It’s hard to imagine a title more Canadian than North of North. “The true North, strong and free” is part of the Canadian anthem, and while few Canadians have ever been north of Edmonton, polar bears, baby seals, and rawhide snowshoes are a large part of the national identity.
I like stories with moral ambiguity, but in the case of Wicked it just seemed to have moral confusion. It begins with Glinda informing the Munchkins that the Wicked Witch is dead, to mass jubilation. It’s a glimpse into the future of the vain, vacuous, vacant Galinda who is smirking at the death of her friend and taking credit for it.
This is a Korean sitcom, which means that where the science is at times problematic, it never descends to the level of bat-science. You’ll learn a lot more valid neuropsychology and the physiology of brain functions than you ever learn from Oz or any of the other pop “doctors” on American television. And yes, behind the comedy is serious, deadly drama.
The first thing to know about Netflix’s high-budget 6 part series about the struggle for the territory of Utah is that it is a western in the grimdark genre. It’s hyper-realistic, dark, bloody, violent and with compelling acting and characters. It’s in the same vein as Godless, The English, or Deadwood.
The Sticky is “The absolutely not true story of the Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist.” If that disclaimer sounds familiar, think “The names have been changed to protect the guilty.” It’s not the only element that will remind you of the classic Coen Brothers’ movie, Fargo. It has the same recipe of idiosyncratic characters caught up in an increasingly absurd and violent web of insane circumstances—and like Fargo, it is howlingly funny and utterly unforgettable.
Quantum Space is a locked room mystery, a voyage of scientific knowledge, and a first contact novel all wrapped up into one. While trying to find out what became of the cosmonauts our characters encounter a strange shiny silver object, a variation of the Yin-Yang circle. It turns out to be a Rosetta Stone, but one that only someone familiar with advanced quantum particle physics can unravel.
If Inside Out was a great portrayal of the hidden mind of a child, Inside Out 2 surpasses it with the far more intricate and complex machinations of the mind of a female adolescent. It’s easy for an adult to dismiss the concerns of childhood as shallow and even trivial, but the tsunami of emotion and confusion that comes with early teenage years is something even adults shy away from.
I mentioned The Sopranos, and I will also mention Breaking Bad, because both have the same elements that propel The Penguin: an exceptionally strong, large cast, a unique and compelling world, and a lead character whose performance is utterly incandescent. Farrell’s performance is right up there with Gandolfini or Cranston. It is utterly amazing.
Pantheon is solid, intelligent, probing science fiction, as good an example of the genre as you can hope to encounter. The scientific literacy and verisimilitude will remind you of Andy Weir or Peter Cawdron, and the moral and ethical complexity and ambiguity is straight from the pages of Harlan Ellison or Phillip K. Dick. Yes, it’s that good.
In most movies, the main character’s developing lycanthropy is pretty much front and center, and the rest of the character’s life is incidental, if not entirely subsumed. You know, like Jack in Werewolves of London. (Still my favorite werewolf movie).
In Nightbitch, the lycanthropy is more or less incidental to the other things going on in the character’s life.