Nextflix Reviews - GLOW

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GLOW stands for Gorgeous Ladies Of Wrestling, this program has had 2 seasons so far on Netflix and I am hooked. I binge watched both seasons pretty much as soon as they hit the network. The premise is based on a real life wrestling promotion that started out in 1986 and had a syndicated TV show for 4 seasons that was known for it's comedic skits. 

In 2012 there was a documentary about the promotion, this was seen by Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch, who were looking for ideas for a female-centric show at the time. They went on to create this GLOW show. This 2012 documentary is also available on Netflix and is an interesting, funny and poignant watch, well worth checking out to see the history and influence it had on this show. 

Season one of GLOW came out on Netflix in 2017, with season 2 just coming out at the end of June this year. The wrestlers from the series are based on the original characters but with different names.

Alison Brie is a keen but essentially failed actor, she just can't get a decent role despite her passion, professionalism and enthusiasm. Her best friend Debbie Eagan is a fairly successful soap opera star and seems to have it all, making Alison feel overshadowed by her. The pair fall out in spectacular fashion when Brie sleeps with Eagan's husband. 

Alison goes to an audition for GLOW, a wrestling show to be filmed for TV, it's pay rolled by enthusiastic but inexperienced rich boy Sebastian "Bash" Howard and to be directed by irascible, jaded Sam Sylvia. The team is soon put together and starts training, Alison brings her acting chops and enthusiam to the project which rubs Sam up the wrong way but this is the best job she's ever been given and is determined for it to be a success.

Things take a nose dive for Alison when her ex-friend Debbie is picked up to be the star draw of the show as all american good ol' girl Liberty Belle. This threatens her position and stirs up animosity between them, but can they forget their differences and make the show and their relationship succeed?

This disparate team of women need to become like a family to each other, living through the bumps and bruises of life whilst going through the bumps and bruises in the ring. Will the fans like the show? Will the network like the show? Will they be able to pull off the manoeuvres they've practised?

The tone of the show is a great mix of fun and serious, there is drama and proper character development but there is a lot of light hearted stuff mainly in the in-ring personnas of the wrestlers, with such names as Welfare Queen, The She-Wolf, Zoya the Destroyer, Beirut, Fortune Cookie and Brittanica. Most of them are terribly non-pc stereotypes which are so familiar to anyone who watched wrestling back in that era.

Season two is a continuation of the themes of the 1st really with new challenges being presented to them to do their best to try and overcome. I won't say what happens but it seems very likely we'll see a 3rd season sometime in the future, where I hope they'll be able to keep up the level of quality and entertainment of the previous ones.

Oh yeah I just found out today that the character Welfare Queen is played by real life wrestler Kia Stevens. Her TV show wrestling persona is a fun heel who is a sweetie out of the ring, nothing like the powerhouse, Awesome Kong she portrayed for the TNA wrestling promotion.

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Nextflix Reviews - Z Nation

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Is it possible to get too much zombie stuff? Obviously there is some rubbish stuff out there but this show is not amongst that category by a long shot. This is a very cool show with lots of action and humour with a cast of believable characters. I discovered it when the 1st season popped up and binge watched it straight away and have done the same as each subsequent series has been released. 

The zombie plague has pretty much taken over the entire world with only pockets of human survivors struggling to survive in the hostile environment. The show starts by showing us a medical unit's attempts to create a vaccine using prisoners as test subjects. One of their guinea pigs Murphy is tied to a gurney and injected with the most recent experimental batch of the anti-zombie vaccine but the room is overrun and he is attacked and bitten multiple times by the undead. Instead of dying or being fully consumed he awakes as a strange human/zombie hybrid with telepathic powers over the undead. In season one a team of survivors gather and take up the mission to get Murphy across country to another facility where they can develop a vaccine from his blood. They discover that Murphy's bite turns people into hybrids who are not attacked by zombies but can be influenced by murphy's mind over zombies power.

The team varies as events claim some of their lives or allegiances change but the main players who have survived the longest so far are ex-soldier Roberta Warren, the team leader, a driven and capable woman who is the team's brains; Doc, an aging hippy with a heart of gold and a taste for weed who applies his medic skills and drug knowledge as best he can; 10K a youth with a knack for sniping who takes his name from his proposed Z kill target and Addy a nice girl turned spiked baseball bat swinging Amazon bad-ass by the necessity of life post-Z apocalypse. They are aided from outside the group by Citizen Z who is the lone operative at a government listening/viewing post in the Arctic Circle, he directs them as best as he can using satellite technology but in a world full of chaos he can't always get the message across.

The story of their travels is influenced by the zombies that are always in their way and the living communities that they encounter along the road. Each season seems to culminate with an end to one phase of the mission and the beginning of another as events seem to always conspire against them. 

Although they fight alongside each other for survival there is often conflict within the group too. The dynamic in the team changes fairly often with Murphy himself being the main catalyst for trouble within the group. This friction increases when he is able to father a daughter by a human, who also has zombie controlling powers of her own amongst other abilities. He's a criminal after all and he has his own ideas about the world's future with himself as the ruler of his own zombie/hybrid community. His bite offers survivors safety from zombies which is very tempting for them and Murphy is fed up with being the subject of human experiments and thinks his kind are the future.

The tone of the show is serious in the main but there is a lot of humour in it too, like a slightly less serious and angst ridden The Walking dead. It's got drama in all the right places but is able to induce more than the odd laugh through crazy situations and quirky encounters.

Netflix has 3 seasons available to view right now although 4 have been released so far and a 5th is in the works too. Hopefully we won't have too long to wait as it was left on rather a meaty cliffhanger. 

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Nextflix Reviews - iZombie

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Starting in 2015 this comedy/drama has just tied up it's 4th season on Netflix and is bloody good stuff. Based on the DC imprint Vertigo comics by Chris Roberson and Michael Allred it tells the story of Oliva 'Liv' Moore who has to change her life drastically after getting scratched by a zombie at a party and becoming infected with the zombie virus herself. The zombie rules in this world are different though rather than being a slathering flesh crazed shuffling fool she retains all her human abilities but craves brains. It's only if she doesn't get a supply to eat that she becomes feral. To this end she gives up her training to be a doctor to become an assistant pathologist at the King County Morgue. Her boss Ravi Chakrabati soon realises her plight and becomes her friend and confidante. Also with his scientific knowledge he seeks to find a cure for the condition.

There is a saying, "You are what you eat" and a strange side effect of eating the brains of the deceased is that she picks up images and characteristics of her meals. This leads her to be able to uniquely assist Detective Clive Babineaux in his homicide cases as she often sees memories from the victims very recent pre-death lives. It also provides much of the ample humour as she takes on their characteristics also which can lead to some very funny situations and I imagine it must be a lot of fun and a challenge for an actor to have so many different facets to play with. She's been affected by the brains of a jock, a geek, a seductress, a surly teen, a mother hen, a cantankerous old man and all sorts of other combinations of humanity in the course of seeking sustenance. And with the knowledge her meals have given her she's helped to solve the cases of their untimely deaths.

Other members of the cast include her on again/off again fiancé/boyfriend Major Lilywhite, when she gets zombied up she has to ditch him as zombism is sexually transmitted apparently! There is also her room mate Peyton Charles who is assistant district attorney for King County and then there is Blaine a sometimes ally, (but mostly villain), whose drug dealing of an infected batch of Utopium led to the initial incident that got Liv zombified in the beginning. 

Over the course of the 4 seasons things have developed significantly as more is learned about the cause of the condition and more people become infected. Blaine uses it as an excuse to earn more money and power through increasingly nefarious means. A lot of the initial story was around Liv keeping her condition secret from her friends but they each learn of it as the show goes on changing the dynamic of the relationships. Also a cure is developed but it is limited and has side effects and they are unsure of it's safety. This also leads to a bit of a zombified/not zombified back and forth too for some of the cast. Attitudes to zombies change as the humans knowledge of them increases and by season 4 we have an independent zombie state in Seattle which is founded in much controversy in season 3. Seattle is now cordoned off from the outside world with paranoia rife between humans and zombies. There is fear and distrust from both sides many humans think of zombies as monsters to be eliminated and some zombies think of humans only in relation to their tasty skull content and with brain shortages being a problem the new rulers of the area are finding it very hard to govern, becoming more authoritarian as the series runs. There are humans who want to become zombies as it cures any terminal illness they may have, and also zombies who want to be cured but there is only a very limited supply of the antidote available. Even the friends within Liv's circle are forced to question their thoughts and loyalties and are faced with hard decisions. 

Apparently the next season, number 5 will be the last so we will see how things develop after the cliffhanger of season 4's finale. I've grown to like all the characters, (apart from Blaine who is a bastard albeit a charming entertaining one), and hope that season 5 will end well for them and like many will be waiting feverishly for 2019 to find out what transpires.

I'd recommend this to anyone who likes a laugh with a bit of sickness involved, she eats brains every week and prepares them with almost mouth watering detail!!!, so that might make some a bit queasy. The interplay between all the cast is great and they all have proper stories to get into as well with no real boring undeveloped characters really. Liv played by New Zealand actress Rose McIver is great, she is so versatile to play all the nuances of the characteristics she inherits from her meals but she is slightly eclipsed as my favourite character by English actor Rahul Kohli's fun portrayal of her boss Ravi. 

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Apparently the show is only loosely based on the comics but I may well add these to my Amazon wishlist 😃

     

Nextflix Reviews - KL Zombi

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I was just saying in my review of Plan Z earlier today about the proliferation of zombie movies that are being made, I mentioned the difference in quality from film to film, but I forgot to talk about the different tones they have, zombie comedies are pretty popular it seems and the zombie movie phenomenon is pretty global too with this one a case in point. It's a zombie comedy from Malaysia, the KL stands for Kuala Lumpur that countries capitol. 

A group of friend's watching fireworks from a cliff top see a cute little poodle who bites one of them and he becomes patient zero. Before you know it the zombies are everywhere plaguing the group members wherever they are, working at school, trying out for a TV popstar talent competition and such like. The main protagonist is Nipis, (which translates as Skinny), he's a bit of a slacker and doesn't notice the dead around him for quite a while, even playing hockey with a team of undead!

Being a comedy and maybe because it's a foreign film the rules are a bit different , the zombies seem to react to pain more rather than just having their heads bashed in, they seem to be able to knock them out. Some of Skinny's fight scenes play out like Robert Downey Jnr's Sherlock Holmes ones where he plans out the attacks before implementing them. He gets out fought by a couple of kids he hooks up with quite a lot though. I suppose it's like Shawn of the Dead a Zom/Com/Rom a zombie comedy romance as there is a love interest for Skinny. 

I quite liked the movie, it was silly mainly, without any real belly laughs, perhaps some of the humour was lost in translation and it didn't have any scares but I didn't mind it at all. Perhaps it was just the novelty of it and if it had been in English or not from an exotic location I'd have disliked it more!

Check out some more zombie stuff HERE!

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Nextflix Reviews - Toast of London

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This is an absurd comedy with protagonist Steven Toast (Matt Berry) who is a hammy luvvy actor (and a bit of a twit), going about his days looking for new work, doing voice overs, starring in the worst play ever produced and looking for sexy lady time whilst getting into all manner of surreal scrapes. Stuff like losing at poker to Andrew Lloyd Webber and having Michael Ball set on him, spontaneously self-combusting publicists, dog-napping for mental movie stars, murderous theatre producers, blow-football with prostitutes, laxative ads, cyclopean directors, Bruce Forsyth plastic surgery cock-ups, joining the Masons, possessed house guests and nuclear subs. Every show features an impromptu music number as well which are just odd.

Regular recurring characters include homophobic fellow actor Ray "bloody" Purchase and his wanton wife (who Toast is nobbing regularly and often getting caught in the act); his bonkers agent Jane Plough who always finds him terrible jobs; his house mate Ed Howzer-Black; his stuffy chauvinist army brother Blair and Clem Fandango & the guys in the voiceover sound booth who seem to like messing with him.

Originally broadcast on Channel 4 all 3 seasons, (19 episodes) of this daft but funny show are available to stream now on Netflix. A fourth season has been hinted at but not confirmed at all yet.

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Nextflix Reviews - Land of The Lost

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Quantum-Palaeontologist Dr. Rick Marshall, (Will Ferrell), plans to use time warps to solve the energy crisis by travelling to alternate worlds to get their fossil fuels and is ostracized by his peers as a crackpot reduced to teaching unruly schoolkids. He is approached at work by Holly Cantrell, (Anna Friel), who offers convincing proof of his theory's validity which prompts him to finish his "tachyon amplifier". They test the machine in a tachyon rich environment at a run down roadside theme park inside a ride called Devil's Canyon Mystery Cave and transport themselves and the ride operator Will Stanton (Danny McBride), to the Land of The Lost.

So this film is from 2009 I never realised it was so old actually, it's based on the old 1974 serial of the same name. I must admit to being vaguely aware of this movie but I never sought it out as I never watched the original series at all and I am also not a massive fan of Ferrell's movies either.  looking at the reviews of this it was pretty well panned by critics and was nominated for 8 Golden Raspberry Awards winning just the one for Worst Remake.

As comedies go it is pretty dire actually, they manage to get pretty much no laughs out of the situation whatsoever, much of the humour is daft or just plain silly and there are a couple of sex jokes too that seem incongruous in a 12 certificate. As a fantasy/Sci-fi adventure it's pretty weak too, there's peril and running but there's no sense of danger or tension ever.

So in summary, this got panned and it really does deserve it as an action/adventure/comedy it fails to have any of those 3 elements notably within it. The only redeeming feature is the lovely Anna Friel, aww she's so cute, like Lara Croft crossed with Pippi Longstocking.

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Nextflix Reviews - Inside No. 9

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This is an award winning comedy/drama series that has just had it's 4th season with a 5th planned on the BBC. Brought to horrid life by Reece Shearsmith & Steve Pemberton, who made Psychoville and also make up half of the team who brought us the dark and sordidly comedic The League of Gentlemen. At the moment Netflix just has the 1st 2 seasons that I binge watched.

Each series is an anthology of 6 episodes with the only link from story to story being that all the action happens inside a house, flat, apartment which has the street number 9. I suppose this could change dependent on the tale, I can quite imagine a future story on a number 9 bus! The stories all have a dark, horror element to them in the main with elements of Hammer House of Horror mixed with Twilight Zone and Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected. The tone differs from story to story, some are just a little off kilter whilst some have dark endings and some provide a genuine little chill with a unique and sometimes powerful twist. 

I think it might have a sense of humour that could be too dark for some, just a bit too twisted for those of a nervous disposition perhaps but I enjoyed it. Some episodes resonate more than others but it's a series well worth watching I think. I hope the next 3 seasons hit Netflix soon.

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Nextflix Reviews - The Babysitter

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My initial thoughts upon looking at this were that this would be a bit rubbish, I even switched it off after 2 minutes the 1st time I started to watch it but I eventually gave it a chance and actually really enjoyed it.

12 year old Cole Johnson is a timid pre-teen, his parents are a little overprotective, he's a tad wimpy, he gets bullied and he still has a babysitter. That last part is no bad thing though as his sitter Bee is a beautiful, vivacious and lovely young lady. She follows his love for geeky things, she's like a best friend, she sticks up for him, she believes in him and treats him like a beloved little brother almost. She is like the perfect girl and he is smitten. 

One night he sneaks out to spy on her and her friends when he is supposed to be asleep and that's when his ideas of the sort of person she is are shattered. 

She has far more sinister plans in store for him other than just looking after him and making sure he goes to bed on time. Plans that involve his blood, satanic rituals, sacrifices and demonic pacts. The rest of the night is spent with Cole battling to survive against Bee and her coven in a bloody series of confrontations. There is humour of the sick, daft kind especially in the always entertaining inventive death scenes. 

In summary a good entertaining little film, not necessarily a memorable classic but fun enough to be worth a watch, as long as you don't take your horror too seriously.

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Nextflix Reviews - Happy!

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So many people have been telling me to watch this or posting up encouraging comments about it on Facebook that I had to check it out. It's based on comics by Grant Morrison who I have to admit I'm not a massive fan of. I know he's very popular and lots of people think his work is marvellous but I never really got on with his stuff that greatly. I don't hate it at all I just don't find it as fantastic as many people seem to. Thinking about it, I think I find his non-superhero comics to be pretty cool but when he does super hero comics I find his plots convoluted. I've not read the original source comics of this show at all but knowing how comics to movie/TV show conversions normally go I wouldn't be surprised if they are twice as mental as this is.

So Nick is a washed up, alcoholic ex-cop turned hitman, he's a total mess but he's still a smart-mouthed bad arse. He gets on the wrong side of the local mob guys as they think he has a password they want. Also his daughter Hailey, that he never knew existed, is abducted by a mad Santa. Lucky for her she has an imaginary friend a blue flying Unicorn called Happy. Happy finds Nick at just the right point, he's had the right amount of drugs that night or his dodgy ticker and getting shot has put him close enough to death to be able to see an imaginary being. The science (?) doesn't matter, it happens deal with it! What follows is a violent, funny, whacky journey as Happy persuades Nick to help him and they fight through mobsters whilst trying to track down Hailey in a world of strange and disturbing kinky weirdness. Along the way he meets up again with his ex-wife Amanda and his ex-partner and also ex-lover Meredith.

This is essentially a buddy cop drama, with two parties with wildly different approaches and it could also have been done as a programme for kids. This is NOT aimed for kids though nope, not at all. Nick has a lot of enemies and he seems to be always outnumbered but manages to fight his way through them in very hands on bloody ways. 

The original comics are just a 4 issue run, this series is 8 episodes long and a 2nd season has been commissioned. There were pointers as to where the series will be going in the 2nd season and it could be interesting. This 1st season was a fun watch, but I wonder if it really has enough legs for a 2nd run. I think they covered all the possible jokes about imaginary friends in this one but I will definitely check it out when it arrives and I hope they'll be able to prove me wrong.

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Nextflix Reviews - Game Over, Man!

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3 slackers, Alexxx, Darren & Joel, with airhead ideas but big dreams work as cleaners in a hotel. They get overtime for the evening in the hotel roof bar to cater at the party of a massive millionaire internet celebrity Bae Awadi and use the chance to pitch their idea for an interactive VR gaming suit to him. Things are looking good, Bae likes the idea and orders a cheque written. It's just a shame that a gang of criminals choose this evening to strike, intent in extorting Bae's father's cash. Things go awry and it ends up being a hostage situation but the trio manage to evade capture and set about taking back the building and claiming their investment.

The trio of protagonists are played by Adam DeVine, Anders Holm and Blake Anderson respectively and apparently are all from a comedy show called Workaholics? I've never heard of it at all, so either it never came to the UK or it just went under my radar. This film was cool for a quick late night mindless viewing but I'm not sure I'd bother seeking out the cast's previous work though.

The humour is pretty vulgar and gross out and very silly too and the trio aren't exactly loveable but I actually quite enjoyed the film. It certainly won't make my top film list ever but it had enough laughs and gross out groans to make me think that I hadn't totally wasted my 101 minutes. It's been very badly reviewed on sites like Rotten Tomatoes with a 9% approval rating but I'd say watch it for yourselves and judge it. Personally I thought it had some good unique ideas for some of the situations and some of the violent scenes were surprisingly dark I thought.

I wanted to say that it's like Die Hard mixed with.. but then I couldn't think of a gross-out, daft comedy to compare it to and I'm not sure if it's because I haven't watched enough modern comedies to find a comparison or if it's just unique. I suspect it's the former.

I did a little research into the actors backgrounds to see if I'd seen them on anything previously and found that DeVine was the voice of The Flash in The Lego Batman Movie and Anderson has a small part in Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse which I reviewed recently HERE.

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Nextflix Reviews - Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse

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I saw this come up a while ago on Netflix and kind of pre-judged it, I thought it would be low budget, badly made rubbish but I am glad I was way off with that assessment as it's actually pretty good. OK it is daft, of course it is, the clues in the name but it's actually pretty funny with some good action and special effects. There are a few laugh out loud moments and some gross out stuff. 

So the local unpopular, cos it's soooo uncool, scout troop are off out on a camp. The scout leader gets infected early leaving just the 3 teenage boys in camp. Ben & Carter sneak out heading to a party, they are planning on quitting scouting soon anyway as they don't wanna lose their cool cred now they are getting older and want to get with girls. They only stuck around this long for their mate Augie who feels betrayed. I don't know why I bothered mentioning that who watches these comedy horrors for character story anyway? Really all you need to know is that it's 3 scouts and a cocktail waitress they meet up with running away from zombies A LOT and killing them in funny & inventive ways in an effort to stay alive.

The zombies are pretty fast and strong but seem to concentrate on throwing our heroes around more than biting them which helps. Animals are also affected by the virus too which you don't see very often in zombie films, there is one scene here that if not played for laughs would be very scary in a serious horror. They discover that the air force are going to bomb the town at 3AM and want to warn the people at the party before the zombies arrive there or the bombs get dropped on them. Lucky they have all their scout training to be prepared for the zombie apocalypse.

Scouts forever!

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Check out some more zombie stuff HERE!