Rick’s Movie picks of the week: Thunderbolts*; The Accountant 2; The Narrow Road to the Deep North

Guest: Rick Forchuk - TV Week Magazine Columnist and CKNW Contributor In theatres: - Thunderbolts* (2025): This is the 36th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and has been described by its director as a "Black Widow" sequel ... sort of! It has also been described as "The New Avengers," and now, having seen it, I am not certain what to call it. Like a lot of movie fans, I have been sort of lost over the years with all the Avengers movies and since "End Game," when half of all life in the galaxy was snuffed out with the snap of a finger, not being certain just which Marvel Comics Universe each film represented. Here it's more of a fresh start - you don't really have to have any previous knowledge of The Avengers to get with the program as there is enough that's new - new characters, new super-powers, and new villains, to keep any action movie fan fully engaged. The action opens with a group of Avenger-types tasked with killing one another as part of an insidious plot by a highly placed U.S. Government official named Valentina Allegra de Fontaine played as a depiction of magnificent evil by Julia Louis-Dreyfuss (Elaine from "Seinfeld" and the lead character in the series Veep"). de Fontain is being grilled by a Senate committee that plays right into her hands as she manipulates the press, various government factions, and the rag-tag de facto Avengers group itself - The Accountant 2 (2025): Nine years is a long time to wait for a sequel, but for those who liked the first Ben Affleck movie, with the star playing the character of Chris Wolff once again, an autistic accountant who helps launder money for the mobs and cartels. In the first film in 2016, we learned that, for an accountant, Wolff had a pretty interesting skill set in addition to working a spreadsheet - he has an arsenal of high-tech weapons at his disposal, he has some strong martial arts skills, and he is not one with whom to mess. This time around John Bernthal as Wolff's equally adept brother returns as Braxton, and the two, who have not seen one another since the last movie, team up with a Federal tax evasion specialist, Mary Beth, played by English actress Cynthia Addai-Robinson. She is working a case involving a missing child, a potentially kidnapped mother, and a surprising outcome for a colleague from the last movie, her former boss Ray King (J.K. Simmons) On Amazon Prime: - The Narrow Road to the Deep North (2025): This five-part mini-series that explores some of the tragedies and excesses of military conflict during WWII and seen from an Australian perspective, has a number of eye-opening moments, the first of which is the casting. It's a story of love, of loss, of cruelty and of pain as a young man Named Dorrigo Evans (Jacob Elordi) , slips into a passionate affair with a married woman, Amy Mulvany (Australian actress Odessa Young), who is the young wife of his own uncle. It is rural Tasmania and the location shooting creates an believable idyllic world for the young lovers ... until things change. Dorrigo is played by Jacob Elordi whom most North American viewers will recall as Elvis Presly in last year's movie "Priscilla." As believable as Elordi was as Elvis, all of that disappears as we see him with his native Australian accent and his acute sense of youth and invulnerability. All of that changes as the armies of the Empire of Japan have sights set on Australia