Ghostbusters is the obvious movie choice this weekend, but not the only one. Phantom Boy is a French animated feature film noir presentation in which a boy with superpowers trapped in a wheelchair helps a policeman (also trapped in a wheelchair) attempt to bring down a mob boss. This is from the folks who made A Cat In Paris, a truly amazing animation; you can expect that same level of quality here.
The one new Movie title isn’t genre, and Janis: Little Girl Blue looks like it actually came out this past week. But it is an excellent documentary about an amazing artist who we lost too soon, so I had to mention it anyways. The IP Man Trilogy puts 3 of the movies in that series into a single box, at a noticeable savings over buying them individually, so if you don’t have them already now might be the time. Likewise DC Universe is releasing a number of their animated feature films two to a box for the price of one this week, including Son of Batman/Batman: Under The Red Hood, All-Star Superman/Superman Doomsday, and Superman vs. The Elite/Superman: Unbound. TV is represented by Nova: Rise of the Robots, also not genre but very worth watching.
We do better in Anime, with some actual new genre titles like Assassination Classroom – Season 1 Part 1 bringing the first 11 episodes of the series home. Akame ga Kill: Collection 2 is the second half of that rather twisted story line, this time with the old enemies working together. Black Butler: Book of Murder has two OVAs about Ceil and the Demon Butler, and a cast that includes legendary author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; that alone should make this an important selection. Finally Gunbuster: The Movie tells the tale of the monsters between the stars, and the humans who go out to fight them. The time dilation caused by their near light speed transitions means the ones they go out to protect may be long dead before the battle is even joined.
Parasyte: The Maxim was fun as an Anime, I can’t wait to see what they do with it as not one, but 2 Parasyte Live Action Films. The films have already been made and released, but I missed them, in part because the only theaters I know they showed in were in Australia. You can pick it up as an import DVD or Blue Ray, but it is just as pricey as you would expect for that release path. I guess I will have to lobby for someone to release it domestically in North America, because even though I am not a horror fan I do love comedy, and this series has a lot of that in all its iterations.
On Wednesday Beauty and the Beast, the new French remake of 1946’s La belle et la bête will be hitting a limited number of US screens. This is a beautifully filmed fantasy classic, I am hoping one of those screens might be somewhere near me. On Friday we have several other options, beginning with The 5th Wave, based on the book of the same name, all about the invasion of the Earth. Ip Man 3 continues the Honk Kong series about the Martial Arts Master who trained Bruce Lee.
Movies bring us Jem and the Holograms, which I have yet to see, so I can’t comment as to how true it stayed to the original premise. Not very, if the reports I have read are accurate; they threw out the female superhero corporate executive of the original series and replaced her with a you tube star with no powers or control. Rotten Tomatoes gave it 19%, which I don’t find very promising, but I will watch it at some point just so I can make up my own mind. Much more interesting is Eden, a French film about the Paris Rave scene in the 1990s and the DJs who made it happen. Daft Punk flit about the edges of the film while the core DJs go through their own evolution played out against the backdrop of the clubs. Rotten Tomatoes gave this film an 82% and it won an assortment of film festival awards, so I am looking forward to catching up with it. I did not find any genre live action TV this week.
Anime has the release of A Certain Scientific Railgun S: The Complete Series, the second season finding a cabal of scientists cloning people with powers and murdering the clones. Their goal is to use the deaths to fuel the growth of a very powerful Esper, but Misaka and the girls of Judgement get wind of the plot when they run into their own clones. Now the battle is on to see who will control Academy City. In Terror in Resonance director Shinichiro Watanabe and composer Yoko Kanno are teamed up to bring you this highly suspenseful series, where Tokyo is decimated by a shocking attack. That is only the opening move in a plot to destroy the planet, and there isn’t much time for the detective chasing down the clues to sift through them for the truth and stop the bad guys.
Lost In Hong Kong is a truly twisted film, and the sequel to the highest-grossing film in China’s history (until Monster Hunt came along last July), Lost In Thailand. It does have some great action and comedy sequences, but the flavor of the trilogy, so risque and adventuresome in Lost on Journey, slid into slapstick with Lost In Thailand, and finally into mainstream with Lost In Hong Kong. Still, each of these films was quite entertaining in its own way, and this final one of the set will be out on DVD in March (it hit US theaters back in September).