Streaming Reviews

I’ve watched my fair share of biopics and documentaries. Well made ones are engaging, focused, and coherently convey’s its story and message. Which brings me to MELANIA (2026), a documentary about the wife of tycoon Donald Trump and this term’s First Lady of the USA.  It follows Melania Knauss Trump as she leads the preparations for Donald Trump’s inauguration as the 47th president of USA. In between the preparation work, we are given anecdotal snippets of Melania’s upbringing in Slovenia, her early interest in fashion, and how it brought her to the USA and eventually to marrying Donald. Other narrations go into her personal motivations, the goals of her “Be Best” campaign, and what drives her.    The movie starts right out the gate as we follow a motorcade right out the gate or Mar A Lago resort. Immediately, the footage impressed me. These are impressive production values! Visually, with the camerawork and colour grading, it looks like a high end Hollywood movie. ...

We know how isekai stories work. Protagonist gets into an accident, gets transported to a fantasy world, and in that world he gains some unique abilities, meets new friends, and embarks on a grand quest.   But what happens when your isekai adventure has ended and you return to the real world only to find out that 17 years had passed? You wake up on a hospital bed and are told your adventures in another world were just dreams while in a 17 year coma after your accident. To add insult to injury your family had broke apart during the time with only your nephew willing to take care of you?   Said nephew is our protagonist Takafumi, and his Uncle is the one claiming to have been a magical warrior in another world for the past 17 years. While skeptical at first, Uncle proves his claims by conjuring up magic leading Takafumi set Uncle up as a YouTuber performing said magic and regaling his viewers of his past adventures. Hijinks ensue when Takafumi himself and his old frien...

Thunder. The surround sound speakers rumbling like thunder. Acoustic waves pound through the theatre seats, vibrating, trembling.  Lightning. Of the flashing projector and the glowing screen. Wind. The ethereal vocals that permeate the soundtrack. Lightning again. Brilliance.  I sit humbled in the brilliance that is Christopher Nolan’s THE ODYSSEY. We know the name of Odysseus, hero of the Trojan war. Some of us know the children’s fairy tale of a cunning leader, others perhaps know past screen adaptations showing a champion who was father to both his biological son Telemachus, as well as the men who served with him in the war. And some perhaps know him from the myths, the legends, the original poems and songs.   This movie is not all of that. As with Oppenheimer before this, as with Batman before that, and as with the Prestige even further back, Nolan deconstructs the myth of Odysseus to present us not just the man of Odysseus, but the story of the ones left behind....