Sometimes there’s too much stuff to review, so here are some other things that you should check out or avoid.
CENTRAL PARK (Season 2) – Apple+ Review
The musical from the team behind Bob’s Burgers is back and, honestly, better than ever. The first few episodes of the next season have dropped and they contain a ton of great songs, great writing, and a lot more insight than I would have expected. One of the episodes contains a near perfect twist ending and one contains a level of introspection and emotional honesty that really hit me deeply. If you haven’t given this a shot yet, you need to.
CHAOS WALKING – Theatrical Review
This movie starts off with the interesting premise of a planet where the inhabitants are infected by “noise,” a psychic field that renders their thoughts out loud and even in images. Aliens killed off all of the women a generation ago. Tom Holland plays a young man on this planet when Daisy Ridley crashes onto it. Now, he has to protect her from the men who want to kill her entire mothership for their supplies. It’s not a bad movie, but it rarely plays the premise up as well as it could. It has some twists in it, but all of them are too obvious for the amount of build-up. Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley are good in it, though, and there are some great supporting cast members.
RAY (Miniseries) – Netflix Review
This is a miniseries of films based on the short stories of acclaimed Indian director Satyajit Ray. They all have elements of seeming fantasy, but not all of them end up actually having fantastic worlds. The key to the series is that it is often focused on personal changes deriving from internal reflection triggered by external events, either because a person starts to believe that they no longer remember their past or because they meet a person that they didn’t realize they had a connection with. They’re all pretty different, so even if you don’t like one of them, maybe give the next one a try. I thought this was a fun series.
THE SEVENTH DAY – Netflix Review
Have you ever thought “we need another terrible version of the exorcist?” Because if you haven’t, then you are sane. Also, this movie isn’t for you. Starring Guy Pearce, who has clearly hit some hard times, as a veteran exorcist who is the Vatican’s resident rebel and Vadhir Derbez as the young and naive priest who is trying to find out the truth about demonic possession, the movie kind of falls apart early on. It almost seems like it is going to confront some of the inner workings of the Catholic Church, but instead basically says “the church is great because demons are very real.”
FATHERHOOD – Netflix Review
Kevin Hart plays Matthew Logelin, a man whose wife dies suddenly during childbirth, leaving him a single father. For a while, his mother and mother-in-law help out, but after they leave, he struggles before managing to get used to single parenting. Years later, Matthew’s daughter Maddy (Melody Hurd) starts having problems at school at the same time that Matthew tries dating again and is having more issues at work. It’s a solid movie mostly because it takes a lot of the issues very seriously and addresses some sides of single parenting that many movies skip. It’s just ultimately not a very interesting story.
The Joker On The Sofa 