Reviews of the Bosch

The mistaken identity and associated twin dilemma is one of the classic conventions of storytelling, but it takes an especially strong premise and an equally adept execution to make a variation stand out. Not every story can be Twelfth Night , or The Prince and the Pauper , or … The Parent Trap . But after seeing this movie, I wonder if The Prisoner of Zenda  should be considered alongside them. Now clearly it hasn’t had quite the lasting power as those other examples –there aren’t a lot of people who really remember The Prisoner of Zenda  –either the 1894 book by Anthony Hope or one of the film adaptations (namely the ones from 1937, 1952, or 1979). In looking at the 1937 film produced by David O. Selznick and directed by John Cromwell (and an uncredited George Cukor and Woody Van Dyke), I can see why the story’s not too well-known to modern audiences; it’s not as specific as other mistaken identity stories and repurposes plot elements from other older stories. However...

There are fewer treasure troves in the history of world literature greater than the One Thousand and One Nights , a collection of Islamic folktales compiled over several centuries. And they’re an often plundered source for animation, from Lotte Reiniger’s innovative The Adventures of Prince Achmed  (the oldest surviving animated feature) to DreamWork’s forgettable Sinbad: The Legend of the Seven Seas , and even Bugs Bunny’s 1001 Rabbit Tales . But of course the most famous is Disney’s Aladdin , which like every movie of the early Disney Renaissance, repurposed an old formula in a new way, something I’ve become increasingly convinced they’ve forgotten how to do. I wish Disney had the courage or conviction to retell Aladdin  rather than remake it. Much like with Beauty and the Beast , it’s an old enough and simple enough story that there are numerous possibilities; while Disney’s Aladdin  is so unique and dependant on its lush yet wacky animation, that a live-action ...

My favourite Star Trek  series is Deep Space Nine . That might have been a very controversial thing to say once, but history’s been especially kind to the third Star Trek  show that aired from 1993 to 1999. Though its two preceding series are still more popular, and even its successive two series are better known, if only for their failings, fans of DS9  know that this overlooked middle child of the franchise was by far the most bold, innovative, rich, and thoughtful Star Trek  series, truly “going where no one had gone before” despite being set on a solitary space station. Ahead of its time in terms of its story arcs, serialization, character complexity, and juggling of themes, it arguably fits in more in the current television climate than it did in the 1990s, and as more people are discovering it, Deep Space Nine  is getting a much deserved re-evaluation. What We Left Behind (a reference to the final episode) is a crowd-funded documentary made in honou...

The Grizzlies  is a movie that has a lot going against it. First of all, it’s a small scale Canadian release set in Nunavut (which is a place so alien to most Canadians it might as well be another country), it has a white saviour by way of Freedom Writers complex as its plot, and it’s an underdog sports movie about lacrosse of all things. So it has an uphill battle in terms of audience attention and critical appraisal; and that’s not even addressing the fact it’s centred on an Inuit community, an area of focus that will always struggle against stories about white people. And The Grizzlies  is certainly weakened by some of its choices that either repeat well-worn tropes or compromise its material to pander to white audiences, however there is a silver lining to it that renders it not dismissible. Based on a true story, the film follows Russ Sheppard (Ben Schnetzer) a high school teacher suddenly given an appointment to the remote Nunavut town of Kugluktuk. Attempting to ...

“I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done since I grew old and weary enough to detect its presence.” -J.R.R. Tolkien To make a movie about J.R.R. Tolkien without the permission of the Tolkien Estate is a very bad idea. In fact it’s what should have brought the development of this movie to a dead halt. Because without authorization from the Estate, the film cannot legally use the names, places, and subject matter in Tolkiens’ works, which are kind of important in a biopic about the guy who wrote some of the most revered books of the twentieth century. It would essentially be like producing a movie about J.K. Rowling without being able to say anything about the Harry Potter  books and not even be allowed to use the word “Hogwarts”. However, Tolkien , a Fox Searchlight film directed by acclaimed Finnish filmmaker Dome Karukoski, went ahead anyway, and while it manages to avoid dealing specifically with The Hobbit , The Lord of the Rings ,...

Avengers: Endgame  is not the final movie of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But you could argue it really should be. Its’ titanic scale, mountains upon mountains of fanservice, and resolution to years of build-up are on a level I can’t fathom a future movie topping, and it brings closure to some of the major characters this universe has been following for over a decade. It feels like a journey come to a worthy end. That’s not to say I want the MCU to end necessarily. In fact I feel it’s been at its best these last few years through films like the Guardians of the Galaxy  movies, Black Panther , Doctor Strange , Thor: Ragnarok , Ant-Man and the Wasp , and of course, Endgame - so the future looks bright at least from a film quality standpoint. However I’ll acknowledge that if they did cease production it would be healthier for Hollywood itself. It would at least give Disney one less tool to rule the global box office with. The ubiquity of Disney within the Holl...

I’m amazed it took this long to get a live-action Pok é mon  movie. The Japanese pocket monster franchise is one of the most popular intellectual properties worldwide having spawned numerous video games, card games, mangas, animes, and movies since its creation in 1995 by video game developer Satoshi Tajiri. And it’s still a phenomenon, so much so that Pok é mon: Detective Pikachu , the Rob Letterman-directed adaptation of the 2016 game of the same name, feels no obligation to really explain what Pokémon are or the finer nuances of its world. It presumes it’s audience has had at least a little exposure to the franchise…and they’re probably right in doing so. Most of us at least have a passing knowledge of who Pikachu is. But cultural osmosis aside, this was an unusual choice for a live-action debut. Rather than tell a safe but accessible story about a kid’s journey to be a Pokémon trainer, this film chooses a more specific story that just happens to be set in the Pokémon wor...

Though it hasn’t made much of an impact over here, The Wandering Earth , a big budget science fiction film from director Frant Gwo (and based on a short story by Liu Cixin) is not only the third highest-grossing film of 2019, but the second-highest grossing Chinese movie of all time. So it’s kind of pathetic that this film that is as big as any Avengers movie in the Chinese market right now dropped on Netflix recently with no fanfare whatsoever. The streaming platform definitely has a problem when it comes to promoting good foreign content, with Bong Joon-ho’s Okja  and Lee Chang-dong’s Burning  (both excellent films) being previous examples of poorly marketed Asian exports. Without elevating The Wandering Earth  to quite the level of those, it really is a movie that deserves to be seen by anyone who loves crazy science-fiction ideas, grand special effects extravaganzas, and even disaster movie intensity. It`s on a scale quite unlike anything I’ve seen of Chinese c...

Unicorn Store  is that kind of strange fantastical-realist movie you don’t see much anymore from the Hollywood machine; movies that are heavily about real world struggles and slices of life, with a light dosing of fantasy. You get the occasional Beasts of the Southern Wild  from the indie scene, and technically Unicorn Store  is an indie as well (one that actually premiered at TIFF in 2017 and didn’t find a distributor until recently at Netflix), but it has a pretty average budget to it and a handful of notable stars –as well as a coordinated release to coincide with another bigger movie its two leads are also headlining that ensures it has a larger audience than it might have otherwise. So there’s something immediately refreshing about this film so wholeheartedly embracing an honest by way of whimsical tone and a grounded realism still open to flights of fancy. Sometimes, this is enough to sustain the movie, other times it’s more reliant on the effectiveness of the ...