James' World 2

Ozark is a television crime drama series created by Bill Dubuque and Mark Williams for Netflix and produced by Media Rights Capital.  Bateman is a director and executive producer for the series. Ozark is about a married couple who relocate their family to the Ozarks for the purpose of money laundering. It took a minute but I finally fell hard for Ozark, completing binge-watching it in record time.

After a money-laundering scheme for a Mexican drug cartel goes wrong, financial advisor Martin “Marty” Byrde (Jason Bateman) proposes to make amends by offering to set up a bigger laundering operation in the Lake of the Ozarks region of central Missouri. Marty suddenly relocates his family; wife Wendy (Laura Linney), daughter Charlotte (Sofia Hublitz), and their son Jonah (Skylar Gaertner) from the Chicago suburb of Naperville to the remote summer resort community of Osage Beach, Missouri. Thinking Osage Beach is uncorrupt, waiting…

Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey is a Christmas musical fantasy film written and directed by David E. Talbert. I was a little reluctant to see this movie because it appeared to be a children’s film.  I was correct — albeit a children’s film, it was an exceptional children’s film.

An eccentric toymaker named Jeronicus Jangle (Forest Whitaker) and his adventurous granddaughter Journey (Madalen Mills), construct a magical invention in this imaginary world which, if they can get it to work in time for the holidays, could change Jeronicus and his family’s lives forever.

Jeronicus employs an apprentice named Gustafson (Keegan-Michael Key) who betrays the toymaker along with a new toy called Don Juan Diego (voice: Ricky Martin), causing Jeronicus to lose his ability to believe in himself and to also mistrust anyone who comes into his presence, for years to come.  Meanwhile, a magical invention called Buddy 3000…

Because Hanna is a streaming Cable TV series each episode was directed by a different director as well as written by several writers. Each episode is treated separately with the continuous story of a different, sheltered, and gifted young lady. Of the TV adaptation, writer David Farr says: “I’ve always felt the film was weirdly male but knew this TV series would have a more female-centric quality.” I’m happy I choose to add Hanna (a remake of the original movie of the same name) to my playlist as it was an exciting series.

**** SPOILERS ****

Erik Heller (Joel Kinnaman) is a former CIA operative whose job was to recruit a very pregnant Johanna (Joanna Kulig) to participate in an exclusive CIA program, code name UTRAX. Pregnancy is the prerequisite to join UTRAX, which secretly enhanced children’s DNA with 3% wolf in order to create super-soldiers. Erik falls in love…