******SPACESHIP-SIZED SPOILERS!!******* 2021’s Space Odyssey. In a time where I’m still a bit pandemic-skittish about going back to cinemas, I decided to peruse my neglected Netflix queue when I came across “Stowaway”, a space flick released this past April. Starring Anna Kendrick (“Up in the Air”), Toni Colette (“The Sixth Sense”), Daniel Dae Kim (“Lost”)…
Tag: Netflix
Zack Snyder returns to zombieland with “Army of the Dead” (2021)…
*****VAULT OF SPOILERS AHEAD!!***** Las Vegas and zombies. Sounds like a comedy-horror marriage made in an all-night chapel with an Elvis impersonator doing the ceremony. What could’ve been a witty zom-com like “Shaun of the Dead” or “Zombieland” goes for lower hanging action-movie fruit. The result feels more like a grounded “Con Air,” but with…
Closing argument on Netflix’s “The Trial of the Chicago 7” (2020)…
I’m taking a rare break from this column’s usual offerings of sci-fi/fantasy/horror content to cross examine writer/director Aaron (“The West Wing”) Sorkin’s latest courtroom drama based on the surreal “Trial of the “Chicago 7” (nearly eight, until unrepresented defendant Bobby Seale’s charge was nullified). This famed court case is a collision of establishment and counterculture,…
“Space Sweepers” (2021) scavenges familiar sci-fi elements into a colorful mix…
Sweeping Victory. Netflix is currently streaming the pandemic-delayed Korean space fantasy “Space Sweepers” (2021), originally known as “Seungriho” (“Starship Victory”). The film is a space-western action adventure with many familiar elements whose characters and heart keep it together when some of its other parts don’t quite add up. Directed and cowritten by Sung-hee Jo (“A…
Netflix’s “The Midnight Sky” (2020) offers bleak escapism but with seeds of hope…
*****JOVIAN MOON-SIZED SPOILERS AHEAD!!***** Netflix’s new sci-fi drama “The Midnight Sky” is a bleak tale of a sickly researcher struggling to warn a returning manned spacecraft away from returning to a dying Earth. While that may not sound like a great night of home-viewing during the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, the film makes for accessible message-heavy…
Netflix’s “Away” (2020) is all about family drama, not the final frontier…
Martian Melodrama. Bit of quick preamble; anyone who’s read this site for awhile probably knows that I am an irredeemable Mars-geek, and a sizable chunk of my book and DVD library relates to Mars, either through real-life probe findings or fictional Mars exploits. For me, the gold standard of fictional Mars missions in this past…
Netflix’s “Project Power” shorts itself out…
Potential. When Netflix announced a new action movie starring Oscar winner Jamie Foxx (“Ray”), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (“Inception”) and interesting newcomer Dominque Fishback, my hungry-for-fresh-entertainment ears perked up a bit. The premise of the movie sounded intriguing; there is a new drug on the streets of New Orleans that, when ingested, gives a person superpowers for…
