Skip to main content

Continuing the reboot of the franchise, War for the Planet of the Apes could be a modern retelling of the period in history when the Cro-Magnon committed genocide by wiping out the Neanderthals. Teen Wolf: The Complete Series is not quite as epic but still has its moments. The Emoji Movie is just silly animated fun, or maybe just silly. There is a documentary worth checking out this week as well: Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked The World has won a ton of awards, and it is nominated for more.

In Anime, Alderamin on the Sky: The Complete Series is a brilliant story that has only begun with these 13 episodes. I hope they mean “the complete series so far”, and they continue making new episodes and season, because it was one of the top 5 shows to come out of Japan in 2016. Fairy Tail: Collection Ten brings episodes 213 through 239 home, nearly 11 hours of non-stop collateral damage during magical comedy combat. Then there is Flying Witch and Servamp Season 1, should you be in the mood for additional supernatural entertainment.

The obvious genre release this week is Geostorm, with weather used as a weapon of mass destruction, controlled from a huge orbital facility like the IIS on steroids. But the trailer reminds me all too much of the disaster films of the 1960s through the 1980s, which I tend to consider formulaic and boring. The live action Tokyo Ghoul hit theaters today and will run until Sunday the 22nd, that one I am really looking forward to. Wonderstruck looks very interesting, but is only in New York and LA this week; it will be out everywhere on the 10th. If you feel like streaming your entertainment this weekend, Red Dwarf Season 12 is currently playing, and BritBox just got it.

The winner this time is Spider-Man: Homecoming, pretty much my favorite iteration of Peter Parker on the big screen so far. As you can tell by the link, Sony hasn’t given the character up, just lent him to the core franchise in return for pulling some of that core franchise audience into their version of the MCU. American Gods season 1 gets my vote for best TV show getting released this week, it is amazing. God of War looks like it should be the best bet out of this week’s Asian films, but somehow they seemed to have allowed the premise of Samurai Pirates to fall through their fingers. I do have to mention Ernie Kovacs: Take a Good Look, the DVD collection featuring one of the most bizarre game shows ever to air on Television. It ran from 1959 to 1961, and even the game show panelists didn’t understand what was going on. Samurai Jack: Season 5 and Samurai Jack: The Complete Series both come out this week, finishing off an excellent but also truly strange TV run. There don’t seem to be any new Anime releases this week, perhaps next time.

The only actual genre this week lean heavily in the direction of horror, American Satan and Happy Death Day. Not really a surprise it being Friday the 13th and all, and the trailers at least make one of them interesting. But their are two movies that might be worth checking out. Professor Marston and the Wonder Women is the almost true story (it is a movie, after all) of the psychology professor who created Wonder Woman and the women who helped him do it. The Foreigner is the latest Jackie Chan film, and the first out of his last 3 to get a US release. There were a few North American theaters who had Kung Fu Yoga and Railroad Tigers, but I don’t live in those couple of cities, so I had to wait for the DVD releases to see them. This one looks to be classic Chan, as he runs rings around the bad guys.