Reviews of the Bosch

2017 has been a rough, discordant year and I’m sorry to say 2018’s not going to be any better. We’re in for a bizarre twelve months ahead, with some things good, some things bad, and some things strange. I’ve seen it through means I can’t disclose, but I feel the public deserves to know at least some of what they’re in store for. So here I’m revealing the biggest news stories of each month of 2018! Prepare yourselves, look on the bright side, and try to act surprised: January: After Kim Jong-Un demands construction of more nuclear missiles bigger and longer than Americas’, he is crushed when a thirteen foot juggernaut falls on top of him during a demonstration. February: The Hollywood Sex Abuse Scandal awkwardly hangs over the Academy Awards as every woman presenter and nominee comes armed with a taser in their bra. March: Humanity breathes a sigh of relief as Twitter is put out of commission. U.S. President Donald Trump throws a brief tantrum before his handler introduces...

The concept behind David Ayers’ Bright  is wonderfully intriguing. The idea of evolving a high fantasy environment full of magic and mythical creatures to the modern age is rife with opportunities to me. Not only would it be fun seeing Elves and Fairies and Orcs interacting with modern technology in a recognizable setting, but it could be wildly inventive and provide a commentary on current civilization. This isn’t however, what Bright  actually does. Taking place in the world I just described, LAPD officer Daryl Ward (Will Smith) is paired with the very first Orc police officer Nick Jakoby (Joel Edgerton). Of course there’s prejudice on Ward’s part. But when they discover the aftermath of an illegal magic wand while out on patrol, they’re roped into a power struggle for the wand between factions who believe it’ll bring back the Dark Lord who enslaved the world thousands of years ago. The story seems very interesting, but the movie’s biggest problem is that it’s not i...

Ever since the early days of film when pioneers like Georges Melies and Fritz Lang used forced perspective to create an effect of someone being smaller than the average human, shrinking in film has been a popular novelty emerging mostly in B-movies and family films. Though it was always something of a gimmick, and has especially been noticeably so after the technology was seemingly perfected in Honey I Shrunk the Kids . Enter Alexander Payne, director of such films as About Schmidt , Sideways , The Descendants , and Nebraska . His latest movie, Downsizing , aims to offer a new perspective on shrinking stories, by using the idea as a jumping-off point for a basic exploration of humanity and life. And I have to say I was surprised by no movie this year more than Downsizing ! Set in the not too distant future, Norwegian scientists have perfected an irreversible process called downsizing, wherein people are shrunk down to five inches to live in miniature communities, as a solvent ...

Has anyone noticed it’s become Hollywood tradition in recent years to put out a musical around Christmas. Whether it be something original or a long-awaited adaptation of a Broadway hit, we’ve been getting them just about annually since 2012. This years’ serving is The Greatest Showman , the debut film from director Michael Gracey, based on the story of P.T. Barnum and how he came to create the recently deceased Barnum & Bailey Circus. It’s a movie that for all its pomp and scale, is just spectacle -but damn, what a spectacle! Phineas Taylor Barnum (Hugh Jackman) has risen from meagre beginnings as the son of a tailor to marry his wealthy love Charity (Michelle Williams). With ambition to provide a comfortable life for his family and a number of failed jobs behind him, he takes a risky venture to open a wax museum. After it fails to make money however, he latches onto the idea of turning it into a show of human curiosities, recruiting a number of acts including a bearded lad...

Winston Churchill has been depicted on film and television numerous times, and portrayed by great actors giving great performances at that. And the focus has nearly always been on his career as Prime Minister during the Second World War, the defining point of his life. So director Joe Wright had to have confidence his interpretation Darkest Hour  would stand out among the multitudes. The good news is it does, but only in a couple areas. Taking place over the period of one month from May to June 1940, the film portrays Winston Churchill’s (Gary Oldman) appointment to Prime Minister of Great Britain following the Parliamentary lack of confidence in Neville Chamberlain (Ronald Pickup). As France becomes lost to the Germans, Britain is under threat of invasion and Churchill feels immense pressure as he attempts to strategize and protect the nation while rebuking notions of peace negotiations and harsh opposition within his very own War Cabinet. How is it there have been two mo...

It’s Christmastime, and that means another Doctor Who  special. And it seems a good half of these Christmas episodes are the site of major change-ups for the show. If it’s not a companion joining or leaving, it’s a Doctor regenerating. This year it’s both. It also happens to be the final episode of Steven Moffat’s eight year tenure as showrunner, a tenure that’s been marked with heavy fluctuations in quality. So “Twice Upon a Time” is truly the end of an era. When Doctor Who  returns in 2018, it’s going to be from a completely new team, and I can’t wait for the fresh perspective. “Twice Upon a Time” is also a tribute to the past, pairing Peter Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor with the First Doctor, originally played by William Hartnell, here by David Bradley. And it’s this that had me most excited for the special. Not only was Bradley exceptional as Hartnell in An Adventure in Space and Time , but the First Doctor is still one of my favourites, and I have a particular fondness ...

The past couple Christmases for Back to the Feature I’ve seen a few ultimately bad seasonal movies. The purpose of this series is to watch and review significant films that I haven’t seen before, but it’s beginning to look like I’ve seen all the good known Christmas movies. And while I can’t say Christmas in Connecticut dispels that notion, it’s certainly a mark above my previous experiences. Christmas in Connecticut  is not a great holiday movie by any means -there are definitely more than a few problems with it, but there is also some decent entertainment to be had in it, if you’re able to look past its’ noticeable shortcomings.        War hero Jefferson Jones (Dennis Morgan) becomes enamoured with the work of food writer Elizabeth Lane (Barbara Stanwyck) while recuperating in hospital. Lane’s publisher Alexander Yardley (Sydney Greenstreet), on discovering this insists she host Christmas dinner for Jones at her famous Connecticut farmhouse. However ...

Unlike a lot of other 90s kids, I didn’t grow up with Jumanji , the 1995 movie based loosely on Chris Van Allsburg’s childrens’ book. I didn’t watch it until later in life and thought it was only okay. So going into Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle , I didn’t have the nostalgia a lot of other people do for its twenty-two year old precursor. And maybe that’s one of the reasons I didn’t find it so bad. Four teenagers forced to work in their school basement for detention come across a console game called Jumanji . They decide to play it, but upon selecting their avatars they’re transported into the game. Now playing as Smolder Bravestone (Dwayne Johnson), Mouse Finbar (Kevin Hart), Ruby Roundhouse (Karen Gillan), and Professor Oberon (Jack Black), the four must survive the jungle adventure and complete a quest before they can be freed from the game, each granted only three lives to do it in. Transplanting regular people in the world of the Jumanji game is a much more interestin...

So far, the second chapter in a Star Wars trilogy is the one that tries to be darker, more ambitious, and even a little hopeless for its protagonists, often who’ve spent the movie apart. This has amounted to mixed results, with Empire Strikes Back frequently being cited as the greatest Star Wars  movie, while Attack of the Clones  is quite clearly the worst. A significant component of Joseph Campbell’s Hero Journey, Rian Johnson abides by this pattern too with The Last Jedi , but consciously pushes further, creating a film that has some shadows of its predecessors while thoroughly charting a compelling new direction for this universe and mythology. Set directly after The Force Awakens , the Resistance fighters led by General Leia (Carrie Fisher) are evacuating their base as the First Order pursues, only to find their enemies are somehow able to track them through light-speed. Covertly on orders from Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), Finn (John Boyega) and Rose (Kelly Marie Tra...

There are a lot of television shows that have done Christmas episodes. And many of them are so good that we keep coming back to them. Some of my favourites come from Futurama , Community , The Simpsons , The Mary Tyler Moore Show , Cheers , Recess , Blackadder , and even M*A*S*H  (a little-known gem called “Dear Sis”). But there’s one animated show with a number of really good Christmas episodes to its name that never gets recognized for them, and that is American Dad! By far the best of Seth MacFarlane’s shows (perhaps because he’s not as involved in the production), American Dad!  is no stranger to slipping under the radar, either by being eclipsed by its sibling series, Family Guy  and even The Cleveland Show  for a while; or by its comic sensibilities being just more clever and surreal than its network competitors to achieve cult status, but not enough that it’s in anyway groundbreaking. Regardless, it’s a series that’s turned out some pretty funny and cre...

The title of Last Flag Flying  sounds unfortunately like the kind of thing you’d hear at the RNC or worse still, a Trump rally. It’s a phrase that seems to imply that kind of nationalistic nonsense about how the American flag and their military need to be glorified that leads to a distorted sense of values. This movie could almost be a propaganda piece. But it’s not; in fact it actually criticizes these very notions while remarkably at the same time being a genuinely patriotic love letter to the U.S. military and its veterans. And no less is expected from a master filmmaker like Richard Linklater. Here, he tells a very heartfelt story about three veterans and their relationship, both good and bad, to the institution that changed their lives. Set in 2003, Vietnam vet Larry “Doc” Shepherd (Steve Carrell) has recently lost his son in Iraq and seeks out his old military buddies to accompany him to the funeral. Sal Nealon (Bryan Cranston) is a crass alcoholic running a shoddy b...