Streaming Reviews

“Don’t need to fear they’re here. Just call the Four! 🎶 Fantastic Four!” That’s from the lyrics of the opening theme to 1994’s Fantastic Four cartoon. It is upbeat, catchy, but really really corny. I would be lying if I said it did not evoke some heavy nostalgia in me for this was one of those childhood cartoons that I followed almost religiously.  Debuting in 1994 as part of the "Marvel Action Hour" along side "IRON MAN", FANTASTIC FOUR boasted two seasons of wildly varying quality to the point where they were almost like two wholly different shows. Other than the voices, everything from the music to the art and animation changed drastically between seasons and thankfully for the better.  Setting nostalgia aside and watching this as an adult, I found the first season of the 90s Fantastic Four animated series to be cheesy albeit charming in a cheap 80s toy commercial cartoon sort of way.  Weird poses, clunky character motion and a mediocre frame rate. The designs l...

JURASSIC WORLD REBIRTH was not something I was clamouring for. Where 2022’s Jurassic World Dominion gave a nice send off to both the characters introduced in 2015’s Jurassic world and the original Jurassic Park, JURASSIC WORLD REBIRTH as its name suggests, is a soft reboot: it continues with just the basic premise of where Dominion left off but kickstarts a new status quo with new characters and no ties to the originals. No easy feat considering how part of the appeal of the previous Jurassic World movies was the nostalgia factor.  I went into this with low expectations. For me, I considered the book on Jurassic park/world closed and tied up in a nice little bow. And now it was opened again. The trailers presented two vastly different sub plots that I could not imagine how they would come together: one was a mercenary group sent to a quarantined island of dinosaurs to retrieve blood from specific species, and another was a family who got stranded on that same island and have to su...

In a world where being a Magical Girl is a legitimate career path, one spunky young lady is about to plunge head first into this fascinating yet oddly familiar industry. Enter fresh graduate Kana Sakuragi.  Not much in the way of work experience but decently book smart, able to memorise instruction manuals the same way she memorise books for school.  After Kana helps magical girl Hitomi Koshigaya during a “Kaii” monster attack, she is hired by Hitomi’s employer Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc.   What captivated me about this anime is its portrayal of the world and the magical girl profession.  This isn’t just a copy of the “corporatised super hero” trope but truly feels like a functional industry complete with the ups and downs of working life. You have the big MNCs down to the smaller startups, of which Magilumiere is the latter.   You have a whole slew of side industries who make durable but comfortable fabrics for costumes, anti Kaii monster technology tha...

Sylvester Stallone as a retired Superhero. This is a premise that I could definitely get behind, and the premise of 2022’s SAMARITAN.   SAMARITAN shows us a post superhero world. In the beginning there were a pair of twins born with strength, durability and regenerative capabilities far beyond normal humans. When their parents died in an arson attack, one of them vowed vengeance against humanity, taking up the villainous moniker of Nemesis.  The other brother became the superhero Samaritan to defend humanity against Nemesis and inspire people with hope. Eventually both superhuman brothers died in a massive power plant explosion.  In present day 25 years later, their home of Granite City is a decaying urban wasteland with a widening rich/poor divide and people who have given up all hope. Our story follows a boy named Sam who is obsessed with Samaritan and buys into the conspiracy theory that the superhero never died.  After being saved from gangsters by an elde...