Big Tuck’s Streaming Scoop-Up: 6/6/2022
This week Big Tuck is bringing you some of the best, brightest, and most bizarre picks from the streaming verse!
Hello all! I’m working on my next big movie review (SPOILER: It has 2 movies involved in it!!), so I thought I would drop some knowledge on some series that seem worth the time to me and a flight flick that is streaming available!
NETFLIX
Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror
Woof.
I honestly don’t know how this came to my attention, maybe because it’s a docu-series and the ‘flix knows that I’m into shotgunning those over a matter of days not weeks? Regardless I was looking for something new to stream and a show I could learn something in, and I feel like this probably won on both fronts…. BUT AT WHAT COST?
For people of my generation – and perhaps the entirety of the USA – 9/11 was the defining global incident of the modern times; most people can still remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. There have been a lot of different takes on the “whys” and the responses to this event, both positive and negative, but regardless of your political leanings, there was a lot more happening behind the scenes that at least I as a civilian was aware of.
Due to the sensitive nature of the subject matter and the fact this played out a lot more like a podcast than something gripping your attention to the screen (I pulled a friendo Josh and watched a lot of this while on the treadmill), I can’t fully recommend it to everyone out there to watch IMMEDIATELY. If you are curious as to what may have led to and been the fallout of this incident, then it’s an extremely fascinating watch that shows you interlinked politics, commerce, and what war truly is. As one of my favorite video games series will often remind you:
RATING: 4/5
AMAZON PRIME
Reacher
Okay back to the fun stuff.
In similar scope to the two movies discussed below, Jack Reacher was a sort of sleeper hit for this large man. I’m no stranger to ole Tommy and thought he did a passable job as a HoboCop of sorts, getting into and out of trouble. The second one sucked, so I guess that’s the end of that….OR IS IT!
While this Reacher series seems on the surface like a hopeless cash-grab and spiritual successor to Jack Ryan (both on prime, to NO ONE’s surprise), the fact that there are 27 (!?!??!) books – written about this grizzled drifter/inspector/veteran/coffee connoisseur/beefcake/CQB Master/you get the point – means that there is a demand for this sort of content, albeit with my suspicions that they are mostly sold at airports or found in those little book trees around trendy neighborhoods.
Anyway, REACHER! The lead beef-cake is probably somebody you have seen hanging around various backgrounds of superhero content (specifically known to me as Hawk), and while I had my doubts, he is very convincing and fun to watch on screen! He’s joined by the typical suspense-novel side characters (no-nonsense Detective from the Big City, female who is both tough enough to hang with the boys yet feminine [read: attractive] enough to tease a love interest) who both give, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, VERY good performances! I don’t know if this is empirically “Good” or just entertaining enough to focus on when you want to, and honestly, I don’t know if it matters. If you’re looking for your next “good but guilty pleasure”, it’s hard to beat the Reach man.
Oh and last thing: there were 2 jarring instances of nudity – one male, one female – that caused me to scream “good LORD” for entirely different reasons. Not bad, Bezos!
RATING: 3.5/5 +
HULU/HBO-MAX
The King’s Man (2021)
You know how they used to say that a movie “Made you believe in the Cinema” again? I’m not a smart enough writer to formulate what the opposite would be, and evidently, I’m not a smart enough movie watcher to avoid this disaster.
I thought the original Kingsman (along with its cousin/sibling Kick-Ass) really filled in a gap that was missing in my post-college viewing years (you can actually read my full Kingsman review here!). Violent, R rated “superhero movies with an edge” even to this day are relegated to small releases and are few and far between, which is a sad fact of the world as the Hollywood machine goes brrrrrrrrr.
Which leads us to this pile of trash. How are the effects in a movie 7 years later worse than the original? I like the idea of these becoming a sort of serialized series where the IP carries them through; the recent British unknown actor’s big break onto the scene before getting scooped up to do Biopics! Instead, I feel like an idiot as this movie drops names/hints/winks to other occurrences in the series, then practically looks directly into the lens as if to say “Get it??? Can you believe we snuck this in here???”.
Some decent action set pieces aside, it’s overly long, predictable, and over-serious. HOWEVER!!! The one saving grace is the ABSURD Rasputin performance by Rhys Ifan. He chews through scenes and dialog like a buzzsaw and I never thought that I would see an actor lick a gunshot wound on Ralph Fiennes thigh. #Haunting
RATING: 2/5
