Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan
Generally speaking, we avoid personalizing our reviews at The Spool. This isn’t the early 2000s. No one needs to know about my journey to my couch to watch Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan Season 4. That said, please allow me a brief personal indulgence that I promise will prove illustrious. In an effort to get ahead of deadlines, I watched the season’s six episodes in a day with a plan to write the review the next day. However, by the time I sat down to write that review about 26 hours later, I realized I had to watch the whole thing again. In a day’s time, I had forgotten too much to write a review in good faith. Continue Reading →
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts
SimilarA.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), Aliens (1986), Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002), Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997), Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999), F9 (2021), Face/Off (1997), From Russia with Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964),
Shrek the Third (2007) Watch afterBarbie (2023) Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023), Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023), The Flash (2023),
StarringColman Domingo, Cristo Fernández,
The blockbuster landscape shifted with Michael Bay's 2007 Transformers movie. It fit his directing style, with his love of explosions and male gazing, but what it amounted to was a guy playing with big, expensive cinematic toys. There was knowledge gained from those five previous installments when the 2018 spin-off Bumblebee had more personality and excitement than any of its predecessors. Continue Reading →
Outside the Wire
SimilarAlien (1979),
Blade Runner (1982) Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Twelve Monkeys (1995),
Netflix has really made a play in recent years to corner the high-concept action movie market: Extraction, The Old Guard, 6 Underground, Project Power et al. feel like they fill the algorithm's innate need to fill the John Wick-sized hole in the moviegoing public's diet. It's that sweet spot that Outside the Wire is unabashedly trying to fill: sci-fi concepts right out of Black Mirror blended with brutal, highly-choreographed fight sequences. The trouble is, despite (or, more precisely, because of) its military sci-fi premise, Mikael Håfström's (1408) latest crumbles under its own sociopolitical weight. Continue Reading →