This week, following a brief theatrical-only run of a single week, a science fiction comedy mystery with Blaxsploitation roots arrives on Netflix. An unlikely trio of characters, Fontaine (John Boyega), Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris), and Slick Charles (Jaime Foxx) unearth a government conspiracy.
It's They Cloned Tyrone (2023 R 2h 2m) I'd listened to an interview piece on NPR's Fresh Air the previous week, when it was making its theatrical review, and it sounded fun. (Here's the piece, both in text and an 8-minute sound file.)
Today sees the digital release of the Venture Bros. movie, intended to cap off the seven-season series that began with a stand-alone pilot in 2003, then came out at a glacial pace through late 2018's season seven finale, with expectations of an 8th season, it was however officially canceled in 2020. Presumably much of what was planned for season eight has ended up in The Venture Bros.: Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon Heart (2023 R 84 m) So much of that will mean very little to anyone just jumping in cold - this movie is meant to wrap up a number of loose ends from the series, after all. As it's a cartoon series, hope remains that we'll still be seeing more after this, but for now this is all we're promised.
Even though I know how much they can pack into small amounts of time, there's no way 84 minutes is going to be enough.
As a huge fan of this series - which started off as a parody riff on the 1964 prime time cartoon Jonny Quest, growing to be considerably more, and a universe unto itself - Warner's likely going to get my money several times. As mentioned, it arrives today as a streamable purchase option. Then next Tuesday (the 25th) will see the release on a physical medium - as a Blu-Ray, which I'm likely to buy as a long-term personal library option. Unfortunately, I don't currently have a Blu-Ray disc player, so that won't help me in the short term. Then, off in what should be late October, it'll join the seven seasons over on the Max streaming platform.
I haven't watched it yet, but I did buy it digitally through my Amazon account, so it was $5 off the $19.99 price. The disc buy's an eventuality, and I have Max, albeit currently still just as a benefit of getting HBO via Fios.
Arrived yesterday on Max, a 3-part original series is Superpowered: The DC Comics Story
A proper caveat: Indications are that this production is generally shallow, uneven, and lacking a focus on substance. Those most in the know about the comics, tv and film projects being referenced aren't likely to be satisfied with much of it if they go beyond the level of just enjoying hearing other people talking about these characters and stories.
Warner Bros Discovery, the latest frankencorp entity to contain both DC Comics and Warner Bros. film and tv material, put this together as a combination of part of Warner's 100th anniversary celebration, and as an in-house bit of easy self-production and self-promotion that would fit nicely on their streaming platform. All this while they're in the early stages of a transition, the latest attempt to (at last?) bring a unified strength of vision to the DC comics-to-screen projects... unfortunately, with the big screen kick-off to that off in 2025 (with James Gunn's Superman: Legacy - and it's yet to be seen if the current strike is going to ultimately shift that target), aside from the comics history they mostly have people talking about already-made screen efforts, many of the most recent of which have not been doing well.
With the second season of the show arriving next Friday - and so would normally not be mentioned until then in this Friday column, I thought I'd mention it now in case anyone might want to revisit the first season of Good Omens in preparation for its second. Based on the novel by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, it stars David Tennant and Michael Sheen as an unlikely pair of friends - a demon and and angel - dealing with the threat of an apocalypse it turns out neither of them want to happen. That six-episode first season appeared on Amazon at the end of May 2019, and a six-episode second will be here next week.
Appropriately, this week, I'll just re-post the trailer for season one: I recall enjoying it on the balance four years ago, another uneven but fun item, and am up for a refresher run before they return.
At the moment I'm a little confused on the wheres and whens, but I know it's currently on Amazon Prime, though it'll be leaving there Sunday, and I've been told it's arriving this Sunday (the 23rd) on Peacock (which I now see will be a return to the platform), there's a heist-gone-awry action chase film from last year. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abduk-Mateen II as adoptive brothers who team up on a bank heist because the latter's wife needs a life-saving operation that's going to cost in excess of $200,000. The operation goes sour, and the pair hijack an ambulance carrying a cop wounded in the robbery, which then becomes the target of a huge chase across LA. Excessive gunfire, car wrecks and explosions ensue and escalate. The final assurance that it will be mindless is that it's directed by Michael Bay. I think I'm still trying to claw back IQ points lost during watching his 2019 Netflix film 6 Underground, which I made the mistake of watching because it starred Ryan Reynolds and it was there on Netflix, so I should consider myself duly warned. So long as I brace myself for cliched (but probably still likeable) characters and increasingly implausible action, it might manage to be a good time.
Oh, as a potential follow-up note -- I haven't looked to see where it can be seen -- this film is a remake of a Danish film of the same name from 2005, where a pair of brothers found themselves in a similar situation trying to get money for their mother's treatment.
Anyway, it's Ambulance (2022 R 136m)
Have as fine a weekend as you can manage, and get back here new Friday as we step into the final weekend of the month and catch that first whiff of August. - Mike
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