It doesn't sound fresh, and I don’t think it’s just because it's a sequel. If the most memorable part of Incredibles 2 is Jack-Jack's fight against a raccoon, there's something wrong. The first film asked really good real-world micro questions in the superhero genre: What if I don't want to be saved? What if my superhero husband is having an affair? It forced the extraordinary to be ordinary, which is the exact opposite of the basis of superhero origin stories.
Read MoreTrue North Streaming is a semi-regular column highlighting some of the best new additions to Netflix’s Canadian service. Like many of you, every so often I get a pleasant surprise when I discover a cool movie or TV show that’s just popped up on Netflix’s often-maligned sister platform. These posts will help you filter through the often quirky mix of Netflix Canada’s offerings and find the most valuable ways to waste some time.
And with that, in no particular order…
Read MoreNow, after another five years and a controversial and largely ineffective re-edit of Season 4 by Hurwitz, Netflix has brought eight new episodes of Arrested to the masses, forming the first half of a two-part Season 5. Out of due diligence, I decided to re-watch the entire series from the beginning before tackling the new episodes, including the remixed 2013 block. And while I came away feeling slightly better about the overall state of the Netflix revival than I had before, Hurwitz and his team have yet to recapture the manic energy and densely layered stories of the first three seasons.
Read MoreThey say that Reynolds was born to play Deadpool and probably because so much of the character has been informed by his own career. He got his first breaks in the ‘90s when gross-out teenage comedies were big summer films, and for a long time he was known as that guy from National Lampoon’s Van Wilder before becoming the lovable idiot or the action star who couldn’t stop making stupid but funny jokes in Blade: Trinity. Superhero films have become both a source of fun and occasional misery, but perhaps no other actor has as much right to lampoon them than the guy who’s been in two of the worst ones in history.
Read MoreIt’s mildly diverting stuff, though unfortunately it doesn’t have the same verve or sparkle as a true heist film, or even of something else from Disney’s catalogue, Guardians of the Galaxy. The whole thing is very capably assembled, but there’s a nagging, familiar feeling of a movie that changed hands partway through production. Which, of course, is exactly what happened.
Read MoreLet’s start with the good; Batman Ninja looks gorgeous. The smoother CGI and cel animation threw me for a loop because I’m still used to some of the herky-jerky action of the old hand-drawn ones, but the colours are vivid, the movements look cool and smooth and the transitions are creative. I watched it with its original Japanese audio and I had no qualms with the voice acting or the translated subtitles, but note there is a completely different set of subtitles to go with the English audio.
Read MoreThe problem with a lot of crime films is that they often feel the need to explain multiple backstories to their viewers before going for the pay-off moment, rather than dropping them in to the middle of a crisis and saying, “here, figure it out.” There’s no big build-up here; you see things as Joe sees it, and a lot of it doesn’t make sense right away. Joe’s PTSD is as much a character of its own as Joe, and it’s often manifested through quick cuts to Joe suffocating himself with plastic bags or silently drowning in water
Read MoreAnd just as venerable franchises like Star Trek and Star Wars adapt to the changing times, Lost in Space has launched on Netflix in a shiny new production, looking to mirror the progressive ideals of the current cultural landscape. And even though some may argue that sci-fi is a saturated genre, Lost in Space – whose original version actually predates the original Trek by a year, hitting CBS in 1965 – does try to set itself apart. It keeps the focus not on the intrepid crew of Starfleet-esque officers, or on a rag-tag group of rebels taking down an evil empire, but on a family unit.
Read MoreThis is why it doesn’t make any sense to fixate on who lives and dies in Avengers: Infinity War (this review certainly won’t). The odds on who survives the titular battle have been argued over for years online, with armchair critics trying to guess the exit points of series regulars like Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) or Captain America (Chris Evans) based on vaguely defined employment contracts that every fan seems to know about without having actually read.
Read MoreThe story is pretty predictable after that: the drone Jaegers fail big time and the kaiju return with the biggest kaiju ever and Jake and Nate have to learn how to put aside their differences and save the world as a team. It’s a near rip-off of the plot of the first film, where two characters who start off disliking each other end up being perfect for each other, and in fact, if Pacific Rim: Uprising was a romcom it could actually work.
Read MoreIt’s the relationship between Atari, Chief and Spots that really fuels the film. Anderson and his team punctuate the movie with intense close-ups of both the dogs and Atari, deep in thought, tears coming to their eyes as they think about the beings they care about.
Read MoreSo what was Spielberg and his team to do? Arguably, there are two routes: engage with Wade’s freaky behaviour and lay his flaws bare, or trim out the objectionable stuff and make a piece of entertainment. Spielberg and screenwriter Zak Penn, perhaps unsurprisingly, go with the latter. So was this the right move, or a missed opportunity to drag Cline’s problematic ideas into the light?
Read MoreVisually, A Wrinkle in Time can be pretty exciting – just like how Disney managed to inject a kaleidoscope of colours and eye candy for Alice in Wonderland… but does it work here? I’m not sure it does; the colourful overtones don’t match L’Engle’s weirdly dark book.
Read MoreTrue North Streaming is a semi-regular column highlighting some of the best new additions to Netflix’s Canadian service. Like many of you, every so often I get a pleasant surprise when I discover a cool movie or TV show that’s just popped up on Netflix’s often-maligned sister platform. These posts will help you filter through the often quirky mix of Netflix Canada’s offerings and find the most valuable ways to waste some time.
And with that, in no particular order…
Read MoreThe problem with a lot of modern horror-thriller sci-fi films is that it’s quite obvious which characters will survive and which ones won’t. I think, over the decades, plot twists that seemed original are much more commonplace now, but Annihilation avoids most of that by telling the audience the result of the expedition in its very first scenes. Self-destruction is briefly mentioned in a line of dialogue but it’s a pervasive theme throughout the entire film, and one of its strengths is showing how each character deals with death and pain and how they ultimately choose to end their fight.
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