*****COMET-SIZED SPOILERS AHEAD!!***** Writer/director/producer Adam McKay is known for poking fun at television conventions (“Anchorman”) and politics (his “Saturday Night Live” shorts). With Netflix’s “Don’t Look Up” (2021) he takes aim at the current distrust of science and common sense, using a planet-destroying comet as broad metaphor for COVID and climate change-denials. McKay also skewers…
Tag: #Netflix
Netflix’s “Space Force” (2020) or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace the Satire…
*****HIGHLY CLASSIFIED: SPOILERS INSIDE! ***** Netflix has just unveiled a new Steve Carrell-produced/starring streaming series that takes place in a reality just west of our own; it’s a universe that still has Star Wars, Twitter, Tiktok, K-Pop, the Apollo lunar landings, Donald Trump (though never mentioned by name) and other alignments with our own universe, but…
Smooth sailing for Season 2 of Netflix’s “Lost In Space”…
The second season of Netflix’s reimagined “Lost in Space” is now streaming, and it ups the stakes, both dramatically and cinematically, looking better than many current science fiction films, and providing a family drama series that isn’t hokey, corny or condescending. To say it surpasses this series surpasses both the original 1965-8 TV series and…
Netflix’s “See You Yesterday” (2019) offers a different spin on time-travel tropes…
Netflix’s new film, “See You Yesterday” (2019) is a fresh take on sci-fi time-travel tropes that radically shifts gears into unexpectedly heavy social commentary… sort of a fusion of “Back To The Future” and producer Spike Lee’s own “Do The Right Thing”…
Taking “The Bird Box” challenge…
With the holidays now in the rear-view mirror, I finally had a chance to check out the new Netflix original movie, “The Bird Box” (2018), starring Sandra Bullock, directed by Susanne Bier from a screenplay by Eric Heisserer based on a 2014 novel by Josh Malerman (which I’ve not read, for full disclosure). The film…
SyFy cancels “The Expanse,” and the grieving begins…
I’ll admit; I’m a Johnny-come-lately to “The Expanse” party, and I’ve not read the books yet, either. But I’m a sincere, devoted and passionate fan of this TV series, and it has filled the hole in my heart that’s existed ever since reimagined “Battlestar Galactica” ended its run in 2009…a hole that even BSG’s spinoff…
Netflix’s “Lost in Space” Season One has landed…
As I’ve said in a previous post ( “Finding “Lost in Space” ), my feelings on the classic series that spawned the current Netflix reboot are decidedly mixed. While I loved it as a kid and would catch reruns quasi-religiously after school, its charms have dimmed considerably for me as an adult. While I’ve matured…
WonderCon 2018 is a wrap…
What a weekend! My wife and I (along with our friend/longtime-partner-in-crime Ali) spent last Friday afternoon through Sunday evening in the fair city of Anaheim (a half hour away at maximum warp and home of Disneyland) attending WonderCon. I’ve heard WonderCon described as ‘Comic Con Jr.’ It has many of the same elements that comprise Comic Con…
Alex Garland’s “Annihilation” creates something new from borrowed DNA…
Writer/director Alex Garland (“Ex Machina”) has a new science fiction movie in cinemas now that will probably not be a giant crowdpleaser/moneymaker, but it is also one of the most thought-provoking, intelligent and genuinely interesting movies I’ve seen since “Blade Runner 2049.” And it’s not a sequel or a prequel, nor is it based on…
Finding “Lost in Space”…
Past Prologue. When I was a kid, “Lost in Space” was one of those shows that I watched in afternoon reruns in the mid-1970s (I was a few years too young to have watched it in first-run from 1965-1968). My earliest impression was that it felt like a wonderfully goofy hybrid of “Star Trek” and…
Netflix’s “Stranger Things”’ truly blossoms in its sophomore year…
“Stranger Things” is a horror/sci-fi ‘80s period piece series created for Netflix by The Duffer Brothers (Russ & Matt), and it feels like a genetically-engineered offspring of early ‘80s-era Steven Spielberg and Stephen King, with a generous helping of the late Tobe Hooper spliced in for good measure. I first got into “Stranger Things” last…