Change Your Image
NotTheOne000
Reviews
Fallout (2024)
Well, okey-dokey!
Never played the games, but I'm a huge fan of the old post-apocalypse going all the way back to my 80s childhood spent watching the likes of the BBC's (terrifying) 1981 version of Day of the Triffids and reading Judge Dredd's Cursed Earth stories in 2000AD. This version of Fallout has to be right up with them as one of the very best of the genre. The characters are brilliantly written, the acting is just fantastic accross the board, the effects work very well and the story leaves us desperate for more. Dark (and often laugh-out-loud) humour, bloody violence and anti-capitalist cynicism abound. Intelligent without being worthy, the show has just the right balance of ideas vs action. The world building is unparalleled - to get quite so much into one series is a significant achievement. One word of advice, it does take a while to build the world and establish the characters. Watch through to the end of Episode 4 if you're undecided after the first three.
3 Body Problem (2024)
The physics is garbage
Couldn't get past the first half of the first episode. Firstly, the physics is just complete garbage, not believable at all if you have an undergrad level knowledge of sub-atomic physics (which I can only assume the original author does not).
Secondly, if all the particle accelerators in the world suddenly started showing bonkers results they would absolutely not be closing any of them down. It just makes no sense - the single most significant set of scientific readings ever recorded, and they shut down the science? It would be all anyone was taking about, everywhere, because we'd all be expecting the universe to come to a catastrophic end at any moment.
I don't mind a bit of poetic licence in my Sci-fi. Not everything has to be consistent with contemporary science, and not everyone has to behave as we'd expect, but this is just bad writing.
High Life (2018)
Poor addition to the genre
A film like this exists in a very special literarily place. It's a genre constructed out of John Wyndham short stories, episodes of sci-fi shows like Space 1999, horror films like Alien 3 and Event Horizon, schlocky explotation films like Forbidden World, low-fi actioners like Lockout and contemplative features by the likes of Kubrik (2001, obviously), Danny Boyle / Alex Garland (Sunshine) and Nolan (Interstellar). If you want to examine the human condition in fine detail in a pressure cooker, sticking a random assortment of humans in a hostile and enclosed off-Earth environment is the place to do it.
Unfortunately, whilst High Life does have some good acting, the occasional excellent scene and a sprinkling of interesting ideas, there really isn't anything here that the genre hasn't already shown us. Lacking genuine originality, the film needed either profundity or a really good narrative. But it doesn't have either of those either. It dissect human nature with the lack of emotion of a mortician, and reveals nothing more than the familiar human parts. All that remains is the art of the film making, which is impressive if that's your thing, but otherwise leaves the film feeling completely hollow if it's not.
Foundation (2021)
Wonderfully produced, badly written
Firstly, credit where credit's due:- Foundation is one of the best-produced TV shows ever made. The sets, costumes, the imagination behind the future technology in both form and function, the very expensive-looking CGI etc are all stunning. The casting is great and the acting is almost universally excellent. There are many scenes that are simply wonderful to watch irrespective of what is happening on the screen.
Which is good news, because the screenplay is, well, not great. The headline is that this is not Asimov's Foundation. There are familiar elements and echoes of the original work, but this is no Dune or LoTR where changes are made to suit the screen form with the overall essence of the original being maintained. Instead, it's very much a case of being "inspired by" the original work.
Beyond that, the plots are all over the place, and each o the two Seasons are at least two episodes longer than they need to be. There's too much lazy writing of the type "we need this thing to happen, so let's just write it as happening", which makes things feel quite random at times, and makes willing suspension of disbelief hard to maintain. Too much of the story is not really sci-fi (was this pitched as "GoT but in space and without the misogyny"?), or is barely Star Trek TNG level writing. And there is far too much time spent on maudlin melodrama. Just because the characters are sad or regretfull doesn't automatically make it good drama.
In summary, it's very well made but not half as clever as it thinks it is. And if you look too closely you can see the clunkiness of the storytelling lying beneath the visual spectacle.
In the Earth (2021)
One of the best horror films that's not a horror film
Towards the middle of this film, one of the main characters states that the problem with humans is that they "want to turn everything into a story". And so it is that the best way to approach In The Earth is to move your focus away from the story. This is no small personal feat, given the outsized role that narrative plays in the currently dominant Disney cinema hegemony, in the multi-series tales told by the "Golden Age" of streaming TV media, in the part-fabricated timelines of our own and others' social media output and in the conspiracy stories of modern life. Story is all-powerful in the 21st Century and we have, perhaps, forgotten how to engage in experiences that do not have, or are not part of, an "important" story. But with this film, the story really isn't the point.
Instead, this is a film about big ideas and visceral experinces. In terms of ideas, the film investigates how humans respond (and have traditionally responded) to powerful natural forces, both in the differences in how we interpret awe-inspiring mysteries (appeasement through religion, control through scientific investigation, and are these two really that different?) and in how we will fight each other and even kill each other as a response to large natural forces and threats. When faced with an existential threat (Covid) or an species ego threat (climate change showing us that we are not able to control the environment after all), many humans react in a way that hasn't changed in hundred of years. And the responses are very personal and hard to predict, and are frequenty overly emotional and even self-defeating.
From the experience perspective, we have all sorts of techniques employed - some traditional classic horror techniques, some experimental art-house - to take us out of our secure environments and remind us how narrow are our daily urban technocratic lives. As with A Field in England, the director seeks to remind us that our very modern lives represent just a thin sliver of the whole of human experience across time and around the world, and that the narrative of our daily lives is not necessarily broad enough to connect us to the world we inhabit.
In The Earth will not work for many, but that doesn't mean it's not an exellent fim.
The Gray Man (2022)
Fun Netflix movie is fun
Absolutely loved this old-skool action movie, took me right back to the 90s era of joyfully over-the-top blockbusters (remember those ones starring Nick Cage or Bruce Willis?) Great set pieces, the actors clearly enjoyed making the film and there was a surprising number of decent laugh-out-loud jokes. One for the genre fans, though, definitely not a "lets make this a drama" Bond movie or a stack 'em, pack 'em and rack 'em Marvel / DC flick, and it probably won't please the more edgelordy of the John Wick fanbase because the hero doesn't wear a black suit / shirt / tie combo. Shame the critics detected too much unsanctioned fun and buried the film. Netflix movies aren't competing on a level playing field, I guess.
The Green Knight (2021)
Has it's moments but also its flaws
This is an interesting take on one of the lesser known Arthurian legends, the first notable retelling in popular culture since Tolkien. There are plenty of good things about the film - acting is great, especially Dev Patel, and the score is especially worthy of praise. The supernatural stylistic flourishes of unreality are well-done, though perhaps not quite as ambitious as, say, Neil Jordan's The Company of Wolves or Ben Wheatley's A Field in England.
However, ultimately the film is let down by the weakness of the screenplay. The dialogue is clunky in places, the narrative sometimes feels a bit baggy and the conclusion is ultimately unsatisfactory. The director made a clear choice to avoid the ending of the original poem, but the reworked conclusion was simply not revelatory enough or smart enough to justify itself, and, as a result, failed to reward the viewer for their invested time.
The Batman (2022)
Excellent Film Noir wearing a bat suit
In a welcome break from standard superhero fare, The Batman drops the high tech gadgets and world saviour schtick of 21st Century superhero genre and gives us a classic stripped-down film noir instead. The acting is great, the direction and screenplay are top notch and there are some excellent action scenes thrown in too.
But, be warned, it IS long and will not be to everyone's taste. Much of what we have come to expect of the genre is completely absent, and it's closer in spirit to mid-to-late-90s cinema such as Se7en or Fight Club than 21st Century MCU or DCEU. If noir isn't really your thing, the fact that it's a Batman movie probably won't save it for you.
9/10 my favourite Batman (and superhero) movie after The Dark Knight.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022)
Very, very good
In my opinion as a fantasy fan who first read LotR 35 years ago, this show has the makings of being the best of the genre shown on TV so far. For a start, it looks absolutely stunning. The cgi is as good as anything you'll see anywhere, the cinematography is beautiful and the design of everything from majestic cities to the detailing of the clothes is exquisite.
The acting is outstanding all round. A few performances are quite something - Clark is better even than Blanchett as Galadriel and Kavenagh is great as Nori. The script is very good, though a couple of times perhaps strays a little bit (where it loses one star for me) and the storyline certainly has me wanting more, though it could be a fraction tighter imho. As a whole package, though, the world-building is already as good as GoT was at its height.
Now, as for Rings of Power as an adaptation of Tolkien's great body of work... I would say that the core of the source works are still there in spirit. Certainly as much as it was in Jackson's fantastic film trilogy, which dovetails well with Rings od Power in terms of style. And this looks to be a much more succesful attempt than the Star Wars franchise saw with the disappointing Star Wars prequels and sequels. There may well be a few liberties taken with the original canon, but I'm confident there's more than enough artistic merit here to forgive them.
So, 9/10 for the first two episodes. Purists may not be happy, and those who struggle with inclusivity will have a hard time. But on the whole it's a must-watch. If Tom Bombadil turns up somewhere along the line, I'll add back that star.
Note: one easter egg you may have missed... the opening scenes show us why the eagles didn't fly the One Ring to Mt. Doom in LoTR.
The Sea Beast (2022)
An old-fashioned ripping yarn
Plenty of buckles are swashed in this well-made family-friendly adventure movie. Whilst the story doesn't break any new ground, it's tightly written and feels genuine in a way few modern kids films do these days. The animation is often superb and is matched by some of the best voice acting you'll find. Jared Harris and Karl Urban are notably good, but are not the only great performances. Whilst it doesn't quite match the magic of the How To Train Your Dragon franchise, The Sea Beast is richer, deeper and more memorable than the majority of recent Disney films, and is a refreshing change from the seemingly endless stream of comedy-heavy, action-lite films for kids.
Archive 81 (2022)
Slow burn occultism
Archive 81 is a well executed, highly genre-literate series that utilises its long-form running time to slowly dial up the tension to a thrilling end. Whilst it lacks the invention of The Dark or the final series of Twin Peaks, it is so well acted, shot, scored and directed that it can be forgiven the occasionally obvious homage it pays to the likes of Stephen King, John Carpenter and Kiyoshi Kurosawa. My advice is to let the familiarity of what is now a very mature genre embrace you, and let yourself become drawn into this very creepy microcosm. My favourite pure horror series of the Netflix era.
Cowboy Bebop (2021)
Great characters, great stories, great fun
Loved this series, fantastic fun with plenty of noir tropes for genre fans like me, but not laid on so thick that it's nothing more than a reheat of 50s cinema. The characters and acting are great, with the leads excelling and the minor roles slotting in perfectly with their oddball eccentricities adding to the overall feel of the Bebop universe. The relationships feel sparky and genuine, with a real chemistry between the three main protagonists. The cinematography is great, as good as many films, and the effects look amazing throughout. The music track selection is interesting, and is used to accentuate, not create, the mood of the scenes.
I understand that many fans of the original do not like the new version of teh original show (which I have not seen). That's fair enough, as I've been in a similar situation myself (Disney Star Wars Universe, I'm looking at you). What I don't understand is the poor reception amongst critics. This is an excellent show, and I would hate a second series to be shelved on the basis of snobbish gate-keeping from critics who are supposed to remain more objective than the Anime's fanboys and fangirls.
Star Trek: Lower Decks (2020)
Set phasers to meh
There is a dark secret at the heart of Trekdom. It's simultaneously out in the open, yet also never spoken about. This is the truth: only original Trek can be counted as "cool" and even that's a bit of a stretch. Sure, Kirk shouting "Khaaaaaan" into the nothingness of space from the middle of the Genesis asteroid was awesome, but it's not exactly Han Solo doing loop-de-loops in the Millennium Falcon.
So, when what has become a devoutly nerdy, self-reverential, deliberately anti-cool franchise on-boards one of the creatives from a very subversive, deeply cynical and ultra-cool show (Rick and Morty) to produce an "edgy" animated sci-fi sitcom, we have to ask ourselves if the product is going to work. The answer is... no.
Truth is, Lower Decks is reminiscent of a lot of interesting shows, but isn't nearly as good as any of them. Red Dwarf does odd-couple-in-space humour more naturally. Futurama does comedy much, much funnier. Teen Titans Go! does sharper self-parody. Rick and Morty does transgressive humour more, er, transgressively and Family Guy does gross-out humour more grossly.
As a result, Lower Decks is a disappointingly bland mish-mash that doesn't know what it's supposed to be. It pulls its punches too often, pretending to be "edgy" but actually playing it safe. It is beholden to the vanilla tendencies of Trek at its worst, and never quite dares to push the envelope further than perhaps it should. Considering that's obviously supposed to be the main point of this creation, it fails at a very basic level. Ultimately, this is an easily avoidable, unecessary addition to the Star Trek canon.
Playmobil: The Movie (2019)
Great for kids
This film really isn't anywhere near as bad as the critics seem to think it is. Playmobile: The Movie is a well-crafted CGI outing that's bright, colourful and goofy with loads of slapstick humour and engaging, endearing characters. It has a positive female role model, and, to its credit, deals in a very matter-of-fact way with a difficult theme that gets overly softened down in modern Disney / Pixar films. Whilst it lacks the sophistication of the best of the Lego movies, it's also fairly reference-free with a relatively small number of Easter eggs and pop-culture references (yes, there are some, but unlike the Lego movies it doesn't feel like every single scene is packed with them).
My daughter laughed throughout and has watched it three times in three days. I chuckled along in places too. It reminds me of the 80s kids movies I grew up with, and it made a refreshing change to watch a kids movies that wasn't rammed full with stuff for the grown-ups. A kids film primarily for kids. I'd give it 7/10 for myself, but have upped it to 8/10 because my little one isn't old enough to have her own IMDB account and so can't give it 11/10.
Ad Astra (2019)
Minimalist and profound
Ad Astra is a difficult film to pin down. The plot is simple, the story linear, the central relationship narrowly defined. There are no great emotional highs and lows. Everything is restrained and contained, the performances are low-key, the music is low-fi. The scenery is beautiful, yet stark. Desolate even. Yet there is, within the film, something important.
The film projects us around a century into the future. We are searching for life beyond our own world. We have become obsessed with it, even. There are hints that this is because we feel trapped within our own limited existence. Fighting over resources, no different from our primate ancestors. Unable to break out of our limitations, so seeking something beyond ourselves to help us evolve. To help us be successful in this future, we undergo continual emotional analysis smooths out our destructive and self-destructive nature and keeps us balanced. We are judged to be stable or judged to be in need of support. No value judgement is made, though, we are simply observed for the sake of practicality. There is merely the recognition of what we are and that we must improve ourselves. If we do not improve ourselves, we do not achieve.
Our hero, Roy McBride, is the ultimate product of this future. He is incapable of emotion and his life is devoid of meaning. This makes him a success in this future. But the film does not state this is wrong in of itself. In fact, his father is the opposite - full of passion and drive - but is a killer. His passion is grand, lofty, for the betterment of humankind. His passion takes him to the edge of the solar system to pursue extra terrestrial life. But that passion kills and kills ruthlessly. His passion is as inhuman as his son's lack of emotion. Roy's father is the embodiment of what is wrong with humanity; a self-deluded megalomaniac and ideologue. He is what we are trying to no longer be. But he is also what drives us onwards.
As Roy journeys towards his father, people die in an almost incidental way. But people die all the time. Thus is life. Our hero accepts his role in their deaths, when appropriate, but does not allow himself to feel guilt. Guilt is for history to judge. Is he a murderer like his father? Yes, but only in the sense that events happen and he is part of those events and that people die because of them. That is, for every one of us, at least a partial truth. A shared criminality for all of us, for to be part of humanity is to be part of a society that kills.
When Roy reaches his father, he finds he still has love for him. He has recognised he is capable of rage, but he has extinguished it along with all his other emotions. But his emotions are in rebellion and he has found one that matters to him more than the need to be emotion-free. He has love for an impotent old man, his father, a killer and a monster and possible mass murderer, yet still his father. When his father admits that he has never cared for people, only for his cause, Roy forgives him. But his father cannot live with that forgiveness, and would rather die lonely. Sinners do not always want to be forgiven, because it can be a terrible punishment for them. To be judged inferior and yet still be offered love, that is something many humans find deeply problematic. It is the antithesis of our current social media lifestyle. The humility we need to accept that kind of love is often absent, because it requires us to admit to our sins.
Unlike most sci-fi, Ad Astra isn't asking us what happens when we meet alien beings, or what happens to us when society starts to collapse, or what happens when we take warfare into space. It doesn't throw Big Ideas and Grand Themes in our face like some wondrous puzzle to be figured out. Instead, it gently asks us to consider what our response will be when we realise that it's pointless to continually look beyond ourselves in an effort to fix the human condition. And how do we find a way to accept that we are truly alone? No God, no aliens, no AI father / mother figures to make everything better. No external demons to fight against, no great causes to pursue, no grand mysteries to unravel and no great evil to overcome. Just us, with all our flaws, keeping on going... because? If there is genuinely nothing beyond us to fight for, then why fight?
If the film has a message, it's that it's time we stopped believing that humanity is a bigger deal than it actually is, that we're so smart and so gifted and so amazing that we deserve something more than what we already have. Reaching for the stars will take us nowhere new because we will always take ourselves with us. So, lets stop worrying so much about the great achievements we think we should attain, and instead allow ourselves to simply enjoy our lives together.
Rick and Morty: Never Ricking Morty (2020)
Comedy will eat itself
If Spaced was the cool, zeitgeist capturing super meta, overly self-aware show for cynical and jaded Gen Xers in their 20s who'd grown up under the threat of nuclear annihilation, but somehow managed to hold on to a sliver of hope and found their optimism could perhaps be kindled by the freedom of the new Millenium, then Rick and Morty is the cool, zeitgeist capturing super meta, overly self-aware show for cynical and jaded Gen Xers who've grown up to discover that the adult world is every bit as awful as they'd imagined it would be back when they were kids in the 80s and who have seen their Millenial optimism crushed by cold, hard reality.
Rick and Morty wants you to feel both smart and dumb because you are both smart and dumb. We all are. When archaeologists from the period of civilization after The Fall unearth my old collection of Blu-Rays and fix up my old Blu-Ray player and TV, they'll watch Rick and Morty and say "yeah, these guys could see the writing on the wall".
Note: Dan Harmon is just a year older than Edgar Wright (who directed of Spaced before going into movies).
Liu lang di qiu (2019)
Best sci-fi Blockbuster in ages
Thanks to the all-conquering MCU and its imitators, sci-fi has taken a back seat in Western cinema over recent years. There's been plenty of great stuff on TV, with the likes of The Expanse for example, but the big-screen space-borne spectacular has become trapped in the suffocating tangle of Disney franshising.
Thankfully, Chinese cinema has now developed to the point where it can produce films of a scale equal to those of Hollywood, and this is demonstrated by The Wandering Earth. The film is a true holiday Blockbuster - huge budget, lots of star names (well, if you're Chinese) and an apocalyptic disaster to be averted.
As is Blockbuster tradition, all the tropes are here - the cookie-cutter characters, the against-the-clock finale, the self-sacrifice, the huge explosions and giant set pieces. But they are all carried out well, and the film is highly effective escapist entertainment.
The CGI is both worse than, yet better than, that of the MCU. Worse because you can tell they don't quite have the budget and panache for the exceptional digitally rendered models of MCU. Better because the digital cinematography is superior to the majority of Holywood blockbusters. Instead of the constant rush of the MCU, there is enough time and a wide enough frame to see what's there to be seen. That is not to be underestimated, because this film feels of a much grander scale than, say, Guardians of the Galaxy.
The action sequences can perhaps be a little overcooked and clichéd, but there are a several heart-quickening scenes as good as anything in the majority of big cinema experiences of the last ten years. The acting is as good as is needed, and the direction manages to stay just the right side of oversentimentality.
What I enjoyed most, though, is the film's atmosphere of humanity. The biggest problem with the MCU, DCU, new Star Wars and X-Men franchises is that they're all about heroes gifted with super-human abilities saving humanity. The Wandering Earth, however, is about a disparate bunch of normal people working together to save humanity. Whereas Hollywood blockbusters have become unpleasantly cynical about the helplessness of normal humanity, The Wandering Earth is ultimately a hopeful film about what humanity can achieve if it works together. Obviously this comes with a proviso that there is an element of Chinese cultural propaganda here. .. but the same can be said of the MCU and the like.
It is ironic that the Western blockbusters tell us that we, the little people, are a homogenous mass in need of the protection of our superiors, whilst it is the Chinese film that celebrates the individual efforts of us normal people. I suppose it comes down to aspiration. The ideal presented by the likes of Spider-Man and the X-Men is that anyone can become one of the special people. This film simply says that we're all special when we work together to make the world a better place - and isn't that what used to be great about US disaster-themed blockbusters in the first place?
Star Trek: Discovery (2017)
Trek is back
I grew up on Star Trek ToS as my mum was a huge fan, but it was Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which I saw first aged about 8, that had me hooked. The beautiful visuals and the deeply emotional storytelling was something else. A sci-fi opera epic that concentrated on what it means to be human and to have human relationships. Then came Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan, which is clearly just amazing and has many great quotable lines (if a movie makes you want to quote it, it usually means it's got something right). After that high-point came a bunch of sequels which were hit-and-miss, (or rather miss-hit-miss-hit), but the characters still carried the series.
As the films soldiered on, The Next Generation launched. I have to admit, I didn't buy into it. The overly-shiny ships, the designed-by-committee characters, the often-hammy staginess of the acting - it never felt real to me. I went from a huge Trek fan to a casual observer. Just when I'd stopped caring altogether, along came the reboot movies. Lightweight, yes, but at least the characters felt real and the path was paved to a possible return on our TV screens. And now we have Star Trek: Discovery.
I enjoyed the first series of Discovery but wasn't quite sure which way the series was heading. Great moments were interspersed with the shadows of TNG-era TV-making. Although it was aiming for Golden Age of TV status with a Grown Up attitude, it occasionally came off as a bit twee. The Season 1 after-show exemplified the Trek love-in attitude that had eventually borged the TNG era. Discovery felt as though it was held back a little by its fanboy / fangirl awareness. Anyway, overall it was a success for me; not the best Sci Fi show out there (which is the outstanding The Expanse) but by no means the worst.
Series 2 brought in some new characters and a whole host of character development. It also began to move away from the vague sense that the show was being run on behalf of the Trekkers, and the show started to move back towards the original ToS in its attitude. In the ToS, and especially the movies, it was the believable human relationships that carried the viewer along. Kirk-Spock-McCoy and crew - their deep affection for each other, to the point of not being complete as individuals without their bonds of friendship ("sometimes the needs of the one out weigh the needs of the many") - made Star Trek what it is today. The relationship between Burnham and Spock is unlike any we've seen in Trek since the original trio left our screens. Their words are heartfelt and touching, their relationship actually matters to the way the characters behave, and, like with the ToS films, the high emotion just stayed on the right side of being mawkish.
Now, obviously there will be a degree of hate. Many Trek fans grew up under the TNG regime and have a different understanding of what Trek is. Also, there will be the usual "it's been destroyed by PC nonsense" cry, which is ironic as ToS was very PC for its time, as was TNG. As an aside, younger viewers watching ToS will have seen plenty of regressive attitudes - women marginalised and treated largely as pretty distractions whilst the men got on with the important business of saving the ship - but with the first mixed-race kiss on US TV and its left-leaning political philosophy, ToS was very progressive. Anyway, in my mind Discovery has evolved into a prime example of where Star Trek has got it right. Trek was always intended to be a mirror to society, reflecting what current society is doing wrong and improving on those weaknesses, and Discovery does that well. The excellent final episode fight scene between the bad-guy, the ultimate patriarchal allegorical figure, and two main female characters is preceded by a very pointed "women, stop talking" line.
So 9/10. Not quite 10/10 as the action does sometimes feel a bit detached and the show finished Season 2 with a rather forced line of reasoning to smooth the join between new and old Trek lore, but that was unavoidable given the context of the new series. But other than those two problems, a very well made series that extols the values of human emotion and human relationships.
Fleabag (2016)
Exceptional comedy drama
Both the best comedy and the best drama on TV right now. The acting is fantastic, and Waller-Bridge's writing has a Tarantinoesque ability to bring the very best out of each actor. The comedy is perfectly nestled within the moments of drama, and, as with all truly great comedy, comes at the expense of the protagonist just when they are at their most vulnerable. The characters are beautifully observed, and each has their own flaws, insecurities and pain worthy of their own TV series. The scenes are so wonderfully crafted, bringing those flaws into sublime juxtaposition.
TV has taken over from cinema, and if Waller-Bridge carries on like this it'll take over from theatre too. Fleabag's personal journey is fascinating and insightful, deeply human and relatable, yet never mawkish or overly focused on self-affirmation. Deserves a hatful of awards, and hopefully will gain the widespread recognition it deserves.
Altered Carbon (2018)
Season 1 - average, Season 2 - much improved
Season 1 Review (7/10):
It was only after watching the first episode I realised I'd read the original novel back when it was released in the early 2000s. I enjoyed the book somewhat, though not hugely, and found the idea of the stacks a good one but on the whole didn't find it particularly engaging.
The TV series starts off well, it looks great (though obviously very much Blade Runner) and the acting is good. The characters draw you in and the story is performed exactly as you want from Sci-fi noir. The TV screenplay for the first half is better written than the novel, and it's a great watch.
But then TV production rules take over. There isn't enough in the book to make a 10 episode series out of, so we get extra characters and a change in the nature of the main antagonist. Characters that are minor become more significant, but not in an interesting way. The common tendency for TV shows to over-egg the relationships between characters infiltrates the essence of the noir and diminishes it. We get an unrealistic and unsatisfying relationship between the hero and the main antagonist that's designed to add drama but actually removes it. We get a flashback episode that exists only for the purpose of facilitating that relationship. It felt like padding.
Had this been a six-part series with the same story as the book it would have been much better.
Season 2 Review (8/10):
Much improved, for me, is Season 2. Two fewer episodes is welcome, and the story is tighter and feels less padded. The action whips along and the acting is just as good, if not better, than the original. Unlike Season 1, there is genuine character development that feels organic rather than contrived. This time the aesthetic and themes are less Blade Runner than they are another influential Sci-fi film which I shall not mention because too much will be given away (and a star docked for that in my score).
In terms of philosophy, there are a few interesting existential ideas flagged up here, though perhaps they are too easily resolved to be genuinely challenging. Sure, it's no Bergman or Beckett, but is comfortably the equal of the majority of the adaptations of Philip K Dick's works (Blade Runner, Total Recall etc).
If you're a huge fan of Season 1 you may find the changes jarring and disappointing. However, if you're really just watching for a trashy but above-average noir with a few interesting sci-fi ideas and some good action scenes and some good acting, then I strongly recommend this even if you were'n't sold on Season 1.
Annihilation (2018)
Remembering what it's like to not understand
In Iain M Bank's novel Excession, one of the sentient super-intelligent spacecraft observes:
"An Outside Context Problem was the sort of thing most civilisations encountered just once, and which they tended to encounter rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop."
And so when the alien asteroid / seed / spacecraft (call it what you will) lands on Earth, we encounter such a thing. Just as when the British Empire's ships landed on an isolated stone-age island, the humans of the film have no context in which to place the events unfolding, hidden, within The Shimmer. All the Earth-islanders know is that something has arrived which makes no sense, over which they have absolutely no power, and which entirely reshapes their core belief of being masters of their immediate surroundings.
Only in Annihilation, the reshaping is not one of an encounter with a higher form of technology or scientific knowledge. It's a disassembling of the sense of explanation to which we have become so familiar. In an era where explanations, scientific or not, are just a screen-tap away, the ultimate shock to us is to be put into an environment where we cannot possibly find understanding - not even an invented one of Russian bot conspiracy theories. The sense of control over ideas that our technology has given us is deliberately cast to one side here.
Garland has described his film as being the book remembered as a dream, and the narrative is true to that statement. Time jumps with no memories to fill in the gap. Characters simply disappear, with barely a thought given to them once they've gone. There is a sense that your body is not quite how your body should be. And understanding is impossible because real-world logic has been suspended. The casting itself is evokes the dream-like nature of the film. Existenz (Jennifer Jason Leigh), Westworld (Tessa Thomson) and Black Swan (Portman) all blur the boundaries between real and unreal.
The film will divide critics and viewers. There is allegory, namely the inherent nature of self-destructiveness that is part of life, and the fact that life simply does what it does, be it human or alien. At the end of the interview between Lena (Portman) and Lomax (Wong), Lena says that the alien did not want anything and was not destroying, but simply changing things. That's also true of the greater arc of humanity. Human society, as an entity, has no sense of autonomy, and whilst it may look like we're destroying the Earth, the truth is that we're actually just changing it.
However, the greatest strength of Garland's films is his willingness to confront the audience with realistic characters and avoid simple morality tales. To overcome her mirror self, Lena realises she can't defeat her reflection by brute force. Only through an act of guile can she win the day, guile which she has practiced through the deceit of her husband. It's not often we see the hero survive by exploiting character traits the contemporary audience finds unpalatable. It's a simple observation, that deceit is one of our species' most advanced evolved attributes - but it's one we do not like to admit.
As for the ending? The prism of The Shimmer is the prism of human interaction. That great generator of invention, the chopping and changing, and cutting and pasting of ideas, thoughts and feelings that makes up the human experience. Lena is Lena, but something new has been added to her. Kane is alien, but some of Kane has been added to him. Both have changed, both have mutated, both have evolved.
Annihilation is, in my opinion, one of the greatest Sci-Fi movies ever made. It's a literary film, and recalls the works of Kurt Vonnegut in its use of high-concept sci-fi story-telling as a framework for intimate existential human study. Whilst not as beautifully constructed as 2001: A Space Odyssey, it has a free-form and fluid feeling to it that Kubrick's controlling style prevents. The ending to Annihilation may not be as explicitly profound as 2001, but it's philosophically subtler. More art-house than smart sci-fi in its denouement, Annihilation is closer to the simultaneously enigmatic and visceral styles of Shane Carruth's Upstream Color or Jonathan Glazer's Under The Skin than the beautifully meticulous artifice of Denis Villeneuve as seen in Arrival or Blade Runner 2049. It is, therefore, far more challenging.
Paramount did well to pull the film from international cinema markets. It does take a while to get going, and most viewers will lose interest before the pieces come together. It's not really an audience-friendly film, to be honest, and if you've read my review this far and enjoyed the film as much as I did, you're probably, like me, the most pretentious member of your circle of friends. Anyway, whilst I wish I'd had the chance to see it on the big screen in the UK, it would have been branded as a flop and that would have been a great tragedy. In a parallel universe where Oscars are given for artistic merit, this film would sweep the board. If it's lucky, in this one it'll get a handful of token nominations.
Thank you Netflix, btw.
Alien: Covenant (2017)
Some things are better left unsaid
So, Prometheus ends. Not a bad film... not a great film, but not a bad film. But the one thing it does do is leave us with a sense of anticipation. We're going to meet the Engineers! And Shaw and David are going to do something really exciting and possibly quite interesting, and we'll see their relationship evolve and explore some interesting ideas about human-as-creator and how creations can be flawed!
Oh, wait, no we're not. Because Shaw is already dead by the time the film starts, David has been transformed into a two-dimensional Ubermensch narcissist with delusions of grandeur, and the Engineers have all been wiped out. A film's worth of set-up is dismantled in the space between two scripts. And what we're left with is a hackneyed story of something-or-other I can't even be bothered to delve into.
There are plot-holes (the Engineer's just let this mystery ship fly over their only remaining city unchallenged?), dodgy CGI (the original Alien looked more real than the CGI one here) and stupid crew-members (why, oh why, did they not suspect David was tricking them?) and a twist ending that isn't a surprise to anyone other than the characters of the film. It isn't really that scary, and it isn't that exciting. David is nowhere near complex enough to justify the focus that's placed upon him. And, yet again, we see an Alien being blown out of an airlock (third time's the charm!).
But what disappointed me the most is that Scott has undermined the key element of the original film. When Alien first hit cinema screens, it really was unlike anything we'd seen before. Geiger's creature was so different from the man-in-a-suit monsters that proceeded it, it really was alien. It was something so different, so strange, horrific and unusual, that the audience had no frame of reference. Now Scott has shown us that the Alien isn't actually that alien at all. It's just a bioweapon that was created by another species of humanoid and perfected by one of our own androids. Mystery explained.
2017 was a bad year for franchise movies. Star Wars, DC and Marvel Universes, and the Alien franchise are all starting to feel very tired. We know too much about them all, so there are no surprises and no discoveries. They rehash old ideas, but can't match the original vigour, or they try to make the old ideas into something new and betray the original spirit. There are occasional one-offs that are worth watching, but they're the ones that break from the main franchise and may as well not be part of the franchises at all. And now there's talk of Blade Runner being brought into the Alien cinematic Universe...
I guess there's still so much money in the franchise model that we'll see many more, however, I doubt very much that any of the franchise movies made in the last few years (and next few years) will occupy the same place in cinema history as the original Alien does. There are 18 sci-fi, superhero and fantasy movies in the IMDB top 100, many of which were early films in ongoing franchises. 5 of those 18 were made in the last 15 years, but none of those 5 are part of those original (now resurrected) franchises, and none of those 5 are part of the new, ongoing franchises. It really is a case of quantity over quality for sci-fi.
Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017)
This isn't the Star Wars film you're looking for
I like films. Actually, I really like films. I also really like TV and I really like novels. I like drama, action, fantasy, I like low-budget art-house films where nothing happens, I like gore-fests and I like psychological horror.
In all these genres, I have very high standards. Yet I can love a cheap-as-chips horror film as much as I love a glittering, star-studded Oscar winner. Why? Because every film should be judged on its own merits, in the context of what it is trying to achieve and according to the traditions of the genre in which it exists. If I'm watching a Malaysian action film, such as The Raid, I judge it on the basis that I should expect to see lots of seriously shot, highly choreographed violence, a simplistic storyline and some throwaway stuff about familial betrayal. If I'm watching a film about the nature of the interlinking of humanity with itself, the animal kingdom and the world, through the human senses, such as Upstream Colour, I'm happy with very little action but lots of juxtaposition of sounds, visuals and emotions.
And if I'm watching a Star Wars film, what I'm pretty much exactly looking for is a Star Wars film. The Last Jedi is not that at all.
The reason many critics love the new Star Wars film is exactly the same reason why so many fans hate it. The Last Jedi takes the very specific sensibilities of the original trilogy and throws them out the window. It takes a series of films that are, at their best, exquisitely made, ground-breaking genre pieces and presents us with an easily accessible, bog-standard sci-fi action movie. It appeals to the lowest common denominator (i.e. non-genre fans), and the critics run with it because they know how to evaluate bog-standard sci-fi films. The critics feel at home with The Last Jedi in a way they did not feel at home with, say, The Empire Strikes Back (which garnered lots of negative reviews upon its release). Just as they felt at home with Arrival in the way they didn't feel at home with Starship Troopers (the former being an arty film that happened to have a sci-fi theme, the latter being a film that both gloried in and yet also subverted a low-brow sci-fi sub-genre and confused the hell out of the critics in the process). The Last Jedi is a perfectly serviceable contemporary action movie, complete with diversity, messages and all that stuff. It ticks lots of boxes for the film critics. But unfortunately, the director is so enamoured with his big brain, he decided he didn't need to respect the source material.
It's rather disappointing that despite so many years having passed since Star Wars' release, so few critics appreciate where the artistry lies in the original trilogy. The simplicity of the stories, the casual, natural intimacy between the main characters, the purity (bordering on naivety) of the messages of film, the fact that everything is presented at face value and nothing has to mean anything more than you want it to... all these things are lost in The Last Jedi. In their place we have contrived relationships, forced messages, and a complete lack of authenticity. All well-and-good for a trying-to-be-smarter-than-it-is Disney flick, but just not good enough for Star Wars. The OT Star Wars was high concept film-making at its best, but what we have now is the opposite. The critics love low concept movies, which is fine, but it's not the point of Star Wars and they really should be able to understand that. Yes, the OT Star Wars films had their inherent limitations, but the people behind those films pushed up to the very edge of those limitations. The latest edition tries to do more by blasting the limitations away, but ends up achieving a lot less as a result.
The Last Jedi: 6/10.
Critic's response to The Last Jedi: 1/10.
p.s I've seen quite a few comments along the lines of "I never really got into the Star Wars films, but I love this one", even from some critics. To some, that means bringing Star Wars to a new audience, but in reality it just means selling out. Has cinema really become so artistically bankrupt that it's now seen as a good thing for a franchise -owner to burn away a highly-regarded creative work's foundation in the name of putting new bums on seats? No wonder TV is where all the talented creatives are right now!
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
And when we become Gods...
Androids in sci-fi movies have been around for almost as long as the genre, dating back to Metropolis in 1927. They have been monsters and angels, standing in both for the cruelty of humanity at its worst and the naïve purity of humanity at its best. They have been a mirror against which we can reflect ourselves and ask what it is to be human. And they have been a warning to us - a Do Not Cross line for what happens if we give in to our hubris and play at being God.
The first Bladerunner movie is designed to challenge our sense of what it is to be human. This was a central theme for Philip K Dick, whose stories twist our perceptions of what it means to be conscious, sentient entities. Deckard's portrayal in the first movie draws us in with his apparent humanity. In the end, we are left wondering if it really means anything to be born human as opposed to be an artificial version of a human. Our realities are creations of either ourselves or someone else. As they are all a fiction, does it really matter who writes that fiction? But all these stories of robots come from a different era, a time when artificial humans were thought possible, even plausible, but still the stuff of fantasy. Even AI such as Hal in 2001 were thought experiments, and performed the function of stripping back the human soul. But that era is now past. Bladerunner 2049 doesn't need to be a metaphor for anything, or a model of humanity to be dissected, because its subject matter is right around the corner.
What Bladerunner 2049 does is something both obvious yet profound. Up until now, one universal element of any story like this has been the underlying question of "what right have we to play God?". That question is usually answered with some form of natural or poetic justice leading to the punishment of the hubristic humans taking more power than they're entitled to. Playing God is reserved for actual Gods, humans should not be assuming that level of power. This film dismisses that question out of hand and asks a much more relevant question, namely "when we have become Gods, what sort of Gods will we be?" Will we be Wallace, the arrogant Old Testament God who treats his creations as his property, to dispose of as necessary to appease his Will and fulfil his Great Plan? Or will we be Joshi, the powerful yet generally benign God who is obviously superior yet is still respectful of the inferior mortals? And what of the androids and AIs in Bladerunner 2049? In previous films, androids have been one of two things - either definitely not human or very nearly human. The artificial intelligences in this film are different. They're definitely not human, yet they're still sentient, feeling, self-aware entities. Again, we are asked a much more relevant question: what rights do we humans have over our artificial creations. Do we have a right to deny a computer mind a physical human-like form if it wants one? Do we have the right to imprison it within a house and just switch it off or destroy it on a whim? And of those living creations that can walk around and think for themselves - do we have a right to deny them the ability to procreate? And if they are able to procreate, do we have a right to control that procreation?
Bladerunner 2049 is the very, very best of sci-fi. It does not speculate far into the future, it does not abstractly reflect upon the nature of our humanity and it does not offer us a moral lesson in the form of a fable or fairy-tale. It challenges us to look at exactly who we are right now and asks us what we are going to do with the power we have gifted ourselves though our technological achievements. The Ks and Jois of Bladerunner 2049 will exist in the not to distant future, quite possibly within our lifetimes. As we are to become their Gods, what sort of world should we create for them?
Legion (2017)
Just perfect
Legion's first episode is a wonderfully balanced and sophisticated work that shows just how complete an art-form the medium of TV storytelling has become.
We are drawn into David Haller's compelling personal world because, through his eyes, that which is invisible within ourselves becomes visible. Our personal worlds are narratives created both by ourselves and by others with whom we interact. We need to believe this narrative is the truth because it defines who we are, yet it cannot possibly be the truth because we lack omniscience and true self-knowledge. Hence, we live with a sense that how we perceive both ourselves and the outside world is not quite the way it really is. The line between the tricks we play on ourselves and the tricks other people play on us becomes blurred. How we deal with that human flaw - the invisibility of the gaps in our knowledge - define who we are. Whether we reject it, ignore it, fear it, are angered by it, or fight to overcome it, our response to that secret flaw determines how we relate to the ideas of religion, science, free will, personal rights and responsibilities and the rights of The State, how we view our own self-worth and the worth of others, and even decide how we vote.
In a very important way, Legion's first episode captures the zeitgeist of the 21st Century post-truth era. There ARE powerful people and organisations working behind the scenes to manipulate us, but what makes us weak is not our lack of power, it's not even our ignorance - it's our inability to accept just how vulnerable an overly developed sense of self makes us when that sense of self is really an illusion. David personifies that vulnerability (a vulnerability wonderfully expressed by Dan Stevens), and the way Haller uses his schizophrenia as a representation of the essence of the human condition is inspired.
In David's world things very obviously don't quite make sense, but the reason for that disjointedness is not the secret conspiracy lurking behind the scenes - it's David's inability to create a cohesive narrative out of what's really happening. We know what that narrative should be, because we've seen it before. Director / writer / producer (and presumably hair stylist, best boy etc.) Hawley's greatest talent is not his ability to retell the same old stories in a new way, but to draw upon the viewer's knowledge of those same old stories. We've seen (or read) it all before - John Wyndam's The Midwich Cookoos is 60 years old, Scanners is 36 years old and Akira (film version) is 29 years old - so Hawley doesn't bother to focus too heavily on the "oh, surprise!" element. He assumes literacy in the genre and uses that prior knowledge as a framework for something much more existential.
This is not a show for the teenage audience and it's no accident that the main character is in his mid thirties. Legion is intended for those who have had the rough edges knocked off, who have lived enough of a life to understand that nothing is as simple as it seems, that right and wrong are not clearly delineated, and that who we are is not necessarily who we think we are. If this show somehow manages to sustain this level throughout its entire run - a feat which would be remarkable considering this first episode contains more insight than the entire run of many "smart" shows, and contains more artistic content than many "arty" movies with much bigger budgets and much longer production times (Arrival, I'm looking at you!) - it will be, by quite a distance, the greatest cultural work to have ever graced our small screens.