The writing of the first act alone and the confusion over the protagonist was magnificent to me. I had an absolute blast in the theater with this one.
Like some sort of fanciful Greek tragedy playing out in front of you. You can't bring yourself to like anybody, but you also can't bring yourself to hate anyone either. It's a pit of vipers and everyone is a victim and a hunter. A powder keg of the modern era. Magnificent.
Straight lightning. Electric in a way only this show is able to pull off. Nobody says what they’re thinking and yet the audience knows exactly what’s happening.
Good lord.
Holy cow. Show stopping. A pool of vitriol and absolute disgust. How this series is making me empathetic towards any of these characters is quite literally a stroke of genius. Holy hell.
Another stellar episode. I love the way that tension slowly comes to a simmer here. It’s all set-up that is brought home over the course of the party. Kendall’s tragedy is heart-wrenching, but the empathy can only go so far.
I think I see the need for last episode now, but I still assert this show would be much more interesting if it could be entirely sitcom.
My issue is that I don’t entirely see this series as more than an experiment. As we see more and more, Wandavision is little more than doses of things we’ve seen elsewhere: Truman Show, Annihilation, Pleasantville, Inception. It makes for something decently interesting, but it brings up a branding problem that it feels as though it’s fighting really hard to course-correct. Marvel has built a brand mercilessly for nearly thirteen years now and although we were given the heads up that Phase 4 was going to get a little more out there, I’m not sure how this is correlating yet. When I think Marvel, I’m not sure something like Wandavision is what I’m expecting/wanting and yet when I think of weird, surrealist cinema Wandavision doesn’t really reach the depths of brilliance there either because it has to retain elements of the MCU when it could be David Lynch directs Marvel if they’d run with it.
In a show where words come 100 miles a minute, when noise is the norm, silence deafens. What is not said haunts the space between giants, desperately grabbing for loose roots hanging from a cliff.
Never has the word “what” held this much power. And the fractured relationship tells you what they’ve lost.
Succession has never been mediocre. But this season we are seeing such a tour de force it borders on overwhelming.
It would be a shame to sleep on this. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier subverts expectations and roles established by the Captain America films, primarily at how we look at American Exceptionalism. Duplicity and duality finally seem to be at the core and it's refreshing and interesting to know that basically the only thing keeping Sam and Bucky positive on governmental oversight was Steve himself.
John Walker's character is fascinating because of how it plays into and against Steve's traits. No longer is Captain America some altruistic force; now he functions even further as an arm of the military. Although Walker would have you believe he's doing everything for the greater good, the greater good is frequently challenged within Steve's arc. By setting up Walker as more of a stereotypical, arrogant military man combined with Sam and Bucky's distrust, the cynicism is not only pushed onto Walker as a Cap replacement but also towards American foreign policy as a whole.
This is something MCU detractors have been citing as fault in the franchise for years, the lack of any critical eye towards the American war machine. I am utterly enraptured.
Mesmerizing, spellbinding, and strange. Pattinson gives an absolutely breathtaking performance in a film so hazy and rich that I was on the edge of my seat. This is the type of film I can only hope to experience when I go to the theater. A journey into the psyche and into the weird.
I am on board with Eggers and wherever he wants to take us.
Episode three of this season brings in something Mr. Robot has been avoiding for awhile: genuine empathy. The series's MO has been cynicism for it's entire lifetime and it has served it well. But as we bring this journey to a close, if we are to truly reckon with Elliot's misdeeds and start to see progression in the way that Esmail has been pushing him it is a necessity to open up the world tonally to others' suffering. This episode does not exist in a vacuum. Mr. Robot has been hinting towards an empathetic break for years. But it is in this episode that it feels as though those teases are finally coming to fruition. Elliot has been changing from someone self-centered and pushed into understanding his actions for those around him. To actually see the other people he affects. Now, for the majority of the show's lifetime, Elliot and f_society have been hacking people around them with few redeeming qualities. But if the shift in super-objective is not only to revert 5/9 but also to rid the world of evil as he sees it, then Elliot must understand the consequences of the hacks he commits on the daily level. From a writing perspective, this pushes the boundaries of the world significantly and brings the perspective of the show into a different arena. By changing focus, we are now left to struggle with gray area in a more realistic way.
I am impressed by this season. Esmail has had tricks up his sleeves for years, but bravo on this one. It's not an outright twist so much as a subtle subversion ultimately tasty and nuanced.
It's as if they heard my complaints from the last episode. Darlene finally got her day in the sun!
The writing in this episode is really quite exceptional. It takes a thorough understanding of character in order to pull something like this off. Bravo.
A tee up. Probably one of the most illuminating looks into the Roy children we’ve seen in terms of how they position themselves. By no means is this an episode of big moves, but the smaller ones will set up the chess board for a later game. This show is fascinating.
Doesn't really juggle its messages and influences as skillfully as it seems to think it does. I had a hard time watching this in the theater because so much of it was just plain cringe-y to me. I know people are absolutely adoring this film, but it felt like a shallow misunderstanding of The King of Comedy and Taxi Driver to me.
Phoenix gives a solid performance and the cinematography is good though.
This is again an episode to rival the heights of season two. A power keg is being set up here with bombastic consequences. Every time you take the Roy’s out of New York, their true colors reveal themselves in ways so riveting. This is excellent television.
This episode, while not necessarily as strong of a package as the pilot, features some incredibly interesting tidbits. Primarily, I love how much this episode is leaning into the subgenre it subverts. This sort of Lovecraftian storytelling is usually told as a straight horror--cosmic, unknowable, impenetrable, and often frustrating. That doesn't mean there aren't major successes (Annihilation, Mandy), but more frequently there are entries that come close to excellent but fall into their own tropes. Lovecraft Country, so far, has been leaning into another subgenre that is significantly less common in the modern era of storytelling: pulp sci-fi. Consequently this is perhaps my favorite area of narratives, but that doesn't really negate the fact that Lovecraft Country is an extraordinarily strong addition to a type of filmmaking that has been laid dormant for the past several years--likely due to an over-saturation of it from the mid-90s to the early-aughts. No piece of this is more apparent that the inclusion of Daniel Sackheim as director for this episode, responsible for some of the strongest episodes of television for shows like The X-Files, The Leftovers, Better Call Saul, Game of Thrones, or (underrated gem) The Man in the High Castle.
Although I don't think the directing as strong as it was in the pilot, I like the spin that Sackheim brings to this episode because it makes me excited for the episodes that lay ahead. Leaning into this type of pulp science-fiction makes me excited because it means that we are able to see a resurgence of an incredibly fun type of story, while also bringing in relevant and important social commentary. It also harkens back to another film that I loved but sadly when a bit unappreciated: Overlord.
mess me up, Alex Garland.
Literally everything about this pilot could not have been more tailor made to my preferences: the lighting, the acting, the premise (of course), and the MUSIC my god. Let's rock.
This episode dives a little deeper into character dynamics than the previous episode, making for a much more engaging watch for me. Mr. Robot has always thrived when it devotes itself to exploring character dynamics complicated by the parameters of the world Esmail has created, and this episode feels like a tease to the next reveal.
I am just more and more underwhelmed by what we're seeing with this series. It's not bad, but it's certainly not very meaty either. What, exactly, are the themes? The overarching struggle that I'm supposed to attach my empathy to? Baby Yoda is incredibly cute, but one off episodes of The Mandalorian thwarting unconnected threats feels like it's just going to get more and more stale. These episodes have been entertaining (this one least of all), but I want something to chew on.
I have to laugh though. The Star Wars fanbase is incredibly fickle and hypocritical. The idea that we hear so much hate for the sequel trilogy and then this series is being lauded by those same fans is hilarious. What are some of the major complaints they have for the sequels? Rey is a Mary-Sue and Star Wars is being Disney-fied?
Have they actually watched this show then? Or are they just enamored by the cuteness of Baby Yoda? The Mandalorian is arguably a bigger Mary-Sue than Rey (who honestly isn't a Mary-Sue, but if she is then so was Luke Skywalker in the originals lol). And this series is far more Disney-fied than either The Force Awakens or The Last Jedi.
:person_shrugging::male_sign:
Genuinely don’t understand the hate for this film. I thought it was pretty solid. I was moved. Great cinematography.
A total. Knock-out. The series has operated on a slow burn since episode one. The rare, delicious occasions when that fuse sparks are an absolute delicacy.
Spin-offs are so tricky and honestly I'm surprised Better Call Saul is able to pull off what it does. Within _Breaking Bad, the amount of Saul we see is finely tuned. We don't need any more based upon how he functions within that narrative. More, quite honestly, would be grating. He's excellently written for that show, but expanding that version of his character into the lead of a whole series wouldn't function properly. That's why Better Call Saul is so fascinating to me. We know exactly where he's going to end up. We know who he'll be at the end of this show.
But we see a deeper, more fleshed out version of the caricature he was here. We get a sense that now, in the fifth and penultimate season of what is arguably as good as Breaking Bad, the decisions he makes are rife with weight and history. Odenkirk is a slam dunk. Magnificently filled to the brim with just the right amount of flair, he knows when to expand his comedic chops and when to play it timid--as is the M.O. for now.
A review of the fifth season of this show would be totally absent without mentioning the supporting cast. Yes, of course, Jonathan Banks and Giancarlo Esposito are stellar again. But the original characters, particularly Kim and Ignacio, are excellent. They are such key players for this world that we know that their absence in Breaking Bad will inevitably lead to some sort of tragedy.
Better Call Saul not only has the burden of being a spin-off to one of the best television shows ever aired, but also a prequel to it. I cannot wait to revisit Breaking Bad again. I have a feeling the characters who seemed so secondary to Walt and Jessie will now feel rife with the immense weight of the world of this show. Which will, invariably, make Walt's condescending demeanor play even better off of characters who know better.
And that is how you do it.
This is a classic Lindelof move. He has, after all, mastered the art of the side-step. However this episode contains bits that are truly inspired but perhaps lingers in its mechanisms just a touch too long.
Sets up the finale beautifully though.
Watchmen was pitched as a reshuffling of the original graphic novel rather than strictly a sequel. That's finally starting to make more sense. At first, I won't lie I was a little disappointed by the lack of focus on the zany elements from the original. Part of what makes the graphic novel so important to me is just how well it blended an absolutely scathing critique on American culture and the political climate, how we love to see ourselves as saviors when we might just be sad, ignorant, and confused. If the lingering questions at the conclusion of the graphic novel series are: what was the point? Are we better off not trying? Was Ozymandias actually a savior? Then Lindelof's series takes those questions and makes them even murkier.
We've been reshuffling in an effort to shape this series into something that applies to today. To turn a critical eye on 2010's American Culture of hyper-vigilance and ultra-tight racial tensions as tied to the inaction of the past. It's singular. It is exactly the kind of drastic measures needed in order to make this pseudo-adaptation work. Rather than adapt the plot of the graphic novel, Lindelof opted to adapt the core tone and themes. It's the reason why this feels truer to Watchmen than what we got from Snyder. It understands the circumstances of the cynicism far better and therefore gets that trying to pit 80s paranoia and panic into today will feel off-kilter. Watchmen doesn't need to be about the 80s. It needs to be about how that panic from the past seeps into the very being of today and about how flawed individuals choose to deal with it, particularly in terms of how we view vigilante heroism through the lens of a modern cultural climate.
That got heady. Sorry. But it was necessary to get to my thoughts on this episode.
This Extraordinary Being is precisely what happens as the culmination of all the rumination of the writers based upon their intentions and skill. We see strife, correlated to today as a result of the past. We see recontextualized characters, deeply othered by how we viewed them. We see intersectionality driven so deep into the psyche of the show that it makes little effort to clue us in. We are just in it. I truly was struck by this episode.
I usually use comparisons to express my reviews. This feels like the kind of piece Joker could have been if it understood nuance, film history, and the basic understanding of how American history plays on the present (I won't go into that further because it honestly irritates me that Joker got any acclaim, now even more so with This Extraordinary Being in existence). This is the kind of superhero show that we get from the zeitgeist of Get Out and Atlanta's Teddy Perkins.
Damn.
I never try to hide my opinions on Flanagan's style. It doesn't sit well with me about 75% of the time, but it would also be difficult to deny that the man has a hold on modern horror. This episode exemplifies the dichotomy between the good and the bad of his direction and writing so clearly that I found it refreshing it was just on display while also highlighting the lack of innovation Flanagan's work showcases.
In the first episode I found it baffling that so many characters are actors in age makeup. In the second episode I immediately realized there probably was a point to all of it. And in this episode, I had that point shoved down my throat with all the nuance a third grader could muster. The writing of the whole Paul reveal in this episode tells you the same information three times: once in Paul's VO, once visually, and a third time through the stinger at the end of the episode. Only one of these needs to exist and considering the episode was filmed as such that the ending should be a cliffhanger, the third option is the one that felt like the intended way. So why did the VO tell us that reveal? Surely the writers know the old screenwriting adage "show, don't tell". Why did the flashback show Pruitt to be Paul so clearly when that could have been visually obscured so that the final shot of the paper could have actually just confirmed what the audience would have been piecing together on their own?
It's things like this that always make Flanagan's work so dull for me. It doesn't require a whole lot from the viewer because every plot point will be drilled into your brain in the least cinematic way possible. For example: Paul's VO could have been written more like biblical scripture that could have played more like a parable rather than intercutting back and forth, which would have synthesized nicely with the title of the episode "Proverbs". But no, instead we're just left to learn the same thing three times with the one that is actually filmic being the last one so there's nothing to appreciate. These pieces of cinematic dullness bleed into several conversational scenes in this episode (and the two that precede it): so often, two characters are just walking and talking. Nothing happens on the way, the camera is just placed in front of them and tracks backwards while the two talk. Bland. They walk slowly, talking about this and that, and then the scene is over. The times when they stop and go back to simple shot/reverse shot conversational scenes it feels better because it means the editor is able to control the pacing and tone rather than leave it up to the take as shot. It might seem like a nitpick, but when all three episodes up to this point have so heavily relied on the walk and talks it just feels phoned in.
All that said, I am incredibly interested in the way that the overall plot of this episode is coming together.
Many pieces of narrative television and film end episodes with characters smoking cigarettes and, many times, it is cliche and conceited.
But then again, most pieces of narrative television and film don't escalate to this level. And of course, most pieces aren't Better Call Saul.
We drive towards the end of TV's most thrillingly honest and emotionally deep show and finally see if Bojack's character arc meant anything. This show has been utterly wonderful and frequently moving.
Cathartic as hell. Bravo. There's an underlying jubilee in the filmmaking on display in this episode that really allows the audience to fly off the rails with glee. And that's truly accomplished stuff.
But I do have a minor gripe with one piece of the writing here. I am more and more uneasy with the show's characters' unwillingness to acknowledge Darlene as a power player in the game of chess that's been going on since episode one. When in reality she's been in on the ground more than Elliot himself. She's gotten her hands dirty and suffered the consequences. I can reason around the characters' ignorance. Perhaps Price and Whiterose just don't really grasp how much f_society is Darlene's as much as Elliot's, but it seems like at some point the show could have a little more reliance in that fact as well. I don't necessarily think it's overwhelming to the point where I am pulled out of the experience. Overall, this is Elliot's story. Darlene is a supporting character, even when they've been pushing more weight onto her as the show goes on, so I don't necessarily think it's the wrong idea to suggest there's stuff going on with her without delving into it as deeply as we do for Elliot. Hell, I've even been critical of the execution of her b-plot this season not being quite as engaging as I would have hoped anyways. But I do think it is the duty of viewers to call out writing short-changing female characters, even if it feels somewhat calculated within the confines of the show.
Regardless, I am enthralled by this two episode streak of Mr. Robot. There was a minor mid-season slump in the writing that was made up for in the craft on display, but this episode shows an incredibly solid cohesion here. In particular, this episode's oner where the Deus Group's gathering is stunning (particularly love that not-so-subtle side-eye thrown to Trump). This series has always shown a very strong grasp on how oners should operate and I place many of them within the upper echelons of one-shots that cinema has to offer. I just love how damn cheeky this one is, though. Conceptually it operates as a troll to the audience. Esmail is so heavily in control of the heist genre he's able to wag his finger at the tropes.
Genuinely one of the weaker attempts at emotional resonance I’ve seen. It’s beyond stupid that a shard of glass could do that when the glass shattering was so deliberately shown in the last episode and no large shards were made. At all.
This show is extremely mediocre in my eyes. Never bad, but never close to approaching the global hype it’s garnered.
Can we please go watch good Korean stuff now?
Monologues. That should be Mike Flanagan's middle name: Mike Monologue Flanagan.
So much of his work consists of one person talking to someone else in some grandiose monologue that drags on a bit longer than I wish it would. It becomes it's most egregious when those monologues aren't in line with the theme of the show or when they talk for three minutes when they could get the same message out in thirty seconds.
It's exhausting. I zone out so quickly.
The second season of Ted Lasso struggles a bit with the sudden realization that this show is a hit that might end up lasting a long time. The opening season pitched us with one of the most charming and likeable characters we've seen this side of Paddington and captured a lot of the wholesome heart that is desperately reassuring to so many people on edge with the state of the world. Season one soothed me when I felt extremely broken and burnt out in my career and I'm not ashamed to admit that I cried a lot while watching it because it was so healing to experience a show about goodness bringing people together. Season two operates a little differently because this is no longer about Ted settling in to coach a soccer team. This season, instead, is about the soccer team itself. Hell, Ted is actually in shockingly little of the season in its entirety. It became more exploratory in a way that was refreshing, even if I did wish it stuck to its guns a bit more. But never once did I watch an episode this season and walk away disappointed because the writing retains all of the wit I fell in love with from season one.
There's deeper lessons and questions in season two. Whereas season one felt altogether more concerned with being wholesome feelgood television, the sequel season challenges the viewer a bit more. Whereas Ted in season one is the loveable underdog who is relentlessly kind, season two digs into those traits and unpacks them. Ted isn't flawless--and this season dares to point the finger at his faults so that he, too, can begin to grow. This sort of challenging writing I deeply respect. Because although I would have preferred more of season one's stuff, I can't deny that it probably would have grown a bit stale without any sort of deeper prodding.
Ted Lasso seems to understand that the path to being a better person isn't a straight line. There are ripples and stumbles along the way and there's always more to do. I appreciated the moments where we spend more time understanding Nate as his own character, or an entire episode about Coach Beard all separate from Ted. It creates realer people and a more well-rounded ensemble. It might have been slightly awkward in the moment, but I do think this creates necessary stepping stones on the way to a larger whole where each character is fully fleshed out--hopefully to then double down on its wholesome atmosphere.
All in all, I found season two to be an extremely enjoyable and solid bit of television, even if I found the growing pains its going through awkward at times. It occasionally gets to the heights that is the knockout of its debut season, but struggles to stay there as consistently. As a southern boy, I am so drawn to and inspired by Ted's charm and I anxiously await season three.
Genuinely hilarious how many characters are just put in age makeup. As if older actors just don’t exist.
The episode itself intrigued me more than I thought it would. Big on the eerie mood, here. I liked that, but probably would have preferred to have a bit more to chew on. The way this first episode wraps up feels like I genuinely have no idea what kind of show I’m even in for—and that’s kind of an issue for me.
