The long-awaited live-action series adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender bends its way to the top of this week’s streaming releases, accompanied by J-Lo’s hard-to-define new project, and Apple’s new big budget sci-fi thriller Constellation.
SERIES
The Grand Tour: Sand Job
16 February 2024 – Prime Video
The motoring world’s greatest trio of buffoons are back! It’s been exactly eight months since the last Grand Tour special, but Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May are finally taking us on another hilarious and exciting adventure. This time the boys are following in the dusty footsteps of the legendary Paris-Dakar rally. Except, no rally cars for them! Instead, cheap modified sports cars, the very vehicles you would normally NOT take into a cross-desert race, are the order of the day.
Constellation S1
21 February 2024 – Apple TV+
Apple TV+ doesn’t get all the fanfare of some of its peers, but the streaming platform has now shown off an incredible track record. Yes, not everything is a hit, but compared to everything else, the success rate is exceptional. One reason for this is the quality of productions. It’s always big budget with well-known talent. And the next example of this is Constellation, an “action space thriller” starring Noomi Rapace and Jonathan Banks that looks super intriguing. Rapace stars as Jo, an astronaut and mother, who is forced to scrap a mission on a space station and return to Earth after a devastating disaster. However, once she arrives, she finds that things are not the way she left them, including impossible details about her very own daughter.
Avatar: The Last Airbender S1
22 February 2024 – Netflix
Nickelodeon’s Avatar: The Last Airbender is one of the greatest and most beloved animated series ever. So, of course it was absolutely butchered to hell and back the first time it was adapted to live-action (I will never forgive Hollywood for this crime!). But now, many years later, we’re getting a do-over courtesy of Netflix and its very deep pockets. This big-budget retelling of the story of Aang, the young monk-like Airbender who has to master the four elements and take up his mantle as the mythical Avatar, is hewing significantly closer to the source material, which has delighted fans left them champing at the bit. However, the production has not been without controversy as original series creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko exited the adaptation due to creative differences, and, most recently, being revealed that certain character and narrative changes have been made to seemingly modernize the story despite the original choices having been very key to those same characters and narrative. How does all of that add up? Well, we’ll find out next week.
MOVIES
This Is Me… Now: A Love Story
16 February 2024 – Prime Video
When the trailer for Jennifer Lopez’s This Is Me… Now: A Love Story first dropped, it was just two minutes of non-stop WTF-ery that left the entire internet scratching its collective head in confusion. What was this thing? A visual album to coincide with the release J-Lo’s latest piece of music? A feature-length music video? A trippy narrative-driven drama? A dramatized retelling of Lopez’s very publicized love-life? Turns out the answer was “Yes”. According to early reviews, the clumsily titled This Is Me… Now: A Love Story is all of the above and more. What’s most surprising though, is that it’s also apparently… good?
Kandahar
19 February 2024 – Showmax
And if you’re looking for some entertainment that is far, faaaaar simpler to wrap your head around, Gerard Butler is here to save your day. Kandahar is the latest collaboration between the Scottish actor and director Ric Roman Waugh, following their work together on Angel Has Fallen and the criminally underrated Greenland. Very loosely based on actual events, this one is about as “skop, skiet, en donner” straightforward as they come: Butler stars as CIA operative Tom Harris who is working on a covert mission in Afghanistan when his cover is blown and everything goes to hell. When an extraction for Harris and his recently appointed Afghan-American translator is compromised, the two reluctant partners are forced to work together to flee across the desert, evading pursuing forces, and make it to a safe zone for extraction. It’s not very deep, but it is very tense and action-packed.
VOD RENTALS/PURCHASES
The following movies have recently become available for digital purchase/rental:
The Blackening
Purchase: Google Play Movies – R182
Rental: Google Play Movies – R46
We all know the trope: In horror movies, the black guy always dies first. But what if everybody’s black? That’s the comedic premise of The Blackening, a new horror-comedy about a group of black friends who reunite for a Juneteenth weekend getaway in the woods, only to find that their rented cabin comes with its own relentless killer. Tim Story (Ride Along, Barbershop) directs from a script co-written by Tracy Oliver (Girls Trip) which looks to skewer (or, I guess, stab) genre conventions for a bloody fun time.
57 Seconds
Purchase: Apple TV – R150 / Google Play Movies – R152
Rental: Apple TV – R45 / Google Play Movies – R50
I’m not going to pretend that 57 Seconds is a good film. By all accounts, despite the talent of Josh Hutcherson and Morgan Freeman, it’s a rather mediocre time. But maybe some of you will want to watch it anyway precisely because it stars Josh Hutcherson and Morgan Freeman. This one sees the younger actor play Franklin, a down-on-his-luck blogger whose unexpected interaction with a tech guru leaves him in possession of a ring that allows its wearer to travel 57 seconds into the past while retaining all knowledge of the immediate future. Exactly what Franklin needs to both turn around his financial woes and plot revenge against the pharmaceutical company he believes is responsible for the death of his twin sister.