Category: 2018
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This episode feels a little bit like “Pilot: Part Two” since it introduces Parker Posey to the series. The soft cliffhanger last episode had her assuming a false identity and getting onto an escape spaceship with mechanics Ignacio Serricchio and AnnaMaria Demara. As the bigger spaceship was under attack from a killer robot before all…
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I must confess I didn’t remember my “Lost in Space” enough to know they had three kids. I thought Taylor Russell was added for the new show. I also don’t think I’ve ever seen the original series, just the movie. But there are three kids. Besides Russell, who’s the Doogie Howser teen doctor, there’s Mina…
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Like most superhero origin stories, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse suffers from some third-act problems. It doesn’t just have a lengthy final fight scene between new Spider-Man (voiced by Shameik Moore) and Kingpin (Liev Schreiber in maybe the film’s only pointless voice casting), it’s got some inherently reduced stakes being an animated movie with a PG…
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I’m late on BlacKkKlansman. It plays a little differently in 2021 versus 2018 (or even 2019), because now there’s no difference in the rhetoric of the seventies racist garbage and today’s Republicans. The film opens with Alec Baldwin playing the host of a KKK newsreel and doing multiple takes as to take the racism up…
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Eun-hee (Park Ji-hu) is an average Seoul eighth grader circa 1994, which would be fine if being average weren’t a one-way ticket to nowhere. Park’s the youngest of three children; while presumably eldest sister Park Soo-yeon has already screwed up and is going to a crappy school across the bridge, son Son Sang-yeon is doing…
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Solo: A Star Wars Story is juvenile, which might be what manages to save it. It’s got nothing but problems—a troubled production (director Howard took over from fired “executive producers” Christopher Miller and Phil Lord and shot seventy-percent of what’s in the film), an uninspired screenplay (by Empire and Jedi screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan and his…
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It’s a Christmas special—or a Winter Solstice special—set before winter break for the teens, which adds to the weirdness because even though Sabrina (Kiernan Shipka) said farewell to beau Ross Lynch last episode… turns out they’re still going to the same school. Yes, even though she’s all in on the witch stuff now, Sabrina’s still…
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Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Ross Maxwell co-write, sending off of “Sabrina”’s first season, with a deus ex machine of an episode where Michelle Gomez decides she’s been waiting too long for Kiernan Shipka to embrace the Dark Lord and it’s time to get drastic about things. If Gomez can’t sabotage Shipka’s friendships with mortals—in addition to…
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This episode could also be called Everything Falls Apart. It puts Sabrina (Kiernan Shipka) through one ringer after another; Shipka’s antics of the last couple episodes have resulted in some very bad, very dangerous situations—soulless cannibalistic husk people bad and dangerous—and she doesn’t seem to want to take much responsibility for it. It’s kind of…
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The two most bewildering things about Annihilation are director Garland’s inability to frame for Panavision aspect ratio—did cinematographer Rob Hardy just not want to tell him he was reusing the same three close-up shots, with his subject on one side of the frame, looking off, the other three-quarters empty, or did Hardy not see a…
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Maggie Kiley directs this one and Kiley’s so far the best director on “Sabrina,” so I went in with high hopes. It doesn’t disappoint, which is something given how much the episode does. It starts with a mine collapse in Greendale, last episode’s cliffhangers—mean girls Abigail Cowen and Adeline Rudolph (but expressly not Tati Gabrielle…
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Netflix did drop “Sabrina” all at once so who knows if this Thanksgiving episode was meant to “air” on Thanksgiving. The Thanksgiving theme doesn’t last long—enough to introduce the hilarious idea of Miranda Otto sitting and watching football all day for the violence–but once the witch alternative, the Feast of Feasts, comes in… it’s all…
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The opening showdown with Sabrina (Kiernan Shipka) confronting Ms. Wardwell (Michelle Gomez) about Wardwell being a witch, spying on Sabrina, saving Sabrina from the sleep demon. Wardwell gives her a questionable tale about how she’s fulfilling a promise to Sabrina’s dead dad to protect her, which Shipka doesn’t quite buy and I’m not sure if…
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This episode starts immediately after the previous one—Kiernan Shipka has just opened a demonic Rubik’s cube, designed by her dead father when he was in the same witch academy she now attends, and released a sleep demon (a make-up encased and excellent Megan Leitch). The episode is just the demon getting into everyone in the…
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I’m very confused; the witch school is within walking distance from the farm where Sabrina (Kiernan Shipka) lives. I thought it was a boarding school far away. Turns out it’s a boarding school—Shipka has to do three nights there—but it’s within walking distance. So she was never going to see her human friends again by…
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No Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa script this episode, Ross Maxwell instead, which initially confirmed my idea about how the first two episodes were the extended pilot and now we’re getting into series proper. Actually, no, because this episode serves to set the series up to be, you know, a series. The episode opens with teenage half-witch who…
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I started this episode very happy Lee Toland Krieger was directing and then immediately regretted it because Krieger uses these camera filters—the iMovie version of wiping Vaseline on the lens—to center viewer attention. So while “Sabrina” has that questionable streaming 2.1:1 aspect ratio… the action takes place in a traditional 1.33:1 TV frame. Not even…
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The opening titles of “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” are, for the most part (if memory serves), Robert Hack art from the source comic book. Now, not only is the comic super-gory, it’s also a period(ish) piece; the show is set modern but none of the teenagers has a smartphone, so it’s a bit removed from…
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After a strong dinosaur suspense opening, with some futuristic submersible entering the closed Jurassic World bay to get something off the seafloor, Fallen Kingdom shockingly quickly becomes a remake of the first Jurassic Park sequel, Lost World. Like, so much you wish there were more in it so David Koepp got a credit through forced…
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About halfway through The Witch: Subversion, I wondered why they’d opened with a flashback showing presumably chid witch Kim Ha-na escaping from her government “doctors.” The prologue introduces evil scientist lady Jo Min-soo and her chief fixer Park Hee-soon, it introduces the secret castle-like laboratory fortress, it has a lot of blood. The opening titles…
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About halfway through The Witch: Part 1. Subversion, I wondered why they’d opened with a flashback showing presumably chid witch Kim Ha-na escaping from her government “doctors.” The prologue introduces evil scientist lady Jo Min-soo and her chief fixer Park Hee-soon, it introduces the secret castle-like laboratory fortress, it has a lot of blood. The…
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The Spy Who Dumped Me has, rather unfortunately, a punny title. It’s an accurate title—the film’s about spy Justin Theroux dumping his civilian and not aware he’s a spy girlfriend Mila Kunis—but it doesn’t capture the mood of the film. No doubt, it’s a hard one to title—because even though it starts with Kunis going…
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About halfway through, Echoes of You gets after-school special cringy, which seems like it’s too bad because at least before—despite being this Dickensian tale of classical pianist employed as a theatre custodian (Laurence Fuller) who befriends the street urchin living out back (Zakary Risinger) through the magic of music—at least it’s well-executed. I mean, basically.…
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I may have already read this issue of Lodger. I thought I’d only read (and mostly forgotten) the first issue, but this one seems very familiar. Going into it without having read the first issue recently and not really remembering the setup—it’s about some white guy named Dante who travels around causing trouble without people…
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The Happytime Murders is exceptionally foul and exceptionally funny. It’s set in a world where animate puppets and humans co-exist, with the human bigotry eradicated because they’ve all decided to hate on the puppets instead. There’s no explanation of how the puppets came to be or when they came to be or whatnot; they just…
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Haunted cop Chang Chen gets a chance to avenge his dead partner Li Guangjie and play hero for the woman (Ni Ni) he loves but doesn’t think he deserves because he’s a haunted cop when the villains who killed Li return. Further adversity comes in the form of a blizzard, which they’re all stranded in…
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Well-made don’t call us a superhero movie superhero origin story about superpowers but can’t control them Gugu Mbatha-Raw returning home to mom Lorraine Toussaint and daughter Saniyya Sidney who both can control the powers. Lots of secrets, a handful of lies. Excellent performances from the three leads; some have better parts than others–Toussaint gets a…
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Bad, but not unwatchable serial killer thriller about ace detective Henry Cavill–a British guy working as a Twin Cities cop (as a British expat), all while filmed in Canada–having obviously guilty suspect Brendan Fletcher in custody only he’s got an accomplice killing cops now. So Cavill has to go to judge-turned-vigilante Ben Kingsley for help.…
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Often visually breathtaking documentary about rock climber Alex Honnold’s potentially suicidal attempt to “free solo” (climb alone without ropes or gear) Yosemite’s El Capitan, something never before accomplished. The filmmakers don’t have a strong narrative (or point, outside showcasing Honnold’s possibly brain abnormality related lack of self preservation and the great outdoors). Also hurts Honnold’s…
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Two hours plus personification of the phrase, “I guess that was okay,” which–given the twenty-five years director Gilliam’s been trying to get it made–is a bit of a letdown. Both Adam Driver and Jonathan Pryce are fine in their lead roles, but neither are anywhere near charismatic enough to carry the film. Supporting damsels Joana…
The Stop Button 