Peppermint (2018)

When Riley North and her family are gunned down in the street, she is the only survivor.  Her husband and child both die.  Riley positively identifies the men responsible, but a corrupt judge throws the case out while the corrupt-or-incompetent prosecutor doers nothing to stop him.  For good measure, the judge tries to throw her in psychiatric detention.

Riley escapes, vanishing for five years, despite the efforts of the FBI and Interpol to find her.  Suburban soccer moms can do that, you know.  International ninjas, all of them.

When Riley eventually resurfaces, she is a gun-totin', knife-fightin', criminal-punchiin' powerhouse, on a one-woman mission to take down everyone complicit in the deaths of her family and the failure to punish those who did it.

So what we have here is a vigilante revenge film of the type exemplified by Death Wish: an ordinary man or woman pushed by evil acts into a rampage of cathartic violence.  And if that's the jam for your cinematic toast, then Peppermint - preposterous though Riley's five year world tour of ninja sneakiness undoubtedly is - is a pretty good option.  Jennifer Garner is convincing as both the ordinary mom and the badass vigilante, and the script rocks along at a decent clip.  Just don't think about it too hard, or expect any kind of nuance, really.

Lost Girl, Season 5 (2014)

Bo & Co have saved the world a bunch of times, but the last time cost her deeply.  She's determined to rectify that; but (surprise!) her 'at all costs' determination may lead to the emergence of even worse threats.  It's enough to get a Succubus down, even before she has to deal with her dysfunctional family life and ever-more-complicated relationship situation.  Will Bo manage to get on an even keel before all her ship sink?

Season five of Lost Girl was originally announced as another standard 13-episode entry, but six months later, right around the time that production would have been at full tilt, it was announced that this would be the final season, an would be extended by an additional 3 episodes.

That's not the best timing.  The writing staff clearly had to scramble to re-structure the final season as two 8-episode parts.  I say clearly, because the structure and character actions / motivations this season are something of a mess.  Bad guys are introduced, re-positioned as possible allies, flipped to villains, killed off, un-killed, switched to being allies with no clear motivation, and then dumped so the show can focus on the newer-and-nastier Big Bad who is hateful for all the wrong reasons, and who will be defeated in the least climactic climax this show has ever had, and since this show is about a succubus, it has had a lot of ... nah, too easy.

Anyway. season five is simultaneously overly-long and slow-moving and also overstuffed with content that doesn't get a chance to breathe and have impact.  Plots race to conclusion or go in circles.  Sometimes both!

Also, Kenzi is only in a handful of episodes, and despite Rachel Skarsten's brave efforts to have Tamsin fill her shoes despite the ever-more-awful plotlines they keep throwing at her, the show never really recovers from her absence.

If you've solidly enjoyed Lost Girl thus far, then you might want to follow through to the end and Bo's final fate.  If you're at all on the fence about it, though, maybe give this one a miss and make do with the season 4 ending, which has a lot more emotional weight.

Scott Pilgrim vs the World (2010)

22-year old Scott Pilgrim is a part-time bassist and full time video game slacker, and to the dismay of his friends and sister, he's dating a 17-year old high school student named Knives.  This has nothing to do with the young lady herself (frankly, Knives deserves better than Scott), and everything to do with it being the latest manifestation of Scott's continued inability to get over his ex: dating a high schooler keeps the relationship 'safe'.

When Scott first dreams about and then meets a young woman named Ramona Flowers, however, 'safe' is not going to be what things are.  First, because Scott falls instantly in love/lust and begins his pursuit of this newcomer without the decency of ending his existing relationship with Knives, and second, because Ramona has a League of Seven Evil Exes, and Scott will need to face and defeat them all in order to date her.

Will Scott triumph over the Evil Exes and win the heart of Ramona?  And does he actually deserve to do so?  Unlike many relationship-oriented narratives, which assume the answer to the latter is always 'yes', this film will actually address both these questions.  Don't expect a traditional story along the way, though.  Scott Pilgrim vs the World is a very, very quirky and off-kilter piece of cinema, full of pop culture references and video-game structures.  It's probably not surprising that it failed to find an audience in its original cinema release.

On the other hand, it also has a fantastic cast and for me, its willingness (unlike so much other media) to grapple with the shortcomings of its main character gives it a heart that not many films can match.

If you're a nerdy type, check it out.

Warehouse 13, Season 5 (2014)

After five years of hunting artefacts with strange and dangerous powers, the Warehouse 13 team rolls into this final season facing - yet again - the destruction of everything they have worked to preserve.  I wonder if they will manage to eke out a win from this apparently hopeless situation?

Well, of course they will, or season five would be even shorter than it actually is.  Because after the 50%-longer-than-normal season four, this final series is only half the length of the others, with a paltry six episodes.  Apparently this was the result of falling ratings after the show was shifted to a later timeslot, though I do wonder if the ratings had started to slip anyway: season four was a bit of a slog at times.

This season on the other hand, isn't long enough to become a slog.  That's not to say that the shortened run doesn't create other problems, of course.  There's definitely a strong tonal whiplash as the show goes from start-of-season-crisis to two episodes that are utterly goofy to end-of-season-crisis without any kind of buffer between them.  It all feels very rushed.

Also feeling very rushed is the entirely unnecessary and frankly rather disappointing romantic pairing of two characters.  Seriously, if your only plan for having a couple form is to have everyone keep telling them they're in love with each other until they give up and agree, maybe just don't go that route?

Despite these issues, this last hurrah from the Warehouse team is generally low key fun, and if you've stuck with it this long, I don't see any major reason not to follow it to the end.

Ava (2020)

Ava is an international assassin, travelling the globe to execute people at the behest of a shadowy organisation of killers-for-hire.  She's very good at what she does, though her employer is concerned by her growing interest in why her targets are being assassinated.

Naturally, Ava's career is something she keeps a secret from everyone, including from her sister and mother.  She was estranged from them in any case, because Ava's a recovering alcoholic who used to steal and lie to feed her addiction. 

As our movie begins, Ava feels it is time to try and mend her relationship with her family ... and her employer feels it is time to lethally "tidy up" the worrying loose end that is Ava's curiosity about the reasons behind her contracts.  You might be expecting that these two threads will get tangled, much as similar themes did in Grosse Point Blank, but the actual overlap is actually quite small and the two never really gel together.

Things not quite gelling together is actually something of a theme with the script, actually.  A fine cast does their best to make it engaging, and they often succeed on a moment by moment basis, but the connective narrative tissue between events is not the strongest.  The film ultimately feels a bit half-formed.

Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous, Season 1 (2020)

When Darius Bowman wins an all-expenses-paid sneak peek at Jurassic World's new "Camp Cretaceous" attraction, he is over the moon.  Not only is Darius a huge dinosaur aficionado, but a trip to Jurassic World was a lifelong dream for him and his father.  Dad unfortunately passed away before that dream became a reality, but this is a chance for Darius to feel close to him again.  And see all kinds of dinosaurs up close, which is awesome, right?  Even when it turns out the other five teens who got invitations are rather less than avid dino-fans, Darius feels like this is pretty much his dream come true.

Of course, we all know exactly what happens to dreams at Jurassic World, and sure enough the events of the 2015 film of that name are unfolding.  Darius and the other five teens find themselves lost and alone on an island teeming with now-uncaged dinosaurs.  And if they don't cross the island in time to make it to the evacuation point before the last boat leaves, they'll be lost and alone forever.

Its gonzo finale aside, I was not much of a fan of the Jurassic World film.  My feelings for this animated spin-off, however, are a lot more positive.  This is not because it does anything especially novel or unique - what we have here is pretty much your standard 'dysfunctional group has to pull together to succeed' narrative, where the glue for group cohesion is rampaging dinosaurs - but because it executes well.  The characters are flawed but empathetic, and once they realise Things Have Gone Wrong, they generally act like they realise just how soft and squishy they are compared to a nine-ton dino.  On the technical side, the animation is decent and the voice acting is really solid.

Do you like dinosaurs?  If so, you'll probably like Camp Cretaceous.

Knives Out (2019)

At first, the death of successful author Harlan Thrombey seems to be a clear-cut case of suicide.  But when someone anonymously hires famous detective Benoit Blanc to investigate, all sorts of secrets and lies and grievances start spilling out, and the case is well and truly wide open once more.

Featuring a star-studded cast (some of them playing significantly and engagingly against type) and with a witty, zippy script that blends humour and drama, Knives Out is a seriously good whodunnit movie that manages to deliver a denouement that makes sense and feels satisfying, without being entirely obvious.  Until quite late in the film, there at least a couple of competing plausible explanations for what has occurred.

And honestly, I don't feel like I need to say a lot more.  This is well written, well directed, wonderfully acted stuff.  It's a shade over two hours long but the time flew by while I was watching it.  Recommended.

Sanctuary, Season 3 (2010)

Season three of Sanctuary opens with the team facing a potential disaster that could cost millions of lives; a crisis that opens rifts in the organisation and also reveals that there are other, previously unknown, threats lurking in the shadows.  Finding those threats will require exploring parts of the world previously hidden from humans, and facing monsters and dangers right out of myth.

It all sounds very exciting, right?  Unfortunately, it is more compelling in the summary than in the actual execution.  At twenty episodes in length, this season of the show is by far its longest, and the momentum rather sags under the weight.  I think there are two main reasons for this.  First because the main villain of the season is occluded for a long time and frankly not that interesting when they are finally revealed.  Second, it rolls out a mid-season cliff-hanger that is so eye-rollingly overwrought and so lazily resolved that I spent most of the subsequent episode more invested in snarking at the TV than in paying attention to what was happening.

The longer season also has some production impacts, with numerous episodes focusing on only a subset of the cast rather than really featuring them all.  This mostly has the effect of creating a clear "A team"/"B team" division, where it becomes more and more apparent that the writers actually have stuff for Helen and Will to do (though in Will's case it's mostly "be someone Helen can explain things to) but don't have much in mind for Kate and Henry beyond a single feature episode for each.

Ten years ago, when it came out, Sanctuary was an adequate if unexceptional light SF show.  TV has moved on in ways that it, being a product of its time, cannot.  In this day and age, there are dozens of SF shows more deserving of your time and attention.