Sol

[8.3/10] I kept waiting for it all to go wrong somehow. Things don’t simply “work out” in the world of Better Call Saul. This show is a tragedy, after all. People succeed, but only at a cost. There’s always some unexpected wrinkle, some unforeseen consequence, that makes victory more complicated and bittersweet than anyone on either side of the screen imagined.
Time and again, season 6 presented the plans of Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) and Kim(Rhea Seehorn) as nearly falling into ruin. If Howard (Patrick Fabian) spots his erstwhile foe in the country club locker room, if a valet walks a step quicker, if Jimmy can’t summon the strength to move a parking sign, the whole scheme falls apart. With each step, they were this close to being discovered. Every time they flirted with disaster. Surely their luck couldn’t last forever.

For its part, “Plan and Execution”, the midseason finale, gives the two of them one last hurdle to leap over. As established in the previous episode, the Sandpiper mediator unexpectedly wears a cast, screwing up their whole plan to stage photos where it looks like he’s taking a bribe from Saul. Now, Kim and Jimmy have to scramble to reassemble their team and restage the pictures, with the ticking clock of the impending mediation to add to the pressure.

By god, it’s fun! If you step back and look at Kim and Jimmy’s trickery, it’s easy to see how they’re destroying someone’s life for thin reasons. However much Howard may deserve some comeuppance for his own misdeeds, this is, at a minimum, disproportionate retribution. But competence in stories is thrilling and competence with flair is captivating. What Jimmy and Kim do isn’t good; but good lord are they good at what they do.

Jimmy persuades his actor to do the job via a stirring speech about the love of performance. His director parlays the “emergency” into more cash in a canny fashion. His make-up artist is dressed up like a Gelfling but no less dedicated to her craft. His boom operator rushes to the scene with the proper equipment in tow. Kim herself fashions a makeshift cast (who would know better?) and races, shoeless, to adjust the blocking for the “scene.” These are pros working their magic in a crunch, and the delight of seeing them work is only matched by the underhandedness of their deeds.

The pièce de résistance comes when the episodes reveals that Howard’s private eye is in on the deal. The ploy of switching the phone number for Howard’s usual detectives is a little convenient. But it adds one more flourish to the scheme: a chance for the P.I. to seed the misleading photos, for Kim and Jimmy to lace them with the drug that will mess with Howard’s head (and, importantly, his eyes), and have their inside man switch them out with some phonies to make Hamlin look like a clown.

It’s the perfect crime. And the last minute change in plans, forcing our would-be heroes to scramble to overcome one more monkey wrench thrown into the proceedings, only shows how brilliant they are at this sort of thing.

So something else has to go wrong, right? Maybe the AV kids realize something’s amiss and decide to call the cops. Maybe poor Irene, the class representative who Jimmy originally recruited, comes into contact with the chemical agent intended for Howard and faints in the middle of the mediation. There have to be complications, unforeseen problems, something to show that for all their skill, all their talent, Kim and Jimmy are flying too close to the sun here.

There aren’t, though. The plan goes off without a hitch. Howard becomes unhinged the second he sees the mediator and makes the connection to the bribe photos. He rants to all involved about how Saul clearly set him up. His pupils are dilated as he cuts the image of someone unwell. He raves like a madman, sounding paranoid, delusional, yelling at strangers about a conspiracy whose only proof is pictures of Jimmy returning some jogger’s frisbee. This is it. This is Jimmy and Kim’s con artist masterpiece.

The mediator walks. The other side lowers their offer, smelling blood in the water. And Clifford Main (Ed Begley Jr.) has no choice but to blink. Maybe he believes Howard. Maybe he can envision a world where his longtime colleague is telling the truth, and the former employee who once bilked his firm out of a signing bonus is devilish enough to orchestrate all of this.

But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. Because Jimmy and Kim want their money and their revenge. Howard wants to do anything to prevent Saul from winning. But Cliff, the most decent man in this universe, only wants to do what’s best for their clients. That means salvaging what he can from this disaster, avoiding the shaky uncertainties that lie ahead, and taking the offer.

It worked, by god. Kim and Jimmy’s plan worked and worked perfectly. It may have cost Kim her chance to supercharge the pro bono practice that supposedly motivated all of this, but at the end of the day, their plan went off without a hitch. As Kim’s mother might say, they got away with it.

The same can’t be said for Lalo (Tony Dalton). He’s had preternatural success to this point. The cunning drug lord tracked down Margarethe Ziegler. He found one of Werner’s “boys.” He uncovered the location of Gus’ (Giancarlo Esposito) superlab. But to this point, he has no proof. “The Chicken Man” is too good at covering his tracks. Instead, all Lalo can muster is a video intended for Don Eladio, spelling out his theory, and a plan to murder Fring’s guards to secure the evidence he needs to support it. It’s a hard-fought plan, one born of sleeping in cars and lurking in the sewers until the time is right.

Except he slips up. He calls Hector (Mark Margolis), maybe to say goodbye in case things go wrong, maybe just to make his uncle proud before he dives into a dangerous situation. But Mike (Jonathan Banks) has tapped the nursing home’s phones, and now Fring’s men know Lalo’s back. The full court press surveillance worked. Unlike Saul’s scheme, Lalo’s plan ran aground on his opponent’s defenses.

The catch is that Lalo is as clever and resourceful as Jimmy and Kim are. Realizing he’s been foiled, he calls his uncle back and declares it’s time to go back to Plan A -- a thinly veiled threat on Gus’ life. He knows Mike will hear it, that Fring will respond, and that the security apparatus will shift. So much of the conflict between Lalo and Gus is a game of chess. Fring’s operation makes a move, and the Salamancas respond in kind. Lalo’s remaining moves are dwindling, but it’s not a checkmate just yet.

The game is done for Jimmy and Kim, though. They relax at home with a bottle of wine and an old movie. No more marks left to fool. No more schemes left to deploy. Only a bit of clean-up left. Howard shows up to congratulate and confront them, and they dutifully permit it. At this point, he cannot win. They’ve seen to that, and he knows it.

His earlier parable about Chuck’s habit with soft drink cans speaks to a sort of vigilance the elder McGill brother internalized. It’s the kind that presumably helped him fend off prankster younger siblings who’d shake up sodas to get one over on their big brothers, the sort that Howard sorely wishes he’d adopted. Hamlin can’t win anymore. But he can dress Jimmy and Kim down for their misdeeds, speak to the rot in the soul that would allow them to justify such an elaborate and immoral act, and try to make it harder to live with.

Howard isn’t wrong. The audience is inclined to side with Jimmy and Kim here. They are our protagonists. They work together and love one another. They’re damn fun to watch in every scheme and scam. They work meticulously to win the day and plan for every eventuality. As their own victim highlights, they rose from humble circumstances while Hamlin had a leg up from his father. Howard’s done crappy things to both of them. The couple is entitled to some righteous indignation.

What’s more, television shows are more fun when the main characters achieve what they set out to do. There’s a natural tendency to root for perspective characters, to hope they’ll see things through, even if deep down we know it’s wrong.

Nevertheless, Howard speaks the truth. Jimmy could have taken a different path, but he was born to color outside the lines. Kim is a person of incredible talent and potential, who uses those attributes to aid those who need it most and to wreak vengeance upon the people who’ve wronged her. They do get off on this, with their sultry celebration during the announcement of the settlement as the latest example. Hamlin has lost, but he diagnoses them to a tee. He draws into stark relief how they ruined a man’s life -- a man who has his own sins to answer for but is still struggling and sympathetic -- and how they’ll have no trouble sleeping at night.

Or at least they don’t betray one iota of regret. Howard points out that they have to play it that way, to feign ignorance and innocence. But they’re both consummate actors, unbothered by the routine, barely suggesting a whit of remorse for their actions. In their eyes, this is karma. This is reaping what you’ve sewn. This is a game to them.

Until it isn’t.

It’s just a wisp at first. A wick bends. The flame flickers. Something is coming. Writer-director Thomas Schnauz and his team deploy the suspense masterfully. The way the mood suddenly shifts is brilliant. Those subtle hints pile up, until the expressions on Kim and Jimmy’s faces tell the tale. They’re no longer gently asking Howard to leave because they’re done with him. They’re imploring him to go for his own safety. Lalo has arrived.

The twist is fabulous. Lalo’s call to Hector was not a means to smoke out Fring or lighten security at the superlab. He knew it would prompt Mike to circle the wagons and pull security away from tertiary targets like Saul, leaving him and Kim exposed and vulnerable. There’s more than one way to get to Gus and, backed into a corner, Lalo found another one.

It’s a spectacularly terrifying scene: the way he emerges from the shadows, the way he’s unnervingly calm despite his overwhelming menace, the way his “lawyers” desperately beg the man who was, just a minute ago, their worst enemy, to get out now if he wants to save himself.

Only It’s too late. The shock arrives as Lalo grows tired of waiting, of tolerating potential witnesses, and puts a bullet through a well-coiffed stranger’s skull once he’s fully diagnosed the shared pathology of his antagonizers. This is the worst day of Howard Hamlin’s life, and also the last day. Holy hell.

There it is. There is where things go wrong. There is the cost for taking things too far and tiptoeing too close to danger and disaster. Better Call Saul is a show that, commendably, zigs when viewers expect it to zag. It doesn’t traffic in twists for the sake of twists. The surprises are earned and the natural consequences of the characters’ actions, rooted in what will affect them most.

The recompense for so many risky ploys to sully a man’s career and reputation is not that the scheme ultimately falls apart or exposes Kim and Jimmy instead. It’s that it crashes into their earlier grand scheme, the source of their blood money, that quickly becomes that much bloodier. There is great surprise, rich irony, and dark poetry in that.

Six episodes remain of Better Call Saul, half a dozen more outings to firmly and finally resolve how what’s left of the life of Jimmy McGill runs headlong into the life of Saul Goodman. In the moment when the barriers between those two personas tumbles down for good, there lies a firm reminder. The “magic man”, whom viewers know and love from his entertaining skullduggery on Breaking Bad, arrived at that colorful existence from a soul-shaking path -- one that always comes with a trade-off, a complication, and a price

[8.2/10] There is no show on television that threads the needle between symbolism and literalism better than Better Call Saul. Part of the show’s success, and that of its predecessor, stem from the fact that it works equally well as an exciting story as it does a commentary on human nature and what relationships with bad or shady people do to us. No character represents that idea better in “Fall” than Kim Wexler.

The scene with her out on the Texas-New Mexico border to interface with her new client works well as foreshadowing, and as a sign that Kim is trying to take on too much by herself and coming close to suffering for it. When her car gets stuck in the dirt, she has so much going on, another tight deadline to meet to try to make up for Jimmy’s possible shortfall, that she tries to take care of it all herself. She find a nearby board, heaves and pushes on the car until it budges, and panics when it starts heading toward a nearby oil derrick. Only by racing into the driver’s seat and slamming on the breaks at the last minute does she avoid a grisly wreck.

It functions as a sign that Kim is juggling too many balls, that she’s letting small but important details slip, with her car as a particular conduit for this idea, in a way that could come back to bite her.

But it also functions as a larger metaphor for what Kim’s going through with Jimmy. She has a problem of being stuck in the muck herself -- with the threat of Chuck’s machinations to get his brother disbarred and Jimmy’s ensuing suspension putting pressure on her to carry the firm. So Kim does what she always does -- she pushes and pushes and pushes until she can get things moving again. Little does she realize that in all that pushing, she may be headed for disaster, and it’s only her frantic heroics that allow her narrowly avoid it. Sooner or later, those heroics will come up short, sooner or later, trying to expend all of her efforts to keep Jimmy out of that muck will backfire on her. It’s only so long that she can go to such lengths and avoid that crash.

Everyone’s hustling hard to avoid a crash in “Fall,” though most of the plots of the episode involve financial decisions rather than ones involving dirt and chrome. That includes Mike who, in a brief scene, does his due diligence with Lydia to make sure he’s putting his name down with the right people, but it also includes Jimmy, who is pushing hard to speed up the timing of his payment from the Sandpiper case.

To that end, he finds roundabout ways of putting pressure on Irene, the named plaintiff, in settling the case so that he gets his percentage of the common fund. That means, plying her with cookies to take a look at the latest letters advising her as to the status of the case. It means giving her a free pair of walking shoes to make her look like a big spender. And it means going so far as to rig a bingo game to make it look like fortune keeps smiling upon her at the expense of all her friends and erstwhile well-wishers.

Many of these sequences are funny. It’s amusing to see Jimmy decked out in full mall-walker gear as he puts in plan into motion. There’s something undeniably entertaining about Jimmy being ensconsced in a spirited session of chair yoga when turning Irene’s friends against her. And it’s enjoyably silly hearing him play “let’s you and him fight” while playing innocent in the Sandpiper lobby. There is a prosaic quality to Jimmy’s treachery here, and his million dollar payday requiring him to hobnob with a pack of old ladies creates a certain amount of inherent farce.

But it also brings a cruelty, a cavalier and callous quality to the story. Jimmy is not entirely without scruples – there is a moment of hesitation, a momentary wince, when he sets the rigged bingo balls into the chamber – but in the end he’s willing to turn poor, innocent Irene into an outcast, to leave her crying in a back room from the ostracism, to get what he wants. That’s who Jimmy is. When he’s in a tight spot, it doesn’t matter that this is someone who is kind to him, who trusts him, who was his key to getting the Sandpiper case in the first place – he wants what he wants and he’ll do what he needs to do to get it, regardless of how dishonest, crafty, or cruel he has to be to do it.

The same, appropriately enough, is true for Chuck in “Fall.” When the malpractice insurance providers show up and declare that they’ll double the premiums on every lawyer in the firm so long as Chuck is in practice there. Chuck vows to see them in court, and Howard, initially kindly and then more forcefully, suggests that Chuck ought to retire. Howard tells his partner that there’s a place for him at the local law school, and less gently, that he no longer trusts Chuck’s judgment.

It’s easy to see Howard as just as mercenary as anyone here (including Jimmy, whom Howard accuses of being like Golem as he tries to move a settlement along), but he’s not wrong. Chuck seems to legitimately be a great legal mind, and he genuinely appears to be getting better, but he has his vendettas, his blindspots, his irregularities that, understandable or not, have made him a liability to the firm he helped create. It’s hard to accuse Howard of any sort of altruism in this, but he’s been supportive of Chuck, stood by him, and it’s not unreasonable for him to reflect and say that Chuck is doing more harm than good to the company that bears his name.

But Chuck doesn’t care about that. He doesn’t care about outrageous premiums or putting his firm’s good name on the line as part of a byzantine plan to catch his brother in the act, or even about destroying his firm by trying to cash out his share. He puts on a show for Howard, one that sees him having turned the lights on and used an electric mixer to try to puff himself up in front of a friend-turned-adversary, to show Howard that he is not the crazy man who ranted and raved on the stand but a sharp thinker making great strides who can either be a vital asset or a one-man poison pill depending on which side Howard chooses.

That’s the thing about Chuck, and his brother for that matter. They are willing to destroy, or threaten to destroy, the lives and livelihoods of the people around them to achieve their own goals, and damn the consequences. (Those consequences may, providently enough, make Howard more likely to want to settle the Sandpiper case in order to have some liquidity and cash on hand.) Even the people close to them, who have helped them and looked out for them, are not immune from suffering in their wake.

That catches up with Kim in the end. She can’t celebrate with a miffed Jimmy when he brings in a fancy bottle of booze in honor of his scheme to prompt a settlement working, because she has to do much to do to try to cover his behind. There’s been hints that her efforts to do it all herself rather than deal with her lingering concerns about Jimmy were going to hurt. There’s the five-minute naps in the car before meetings at Mesa Verde. There’s the near-miss out at the oil derrick. There’s other instances where simply being proximate to all this mess has put Kim in harm’s way.

As always, the show shoots it beautifully. There’s something quietly ominous about the silence in the car after Kim rehearses her speech. The scenery outside the window starts to fade away. Suddenly, in a blink, the accident hits. She moans in pain as she pulls herself from the wreckage. Her carefully-crafted binders blow away in the wind. Smoke billows into the austere New Mexico landscape as she surveys the tumble of metal and legal documents before her. This is, despite all her efforts, despite all her attempts to carry everything on her own back, something unavoidable.

That’s the rub of “Fall” and of Better Call Saul. Except when facing one another, the McGill brothers almost always get what they want. They know how to work the system, to tilt things in their favor, to intimidate or challenge or call the bluff of whomever is standing in their way. And because of that, they rarely suffer.

But the people around them do. The people who care about them, who try to help them, who do anything to tarnish their pride or their patience end up worse for being in the unfortunate orbit of these two men, just as Nacho’s father is worse for his son’s association with the Salamancas. It’s never Jimmy or Chuck who has to face the consequences, has to stomach the hardships of their failings or difficulties -- it’s the poor old lady made a pariah so that Jimmy can have a payday, it’s the man who stood by Chuck until it threatened to destroy his firm, and it’s the smart, decent woman who became Jimmy’s confidante, accomplice, and caretaker, straining to keep the two of them from ruin, and finding herself asleep at the wheel, surrounded by crushed chrome and the detritus of her meticulous work.

There is no escaping the McGill brothers. There is no fixing them or correcting them or saving them. There is only the doomed efforts that emerge in their wake, that inevitably end in a crash.

[9.8/10] One of the ways you can tell that a show is great, not just good, is when it’s engrossing even when there’s not anything particularly exciting or notable happening. It’s easy to be engaged, even giddy, about Better Call Saul in the midst of McGill-on-McGill courtroom combat, in the middle of another of Jimmy’s capers, as Mike Ehrmantraut is springing another one of his traps, or when another little Breaking Bad easter egg pops up. But the mark of a great show is that it can be just as transfixing, just as mesmerizing, to watch Chuck have dinner with his ex-wife, the moment laden with hopes and expectations, with little more happening than a conversation between old friends.

Better yet, that flashback to a time when Jimmy and Chuck were using their scheming in concert and not against one another isn’t simply a flight of fancy to contrast their later antagonism, or a simple pleasing vignette of the early point of Chuck’s condition. It’s a character study, a set of scenes that never comes says anything outright about Chuck McGill, but tells us so much about who he is, how he reacts to obstacles and difficulties, and quietly sets up the bigger fireworks to come.

It shows that Chuck is a prideful man. That’s not much of a revelation, but what’s striking about the flashback are the lengths that he goes to hide his condition from his ex-wife, Rebecca. He concocts a story about a mixup with the electric company (poetically enough, involving transposed letters on an address), and tries to keep it all under wraps.

When Rebecca uses a cell phone that causes his “acute allergy to electromagnetism” to flare up (featuring superb camera work and sound design to convey his perception of it), he throws it out of her hands. But when called to account for his behavior, he doesn’t come clean about why he did it. Tellingly, he not only comes up with an excuse, he not only turns the blame onto Rebecca herself rather than accept it for be honest, but he frames it in terms of propriety, in terms of what’s “right,” in terms of a decorum that he sees himself as adhering to and chastises others for not meeting his standard. It is a defense mechanism, a self-preservation method, one that in that moment and in the future, causes him to mask his frustrations in grandiose notions of propriety and principles rather than face his own failings and prejudices.

But most importantly, even when Rebecca is effectively storming out, an act that would thwart the elaborate lengths he went to under the clear purpose of winning her back, he keeps Jimmy from telling her the truth. Even though Chuck seemed on the cusp of making a breakthrough with a woman he clearly still had feelings for, he could not bear to be thought of as sick; he could not bear to be though of a lesser; he could not bear to be thought of as crazy. Jimmy McGill knows that, and though he clearly takes no pleasure in it, it’s how he takes his brother down.

In just five minutes, Better Call Saul gives its audience a snootful of character detail and foreshadowing that establishes and reestablishes every hint and bit of shading to make the series’ peak drama at the end of the episode that much more understandable and meaningful. It’s a sign of this show’s virtuosity, and the way it understands tension, character, and storytelling like no other show on television.

And that’s just the first five minutes! “Chicanery” goes full courtroom drama in a way that BCS, despite being one of the best legal shows to grace our television screens, hasn’t really done before. The show sets it up nigh-perfectly, laying out witness testimony, objections, and grants of “leeway” that make sense in context while also providing enough wiggle room for the major characters to be a little more theatrical that would be typical for a disciplinary proceeding.

That extends to the episode’s supporting characters as well. Kim Wexler, who is Better Call Saul’s secret weapon, is not only sharp and decisive in the courtroom, but amid all the intra-McGill squabbling, gets a big win. Rather than relishing in her success, Kim distinguishes herself from both McGill brothers by coming clean to the representatives from Mesa Verde about all this ugliness, only to have the head of the bank brush it off and call her the best outside counsel he’s ever had. It’s subtle but important way that Kim and Jimmy fully win here, and that the blowback from Chuck’s machinations do not sink the client and the work that Kim has put so much effort into.

It also extends to Howard, who, while frequently a cipher on this show, continues to offer some of the most pragmatic and complex approaches to these situations of anyone. He is clearly on Chuck’s side, and clearly interested in preserving the good name of his firm. But he is also firmly honest on the stand, complimentary about Jimmy when he doesn’t have to be, frank about how his rise and fall within HHM, and cognizant of Chuck’s limitations and liabilities in a way that Chuck himself simply isn’t.

What ensues is an incredible chess match, a battle of wits and wills, between Jimmy and Chuck. Chuck carefully rehearses his testimony, again careful to couch his attack on his brother as not coming from a place of affront or weakness in himself, but to an abstract, platonic ideal -- the law. Chuck is out to show that he does not hate his brother; he cares for him, wants what’s best for him, but also wants what’s best for the legal professional he claims to hold so dear.

“Chicanery” subtly undercuts the sincerity of Chuck’s words not just by their rehearsed nature, but in the selection of detail that precedes them. He professes to love the law because it guarantees equal treatment to everyone under the same rules and regulations, and yet he is driven to these proceedings in a jaguar, pulls up to the courthouse in the presence of reserved parking cones, and saunters in as the concerned god on high, blameless for his own misfortunes and ready to direct judgment at those he sees as at fault.

But Jimmy is ready, as always, with a plan of his own, one that is not completely above board. His official goal is to not to dispute that it’s his voice on the tape or that it was tampered with, but that he said what he said because he was concerned for his brother’s wellbeing and more importantly, his sanity. In that, he hopes to convince the disciplinary committee that he did not undertake the elaborate, “baroque” scheme to disrupt his brother’s dealings with Mesa Verde that Chuck alleges, but that he gave into Chuck’s paranoid fantasy so as to prevent his brother from slipping further.

And like the best of Jimmy’s lies, it works because there is a grain of truth to it. We know that Chuck isn’t wrong that even if there was no hard evidence of it, Jimmy unleashed an elaborate ploy to trip up Chuck. But we also know that Jimmy means it when he says he would say anything to make his brother feel better, to prevent Chuck from slipping back into his aluminum foil-lined nightmare. Jimmy may have been admitting what really happened rather than telling Chuck “whatever he wanted to hear,” but coming from Slippin’ Jimmy, that is the truest sign that he genuinely would have said anything, even the god’s honest, to make his brother feel better.

That’s also what makes it so tragic, so impressive but sad, that Jimmy will now do anything to show that his brother is insane. Better Call Saul is tremendous at muddying the moral waters in complex, unassuming ways, but Jimmy’s plan to provoke Chuck may be the apotheosis of an act that is clever, resourceful, full of Jimmy’s trademark showmanship, understandable, and yet also more than a bit diabolical. It’s easy to root for Jimmy, particularly in the shadow of his brother’s superciliousness, but it’s one more case of Jimmy covering up one dirty trick with yet another.

While Jimmy normally revels in that sort of gamesmanship, in the razzle dazzle that makes him as effective as lawyer as he was a conman, he seems to take no joy in it. He reveals that he had Mike take those photographs of Chuck’s apartment to lure Rebecca back, something that he knew would put his brother off balance. But when he stands by the vending machines (which create a subtle buffer to prevent Chuck from confronting him about it) he does not have a wisp of glee at his plan coming to fruition, just the hurt resignation that it’s come to this.

Jimmy, however, is not done. In his final act meant to prove to the disciplinary board that his brother is unbalanced and thus untrustworthy, he resorts to some of the titular “chicanery.” He employs Huell(!) to slip a cell phone battery in Chuck’s pocket, and what follows is one of the best scenes in the show’s history.

It involves a back and forth between Jimmy and Chuck. Jimmy seems to pulling every rabbit out of his hat that he can come up with to expose his brother as a nut. He shows pictures from inside Chuck’s house. He gestures to Rebecca in the audience and even garnishes an emotional apology from Chuck to her. He plays “commit and contradict” with Chuck about his alleged illness, trying to establish for the disciplinary committee that Chuck’s issues are psychosomatic, and getting his brother to affirm that he is not feeling electromagnetic waves from anywhere in particular in the room.

It’s then that Jimmy takes out his cell phone, presumably expecting a reaction from Chuck to prove that his brother would respond to it on sight. Instead, Chuck, appearing wise to Jimmy’s machinations, determines that the phone is without is battery, and it seems, for a moment, like Jimmy’s stunt has been foiled, more fodder for Chuck to demonstrate that his brother is a two-bit huckster, not a lawyer. Instead, Jimmy plays the magician, revealing the final element of his trick -- the battery that Huell slipped into Chuck’s breast pocket.

That is what sets Chuck off, as he pulls the battery out like it’s radioactive and tosses it on the floor. He goes into a deranged rant that ought to earn Michael McKean an Emmy. He howls about his brother’s irresponsibleness, about how Jimmy’s billboard stunt had to be staged, about how defecating in a sunroof, about slights going back to childhood. The camera zooms in slowly on Chuck as he digs himself deeper and deeper, each word making this crusade seem more like the childish vendetta from a mentally-disturbed man against the imagined slights from his little brother than a high-minded mission to uphold the law. As more and more of his angry, pontificating face fills the frame, he stops, and the ensuing shot of the disciplinary board’s reaction says it all.

Jimmy has done it. In front of the state bar, in front of their partners, in front of the women they love, Jimmy exposes his brother as a mentally ill person ranting and raving, not the dignified legal lion he tried so hard to present himself as, in the courtroom and in that dinner with Rebecca way back when. The episode cuts to a far shot of Chuck, seeming so small, so defeated in the frame, as the buzz of the exit sign looms large next to him. This is his Waterloo, the terrible culmination of two brothers’ issues with one another, laid bare in a court of law for all the world to see.

Chuck, more than Hector or Howard or the cartel, is the villain of Better Call Saul. That makes it easy to hope that Jimmy overcomes him. But in that final moment, Jimmy again mixes fact with fiction. His brother is telling the truth. As paranoid as it sounds, as childish as it is to hold onto certain grudges and resentments, Chuck is correct in all of his assessments. And yet, as the opening scene tells us, he is a prideful individual, unwilling to admit to his illness, to his difficulties, as anything that would make him seem the lesser or not in control. That is his downfall, the fatal flaw that not only keeps him from carrying out his plan, but from what we see in this episode, which costs him the love of both his wife and his brother. That is unspeakably sad -- the story of an individual, even a villain, coming so close, and losing everything worth having in the end, when the worst of him is put on display.

[8.5/10] You could be forgiven for asking, “Hey, isn’t there some guy named Saul in this show?” for most of the runtime of “Sabrosito.” It’s an episode that turns over most of the proceedings to the happenings in the orbit of Gustavo Fring, with enough of a narrative side dish for Mike and Jimmy to remind you that they are main characters in the series.

But I’m not complaining. Giancarlo Esposito has a presence that can hold your attention like few other actors can. The details we see here -- the cold war brewing at Don Eladio’s compound, the affronts between Gus and Hector, the declaration of resolve from Fring himself, add so much shading to what we already know about the grudges and rivalries within the cartel from Breaking Bad. In a way the rest of Better Call Saul hasn’t really, “Sabrosito” serves as a direct prequel to the events that Walter White would eventually get tangled up in, and by using Gus as a conduit for that, the show practically guarantees a compelling episode.

And, as usual, there is some connective tissue between the seemingly disparate, constituent parts of the episode. Gus’s story is ultimately about standing up to bullies, standing up to intimidation, standing up to the people who believe that you deserve less. It’s about pushing back against those who do not respect you, who believe that your new ways don’t measure up to their old ones, and who believe you need to kowtow to their wishes.

But so is Jimmy’s. Sure, an ornery older brother trying to drum you out of the legal profession is not exactly the same thing as a rival drug dealer using his standing in the cartel to lean on you, but “Sabrosito” draws a line between Chuck and Hector. Both of them are old timers, long entrenched in the systems in which they operate, ready to use their connections, their standing, the power and network they have amassed in their time, to stamp out the people who challenge their hegemony.

For Hector, that means preventing the upstart Gus from infringing on his territory. The opening of the episode in Don Eladio’s pool not only puts Breaking Bad fans on alert for little pink bears, but it calls to mind both Gus’s partner being killed at the edge of that pool, and Don Eladio himself meeting his end there. It’s an interesting shot that immediately makes the setting of the scene laden with meaning before a single word is spoken.

Don Eladio, gregarious shit-stirrer that he is, makes Hector feel the lesser man next to the bigger stack of crisp, clean bills Gus sends Don Eladio’s way, and the Los Pollos Hermanos shirt Don Eladio puts on only adds insult to injury. So Hector goes to throw his weight around with Gus, in the best way he knows how - by messing with him at his restaurant.

It’s unexpectedly tense for a scene set at a fast food chicken restaurant. Still, Hector knows the best way to violate the sanctity of Gus’s domain, to twist Gus where it will bother him the most. He wanders around the meticulously kept restaurant violating every norm of cleanliness and decorum imaginable. He intimidates customers; he smokes; he wanders in the back and carves gunk off his shoe. The message is clear -- I am in charge here, and even if there’s a greater authority than myself to consider, you’ll accede to my wishes.
That’s the message Chuck sends as well. There is the same air of tension as the McGill brothers, and their legal representatives, file in to accept the A.D.A.’s deal. Chuck, true to form, leans on his brother about every niggling detail, from the wording in Jimmy’s confession to the cost of the destroyed cassette tape. And from the minute Ms. Hay converses with Chuck about his condition, it’s clear that this is far from a neutral proceeding, removing any doubt that she is, knowingly or not, taking Chuck’s side on this. The peak is when she requires Jimmy to not only sign his confession and make restitution, but to apologize to his brother.

This is where Gus and Jimmy stand in the same position. Both are clearly on edge, facing the men who want to squeeze them out. But each maintains their composure, not rising to the bait meant to throw them off balance, letting their tormentors believe that they have won this battle. Gus, stoic as he is, simply makes velvety threats and stands there dignified and unmoved. Jimmy, a little more heart on his sleeve, turns his supposed apology into a recrimination, albeit one subtle enough to pass muster with the A.D.A.

But neither of them is beaten. Through Kim’s clever phonebooking and Jimmy’s use of Mike’s combined conman/handyman skills, the pair not only have a plan to thwart Chuck from getting Jimmy disbarred, but they have evidence and the benefit of Mike casing the joint to go on. Gus, for his part, stays resolute, but clearly is unspooling a big plan in his own mind. When he speaks to his frightened employees, he speaks off a refusal to bend, to allow the old guard to flex its muscles and have the newcomers cower in fear. He resolves to stand his ground, and the people who work for him applaud him for it.

And poor Mike may be a big part of that big plan. His is the most understated story in the episode, but it’s also, in its way, the most poignant. Mike is a taciturn individual by nature, which calls upon Jonathan Banks to fill in the blank spaces of dialogue with his world-weary expressions. With his granddaughter Kaylee nestled in his arm, there is a hint of wistfulness, of regret in his eyes, enough for his daughter-in-law to pick up on it. These are the loved ones for whom he committed those terrible deeds for, for whom he got other innocent people killed. Better Call Saul plays its cards close to the vest, but Banks’s performance gives the sense of the moral calculus of those acts weighing on Mike in that moment.

When sitting down with Jimmy at the diner, Mike remarks that it was nice to fix something for once. When we see him later in the episode, he’s reading Handyman Magazine. Mike is good at what he does -- the way he manages to nonchalantly shoo Chuck away with his power tools shows that -- but there’s also a sense that he’s weary of this. Keeping his daughter-in-law and granddaughter in that nice neighborhood, with the good schools and safe havens, costs real money, and Mike’s most marketable skill, the one that brings those brown paper bags full of dollar bills, isn’t a pleasant one. Maybe, Mike just wishes he could rest -- build things instead of tear them down.

One of the best qualities of Better Call Saul is the way it uses its status as a prequel as an advantage rather than a difficulty. The tension between Gus and Hector in “Sabrosito” is heightened because we know there is enough bad blood between the two of them in the future that Hector sacrifice his own life so long as he can take out Fring at the same time. Jimmy’s tet-a-tet with Chuck has added intrigue because it seems as though Chuck has his brother dead to rights, and yet we know that Jimmy will continue practicing law, by hook or by crook, leading the audience to wonder how he’ll wriggle out of this one.

But it also creates a sense of tragedy, of star-crossed destiny for characters like Mike. It isn’t a bully who compels him, and it’s hard to imagine someone being able to intimidate him into doing anything. And yet, he is no less pulled by forces beyond his control -- the need to care for his family, the need to make up for the death of his son that he feels responsible for -- that we know will keep from the life of a contented handyman.

The encounter between Mike and Gus at the end of the episode, where Mike agrees, in his typically cagey way, to work for Gus, is in part a momentous one, because it serves as a milestone for a partnership that will pay dividends for each of them. At the same time, it’s a recommitment to a line of work that will ultimately grind away at Mike, that will lead to his death, that will jeopardize those stacks of dollar bills he has stashed away for his granddaughter.

It’s hard to say it will lead him to ruin. Mike is not a young man and he enjoys close to a decade of being able to care for his family. But for at least a moment in “Sabrosito”, it seems that at a time when Gus and Jimmy are desperate and resolute to stay in the game, Mike wants out. And we know, however much he may want that, the ability to while away his time fixing doors instead of dusting cartel goons, he’s fated to keep at this until, one day, it kills him.

[8.0/10] Two devices, each meant to record, to track, to create leverage over another person, are at the forefront. Each, in their own roundabout way, needs its batteries replaced, and in both instances, that necessity leads to the monitoring party being exposed. It continues to amaze me how two stories that seemingly have nothing to do with one another can maintain such close but unshowy thematic ties.

By which I mean, Better Call Saul is back! That simple parallelism is a reminder as to how great this show is at setting up the little things that have much bigger echoes. The two plots in this episode – one about the fallout from Jimmy revealing his malfeasance to Chuck, and the other hinging on Mike trying to figure out how a mysterious stranger realized he was headed out to the desert to do some business – take things slow, letting us see the incremental progress of each story thread. But it’s immediately clear in each of them how these developments are building to a bigger reckoning.

The former story centers on the lifeblood of the series – the relationship between Jimmy and Chuck. After Jimmy has seemingly resolved the issue with Chuck retiring from HHM, and helps his brother start taking down the aluminum foil, a chance discovery of an old book rescends into a mutual bit of reminiscing. Chuck talks about how he used to read to Jimmy; Jimmy compliments his brother’s memory for recalling details like the shade of his nightlight, and for a split second, the two are brothers again.

But then, Jimmy mentions a young neighbor, and Chuck’s expression changes, and without underscoring it, there’s the perfect hint that some Slippin’ Jimmy incident from the past is back at the forefront of Chuck’s mind. He stops the trip down memory lane, and tells Jimmy that he has not forgiven him and, moreover, that Jimmy will pay for what he’s done. When describing the events to Kim later, Jimmy is lost in frustration, telling her that for ten minutes Chuck didn’t hate him, and Jimmy had forgotten what that was like.

It’s heartbreaking in its way. The events of “Klick” demonstrated that as much as Jimmy resents Chuck sometimes, he still loves his brother, and is willing to subordinate his own interests when his brother truly needs him. While Chuck is undeniably petty, we’ve also seen that to some degree, he’s earned his brother’s mistrust, but there’s still something sad about the way the two siblings are seemingly fated to tear one another down, as Chuck promises to do right to his brother’s face.

I’ve been lousy about predictions on this show, but I’ll venture a guess as to how he means to do it. When Hamlin hears Chuck’s surreptitiously recorded tape, he asks what possible use the tape could have, given the questionable legality or utility of the tape in any court of law or professional setting. It’s potentially not a coincidence that in the preceding scene, we see a glimpse of discord between Jimmy and Kim, one spurred on by her continued distaste for the very act of stepping outside the bounds of ethical behavior that committed by Jimmy to benefit her.

We only get short scenes of Kim in “Mabel,” but they’re meaningful, conveying the discomfort she feels from capitalizing on Jimmy’s misdeeds. She blanches when her contract from Mesa Verde trashes Chuck for his incompetence. She stays up late into the night agonizing over every punctuation mark in her filing, desperate not only to earn this (somewhat) ill-gotten windfall, but to prove that she will not make the same sort of mistake, that she deserves this despite how it came to her. It’s not hard to imagine Chuck being able to drive a wedge in the already fraught relationship between Jimmy and Kim, to make his brother pay by trying to take away one of the few people in his life that Jimmy truly cares about. The irony, of course, is that Chuck is one of those few people.

People care about Mike Ehrmantraut too, though perhaps not in the way he might prefer. As I discussed in the context of BCS’s network sibling, The Walking Dead, there’s something impressive about a show being able to tell a complete story nigh-wordlessly. Mike is, characteristically, a man of few words, and his Season 3 debut doesn’t depart from that, but communicates the confusion, desperation, insight, and turnabout of Mike’s adventures with a tracking device expertly despite that limitation.

It is still such a thrill to see Mike work. One of Better Call Saul’s best qualities is the way it takes time out to show its characters thinking, working out problems, without ever belaboring the point. In fact, Mike’s tinkering with the duplicate tracker he manages to get his hands on (via the shady veterinarian we met previously) is, mid-process, a bit too opaque, to where it’s clear he’s onto something, but it’s not clear what. And yet, the moment an unnamed goon shows up to Mike’s house to replace the battery and Mike’s little radar lights up, it’s clear where his ingenuity has led him.

But more than that bit of excitement at everything coming to fruition, it’s just as enjoyable watching Mike chew on this problem and slowly but surely piece everything together. Like its predecessor, Better Call Saul sets up these miniature mysteries, requiring its characters to use their wits and their determination to solve them. The promotion for the new season strongly suggests where Mike’s clever use of the tracker will lead him, but the way he reaches that point is just as compelling.

It is not, however, the only instance in the episode where such a device meant to give the user an edge over their would-be prey backfires. Of all the great moments in “Mabel,” the best may be the one where Ernesto goes to replace the batteries in Chuck’s tape recorder, inadvertently hears the recording of Jimmy, and is immediately dressed down and quietly threatened by Chuck.

I’m sure there’ll be plenty of time to wax rhapsodic about how interesting a foil Chuck is in this show, but what’s telling is how quickly Chuck segues from pure anger to a quick cover up and CYA maneuver centered on misdirected notions of legal confidentiality, to not so subtle threats directed at poor, innocent Ernesto should he volunteer the information he overheard. Better Call Saul repeatedly plays up the cruel irony of how Chuck looks down upon Jimmy for his unethical ways, but is not above bending the rules, or at least mischaracterizing, when it suits his needs, most frequently in order to stifle his brother.

Jimmy clearly feels the brunt of that from his brother. When confronted by the young captain who calls him out for lying to get his eight-second clip of the B-29 bomber for his commercial, Jimmy clearly projects his frustrations with Chuck onto the young man who, like his brother, seems concerned with Jimmy’s less than upstanding tactics. Jimmy, as is his talent, manages to misdirect and in a strikingly similar fashion, threaten the man to keep his lie under wraps, but the pain of the brothers’ relationship lingers with each of them.

Better Call Saul is cagey about whether the McGill brothers will ever be able to overcome that. We know that Jimmy becomes Saul. We know that Chuck isn’t around, or at least remains unseen by the time of Breaking Bad. There’s little hint that they will be able to forgive one another and reconcile, or if the show believes that sort of thing is even possible.

If anything, BCS seems skeptical that a tiger can ever really change its stripes. In the episode’s opening, we see Jimmy as Cinnabon Gene, making every effort to keep a low profile and continue living his life as a schnook. But despite strenuous efforts, he cannot resist yelling to a young shoplifter that he should say nothing and get a lawyer. That part of Jimmy will seemingly always be with him. Chuck recognizes that, but fails to see that the same manipulative bent lies within him as well, and the devices meant to expose his brother, unwittingly exposes him as cut from the same cloth.

[9.3/10] When I think about the things that connect the six different vignettes that make up The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, the Western-themed anthology film from the Coen Bros., I come up with the same two themes that are present throughout the duo’s filmography: uncertainty and death. That’s a little grim for what is an, at times, bleak, foreboding, heartbreaking film, but also one that is funny, whimsical, and even downright sweet at times. And yet whether they’re putting the wind at your back or having it blow you down, the sense of the unpredictability of life, and the way what comes after puts that into relief, is present through each of the disparate but connected segments.

The film features a seemingly unflappable gunfighter being suddenly and unexpectedly flapped (and then doing some flapping of his own). It has well-dug claims being subject to interlopers, a random series of events leading a man away from and then back into the noose, and an unanticipated romance being felled by the consequences of a yapping dog. And in each of these stories, death looms large, whether it be the brutal results of an act that no longer sells or the balance of choosing an easy death and the certainty of the afterlife over enduring the potential for a brutal one, or a portentous carriage ride that has more in common with passage down the River Styx than an amble through the countryside.

As befits a film from directors with a throughline entries as diverse as The Big Lebowski and No Country For Old Men, this movie revels in the unknowable nature of the working of the world, where the only certainty lies in the unavoidable journey to the next one.

But it’s also full of absolute aesthetic splendor and pitch perfect visuals as the Coens ply their audience with tales of the mortal and unexpected. Scruggs makes the most of its western setting, with gorgeous vistas, striking weather-worn towns and encampments, and image after image of bold figures flanked by the desert landscape. The lighting makes a big difference in the film, from the bright crisp tones of the outsized opening vignette of the segment that gives the film its title, to the darkening hues of the final scene which signals the sort of descent the characters are experiencing.

At the same time, the framing and editing are superb. Scruggs is a tactile, patient film, showing the audience the ominous advance of boots on bankhouse boards, or the steady rhythm of panning for gold in azure waters, or the advance of a fleet of indigenous fighters from far off in the distance. The Coens and their team know when to stop and focus on the individual details that give texture to this world, when to hold fast on the faces of the souls at their center and help the audience feel what they’re feeling, and when to pull back and give you the sense of worldly scope at play in each of these stories. As well-written as each vignette is, it’s the perfect visuals and staging that let’s each land with such force.

It also helps that despite the commonality of the western setting, Scruggs evokes different visual moods at the same time it’s delivering stories with different tones. There’s a tall tale-esque, exaggerated, even impressionistic vibe to the opening sequence, that looks back on the heightened reality of gunfighting in the public consciousness with bemused romanticism. But that’s contrasted by the “Meal Ticket” segment, which tastefully but brutally telegraphs a grim end for a disabled performer who’s no longer useful. (The segment also can’t help but intimate some subtext about the Coens’ own classically-informed creations falling in esteem and attention in favor of flashier, chicken-multiplying blockbusters at the box office.)

There’s a trademark sense of literal gallows humor and irony in the “Near Algodones” vignette, where a seemingly simple bank robbery turns from lethal reprimand to mortal reprieve and back again over and over. That sense of the strange, tragicomic unpredictability of life is clearest here, with glimpses of beauty and unknown forces pushing our outlaw protagonist like a leaf on the wind. It’s balanced, though, by a separate parable in “All Gold Canyon”, a tale of persistence and determination and good and bad fortune, but also one of the indifference of bucolic nature to our quests and impediments. While the workings of the world push the outlaw in the former around, the world is at bay, waiting to return to normal, after the old prospector’s steady, and unexpectedly bloody perturbation of land to find his fortune.

The final segment, “The Mortal Remains”, is one long conversation about the nature of men and of relations between them, that ends when the tenor of their destination becomes clear and eclipses such worldly concerns. It’s one of the most elliptical pieces in the film, as filled with writerly dialogue as it is with symbols and portents. But it also offers the movie’s sharpest take on death, the way it sneaks up unawares and intrudes on the more prosaic concerns that consume our lives.

Still, I don’t think it’s the key to Scruggs and its tales of wonder and woe. That comes in “The Gal Who Got Rattled,” the penultimate vignette, the one that feels the most like a complete story, and for my money, the best of the six. It features the Coens’ sweetest romantic relationship since Fargo, their exploration of the expectations placed on and the options available to women in this time and place, and the apotheosis of the way that the unexpected can bring great joy to our lives when we embrace its uncertainty, but also how the random barking of a dog that narrowly escaped its own death can instead bring it to those on the cusp of settling into that joy. It is the most heartening and eventually harrowing segment in the film, one filled with richly drawn characters, stunning visuals, and the clearest encapsulation of the movie’s ideas in the conversations between the titular “gal” and her earnest suitor.

Those ideas boil down to that “embrace the mystery” lesson that the Coens have been toying with for decades, most notably in A Serious Man, and the prospect of death, whether it’s of peace, of shock, or of ominous portents, that lurks in the background. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs gives us all sides of these notions, and a buffet of different tones and tales to put them into relief. It is an alternatively hilarious, dispiriting, and inspiring film that collects the best and various modes of the Coens, and fits them into one varied but complete package, representing their most venerable motifs with charm and poignance.

Last year saw two prominent movies taking socially relevant topics and telling a story that subverted expectations. Jana Gana Mana was one, and Gargi was the other. 'Gargi' follows the events surrounding the eponymous character after her father is accused of gang raping a minor. What follows are the endless rounds of court, media trials, and the instant judgement meted out by people and social media.

Gargi gives a glimpse on how we as a people can lose all sense of rationality, perspective, and right and wrong in this era of information overload. On the other hand, it also reminds us of the old adage of not judging a book by its cover; of how we can jump to conclusions based on some preconceived notions that we grow up with, especially when it comes to caste, professions, and other basic things.

The story is fairly tight, with very little procrastination. The direction and score is decent. However, this movie is all about performances, especially that of Sai Pallavi as the titular Gargi. And, she does the character great justice. Showing strength and vulnerability in equal measures. While she shines in moments where she is supposed to face up to the judges, media, and people, it is in her private moments that she truly shows her class. R.S. Shivaji, as the accused portrays the helpless father with great aplomb. Kaali Venkat as the, at times. clueless but determined lawyer helping out Gargi wins our hearts.

Overall, Gargi is a movie I'd definitely recommend.

I am going to assume that anyone reading this already knows that the film is about a couple going through the divorce process (if you didn't know this you find out right at the beginning). Halfway through the film I asked myself why the film wasn't called "Divorce Story" as the story is really about the difficulty that families face when a relationship falls apart. After mulling this over for a day or so I think I realized the answer. The film isn't about divorce as much as it is about relationships. In the film the couple doesn't seem to have problems that couldn't be worked out. In the opening sequence we see that there is actually a lot that they like about each other. As the film plays on we see that there is a fair amount of baggage that each of them has.

And that's where the heart of the film is. Much of the baggage are things that the characters have carried around in silence and thus they were allowed to grow and mutate internally. The film isn't so much a cautionary tale about divorce as it is a cautionary tale about relationships. The key to the film was said by Alan Alda's character in the middle of the film: after all of this is said and done you're still going to have to work this out between the two of you. So yes, the repressed feelings ended up being spoken by lawyers at the cost of hundreds of dollars an hour. And yes, when it was all said and done they did have to learn how to get along. But the real problem is that they had not learned to talk to each other years before and they were just starting to learn how to do it when the dust settled. What if they had learned how to do so years before?

It is wonderful to see A-list hollywood actors doing adult dramas again. Adam Driver has really been on a role with some fantastic films (including the criminally unseen Paterson). This wasn't the most entertaining Baumbach movie that I've seen but it may be the most intelligent (and in some ways, the most important). The writing and acting are superb.

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A very good example of what Bollywood can do outside of its usual norms. A mix of folklore, horror, thriller and historical movie.

Vinayak grows up in a manor where a fabled treasure is hidden, though nobody found it. Coming back as an adult he finds it. However he seems to go back and forth between the city and the manor and only brings back a few gold coins at a time. The main story and mystery part focuses on how he's getting his gold coins. And the reveal of the whole ritual is amazing.

Get at the bottom of the well in the manor's courtyard. There's a corridor with another fortified well at the end. There you enter the goddess' womb. Get down there, draw a protective salt circle. Bring a doll made of flour. As soon as the doll is revealed, Hastar appears. He can't get into the circle, which is great because a simple touch will change you into an undead. Give him the doll, and while he's eating it, quickly spill some coins from his satch and pick them up, but remember, no touching. Then get the hell out of here before he's finished.

The whole movie looks really good. The light work and almost constant rain creates a great gloomy mood. But the womb part... just amazing. It's just the right mix of creepy, disgusting, fantastic and realistic. It fits perfectly. Not only the decor but also Hastar himself.

The rest of the story, with his wife, his kid, his mistress, the opium dealer trying to find the secret are basically fillers here, but it's short and diverse enough to make it an interesting complement to the story and not be annoying. This actualy creates a different focus on the womb sequeces, it's a great choice. The relationship with his kid is weird though. You're not really sure if he's useless and Vinayak is going to sacrifice him, or if the kid will try to take his father's place or whether he will just fuck it up.

The final part, when the kids suggests to steal the satchel instead of a few coins, feels a lot like it's going a goose that laid golden eggs way and ends up totally different where every doll they bring generates an instance of Hastar. That's one of the best twist I've seen in a while. Not only is it surprising and interesting but it doesn't disrupt what we already know, it doesn't come out of nowhere and actually feels quite logical. After all, Hastar only appears when you show a doll, and there's nothng telling that it's the same Hastar every time you get in the womb. After all the satchel is not limitless, maybe it would have emptied by then..

That's also a strength of the movie. Despite being obviously fantastic, the whole thing is actually coherent and makes sense. Every thing that is done to get the gold has its explanation, as well as the weird monster grandmother, up until the final twist.

This is a great, original, masterfully directed and shot story. Incredible for a first film. I'm eagerly waiting for his next ones.

Of the 2 superhero movies I watched this weekend, the Marvel one, in an established universe, isn't my favorite. That's how good Minnal Murali is. Kudos to Basil Joseph for making a fantastic superhero origin story. I'm just happy that we finally have a proper superhero movie of our own (though, to be fair, 'Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota' was a decent attempt). Sushin Shyam's background score complements the movie perfectly, so do his and Shaan Rahman's songs. Tovino Thomas as Jaison/Minnal Murali is charming, funny, and 'superheroic', yet grounded. He captures the cockiness and vulnerability of Jaison in equal measure. The rest of the supporting cast is great as well.

As with most great superhero movies, it's the villain who steals the show. Guru Somasundaram as Shibu is innocent and menacing in equal parts. The writers, Arun Arindhan and Justin Mathew, play a tug of war with us getting us to sympathize and despise him when least expected.

The VFX is a bit below par, but that is to be expected given the budget. The story does lag at times, but the good parts more than make up it.

The small homages to Superman and Batman are nice touches.

I sincerely hope that #MinnalMurali teaches Indian creators that superhero movies are more than just heavy VFX and awesome fights and encourages them to wade into the genre.

The only regret that I have about watching Malayankunju is that I did not do so when it was in the theaters. I had heard some great reviews about it, but also some reviews stating a slow first half.

However, as I began to watch the movie, I realized that the events of the first half are required to build up the primary character, lend poignancy to the second half, and to prevent the movie from being a mere survival film. We see in the first half a broken man who is either a good one trying to put on a façade of being an asshole; or he is an asshole trying to be a good person. And, his survival attempts in the second half are emblematic of him trying to heal himself; one of the many subtle themes running through the movie.

In a refreshing departure from the standard survival movie tropes, 'Malayankunju' takes issues such as personal loss, depression, and climate change, and weaves a story around it. At the same time, the writer, Mahesh Narayanan, adds enough story to keep the causal viewer engaged.

As is the case with a lot of Malayalam movies, the supporting cast is very natural, and provides a nice glimpse into the rural Keralan lifestyle. However, this movie is all about Fahadh Faasil. There are no new paeans that I can sing about him that haven't already been sung. He is convincing in each shot of the movie and carries the film quite ably.

AR Rahman, apparently returning to Malayalam cinema after 30 years, provides a great background score. We get different themes for each of Anil Kumar's (FaFa) moods. Where the score in the first half oscillates between gentle to turbulent, in the second half, it is all about rousing crescendos interspersed with silences. I haven't seen a lot of 2022 releases, but among the ones that I have seen, this background score is up there with Vikram's score by Anirudh.

Overall, this is very much a movie worth everyone's time.

A potentially great film being held hostage by its PG-13 rating and its messy, all over the places screenwriting.

By PG-13 I don't simply mean its visuals/goriness, but most importantly its dialogues, themes, and storytelling it tries to raise. Let me explain.

First, the dialogues.

The film opens with murder and Batman narrating the city's anxious mood. We get a glimpse of noir in this scene, but it soon falls flat due to a very uninteresting, plain, forgettable choice of words Batman used in his narration. Mind you, this is not a jab at Pattinson - Pattinson delivered it nicely. But there is no emotion in his line of words - there is no adjectives, there is no strong feelings about how he regards the city full of its criminals.

Here's a line from the opening scene. "Two years of night has turned me to a nocturnal animal. I must choose my targets carefully. It's a big city. I can't be everywhere. But they don't know where I am. When that light hits the sky, it's not just a call. It's a warning to them. Fear... is a tool. They think I am hiding in the shadows. Watching. Waiting to strike. I am the shadows." Okay? Cool. But sounds like something from a cartoon. What does that tell us about you, Batman?

Compare this to a similar scene uttered by Rorschach in Watchmen. "The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood. And when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. All those liberals and intellectuals, smooth talkers... Beneath me, this awful city, it screams like an abattoir full of retarded children, and the night reeks of fornication and bad consciences." You can say that Rorschach is extremely edgy (he is), but from that line alone we can tell his hatred towards the city, and even more so: his perspective, his philosophy that guides him to conduct his life and do what he does.

Rorschach's choice of words is sometimes verbose, but he is always expletive and at times graphic, making it clear to the audience what kind of person he is. Batman in this film does not. His words are always very safe, very carefully chosen, which strikes as an odd contrast to Pattinson's tortured portrayal of Batman as someone with a seemingly pent up anger. His choice of words is very PG-13 so that the kids can understand what Batman is trying to convey.

And this is not only in the opening scene. Throughout the film, the dialogues are written very plainly forgettable. It almost feels like the characters are having those conversations just to move the plot forward. Like that one encounter between Batman and Catwoman/Selina when she broke into the house to steal the passport or when Selina asked to finish off the "rat". They flow very oddly unnatural, as if those conversations are written to make them "trailer-able" (and the scenes indeed do appear on the trailer).

Almost in all crucial plot points the writers feel the need to have the characters to describe what has happened, or to explictly say what they are feeling - like almost every Gordon's scene in crime scene, or Selina's scene when she's speaking to Batman. It feels like the writers feel that the actors' expression just can't cut it and the audience has to be spoonfed with dialogues; almost like they're writing for kids.

Second, the storytelling.

Despite being a film about vengeance-fueled Batman (I actually like that cool "I'm vengeance" line) we don't get to see him actually being in full "vengeance" mode. Still in the opening we see Batman punching some thugs around. That looks a little bit painful but then the thugs seem to be fit enough to run away and Batman let them be. Then in the middle of the film we see Batman does something similar to mafias. Same, he just knocked them down but there's nothing really overboard with that. Then eventually in the car chase scene with the Penguin, Batman seem to be on "full rage mode", but over... what? He was just talking to Penguin a moment ago. The car chase scene itself is a bit pointless if not only to show off the Batmobile. And Batman did nothing to the Penguin after, just a normal questioning, not even harsher than Bale's Batman did to Heath's Joker in The Dark Knight - not in "'batshit insane' cop" mode as Penguin put it.

Batman's actions look very much apprehensive and controlled. Nothing too outrageous. Again, at odds with Pattinson's portrayal that seem to be full of anger; he's supposed to be really angry but somehow he still does not let his anger take the best of him. The only one time he went a bit overboard that shocked other characters is when he kept punching a villain near the end of the film. But even then it's not because his anger; it's because he injected some kind of drug (I guess some adrenaline shot). A very safe way to drop a parent-friendly message that "drug is bad, it can change you" in a PG-13 film.

And all that supposed anger... we don't get to see why he is angry and where his anger is directed at. Compare this to Arthur Fleck in Joker where it is clear as sky why Arthur would behave the way the does in the film. I mean we know his parents' death troubled him, but it's barely even discussed, not even in brief moments with Alfred (except in one that supposedly "shocking" moment). So... where's your vengeance, Mr. Vengeance? And what the hell are you vengeancing on?

Speaking of "shocking" moment... this is about the supposed Wayne family's involvement in the city's criminal affairs that has been teased early in the film. Its revelation was very anticlimactic: the supposed motive and the way it ended up the way it is, all very childish. If the film wanted the Wayne to be a "bad person", there's a lot of bads that a billionaire can do: tax evasion, blood diamond, funding illegal arms trade, fending off unions, hell, they can even do it the way the Waynes in Joker did it: hints of sexual abuses. But no, it has to be some bloody murder again, and all for a very trivial reason of "publicity". As if the film has to make it clear to the kids: "hey this guy's bad because he killed someone!" Which COULD work if the film puts makes taking someone's life has a very serious consequence. But it just pales to the serial killing The Riddler has done.

Even more anticlimactic considering how Bruce Wayne attempted to find a resolve in this matter only takes less than a 5 minute scene! It all involves only a bit of dialogues which boils down to how Thomas Wayne has a good reason to do so. Bruce somehow is convinced with that and has a change of heart instantly, making him looks very gullible.

And of course the ending is very weak and disappointing. First, Riddler's final show directly contradicts his initial goal to expose and destroy the corrupt elites. What he did instead is making the lives of the poor more difficult, very oxymoron for someone supposed to be as smart as him.

Second, the way Batman just ended up being "vengeance brings nothing and I should save people more than hurting people" does not get enough development to have him to say that in the end. Again - where's your vengeance? And how did you come to such character development if nothing is being developed on? And let's not get to how it's a very safe take against crime and corruption that closely resembles Disney's moralistic pandering in Marvel Cinematic Universe film.

Last, the visuals.

I'm not strictly speaking about gore, though that also factors in the discussion. The film sets this up as a film about hunting down a serial killer. But the film barely shows how cruel The Riddler can be to his victims. Again, back to the opening scene: we get it, Riddler killed the guy, but it does not look painful at all as it looks Riddler just knocked him twice. The sound design is very lacking that it does not seem what The Riddler done was conducted very painfully. Riddler then threw away his murder weapon, but we barely see blood. Yet when Gordon arrived to the crime scene, he described the victim as being struck multiple times with blood all over. What?

Similarly, when Riddler forced another victim to wear a bomb in his neck. The situation got pretty tense, but when the bomb eventually blow off, we just got some very small explosion like a small barrel just exploded, not a human being! I mean I'm not saying we need a gory explosion with head chopped off like in The Boys, but it does not look like what would happen if someone's head got blown off. Similarly when another character got almost blown off by a bomb - there's no burnt scar at all.

Why the hell are they setting up those possibly gory deaths and scars if they're not going to show how severe and painful these are? At least not the result - we don't need to see blood splattered everywhere - just how painful the process is. Sound design and acting of the actors (incl. twitching, for example) would've helped a lot even we don't see the gore, like what James Franco did in The 127 Hours or Hugh Jackman in Logan. In this film there's almost no tense at all resulting from those.

I'm not saying this film is terrible.

The acting, given the limited script they had, is excellent. Pattinson did his best, so did Paul Dano (always likes him as a villain), Zoe Kravitz, and the rest. Cinematography is fantastic; the lighting, angle, everything here is very great that makes a couple of very good trailers - perhaps one could even say that the whole film trades off coherency for making the scenes "trailer-able". The music is iconic, although with an almost decent music directing. And I guess this detective Batman is a fresh breath of air.

But all that does not make the movie good as in the end it's still all over the places and very PG-13.

Especially not with the 3 hours runtime where many scenes feel like a The Walking Dead filler episode.

If you're expecting a Batman film with similar gritty, tone to The Dark Knight trilogy or Joker, this film is not for you. But if you only want a live-action cartoon like pre-Nolan Batmans or The Long Halloween detective-style film, well, I guess you can be satisfied with this one.

At least this one is entertaining. Despite the fact that it mainly warns us about the dangers of adolescent popstar live.

It's also very long to start. Its 1h10 could easily be packed into 45 minutes. The whole Rachel awkard teen's story and how she can so easily be influenced by a toy telling her to believe in herself is way too long. First as usual with this type of character, I have a very hard type believing that a girl that looks like her would be in this situation at school. And it's not like she's even useful in anything as a character. She's just a plot device. She wants the Ashley Too, and she wants to do what she says. That's it. She's such a huge fan and that's her whole character. OK, the fact that she says that when face to face with Ashley that is tied to her bed and just woke up from a coma a few seconds ago, that's funny. But she doesn't do a single thing. She's in a back fangirling while Jack drives. She does nothing while Ashley Too unplugs the real one and Jack is handling the bodyguard. She does nothing at the end while Jack is actually playing with her idol. Such a loooong exposition for a character that has nothing to do after. I mean it goes through all the cliches and then deliver nothing...

I'm not really in the Miley Cyrus demographic, never seen her, maybe heard one song, I mostly have seen her in tabloids stories. But wow, I found her very good. As the cheery popstar, as the depressed ex child star (but maybe they're not such composition roles) and very much as the robot voice. Through the whole beginning the only interesting parts were hers, and the real story starts at Ashley Too's awakening.

This second part was fun, though it looked more part of a teen show than a BM episode.

As for the tech part, it's a lot less dark than usual. There's basically no downside. Previous season had a way harsher treatment on the duplicating consciousness thing. That was a constant theme in last season, with very dramatic to horrific consequences, but here it's like they wanted to show, look, it can be fun too. Very not Black Mirrory.

However it's not like we're talking about every day technology as it is usually the case. Even in this world, the tech used seems to be revolutionary. And that makes no sense in the story. So the aunt, or her company, or people who work for her anyway, manages to map an entire mind, industrial scale, and they use it for... a pop star doll ? Also it was cheaper to have a miniature doll with the capacity of containing and running the whole thing and put a limiter on it, than to just map and put the tiny part you want to use ?

Then their holographic tech, that seems pretty good too. Though weird moment when Catherine is in front of the (probably mostly teenage fangirls) audience and does her Apple keynote, being happy to be back into the most lucrative part of the business. She actually says that. Not at a tech investor meeting, in front of the live audience. Also fully customizable (even her clothes!) and scalable, like that's not the easiest part of an hologram.

And then there's this machine that allows to decipher songs from the brain of a coma patient ! That's fucking amazing. The applications just for medecine, are unimaginable. And the other ways it could be exploited...

I can think of a thousand ways to make a shitload of money with that without needing to drug your niece into a coma ! They litterally invent technology worth hundreds of billions of dollars just to make a few millions out of a teenage pop star ! Pretty weird when the aunt's character is just presented as being driven by money.

And what's with the dad's machine ? It shows a brain, so I thought he was working on rat's brains, but he just has a small rat chasing robot ? And, without knowing anything (it's repeated enough), you can plug a toy, see it's brain and edit the limiter on it ? That was worse than any hacking scene in movie history, but maybe it was a joke on that ? Didn't feel like it.

Anyway, by far the best episode of the season, but that's not saying much. And still not a Black Mirror episode. I rate it 7 because it was entertaning, but if I was to rate it as if it was a BM episode, that would be lower.

A real BM episode would have gone over the spying part of the Ashley Too technology. A lot to do with that alone. And like I already said, all the brain mapping thing, there was a lot of ways to exploit that, though it was kinda alredy done in last season, there were still lots of possibilities.

Kinda liked the suggestion that if you're not kept under hallucinogenics drugs you would real music instead of pop :)

On the surface, Jallikattu is just a movie about an entire village acting bonkers trying to catch a loose bull on the run. But, underneath the simple premise, Lijo Jose Pellissery quite audaciously ventures to create an entire movie as a metaphor for the darker side of humankind.

Boasting of a true ensemble, instead of a single leading actor (unless you count in the bull), Jallikattu's true strengths are its story, cinematography, and background music.

Jallikattu is a stark look at the unfathomable capacity of humans to, at times, devolve into something ugly when gathered in numbers. The movie is a raw look at the worst of human tendencies and, as a result, is quite cynical at times. While an argument can be made that humans are rarely so cruel, the movie tends to skip the in-betweens and jump to the extremes of human atrocities at times (especially, the climax, which was quite harrowing to watch). This is not a light watch, or a movie that one may enjoy rewatching. However, it is definitely worth a watch.

The cinematographer has done a spectacular job throughout out the movie. Though, frankly speaking, I am yet to watch a Malayalam movie having average cinematography.

The background music complements the story very well. Also, given that the movie doesn't have a lot of dialogue, the BGM was always going to be important.

This is the first LJP movie I have seen. And, I can understand why he is so highly talked about as the next big Indian director. As a fan of the movie, I am very much looking forward to watching his other works.

Inspired by Shakespeare's 'Macbeth', Joji revolves around the eponymous character who happens to be a member of a very rich and influential family in rural Kerala. Joji is a delusional and stubborn young man who thinks he is wronged by everyone, from the society, to his friends, to his family. Looking for a way to succeed, his life takes a turn when his father gets paralyzed.

Despite being just over 1.5 hours long, Joji is a slow burn. There are no jump scare moments, or moments of grand revelations, yet the director, Dileesh Pothan, manages to build up enough tension to latch on to your attention and not let go till the end. I have been recommended at least two of his earlier movies (I enjoyed both of those trailers), but unfortunately, this is the first one that I found on OTT.

The great, yet simple, background score and the cinematography help as well (are there any good movies with bad cinematography in Malayalam cinema?).

Ultimately, the movie boils down to great storytelling and brilliant acting by the cast. I haven't read or seen the original Macbeth, but Shyam Pushkaran's writing has certainly piqued my interest to take a look at the original.

Fahadh Faasil does what Fahadh Faasil does best: put in a great acting masterclass. His different 'masks' (a metaphor used within the movie, referring to the COVID face masks, of course) are quite convincing, and the way he undergoes each transformation is subtle yet great to watch. Unnimaya Prasad as Bincy is brilliant as the 'enabler' for all that Joji does. The rest of the cast provide able support (I quite liked Basil Joseph's Father Kevin).

Overall, this is quite a good movie. One that I would definitely recommend.

Malik, set in a fictional village of Ramadapally, chronicles the life of Ahmed Ali Sulaiman Malik. Based on a couple of real life incidences and characters, Malik is also quite reminiscent of Kamal Haasan's Nayakan; though it is definitely not a copy of the Tamilian classic. Malik is devout Muslim who rises from being a common smuggler to becoming the 'Godfather' of Ramadapally and maintaining the peace between the Muslim and Christian communities that live in the village.

The movie starts with the arrest of Malik as he is on his way to Hajj. The rest of the movie oscillates between the days following his arrest and the different characters narrating the backstory of his ascent to being the most powerful man in Ramadapally, leading up to the present day.

While most of the movie is a great watch, I felt that one of the major plot points in the movie is a bit weak and undermines what could have been a great modern day gangster classic. However, that plot point does not come to the fore till very late in the movie, and by then some of the other events going on in the movie are gripping enough to cover up for the shortcomings of that particular thread.

Some of the cinematography in the movie is just brilliant, including a couple of instances of single shot scenes. The action is gritty. The score is quite good as well.

But the high point of this movie (no surprises there) is the cast. This is only the fourth Fahadh Faasil movie I have seen, but I can confidently say that he is one of the best actors in India. He probably has the biggest range along with Rajkummar Rao and the late Irrfan Khan. Given that he was playing the titular character, and he is the biggest name in the movie, the focus was always going to be on him. And, he delivers in the most spectacular manner. He is a lot more reserved than Kamal Haasan was in Nayakan, but is as impressive as Kamal. This is not to say that the rest of the cast was not great. As is the case with a lot of modern Malayalam cinema, the acting was great all around. Nimisha Sajayen as Roselyn was brilliant and went toe-to-toe with FaFa. I also quite liked Jalaja as Jameela and Sanal Aman as Freddy.

Overall, Malik is a movie that falls just short of being a must-watch.

P.S: This is probably the most 'commercial' looking Malaylam movie I have seen so far.

'Masters of the Universe: Revelations' is not an outstanding series by any stretch of imagination, but it is still quite a good one. While everyone has the right to like or dislike a series, hating a series over nostalgia is a tad stupid. Stories can evolve to fit in to contemporary times. The makers of this series have attempted the same, and have pulled it off quite well, without any sermonizing that seems prevalent at times.

The original He Man animated series formed a big part of my childhood and I loved that series. However, I must confess that I couldn't really get into it when tried to re-watch it a few years back. The characters seemed a bit one-dimensional, there was a lot of deus ex machina involved, and there was actually a bit of sermonizing involved as well since each episode would have a 'Moral of the Story' at the end of it. And, that was understandable as the series was aimed mainly at kids and to sell the toys (not that this one isn't intended for the same purpose).

With this series, the creators have tried to add depth to a lot of supporting characters, especially Teela, Orko, and Evil-Lyn. I haven't read the Masters of the Universe comic books, so I do not know if the same backstory is added for these characters in the comics. The focus on other characters has also enabled the creators to expand the universe and add more complexity to it. While the worldbuilding does seem a bit derivative at times, it nevertheless holds good as the characters themselves are given decent backstories and emotional connections.

The animation is quite good. So is the score (though, I do think the original opening theme was better). The voice cast is outstanding, with Mark Hamill as Skeletor and Lena Headey as Evil-Lyn doing a particularly brilliant job.

The main area where the series suffers is the actual building up of some of the relationships. It seems a bit abrupt at times. However, given the short runtime, that was inevitable, I guess. The series also lags a little bit in the middle, I feel, which shouldn't be the case given how short it is. I do agree that the first trailer that was released was a bit misleading (though again, that is no reason the hate the series), but showing anything else would have given away couple of a major spoilers.

Despite these shortcomings though, I found the series to be quite engaging. I hope all the negative feedback does not discourage Netflix from going for a second season.

Cinema Bandi lives up to its tag line of 'Everyone is a filmmaker at heart.' The movie bears unmistakable signs of a rookie director and editor making their debut, and most of the cast making their debut or being in early part of their career. However, it still works as they do not waver from their motto.

Veera is an auto rickshaw driver from a small village who happens to find an expensive camera that someone has forgotten in his rickshaw. Together with his friend Ganapathi, he embarks on a mission to make a movie that will earn millions and help him solve his own, and his village's problems. Armed with the camera, and a motley crew of writers and actors, the two friends stumble from one obstacle to another in their cinematic endeavors.

On the face of it, this is a very simple story with a predictable ending. However, the director explores the possibilities that technology, easily accessible and usable technology, affords those who can get a bit creative and are unafraid of making mistakes. This movie comes across as an ode to the thousands of YouTubers, TikTokers, etc., who dare to turn to new avenues made available thanks to a camera on devices of everyday use.

Cinema Bandi is by no means a cinematic achievement, but has enough heart - and, at 1.5 hours, is short enough - to keep you sufficiently engaged. This is not a movie to keep at the top of your 'To Watch' list, but can be a good leisure watch to wind down for a weekend over a pint (or a peg).

Set in a dystopian future, the the human race, after having tried to find an alternative to Earth (which is taken over by Godzilla), decide to come back and fight Godzilla and reclaim the planet. For a movie with such a short runtime (for a Monster movie), it takes its time to buildup the story and the world.

However, once we get into the thick of the action, the movie moves along at breakneck pace, with the humans, Godzilla, and other new species that have evolved on Earth (turns out that the humans have been absent from the Earth for about 20000 years, giving rise to a new animal kingdom) all having a go at each other.

While the movie is purely a Monster slugfest, it does skim the speculative sci-fi territory, especially in terms of evolution and the effect of the absence of humans on it.

I watched the English dubbed version, so I am not sure of the accuracy of the translated dialogue. However, it was good enough in English, with the correct emotions portrayed behind the words.

The animation is beautiful, and offers a great view of the post-human world. Godzilla, who is deemed to be Earth's response to growing human decadence, resembles something spawn from the womb of the planet.

Zack Snyder's Justice League begins from where the battle between Doomsday and Supes, Bats, and WW ended. As Luthor says at the end of BvS, 'The bells have been rung.' The death of Superman is essentially seen as a free pass to take over Earth by any extraterritorial beings looking to do so. One such being, Steppenwolf, steps forward and sets about the task of conquering Earth for Darkseid (there's a whole backstory here that would constitute major spoilers).

As a counter to this threat, Bruce Wayne and Diana Prince set about gathering some gifted individuals (resurrecting Superman along the way). While the story may seem pretty much similar to the now, rather unfairly, dubbed 'Josstice League', it is in the execution of the plot that the 'Snyder Cut' stands apart.

We see a very well fleshed out backstory for Victor Stone a.k.a Cyborg. Flash, while still a bit underdeveloped, has his moments in the sun as we see him unleash his full potential. And, while Batman may not have much to do in the movie, Bruce Wayne does. We see Bruce getting a lot of screen time, allowing Affleck to shine through. Even though Wonder Woman and Aquaman have additional scenes, their impact on the movie remains minimal; though they do have a much larger say in the outcome of the final fight. Superman, as is expected, does not have a lot to do in this movie. But, the one encouraging thing is that the character remains consistent in his portrayal from previous movies in DCEU, as opposed to the original JL, where he seemed a completely different character.

The score of the movie is quite great, and keeps you engaged in the story. The VFX and cinematography falters noticeably at times, something we do not really expect in a Zack Snyder movie. However, the fight sequences are still quite brilliant; something we do usually expect in a Zack Snyder movie.

While the movie runtime is 4 hours, the actual story is about 3 hours 40 minutes. The last 10-15 minutes are more of Snyder shoving his vision of DCEU under WB execs’ face. And it is these last 10-15 minutes that made me really sad about the fact that this might be the last that we see of Snyder in DC (unless of course extraordinary amount of money comes into play here). Snyder paints a picture that is intriguing and darker than, quite possibly, any other superhero movie has offered yet (with the exception of Watchmen). However, given how the #ReleaseTheSnyderCut movement got us this movie, it is ot unfathomable to maintain a modicum of hope.

So, is the famed 'Snyder Cut' better than the 2017 Justice League? Extraordinarily so. However, it still has some flaws in it, which keep it from being a perfect movie. Some of those can, of course, be attributed to the fact that Snyder was forced to convert what was supposed to be a trilogy into a single 4-hour film. Some, however, crop up from a lack of coherent editing.

However, this should not deter you from watching what is unquestionably a breath of fresh air (after BvS) in an era where comic book movies are reduced to grand CGI battles and, sometimes, silly quips.

I really don't know what to think actually. My mind is shared with two opinions.
Here there are:

1. Where did the answers go??? I mean, after watching this, it feels like i'm expecting an other episode. In this very episode we would see how Clay's mom understand everything that happened with Clay this few days, the reaction of Hannah's parents about hearing their daughter explaining why she took her own life (producers missed a real heartbreaking scene), the decision of Mr Porter about the future of the tapes, … ; we would also get the answers to "Did Alex succeed killing himself?", "Is this asshole of Bryce Walker will pay for his actions?" and probably others that i forgot.
The point is this end felt, to me, almost rushed. I would not have minded a 90 minutes series finale aha! Btw this makes me questioning about "is this really a series finale?", i really hope they aren't making the mistake of producing a season 2, which would hardly be as good as the first one.
Anyway, i'm still glad they shown us that all the things i listed up there will happen, even if we don't know how and don't see it.

2. Gosh, this SHOW was breathtaking. I got surprised. I thought this was gonna be a usual teen drama and i was reluctant about that.
Maybe i was expecting too much of this series finale, as I got teary-eyed in Episode 11, i was sure i would be moved by this one. But no, this was the end, this was not supposed to be as intense as Clay's tape, that's logical.
I liked a lot of things. Hannah suicide scene narrated by Clay was so deep, and this roles reversal was very interesting. I'm glad Tony did the choice to bring the truth to the parents.

This simple show has a real power, it made the watcher think about the importance of words and actions. 13 Reasons Why is a huge success. The cast is awesome, the production is even more awesome… Thank you Netflix, really.

[EDIT after i rewatched the episode (June 14th)] : When you know there will be a season 2, this season finale is much better! I'm glad they didn't end the show this way but i would still have expected them to close the story definitely. To conclude: i can't wait for season 2!!!

[8.4/10] We live in the finite. Everyone reading this has a limited amount of time on this plane of existence. Maybe you believe there’s an eternal paradise waiting on the other end. Maybe you believe in reincarnation. Maybe you believe that we’re simply waves whose essence is returned to the fabric of the universe. Whatever you believe, almost all of us can agree that whatever we have here, our fragile world and fragile bodies, are not built to last.

That is both terrifying and maddening: terrifying because, like Janet, none of us truly knows what’s on the other side, and maddening because there is so much to do and see and experience even in this finite world, and given how few bearimies we have on this mortal coil, most of us will only have the chance to sample a tiny fraction of it.

So The Good Place gives us a fantasy. It’s not a traditional one, of endless bliss or perpetual pleasure or unbridled success. Instead, it imagines an afterlife where there’s time enough to become unquestionably fulfilled, to accomplish all that we could ever want, to step into the bounds of the next life or the next phase of existence or even oblivion at peace. The finale to Michael Schur’s last show, Parks and Recreation, felt like a dose of wish fulfillment, but with this ending, The Good Place blows it out of the water.

Each of our heroes receives the ultimate send-off. By definition, nearly all of them have found ultimate satisfaction, a sense of peacefulness in their existence that makes them okay to leave it, having connected with their loved ones, improved themselves, and accomplished all that they wanted to. If “One Last Ride” seemed to give the denizens of Pawnee everything they’d ever wanted, “Whenever You’re Ready” makes that approach to a series finale nigh-literal for the residents of The Good Place.

And yet, there’s a sense of melancholy to it all, if only because every person who emerges from paradise at peace and ready to leave, has to say goodbye to people who love them. Most folks take it in stride, with little more than an “oh dip” or an “aw shoot”, but there’s still something sad about people who leave loved ones behind, and whom the audience has come to know and love, bidding what is, for all intents and purposes, a final farewell.

But The Good Place finds ways to make that transcendent joy for each of our heroes feel real. Jason...completes a perfect game of Madden (controlling Blake Bortles, no less). He gets loving send-offs from his father and best friend. He enjoys one last routine with his dance crew. He inadvertently lives the life of a monk while trying to find the necklace he made for Janet. It is the combination of the idiotic, the sweet, and the unexpectedly profound, which has characterized Jason.

Tahani learns every skill she dreamed of mastering (including learning wood-working from Ron Swanson and/or Nick Offerman!). She connects with her sister and develops a loving relationship with her parents. And when it’s time to go, she realizes she has more worlds left to conquer and becomes an architect, a fitting destination for someone who was always so good at designing and creating events for the people she cares about. Hers is one of the few stories that continues, and it fits her.

Chidi doesn't have the same sort of list of boxes checked that leads him to the realization that he has nothing more to do. Sure, he’s read all of the difficult books out there and seemingly refined the new afterlife system (with help from the council) to where it’s running smoothly, almost on automatic. But his realization is more from a state of being happy with where everything is, with what he’s experienced.

He has dinner with his best friend and Eleanor’s best friends and has so many times. He’s spent endless blissful days with the love of his (after)life staring at the sunset. His mom kissed Eleanor and left lipstick on her cheek, which Eleanor’s mom wiped off. I love that. I love that it’s something more ineffable for Chidi, a sense of the world in balance from all the bonds he’s forged rather than a list of things he’s done. And I love that he felt that readiness to move on for a long time, but didn’t for Eleanor’s sake.

Look, we’re at the end of the series, and I’m still not 100% on board with Eleanor/Chidi, which is a flaw. But I want to like it. I like the idea of it. And I especially like the idea of someone being at peace, but sacrificing the need to take the next step for the sake of someone they love. The saddest part of this episode is Eleanor doing everything she can to show Chidi that there’s more to do, only to accept that the moral rule in this situation says that her equal and opposite love means letting him go. Chidi’s departure is hard, but his gifts to Eleanor are warm, and almost justify this half-formed love story that’s driven so much of the show.

Unfortunately, no matter how much peace he finds, Michael cannot walk through the door that leads to whatever comes next. So instead, he gets the thing he always wanted -- to become human, or as Eleanor puts it, a real boy. Ted Danson plays the giddiness of this to the hilt, his excitement at doing simple human things, the symbolism of him learning to play a guitar on earth, on taking pleasure in all the mundane annoyances and simple fun and things we meat-sacks take for granted. Each day of humanity is a new discovery for Michael, and there’s something invigorating about that, something heightened by his own delight at not knowing what happens next in the most human of ways.

The one character who gets the least indication of a next step is Janet. We learn that she is Dr. Manhattan, experiencing all of time at once. We see her accept Jason’s passing, hug our departing protagonists, and take steps to make herself just a touch more human to make her time with Jason a little more right. But hers is a story of persistence, of continued growth, in a way that we don’t really have for anyone else.

Along the way, the show checks in with scads of minor characters to wrap things up. We see the other test subjects having made it into The Good Place (or still being tested). We see Doug Forcett deciding to party hard now that he’s in Heaven. We see Shawn secretly enjoy the new status quo, and Vicky go deep into her new role, and The Judge...get into podcasts! As much as this show tries to get the big things right for all of its major characters, it also takes time to wrap up the little things and try not to leave any loose threads from four seasons of drop-ins across the various planes of existence.

That just leaves Eleanor. She takes the longest of any of the soul squad to be ready. She tries, becoming okay with Chidi’s absence. She overcomes her fear of being alone. But most importantly, she does what she’s come to do best -- help people better herself. There’s self-recognition in the way her final great act, the thing that makes her okay with leaving this plane and entering another, is seeing herself in Mindy St. Clair and trying to save her. The story of The Good Place is one of both self-improvement and the drive to help others do the same. Saving Mindy, caring about her, allows Eleanor to do both in one fell swoop.

So she too walks through the door, beautifully rendered as the bend between two trees in a bucolic setting. Her essence scatters through the universe, with one little brilliant speck of her wave, crashing back into Michael’s hands, reminding him of his dear friend, and inspiring him to pass on that love and sincerity back into the world. It is, as trite as it sounds, both an end and a beginning, something circular that returns the good deeds our protagonists have done, the good people they have become, into some type of cycle that helps make the rest of this place a little better.

Moments end. Lives end. T.V. shows end. The Good Place has its cake and eats it too, returning to and twisting key moments like Michael welcoming Eleanor to the afterlife, while cutting an irrevocable path from here through the crash of the wave. It embraces the way that the finite gives our existence a certain type of meaning, whether we have a million bearimies to experience the joys and wonders of the universe, or less than a hundred years to see and do and feel whatever we can. And it sends Team Cockroach home happy, wherever and whatever their new “home” may be.

In that, The Good Place is a marvel, not just because it told a story of ever-changing afterlife shenanigans, not just because it tried to tackle the crux of moral philosophy through an off-the-wall network sitcom, but because it ended a successful show, after only four seasons, by sending each of them into another phase of existence and made it meaningful. There’s a million things to do with our limited time on this planet, but watching The Good Place was an uplifting, amusing, challenging, and above all worthwhile use of those dwindling minutes, even if we’ll never have as many as Eleanor or Chidi, Michael or Tahani, Janet or Jason, or any of the other souls lucky enough to be able to choose how much eternity is enough.