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You Have Been Watching
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I’m watching Danny Boyle’s dance adaptation of The Matrix. It’s weird! https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001tws5
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It’s past 11 on the 31st of December, so time to finalise my Top 10 of the year list!
- Oppenheimer
- Poor Things
- Asteroid City
- The Boy and the Heron
- All of Us Strangers
- May December
- Perfect Days
- The Holdovers
- Killers of the Flower Moon
- Bottoms
And my Next 10, unordered:
- Anatomy of a Fall
- Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
- Barbie
- Beau Is Afraid
- Fallen Leaves
- Godzilla Minus One
- How to Have Sex
- How to Blow Up a Pipeline
- Past Lives
- Rye Lane
For the first time I can recall, all of my Top 20 I saw in the cinema.
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Watched Boat Story, a fun darkly comedic six-part crime drama about two strangers who get involved in an escalating beef with gangsters and drug lords and have to find their way out of the situation their own actions have put them in.
It’s very cartoonish and a bit uneven but the whole thing is written so playfully and the story sometimes goes in such unexpected directions that I still enjoyed it a lot. It feels like it owes a debt to Lock Stock style capers but has its own feel too. I enjoyed it.
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Al will be thrilled to learn that the US’s true national sport, Jeopardy, has been adapted for the UK (again?) with a series hosted by Stephen Fry which started today.
I watched it. It’s decent enough. It’s hard to not hear all the noises they’ve imported from the US original as cliches and parody targets that I’ve always known them as though. Oh and the contestants’ buzzers are silent, which seems odd and I’m not convinced isn’t a production error.
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Oh and the contestants’ buzzers are silent, which seems odd and I’m not convinced isn’t a production error.
It definitely feels like a mistake, but it’s the same in the US one:
I enjoyed it. I think this first run is only four weeks, I would probably watch if it’s picked up.
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I saw Godzilla Minus One yesterday. I won’t rehash what Lorcan said.
I saw a few things that reminded of “Jaws”.
Usually, these monster movies make you sit through the boring human
scenes waiting for the monster scenes or big battle.This one however, put the humanity first, the main character’s arc and his “household”
his trauma and survivor’s guilt, the job he got after the war, his redemption, the devastation of postwar Japan.(I felt it when he told the girl “I’m not your Daddy.” …. and when he felt he lost Noriko in the attack).
Some of the Godzilla attacks had the same music from before, scenes of train cars in his
mouth, and the blasts depicted the country’s collective memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.Great movie.
Next monster movie for me (when I get to it) will be the Shin one.
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On New Year’s Eve night, I turned on Turner Classic Movies (TCM) to catch An Affair To Remember, the 1957 romance starring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, followed by Mel Brooks’ hilarious Spaceballs. A fantastic double-feature.
Yesterday TCM ran a marathon of 1960s Japanese monster films, with subtitles rather than dubbing. I was only able to catch Godzilla Vs. Mothra before having to take care of some business, but my wife kept it on all day and had a great time.
Our cable package has numerous premium channels including multiple HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, Epix, etc channels; we also subscribe to AppleTV, BritBox, Prime, Disney, Max and others. But more and more, lately, I find myself checking out TCM for some wonderful classic films of all genres.
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Yesterday TCM ran a marathon of 1960s Japanese monster films, with subtitles rather than dubbing. I was only able to catch Godzilla Vs. Mothra before having to take care of some business, but my wife kept it on all day and had a great time.
Godzilla vs. Mothra is a genuinely good movie to boot!
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I watched the Imagine special on RTD from a few weeks back. It’s a good little documentary that recaps his life and career nicely, including lots of stuff I wasn’t aware of. And it’s made me want to go back and catch some of his shows I never watched.
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My wife and I are catching Godzilla Minus One tomorrow before it leaves cinemas. I am looking foeward to seeing and and the prospectbof getting rid of both kids for a couple of hours!
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My wife and I are catching Godzilla Minus One tomorrow before it leaves cinemas. I am looking foeward to seeing and and the prospectbof getting rid of both kids for a couple of hours!
So, this was fantastic. Did what any successful disaster movie does – use the large scale as a backdrop to tell small scale stories. Human stories where never overwrought and felt genuine. Large scale disaster lead to moments of breathless tension. Really glad the big G was left as a force of nature and there was no attempt to humanise him (with a corny scene along the lines of small child places hand on colapsed Godzilla and has a moment of connection when he opens his eye). There was a trailer for Kong / Godzilla before this and that looked like absolute souless dogshit in comparison.
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A Murder at the End of the World
This is a great little thriller series. It avoids many of the pitfalls that this type of story can fall into – too much padding, illogical twists, an unsatisfying resolution, doing dumb stuff.
A good cast for a sharp, smart story that has a lot to say about the world we’re in, and who we are in it with. It’s the kind of story best watched knowing as little as possible, then watch it spin out across seven episodes.
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Reacher Season 2
I was a big fan of season one. I like how Reacher just comes in to a small town and wreak havoc with his no nonsense attitude. The cast and their chemistry was also really good. Season two is no different but on a bigger scale. I’m really enjoying watching season 2 right now. I hope it finishes with a bang.
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Reacher Season 2
I was a big fan of season one. I like how Reacher just comes in to a small town and wreak havoc with his no nonsense attitude. The cast and their chemistry was also really good. Season two is no different but on a bigger scale. I’m really enjoying watching season 2 right now. I hope it finishes with a bang.
He broke someone’s arm with a headbutt! It’s a ridiculous show, but in the best way.
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My Babylon 5 rewatch has reached the end of the Telepath arc, and while I’m not has hard on series 5 now as I was at the time, it’s still not great. A story that’s stretched out to about twice the length it should have been because of the cancellation and uncancellation of the the show, there’s some great ideas in there and I like that Byron didn’t turn ‘bad’, he stuck by his convictions and rather failed at holding on to the more radical elements in his group. But the execution lacks at many points and I feel like JMS played a lot of things safe in the first half of the series overall. Take the leaders of the Interstellar Alliance, Sheridan and Delenn especially lose their fire and become more a domesticated couple, especially Delenn who just fades into the background of a lot of episodes. G’Kar suffers as well, becoming more of a comedy character between his neurotic obsession over writing the Alliance constitution and then delivering witty bon mots when he and Londo visit Centauri Prime. I remember a criticism of Legend of the Rangers being the way G’Kar was joking a lot and the whole “kiss kiss, love love” bit, but that started here.
Well at least I’ve still got Garibaldi’s alcoholism, the Drakh, and the fall of Centauri Prime to look forward to. And to see if I can make it through Sleeping in Light without crying this time.
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And to see if I can make it through Sleeping in Light without crying this time.
No chance.
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Jane Espenson.
She’s working on Foundation atm.
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I saw Shin Godzilla and my listing of the top 3 would be:
1 G minus 1
2 Shin
3 The first one (with Raymond Burr reporting)(The rest are still entertaining in their own right with the Kaiju battles)
These 3 movies suspended belief with the monster but the rest is on how the government deals with it.
Shin was very political with press conferences, how the government handles evacuating the areas, collateral damage, how the US and UN wanted to get involved.
(Interesting how the US “took” sample remains of G without permission and later on their stealth bomber planes were in Japanese air even before Japan requested!) 🤣
It was said the movie was a metaphor of how the government dealt with the Fukushima disaster, with the monster evolving every time and the situation getting worse.
I say to let the kaiju movies be done by the Japanese and keep them well grounded
Only thing: The Japanese American woman the US sent came across to me as more of a model than a govt. worker.
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I really don’t get why they haven’t brought in Drew Goddard and Steven DeKnight. I mean, okay, it’d be admitting failure to get the other Punisher guys after their plan didn’t work out, I suppose, but fuck did those guys make a great Daredevil and at this point, Disney should just try to get a good show in whatever way possible. Plus they could get some of the other Buffy alumni on board – Dave Greenwalt is still around, he ran Grimm and that was very solid work. Or Jane Espenson.
I seem to remember reading somewhere that if they were to make a direct continuation of the Netflix Daredevil then there would be certain payments due to the original creative team on that show, based on the contracts that were agreed at the time.
By making a “brand new” version of Daredevil (however tenuous that definition might seem when it will have a certain amount of overlap with the cast, designs etc. from the Netflix DD), Disney+ avoids having to do that.
Seems pretty silly to not do it when what people want is basically more of that show, but I guess Disney+ may want to avoid any obligations that come with that.
I think it’s also probably pretty embarrassing for them that all their live-action MCU TV output has been so mediocre that the original Daredevil Netflix show is still head and shoulders above it, quality-wise. So maybe they don’t want to be seen to be admitting defeat by going back to that well.
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Anyway, I finally watched Oppenheimer this week. I thought it was excellent – a great cast, perfect direction, smart writing, the lot. It felt like proper grown-up filmmaking.
I also thought the editing in particular was absolutely fantastic. You could have edited the same scenes differently and it would have been a completely different (boring and stuffy) movie about men talking in rooms. But the way it was done really made it move and gave it constant momentum. And the music really added to that too.
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The first episode of the Gladiators reboot was a ton of fun.
It has the same look and games of the original, the same banger of a theme tune and the Gladiators mugging to the camera is still as gloriously cheesy as it always was.
Walsh and his Nepo baby are still a bizarre choice to host though. There should definitely be a female presenter considering the whole show is split into male and female events.
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It was said the movie was a metaphor of how the government dealt with Fukushima disaster, with the monster evolving every time and the situation getting worse.
There’s a lot of stuff in the movie directly lifted from the Fukishima disaster, like the jumpsuits the various government officials wear over their business suits, and the moment where the minister is on TV saying there is no chance that Godzilla will come ashore when an aide whispers something to him and then it cuts to Godzilla coming ashore is based on a point during news coverage of Fukishima where the news literally changed in the middle of a briefing.
Only thing: The Japanese American woman the US sent came across to me as more of a model than a govt. worker.
I do wonder about her casting. Not that Satomi Ishihara was bad in the role, but she talked about how intimidating playing a bilingual character was and it’s clear that her English isn’t very good. You kinda wonder why they didn’t hire an American actor who could also speak Japanese. Godzilla has a long history of bilingual movies to boot, Every movie in the Heisei era has at least one sequence or character where English is spoken with Japanese subtitles on-screen, and movies before and after that often had American actors like Don Frye in Final Wars or Nick Adams in Invasion of Astro Monster. Interestingly there are two Japanese vocal tracks for Final Wars – one where Adams is dubbed over and one where he still speaks English. By comparison Nick Adams was just dubbed in Astro-Monster, which leads to an amusing moment early in the movie where his character is in a spacecraft, and his Japanese co-pilot speaks a line in English and Adams speaks Japanese a second later.
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Speaking of Godzilla, kinda sad no one’s talking about the Monarch TV show… it was pretty good, tbh, delving into the new movies’ lore and some pretty damned good VFX whenever monsters show… and Gozilla of course, looks great, movie quality… I wonder why it felt completely under everyone’s radar
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People don’t really talk about shows on Apple TV Plus, except maybe Ted Lasso.
I enjoyed the show more than the last two US Godzilla movies, which isn’t saying much.
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I didn’t bother with Monarch because i just assumed it was part of the Monsterverse and who cares about that?
For All Mankind was pretty good this year though.
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I watched the first episode of True Detective: Night Country.
It was an okay start. Where the first season hinted at the supernatural, this season is a bit more overt. I’ll keep watching, but it already feels like it won’t be that great. I hope I’m wrong.
Really, I think the first season was simply lightning in a bottle. It was just one of those very rare occurrences where everything came together perfectly. Trying to recreate that success is just not going to happen.
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I think the first episode was perfectly fine, but it felt more like Twin Peaks than True Detective.
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On the other hand, Season 5 of FARGO has a fantastic, neck-grabbing first episode. The lead actress, Juno Phillips (from Ted Lasso) is just amazing as a Minnesota housewife with a secret.
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Not that Satomi Ishihara was bad in the role, but she talked about how intimidating playing a bilingual character was and it’s clear that her English isn’t very good. You kinda wonder why they didn’t hire an American actor who could also speak Japanese. Godzilla has a long history of bilingual movies to boot, Every movie in the Heisei era has at least one sequence or character where English is spoken with Japanese subtitles on-screen, and movies before and after that often had American actors like Don Frye in Final Wars or Nick Adams …
And the original one had Raymond Burr as the reporter.
As for Shin G and the govt. handling the monster: The older statesmen dismissed Yaguchi when he first said the problem was a huge creature. Then later Yaguchi recruited someone he knew from college, and the older ones dismissed her when she said the monster was evolving and would be able to walk on land, and then later on someone laughed at her when she said the creature was feeding off of nuclear fission. She was the one who proposed the strategy that actually worked in the end. I would have liked more time for her character, but then the movie brought in the Japanese American diplomat. Was her attitude and demeanor throwing shade ie. that she was “Americanized”?🤣
Shin had its message and Minus One had a message of how the govt. didn’t value life especially with the kamikaze fighters, no plane ejector seats, and private endeavor with no red tape is better.
Both movies left the final fate ambiguous. The monster might or might not return as a threat, not exactly a cliffhanger.
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And the original one had Raymond Burr as the reporter
Burr was actually edited into the US release! It was a very well done edit, they shot Burr with body doubles of the Japanese cast, overdubbed his dialogue into scenes from the original movie, and basically wrote him into the story in some interesting ways. They even brought him back for the US version of Return of Godzilla
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Burr was actually edited into the US release!
I recently saw the original unedited and undubbed Japanese version of GODZILLA (thank you, Turner Classic Movies!) and was pleasantly shocked by how different that version is from the film I watched on American television as a kid. A much clearer allegory about the consequences of nuclear bomb testing and the dangers of weaponization of science. Sadly, though, no Raymond Burr…
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Look, I’m not saying that if you search for the twitch channel “GodzillaFanZone” you’ll find someone who has most of the movies subtitled playing in a loop, but… uh… I have no way to end this sentence
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I have no way to end this sentence
You could try an exclamation point or a question mark, but I often find that a simple period is sufficient.
Glad to be of help.
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You could try an exclamation point or a question mark, but I often find that a simple period is sufficient.
You’ll never be the next Stan Lee with that attitude.
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We watched The Creator last night. Actually we had to finish the last half hour this morning as I kept falling asleep, which might be because I found it a bit flat.
It’s a shame as in some ways it’s a really well-made “original” sci-fi story, the kind of thing we need more of – it looks great, with excellent designs and decent enough performances (especially from the child actor).
But at the same time it all feels very familiar and predictable. Edwards obviously grew up on the same movies we did, and there’s a lot of James Cameron/Ridley Scott sci-fi influence here.
But what he doesn’t quite nail like they did is fleshing out the characters and making us care about them in the way you would in Alien or Aliens or Terminator or The Abyss. So it all ends up feeling a bit empty and soulless, going through the motions, a bit machine-like, ironically enough given the subject matter. You end up just waiting for events to play out, and there aren’t really many surprises.
I’m not quite as down on it as I sound – with a bit more character work early on and a few less clichés and predictable moments, it could be a great movie. But in the end it falls short of that.
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Saw Poor Things today. I thought it was pretty great – funny, thought-provoking, even quite moving in places.
And the performances were excellent, Emma Stone especially, but also Dafoe is very good in it. Worth a watch.
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I was pleasantly surprised to find that Sky Cinema had Jet Li’s The One on over Christmas and I watched tonight for the first time in… 20 years, I guess.
Does it hold up? To a degree. It’s a great concept – essentially multiversal Highlander – but it’s a bit more undercooked than I remember. Maybe it’s just because there’s no way this would be made at less than 2 hours now, while this is only 84 minutes. The end is especially a tad perfunctory and lacking in drama when they nearly send Gabe to the prison universe instead of Yulaw and it’s all just quickly resolved on Statham’s say so with any question. Given how short it is, they could have used another five or ten minutes to flesh some bits out.
Or maybe it didn’t need that anyway. It’s a fun action film with a lot of wonderfully of-the-time nu-metal songs featured in it that doesn’t outstay it’s welcome. And that’s enough really.
Can’t work out who it’s weirder to see with hair though: Delroy Lindo or Jason Statham.
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Christel and I finally watched Beef on Netflix.
It deserves every award it has received. Excellent writing and performances by all. What really could have been a superficial series, had a surprising amount of depth, especially in the development of secondary characters. You really came to understand and even care about them. They could have taken the easy way out and made a lot of the characters one dimensional, but they didn’t. And it really stuck the landing.
Speaking of sticking the landing, Season 5 of Fargo did that in spades! The resolutions for the characters was great, but the last half of the epsiode was utterly brilliant. I don’t want to offer even the slightest detail as not to ruin it for anyone for anyone but great performances carried great writing to a truly fantastic conclusion. This has been a great series and return to form.
I highly recommend both series.
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And to see if I can make it through Sleeping in Light without crying this time.
No chance.
I lasted 90 seconds, the flashback to Lorien saying “and some day he will simply… stop” got me.
Though to be fair, I watched it and Objects at Rest back to back and Zack saying he’d still be at B5 when they turned out the lights and Sheridan’s goodbye to the station kicked me off.
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Christel and I finally watched Beef on Netflix. It deserves every award it has received. Excellent writing and performances by all. What really could have been a superficial series, had a surprising amount of depth, especially in the development of secondary characters. You really came to understand and even care about them. They could have taken the easy way out and made a lot of the characters one dimensional, but they didn’t. And it really stuck the landing.
Yeah, Beef is really great and becomes something quite unexpected and thoughtful by the end.
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Reacher Series 2
Damn, this was a lot of fun, but you have to accept certain conditions from the start.
First, Jack Reacher is not your life coach, this series is not a practical guide for living life. If you encounter anyone who believes this, get far, far away from them.
Second, this is not a series where characters are in deathly peril, at risk of severe violence or maiming. It is not a “good is dumb, evil is smart” tale.
Once those conditions are met, you are free to enjoy the story of a one man wrecking ball, of a big lunk who looks a big lunk but is also smart. You are free to enjoy a story where, less than 10 minutes in, a crapbag gets his arse handed to him. Which is always the trick in stories like this – the villains have to deserve what is about to befall them.
This time Reacher is joined by his old team, well, what’s left of it. There’s also Robert Patrick, once again playing an effective villain, who likes to monologue. There’s some neat references to the first series too.
The key thing above all: Do not take it too seriously.
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He breaks a mans arm by head butting it!!….its peak tv.
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Most streaming series on Netflix, Apple+, Prime, etc. have a fantastic first season and then gradually lose that greatness in subsequent seasons. But I just finished season 5 of FARGO on Hulu, and Noah Hawley has just created the best season ever of what was already a consistently outstanding show.
Even if you’ve never seen the previous four seasons, even if you’ve never seen the movie, you have to watch FARGO SEASON 5!!
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This is so weird.
Fargo series 4 and 5 are on Amazon Prime.
Series 4 does not have subtitles, series 5 does!
Well, weird as it is, it decides what is next!
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Probably worth pointing out that Fargo isn’t a streaming show, it airs on FX.
Fair enough, but I stream it on Hulu when all the FX episodes have been aired.
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Probably worth pointing out that Fargo isn’t a streaming show, it airs on FX.
Streaming versus “broadcast” TV is an increasingly meaningless distinction for me. Most live TV I stream through apps like iplayer anyway, and most traditional broadcasters now also have their own streaming apps that can be used to catch up on stuff that’s recently been broadcast. Some streamers release episodes at the rate of one a week, some traditional broadcasters like the BBC often make all episodes of a show available to stream as soon as the first one broadcasts. It’s all just TV.
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I have to subscribe to a streaming service I’ve never used before so I can watch Fargo season 5. So I’ll do that when I find some time so I can watch some more of their stuff and cancel after one month. They also have Counterpart, so I can finally watch that one.
I’ll probably cancel Disney+ for a bit then, they’ve got nothing much going on at the moment. I do have to finish watching the second What If season with my kid though.
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They also have Counterpart, so I can finally watch that one.
Counterpart is great!
Not available digitally at all here, but I was able to import the DVDs.
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They also have Counterpart, so I can finally watch that one.
Eh, I’m not sure it’s worth it, considering how they unceremoniously cancelled it… u_u
I suppose it’s a good show anyways, but yeah, prepare to be left out to dry with that one.
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They also have Counterpart, so I can finally watch that one.
Eh, I’m not sure it’s worth it, considering how they unceremoniously cancelled it… u_u
I suppose it’s a good show anyways, but yeah, prepare to be left out to dry with that one.
To be fair, it did have a decent ending. I remember at the time the rumors were that Season 3 would have been set somewhere else with different characters.
It’s definitely a series worth watching.
During the early days of the pandemic, this show came to my mind a lot.
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I just watched Getting Even With Dad, which is a thuddingly mediocre Macaulay Caulkin vehicle but in which Ted Danson is basically the visual model for Jack Knight from early Starman.
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I very rarely watch reality TV type gameshows, but I watched the first season of The Traitors (UK) last year with my daughter and enjoyed it – and this year’s second series was even better. A very simple concept, but it played out very entertainingly thanks to the various characters and permutations of the endgame involved.
Plus Claudia Winkleman (who I’ve never really loved before) strikes exactly the right balance between melodrama and high camp, and she basically makes the whole thing work.
Highly entertaining.
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I watched that Matt Reeves Batman film tonight. Well, 90 minutes of it anyway, which was more than enough. Goddamn that film is *boring*! Almost self-parody levels of dour emo gloominess.
Sorry, I can’t hear this review unless it’s delivered in a gritty whisper.
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I like that film, but I do hope the new Gunn Batman is more of bombastic out of Gotham Justice League Batman..I want to see a live action Batman hanging out on the JL satellite beating the shit out of aliens. Grim and gritty has its place, but it can drain the fun out of a lot of this stuff…..Batman Forever is still one of my favourite Batman films because I think it mixes the styles quite well.
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Watching the 1996 Generation X unsold pilot on YouTube:
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Weird Science for the first time in maybe 10 years. It’s better than I remember actually. I love all the bullshit 80s computer stuff early on and the freaky things that happen to the party when they try to repeat the process. Other elements are certainly more problematic, but hey, it’s of its time.
LeBrock is the real highlight though, elevating the role of Lisa beyond what it could have been, giving some real warmth to it. It’s a shame she stopped acting for five years immediately after this and didn’t parley it into work on some meatier projects.
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I don’t know if I will catch all 7 seasons but…
It goes off the boil after season 4, to be honest.
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Fargo s5 is living up to its rep. Watched the first four episodes.
Jon Hamm is a supremely creepy total bastard in it.
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I watched Bottoms and really liked it. Silly and funny and goofy and entertainingly violent, with good instincts about how far to milk a joke without sucking the life out of it. Best comedy movie I’ve seen in a while.
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I watched Bottoms and really liked it. Silly and funny and goofy and entertainingly violent, with good instincts about how far to milk a joke without sucking the life out of it. Best comedy movie I’ve seen in a while.
Did you notice the mascot?
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I watched Saltburn last night. It’s maybe one of the most shallow and stupid films I’ve ever seen, really awful.
It’s for the most part a very boring film, albeit with some pretty cinematography at times. The ‘shocking’ moments feel like they’re trying too hard and really aren’t all that shocking, and the whole thing takes ages to really go anywhere and then just falls apart almost immediately.
A bad movie and a waste of the good acting talent involved. Richard E Grant and Rosamund Pike are the only real high points, and they’re not in it that much.
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I watched Bottoms and really liked it. Silly and funny and goofy and entertainingly violent, with good instincts about how far to milk a joke without sucking the life out of it. Best comedy movie I’ve seen in a while.
Did you notice the mascot?
I did not, but having looked it up I almost feel I need to watch the movie all over again and just keep my eye on the backgrounds. I did notice quite a few fun details first time around, but not that one!
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Watched The Favourite. It’s a great movie, and a lot of fun to watch, what with the mixture of period drama setting and witty modern-day dialogue and behaviour, mixed with an absurdist touch that is enhanced by the use of wide-angle lenses that makes it all look all the more weird and riduculous. And Olivia Colman is spectacular as Queen Anne.
But as I suspect always with Lanthimos’ movies (it certainly was the case in the fantastic Killing of the Sacred Deer), it’s not easy to figure out what exactly it is all about, especially given the movie’s ending.
(Spoilers:)
Has Abigail always been malicious and sadistic at heart? Or has she been corrupted immensely quickly by her new station? Does the last scene suggest that in spite of everything, Anne will always dominate her, and her station in life in a way always remain what it was when she was 15 and sold to a fat German? Or is it to be read more openly, showing a power play between these two women that resembles the one Anne had with Sarah, a curious replacement for love and affection in the absence of both? Is Abigail triumphant, or does the Queen’s domination of her show that all of the protagonists end up losing in this game of theirs?
In the end, my interpretation of the movie would be the latter, I suppose. If you forget about the historical setting and the plot of intrigue and machinations, what it is all about in the end is showing that relationships in which one person has power over the other will always be toxic and damaging to all sides. In the framework of an absolute monarchy, everybody but Anne struggles to have some form of safety in this cruel system, and the only safety to be had is favour with the Queen. But Anne also has needs, and thus others have power over her, which she can’t really allow. And thus every interaction turns necessarily into a brutal struggle. But the same can easily be said for modern relationships, the moment one part seeks to dominate the other.1 user thanked author for this post.
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Sonic the Hedgehog 2
We are in a world where, along with all the bad, bad crap going on, we get Sonic movies – and they are good!
This sequel is a load of bonkers fun as it smartly weaves a story around a load of Sonic pieces: Tails, Tails’ plane, Kunckles, Robotnik’s super robot, chaos emeralds, Super Sonic. Plus homages to past Sonic stages.
Carrey continues to enjoy hamming it up as Robotnik, while Elba is having fun as the very serious Knuckles.
No one has to watch this movie but it’s a fun way to spend two hours.
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Yeah, the Sonic movies are both fun but I loved that the second one drew so much more on the games for inspiration. Looking forward to the third one later this year.
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One D+ recommendation before the sub expires – The Creator.
Built around a human vs AI conflict, this becomes far more multi-dimensional with a geographic division of Asia being far more at ease with AI than the US and their allies. It later turns out that the trigger for the entire war, the nuking of LA, was human error. And all that follows was a gigantic exercise of arse-covering.
Another aspect the film interrogates well is the attitude that humans should be able to do anything because AIs are not real. A linked aspect is how language is used to dehumanise and justify any horror. This is embodied by the US building a trillion dollar orbital battle station that can rain death via laser radar.
It follows from all of this that the humans, especially the Americans, are incapable of understanding the AIs. They hear of a new weapon and think only in those terms, but the creation is a kid, who can remote control technlogy. And she is intended as a defensive measure only. Which sets up a well executed journey for the main character of Joshua.
The visuals are often excellent, matching films with far, far larger budgets. Though there times when it falls into the pitfall of being too dark at times. The performances are good too. Add in a more subtle than you might expect soundtrack from Zimmer and it’s well worth watching.
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True Detective: Night Country
The show had good performances and an excellent atmosphere, but the mysteries and their resolution were absolute garbage. The show offered no real clues throughout the series until the very last episode and everything was dumped on you at once. It made for a very unsatisfying ending and disappointment for the series as a whole.
There was also a callback to a famous line from the first season that just made me groan. It felt so forced.
She show got renewed for another season under the supervision of the writer/director of this one. Honestly, the first season was lightning in a bottle. It was just the perfect confluence of talent and timing. They can keep trying, but I don’t think they will ever be able to replicate that first season.
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True Detective: Night Country The show had good performances and an excellent atmosphere, but the mysteries and their resolution were absolute garbage. The show offered no real clues throughout the series until the very last episode and everything was dumped on you at once.
I agree with all of this. Plus lots of stuff still went unexplained even then, and stuff either made no sense or actively contradicted stuff we were told early on in the season.
A total mess really.
It’s a shame as I thought the setup in the first episode or two held promise. Foster was great in it, and the setting was original and atmospheric. But it felt like quite basic aspects of storytelling eluded the people running the show and it really lost its way a few episodes in.
I also thought the connections to season one were unnecessary and superfluous, and obviously shoehorned in.
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