I’m unsure what any fellow critic thinks but I was reeled in from the get-go.

The Harder They Fall – I got only a few minutes into this film, just past the cold open and credits, when I knew I was in for a hell of a ride with this new western. The cast alone is worth screaming from the rooftops because we’ve got Lovecraft County’s Jonathan Majors, Idris Elba, Academy Award winner Regina King, Oscar nominee Lakeith Stansfield and Delroy Lindo just to name a few. The story follows outlaw Nat Love who discovers that his enemy Rufus Buck is being released from prison and rounds up his gang to track him down and seek revenge. Those riding with him in this badass and beautiful looking new school Western include his former love Stagecoach Mary, his right and left-hand men hot-tempered Bill Pickett and fast drawing Jim Beckwourth and a surprising adversary-turned-ally only known as Cuffee. Rufus Buck has his own fearsome crew, including “Treacherous” Trudy Smith and Cherokee Bill, and they are not a group that knows how to lose which leads to a crazy final showdown that had me on the edge of my seat. This is the debut film from Jeymes Samuel who gets to put a future-length spin on his short film from eight years ago with the producing power of Jay-Z to back it up and it all turned out gloriously. Jay-Z also debuts a song over the beginning credits that sets up the film in the best possible way. This might be one of my favourite movies this year.

Spencer – This is a movie I have been looking forward to ever since it was announced because I am a huge advocate for Kristen Stewart in movies as dunking on her for her performances in the Twilight movies is old and busted these days. Is she a good enough actress to take on a huge public figure that was beloved internationally? Yes, I think so. The film has KStew playing Princess Diana right at the time when she and Prince Charles were about to call it quits. During her Christmas holidays with the royal family at the Sandringham estate in Norfolk, England, the holiday season will mean something a little bit different for the Windsors and nothing will be the same afterwards. I haven’t even seen the film yet but I want to believe that this may be a contender for best actress and Pablo Lorrain, the film’s director, is no slouch in the biopic department, already giving us the stellar Jackie starring Natalie Portman.

The Electrical Life Of Louis Wain – Benedict Cumberbatch is going to have a strong final part of 2021 with this movie getting some love and his other film, Jane Campion’s The Power Of The Dog, also getting rave reviews and the good news is you can see them all from the comfort of your own home. Yes, we now live in an era where the Oscar hopefuls are getting snapped up by streaming services like Netflix or, in this case, Amazon Prime. This film dabbles in the art field with writer and director Will Sharpe making his feature film debut about the story of English artist Louis Wain who rises to prominence at the end of the 19th century for his surreal cat paintings that seemed to reflect his declining sanity. I love stories about misunderstood geniuses like Lewis Carroll and the like so a biopic like this is totally up my alley and I love Cumberbatch’s character work. I also would be remiss to point out that the cinematography was done by Erik Alexander Wilson who did such beautiful work on Paddington 2.

A Man Named Scott – I really love a good music documentary about origins, inspiration, musical drive and creation and I feel like that is exactly what this film will be, focusing on a different genre than I’ve seen in the last few music films and it is all based around one of my favourite rappers, Kid Cudi. The film follows the music career of Kid Cudi from the release of his incredible album ‘Day n Nite’ in 2008 through present-day recordings. Friends and producers illustrate his story in conjunction with concert footage and never before seen behind-the-scenes. There were so many different things I learned about Cudi’s process in songwriting, mental health and how he is with his friends, like Dune star Timothee Chalamet and I totally dug everything about it. I hope people pick up on it when it launches on Amazon Prime.

Love Hard – Netflix has a penchant for releasing some really dumb and really bad romantic comedies and every now and then I get duped by them because an actor I like is in it and find myself cursing the producers when the credits roll. That was definitely the case with this movie that has Silicon Valley’s Jimmy O. Wang in it and, well, that shouldn’t have been an indicator as he’s done some terrible ones. The film also has The Vampire Diaries’ Nina Dobrev and Never Have I Ever’s Darren Barnet and follows a lovelorn LA girl who falls for an East Coast guy on a dating app and decides to surprise him for the holidays, only to discover that she’s been catfished. I can’t lie, everything about this movie looks lame and completely forgettable and, as much as I enjoy all of these three in other things, it’s not enough to make me at all interested in this one.

Only The Animals – I’m a huge fan of French cinema and have been for a long time. Their films usually have a great depth of character and a rich story to them and this one definitely plays into that but in a multi-faceted way that explores multiple characters’ journeys that all lead to a tragic conclusion. The story surrounds the mystery of a missing woman whose car is discovered on a road to a small remote village after a snow storm. While the police don’t know where to start, five people are linked to the disappearance, each one with his or her own secret. The coincidence factor is constantly raised and pushed in this film, almost to a point where it is a detriment to the final outcome but I still felt wrapt in the mystery. The one thing that is very true is there is absolutely no likeable male character in this film, every one of them acting with a dark motive, but maybe that’s the point. I do like that Inglourious Basterds actor Denis Menochet is part of the ensemble but he is such a dirtbag in it.

Blu-Ray:

Nine Days – I hadn’t heard of writer and director Edson Oda before starting his ambitious and deeply philosophical feature-length live-action debut but you can be sure that I know his name now and definitely feel the influence of those who inspired him. It also helps that he had the great talent of Us star Winston Duke to anchor his insanely existential story to and the erratic power of Zazie Beetz to dispel those feelings of narrative control. This film is incredibly hard to describe but to put it into the vaguest of terms, it follows Duke as a reclusive man who conducts a series of interviews with human souls for a chance to be born into existence. Skirting discussions of existence in an umbrella of grand questions, the movie plays as if Terence Malick’s Tree Of Life was a philosophical thriller and manages to not get ugly in its pretentiousness but instead prompts more introversion into the viewer’s own beliefs. This movie is definitely not going to be for everyone and the reward lies not within individual scenes but the entirety of its mosaic and comes out the other side with its own separate narrative on consciousness and what we choose to do with it. I also loved the casting with Benedict Wong stealing every scene he was in.

PAW Patrol: The Movie – Every nightmare for the parents of the last eight years has finally come true as the gang from the Paw Patrol have now landed themselves in a big-screen film that will have their faithful fan base tugging at their moms and dads begging to see it. Yes, that’s right, Ryder and his team-up pups have been upgraded and become more textured with their feature film debut and, although it has a few jokes that may land with adults, it’s very much business as usual. The story follows the gang as they move to Adventure City to keep tabs on the sleazy Mayor Humdinger who has gained leadership over the big city in an uncontested election. The movie features some guest voice work from Kim Kardashian West, Dax Shepherd, Randall Park and Jimmy Kimmel and, thankfully, doesn’t overstay its welcome to the point that you want to be euthanized. Honestly, I expected a lot worse.

Pig – It was a weird week in the new release section when this came out as there were two films that were completely pig-centric and in a fashion that would surprise no one that knows me, I hugely celebrated this one, the Nicolas Cage movie. The legendary and iconic actor adds another incredible performance to his recent renaissance in his career with a film that fits neatly in the calibre of films like Joe, Mandy and Color Out Of Space, giving me more ammo to call him one of the greatest. The story is fairly simple at first, with Cage playing a truffle hunter who lives alone in the Oregonian wilderness that must return to his past in Portland in search of his beloved foraging pig after she is kidnapped in the middle of the night and the assailants leave him for dead. The story opens itself up as it begins the second act leading to a totally brilliant finale, all with Nic alongside his benefactor, played by Alex Wolff in an equally great performance. This movie had me on the edge of my seat and not just because it is a Nic Cage film but because it was so well presented by writer and director Michael Sarnoski who guides this story with veteran precision. This movie is so damn good.

Come True – Is it finally time for some horror? Oh yes, it is kiddies but, remember, in my world, it’s always time for horror! This is the lone release this week from the Great White North and it is also the sophomore film from filmmaker Anthony Scott Burns who made a pretty solid debut with Our House starring Thomas Mann. This film features the always great Julia Sarah Stone as eighteen-year-old Sarah who, looking for an escape from her recurring nightmares, submits to a university sleep study, but soon realizes she’s become the conduit to a frightening new discovery. I really liked this movie on a surface level ad loved the textured madness of her dream world but the more I started to break it down after viewing it the more that I felt the hollowness of its attempts to be clever as plot holes and missteps start to rend the experience apart leading to an ending that was entirely not satisfying. The film is by no means bad, just underdeveloped and a bit underwhelming in its final delivery but the Clive Barker Hellraiser-like nature of the “other side” of the landscape is enough to keep you interested.

Zone 414 – Guy Pearce is an immediate draw to any film he takes part in but his agent seems to throw every available script at him to the point that I feel like he’ll do anything. That said, this one interested me solely in that it was a sci-fi story with him in it and it has robots so my nerd senses take over. Set in the near future, the film follows private detective David Carmichael, hired by Marlon Veidt, an eccentric businessman, to track down his missing daughter. David teams up with Jane, a highly advanced A.I. to solve the mystery, which may be more treacherous than the payday would suggest. The secondary thing that makes me interested in this film is the co-star Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz who was in one of my favourite French thrillers of the last decade, Revenge. That being as it is, this movie doesn’t go above being mediocre at any point during it. Again, Pearce’s talent is utterly wasted ad as good as Lutz looks onscreen, she isn’t really given all that much to do. As far as the debut of filmmaker Andrew Baird goes, it’s an interesting start but needs some more substance in the delivery.

The Sheik – Usually, I’m bringing the classics from companies like Warner Archive but every now and then Paramount sends me a reissue on blu-ray which is what I have this week but it goes beyond some of the aforementioned releases by at least a decade as this romantic adventure drama was released at the beginning of the roaring twenties. The film stars two of the celebrated talents of the era, Agnes Ayres and Rudolph Valentino, and under the eye of the equally celebrated filmmaker George H. Melford. The story follows a charming Arabian sheik who becomes infatuated with an adventurous, modern-thinking Englishwoman and abducts her to his home in the Saharan desert. The free-spirited socialite recoils from his passionate embraces and yearns to be released and, only after being kidnapped by desert bandits, does she realize how much she has grown to love the sheik, who comes to her rescue in the nick of time. For a long time, this film was revered and looked upon as a masterpiece, included among the American Film Institute’s list of the top one hundred America’s Greatest Love Stories movies. The abduction angle is a little dicey these days I think so that may be a little redacted.

Kung Fu: Season 1 – It’s been a long time since David Carradine roamed the streets of Western America as Shaolin Monk Kwai Chang Caine in the original series Kung Fu, which ran from 1972 to 1975, a movie in 1986, then rebooted in 1993 to run for another four seasons. Well, The CW, who are no strangers to rebooting popular shows, have put this classic martial arts serial in the crosshairs for a gender-swapped update. Starring Legacies actress Olivia Liang, she plays a young Chinese-American woman named Nicky Chen who, after a quarter-life crisis, decides to drop out of college and go on a life-changing journey to an isolated monastery in China. She returns home to find her hometown overrun with crime and corruption and vows to use her martial arts skills and Shaolin values to protect her community and bring criminals to justice while searching for the assassin who killed her Shaolin mentor and is now targeting her. Much like the Walker, Texas Ranger reboot, this show plays in the corny sandbox but it still has all of those nods to the original that will make you smile and remember Caine and how he was here to help us.

Steve’s Blu-Ray & DVD Geek Outs:

Black Lightning: Season 4 – Let’s just acknowledge right here how fantastic all of the DC Universe shows have been since the start of their sort of expanded universe, starting with Stephen Amell’s Arrow. Everything that has been put out has been a total knockout and that extends to this series that, I admit, as a comic book fan I was a bit hazy on the character. Cress Williams plays the titular hero whose civilian identity is Jefferson Pierce, a crusading school principal who gets back into action as the original African-American electrical superhero Black Lightning. He hung up the suit and his secret identity years ago, but with a daughter hell-bent on justice and a star student being recruited by a local gang, he’ll be pulled back into the fight as the wanted vigilante and DC legend. Locally shot in Vancouver, as are all of these shows, this is a very entertaining series with fantastic action sequences in every episode. Cruising through this show has been an absolute pleasure and it is bittersweet to see it come to an end with this final season.

Crocodile Dundee Trilogy – As a kid, I grew up thinking Australian legend Paul Hogan was some kind of otherworldly superhero and it was definitely due to these films or, at least, the first couple. I will say that they paled a bit on rewatch but they had me wrapt as a youngster. For those who forgot about Mick from down under, the first film followed an American reporter, played by Linda Kozlowski, who goes to the Australian outback to meet the eccentric crocodile poacher and invites him to New York City. Of course, love ensues and the second film has Dundee protecting his New York love from gangsters who’ve followed her down under before the final film, released thirteen years later, has Mick heading to Los Angeles with his son for a different and vastly less successful fish out of water story. Are these films good? Hell no. Are they a representation of comedy of its time? Definitely and they can still be enjoyed on that level I think.

Night Shift – The first-ever Michael Keaton performance on the big screen is now on blu-ray and I am totally stoked. As a kid who loved everything Keaton did, this film holds a special place in my heart and, yet again, I definitely saw this movie way too young. The film was directed by Ron Howard and follows a morgue attendant who is talked into running a brothel at his workplace after a deceased pimp is sent there. Unfortunately, the pimp’s killers don’t look too kindly on this new “business”, nor does the morgue’s owner and both look to shut it down in their own unique ways. Just imagine a ten-year-old kid learning what a brothel was through the help of Mr. Mom and The Fonz and you’ve got a good representation of my experience but, that aside, I loved this movie and still really do. The comedy and the timing of the cast are timeless even if everything else is outdated. Warner Archive knocked the cover off the ball with this one.

Yokai Monsters – I’ve got some weird one-offs to finish off this week’s geek outs so bear with me but it starts out with some classic 1960s Japanese kaiju stuff and if that doesn’t scream “GEEK” I don’t know what to tell you. This is a new and gorgeous box set from the masterminds at Arrow Video who don’t just bring their all to the content on the discs themselves but the packaging as well. The collection features four films that kick off with 100 Monsters from 1968 to Spook Warfare from the same year then Along With Ghosts the year after. We then fast forward to the finale which was released in 2005, The Great Yokai War, which was my introduction years ago when I worked at a video store. If you like your Godzilla and Gamera with a little more mythological lore then these movies are for you and you will adore this set.

Honey Girls – This is one of the weirdest new releases I have gotten in a while and it all started with the header “From Build-A-Bear Studios” which threw me for a loop. Not only do we build stuffed animals in their store but they make movies now? It also stars Ashanti who I feel like I haven’t heard anything about since the Ja Rule days, pre-Fyre Fest. The film has the 2000s pop star playing mega pop star Fancy G who hosts a contest to find the next big solo artist but the young contestants realize they are “better together” and secretly form a band called Honey Girls and become a huge hit cloaked in mystery. This movie is totally made for the kids, really the biggest reason I’m bringing it is that I hardly bring the kid’s films to this section. Come to think of it, this one may burn out that subject on this part for a little bit.

Television:

Narcos Mexico: Season 3 (Netflix) – The spin-off of the massively popular Netflix series, Narcos, comes to an end with this third and final season which continues to document the rise of the Guadalajara Cartel, following an American DEA agent who learns the danger of targeting narcos in Mexico. Starring Michael Pena and Diego Luna with narration from Scoot McNairy, this show had more than enough star power to keep me engaged and I’m really excited to see where this show is going to end off, especially with the chaos and tension of the last two seasons. Hopefully, the momentum keeps up, which feels like an easy bet as neither this nor the original series really has had a lull point. Get ready for the binge, everybody!

Big Mouth: Season 5 (Netflix) – It’s time to get uncomfortable with our bodies all over again as this lewd, rude and massively crude animated comedy returns with all-new episodes. I adore anything that Nick Kroll and John Mulaney do and when you throw Maya Rudolph and Jason Mantzoukas into the mix then I am in love. For those who don’t know about this show, it is the awkward and sometimes brutal coming of age story of two best friends in the throes of puberty, this time dealing with the fallout of summer camp and new urges that have arisen since then and new love interests that have been created along the way. Watch it at your own risk but keep it in mind that it is totally my kind of messed up.

Dickinson: Season 3 (AppleTV+) – One of my favourite young actresses today and the future Kate Bishop in the upcoming Hawkeye series which hits Disney+ in December, Hailee Steinfeld has been on my radar since her breakout performance in True Grit. AppleTV+ knows her star power as well as they cast her in this great new series which delighted viewers when it debuted with the streaming service and quickly renewed it for a third and final season. Steinfeld takes the lead role in a highly fictionalized and stylized version of the real-life aspiring writer Emily Dickinson who is refreshingly brought to life with modern sense and sensibility. Embarrassed by her own parents and shunned from society, she stops at nothing to rebel against her strict background and makes her voice heard through the magic of poetry and, honestly, the series really works well. It’s an ambitious project but former head writer for The Affair, Alena Smith can channel all of it into a culturally relevant story without dampening the time period or real-life character. I was surprised by it.

What The Hell Should I Watch? – Oct 28th

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October 28, 2021

New Releases:

Last Night In Soho – October is a damn good month for movies this year as we have yet another week that features one of my most anticipated films of the year and it happens to be one from a filmmaker who makes nothing but gold. Yes, Edgar Wright could be considered possibly my favourite current working writer and director who hasn’t let me down yet with a perfect track record and he already has a film that came out this year with his music-driven documentary, The Sparks Brothers. This puts him back into the narrative driver seat with a darker story about an aspiring fashion designer who is mysteriously able to enter the 1960s where she encounters a dazzling wannabe singer. The glamour is not all it appears to be and the dreams of the past start to crack and splinter into something darker as she is increasingly in more and more danger of not returning to her world. The cast is stellar in this with The Queen’s Gambit’s Anya Taylor-Joy, Jojo Rabbit’s Thomasin Mackenzie and former Doctor Who Matt Smith and the editing, scope and music will guarantee to be top-notch as that is where Wright always excels. Buckle up because this one is going to get crazy.

Antlers – Guillermo del Toro returns to creep us out this Halloween but only from the writer’s chair as Hostiles and Out Of The Furnace director Scott Cooper helms this monstrous tale that, just from the trailer, has me swiftly onboard. It feels like this film was announced so long ago and, with the pandemic being the time suck it has been, I had completely forgotten that it was coming but I love how much gothic substance it seems to ooze. The story is set in an isolated Oregon town and follows a middle-school teacher and her sheriff brother who become embroiled with her enigmatic student whose dark secrets lead to terrifying encounters with a legendary ancestral creature who came before them. The advance reviews are interesting for this, some calling it an arthouse monster movie which has me salivating for it because it reminds me of Brian Bertino’s The Monster, a film that didn’t get enough love. Maybe this will be the same and become a deep genre favourite.

Army Of Thieves – I feel like I have to armour myself before I head into this review because the Zack Snyder army is brutal, unforgiving and very interested in everyone else’s opinions so I have to be careful here. That being the case, I’m pretty glad that this prequel for Army Of The Dead decided to focus on one of the more interesting characters but given his fate in the movie that follows, I’m confused as to why this wasn’t released first. The film focuses on German safecracker Ludwig Dieter but more on his origin story as an uber-fan named Sebastian who posts his love letters to safe creators on his YouTube channel. Through an international jewel thief that finds his videos, he is recruited into a group of aspiring thieves on a top-secret heist to unlock three legendary safes during the early stages of the zombie apocalypse. The film was directed by the lead actor Matthias Schweighöfer as well and he is the only thing that is keeping this paint by numbers action thriller alive alongside actress Nathalie Emmanuel who does marginally better genre films with the Fast And Furious movies. I didn’t hate this movie just really questioned its point for existing.

Hypnotic – After her stellar work for her husband, writer and director Mike Flanagan, in Hush, The Haunting Of Hill House and the recent Midnight Mass, Kate Siegel is one of my favourite genre actresses working right now and this new film has me interested just based on her being the lead. The film comes from directing duo Matt Angel and Suzanne Coote who’s the last film The Open House had a lot of promise to it then had a hard time keeping the tone right and sticking the landing. With Siegel on board, I have more faith in this story of a young woman seeking self-improvement who enlists the help of a renowned hypnotherapist but after a handful of intense sessions, she discovers unexpected and deadly consequences that spiral her life even more out of control. A strong trailer keeps my interest flowing in this horror story and I’m compelled by it being written by Richard D’Ovidio who did the Dark Castle remake of Thirteen Ghosts, a film that I loved in theatres and one that has a little cult love of its own over the years. I’m not expecting that level of insanity or even something like Malignant but something fun nonetheless.

A Mouthful Of Air – Without a big ad campaign or any trailers that I had seen leading up to now, Sony seems to be trying to sneak this Amanda Seyfried drama past us which seems kind of odd as it has a bit of a built-in audience with it. The film comes from writer Amy Koppelman whose book I Smile Back was adapted into a hell of a movie and now she makes her directorial debut with this. Seyfried plays bestselling children’s author Julie Davis who’s work’s main focus is for kids to unlock their fears, a piece of advice she hasn’t taken to heart herself. When her daughter is born, that trauma is brought to the fore, and with it, a crushing battle to survive and persevere for her family’s future. Koppelman manages to keep her first foray into filmmaking grounded enough and small enough to excel in a great character story, showing the groundwork she gave Sarah Silverman in I Smile Back wasn’t a one-time thing. The result is a raw and real performance from Amanda Seyfried and a film that gives hefty reasoning as to why it should be watched.

13 Minutes – I can’t lie, when I saw country music star Trace Adkins name top lining this new film I almost panned it as completely uninteresting as I hate country music that much. Sorry, it may be a possible character flaw but I’ve made peace with that. The fact that Thora Birch, Amy Smart, Anne Heche Peter Facinelli and Paz Vega brought me back into it as all these actors were enjoyable for me but have largely disappeared, save for the rare film like this. The film focuses on a very real and concerning thing for everyone in the world and distills it into the story about four families in a Heartland town who are tested in a single day when a tornado hits, forcing paths to cross and redefining the meaning of survival. As interesting as this story could be, the production value fails it out the gate because everything looks cheap and therefore corny which is a dagger of death in any disaster movie. It’s not even cheesy in a fun Sharknado way either and everyone in this movie is dreadful and I’m not sure that it could just be blamed on the writing. Nothing is redeeming about this one.

Snakehead – It feels like the career of Sung Kang has been kind of overshadowed by his involvement in the Fast & Furious series, which he joined when his friend Justin Lin got to helm Tokyo Drift. Even after the death of Han, he didn’t get to explore anything else movie-wise but we cheered like hell when Han was brought back for F9. Well, this is a little bit of showcasing of the actor I have enjoyed since Better Luck Tomorrow, playing a supporting role in a gritty tale of a Chinese immigrant who gets caught up in an international crime ring of human smuggling while attempting to make a better life for her family. The film is violent and dark with an almost depressing finale to it that will stick with you and that is definitely through the documentary-like closeness that the cinematography exhibits and I look forward to the next one from writer and director Evan Jackson Leong. This was quite an impressive narrative feature debut.

Blu-Ray:

The Suicide Squad – James Gunn jumped ship from Marvel temporarily when Twitter came out to attack him but the great thing is Warner Bros. and DC Comics snapped him up immediately to do a little course correction with a team that had so much potential and flopped badly The Suicide Squad. Well, he’s got some of the original players like the brilliantly cast Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, Joel Kinneman as Rick Flagg, Viola Davis as the formidable Amanda Waller and more and adds his flavouring with Nathan Fillion, Michael Rooker and Sean Gunn to surround the great new additions of Idris Elba and John Cena. This sequel follows supervillains Quinn, Bloodsport, Peacemaker and a collection of nutty cons at Belle Reve prison who reluctantly join the super-secret, super-shady Task Force X as they are dropped off at the remote, enemy-infused island of Corto Maltese in a mission that could only be described as one-way. This movie rocks so hard, shlocky and gory in a way that shows off the foundation of Gunn’s career as a Troma Entertainment filmmaker, and is darkly hilarious, brash and unpredictable. Let’s just say that you shouldn’t form any attachments to any of the characters. That said, everyone kind of gets their moments to shine within the chaos.

Stillwater – Matt Damon thrillers still intrigue as he always picks stories that compel and make you think and this one is no different as it is based on a true story. The other thing that immediately grabs my attention about this film is Spotlight director Tom McCarty, who always seems to bring it in these high drama films, which makes me forgive him for making an Adam Sandler dud like The Cobbler. The story has Damon as unemployed roughneck Bill Baker who travels from Oklahoma to Marseille to visit his estranged daughter Allison that is imprisoned for a murder she claims she did not commit. Focusing on a new tip that could exonerate her, Allison presses Bill to engage her legal team and eager to prove his worth and regain his daughter’s trust, he takes matters into his own hands. Quickly roadblocked by language barriers, cultural differences, and a complicated legal system, he gets the help of a French actress and single mother who helps him navigate a path to his daughter’s freedom. The film is a great vehicle for Damon to show some of his worried dad chops and I thought it was a better than average story but I just wish that it steered away from the Amanda Knox comparisons in its marketing because the two are very different stories.

Don’t Breathe 2 – A few years after the breakout hit and original thriller from Evil Dead remake director Fede Alvarez blew our minds, his long-awaited follow up is now on our doorstep and even if Fede is taking a back seat in this one and producing it his fingerprints are all over it. Now, as far as I see, we don’t get the return of Jane Levy in this but we do get the awesome and formidable Stephen Lang reprising his role as the terrifying old blind man and the trailer gives me goosebumps. The film picks up with his character who has been hiding out for years in an isolated cabin and has taken in and raised a young girl who lost her parents in a house fire. Unfortunately for the perpetrators, their quiet existence is shattered when a group of kidnappers show up and take the girl, forcing the Blind Man to leave his haven to rescue her. I expect the same sort of shocking ultra-violence to permeate this film thoroughly but what I find interesting is that the Blind Man has been shifted in his role as the antagonist in the first movie and now is an almost anti-hero we root for in this one. Honestly, when I think about the original film the turkey baster scene always rises to the top so I hope there is just as memorable of a scene in this one.

On The Rocks – Sofia Coppola has returned during this odd year of movie delays with possibly my favourite movie this year and she brought Bill Murray back with her and I couldn’t be happier with it. The film stars Rashida Jones as a young mother who reconnects with her larger-than-life playboy father, played by Murray,  and they embark on a mission to see if her workaholic husband, played by Marlon Wayans, is having an affair. The chemistry between Jones and Murray, first displayed in the Netflix Christmas special A Very Murray Christmas, is so palpable that you just want them to star in absolutely everything together. The script is so snappy and fun, The film charms you in every moment and I would be perfectly content in watching this film every day for weeks on end, I loved it that much. This is a true gem of a movie and I highly recommend it.

New Order – Just the lead into this new thriller is utterly fascinating as it has almost a “High Rise” like the collapse of society to it which makes it fit into today’s overhanging feeling. A Mexican and French-produced drama that was originally conceived six years ago, this is a near-future dystopia that takes place amid a protest that rages in the streets while Marianne’s high society family prepares for her wedding. At first, only splatters of green paint and the appearance of Rolando, a former employee seeking emergency medical funds, intrude on the festivities but soon the party is unable to keep the reckoning at bay, and what follows is a swift disintegration of law and order defined first by class lines, then by disastrous government recapitulation. The reviews on this film are off the charts with so much praise being heaped on the excellent acting, cinematography and editing, I am salivating to get my eyes on it, personally. This film feels almost Kubrickian by comparison.

Dinner At Eight – I got a handful of Warner Archive this week and they are all classic from different eras and of varying genres as well. This movie kicks it off, a film with an incredible powerhouse cast that features the top stars of the thirties with John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Billie Burke, Jean Harlow and more. The story follows affluent couple Millicent and Oliver Jordan who throw a dinner for a handful of wealthy and well-off acquaintances, each of whom has much to reveal. Contends with financial woes and causing a lot of tension between the couple, the couple tries to keep their secrets from bubbling to the surface while mining for the dirt on everyone else. The film was remade in the late eighties for television and featured John Mahoney, Mrsha Mason and Charles Durning but this one here is the real deal, a great farce comedy.

Children Of The Damned – Let’s get spooky in the classic sense and we’re doing double duty in the Warner Archive department starting with this chiller. This one is cool because it is the precursor to Village Of TheDamned, a film that got remade in an almost comedic way by the Master Of Horror, John Carpenter. The story follows six impossibly intelligent children from all over the world with dangerous psychic powers that hide in a church in England after the military tries to experiment on them. Besieged, they warn the military to back off before unleashing the worst of their abilities and creating absolute carnage. Interestingly, this film is a sort of LGBTQ+ story in a way as actors Ian Hendry and Alan Badel play two flatmates in the film who were a gay couple. As it was made at a time when homosexuality was illegal in the United Kingdom, there could be no inference that they were anything other than platonic friends. Each country’s film histories are so rich so it’s interesting to hear of the old international filmmaking through titles like this.

Mary Stevens, M.D. – This reissue of classic 1933 drama is really interesting because the first time this was attempted for a re-release just three years later, it was denied, allegedly, based on its topics of marital infidelity and unwed motherhood.  The film was that forward-thinking at the time and tried to dispel a lot of societal issues that were barred from being on the silver screen by producers. The story follows Mary (Kay Francis) and Don (Lyle Talbot) who graduate from medical school together, and, while Mary has a crush on Don, he has eyes for only Lois (Thelma Todd), the daughter of a prominent politician. Mary devotes herself to her medical practice while Don wastes his talents in favour of booze and high society but when the two meet again sometime later, they have an affair, and Don promises to leave his wife. After Mary discovers she is pregnant and Don finds that divorce is not simple, tragedy occurs and this is where the film gets a little controversial. This movie is largely not talked about so it’s pretty fascinating that Warner Archive has stepped in and brought it to the masses again.

Eye Of The Devil – Some more classic horror to finish off my Warner Archive stuff this week and this one has some Halloween brilliance to it as it features a pre-Dr. Loomis Donald Pleasance well over a decade before he would take that iconic role. The rest of the cast is pretty great too with David Niven, Deborah Kerr and the sadly foreboding presence of Sharon Tate. The film is about vineyard owner Marquis Philippe de Montfaucon who is called back to his castle Bellenac because of another dry season. He asks his wife, Catherine de Montfaucon, and children to remain in Paris but they still come after him. and soon discovers that her husband is acting mysteriously and that his employees are following old pagan rituals that call for the life of the Marquis to save the crops. The film was helmed by storied genre filmmaker J. Lee Thompson who had to endure the firing of original star Kim Novak and protect Tate in her first role last the studio wanted to replace her constantly. These old Hollywood stories nestled within these productions are so interesting.

Deep Red 4K – Look, we can’t have a proper Halloween without the inclusion of Dario Argento in some capacity. I don’t make the rules, I just enforce them and follow them to a T. I will be the first to admit that this isn’t the best of his catalogue but it is dripping with blood, gore and his sinister and colourful style plus it has Goblin doing the music again and Arrow Video knows how much we need this right now and have presented it on 4K now. The film stars David Hemmings and Argento’s consistent collaborator and wife Daria Nicolodi and is about a jazz pianist and a wisecracking journalist who is pulled into a complex web of mystery after the former witnesses the brutal murder of a psychic. Getting to experience this at the Vancouver International Film Festival a couple of years back with Goblin there to play the live score, I formed a new appreciation of this kind of sub-par flick but I feel like the high definition release may win a few more fans over. It is pretty damn cool.

Star Trek: The Original Series – The coolest thing with being hooked up with Paramount’s home release division is all the Star Trek stuff I have gotten which includes all of the new CBS All Access series like Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, all of the original crew films and now the complete original series to accompany it. This series is iconic, has episodes we all know and has influenced science fiction ever since it debuted in the 1960s. Even better, this box set is on blu-ray and has completely revamped all of the original films and updated it in high definition. It also has hours and hours of featurettes and the set itself is all three seasons in gorgeous steelbooks that would be cherished by any Trekkie who got their hands on it. Yes, this is an idea for the upcoming holiday season so get on it now.

Superman: The Complete Animated Series – When this series originally aired, coming on the heels of the greatest animated comic book series ever put together, Batman: The Animated Series, I was captivated by it. Ignoring the protesting of the people that say X-Men is the best, I’ll continue by saying that I own both shows on DVD but to receive this complete series on blu-ray is something special because the writing on it is so phenomenal and maybe the best interpretation of the character that we’ve ever gotten. It bums me out that whenever the conversation of best Superman is brought up that Tim Daly, the voice of the big blue boy scout in this, is never part of the choices even though Kevin Conroy, the iconic voice of Batman, is always part of the Caped Crusader best of. Maybe people can rediscover this one and we can get some more love for this iteration of the Man Of Steel.

Steve’s Blu-Ray Geek Outs:

Legend – Arrow Video came through with some collector’s edition gold a few weeks back and it just hit my doorstep this week and it is the perfect title to geek out on and an even better one to kick it off with. It’s pretty funny that I talked about a Legend movie just a couple of weeks ago but this is the superior movie that used that title. Directed by Ridley Scott and scored by Tangerine Dream, the film is a magical adventure which features elves, demons, and other mythical creatures and the Lord of Darkness, played by Tim Curry and the personification of evil at the heart of it, planning to disperse eternal night in the land by killing every unicorn in the world. Although he looks unbeatable, Tom Cruise’s Jack and his friends are disposed to do everything to save the world and Princess Lili, played by an early Steve dream girl, Mia Sara, who Darkness intends to make his wife, from the hands of this evil goliath. This movie was so hated at the time of release but I feel like views have softened towards it and, as a guy who has always loved it, I am overjoyed at that prospect. Also, this set is so freaking gorgeous and people need to have it on their shelves.

Audrey Hepburn 7-Movie Collection – One of the most important actresses of an entire era and the inspiration to many, Audrey Hepburn commanded an entire genre of filmmaking and they are all celebrated in this new Blu-ray set. Let’s list them off, shall we? Truman Capote’s Breakfast At Tiffany’s follows a young New York socialite who becomes interested in a young man who has moved into her apartment building but her past threatens to get in the way. Funny Face is about a shop clerk who is discovered as a new fashion model during an impromptu fashion shoot at a book store. Paris When It Sizzles is about a Hollywood screenwriter whose young assistant helps him over his writer’s block by acting out his fantasies of possible plots. Roman Holiday is a famous Christmas film that you have most likely seen on television before, Sabrina is a classic romantic comedy that was remade with Harrison Ford, War And Peace is an adaptation of the classic Lev Tolstoy book and I have covered My Fair Lady on 4K before so you can title search that one on stevestebbing.ca. There’s a lot of movies in here so I had to blow by some of them. If you know these movies, you know what they’re about, right?

Edge Of Darkness – This film was made during the time where we knew what Mel Gibson was really like as a person so I can understand why people mostly skipped this film and for good reason. That said, I feel like this one is definitely in the underrated column and has a great performance from Gibson, studious direction from Martin Campbell and is based on a pre-existing television series on the BBC in the mid-eighties. The story follows Gibson as a grieving homicide detective who is investigating the murder of his activist daughter when he uncovers a corporate cover-up and government conspiracy with her at the center that attracts an agent tasked with cleaning up the evidence and eliminating everything in his path. Adapted by the phenomenal William Monahan, this film has fantastic character work and a compelling plot that keep you gripped for the entire duration. Buying it for, under ten dollars, I feel like I scored big time.

Television:

Insecure: Season 5 (Crave) – Issa Rae returns with the next season of the HBO series that put her on the map and, honestly, I just started getting into it ahead of its fifth season premiere and I’m kind of kicking myself for not being on the bandwagon sooner. The show was co-created with The Office and The Daily Show’s Larry Wilmore and follows the awkward experiences and racy tribulations of the modern-day African-American woman from the perspective of two female protagonists, Issa and Molly who have been best friends with each other since their college days at Stanford. The writing in this show is both hilarious and biting in its nature, never quite steering you into a false narrative, which reminds me quite a bit of Aziz Ansari’s show Master Of None but notably, the Lena Waite led recent season. I’m so excited to get caught up to the current season as it has been a little while since season four.

Colin In Black And White (Netflix) – Colin Kaepernick will most likely never see another NFL game in his lifetime and the sad realization of that has become more and the seasons since he’s been gone even though, heck, a lot of teams would be lucky to get him. He’s damn good. The best thing now for him is to get his story out there and use his platform to educate and that’s what this series is all about. Teaming up with Ava Duvernay, the show explores Kaepernick’s high school years and the experiences that led him to become an activist. It kind of plays like a very serious version of Chris Rock’s Everybody Hates Chris but with a very pointed message at all times and Kapernick narrating the whole thing. My issue is that the actual reenactment of his life comes off so goofy and underacted, even with Mary Louise Parker and Nick Offerman in prominent roles. I was honestly not too impressed after episode one and have yet to continue.

Star Trek Prodigy (CTV Sci-Fi) – The collective zeitgeist is probably looking at CBS All Access and thinking they’re milking the Gene Roddenberry created universe of smart science fiction for all it can get and, yes, that’s almost exactly what producers are thinking but it is paying off. They have a straightforward series with Discovery, a call-back show with Picard, a comedy series with Lower Decks and now this inbetweener. The series is a teenager aimed animated story that follows a group of teenagers who steal a derelict Starfleet vessel and use it to explore the galaxy. The show signals the return of Kate Mulgrew’s Captain Janeway and Robert Beltran’s Captain Chakotay from Voyager, which makes me far too happy for a guy who isn’t a Trekkie.

Curb Your Enthusiasm: Season 11 (Crave) – Larry David is back to make awkward and uncomfortable moments and to walk away relatively unscathed and, for this, we love him, a definite American treasure. This previous season had much of the same sort of hijinx you would expect, like Larry going head to head against a coffee bar, bringing the wrong date to a destination wedding and more things that he has to make amends for eventually, you know, in his way but each season seems to end in a crescendo that could end it all. Maybe he likes it that way? An easy out. Last season had one of my favourite Curb episodes though with Larry using the MAGA hat to get out of social situations and road rage so this one better have a pretty, pretty pretttttttyyyyyyyyy good one to up the ante on that.

Love Life: Season 2 (Crave) – Anna Kendrick returns for another awkward trip into bad dates, blind encounters one night stands and horrible relationships after a surprisingly good first season that slowly nabbed many Crave viewers after debuting in the States on HBO Max as one of their original launch series. Season two is a bit of a swerve as I feel like it will pull away a bit from Kendrick’s character of Darby and instead takes a focus on Marcus Watkins, played by William Jackson Harper from The Good Place, an actor with absolutely brilliant comedic timing. I’m looking forward to seeing him take on something a little less crazy and something more grounded, relatable and most likely full of cringe-worthy moments. Let us see if this series can best the sophomore slump.

What The Hell Should I Watch? – Oct 21st

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October 21, 2021

New Releases:

Dune – It feels like I’ve been waiting forever for this Denis Villeneuve take on a Frank Herbert-written epic that I have read, as well as all the sequel books that follow. This means I’m fully in the know of a complex story that David Lynch had issues bringing to the screen in the mid-eighties, but did an interesting job, and a series of Sci-Fi Channel movies that were pretty solid but only really targeted at the fans. The gist of this movie’s synopsis is it tells the story of Paul Atreides, a brilliant and gifted young man born into a great destiny beyond his understanding, who must travel to the most dangerous planet in the universe to ensure the future of his family and his people. As malevolent forces explode into conflict over the planet’s exclusive supply of the most precious resource in existence-a commodity capable of unlocking humanity’s greatest potential-only those who can conquer their fear will survive. The cast is big, with Timothee Chalamet leading the way with Zendaya playing his romantic lead and the surrounding cast of Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Rebecca Fergusson, Jason Momoa, Dave Batista and Stellan Skarsgaard to fill out this science fiction epic. My excitement is at fever pitch, even with the so-so reviews I’ve seen so far.

Ron’s Gone Wrong – Disney brings their next computer-animated feature film to the big screen and I have to say that the effectiveness of the non-Pixar works that they have released, which include Wreck-It Ralph, Moana and Raya And The Last Dragon, has me very excited for this one. The voice cast, which includes Luca’s Jack Dylan Grazer, Zach Galifianakis, Ed Helms and Olivia Colman, have me really looking forward to a fun and funny film and the premise just seems like something that will deliver. It is the story of Barney, a socially awkward middle-schooler and Ron, his new walking, talking, digitally connected device, which is supposed to be his ‘Best Friend out of the Box’ but unfortunately, he came out of his packaging defective. The trailer is adorable and absolutely hilarious so I’m hoping all of the good parts weren’t crammed into the ads for it and it pans out as a feature idea.

The French Dispatch – We have been waiting a long time for the next Wes Anderson film, due to the shutdown caused by the pandemic, and even more since the newest live-action story from the idiosyncratic filmmaker as his last feature in this regard was the Academy Award-winning Grand Budapest Hotel in 2014. Again boasting a huge cast that has Timothee Chalamet, in his second film this week, Léa Seydoux, Christophe Waltz, Jeffrey Wright and Elisabeth Moss making their Anderson debut alongside staples like Willem Dafoe, Tilda Swinton, Owen Wilson and Bill Murray, this is another of the most anticipated for me. In a nutshell, the film is a love letter to journalists set in an outpost of an American newspaper in a fictional twentieth-century French city that brings to life a collection of stories published in “The French Dispatch Magazine”. The movie has been described as “quintessentially Anderson” which illustrates to me that I’m going to love it so if you’re a fan of this very original storyteller’s work then you will be into this one as well.

Night Teeth – With a terrible title like this, I really wasn’t quite sure what I was getting into with this Netflix-produced horror thriller but it is a vampire flick and we are mid-October so why the hell not? I was even letting the fact that the credits said “and Megan Fox” because Machine Gun Goofball wasn’t in it and she appears only for one quick scene. The film follows a college student who fills in for his older brother as a nighttime chauffeur and his night consist of picking up two mysterious women for a night of party-hopping across LA. When he uncovers their bloodthirsty nature, their dangerous, shadowy underworld and their plans to shake it to the ground in a series of city-wide stops, he must fight to stay alive and see the morning sun. This movie is corny, underwritten and absolutely dull and boring in many spots throughout. Bumblebee star Jorge Lendeborg Jr. doesn’t appear to have the charisma to hold your interest or the script has betrayed his talent because, either way, this was pretty painful to get through and that ending really filled me with all sorts of regrets.

Jackass Forever – What can I really say about this one in a broad sense because I feel like the target market knows exactly who they are. As a fan of the Bam Margera led CKY series and the original MTV produced Jackass series, I was into all of these movies as well and as I’ve gotten older the appeal is still there in a nostalgic sense but I am ready for it to come to an end, which I believe is the goal of this one as the tagline says that eleven years after the last movie it’s time for finality. Again, not much of a descriptor other than these guys go through insane stunts and pranks, just like always, and it looks like someone tricks Machine Gun Kelly, which I am so here for. Those who know will love it and those who don’t will stay away. Simple as that.

The Capote Tapes – Just seeing the name Capote gives me flashbacks to fifteen years ago and being a video store clerk as two competing Truman Capote films arrived on video, one featuring Toby Jones in the role and the other was an Academy Award-winning turn from Philip Seymour Hoffman. This film is not a dramatic recreation of his In Cold Blood writing process though and instead is a documentary that gets deeper into the man’s psyche than any narrative film could. Using the tapes, animation, and new on-camera interviews with people who knew him, this film explores the impact of Capote’s explosive unfinished novel “Answered Prayers”, something I knew nothing about. It was meant to be Truman Capote’s greatest masterpiece, an epic portrait of New York’s glittering jet-set society but, instead, it sparked the downfall of the iconic author of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood. As far as documentaries go, I was totally intrigued by this film as the man himself was a bigger-than-life being who lived his life without apology which fascinates me, given the time and place he lived in.

Christmas At Cattle Hill – Now, this film is both a testament to how much I love my kid and my dedication to my reviewing craft because, to be quite honest, it is an animated Scandinavian Christmas movie with a terrible overdubbing and it was excruciating on my soul. Okay, maybe that was pretty melodramatic but I really was feeling the minutes of my life falling through the hourglass of time as this film slowly ticked by. Originally titled Jul Pa Kutoppen, something I don’t want to pronounce, the story follows Klara the Calf, excited to spend her first Christmas on Cattle Hill with her father but when they arrive at the farm, she is disappointed to see he has not attempted to decorate for the holidays. When her father is unexpectedly called away for work, Klara sees it as an opportunity to make Cattle Hill a Christmas paradise with the help of the cheeky Christmas elf who lives on the farm, but as Klara finds out it is about being together at Christmas which is the most important. Yes, we can’t have a holiday film without the main moral being “you forgot about the spirit involved” because if it isn’t present, does it count? This movie is not at all good for any sentient adult but the kids will love the Christmas flavour. That said, isn’t it way too early for holiday movies?

Blu-Ray:

Snake Eyes – It’s been a bit of a tough go for the IP of G.I. Joe, known by fans for decades as the greatest American heroes, as the film versions, besides the animated one in the eighties, have all kind of flopped on the world stage in live-action form. There were cool elements in them like Joseph Gordon Levitt’s Cobra Commander which never got fully realized and the inclusion of box office Viagra The Rock as Roadblock in the sequel but nothing fully came together to make an awesome franchise. They’re now going back to the origins of this new film that focuses on the fan-favourite of Snake Eyes, a tenacious loner who is welcomed into an ancient Japanese clan called the Arashikage after saving the life of their heir apparent. After he arrives, the Arashikage teaches Snake Eyes the ways of the ninja warrior while also providing something he’s been longing for, a place to call home. Unfortunately, when secrets from his past are revealed, Snake Eyes’ honour and allegiance will be tested as he turns to fight against those who had taken him in. Crazy Rich Asians star Henry Golding takes the title role of this film that is supposed to have him go silent and never reveal his face again by the conclusion of this film and doesn’t. Instead, they try to ensure a follow-up movie that will never happen as this movie has really nothing going for it and even bobbles the action sequences that are confusing, close-up and devoid of any martial arts coherence whatsoever. What an absolute disappointment this reboot turned into and they even totally wasted the inclusion of Samara Weaving’s Scarlett.

Old – After the fizzling third act of his Unbreakable trilogy with the slightly underwhelming Glass, the trickster and twisty filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan returns with a film that looks like straight-up horror and the film looks so deeply disturbing and equally intriguing. Of course, this movie is all contingent on if Night can keep the story going but the cast is really solid with Gael Garcia Bernal, Rufus Sewell, Alex Wolff, Thomasin McKenzie, Abbey Lee and more so I feel a hit here. The story is about a family on a tropical holiday who discover that the secluded beach where they are relaxing for a few hours is somehow causing them to age rapidly reducing their entire lives into a single day. Guess what? M. Night can’t even keep it going from the get-go as this script is one of the most frustrating pieces of garbage I’ve had to sit through this year. Absolutely no one talks like this and it feels like everyone is repeating their name and occupation throughout the first half of the movie. The elements that form the general idea are pretty cool and I liked some of the cinematography but everything else conspired to make me hate the entire duration of the movie. Shyamalan is on a downward skid right now and it’s not pretty.

Needle In A Timestack – Usually when you see an Academy Award-winning writer’s name attached to a movie you build a little bit of interest, based on it being the works of an internationally renowned creator but beyond that, with this title, I thought it might be a time travel story and, lo and behold, it is. The concerning thing is John Ridley, who both writes and directs this fantasy drama, hasn’t had anything of interest theatrically since 12 Years A Slave and I guarantee he wants to forget Ben-Hur. The story follows Nick and Janine (Oscar® nominees Leslie Odom, Jr. and Cynthia Erivo), a married couple who live in marital bliss until Janine’s ex-husband (Orlando Bloom) warps time to try to tear them apart using Nick’s college girlfriend (Frieda Pinto). As Nick’s memories and reality disappear, he must decide what he’s willing to sacrifice in order to hold onto or let go of everything he loves. I am a total sucker for a time warp film but even with great performances featured in it the movie never takes advantage of that sweet little sci-fi twist and it all ends up being mediocre or worse. The tension is non-existent, the pacing makes it feel overly long and I just keep begging for directors to use Erivo and Odom Jr. properly.

No Man Of God – It feels like there are so many different films and documentaries made about serial killer Ted Bundy at different times during his killing spree or arrest, so much so that it’s a wonder if anything new can come out of this chilling figure. Well, it turns out there is still a little bit to wring out of the story as this new film tries to do exactly that, using Lord Of The Rings actor Elijah Wood and The Marvelous Ms. Maisel’s Luke Kirby in two of the best performances this year. The film follows FBI analyst Bill Hagmaier who is given unprecedented access to Ted Bundy through a series of interviews as he sits on death row, awaiting his execution, in the hopes of understanding the psychology of the serial killer and providing closure for the victim’s families. As Hagmaier delves into Bundy’s dark and twisted mind, a strange and complicated relationship develops that neither man expected. This movie absolutely floored me, not with any new information on Bundy but simply the performances put forth. I already loved Wood but Kirby’s chameleon-like ability is something that should be celebrated.

The Survivalist – Oh no, Jonathan Rhys Meyers is back for another poorly thought out career decision and it seems that he’s dragged a two-time Oscar nominee into it as John Malkovich co-stars. Malkovich may be the biggest draw to this film as writer Matthew Rogers is a newbie to the feature film game and Joe Keeyes hasn’t made anything notable yet, although he has worked with his critically acclaimed supporting star before. The story is set a year and a half after the fall of civilization due to a viral outbreak, which is too familiar for my liking, following a former FBI agent who is forced to protect a young woman immune to the disease from a dangerous gang leader hunting her. Despite the efforts of the actors, which includes Happy Death Day’s Ruby Modine, nothing about this movie fully comes together to be anything original or even interesting. Ben isn’t a good enough character to get behind and the white knight valour of his drive seems contrived. I like seeing Meyers utilized but he can’t seem to find something that sticks in our brain.

Injustice – Something I always look forward to, being teamed up with Warner Bros. for their animated home releases, is receiving all of the DC Animated movies as they are the absolute pinnacle of comic book adaptations. This new film also has the added fun of being based on a video game that I love which, not ironically, also has a comic book of its own. It takes place on an alternate Earth, as the Joker tricks Superman into killing Lois Lane which causes a rampage in the hero. Superman decides to take control of Earth with an omnipotent martial rule and Batman and his allies will have to attempt to stop him by any means necessary as heroes start dying left and right. I’m going to say it now, this is probably the worst of the DC animated library and I thoroughly hated it. The animation was lacklustre and wooden, the usually impeccable casting was bland and everything felt incredibly generic against the backdrop of what this studio has already done. With a few new releases on the horizon for the DC Comics animated films, it’d probably be best to forget about this one.

Crime Story – When you think of a title like this, Richard Dreyfuss is probably not the first name that would pop into your head but here we are with a gritty thriller starring him and Mira Sorvino. With that in mind but with a pretty inexperienced writer and director, we at least get to see the veteran actor play in a different sandbox this late in his career and get some movie blood on his hands. The story has him as an ex-mob boss suffering from cancer who is targeted in a home robbery which sends him on a deadly rampage of vengeance that puts his family at more risk. As dull and unoriginal as this movie largely comes across, Dreyfuss is the anchor that holds your interest as his simmering intensity leaps off the screen even with a bad script. The movie only clocks in at just over an hour and a half but it felt like it had some room to make more of the heavier moments work but sort of leaving them in the dust of mediocrity. Not a lot to redeem this one.

The Old Ways – This little horror flick snuck its way onto Netflix a while back and really didn’t raise any awareness for itself but now that it is on home release and I got my hands on it, it has me wondering why not because I absolutely loved it. The film comes from director Christopher Alender who, up until this point, was known to me as the guy who did The Muppets Now series for Disney+ but now is this interesting eye for a new vision in the horror genre. The film follows Cristina, a journalist of Mexican origin, who travels to her ancestral home in Veracruz to investigate a story of sorcery and healing but when she arrives there, she is kidnapped by a group of locals who claim she’s the devil incarnate. This movie is at its heart a possession film but it has the wherewithal to set up its characters well in the first act so you really have deeper care for Cristina and the challenges she faces and the demise she may or may not be hurtling towards. It also has some really dark humour to it that honestly caught me off guard ad drew me into the script even more. This film is a total surprise and I hope more and more people pick up on it.

Ratcatcher – Got to love Criterion for bringing the smaller films that we never had the chance to see in a widely accessible format which generally includes the first works of, now, very established filmmakers and that’s what we have here. Lynne Ramsey is a gifted and thoughtful storyteller that has made absolutely unforgettable cinema like the Tilda Swinton chiller We Need To Talk About Kevin and the simmering intensity of You Were Never Really Here with Joaquin Phoenix but this is where it all started. This film is what I like to call the humble Harmony Korine/Gummo beginnings as the story follows a naïve young boy who navigates the dirty squalid streets of 1973 Glasgow and the poor youth around him. This film is a fascinating story of a sliver of fascinating timing in a coming of age tale, told against the backdrop of a brutal garbage strike, with trash flying through the air in a way that would make that American Beauty kid cry. Ramsey had established herself as a powerful voice in cinema prior to the year 2000 and definitely before the first film I saw of hers, Morvern Callar. I feel educated on that now.

Superman And Lois: Season 1 – With Arrow ending its run almost two years ago and Black Lightning and Supergirl both calling it quits this year, I was really surprised to see that we were getting a new Superman series which is actually a spin-off from his cousin Kara-El’s show. With Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch sticking to their titular DC universe roles, the world the mega-producer Greg Berlanti has crafted continues on its path with this show that follows the world’s most famous superhero and comic books’ most famous journalist as they deal with all the stress, pressures, and complexities that come with being working parents in today’s society. Oh, did I not mention that they had a super baby? Well, I guess you should have boned up on Supergirl before starting this one which is not me mocking you, just a real prerequisite to actually being able to enjoy this because following it would be pretty easy. I’m just happy for this to erase Dean Cain from my mind because that dude is a real waste of space these days.

Steve’s Blu-Ray Geek-Out:

Survive The Game – Bruce Willis is back on your home release shelf again and, if you go by his expression on the cover, he’s bored as hell in the process too. He also returns to reteam with One Tree Hill alumnus Chad Michael Murray for his second movie with two more on the horizon with the same director as this one, James Cullen Bressack. This action thriller follows Willis as a veteran cop who is injured in a drug bust gone wrong causing his partner to pursue the two criminals who shot him to a remote farm owned by a troubled vet, played by Murray. As the two try to plot their defence, more of the gang arrives, along with the wounded partner, and, outnumbered, the three heroes must use stealth, smarts and marksmanship to take down the drug-dealing mob. As expected, this film was all sorts of terrible and it lets you know how bad it is from the start. Willis has ceased to care about anything he does for an unestablished name and it has to be frustrating for a filmmaker. He also seems to find ways of lessening the workload for him by only appearing sporadically in films he is top-billed in. I don’t know if I’m annoyed or impressed by that cunning ability.

Television:

Inside Job (Netflix) – After the critically well-received and kind of cult hit of Gravity Falls, a kids series that picked up a large adult following which grows every day, everyone was wondering what creator Alex Hirsch would do next. Now, after signing a deal with Netflix, we know what his follow-up is and it feels like a show fueled by the headlines of at least the last five years. The show follows anti-social genius Reagan Ridley and her dysfunctional team who work for Cognito Inc. as employees of the Deep State where conspiracies aren’t just theories they’re fact and keeping them a secret is a full-time job. Even in a workplace filled with reptilian shapeshifters and psychic mushrooms, she’s seen as the odd one out for believing the world could be a better place and she could be responsible for it, if only she could manage her unhinged, manifesto-writing father, her irresponsible coworkers, and finally snag the promotion she’s been dreaming about. This show is a bit slow going but Lizzy Caplan is really funny as Reagan’s voice and Christian Slater being cast as her dad is kind of a stroke of genius. My progression through the show is slow going but still enjoyable.

Locke & Key: Season 2 (Netflix) – One of my favourite modern comic series ever, a little piece of haunted mystery from the minds of Stephen King’s son Joe Hill and artist Gabriel Rodriguez, this show made its way onto Netflix after a long and rocky road of an adaptation process and totally floored me with being a totally original show as well. The story follows three siblings who move into their ancestral estate after their father’s murder and discover their new home has magical keys that must be used in their stand against an evil creature who wants the keys and their powers. Knowing the endgame of the comic book, I am so excited to see the progression of the live-action telling will bring this story as it has already deviated a bit. I think it has already grabbed a pretty sizeable audience and will continue to do so, especially with all the people who have finished Midnight Mass and want to keep things in sort of the same vein.

Adventure Beast (Netflix) – This is such a weirdly chaotic but soft-spoken little animated comedy that I couldn’t quite wrap my head around. The good thing is the episodes are short, at a run time of fifteen minutes per episode and very reminiscent of the Adult Swim original programming. The show comes from co-creators Mark Gravas and writer, former paratrooper, adventurer, strongman, television presenter, and the world’s highest-selling humorist Bradley Trevor Grieve who takes center stage in animated form as the leader of this show. He plays himself, a brave zoologist, who, along with his spunky niece and anxious assistant, explore the world while saving wild beasts at the same time. This show kind of charmed me by having zany misadventures all the while imparting weird and wonderful nature factoids that were sometimes absolutely fascinating. It’s really what kept me going through each episode.

Invasion (AppleTV+) – More sci-fi programming for AppleTV on the heels of Foundation becoming a huge hit and earning a second season renewal and I’m sure the creators of this show, X-Men producer Simon Kinberg and Hunters showrunner David Weil, would love to piggyback on that. The story takes place in real-time through the eyes of five ordinary people across the globe as they struggle to make sense of the chaos unravelling around them when Earth is visited by an alien species that threatens humanity’s existence. I’m always into some mysterious sci-fi and the world destruction angle is all too intriguing so I have taken in the first episode and quickly saw that Golshifteh Farahani and Sam Neill were series regulars. Right there, I was sold on this. I’m a man of simple “I like that person” tastes sometimes, what can I say.

What The Hell Should I Watch? – Oct 14th

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October 14, 2021

New Releases:

The Last Duel – Given that masterful director Ridley Scott has probably made just as many bad movies as he has good ones over his storied career, I’m inclined to be a bit standoffish about this new medieval film and with the trailer for his next film after, House Of Gucci, looking borderline awful, it worries me even more. That said, he did make the incredible Kingdom Of Heaven, the descriptor is reserved for the director’s cut only, and this is the sole reason that I feel any sort of excitement for this one besides the cast. Starring Matt Damon, Adam Driver, Jodie Comer and Ben Affleck, the film is based on a true story amid the Hundred Years War about France’s last sanctioned duel between Jean de Carrouges and Jacques Le Gris, two friends turned bitter rivals. Carrouges was a respected knight known for his bravery and skill on the battlefield and Le Gris was a Norman squire whose intelligence and eloquence make him one of the most admired nobles in the court. When Carrouges’ wife, Marguerite, is viciously assaulted by Le Gris, a charge he denies, she refuses to stay silent, stepping forward to accuse her attacker, an act of bravery and defiance that puts her life in jeopardy. The ensuing trial by combat, a gruelling duel to the death and I have to say the trailer is pretty damn intense but Affleck’s hair in it makes me laugh every time. I’m willing to put aside the absence of French accents aside to give this one a fair shake.

Halloween Kills – It’s the most wonderful time of the year, especially if you’re a horror fan because Halloween is the gift that keeps on giving and October is full of genre spoils for us including this franchise follow-up that we should have gotten last year. Jamie Lee Curtis returns as Laurie Strode, a badass survivor who is looking to eliminate some family baggage before it nabs her. Picking up minutes after Laurie, her daughter Karen and granddaughter Allyson left masked monster Michael Myers caged and burning in Laurie’s basement, Laurie is rushed to the hospital with life-threatening injuries, believing she finally killed her lifelong tormentor. But when Michael manages to free himself from Laurie’s trap, his ritual bloodbath resumes and, as Laurie fights her pain and prepares to defend herself against him, she inspires all of Haddonfield to rise up against their unstoppable monster. The Strode women join a group of other survivors of Michael’s first rampage who decide to take matters into their own hands, forming a vigilante mob that sets out to hunt Michael down, once and for all. That story sounds so killer and it all sets up the finale, Halloween Ends, which is said to be a definitive ending to the franchise. I know that my appetites are going to be more rampant when the credits hit for this middle piece, I’m ready for it.

Mass – Usually comedic actor and writer Fran Kranz makes a dramatic turn in this film, his debut as a director, and the buzz behind it is huge. It also helps that he has a damn good cast assembled for it that includes Jason Isaacs, character actress Ann Dowd and former Goonie Martha Plimpton. The film follows the meeting between two sets of parents, years after an unspeakable tragedy tore their lives apart. Agreeing to meet privately for a discussion to hopefully gain some closure, the story is one of grief, anger and acceptance by coming face-to-face with the ones who have been left behind in the aftermath. For a first feature, Kranz lands with such an emotional resonance that I felt like a truck had run me over and all I could do was sit in stunned silence. I still don’t know when I will be fully able to unpack all that I saw, it is that heavy.

I’m Your Man – Dan Stevens is an actor that I have such an aversion to as he has done so much incredible work in all different genres and variations. This is why I immediately gravitated towards this German film that also features a role with actress Sandra Huller who’s film Toni Erdmann is still one of my favourite European-made comedy dramas ever. Seriously, seek it out if you haven’t seen it or heard of it. This movie is an odd choice, a sci-fi romantic comedy with relationship science at its core. The story follows a scientist who accepts an offer to participate in an extraordinary experiment to obtain research funds for her studies. For three weeks she is required to live with Tom, a humanoid robot designed to be the perfect life partner for her, tailored to her character and needs. What results is a playful romance about relationships, love, and what it means to be human in the modern age in a film that is incredibly thought-provoking and original in every way. I started at the top of this raving about Stevens and Huller but it is lead actress Maren Eggert who stunned me in this, an absolute revelation of a star. This movie is such a hidden gem in my opinion.

The Velvet Underground – One of the most influential groups of all time and the conduit through which we got the idiosyncratic stylings of the incomparable Lou Reed and the wild Nico, it’s so cool that AppleTV+ has given us this deep look in documentary form. The film is a spotlight on a group that created a new sound that changed the world of music, cementing its place as one of rock ‘n’ roll’s most revered bands. It shows just how the group became a cultural touchstone representing a range of contradictions: the band is both of their time, yet timeless; literary yet realistic; rooted in high art and street culture. The film features in-depth interviews with the key players of that time combined with a treasure trove of never-before-seen performances and a rich collection of recordings, Warhol films, and other experimental art that creates an immersive experience into what founding member John Cale describes as the band’s creative ethos: “how to be elegant and how to be brutal.” Directed by acclaimed director Todd Haynes, this played directly into my love of music documentaries, classic music and bigger-than-life personalities and I loved every second of it.

Fever Dream – I have a pretty solid love for Chilean films as I have been stunned by some great ones like the works of Pablo Larrain, Sebastián Lelio and Sebastian Silva but the limited knowledge I had of director Claudia Llosa didn’t connect with me in her film Aloft with Jennifer Connolly. This one looked like a great second chance, a beautifully shot, Terrence Malick-like twisted experience into mystery and the descent into death. This movie is damn near impossible to describe on paper but follows two women and their kids who seem to be on a purgatorial transition to the next plane in one form or the other. The film is about parental protection, loss and letting go and seems to catch everything in the prism of a fantasy mystery in the mind of Llosa through the novella it was based on, The Rescue Distance, which is the name of the film in Spanish. I feel like this isn’t a recommendable film but it kind of captured my art film eye in the end. 

Blu-Ray:

Free Guy – It feels like we had been waiting a long time for this Ryan Reynolds video game-centric film to hit theatres and that’s really because it was supposed to come out more than a year ago and the first trailer for it was probably almost two years prior. The film was originally scheduled to release on July 3rd, 2020 but was delayed to December 11th, 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic before being shelved indefinitely in November. After getting rescheduled another two times this Shawn Levy comedy has done its theatre run and is on home release for everyone to see and enjoy. It follows a bank teller who discovers he is a background player in an open-world video game who decides to become the hero of his own story when a user shows him the reality of his world. The movie did not at all suffer from building it up in our minds for two years and gave a happy and fun ride that plastered a smile on my face for the whole time. Reynolds is charming as always, Jodie Comer and Joe Keery are great and Taika Waititi damn near steals the movie as he usually does but this time in a villain role. This is such a fantastic movie and I highly recommend it.

The Green Knight – This was one of my most anticipated films of the year and holy hell did it ever deliver and, unbeknownst to me, it was a Christmas movie which the trailers do not let you know. I guess I have a new one to occupy the shelf with Die Hard. The film is a mesmerizing looking blood and sword epic art film from Ain’t Them Bodies Saints and A Ghost Story director David Lowery and the almost literally left my jaw on the floor at my local theatre after the credits and end credit stinger finish. Yes, it has one of those. Starring Academy Award nominee Dev Patel, Oscar winner Alicia Vikander and Joel Edgerton, the film is an epic fantasy adventure based on the timeless Arthurian legend that tells the story of Sir Gawain, King Arthur’s reckless and headstrong nephew, who embarks on a daring quest to confront the eponymous Green Knight, a gigantic emerald-skinned stranger and tester of men. Gawain contends with ghosts, giants, thieves, and schemers in what becomes a deeper journey to define his character and prove his worth in the eyes of his family and kingdom by facing the ultimate challenger. This movie is easily my favourite movie of the year although I feel like it isn’t accessible for a mainstream audience. To be real on that, most of my favourites aren’t anyways.

Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain – When Anthony Bourdain committed suicide in June of 2018 it, without hyperbole, shook the world. I swear that most people were shaken by the loss of one of the greatest chefs on the planet who took his love of food out of the kitchen and into and all across the world with his incredible travel shows that went much deeper than the surface level in every way. This documentary is an intimate, behind-the-scenes look at how an anonymous chef became a world-renowned cultural icon known to us also as a writer, adventurer and provocateur. The film comes from Oscar-winning director Morgan Neville who curates thousands of hours of footage of Bourdain, dating back to the late nineties, to create a portrait of an absolute legend with the help of his close friends as well. The film never shies away from the darkness and impulsiveness that peppered Bourdain’s life and gives an incredible well-rounded resolution to his story without softening the blow of his end. This movie was incredible.

The Snake Girl And The Silver Haired Witch – Arrow Video is giving us a new collector’s edition for a classic piece of Japanese cinema that was nowhere near any North American theatres. Even more fascinating, this was an early comic book adaptation because it came from a horror manga series and even featured an early form of special visual effects that still look pretty cool now. The story is about two rival, shape-shifting sisters who are on less than good terms but when an evil creature threatens to destroy both of their existences they have to overlook their differences and join forces to battle it. This movie seems to transcend the time in which it was made, the late sixties and is a fun thrill ride that clocks in at less than an hour and a half. I have to think that the influence level of this film is huge.

The Haunting Of Bly Manor – With his first series based on the novel The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, Mike Flanagan proved once again that he is a horror director at the top of his game and the perfect fit for this series that took in many of Netflix subscribers. Now, we head into his next series that will be sure to give you nightmares just like Hill House did for me, shot in Vancouver, this series once again follows Henry Thomas’ character Henry, who hires a young American nanny to care for his orphaned niece and nephew who reside at Bly Manor with the chef Owen, groundskeeper Jamie and housekeeper, Mrs. Grose. Soon after arriving at the Bly estate, she begins to experience strange occurrences and a grim history starts to unravel. This series is full of emotion and atmosphere and it is really neat to see Flanagan pivoting off of Jackson’s classic into this version of The Turning Of The Screw. Also, like the first series, there are so many hidden ghosts to be spotted in this season, one of my favourite things about Hill House.

The Flash: Season 7 – Wow, it’s crazy to see the DC Comics television universe still alive and well after Arrow, the original kickstart to this small screen franchise, has been gone for a year now. This season is all about change too as two series regulars say goodbye and the dynamic shifts a little bit. The show picks up after last season’s cliffhanger which saw the brilliant and powerful Eva McCulloch victorious and still-at-large in Central City and Barry must regroup to stop her and bring back his missing wife. With help from the rest of Team Flash, Barry will ultimately defeat Mirror Monarch and reunite with Iris West-Allen but, in doing so, he’ll unleash two more devastating threats, one that could tear his marriage apart and another that will lay waste to Central City and change the future forever. I love this show and the depth of the characters and the care to the source material is next level.

Steve’s Blu-Ray Geek-Out:

A Clockwork Orange 4K – My favourite film of all time, number one with a cockney bullet and an incredible adaptation of the Anthony Burgess novel (which I have read) by the greatest cinematic master to ever grace the earth Stanly Kubrick, is nowhere in glorious 4K. Yes, this is the film responsible for my deep love of film and basically, the reason that I talk to all of you here and on the air every week so this is a pretty special film to bring to the blog this week. For those who don’t know this Malcolm McDowell-led film, it follows protagonist Alex DeLarge, an “ultraviolent” youth in a futuristic Britain. As with all luck, he eventually runs out and he’s arrested and convicted of murder and while in prison, Alex learns of an experimental program in which convicts are programmed to detest violence. If he goes through the program, his sentence will be reduced and he will be back on the streets sooner than expected but Alex’s ordeals are far from over once he hits the streets of Britain and his consequences come to implode what’s left of his world. This movie is pure perfection, always incredible looking and the 4K just adds so much more to it. This is like a sliver of pure gold to me and I couldn’t be more excited to possess it.

Inglourious Basterds 4K – This one was cool to receive as I already have it on blu-ray but I have become a bit obsessed with the even higher format of 4K, especially with modern shot films, as they seem to add a little bit more to the fun. This is a great one to try it out on, Quentin Tarantino’s one and only World War II action flick with that same great dialogue style with an incredible cast, all led by a commanding performance from Brad Pitt. For those unaware, the film is set in the first year of Germany’s occupation of France, following Pitt’s character of Allied officer Lieutenant Aldo Raine who assembles a team of Jewish soldiers to commit violent acts of retribution against the Nazis, including the taking of their scalps. He and his men join forces with Bridget von Hammersmark, a German actress and undercover agent, to bring down the leaders of the Third Reich and their fates converge with theatre owner Shosanna Dreyfus, who seeks to avenge the Nazis’ execution of her family. This is one of my favourites of Tarantino’s films and I’m even cool with him shifting history a bit and those who have seen the film know what I’m talking about.

Another 48 Hrs. – One of the originators of the buddy cop slash mismatched partners action comedies, I have such a deep place in my heart for all of these films that came out of eighties Hollywood cinema including the first film this Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy pairing. That said, I think the sequel is pretty damn solid and I was really happy to see it arrive in blu-ray form on my doorstep. The film picks up again with Nolte’s Jack Cates, who has been after an unidentified drug kingpin who calls himself the “Ice Man” for the last four years. Jack finds a picture that proves that the Ice Man has put a price on the head of Eddie Murphy’s Reggie Hammond, who is scheduled to be released from prison on the next day. Jack tries to convince Reggie to help him clear his name and find the Ice Man, but Reggie says he won’t help well, at first, but you know the drill. Action legend Walter Hill directed this film amid a hot streak of genre filmmaking and, although it is nowhere near perfect, this movie is still really entertaining and both stars have phenomenal chemistry. 

Oculus – We’re doing double duty this week when it comes to Mike Flanagan mentions because I just picked up this little beauty of a horror film for a great price and wanted to share it with everyone. This movie is always regarded as his debut feature when it was the film Absentia that kicked off this horror master’s career but this is a damn good one to remember. Starring Guardians Of The Galaxy’s Karen Gillan and Battlestar Galactica’s Katee Sackhoff, the film follows adult siblings, Kaylie and Tim who are struggling to rebuild their relationship, still haunted by the violent demise of their parents ten years earlier. Kaylie suspects that their antique mirror, known as the Lasser Glass, is behind the tragedy as the seemingly harmless reflections contain a malevolent, supernatural force that infects the mind of anyone who gazes into it. As Kaylie gets closer to the truth, the siblings become caught in the mirror’s evil spell in a horror story that is so effective that it seemed to slip into my dreams after watching which was super creepy. If you haven’t seen this one, it’s a perfect choice for Halloween time.

Television:

The Babysitters Club: Season 2 (Netflix) – This series of books is so classic that I remember the original series sitting in my elementary school’s library and now my kid reads the revamped book series as I write this right now. She’s a total fan. She’s also a good source of information because I can tell you that the series so far is playing exactly how the book series outlines it to be so it is faithful to the source material. The story is pretty simple and follows a group of friends that form a business to babysit for families in their neighbourhood. There they have to contend with their new responsibilities, conflicting ideas, mature choices for their future and even competition claiming ideas as their own. The show is well done and the target audience seems to love it. I’m still trying to get over the fact that Alicia Silverstone plays the main character’s mom in this.

You: Season 3 (Netflix) – This creeper thriller gets another new season, proving the audience lust still is at a fever pitch, as Penn Badgley reprises his role as Joe Goldberg, a bookstore manager who you hate but can’t keep your eye off of. Now the question of season three is “How much further can Joe go for his version of love now that he’s found it?” and according to the star, this season, again, was tough to pull off without repeating themselves, and it’s a character he has a hard time playing as he is so massively unlikeable. Who knows? Maybe this is the season that fails to connect with the massive audience the first pulled in. I love that Joe was pretty unable to dupe his new love interest, played brilliantly by Victoria Pedretti who broke my heart in The Haunting Of Hill House, and she even added a new element to his trajectory which I can’t even begin to talk about for spoiler reasons.

Just Beyond (Disney+) – R.L. Stine has something new to chill you to the bone with and this comes on the heels of his seventy-second birthday which means that this dude has no room for slowing down his creative juices. As a big Fear Street reader and a guy that pushed his fair share of Goosebumps onto a younger audience, I’m all about taking in some new horror from a master. to the young adult audience. He, again, goes anthology-style because he’s damn good at it, and tells a series of journeys of supernatural self-discovery through the worlds of witches, aliens, ghosts, and alternate dimensions. Having gotten the chance to watch a few of these I have to say that your Halloween with the kids would be perfectly capped off with a viewing of one or two episodes of this before sending them to bed. It definitely will tickle their brains as it did mine.

Chucky (Showcase) – As an old-school fan of the Child’s Play series and especially when it went more horror comedy and just did away with all the rules, I have been looking forward to this new iteration of it in series form ever since it was announced. Even better, the show was created, written and run by the original guy behind it all, Don Mancini, so you know that everything is going to go just right for all you Chucky fans. In this TV series adaptation, a vintage Chucky doll turns up at a suburban yard sale, and an idyllic American town is thrown into chaos as a series of horrifying murders begin to expose the town’s hypocrisies and secrets. Meanwhile, the arrival of enemies and allies from Chucky’s past threatens to expose the truth behind the killings, as well as the demon doll’s untold origins as a seemingly ordinary child who somehow became this notorious monster. I have no idea if this all turned out for the multitude of fans out there but I do know that I will certainly be tuning in to gleefully watch the mayhem started.

Legends Of The Hidden Temple (The CW) – This is kind of a cool new reboot and it is especially cool for us Canadian kids who never got to experience the original Nickelodeon-made series. The show was the thing of epic memories that put kids during an Aztec jungle obstacle course to make their way to the finish for cash and prizes. Now the show has been supersized and stultified for its reboot and I’m happy because now I still have a chance to compete in it unless they are barring Canadians. Again. That said, I’d probably lose spectacularly but that’s all the fun I think.

What The Hell Should I Watch? – Oct 7

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October 7, 2021

New Releases:

No Time To Die – It feels like we’ve been waiting forever to see Daniel Craig’s swan song as cinema’s most famous super spy and now it is here and it looks glorious. There’s a lot to make up for as the last installment, Sam Mendes’ Spectre, was a complete and utter disappointment that blew the great casting of Christophe Waltz as Blofeld and gave us a lacklustre paint by numbers action film instead of the Bond that had been set up for us in Skyfall. At least he’s back for another go as the most iconic Bond villain and it is now helmed by a filmmaker with a perfect record, True Detective’s Cary Fukunaga. The story picks up with Bond having left active service and is enjoying a tranquil life in Jamaica. His peace is short-lived when his old friend Felix Leiter from the CIA turns up asking for help but the mission to rescue a kidnapped scientist turns out to be far more treacherous than expected, leading Bond onto the trail of a mysterious villain armed with dangerous new technology, played by Rami Malek in a role that I’m pretty sure is Dr. No. The trailers look awesome for this and at a runtime of close to three hours< I really hope it is jam-packed with breathtaking moments.

There’s Someone Inside Your House – This is a movie I have been looking forward to ever since it was announced and it was just because it comes from director Patrick Brice, the guy who made the Creep movies for Netflix, two delicious little fright fests that people should watch this month. Honestly, I feel like this new teen slasher film would fit great with a marathoning of the new Fear Street trilogy so keep that in mind to give yourself a solid Halloween this year. Based on a novel by Stephanie Perkins, the story follows the graduating class at Osborne High who are being targeted by a masked assailant, intent on exposing the darkest secret of each victim, and only a group of misfit outsiders can stop the killings, so it’s kind of like Fear Street in that sense. I love the aesthetic of the killer wearing masks modelled after the victims’ faces which gives it a stylish edge in my opinion and the reveal might be a bit telegraphed but it is still a satisfying conclusion and the cinematography is great.

Night Raiders – As far as Canadian films go, this one is sitting at the top of my anticipated watches of the year and not just because it is a notable Indigenous made production but purely based on the involvement of lead actress Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers who blew me away in Jeff Barnaby’s zombie thriller Blood Quantum as well as writing, directing and starring in her first narrative feature The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open which is must-see for anyone and everyone. This new film is a sci-fi, written and directed by Danis Goulet in her feature film debut, set in 2043 with a military occupation that controls disenfranchised cities in post-war North America. The main thread follows a desperate Cree woman who joins an underground band of vigilantes to infiltrate a State children’s academy and get her daughter back. A female-driven dystopian drama about resilience, courage and love, this movie looks like an intense piece of cinema that brings the indigenous voice to a deep genre story.

Defining Moments – Burt Reynolds was a legend no matter how you feel about him. A guy that was a sex symbol in the seventies and a badass that took no crap from anyone for his entire life. When we lost him a few years back he has so much unreleased work because, unfortunately, he had done a lot of lower budget work as the man worked up until he died. This is the final film of his, a story of eight very different people who are at a crossroads in life and must make decisions that will forever change who they are. Jack must decide to spend the rest of his life with his girlfriend Terri. Marina must reconnect with her ageing father. Laurel must embrace her new pregnancy and come to terms with her father’s early Alzheimer’s, and Dave must learn why life is worth living. Burt plays the father suffering from Alzheimer’s and it feels bittersweet because this is a final performance where we will remember this and not the natural causes that he went out on. Again, love him or hate him, he went out on his shield.

Summertime – Carlos López Estrada is a director that has had a hell of a diverse filmmaking career already. I first saw his work as the phenomenal tale of Oakland gentrification with Daveed Diggs and Raphael Casal’s Blindspotting, which was one of my favourite movies that year. Already this year he did the incredibly gorgeous Disney animated film Raya And The Last Dragon and now his film from last year finally gets its time to shine. This film is another dagger into the reality of society, set over a hot summer day in Los Angeles, following the lives of twenty-five young Angelenos as they intersect. A skating guitarist, a tagger, two wannabe rappers, an exasperated fast-food worker, a limo driver-they all weave in and out of each other’s stories and through the poetry they express life, love, heartache, family, home, and fear. Although, one of them has simple goals in life and just wants to find someplace that still serves good cheeseburgers. This is another fantastic film from Estrada and without hugely notable stars in this, weaves and crafts a narrative that bonds you to each of the characters. This is one special filmmaker.

The Rescue – It’s documentary time, so listen up because it’s time to learn, feel and take something away from some hard-hitting film. This one also got a recent boost from Moonlight filmmaker Barry Jenkins who called it must see. The film chronicles the enthralling, against-all-odds story that transfixed the world in 2018, the daring rescue of twelve boys and their coach from deep inside a flooded cave in northern Thailand. Using a wealth of never-before-seen material and exclusive interviews, filmmaking duo E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, the geniuses being Free Solo and Meru, keep viewers on the edge of their seats as they bring alive one of the most perilous and extraordinary rescues in modern times, shining a light on the high-risk world of cave diving, the astounding courage and compassion of the rescuers, and the shared humanity of the international community that united to save the boys. This is another incredible piece of work from two documentarians who bring amazing insight into all of their projects.

V/H/S/ 94 – Nothing gets me going more than a cool anthology movie and especially one in the horror department. This series has been going for a little bit as we’ve gotten two releases then a sort of spin-off called Viral, a short television series and now this throwback to when the VHS format was in high gear and we all got frustrated with tracking. The main story revolves around a police S.W.A.T. team that investigates a mysterious VHS tape and discovers a sinister cult that has pre-recorded material that uncovers a nightmarish conspiracy. The stories within are helmed by three interesting filmmakers like newcomer Chloe Okuno, rising star Ryan Prows and current horror favourite Simon Barrett so, working in the short film format, this could be another cool collection of chilling little stories.

Blu-Ray:

Space Jam: A New Legacy – I feel like a sequel or reboot of the NBA and Looney Tunes collaboration fantasy action film Space Jam was inevitable and with Lebron James being the modern equivalent to Michael Jordan, sidestepping Kobe Bryant who was another player in that echelon, and with King James being so involved in movies these days, he’s the logical choice to lead the charge. The film is about a rogue artificial intelligence that kidnaps Lebron’s son and he must get them home safe by leading Bugs, Lola Bunny and the whole gang of notoriously undisciplined Looney Tunes to victory over the A.I.’s digitized champions on the court made up of a powered-up roster of professional basketball stars. It’s really what you would expect from a reboot but just modernized and with so many other Warner Bros. properties in the background. I think that the most fun is pointing all of them out because I even saw A Clockwork Orange in the crowd which is kind of inappropriate. After all, the result is a soulless dragging of many Warner Bros intellectual properties with no other weight than just showing them off and doing nothing with them. This could have easily been missed in my viewings and I wouldn’t have thought more of it.

Escape Room: Tournament Of Champions – The original film to this horror sequel was a huge surprise to me as I thought it was going to be a badly written cash grab that was honing in on the escape room craze that still runs rampant all over the world. What we got was a cool sort of horror adventure as we see the characters go from elaborate trap to trap in an unpredictable and thrilling film. So, was I looking forward to this follow-up? You bet your ass! Joining forces with two of the original survivors, the story follows six people who unwittingly find themselves locked in another series of escape rooms, slowly uncovering what they have in common to survive. AS they move room to room, they soon discover that they are all survivors of a previous game and are now playing on a sort of “championship” level. I’m here for the unique set pieces and the mystery so hopefully, this one can keep it going and we get a franchise out of it.

Six Minutes To Midnight – This is a slight Bond connection here with a former M taking center stage in this new historical-based drama as Dame Judi Dench and the great Eddie Izzard have a little piece of World War II-centric story to tell you. Set in the summer of 1939, the story follows the influential families in Nazi Germany who have sent their daughters to a finishing school in an English seaside town to learn the language and be ambassadors for a future looking National Socialist. A teacher there sees what is coming and is trying to raise the alarm, predicting the horrifying future, but the authorities believe he is the problem. This movie plays out interestingly at first but then the story starts to slide in an unbelievable direction, causing me to frantically look up the real story to fact check and, lo and behold, this is a completely fabricated plot. That kind of thing bothers me as there are so many real tales in this time and made-up ones feel unnecessary in my opinion. It is great to see Izzard and Dench on screen together though.

Broken Diamonds – Oh no. Not another Ben Platt movie, I don’t know if I can take it. The good news is Platt isn’t playing a teenager and it comes from Peter Sattler who did the phenomenal Kristen Stewart drama Camp X-Ray, which gives it a bit of an immediate boost. The story has Platt as a twenty-something writer who, in the wake of his father’s death, sees his dream of moving to Paris put in jeopardy when he’s forced to temporarily take in his wildly unpredictable, mentally ill sister, played by Mistress America’s standout stat Lola Kirke. Let’s just say that the Dear Evan Hansen actor only redeems himself a small amount with a movie that sometimes hits with its dark comedy and handling of mental illness but nothing sticks around enough to be memorable and at the end, it felt very dime a dozen for damaged guy dramedy films.

Fried Barry – Leave it to South Africa to make the most twisted alien odyssey that still manages to channel some of the sweetest-hearted moments from Amblin Entertainment like classics of the eighties and make you feel sort of dirty for connecting them. This is exactly what writer and director Ryan Kruger does with this insane body possession sci-fi horror, his feature-length debut and a statement maker if there ever was one. The story is pretty simple at its core, following Barry, a drug-addled, abusive bastard who, after yet another bender, is abducted by aliens and takes a backseat as one of the visitors assumes control of his body and takes it for a joyride through Cape Town. What follows is an onslaught of drugs, sex and violence as extraterrestrial tourist enters the weird and foreign world of humankind. This movie is insane and after a quick introduction of the characters, grabs you by the collar and directs you on an unpredictable journey with the oddest of drivers in actor Gary Green who was chosen for his unique look. The brilliant crosscutting gave me Edgar Wright comparisons but Kruger is looking at grand pictures here and I can’t wait to see what he does next.

Night Of The Animated Dead – As we are in the beginnings of October it’s cool to see this cartoon reimagining of a horror classic that also gets a little chance to expand on some of the violence and gore that the time and technology limited when one of the original masters of the genre, George A. Romero first told us this story in 1968. As in the original, the film follows siblings Barbara and Johnny as they visit their father’s grave in a remote cemetery in Pennsylvania when they are suddenly set upon by zombies. Barbara flees and takes refuge in an abandoned farmhouse along with stranded motorist Ben and four local survivors found hiding in the cellar. Together, the group must fight to stay alive against the oncoming horde of zombies while also confronting their fears and prejudices in a movie that never loses the substance of what is at heart or, in this case, the brain meat of the message. What I could have used was a better animation style as this felt a little cheap and underdone, like it was driven to be a forgotten direct to blu-ray title. At the end of the day though, nothing will tarnish the lustre that this story contains.

Universal Classic Monsters 4K – Usually Shane gets a tad exasperated with my long list of horror films I bring to the show but these are absolute classics and it says so in the title. If it wasn’t for these four iconic movie creatures we wouldn’t have the films we have today and I’m not just talking about the horror genre. This set, bringing every film to the high definition platform of 4K, has all four of the startings to the most famous movie monsters with Bela Legosi’s Dracula, Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein’s Monster, Claude Rains’ Invisible Man and Lon Chaney’s Wolfman. These are films I can even show my nine-year-old, who hates horror but is pretty fascinated by the origins of it. This is a damn cool set, I think.

The Nevers: Season 1 Part 1 – This new HBO series already leaves a bad taste in my mouth as it was shepherded to the television screen by the former nerd messiah and current Hollywood pariah Joss Whedon and episode one has the markings of him all over it which, up until Justice League, wasn’t a bad thing. Hell, we used to celebrate it! How times have changed. The series is set during the last years of Queen Victoria’s reign in a London that is beset by the “touched” group of people, mostly women, who suddenly manifest abnormal abilities, some of them charming but some are very disturbing. Among them are Amalia True, a mysterious, quick-fisted widow, and Penance Adair, a brilliant young inventor. They are the champions of this new underclass, making a home for the Touched while fighting the forces of every malevolent force that crosses their path to make room for those whose history as we know has no place. I will say that I have hopes that the show will improve as the acting is great and the production value is stellar but the world-building is sluggish, disjointed and kind of nonsensical in moments.

Steve’s Blu-Ray & DVD Geekouts:

NCIS: Season 18 – I’m starting to lose any sort of time gauge on this show as season eighteen has rolled around now and it’s still a juggernaut for the old folks with no sign of slowing down? In this spin-off of J.A.G., as you all must know after almost twenty years of episodic television, Mark Harmon plays Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs, the leader of the Major Case Response Team in the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and rocks possibly the worst haircut in television. The latest season kicks off with a mystery as Gibbs disappeared at the end of season seventeen and, through the international intrigue and investigations, the show hit episode four hundred this season, a huge milestone. I seriously can’t believe the show is still going at full steam, those ratings must be big enough to keep them going well.

The Shawshank Redemption 4K – One of the greatest films ever made and probably the best Stephen King adaptation to date, this Frank Darabont-directed prison story finally makes its glorious debut on beautiful 4K. As a huge King fan, the author that got me heavily into reading, this is a story I read before I saw the movie and it will forever have a place in my heart as the most faithful translation I have ever seen. For those who have never had the privilege, the story chronicles the experiences of a formerly successful banker as a prisoner in the gloomy jailhouse of Shawshank after being found guilty of a crime he did not commit. Over the years, he retains hope of freedom and eventually gains the respect of his fellow inmates, especially longtime convict “Red” Redding, a black marketeer, and becomes influential within the prison. This movie is incredible and the performances from Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman are the driving heartbeat of it that keeps you so engaged. This is such a special movie and now you can have it in its best possible format.

Mommie Dearest – This movie is a batshit film that goes to huge levels dramatically and all of this is even more insane when you realize that this is supposed to be a true story. Faye Dunaway turns in a role that has to be recognized in her career as a tent pole, playing the real-life diva and actress Joan Crawford. Based on a book written by her adopted daughter Christina Crawford, the film follows Joan as she decides to adopt children of her own to fill a void in her life, yet, her problems with alcohol, men, and the pressures of show business get in the way of her personal life, turning her into a mentally abusive wreck seen through the eyes of Christina and her brother Christopher, who unwillingly bore the burden of life that was unseen behind the closed doors of “The Most Beautiful House in Brentwood.” Dunaway’s performance in this film was so big and over the top that the bad reviews effectively derailed her career. She believes that she should have won an Oscar for it and to this day the mere mention of the film sends her into a rage and she refuses to talk about it. That is the ingredients for a cult classic.

Television:

On My Block: Season 4 (Netflix) – Deep within the catalogue of all the many Netflix original programming are shows that have been going on multiple seasons and have just flown under the radar in a large mainstream way. This is one of those shows and one that showcases some of the diversity that can be seen on the streaming service but I believe this might be the final season of it which may be bittersweet for anyone discovering it now. The series is a coming-of-age story about four bright, street-savvy friends navigating their way through high school in the gritty South Central Los Angeles while trying to get their friend out of a gang and navigating the battlefield of all types of relationships, friendships and those that turn into something more. The show got me with the writing as it features a couple of writers who found their footing here when they paired up with Awkward creator Lauren Iungerich who is excelling as a showrunner.

Muppets Haunted Mansion (Disney+) – If you have Muppets doing anything, well, I’m easily swayed to be on board and this is a full-on special so it has my attention. That said, I start to recognize the new voice of Kermit The Frog more and more as I watch newer Muppet productions and it does throw me off but the heart is still all there for sure. This special borrows a little bit from the Muppets now being owned by Disney and has Gonzo being challenged to spend one full night in the infamous Haunted Mansion. Simple and effective, this special has all of your favourite Muppets plus Will Arnett, Danny Trejo, the late Ed Asner in a final performance and more. Let’s face it, even if I said it was awful, you’d watch it anyway because it’s the Muppets. I get it.

The Walking Dead World Beyond: Season 2 (AMC) – The first season of this second Walking Dead spin-off arrived on blu-ray a couple of months ago, just as the final season of the original series has been gearing up to close the first television bloodline of a now-massive entity and this one has a different vibe to it as it seems to combine the themes of Lord Of The Flies a little bit with the shambling flesh, brain and entrail eating ghouls we are oh so familiar with these days. Featuring Nico Tortorella from Scream 4, this series focuses on the first generation to grow up during the zombie apocalypse, centred around a trio of characters and judging by the trailer it looks suspenseful and will carve a new side in this new zombie lore. So far it’s great, though not as good as Fear The Walking Dead but I will continue to immerse myself in Robert Kirkman’s imagination as season two is on the horizon and the first ends with such a great cliffhanger. Of course, with Kirkman behind it, I will say that it’s not for the faint of heart at all.

Escape The Undertaker (Netflix) – This one is really simple so I won’t spend too much time describing it. The WWE signed a deal with Netflix to produce content and so far we have gotten a now-cancelled sitcom with The Big Show, a family film about a magical luchador mask and this new interactive Halloween special. The story has you playing as the eleven-time tag team champion team The New Day as they go through the Undertaker’s mansion to find his mysterious urn to add it to their Power of Positivity. Yeah, it will only appeal to wrestling fans and only the st decade current fans at that. I know where I stand on this.

What The Hell Should I Watch? – Sep 30

stevestebbing

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September 30, 2021

New Releases:

Venom: Let There Be Carnage – After many delays and release date shifts we finally get the follow-up to a non-MCU-connected franchise that still manages to include Spider-Man and, yes, I know that this is all convoluted and confusing. That all said, the first Venom movie was a stupid amount of fun and Tom Hardy really brought his A-game to the absurdity and now we get the fan-favourite villain of Carnage to join the antics. The sequel follows Eddie Brock as he still struggles to adjust to his new life as the host of the alien symbiote Venom, which grants him super-human abilities to be a lethal vigilante. Brock attempts to reignite his career by interviewing serial killer Cletus Kasady, who becomes the host of the symbiote Carnage and escapes prison after a failed execution. With Andy Serkis taking over directing from Ruben Fleisher, I feel like the special effects will see a step up and it looks like Naomie Harris is in the role of another symbiote creature, Shriek, so I’m pretty excited about this one as a total comic book nerd.

The Many Saints Of Newark – The anticipation of this new prequel story to possibly one of the greatest television shows ever made is huge and for me, situated in Penticton, my disappointment couldn’t be greater as we aren’t getting it in my small town. That sadness aside, I find it fascinating that James Gandolfini’s son Michael is taking the young Tony role in this film and I’m so excited to see how his compatriots in Paulie Walnuts, Silvio, Big Pussy and even his uncle Junior are handled. The film follows young Anthony Soprano, growing up in one of the most tumultuous eras in Newark’s history, becoming a man just as rival gangsters begin to rise and challenge the all-powerful DiMeo crime family’s hold over the increasingly race-torn city. Caught up in the changing times is the uncle he idolizes, Dickie Moltisanti, who struggles to manage both his professional and personal responsibilities and whose influence over his nephew will help make the impressionable teenager into the all-powerful mob boss we’ll later come to know, the infamous Tony Soprano. The reviews that have been pouring in so far are mixed but the consistency in all of them is that this movie was made for the fans and we’ll all eat it up like a plate of gabbagool.

The Addams Family 2 – We’re already at a second animated feature of the kooky, ookey and spooky family that was done so well in live-action form by Barry Levinson in the nineties. Heck, I didn’t even know that the film had done well enough for a sequel but I guess this is our new Hotel Transylvania in a way. Once again featuring Oscar Isaac and Charlize Theron as Gomez and Morticia Addams, now distraught that their children are growing up, skipping family dinners, and totally consumed with “scream time” so, to reclaim their bond, they decide to cram Wednesday, Pugsley, Uncle Fester and the crew into their haunted camper and hit the road for one last miserable family vacation. Their adventure across America takes them out of their element and into run-ins with their iconic cousin, It, who is “voiced” by Snoop Dogg but he doesn’t really talk though, does he? This is pure entertainment for the kids based on an IP that we all know and love within different generations who loved the movies or the original television show. I’m just in it for the adult references.

The Guilty – Jake Gyllenhaal and Antoin Fuqua reteam after their boxing flick Southpaw for a remake of a Danish thriller that really comes off as a better final product than their first collaboration. Gyllenhaal is doing all the powerlifting in this film as the whole film is just essentially him on the phone for the entire duration but it really does work. The film takes place over the course of a single morning in a 911 dispatch call center with call operator Joe Baylor trying to save a caller that says she has been kidnapped, propelling him into an intense race against time as he feverishly attempts to locate her and get her to safety all from his desk. Adding to the mix of emotions, he is on the eve of finding out his fate in an incident that took him off the streets and put him in the office he works out of now. Gyllenhaal displays some of his best characteristics in this film that he could have made or broke. I wouldn’t have believed that great tension and suspense can be made in this format but Fuqua excels with every edgy scene we get. A great audience-pleasing thriller.

Mayday – This is an oddball of a movie but it really works in a crazily existential way. What immediately drew me to the film was the cast which features the young stars, Grace Van Patten, from the currently running Nine Perfect Strangers, Mia Goth from High Life and French actress Soko from Her and all anchored by the veteran prowess of Juliette Lewis. The story centers around Ana who is transported to a dreamlike and dangerous land where she joins an army of girls engaged in a never-ending war. Though she finds strength in this exhilarating world, she realizes that she’s not the killer they want her to be and struggles to find her exit from the conflict. The film looks gorgeous and the plot is engaging but it is vapidly fleeting by introducing so many elements that it has no intention of wrapping up or even fleshing out. I wanted to love this film but it leaves you cold in so many different ways.

Titane – Well, it’s twice in a row the little town I live in deep in the beautiful Okanagan has pissed me off by not having a sought-after film playing but this one I can understand because it’s foreign, a really niche indie and it is decidedly messed up. The film comes from writer and director Julia Ducournau who’s last movie, Raw, became one of the most talked-about horror movies of the decade. For this one she’s going further out there, telling the story of a father who is reunited with the son who has been missing for 10 years following a series of unexplained crimes. That doesn’t sound immediately weird but it’s almost just the basic bullet point of what the basis is. This film is deeply cerebral body horror mixed with an uncompromising and unpredictable journey into provocative filmmaking that I can’t wait to get my eyeballs deep into. The buzz made my anticipation for this hit a fever pitch and now all of you lucky people get to see it before I can.

Adventures Of A Mathematician – On the surface this movie sounds incredibly boring, it’s not easy to sugar coat that one at all. It’s a German, Polish and English collaboration on a true story of a renowned mathematician and it doesn’t feature any actors that I can recall seeing before. Snorefest, right? Coming from writer and director Thor Klein, it is the story of Polish immigrant and mathematician Stan Ulam who moved to the U.S. in the 1930s and helped to create the hydrogen bomb and the first computer while deals with the difficult losses of family and friends at the same time. It felt so hard to keep engaged with this movie as the character story seemed to get lost in a muddied telling of history that felt so lacklustre in its presentation that it couldn’t elevate above how boring I already felt the subject matter to be. This movie felt punishing and it was only just over an hour and a half long.

Blu-Ray:

The Forever Purge – They’re still making these movies? Yes, of course, they are because they make money, cost little and even spawned a television spin-off. Also, it seems like everyone in America kind of wants to kill each other already so the thirst for a horror film about a one-night mass killing spree is still pretty appealing. This installment has the fallout from the events of the previous film and instead of improving the world through the main characters heroic actions and the exposing of the elite who created it, all the rules are now broken as a sect of lawless marauders decides that the annual Purge does not stop at daybreak and instead should never end. The imagery is totally gnarly with all of the Purge costumes and this aesthetic is what always brings me back to these movies as a glutton for punishment I guess. That said, the implications from all of the previous installments hit a fever pitch in the story of this one as the franchise moves closer and closer to a believable America which might be the most chilling take away from it. I really enjoyed this one, a favourite in the series.

Blithe Spirit – Dan Stevens is such a great actor in anything he does that no matter what project he is a part of I will still give it the infinite time of day to watch. That includes this pretty silly ghostly comedy that is not getting any good word of mouth whatsoever. The film has him playing a married crime novelist suffering from writer’s block who hires a spiritualist medium to hold a seance that accidentally summons the spirit of his deceased first wife, which leads to an increasingly complex love triangle with his current wife of five years. Co-starring Dame Judi Dench, Leslie Mann and Isla Fisher, the film has the foundation to be great but falls into slapstick and contrived trappings that do everything but engage you on the level this cast has done before. Even at a run time of an hour and a half, it feels like the script has been stretched and warped into a longer form of storytelling which just does not work in any capacity. These stars deserved better.

Twist – Got to love a weird choice in the reimagining of a classic story and that is exactly what we got right here. The story of Oliver Twist has been told in many different ways by many different and accomplished filmmakers through the film age, including one by controversial director Roman Polanski, but none quite like this. This one goes for the “inspired” route, an action-fueled crime-thriller set in contemporary London that follows the journey of Twist, a gifted graffiti artist trying to find his way after the loss of his mother. Lured into a street gang headed by the paternal Fagin, played by Michael Caine, he is attracted to the lifestyle and to Red, an alluring member of Fagin’s crew but when an art theft goes wrong, Twist’s moral code is tested as he’s caught between Fagin, the police, and a loose-cannon enforcer played by the formidable Lena Headey. All of this sounds original and cool but unfortunately, this film is the equivalent of a thick skull with no brain, hard-hitting action with zero substance underneath. It’s targeted at a younger crowd that doesn’t have any reverence for the source material, not that it was necessary to have that in the end.

Children Of The Corn 4K – Some classic Stephen King gets the collector’s edition treatment this week from Arrow Video and even better it gets the full 4K update to show this chilling story in all of its glory. It was so great to see Peter Horton and a young Linda Hamilton, the same year The Terminator would be released, in this adaptation of a short story I read way too young. For those who never had the privilege but have for sure heard the name or reference, the story is about a young couple who enter into a desolate midwestern town where all the adults are apparently dead and the children, led by a creepily charismatic boy, have formed a cult that worships a malevolent force in the cornfield, He Who Walks The Rows. This movie is iconic and a major piece of “creepy kid” cinema that is always brought up in the best of the eighties horror. The ending is a beautifully hopeless downer that feels so ballsy to do but really speaks to the power of King’s storytelling.

Steve’s Blu-Ray & DVD Geekouts:

Beverly Hills 90210: The Ultimate Collection – *bu-nuh-nuh-nuh* *bu-nuh-nuh-nuh* *clap-clap* Yeah, I still know the Beverly Hills 90210 theme song opening but that’s because my mom and I watched it originally so when I got this massive box set that includes the original series as well as the revival limited series she texted me as soon as she saw me Instagram it. My wife was equally as static as this is a big show in her upbringing as well, a seminal moment in our coming of age. In a show about a group of friends living in Beverly Hills, California making their way through life from their school days into adulthood, we all had our favourites, our crushes and our favourite episodes and it seems to connect all of us nineties teens and the older viewers who may have gotten pulled into the fan vortex as the show continued it’s run. Does it work now? Probably not with all the weird fads, clothing choices and lack of technology but it never hurts to try and indoctrinate the next generation. Now, let’s continue to rock out to the theme song.

District 13 Ultimatum – Sometimes it’s a good opportunity to watch some mindless action with cool sequences and the barest existence of a plot. That is exactly where this film fits in, the sequel to a French action flick that seems like more of an excuse for mega-producer Luc Besson to show off some parkour-style fighting and dazzle people with crazy stunts. Five years after the original, vigilante justice-keepers Damien (Cyril Raffaelli) and Leito (David Belle) are back in the outer-Paris ghetto of District 13 to save the impoverished, violence-riddled community. Controlled by fiYve ruthless gang bosses jostling for ultimate power, District 13 is in dangerous decline and, to save those living within, Damien and Leito must restore peace before the city’s secret law enforcers take measures into their own hands. The subtext of this installment gets needlessly political and it starts to drown in the bigger story it’s trying to tell but that aside the action still rocks and it has sequences that will constantly have you rewinding and wondering how the hell they did that.

Young Sheldon: Season 4 – With the main series of The Big Bang Theory long in the rearview now, this piece of the Chuck Lorre created series with this spin-off about the childhood years of Sheldon Cooper, a show that Jim Parsons narrates naturally and has been doing great ratings for CBS for two straight seasons even standing apart from the show it spawned from.  This show could have been a real bust but a weird thing happened after I watched a few episodes and that was a simple notion that I was enjoying it and Annie Potts plays his “MeeMaw”! Sold! The second season proved that this show is beyond a flash in the pan sophomore hit as it takes that groundwork laid out by the original series and puts it in an almost Wonder Years-like filter and now it can continue its Sheldon Cooper lore without any new encumbrance or retcon. That and it doesn’t have a laugh track, an instant killer with me.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus – One of Terry Gilliam’s troubled productions has now landed itself in my collection finally and it’s a film that will largely be remembered as the one that Heath Ledger died during the production but it really deserves to be recognized on its own merits. It is really classic Terry Gilliam at its core ad immediately gives remembrance to films like The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen, The Fisher King and Brazil from his phenomenal filmography. Starring Christopher Plummer in the lead role, the leader of a travelling show and the harbourer of a dark secret. Thousands of years ago he traded the soul of his daughter, Valentina, to the devil and now the devil, played brilliantly by Tom Waits, has come to collect his prize. To save her, Parnassus must make a final wager to see whoever collects five souls first to gain possession of Valentina. Tony (Heath Ledger), a man saved from hanging by Parnassus’ troupe, agrees to help collect them, but deviously has his eye on marrying Valentina himself. This film is crazy and ballsy in a way that only Gilliam can deliver with his idiosyncratic form of storytelling. Filmed in Vancouver, it’s insane how much it looks like dirty old London.

Mona Lisa – Bob Hoskins is a character actor that never really got his due but featured in some of the best films from over thirty years of work and this movie is definitely part of the greatest roles he ever played. Mona Lisa was a Neil Jordan film that was nestled in the middle of a four-year stretch that included Brazil, A Prayer For The Dying and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? which informed a really cool era in his career but this one was something special on its own. He plays a man just released from prison who manages to get a job driving an expensive call girl from customer to customer. Initially, they don’t get along, and he doesn’t fit in with the high-class customers Simone services but the two slowly form a bond that extends to being a protector from the outside elements as well as those in control, like the kingpin in charge, played brilliantly by Michael Caine. This film now gets its own praise in the form of a Criterion Collection release and after taking it in again, it wholly deserves this honour. Jordan’s authentic filmmaking shines through in a film that is, from top to bottom, a total masterpiece.

Television:

Attack Of The Hollywood Cliches! (Netflix) – We all know the horrible cliches that Hollywood films love to throw at us time and time again without learning a thing. The romantic comedies that have a mad dash through the rain to reunite for a kiss, the cool guys that don’t look at explosions, the constant belittling of ethnic minorities, the list goes on and on. Now Netflix is going to shine a little light on it through host Rob Lowe in a special that features some of the most famous films along with screenwriters, academics and critics like Andie MacDowell, The Lucas Brothers, Andrew Garfield, Amy Nicholson, John August and many more as they guide through the funny, weird and controversial clichés which appear on the screens. Some of them were super obvious to me but some of them I cling to going “no, no, no, not Garden State” but, yes Steve, that is the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope and it is a massive cliche. Sigh, my heart is broken.

Maid (Netflix) – Coming from Orange Is The New Black and Casual writer Molly Smith Metzler in her debut as a creator and showrunner, this new series had me intrigued right away as it has the real-life mother and daughter tandem of Andie MacDowell and Margaret Qualley in the same production for, I believe, the first time. The show was inspired by the New York Times best-selling memoir Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive by Stephanie Land and follows a single mother who turns to housekeeping to make ends meet as she battles against poverty, homelessness, and bureaucracy. Also escaping a brutally abusive relationship, this is an interesting story of one woman’s struggle to empower herself against all odds and Qualley is the perfect actor to portray it with a simmering intensity that boils over from time to time. I’m really enjoying it so far.

Seinfeld (Netflix) – What can I say about this show that you really don’t know already? It debuted on NBC in the late eighties and had a huge run, inspiring so many along the way ad still is consistently quoted to this very day. Heck, creator Larry David is still kind of living off of it as Curb Your Enthusiasm is a direct offshoot of it and even did a reunion series within the HBO show. For fun though, why don’t I give you a synopsis? Running for nine seasons, Jerry Seinfeld stars in this television comedy series as himself, a comedian. The premise of this sitcom is Jerry and his friends going through everyday life, discussing various quirky situations, to which many can relate to (especially if you live in New York City). The eccentric personalities of the offbeat characters who make up Jerry’s social circle contribute to the fun. That’s it in a nutshell and, damn, reliving these episodes, what an incredible ride it was and I can appreciate it a lot more than I did when it originally aired.

The Problem with John Stewart (AppleTV+) – I feel like we’ve all been waiting for it and it’s finally here as The Daily Show originator and beloved host John Stewart returns with a brand new show without any tether or constraint as he has the freedom of the AppleTV+ platform. The series is less comedy and more Stewart tackling issues that affect Americans the most, with Stewart in discussion with the people who are impacted by each issue, as well as those who have a hand in creating the impact and, together, they will discuss tangible steps that can lead to a solutionary path forward. This may not be the kind of return you’re looking for and, honestly, if you want that I think Trevor Noah is doing a great job with The Daily Show. This is something needed, something cathartic and something Stewart needed to do with the cloud that he had. This is special television right here.

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