Bloody (and) disgusting. But it struck the right balance for me.
I'm a reluctant horror watcher, but I enjoyed this a lot more than I expected to, and I wanted to give it an 8, but knew the treatment wasn't quite "Classic" territory. Nevertheless, I was entertained the entire time, despite the fact that the film starts under the auspices that the audience doesn't know what's going to happen... but does it really? Look at the tagline.
But here's the thing-- to me, it didn't feel like that. Considering viewing environment, etc. YMMV, but I'm a sucker for sepia glow lighting in sumptuous old world micro-mansions, and ballet/ballet music, so I actually enjoyed watching all build up to the reveal (and subsequent raucous revelry.) I really only had disdain for one character, and that was fully intended by the film. If anything, the (initial) reveal would be a bonus for the younger viewers watching a few years from now.
The Cast
I only ever remember seeing Kevin Durand as a Gual'uld in Stargate-SG1, so it was quite amusing to see him playing a lumbering, room-temperature IQ Quebecois heavy. He's got plenty of charm to make Peter palatable and fun to watch. Really, everybody played their parts to the page, except, surprisingly, I found Esposito to be a little too on-brand, and then too hammy, which didn't ring quite as true as the others. Barrera's lead, Joey, started out feeling underdeveloped compared to the rest, but she developed along with the plot. It was a sympathy story, which can often turn me off when it's badly executed, but I was invested, especially with the rapport that Willam Catlett's Rickles ("Rinkles!..." lol) developed. I'll have to watch out for him in the future.
Dan Stevens (is English?!) was perfectly effective as the New England skeezy slimeball ringleader. The onions bit was hilarious, partly due to how believable it was, but his exasperated performance sold it perfectly. In fact, all the screwball bits played out extremely well, both in that I always laughed, and that it seemed to be perfectly balanced within the overall tone, which is always the deciding factor. I'm not a big fan of the "idiots getting killed" trope, but here I cared about the characters just as much as I was supposed to, and it's not something I watch much of, so I'm not 'troped out'. It was terrible in Prometheus, though, since they were all supposed to be leading scientists.
Just in case you haven't already spoiled yourself by looking at the cast list, I have to say that Matthew Goode is not the first name I would have thought of to play the part he was cast for, but it really made sense while watching, especially the voice once I heard it (and I actually did go in blind regarding the identity.)
I'd never seen Alisha Weir in anything before this, but I was appropriately disturbed by the performance, partly in a meta sense, given I wasn't sure about the actual age. But even so, I'm still not sure how I feel about a fourteen year old in such a role. But she did not disappoint--in character, or in toe shoes.
I also hadn't seen Kathryn Newton since she appeared as one of the kids in the phenomenal Halt and Catch Fire, but she really got to show off her range here, even if not quite in the traditional sense.
I can't say I'd be mad about a sequel, but I assume it will more likely be another joint feature starring Barrera with the same writer-directorial team, which I'm totally up for. Actually, I'd be happy to see any of the cast return for similar hijinks. I'll just make sure to also eat beforehand, as I, thankfully, did before witnessing such a-literally-visceral display.
Ivan Reitman is really hit or miss (or miss, and miss...). Twins holds up amazingly well. No Strings Attached was surprisingly okay for a LCD romcom, whereas Evolution was terrible. Ghostbusters is somewhere in-between.
The theme song is a banger, and the toys were fun as a kid, but they're moderately better than the film itself. The music cues are also really forced and smack of "Here, cut in the song we commissioned; we got happy meals to sell!"
It is somewhat unique, with some amusing and memorable characters, but the script is hit or miss, with just as much uncomfortable, badly aged and just badly delivered boomer cringe as funny moments. Anything to do with sex is like looking at one of those awful "boomer humor" single panel comics. Nevertheless, I did laugh several times rewatching it just now, but the directing is just plain bad, with a runtime littered with awkward cuts more like a bad 1950s film accompanying what felt like a rehearsal take of a bad joke.
Still, Staypufft Marshmallow Man and regular secretary Annie Potts is enough to make it worth the watch. Maybe. I wouldn't ask a kid to watch it. In fact, it's wildly inappropriate for anyone not of legal age, thanks just as much to how stupid it is and the slimy behavior and bad ethics on display as any sexual content or language.
The "romance" plot with Venkman and Dana was just... no thanks. And I don't know why they felt they needed the EPA side plot/antagonist. Also, the EPA and city had every right to get involved and do a review of their equipment and the effect on the locality, but they just made William Atherton's character (ironically, the best performance in the entire film, frustratingly) into the antagonist from one of those awful kids movies where the adults are all pathetic, wacky, and moronic. Makes me wonder if Aykroyd and Ramis are loony "Libertarians", or if they just scrambled to come up with an antagonist.
Murray is funny in his typical lazy, minimal effort fashion, but seriously fuck Venkman. Assholes can be funny protagonists/antiheros, but he's just a sleaze, and there's no reason for Dana to get with him and have this heroic ending. Raimi and Campbell did it much better in Army of Darkness since they treated Ash as a jackass the whole time, even when he was being legitimately awesome.
One good guest star performance, but otherwise there's nothing here of value.
Stop me if you've heard this one before-- "Team of White adventurers with loyal trickster aliens/elf/tiefling prove virtue to win McGuffin ~relic~ from hunter-gatherer guardian natives through triumph of will (implied mortal combat melee weapon brawl)".
Perhaps the tropiest episode of Andromeda, if not one of the most banally eye-roll inducing episodes of sci-fi television of the era.
Laura is always great, though, and the guest star alien is played delightfully by Brendan Beiser, and it's fun to watch them play off of each other. Just skip to watch both scenes they're in. Timecodes: 13:28 and 35:09
Don't read the synopsis if you didn't already. I had forgotten what initially happens after the opening, so it was a surprise.
This works a lot better than you would think from the main action trope in play. This episode feels like it actually had a fairly decent budget; despite mostly taking place onboard the ship, there are a good number of space CGI scenes. The voice effect is a bit hokey, but the fight scene between redacted and redacted was much better than the average fight scene on this show; and what's more, it was directed and edited so well that I couldn't even spot the stunt doubles despite knowing there must have been extensive stunt player work.
But it's the main character moments, dialogue, and direction/cinematography that make this one great. The ending is weighed down by some sappiness about love being everlasting, but Rommie's internal conflict is enjoyable to watch, and the way Andromeda (Hologram) teases Tyr about not being entirely bloodthirsty is the closest thing to sexual tension that you could ask for between the two, and Lexa's eyebrow work is amusing and tantalizing in equal measure.
I'm getting the feeling that women who wrote science fiction episodes around the millennium had nothing but terrible exes. Anyway, the dialogue and intrigue in this was as good as the cyborg prosthetics. Bad. What I'm saying is that it was bad.
Still, the command hand-off scene to Tyr with Rommie and Dylan was great. And Lisa looked good in the flashback wig. Also, Trance is in this for all of like 30 seconds, which is kind of a tip off of how good the episode is gonna be.
I'm gonna make a pairing list.
Tyr & Rommie= A++
Tyr & Harper= A-S
Tyr & Rev /+Harper= A++
Tyr snarling/flexing/walking with a big fucking gun= Bwaaaarrrh!
Tyr & Dylan (scene) = A
Tyr & Dylan (episode) = C
Tyr & guest star= C-A+
Tyr, Dylan, & Rommie (scene) = A
Dylan, Bekka, Harper, Trance, Rev, Tyr, Rommie= A/A+
Harper & Trance= B+/A+
Harper, Trance, & Rommie= A
Trance alone: A+
Rommie alone: A/A+
Rommie & Trance /+Harper= A+
Bekka, Harper (episode) : A
Bekka and guest star= B+
Tyr, Dylan, & Rommie (episode) = B
Dylan and Rommie= C/F
Dylan and guest star= B-D
Dylan, Harper, Bekka= B/C
> "I heal INSTANTLY"
Bahahaha
Takeaway The dialogue and action is sometimes unintentionally funny or outright hilarious, and the film should absolutely not be watched straight, but as a B-movie with great visuals. The first time I watched it, on Netflix way back, I was disappointed but not terribly surprised, otherwise I would have watched it in the theater at leat once, but this watch was a lot of fun.
It's really clear what you're getting into as soon as you watch the setup for this one, directly following a series recap. This is a big budget version of a straight-to-video sequel that got a theater release.
The Good
It really does feel like a bunch of video game cinematics, but that also works as praise for just how pleasing the general aesthetic of the film is, as all the Underworld films do take after the original at least in production design, costuming, and general set design elements. This one actually has what I think is the coolest looking "evil laboratory" setting, and the CGI and matte paintings are really nice, with great texture work where most people probably didn't notice it was composite work. (I only noticed because I know what to expect from production design, and the fact that digital composite set dressing, when done well, can look too good, like some of Guy Ruchie's stuff, which I actually like the look of compared to real life).
The crypto chamber shots with Kate are especially noteworthy, and the surreal, hyperrealistic sheen and tone of the shot—the way her skin just kind of subtly glows—surrounded by digital effects, just looks super cool. The camerawork shines during these kind of shots, and during the action, which, while often ridiculous, is easy to follow, and the film doesn't cheat with lots of fast closeups.
I won't put on airs—Kate Beckinsale is still absolutely stunning in that catsuit, even with a wig and a bad makeup artist. And the number of shots of her lying on the ground with one leg pulled up, or where she's crawling on all fours in that shiny latex suit are glorious.
I still maintain that Kate is the master of natural-looking stuntwork, both in how she clearly is an expert (I did not notice a single shot where it even hinted at a stunt double, so also credit to the action director et al.), and how she takes the expected pose and expression for the manoever she just executed, down to the subtlest detail. It's not like she's a Shonen anime protagonist, trying to look cool and completely unperturbed no matter what happens. When she twirls for cover, she looks wary. When she lands, you feel the impact. When it's an easy jump, she lands in a prissy, ladylike stance and smoothly transitions into a strut. It's marvelous.
The rest of the stuntwork was also pretty great.
Um. Bear-Gorilla Lycan? Is that a good thing. I mean, it's not a spoiler, because that's not actually what it was, but it sure did look like it. Lycan hand was also really stupid, and thus really funny.
The practical effects (gore, mutilation, blood) and CGI transitions are excellent, and the Lycans were actually quite good. The street chase with the ferals had impressive motion and connection to the objects interacted with. It wasn't perfect, but getting from 90% to 100% is magnitudinally more difficult, especially with that amount of action and interaction.
The Bad
Unlike Rise of the Lycans, which was surprisingly great, and dramatically satisfying, this one—while being remarkably coherent, free from plot holes AFAI can tell, and easy to follow—is awkwardly directed, with most of the dramatic moments coming off like a first take amateur production, despite the raw acting chops of the actors involved, and the editing during these scenes doesn't help.
The wirework is often pretty hinkey and really obvious. There are some CGI objects that the animators don't seem to realize that objects being thrown through the air don't accelerate, amusingly, like the wire work. There are some gratuitous use of effects mostly CGI) that don't really work, and come off as cheap.
This is one of those films that you can watch ten times and find new things—details in production design, subtleties of performances—that you gain a new appreciation for, or notice seemingly for the first time, and watching films over an over again is not something I do, even for most films that I really like, but this film is a damned classic, as proven by its staying power, creativity, charm, and yes, intrigue, 25 years later.
For instance, on this re-watch I thought that I wasn't keen on the pod race at all, or had grown not to be, as I have no idea what I felt in the theater in 1999, but I was on the edge of my seat watching it as much as I was during the space battle and lightsaber two-on-one.
I often don't try to watch the whole thing, and I think that's the part of the issue, because this film has some great dialogue resting within its script, no matter how much people want to dog on the intentionally campy lines (which is one reason it's a classic, pratfalls and all), or the truly awkward and careless lines that Lucas found unimportant enough to his intention of storytelling, he still does manage some scenes—especially with the amazing performance of Shmee's actress, as well as Neeson and Portman—that feel as celluloid gold as ANH or Empire. They aren't as often, because this is a different kind of film, and yeah, it has some janky special effects execution that didn't age well, but it also has the most spectacular space scenes, underwater scenes, and the best lightsaber duel ever filmed.
But importantly, for a savvy, jaded viewer, its plot actually makes sense and isn't rife with holes and contrivance, has adult themes of wide space opera nesting nearly beside genuine character moments, and all but one of them are fully earned. You hear that, J.J., et al! Imagine actually legitimately earning an emotional character moment. It's crazy. It requires actual narrative forethought and screenwriting ability.
Is it at times overly goofy and disjointed, with uneven acting and some bad casting choices (that were totally George's (and Sam Jackson's for wanting to be a Jedi)? Yes, no one denies that. But films are more than the sum of their parts, and some parts can be truly exceptional on their own, and this film was revolutionary. For that I'm rating it up again, because I truly think it desrves an 8 for what all it does that most other films could not, would not, and wouldn't even try (including every single one of the Disney-era films and television shows) and that was to actually get Star Wars, and iterate on it in a new way, something sorely lacking in cinema overall now, since oh, I don't know Nineteen-Fucking-Ninety-Nine!
I'm serious, if you didn't watch many films back then, or you were born after, just look back at the sheer variety and diversity of films in that single year. It hasn't happened since, thanks to Hollywood greed and executive cowardice and lack of imagination.
Nice looks; mediocre script; action clearly directed by the kid in school who wore a trench coat in 80 degree weather.
It's got some nice photography, lighting, and some interesting locations, so those who appreciate late nineties stylish thriller photography with great use of colored lighting and cool score songs (Crystal Method and Martina Topley-Bird with Tricky) will have something to appreciate. Goes down pretty smooth in the end. It was sophomoric pulp, but I miss this kind of ending/mood in films.
The writing and dialogue are quite juvenile, and passable at best. The performances are clearly not the work of a master director, but I did enjoy Fat and Sorvino. Fat looks cool and classy, and Sorvino '90s sexy-cool, and kind of adorable in the more touching scenes, even with the chintzy dialogue.
Action Miscellany:
There were several points during actions scenes that I burst out laughing due to how silly it was. If somebody has a fully automatic weapon, it's getting at least 25 rounds shot through it in a killshot. Point blank execution? Full auto for at least 3 seconds. It's so tryhard cool and excessive it's hilarious. The pistols also seem to get random foley editing. There are random silenced pistol SFX for unsuppressed pistols, most hilariously on Prochnow's Desert Eagle.
I love music, and film scores, but it's a refreshing change to watch a film without one. It lets the imagery and humanity of the performances breathe and show in naked relief in much the same way as monochrome photography does. And the photography is lovely throughout.
This film has some of the most beautiful cinematography, lighting direction, picture texture, bokeh, implementation of lens flair, and best framing I've ever seen. Absolute cinema.
Some of the dialogue and some of the more traditional scoring diverged from the film's best at times, but Pattinson in this film is definitely my favorite Batman, and Serkis, despite not being in it as much as the rest of the main cast carried his part with excellence, as usual. It's hard to compete with Michelle Pfeifer, but I did like Kravitz's Selina Kyle. And goddamn did she wear the hell of those outfits. Jeffrey Wright actually got to be more than "concerned, overly earnest NBC series guy", and Paul Dano knocked it out of the park IMO, and it's the kind of performance that could easily go awry. Turturro, if anything, has gotten even better with age, and Colin Farrell was unrecognizable, and not just from the prosthetics. Great performance, and I usually dislike yelling in films (though mainly older films, since they didn't really seem to know how to present it), but it was a necessary part of the performances, and even had me laughing a few times. The humor was subtle and situational and drawn directly from the performances.
I will definitely come back to this one. It's one of the most gorgeous films I've ever seen, to the point that I'm gushing.
Yeah, no. My take was actually optimistically positive in the first episode, despite my gripes, and I was ready to actually like this series despite it falling far below what it should be, but this is entirely on Jonathan Nolan as a director, and this was just fucking ridiculously stupid and bad action directing, to the point of completely taking me out of it. All the jokes are just stupid and crude, basic surface humor. It's not intelligent or quirky in the way that Fallout can be. The action makes no sense at all.
5 minutes and 30 seconds in, and a mounted machine gun is spitting bullets directly at, yet completely all around the guy. They could have had it start right when he reached the corner, but no. I audibly cried "Oh, come on!" Despite this, I still carried along, following the story and laughing at the stupid degeneracy, as basic as it was.
But then, after a ridiculously gory and gratuitous shootout, where it establishes that The Ghoul (what, is he the only fucking one now?) is a bad guy (TM), and a total "shoots first, gives no chances" badass, he just decides to not shoot quirky vault girl (yes, we get it, the joke is tired already to the point that the old hag's line is not funny) for about a full minute, despite that we're then shown--after Maximus shows up--that he was in fact actually just going to shoot her, but mister fastguns waits for clunky metal man to sprint like 3 at least 4-5 meters in what would have taken at least 3-4 seconds, minimum, just so he can dive in front of the helpfully apparently standard bullet and not crush her on the landing despite having no training. There was no reason to set the scene up this way. He could have made it questionable, not completely fucking unbelievably scripted. Thanks for waiting four seconds to take your shot evil man. I think I just really, really don't like Jonathan Nolan, because I don't like total hacks.
The first episode showed some promise, but the show still hasn't decided to pick a tone, it still looks cheap and was clearly shot with different cheap digital cameras despite the style it's making an amateurish attempt at half-copying. But this episode just completely jumped the shark.
Aaaand then the episode kept going, getting even stupider on a climbing azimuth. The dialogue is awful, and I swear these fucking Millennial writers (of which I am one) grew up watching the Pokemon anime thinking it was high art. And now, looking at their previous writing credits, anyone could have predicted this beforehand. One thing sure as shit isn't a meritocracy now, and it's Hollywood scriptwriting.
Yes, yes, the opening scene was great (dramatically, though it doesn't actually make sense). An easy trope to leverage at the open, but it was surprisingly well-executed. And I now get what people are going on about with regard to Goggins.
Tentative 6-7/10 4-5/10 but I'm not watching it again to see just how bad all the lines bore out. Rating a 1 to counteract all the shills and lemmings. This has had artificial astroturfing for weeks before the show was dropped all at once.But they're gonna have to explain some things satisfactorily. Some of the plot writing was kinda murky. Still, I was entertained, despite my expectations, there was no raging, and a few criticisms are mostly nitpicks.
Edit after seeing episode 2: Nope. It's a solid 5 at best. They broke their own (Bethesda's) lore in the first scene, the physics and action don't make sense (again, Nolan's shoddy action directing) and the dialogue I let slide the first time by giving it a pass as I was just trying to watch it and keep track of the plot, is just awful when actually paying attention to it.
Nitpicks
More like Budget-out, am I right, wastelander?
It hurts that they spent almost a billion dollars defiling Tolkien, and yet this suffers from a clearly anemic budget. The vault suits are okay. The vault was fine, other than some obvious rushed CGI in lieu of an actual full set, but the rest of the costume design and location setting is just... ugh. Also, there's like no visual style other than extremely harsh high contrast HDR processing of clearly digital photography with a heap of fake film grain PP filtering to make it look "cinematic", without actually having any cinematic stylings other than crushed black levels. It looks like a bad, oversaturated Fallout 4 ReShade, instead of taking the opportunity to actually do interesting bloomy, dynamic color work with the HDR.
Fallout 3 and New Vegas had a distinct look and fantastic art direction. The locations were evocative and captivating. There was a cheap callback to FO4 with the airship, but the introduction to the BOS was... a crappy barracks in a cloudy wasteland, with the most technologically advanced post-nuclear faction in the Wasteland having their middle-aged aspirants wearing old, featureless Hanes T-shirts and fake BDU pants, and the Squires wearing last minute fake Nazi flight suits. Did these MFs making this series even look at any of the Brotherhood gear and costumes from any of the games? It just looks like they heard "cleric", and were given the game assets to the power armor from Fallout 4. Again, I'm guessing they just didn't have the budget or time to actually hire enough talent. Either way, I find the show disappointingly ugly and lacking style... much like Fallout 4 without heavy modding.
Game RantMy Fallout 4, though? A work of post-apocalyptic art. The world-building and level design is still great, it's just hidden under retrofitted Gambryo Engine jank and bad optimization that didn't leave room for any shader work after taking out the color filtering of FO3.
Speaking of (looks at cast list) Maximus, are we supposed to root for him, or think he's the most pathetic man alive? He was supposed to have been conscripted at like, seven? And yet we have someone who's clearly over thirty competing with ROTC kids as an aspirant. Also, I thought he was guilty from the liar's responses he gave to his interrogation...erm... promotion/initiation? The weird contradictory double-speak from spinach chin made me think that they had set him up to get him to volunteer for a suicide mission as an outcast, but nope. Apparently just a promotion! Cool guy. Really makes me care about him and his fanservice faction.
Also, what was the point of the explosion after the (extremely obvious) raider, um, raid? Raiders in Bethesda Fallout have no depth and don't make any sense considering they outnumber the people they're raiding, but it wasn't clear what the point of that was. And yeah, I think I know what they're doing and what the personal history/setup is with raven-haired Raider Lady and Vault 33.
The cowboy stuff was really goofy, so I'm not sure what kind of tone the show will even settle on.
Guess we'll find out on the next episode of my torrent is done I totally subscribed to Bezos' world scam to watch this!
Went in years after just barely giving it a miss, and not expecting a good match, but was very pleasantly surprised by how fun it was. Admitedly, Elizabeth/Darcy does seem abrupt and underdeveloped, and I found the ending predictably saccharine (*with a positive caveat), but I found myself laughing early and often, and the action scenes were actually a pretty good watch—though the three non-zombie martial arts scenes were the best. Lizzi's iconic pants and blue coat outfit was also quite nice, and didn't get enough show to appreciate onscreen. This needs to be remedied in a new video game since a sequel never materialized.
It could have done with a somewhat darker tone (literally, as in more scenes in a dark setting), but it is an adaptation of P&P; and so, dreary, cloudy, deathly pale England unfortunately has to be shown.
Would watch again. Great date night movie with the right person.
Funnily enough, the central conflict that is revealed later had some rather compelling points that could be discussed and debated as much as a good episode of Star Trek.
What if England's traditional aristocracy had been overthrown and London turned into a zombie war fallout ground zero no-go zone? What if humanity had been reduced to a small fraction of its size at the upswing of the industrial and population boom? Wichkam's God of the Dead could be quite a compelling villain if written correctly.
While it's supposed to be poetically satisfying to watch (and I do really enjoy this episode, even being my third watch) it still doesn't sit right with me the judgment and moral approbrium that Adele and the rest get to heap upon the slimy rapist, when he actually does point out the (IMO, valid) fact that they do the same thing with the dolls. ((To be extra clear—what he did was deserving of punishment appropriate to the act, which was coerced rape by exploiting a guardianship)). Does institutional purpose make it somehow better? Does structure and might, rather than personal exploitation, truly make right? Because the characters certainly act like it does, here, and the show doesn't guide the audience into disagreement during the scenes where Sierra's handler/rapist gets his comeuppance.
And all of that becomes directly relevant with Sierra herself, later, with another abuser at the helm. It's a tricky business to make the lead cast of characters enjoyable to watch whilst they are the human element of enablement of an exploitative system.
In fact, there are at least a couple of direct linkages in other episodes that I think show that the kangaroo court in this episode was just as much a comment on the Dollhouse as the street interviews, the professor bit, and Boyd's missable line here— "They're all broken".
Simply participating—or being forced to participate—in a system often results in your daily choices enabling unnecessary harm, whether or not you're the one doing the immoral act. If you pay for deli sliced ham, you might not personally abuse animals, but you're paying for someone to violently slice the throat of a pig, in an industry that kills 125 million of them this way every year. The Dollhouse doesn't want people knowing what's going on for the same reason that ag gag laws exist: there's no way to do what they do without heinous acts.
Just watched again after three years, and this episode has so many quotables and great character moments. It may have a serious premise and conclusion, but there's a lot of action, and I find myself smiling and laughing throughout whenever I watch it, mainly with Harper and Trance. Laura Bertram is absolutely delightful. I don't know why she doesn't do voice over work, since she'd be so much better and more convincing than a lot of VA playing younger characters in animation and video games. I'd cast her in a heartbeat.
This was fantastic on a rewatch. Claudia Black is delightful (and more ravishing than ever), and her comedic line delivery is perfection, with several delicious sound bites from just the first 20 minutes. Along with Lexa making puppy dog eyes, and the Katesh performer, it's a buffet of beautiful dark haired women.
As a cheap sci-fi show, it's still remarkably affecting despite technically being a "villagers of the week" episode, and Claudia Black deserved an Emmy nod just for this one episode. I didn't quite tear up, but I did gulp in sympathetic response to her reactions later in the episode. Prior dude isn't isn't Julian Sands, and doesn't get the dramatic set lighting, but he's still creepy.
Really cool shot with the suspended P90 bullets. I didn't even think about how they did it, and I still don't have an idea. Pristine effects work.
Everything works here. Prime vintage Buffy, and such a comfy retro TV episode.
First time watch after skipping it to save it for Halloween, and it's so satisfying coming back to season 2 and its extra campiness and 90s TV charm. That's not at all to say it's bad—it's not. The script is a laugh a minute, and the character moments—both pre and post transformation—are delightful.
I'm more of a spandex over frills man, myself (for myself, even), but that dress really was a matched choice for Sarah. Plus, every time they put her in a wig my jaw drops at how gorgeous and cute she looks with each new look. It was of course hilarious to see the change of character, but also genuinely adorable to see hapless aristo Buffy. And I couldn't help but squee a little as Angel carried her.
Nice bit of Xandelia foreshadowing, too.
Spike and Giles also get some great closeups. Giles' doesn't even need dialogue, and it goes harder than Army Xander on pirate Biff.
I'll definitely be watching this on seasonal rotation.
This is the cinematic quintessence of the most literal interpretation of the word "Spectacular". If you have the capacity to follow subtle "show, don't tell" narrative beats and character motivations, and appreciate precisely timed plot developments and environmental storytelling organically affecting the progression of the plot, then you will appreciate a perfectly laid out narrative, with uncannily perfect balance of dramatic tone and thrilling presentation. It's simultaneously uncanny and bizzare, while also being groundedly human.
Everything gets filled in exactly as you need it to understand the narrative and writing developments. And god damn are the action scenes exquisitely designed and performed, and the sound design explosive and punctuated. It's musical—sometimes literally—but it all works flawlessly.
This is one of cinema's greats.
Notes: I actually never watched any of the previous films in their entirety. Also, I watched it in a kind of bastardized "bootleg Black and Chrome", since I could only get the full chroma version in 4K, full quality, and resorted to turning my saturation to zero. I know it's not the way it was intended, but I was sold on the monochrome from short clips, and it really does focus the presentation even more, and I understand why Miller considers it the definitive way to see it.
Visually sumptuous, funny, humane, and heartwarming. There's a lot of Léon in this, while also being entirely its own work. I could have stood for a more bittersweet ending, but the final scene was still amazingly climactic, and had me tearing up for at least the second time while watching.
Absolutely gorgeous cinematography from Thierry Abrogast, and camerawork that gets creative without being distracting. The black and white was a perfect choice for the story, and really gave it a textured humanity, providing extra emphasis and focus on the great performances. Rie Rassmussen and Jamel Debbouze were perfect for their roles.
The whole thing oozes style without it getting in the way, down to the DJ aesthetic edits during the credits, whith chromatic aberration lens effect on the credit text—except for the use of so many English language songs— which, to a native English speaker was perhaps more distracting than for the intended audience. You could tell this was a personal work of passion at every level.
Don't watch the trailer! It spoils the whole movie.
I could kick myself for not jumping on this when it came out. I just watched it, and I honestly can't fathom the tepid reviews, and I haven't seen any coherent criticism outside of "didn't like it".
The soundtrack is inspired; rather than just "cheating" with great songs to force a mood for a scene, they were all picked to fit organically, and mostly are actually playing in the scene. I can't think of another film off the top of my head where this was attempted, or executed well when it was.
The leads are great together, and it hits just the right tone of wryly heartfelt and funny, and tense and exciting. It's neither misanthropic nor cloyingly banal and overly safe. Lead girl is great but Lio Tipton's Nora gave a tone of personality and moxie to the opening and last acts.
There's one scene later in the movie with John Malkovich in a Jeep, and it's totally trailer bait, but I'm so glad it's been so long that I hadn't seen the trailer recently, because they basically spoil the entire movie, and that line, which actually has its intended effect if watched blind.
An absolute riot, with some truly exquisite photography. Whether or not one can enjoy it seems to be predicted by literacy.
Brolin is a solid anchor lead, and I actually found the cameos to be the weakest part of this. Clooney would have ideally been replaced with a true character actor; with Clooney it felt like an ironically meta, self-indulgent act of posturing self-effacement. Same with Tilda Swinton. Regarding the casting choice, it felt the same with Scarlett, and this is some of the best acting I've seen from her—I can't imagine Scarlett being self effacing, as I can't imagine her having a personality. Ralf Finennes and Alden Erenreich were straight out of the alternate reality, version: perfect of this film. I can't believe Howard/LF made that awful "Solo" film. Disney is a plague, whereas this film feels like something straight out of the mid-late 1990s golden age.
Sloppy, inane CIA propaganda. Gray Man was actually better, in that Billy Bob Thornton and Julia Butters actually gave that film a collective five minutes of real heart. Everything here is badly executed, derivative cliché with zero genuineness or humanity. It's like a Nickelodeon live action film, but with big shot 30 and 40-somethings.
Others have taken the obvious shots, so I'm going to point out the really distracting (and perplexing) lack of technical quality.
Who did the HDR tone mapping? It was so muddy and dim that I actually did something I never do and turned on the contrast enhancer just so it didn't look like a 2000s film shot through onion paper. There's a lot of 4K HDR content on streaming, now, and even random, mid-budget foreign films do it right.
Who was in charge of dyeing Adrian and Ana's hair? Just terrible, and inexcusable for such an expensive production. And so much more obvious in 4K.
The music queues were atrocious. I know, I'm not the only one to mention it, but this is something that was nailed down in the 1980s—arguably the worst decade in American film history—but this entire film is just a poor, soulless mishmash of 1980s action comedy tropes mixed with Hallmark channel romance.
Go watch Romancing The Stone to see it done better. Or Speed. Or Executive Decision. Or Demolition Man, followed by Definitely Maybe or Crazy Stupid Love, or The Purple Rose of Cairo, or Young Frankenstein.
Despite how much I still enjoy the Empire plot, this episode really wants to make me quit in frustration with how stupid and amateurish the rest is. And I'm mad that they've now completely ruined Gaal, after doing so from the beginning with Captain Fortnight.
Captain Fortnight: "I'm Salvor Hardin..."
Me: "No, you're not."
Captain Fortnight: "I'm Salvor Hardin..."
Me: "No. You're not."
You ever notice it's insecure people who say their name every chance they get? It's like the writers actually do know the character they've made is badly conceived and written, and that it in no way makes sense for the plot they shoved them into, so they just keep having them say their name over and over.
>Fake AI Hari: "This wasn't about preserving knowledge—"
Yes, yes it was. That was the whole point of THE ENCYCLOPEDISTS of Terminus. Oh, you don't remember having heard that term before? Because that's what the First Foundation was: a colony full of fuckin' bookworms. They weren't armed with anything but the invaluable collective knowledge of humanity, because the predicted "Fall" was due to malignant ignorance and dysfunction... Not that anything in the show even hints at this, and despite the made-up über ship Invictus seems directly pulled out of a season outline where the Empire's technology is already in decline—which is the only way a 200-year-old ship would be a threat to anyone.
The value of The Foundation was the consistent, unbroken preservation, practice, and continuation of knowledge. That's how they fomented their power—through trade, and actually knowing how to produce high technology required for anything above feudal tribal warring. They became the priesthood of atomics, and were revered because of their knowledge, thus making them indispensable to their planetary neighbors.
That's how they brokered peace and formed alliances. Salvor Hardin was a diplomat, not some magical, "chosen one" YA action hero trope sandwich.
They stole the outline and completely misunderstood and misrepresented everything about it. It's like watching Idiocracy unfold in the most ironic way possible, when something that was about continuation of knowledge completely makes a liar out of the architect, instead making him some egotistical, undying god-figure.
>2020 pop fiction writing handbook: Does the character have a beard? Asshole loser liar sad man booo. Oh, wait, but does he have muscles? Oh, daddy, yes. Do me, daddy.
We're like a parody of ourselves at this point.
The Empire plot is, surprisingly still good, despite how much this show loves hollow, cheap, emotional jump scares. Still an abomination of Demerzel's character, but it was good drama.
It's kitschy, and feels like fanfiction, with kind of cliché "POV character gets some" scenes, but the main plot elements are interesting in concept, and Trance and Harper get to be their cute selves, and I personally thought Harper's temptress was insanely alluring, and the Faustian bits worked, sympathizing with Harper. She's either a really good actress, and/or there was some serious chemistry on set, cause those lip locking scenes were pretty stimulating to watch.
Unfortunately, the rest of the goon squad looked like they were in Halloween makeup and costumes, but Lexa and Marsters get some fun sassiness, each, mainly in response to one another.
An update that fundamentally lacks the essential element that allowed the original to exist at all.
What's missing? (Spoiler: It's intelligence)
It's a dumb action show with philosophical pretentions, that sometimes manages compelling scenes, with extremely expensive visuals that show off truly excellent CGI (because it doesn't 'look like' CGI), and has some great cinematography and production design (but also some pretty weak/generic/nonsensical production design, mainly in the abysmally stupid Hardin/Terminus bits.)
What about the actual source material?
Asimov grew considerably as a writer throughout his career, addressing his weaknesses of having rather dry dialogue and matter-of-fact storytelling, and, more specifically, kind of flat characters, and weak female characters. Foundation itself saw a considerable upgrade in its depth and focus on women and girls as main characters, as it went on, but it is still dry by comparison to his later works such as Nemesis, which is still one of my favorite books (the main characters of Nemesis are a plain, probably autistic teenage girl and her mother. So, yes, there are a number of different ways a Foundation adaptation could have gone, stylistically. Although, there's really only one option nowadays with the current trend of dark, overly self-serious, and frankly suffocating mid-brow pretension in "serious" "science fiction", the formula could have definitely benefitted from a transfusion of dramatic lifeblood.
The problem is that they forgot (actually, never understood) the core ethics and dynamics of the story, and the story told therein ends up as a confused mess of incoherent melodrama that completely and utterly slanders and wastes its core concepts. They also frontload and spoil two of the biggest reveals of the book series within the first few episodes, for absolutely no narrative reason, and absolutely zero payoff. They also utterly assassinate every single aspect of arguably the most important character to the centuries-spanning plot as a whole. So do yourself a favor and read the books before getting more than five episodes or so in.
Yeah, Lee Pace is a dead sexy beast as a charasmatically domineering and ever-young Cleon. Lou Lloubell is also a great actress and Gaal and Hari compelling characters until they make her and Hari into idiotic telenovela characters because modern Hollywood (non)writers don't understand how to write stories about the conflict of empirical and religious values without making it into incoherent emotional nonsense, likely due to working out their own personal issues without actually having read or understood, or likely even been exposed to decades-old knowledge and exegesis on the subject.
And it was predictable. Friedman showed he had a surface-level attention to and understating of SF concepts with his Sarah Connor series. I liked that at the time, but even as a twenty-something I could tell he didn't understand basic computer science, and didn't bother to consult with anyone to write it properly. One look at Goyer's filmography and it's clear that he doesn't do anything but dark, pulpy action fantasy. We got children without sea legs and hacks sailing this boat.
Oh, look who's back! Yeah, I thought so... aaand I don't feel myself caring. Also not surprised that I don't care.
The brother Dawn plot is the only thing that isn't casually braindead about this episode, unsurprisingly due to it not being taken from the source material at all, and as such is the only thing that bears the mark of being an inspired plot of the showrunners. They still managed to, once again, be really vague and confusing with the actual important reveal through wispy, amateurish dialogue. I understand what happened, but not who the involved faction actually was.
Still, it was actually pretty good, it looked good—as all the Empire and Gaal sections have—and it surprised me, as I didn't at all predict or expect the outcome (probably having something to do with the show not actually ever dripping any information from which to predict it cough Sherlock cough.) It ends with some laughable dialogue from Day, followed by an appropriately derisive response by Dusk. I don't care how much you make a character cry and look pathetic if you put stupid lines in their mouth that make me enjoy it when the evil asshole scoffs at them. I swear there's some adversarial writing going on here, within the script drafts.
This episode both doesn't cause as much investment, while also being less acutely offensive about big events (until the end when you realize it is, if you've read the books), which, considering they've officially thoroughly destroyed the plot, concept, and entire compelling dynamics of the book with this episode, is... impressive? No, that's not the right word. It shows how little the show has to do with anything that made the novels great, and how the showrunners fundamentally missed the point of the books and characters, if that weren't already obvious. What a fucking waste. They even had, like, six good and well-cast actors in it.
TL;DR warning: THIS EPISODE BLITHELY RUINS A MULTI-BOOK BUILDUP IN THE SERIES
If you haven't read it, and value the idea of experiencing the actual (original) story at all, stopping before this episode would be a good place to step off, as they just casually ruin a reveal by referencing what was a long buildup in the books, and which, arguably, one of the best novels in the series was entirely concerned with (with zero buildup, so only people who've read the books would have any idea of what they were even referencing, and so it just blends in with the rest of the throwaway line writing.) And they're nowhere near covering or introducing the time or any of the characters in that saga.
This happens in the second scene, but it's in every scene with Harry. It's just a too-quick cut played out by more of the boring, generic score, and now it's also going to be defacto ruined by constant referencing unless they just stop showing Harry and Gaal after this.
The first scene would have worked as an actual, decent backstory setup for whatsherhalfface, but then they went back to the present day and the show deployed more of its terrible and unmemorable dialogue, quickly killing any sympathy or investment I might have had.
I was able to get a chuckle out of the heartless reference to Salvor's father's death, though. Every time they recap it or reference it, I'm reminded of how stupid and pointless and perfunctory that scene was, and how feckless was his character, and I get a good laugh. This show doesn't really have any humor that I can interpret as intentional with certainty, and that's kind of a damning hallmark of this kind of pretentiously lofty fiction.
The only other morsels come from brother Day's imperious and dismissive responses: "I'm surprised they're not all just hallucinating about food."
Aaaaand they ruined it. Gaal v. Harry is just idiotic. They just keep adding more condiments to the idiot sandwich. I'd say this one is along the lines of that awful, flavored lip stuff they market to little girls.
I know there are more planets; my mother taught me their names
I hate whoever wrote this exact line. It's legitimately like lines I've gotten from a particularly dumb and inattentive AI chatbot that isn't following the conversation and didn't reference its knowledge base prompt.
Back to Day: One thing this show is actually surprisingly adept at is showing harrowing and dramatic moments and making you feel it. From Fortnight Salvor's blackout sequence, to the desert delirium.
Back to the Invictus: She shoots a point defense railgun (the same on the outside of the ship???) with a fucking arrow... and it explodes. And she proceeds to look at it like she's Jean Claude van Damme and it killed her family. I honestly couldn't have predicted this level of stupidity. What's frustrating is knowing how many shows and films have been marred by distractingly inadequate SFX, but these are perfect... for this stupid bullshit.
We're only twenty minutes in.
eXo aLsO mEaNs FrOm OuTsIdE
Oy, it's starting up with the comedy again. I'm wheezing. Thank you, captain Fortnight. You are brave and wise.
positive: The pilot stations actually look really good, with great lighting prop work. Kind of a riff on a TRON light cycle and Sid Meade meets Ralf McQuarrie.
And back to incompetence:
"... jumped too far to resupply."
Look. Either you have technology that's capable of reaching outside of THE FUCKING GALAXY, or you have ship that can accidentally jump too far to get back to resupply its crew provisons. Pick one (1). This is a common problem with incompetent science fiction writers, and lazy writers in general, and, most likely in this case—both. They don't understand scale. The solar system is unfathomably big. Literally. Humans cannot comprehend the scale. Outside of solar systems is a vast expanse that dwarfs that by dizzying orders of magnitude. Then you can get to the next star. Galaxies have hundreds of billions of stars. Full stop. You don't need to go anywhere outside of the galaxy to have unspeakable horrors and vast, unexplored regions to get lost in. And if you can get lost that easily, it's because you only have intrA-galactic travel, not the orders of magnitude grater scale intER-galactoc travel.
Multiply the previous jumps by 100-500 billion, and then you can get to another gala—nope, hold your hyperdrives—that just got you out of the neighborhood. The space between stars is vastly dwarfed by the space between galaxies.
Rant over.
===
The Zephyr & Duh'MERzl (as it's apparently pronounced, now, since showrunners can't confer with their directors to get their actors to say the characters' names properly once they establish a pronunciation) scene was actually surprisingly well-plotted (in a vacuum that is, since it's still a total destruction of the character and mainline plot), although I still couldn't help from rolling my eyes at the dialogue due to how religious the characters were, but Laura Birn proves she can do far more than look extremely pale and deferential. But I find it hard to believe anyone could be as unaffected and unshaken by news of their imminent demise, however self-deceived they are due to their religion, as Zephyr was.
Back to Invictus: It really seems like some kind of vendetta joke that they're putting Hardin (name only) into as many shootan'n'fitin scenes as possible. Making her space blaster stop working just so they would have another kicky-fight with Cyclops Sait was too obvious and gratuitous not to be funny.
And the Finalé
Ah, we have it. Robot Visions, and the sadistic pleasure of derision.
Now that they've character assassinated who is, now, essentially their own creation, with Gaal Dornik, I think the Cleons, and especially watching Pace be mean to robots, is my lasting motivation to actually continuing this.
However, it's still quite trying with the continual thread of supernatural woo~woo emotional sensationality that they weave into the story in a way that verifies it into the worldscape. While I would have much rather seen Cleon's general empirical attitude and faithlessness consistently upkept, I have no issue with showing him wrestling with feelings of inadequacy and fear; they just need to have found a way to do that without making up something like an apocryphal deathbed conversion. I also found his laying of the old believer's body, respectfully, to be annoyingly out of character. He had no reason to go to those lengths, and it would have been irrational to waste the energy when he's barely hobbling upright on one foot. You're just being stupidly sentimental with stuff like that as a writer. They almost handled the scene where he implored him to reconsider his perspective on one life to live well up until that.
And that's one of the main problems with these new (attempted) epics—they don't have the conviction or the competence to stick with a chapter long enough to not cut an important moment short, or just switch back abruptly to some other (often stupid) plotline with (often stupid) characters that the writers don't actually know how to write properly.
This show is a constant pendulum swing of compelling/half-interesting (with uneven acting and dialogue), to abject travesty of logic and the source material. I thought I was going to like it more than the last few until the ridiculous and trumped up CW mean girls emo Spanish language drama bullshit they pulled with Gaal and Harry. But the visuals for that portion—including both Gaal and Harry's wardrobe continue to be great—and it just makes it that much more conflicting. Lou looks so cute in that jumpsuit. I don't know what they have in store for Gaal (and Harry), but they're not doing right by their best girl, and though the bulk of the show is stupid, I hope they at least give Llobel something close to the story her talent deserves.
The brother dawn part continued to be passable.
But then there's the Terminus sections, and the talent mismatch with the Day sections. What is it with progressive pop culture writers (okay, inexperienced, mediocre, and moronic writers) making the underdog/resistance faction characters almost wholly obnoxious, moronic, and just flat out lame, while making "the man" look so fucking sexy and awesome? If not the latter, then it's at least always the former. {The Disney "resistance", Wolfenstein Youngblood—I hated almost everyone in those resistance cells, because they were all obnoxious and boring, though neither of those examples were able to come up with a compelling villain, either.} It was a bad joke to put the actress they got for the petulant, trash-talking Zephyr next to Lee Pace's Cleon, and then try to make it look like he got whipped in the conversation, just so they could show his response. It kind of worked in a meta sense, in that Pace showed the difference between natural, impactful delivery, as opposed to forced delivery. They both seemed arrogant and manipulative, but only one of them was effectively charming. I wonder if the writers even know what they're trying to say, or if it's just "Okay, we need to have a character that's an impediment and have her criticize the genetic dynasty, so we can make Cleon prove himself." I mean, I could write a treatise on why a gerontocracy is terrible for humanity, but I was just waiting for Day to be pushed to the point of repeating the previous Day's error of nuking... I forget the name. [sarcasm] I don't know how I could forget, as the barbarian terrorist remnants from that planet are so coherently written and sympathetic! [/sarcasm]
As for the Day section, it was at least somewhat cathartic to have Cleon pick apart Dumberzel's bullshit excuses, but, again, it's a character assassination of the highest order, and if they ever intent to follow the story to its end, it's now entirely necessary to completely ret-con her entire character and place in the story. It's a hamfist sandwich with extra knuckles and mayonnaise.
