We’re closing in on the end of the year and trying to wrap up on a few things we’re in the midst of watching. I’ve got my Netflix queue down to under six things in my list and trying to nail down those final couple of movies within it. At this point, it’s just a few movies left overall and the second season of Umbrella Academy that I’m waiting to watch with someone.
The big watch of the week was getting to take in the Wonder Woman 1984 film since it was high on my list and definitely a good use of HBO Max for me. I’ve actually enjoyed the service a lot and get a lot of use out of it, but I can’t understand people who say there’s nothing on Netflix when I’m generally overwhelmed with things to watch there.
You can read our review of Wonder Woman 1984 here.
Another new film that got an early streaming run is Midnight Sky which ended up on Netflix. Directed by George Clooney based on the screenplay by Mark L. Smith, it’s the kind of bleak science fiction that I can get behind from time to time but falls into too many tropes and doesn’t end with any kind of hope. I mean, they seem to intend the ending bit to be hopeful for the species but it’s really not when you get down to the obvious issues. But there’s a lot to like along the way as Clooney’s material is a lot of fun in the arctic with the research facility there and I liked what we saw of the alien world ever so briefly. But so many bad choices are made that should be excised from every single science fiction script of this nature these days that just hamper it. As soon as those on the ship go on a space walk for a repair, you know who is going to die. It ain’t gonna be the pregnant white woman. And you know as Clooney travels from his base to a further one in order to reach better communications facilities that there’s going to be really bad things happening along the way. It’s a given. There are some great visual moments throughout and I really do enjoy a bleak end, but something here just didn’t land right.
I finally started the Kingdom series and made it two episodes into it before I realized that the whole thing just wasn’t clicking for me. Sometimes a show makes you disinterested surprisingly quickly and this one did just that.
But I’m also frustrated at how easily I got into Virgin River. I blame this one on my mother who constantly asked me to find out about a third season and then discovering Alexandra Breckinridge was the lead, who I enjoyed in The Walking Dead. Then I saw that Lexa Doig from Andromeda was in it as well and, well, damn it. It’s an ongoing series based on an eight-book Harlequin series so there’s plenty of material. I like the characters and interactions but I detest the entire overplayed “we’re small town people, we know we’re better than city folk” thing because it’s just so blunt and annoying. The way some of them act would keep you from ever talking to most of them again when they’re like that. But coming off my burn through a lot of Christmas movies and looking for schmaltz and simple drama, this fills that slot nicely.
