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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…
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Marvel’s ‘Moon Knight’ Is a Bit Disjointed | Awesome Friday!
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Comics are weird. There’s no denying this simple fact, and there’s no use trying. This fact is universal and can be a barrier to entry for new fans. Sometimes 50 years of lore is a lot to wrap your head around. One of the great strengths of Marvel’s ongoing cinematic universe is that initially,…
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VIFF 2020: ‘John Ware Reclaimed’ looks to change the conversation about the famous black cowboy | Awesome Friday!
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For Foggo, John Ware has been a lifelong concern. She started a research file in the early days of her career as a writer and, in 2012, wrote a play titled John Ware Reimagined –songs from which are staged throughout this film– about his life and times. She admits that she knows she is…
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VIFF 2020: ‘Jumbo’ is a sweet film about love and acceptance | Awesome Friday!
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On its face, Jumbo is about a young woman who falls in love with a carnival ride. No, not “oh hey, I love that ride.” She develops a deep emotional and sexual attachment to the ride. Yes, that’s a bit weird, but that is just the surface of the story. At its heart, Jumbo is about…
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VIFF 2020: ‘The Magnitude of All Things’ looks at climate change through the lens of personal loss | Awesome Friday!
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Of all the stories presented, one common thread is money. Unfortunately, those who do the damage are more concerned with money than with the people affected. Again, this is not new information. Living through late-stage capitalism has made none of this surprising, only disappointing. Many stories in The Magnitude of All Things are as much about…
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VIFF 2020: ‘Inconvenient Indian’ Is a Powerful Look at the Past, and Present, of Indigenous Life in Canada | Awesome Friday!
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What makes Inconvenient Indian powerful is that it doesn’t let us get away with this. After a long section of various indigenous efforts to reclaim culture and foster some hope, the film also draws a straight line from our collective past to our present ignorance. It directly shows the police violently arresting Wetʼsuwetʼen people in BC…