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The Witcher Season 3, Volume 1: History Repeats Itself | That Shelf
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It feels like this season will be made or broken by the final three episodes, releasing in late July. That’s not to say that it isn’t good, just that it doesn’t offer anything as new or compelling as the first two seasons did. A proper ending might supply those things. Again, the show is…
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Transformers: Rise of the Beasts Sinks into Incoherence | Exclaim!
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There’s a moment in the third act of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts where the bad guys have taken possession of the transwarp key (the central MacGuffin of the plot) and started their evil plan, and the good guys appear on the horizon to let everyone know that the big final battle is about to happen.…
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It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Season 16 Sneak Peak: The Gang is Back in Fine Form | That Shelf
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When a long-running series returns for a new season, the first question is always, “will it still be good?” With It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia now entering its 16th season, this question is front of mind. Dennis (Glenn Howerton), Mac (Rob McElhenny), Charlie (Charlie Day), Dee (Kaitlin Olson), and Frank (Danny DeVito) have had so many…
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Little Bird Review: A Must-Watch Canadian Story | That Shelf
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Set in both the late 1950s and the early 1980s, the story follows Bezhig Little Bird, a young girl (played by Keris Hope Hill) who is removed from her family in Saskatchewan at the age of five and adopted out to a Jewish family in Montreal where she becomes Esther Rosenblum (played by Darla…
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Class of ’09 Is Too Unrefined to Be Great | Exclaim!
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The result is a series with unmet potential (at least in the first half) that will likely receive unfavourable comparisons to shows like Black Mirror or Westworld. That is not to say that the series is bad, though. The ideas raised are timely, and the show’s vision of the future is depressingly plausible. Fans of science fiction…
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Star Wars: Visions Volume 2 Review: Nine Exciting Expansions of the Star Wars Universe | That Shelf
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Star Wars, as a franchise, needs some expansion. This isn’t to say that there aren’t many entries in the franchise, rather that, with few exceptions, they tend to concern the same familiar locations and faces that we have grown accustomed to. Star Wars: Visions Volume 1 pushed some of those boundaries, and I am happy to report that…
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Polite Society Doesn’t Follow Coming-of-Age Conventions | Exclaim!
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Polite Society hits the ground running, jumping and kicking in the first few minutes, and never lets up its pace or infectious, offbeat energy. It’s a mashup of genres and styles, ranging from a coming-of-age tale to a kung fu epic to an Ocean’s Eleven-style heist. Still, even with all this going on, director and writer Nida…
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Star Trek: Picard Season 3 Review: A Fun, Final Adventure | That Shelf
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On the whole, Star Trek: Picard has been a mixed bag. With a languid pace in its first season, followed by a ridiculous time-travel plot (even by Star Trek standards) in its second, it needed to be clarified what the series wanted to be. For better or for worse, these are not problems that Season 3 shares. Link: https://thatshelf.com/star-trek-picard-season-3-review-a-fun-final-adventure/
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Shrinking Grows Past Its Familiar Story | Exclaim!
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With so much content these days, it can sometimes feel like there are no new stories. Shrinking, AppleTV+’s new series starring Jason Segel, covers familiar territory: an affluent, white male therapist living in an affluent neighbourhood full of affluent friends has hit rock bottom after a year of grief and begins to act out as a…
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Broker Unboxes Found Families | Exclaim!
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What makes a family? This is the question on Hirokazu Kore-eda‘s mind lately. As with his 2018 Palme D’or-winning film Shoplifters, Broker attempts to answer that question by examining a most unlikely found family: a group of people brought together via human trafficking. That might sound sensational, but the film concentrates its characters around a so-called “baby box,”…
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‘Fire of Love’ Paints a Portrait of Love in Magma | Awesome Friday!
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Katia and Maurice Krafft were rock stars in the field of volcanology. Among the earliest scientists to extensively film and photograph active and erupting volcanoes, and often got as close as possible to the magma flows in an age when the unpredictability of the geological activity kept everyone else hundreds of feet away. It…
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‘Make People Better’ leans too hard into being a thriller but remains compelling nonetheless | Awesome Friday!
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In the film Gattaca, there is a scene where a set of new parents are consulting a doctor about genetically altering the baby they wish to conceive. When they posit that maybe it’s better to leave a few things to chance, the doctor scoffs and tells them they want to give their baby the…
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Scrap Is a Thoughtful Meditation on the Things We Build | Awesome Friday!
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Where do the things we make go when we’re done with them? It’s a question that we too often don’t ask ourselves, along with what the long-term effects are of what we do with our old stuff. Scrap doesn’t have any easy answers, but the new film from director Stacey Tenenbaum does offer a fascinating glimpse…
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Framing Agnes Obscures Its Own Powerful Premise and Story | Awesome Friday!
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In the 1950s and 60s, researchers at UCLA conducted a study into sex disorders. The resulting archive of data contains a cross-section of trans history in the form of interviews conducted with the study’s participants. One of the participants –a woman known only as Agnes- used the study to receive gender-affirming care and then…
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L’Inhumain Explores Inner Turmoil Using a Mythic Monster | Awesome Friday!
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One of, if not the, best-known monsters in indigenous folklore is the Wendigo. Once men, their souls corrupted after turning to cannibalism, they stalk people who enter their territory and devour them, their hunger insatiable. This is the creature that Matthieu (Samuel ‘Samian’ Tremblay) faces in L’inhumain, but whether it’s the monster is up…