I will start off this review and tell you action movies are not really my thing unless they are disaster flicks. However, the trailer for Tetris on Apple TV+ looked as addicting as the game (who didn’t play Tetris as a kid) that I just had to check out. And it was even better than I thought it could be.
Henk Rogers (Taron Egerton) is an American videogame designer whose life changed when he saw Tetris at a videogame convention in Las Vegas. He loved it so much that he bought the rights for it for Japan for PC and arcade.
He knew he had a hit on his hands, so he went to his banker and secured the money to make it happen. However, since he had a failed business venture with them, they make him put his house up for collateral.
Now, he has to make sure it succeeds, or he loses everything. And he only wants the best for his wife and daughters.
Henk finds out that spoiled rich kid Kevin Maxwell, who works for his ruthless dad Robert Maxwell a publishing tycoon, won’t share the rights to the arcade game versions of Tetris.
Henk is a desperate man, so he goes to the head of Nintendo and tries to get him to invest. That is when he was introduced to the future Game Boy. So now, he must have handheld rights for Tetris so that he can put the game on their console and make millions and millions of dollars.
So he decides to go around the Maxwells and sneaks into Russia to talk to the people who created the game and made the original contract so that he can get their approval to license the game. Russia is still a communist country, and they don’t want to share. The KGB will try to intimidate Henk, his wife, and everyone involved with this deal because Robert Maxwell is in cahoots with the Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
And that is when the movie really has you on the edge of your seat, like when blocks start coming down quickly on Tetris. Remember how nerve-wracking and thrilling that was at the same time?
That is this movie from beginning to end. It is face paced. You never know what is going to happen next. You are not sure who are the good guys are and who the bad ones. However, you are rooting for the hero Henk. You want him to get this game, but there are so many hoops he has to jump through, and he is like Kevin Hart playing basketball with people the size of Shaq.
I honestly felt like I was playing Tetris while I was watching the movie. The vision that director Jon S. Baird had for it played out smashingly. So much so that you feel like you don’t have time to breathe because you don’t want to miss a single second of the story.
A story that makes something we grew up with so much more interesting. Who knew all of this went on? But most of it did, and that is why it is so great that it got told.
It made me want to download and play Tetris again. But only after the movie ended because nothing was going to distract me from it. I can’t wait to watch it again because I am sure I missed so many little things.
So if you are looking for an action movie that is not all about cheap thrills, then you need to watch Tetris as soon as you get home. I promise you will enjoy it as much as I did. Actually, you will probably enjoy it even more because action movies are your thing.
Ted Lasso is back on Apple TV+, and the third season is shaping up to be its best one yet. I was so emotional watching the touching season premiere.
It starts off with Ted Lasso (Jason Sudeikis) dropping his son off at the airport to go back to America to be with his mom. Now that his son has gone home, it is time to focus on the team.
AFC Richmond is last in everyone’s poll, and no one has any faith in the team. So it will be a miracle for them not to be in the last place. And that miracle is coming. But I can’t tell you how just yet.
Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham) still wants and needs to do better than her ex-husband Rupert (Anthony Head), and she wants and needs Ted to step up. Especially after Nate (Nick Mohammed) totally trashed him during his first press conference as the new manager of West Ham United. When did Nate grow balls? And how will Ted react to all the negative things that Nate said about him?
Meanwhile, Keeley (Juno Temple) is adjusting to having her own PR firm, and it is not going as she expected. To make matters worse, she is still dealing with Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein) dumping her.
And then there is the team. They need a pick me up. Can Ted and Roy Kent deliver it to them? They are going to have to, or they really will finish in last place.
While the team might be in last place, the show is in first place in our hearts. They say this is the last season. And if it is, then I can say they are going out splendidly after watching the first four episodes.
We have all played Tetris and found ourselves addicted to the game. But did you know the story behind how it became a global juggernaut is more interesting than the game itself? Because of that, Apple is turning the tale into a movie.
Tetris tells the unbelievable story of how one of the world’s most popular video games found its way to avid players around the globe. Henk Rogers (Taron Egerton) discovers Tetris in 1988, and then risks everything by traveling to the Soviet Union, where he joins forces with inventor Alexey Pajitnov (Nikita Efremov) to bring the game to the masses. Based on a true story, Tetris is a Cold War–era thriller on steroids, with double-crossing villains, unlikely heroes, and a nail-biting race to the finish.
We know how it ends, and I can’t wait to see how it began when it starts streaming on Apple TV+ on March 31st.
Apple TV+ just gave us a Valentine’s Day gift. That is because they announced that Ted Lasso’s 3rd season will debut on March 15th.
The streaming service also revealed what we can expect. In the 12-episode third season of “Ted Lasso,” the newly-promoted AFC Richmond faces ridicule as media predictions widely peg them as last in the Premier League and Nate (Nick Mohammed), now hailed as the “wonder kid,” has gone to work for Rupert (Anthony Head) at West Ham United. In the wake of Nate’s contentious departure from Richmond, Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein) steps up as assistant coach, alongside Beard (Brendan Hunt). Meanwhile, while Ted (Jason Sudeikis) deals with pressures at work, he continues to wrestle with his own personal issues back home, Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham) is focused on defeating Rupert and Keeley (Juno Temple) navigates being the boss of her own PR agency. Things seem to be falling apart both on and off the pitch, but Team Lasso is set to give it their best shot anyway.
However, there is one thing they didn’t tell us. And that is if this will be the Emmy-winning show’s final season, as rumored. Hopefully, we will get a season 4 because I don’t want this series to end.
On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. The city was not prepared for what was going to happen after she hit. As we know, the levees broke, and the city was flooded, stranding her citizens.
Not only was the city unprepared, but so was one of its hospitals. Apple TV+ is the story of the hellish Five Days at Memorial Hospital went through and the gut-wrenching decisions they had to make.
During the first night, they remained relatively calm as Katrina huffed and puffed. It looked like they made it through the worst of it. And then the power went out. Luckily they had a generator and got it back on.
Unfortunately, the air conditioning was not on the generator and stopped working in the heat. That was the beginning of their troubles.
As the days went out, the generator ran out of gas, and they struggled to keep patients alive. In fact, they started losing them due to the heat, lack of food and water, and no electricity. Not only that, the plumbing stopped working.
They had very little contact with the outside world. Even if they had more, it wouldn’t have helped. No one knew what they were doing. They tried to get the owners of the hospital to rescue them, but their calls were literally ignored.
They were surrounded by water and had no way out. No one was coming for them. The critically ill patients who were part of LifeCare Hospitals of New Orleans were getting sicker and sicker.
The head doctor was trying to decide what to do with the pets if they were ever rescued. She decided that they could not go with them, so it was suggested that they be euthanized rather than being left to die.
Finally, on day five, they were told they were going to evacuate everyone at the hospital, but they only had a few hours to do so. The decision was made that those who were the sickest were not healthy enough to go with them. Therefore, they would be left behind. That is when six bodies became 45.
Not over time, but in the hours before, the hospital would be deserted. Were they murdered? That is the question that the final three episodes ask. It is a story that hasn’t been told like this until now and needs to be shared.
What everyone in that hospital went through was horrifying. The decisions that were made make you wonder what you would have done. Would you have saved them? Let them die? Or save them from going through hell alone as they waited to die, abandoned by the people who were supposed to be there for them?
I still don’t know what I would’ve done. And I pray no one ever has to make those decisions again.
You will be left feeling this way after every episode. The first five episodes each take place over one day, from the day of the hurricane until the day they are evacuated. The fifth episode will leave you heartbroken and in tears. It has Emmys written all over it.
The final three episodes focus on the investigation into the 45 deaths and what and who went wrong. Personally, I think they went after the wrong person. But you will understand what I mean when you watch it.
Five Days at Memorial is exceptionally well done. You feel as though you are the fly in the room, watching the unimaginable horrors that they went through. You can feel their desperation and exhaustion. But thankfully, you can’t smell it.
Because of that, Apple TV+ tells the story as it should’ve been told. We cannot let history repeat itself. And hopefully, this will guarantee that it never does.
The limited series event stars Vera Farmiga, Robert Pine, Cherry Jones, Julie Ann Emery, Cornelius Smith Jr., Adepero Oduye, Michael Gaston, Molly Hager, Jeffrey Nordling, and Damon Standifer.
The first episode is streaming now, and a new episode will debut every Friday.
