I'm currently just going into season 2 of The Umbrella Academy on Netflix; maybe not fantastic but nevertheless very imaginative and watchable. I'm a sucker for a good time-travel story, and by the time you add into it a global apocalypse storyline, mix in some stuff about the mundane human problems faced by super-enabled human mutants, blend in a scary Big-Brother-esque temporal agency sending out brutal cops/assassins to maintain the integrity of time and then sprinkle on a wee touch of bird-watching...well, how can you go wrong? I like it!
We are also greedily consuming each new episode of the second season of Reacher. Lots of action, well written dialogue, generally believable characters, tons of flashbacks used to explain and clarify the motivations of the characters in the present, and one of my all-time favourite fictional heroes. Alan Ritchson pulls this role off well; I have a couple friends who are constantly comparing it to the book series (which I also love), but like any novel adapted into a movie, it must be watched and judged as its own entity. Constantly nit-picking about how "that's different than the book!" is pointless and silly...although I think the literary Reacher and the cinematic version are pretty well-aligned. The worst thing about this series...is being forced to wait a week for each episode.
Finally, we just watched Rogue Moon, a pretty decent space-opera. Take a female version of Clint Eastwood, put her into a spaceship instead of on a horse, set it on some assorted distant planets instead of the American West, throw in some evil Space Nazis and other assorted baddies including a very hate-able villain, and then sit back and enjoy. It's got a sort of gritty Star Wars kind of vibe. No thinking required; perfect! There's a second part due to come out next year, but this is a perfectly satisfying stand-alone.
