Flatliners Should Have Had a Do Not Resuscitate Order

Continuing the trend of endless remakes nobody asked for, director Niels Arden Oplev takes a crack at resurrecting a crappy 27-year-old Kiefer Sutherland vehicle. At least it’s not a beloved film getting the cheap makeover this time. One would think that, at the very least, this new version of Flatliners can’t be any worse than the original. One would be wrong.

No Ugly People

Courtney (Ellen Page) is a medical student at The Top-Rated Medical School That Does Not Admit Ugly People. Obsessed with the after-life after carelessly causing her sister’s death nine years earlier, she comes up with the plan of stopping her heart for a couple minutes to force a near-death experience. She has surprisingly little difficulty recruiting fellow students to this dangerous and ethically indefensible project. Continue reading →

The Tick – Season 0.5 Review

After a year-long wait, the first half-season of The Tick was finally released on Amazon. We got 6 episodes, but that included the original pilot, so, really, we only got 5 new episodes. And as a Tick fan, I was bitterly disappointed.

The show did get a couple things right. Peter Serafinowicz nails the Tick. His speech patterns, voice, and mannerisms are spot on. If you’re a fan of the animated series from the 1990s, Serafinowicz is a perfect live action version of the titular hero. The second major protagonist of the series, Arthur (Griffin Newman), doesn’t come off nearly as well, but more about him in a moment. Arthur’s sister, Dot (Valorie Curry), mentioned but not often seen in the animated series, plays a much bigger role in this incarnation, and that is arguably the only other good thing about the show. Dot is an active and ongoing participant in the action and in Arthur’s life, with some interesting subplots of her own. Expanding her role was a major plus.

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The Tick coming soon

The Tick Season 1 on Amazon Prime Video August 25

Last year, Amazon’s original pilot gave us our first look at a new, live action incarnation of The Tick. (See my review here.) Since then, Tick fans have been eagerly awaiting the release of the first season. Well, the wait will soon be over. The Tick, Season 1 will be available on Amazon Prime Video this Friday, August 25.

Will it live up to hopes and expectations? We’ll all find out very soon.

Check it out on Amazon Video.

The Dark Tower – Like Watching People You Don’t Know Play Dungeons and Dragons

The Dark Tower incorporates elements from Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger and other novels in the series into a condensed/derivative story for protagonist Roland Deschain, the titular gunslinger (Idris Elba). There’s a Dark Tower that protects various parallel universes, including ours, from a dimension full of demons. The Man in Black (aka Walter, portrayed by Matthew McConaughey) wants to destroy the tower and let the demons in. His plan involves strapping children into a big psychic cannon, painfully extracting their psychic energy, and blasting the tower with it. Roland, once a member of the mystical, knights-of-the-round-table-like order of Gunslingers, is a broken man simply bent on revenge. Jake Chambers (Tom Taylor) is a kid in present day New York with massive psychic ability who sees visions of all of this, but no one believes him, so he is subjected to escalating levels of psychiatric treatment.

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Dunkirk – When the British Still had Guts

Dunkirk tells the story of the evacuation of British forces trapped on the beaches near the port of Dunkirk in the early stages of World War II. Director and writer Christopher Nolan attempts to humanize the events by focusing on the experiences of a few characters – Tommy (Fionn Whitehead) and a French soldier (Damien Bonnard) trapped on the beach and desperately trying to escape, Mr. Dawson (Mark Rylance) owner and pilot of a small boat heading to Dunkirk to assist with the evacuation, Farrier (Tom Hardy) a Royal Air Force pilot defending the flotilla from the German air force, and Commander Bolton (Kenneth Branagh) the British officer directing the evacuation on the beach.

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