A SCI-FI GURU RETURNS
Ex Machina director brings Annihilation to the big screen, Chris Lackner writes.
Big releases Feb. 23: Annihilation; Mame Night.
Big picture: You want to be excited about Annihilation. It’s from Alex Marland, the writer and director of Ix Machina (2015), one of the best sci-fi films of all time. And it stars Natalie Portman, one of our finest actresses (when she isn’t reading off a script touched by George Lucas).
She plays Lena, who ventures off into “the Shimmer,” an expanding, swirly rainbow wall that looks like the end of a kaleidoscope. When she goes in search of answers to what happened to her soldier husband, what her team finds is Eden meets Lost meets Pan’s Labyrinth … meets zero chance of Portman getting an Oscar nod. New species of animals, plants and bugs — plus an alligator with shark’s teeth — run amok on the other side of the portal. It’s like Wonderland as created by the unlikely combination of Doctor Frankenstein and Noah from the Bible.
Meanwhile, Game Night stars Jason Cateman as Max and Rachel McAdams as Annie, leaders of a weekly couples’ game night. They encounter an unexpected adventure when Kyle Chandler turns things up a notch with a murder-spy mystery that becomes the real thing. This one is from the minds behind Bachelor Party. Forecast: “It’s not destroying, it’s making something new,” Portman says of the supernatural force known as the Shimmer. You’ll hope it’s not remaking her career trajectory. Game Night goes far beyond trivia and board games to deliver a real winning comedy. For the record, I would watch the charismatic Chandler (Friday Night Lights, Bloodline) host a stamp collectors night.
Big events: The Frankenstein Chronicles (Feb. 20, Netflix); Seven Seconds (Netflix, Feb. 23). Big picture: You can stop pretending to care about speedskating and luge soon. The Olympics wrap up on Feb. 25 with closing ceremonies from South Korea. In between, you can watch Game of Thrones’ Ned Stark with his head firmly in place hunt down a serial limb cutter. The Frankenstein Chronicles stars Sean Cean, Stark on GoT, as a 19th-century police officer investigating a “monster” at work after a “composite” corpse is found made up of the body parts of missing kids.
You guessed it: This one is inspired by Mary Shelley’s famous novel, and a fictionalized version of the author even appears.
Meanwhile, Seven Seconds comes from the talented mind of Veena Sud (The Killing). This 10-episode series focuses on racial tensions and violence in New Jersey after an AfricanAmerican teenager is critically wounded by a white cop. wipped from potential daily headlines, nothing is black and white in this one.
Forecast: These two great dramas will be with you long after the week’s sporting drama has come to an end.