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Colony: Panopticon (2017)
Outstanding episode
The best science-fiction is always about the human condition, about who we are under extraordinary circumstances, who we really are when tested and faced with life or death decisions.
It's not giving away anything when I say that the show runners must really like "The Lives of Others", a German movie from 2006 that won the academy award for best foreign language film in 2007.
It's a great episode, my favorite so far.
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007)
Lumet goes Tararntino
Sidney Lumet goes Tarrantino and falls short. It's still worthwhile for fans of Phil Hoffman, Ethan Hawke or Albert Finney, since they do make a real effort. It doesn't work as a thriller as it was pitched to Lumet, not as a Melodrama as Lumet continues to call it, nor as the tragedy that it really is.
This story should have been told in a linear fashion, like Allen did with Cassandra's Dream and the whole malaise would have been more obvious. Who really wants to watch a tragedy these days where fates runs it's cause like a clockwork? Pretty much everybody is dead at the end, or blind or in a madhouse. Undressing Marisa Tomei the way it was done also doesn't speak in favor of this movie. It's not uncommon for old directors, though.
Unfortunately there was little information about what was cut or never filmed. Interestingly, in the script Phil and Marisa's characters had a child. In a tragedy, that's where the real suspense could be coming form.