I wonder if Crozier stayed with the Intuit people because of loyalty and guilt of losing his crew or if he was eluding the possibility of some kind of criminal charges once he returned home? Mr. Hickey ended up being so gloves-off nuts that his impact and death in the final episode was tempered. The tuunbaq was an original monster with a very strange appearance. Its semi-human facial features were actually off-putting. I wonder if the tuunbaq was weakened by Mr. Blanky's vest of forks? Dr. Goodsir's suicide/self-sacrifice was brutal in the extreme.
I watched episodes 8 and 9 back-to-back so I'm not sure I can remember what happens in each. I do think this was the best episode of the series so far. Heartbreak, horror and repulsion.
Capt. Fitzjames's death was very sad. I really liked the friendship that he and Crozier formed. Mr. Hickey has gotten out-of-hand crazy. He was one of those scheming villains that you are intrigued by, but once he stars knifing people and then eating them, he can't be dismissed soon enough. Since he's quit the bottle, Capt. Crozier is an almost flawless leader.
This series continues to be nothing short of amazing. The scenes with the firefighters and plant workers being quickly consumed by radiation is one of the most horrifying and grotesque things I've ever watched. And from what I've heard the writer say, they steered clear of going the distance with their depictions of these men burning up from the inside out. This really affected me and I'm someone who watches a lot of Horror movies and TV. I thought I'd been desensitized from seeing so much of that genre, but after watching this episode of "Chernobyl", all I required was a shot of realism.
About a decade ago, I read quite a bit about this accident and I think this series has been very accurate in its dramatization. Including the effects of radiation on those in close proximity to the reactor. Let that sink in.
There's a nice quiet moment between Crozier and Fitzjames and then all hell breaks loose! Which is the bigger monster...Mr. Hickey or the Tuunbaq? We'll know in two episodes.
This was one a bit underwhelming but still very good. I feel bad rating it lower but there's a lot of walking around and many quieter moments that aren't as impactful as some of the earlier episodes.
The judgement to keep information from the crew about the food supply is being called into question and now some are plotting. Mr. Hickey shocks on more than one occasion.
It's very hard to rate The Terror's individual episodes against one another when they are so tightly knit together to form a complete story. Rating anthology shows, like the Twilight zone or any series that combine a mythology with monster-of-the-week episodes (like The X-Files or Fringe), gives you the opportunity to differentiate based on the short story or one-off characters. The difference between episodes of The Terror is minimal because it's base story never changes so my ratings have all been uniform. I anticipate my overall rating of the show will be higher than if an average was taken from my individual ratings of each episode. The overall rating will represent an overall enjoyment of the season.
Another of the early series's classics. This does plenty to move the story arc along and there's more of Jared Harris (as Mr. Jones).
Mr. Jones makes Olivia pass a test to diffuse a bomb that will seal peoples' orifices (you read that right!) if it explodes. Walter's typewriter suggests that he wrote the ZFT book.
This has one of my all-time favorite teasers of any TV show, ever...the man to hedgehog monster transformation aboard a passenger jet. The post-credits accident witnessed by the soccer mom is also a total stunner.
I think this episode may be an important one for the story as it progresses.
John Scott is not the traitor we thought. Thankfully (and mercifully) it looks like John Scott and the dream tank are done.
This is the weakest story of the series so far. A computer program melts victims' brains. This is full of bad tech including "fused" hard drives, wonky Internet tracing, etc. Peter gets drunk and kind of hits on Olivia.
Agent Loeb caught. Olivia abducted
Huge viral slugs come out of victim's mouths. Pretty gross. This has the first appearance of Harris, who's sole purpose appears to be to hassle Olivia.
Good opening teaser with a rampaging invisible elephant. I also like the scene where Scully tells Mulder that a conservationist that she interrogated "really pisses her off". I also liked the real elephant they used. This was an episode with a preachy message which wasn't as totally unbecoming as I'd thought. It's just not something I want when I watch the X-Files.
Secondary character in this episode: None
Mulder & Scully (M&S) investigate a ship that had it's crew die of old age. M&S board the ship and they age as well. This episode is really slow. It's got a decent opening teaser but it doesn't go anywhere after that.
Secondary characters in this episode: None
M&S investigate serial killings at a circus freak show.
The first Darin Morgan episode so it's also the first funny one. I love the dialog between the characters here. Primarily Jim Rose who plays Dr. Blockhead. Duchovny and Anderson have great comedic timing and there are some moments here. Like when Dr. Blockhead is explaining how awful it would be going through life looking like Mulder, then the camera zooms to Duchovny who's striking a pose on the front steps of a trailer. Anderson has her moment,too. She puts a live cricket in her mouth.
Secondary characters in this episode: None
Possessed boy kills his little brother by luring him on to train tracks with balloon. Exorcism scene is intense. Scully is absolutely beat up by evil spirit and if this doesn't prove to alleviate some of her skepticism about the paranormal, nothing will.
Secondary Characters in this episode: None
There is some funny interplay between Scully and Mulder here, but it's more biting and mean spirited than the playful banter found in the stories written by Darin Morgan. Chris Carter seems to be trying to create his own version of Morgan's scripts. Scully is pissed at Mulder because he has taken a liking to Detective White. The story about the two girls influenced by planets aligning or something was enough to give Scully and Mulder opportunities to interact, and that friction is primarily the only reason it exists. I did like Mulder's attempts at mixing a drink in his hotel room.
It was fun to see Dana Wheeler and a young Ryan Reynolds in this.
Secondary Characters in this episode: None
This was kind of disappointing. It's not the fault of the movie. Gary Oldman was great (of course) and it was a nice dramatization. I just didn't like this as much as I thought I would. It's mostly my own fault for desiring more of a history lesson than a character piece.
Well, this is certainly based on the Stephen King short story of the same name. But to make this into a movie, they really had to stretch out the original tale that can be found in King's first collection of short stories named "Night Shift".
The ending of this movie, when the characters enter the sub-basement by way of a trap door, can't hold a candle to the grotesque portal to Hell that King created in his story. The monster, along with other dog-sized rats, is a mysteriously alien thing. A creation of all of the mud and grime collected over a century of polluted waters, factory waste and graveyard bodies. King paints a disgustingly effect story with an ending that only hints at a conclusion.
This movie tries but mostly fails because the more frightening monster happens to be the factory foreman named Warwick. He's a villain painted with a heavy, heavy brush. A character with not one ounce of redeemable value. You know he's going to get his comeuppance right from the start. The main character, Hall, on the other hand, is nothing but goodness and courage while all of those around him are dysfunctional. I couldn't help wondering why they would work for such a tyrant in such a hellhole?
Bad-guy Warwick goes absolutely bonkers during the final act but I'm not sure why. Sure, he was a total jerk, cheat, asshole, but he went totally nuts by the end. This was not in the book and I think this route was chosen to extend the 17-page story into an 86-minute movie.
Still, this was entertaining in an over-the-top way. Everyone was dirty, sweaty and crazy. There was lots of grime and gore. The practical monster effect was actually very good and the rats were plentiful.
This is a very entertaining sequel. Rudd and Lilly make a great pair. There's a lot of danger for all the characters, but on a smaller scale (no pun intended). It's very funny, like most of the Marvel Cinematic Universe films, but this has a big heart and is something you can watch with the young lings.
The imagination during the action scenes is really well done. It's exciting stuff with the sinister edges sanded down a bit. The Ant-Man films are a really welcome change of pace in the MCU.
I was shocked by how dull this movie was. This is not a scary movie. It's got a family who is attacked by their dopplegangers. Personally, I think walking into a room and finding yourself standing there is one of the scariest scenarios that I can think of. Yet this family has their own dopplegangers break into their cabin and one of the kids says "they're us". Huh?!?! That's it? Then they all proceed to battle their evil twin and honestly, there's minimal how-can-you-be-me? style interaction. Their reactions are really no different than if some unrelated evildoers had broken in.
There was a twist at the end that made me shrug my shoulders. There are a lot of theories online about the underlying meaning of this film. I suppose it could be a commentary on the differences in classes in America but that makes the whole affair even less interesting.
"Get Out" was my favorite film of 2017 but "Us" doesn't compare.
"Screamtime" is yet another Horror anthology that I'd never seen before. First off, it's a cheap looking collection of three tales with a pretty crappy wraparound story. The wraparound story kind of melds into the last story in a completely goofy way. But, the three mini-movies are pretty good. I should also point out that I saw this on CometTV and it looked absolutely awful. There were a couple of occasions when you could tell that this copy of the movie must have been transferred from a VHS tape because there were some tracking effects that were very noticeable.
Anyway, about those three stories. The opener features a man who loves entertaining children with his puppet shows. His wife and stepson are leaving him because I guess he's not making enough money. The stepson burns his stuff and his wife constantly nags him. His puppets are not pleased.
The second story is the best of the bunch. It's about a woman who's haunted by visions in her house that no one else can see. Usually stories about someone who experiences something and aren't believed bug me, but in this story's case, the ending really pays off and alleviates that annoyance.
The last story is the weakest and features some burglars and fairies. A strange combination for certain but once again the ending is really good.
"Screamtime" is an early '80s movie so it moves a little slow. That, along with how badly it looks, will keep many away. But that's kind of a shame because it tells some decent tales.
Very gross story about contagion that is spread by bugs that cause pustules which burst like a zit and infect the person hit by the popping larvae. The reason this is part of the story arc is because the CSM is involved and I believe that the bugs were an early attempt to test how to kill off the populace to make way for alien takeover or alien/human cloning and colonization.
Secondary Characters in this episode: Cigarette Smoking-Man
This is Vince GIlligan's first episode for the show. Dr. Banton is involved in a freak accident in a particle acceleration and now anyone his shadow touches is vaporized or broken down (or something). Banton is taken by X and experiments are performed on him, well, more like he's bombarded by strobe lights in a lab. The camera zooms in on his face and a tear streams down it as a sound effects of pulsing lights runs through the end credits, which is quite eerie.
This was not as good as I remember it being the first time I watched it, but the ending really saved it for me.
Secondary Characters in this episode: X, Dr. Chester Ray Banton
This episode goes crazy when it's revealed that a lot of its population are practicing cannibals. And many of them are much older than they appear. And Scully is in extreme peril again as she is almost beheaded until Mulder saves her at the last moment.
Secondary characters in this episode: None
The best episode of the series to this point. There's a ton of action in this and there are so many details.
Secondary Characters in this episode: Cigarette Smoking-Man, Krycek, Albert Hosteen, Bill Mulder, The Syndicate
A teenage boy on an Indian reservation finds a buried boxcar with dead aliens in it. Mulder receives every Top Secret document associated with UFOs and aliens since the 1940s. They are given to him by a hacker known as "The Thinker", but the docs are all coded in Navajo and require and Navajo code-talker to translate. Mulder punches Skinner. Scully finds Mulder's apartment water being drugged which explains his fever and erratic, psychotic behavior. Mulder has the documents which will inform him of his father Bill's sanctioning of alien experiments. Krycek shoots and kills Bill. Mulder fights Krycek who I think was outside Mulder's apartment waiting to kill him. Scully shoots Mulder in the shoulder so that he can't kill Krycek with Krycek's gun which would have implicated Mulder in the killing of his father. Scully takes Mulder to the reservation to meet with Albert Hosteen, the code-talker. Scully tells Mulder that one of the things in the Top Secret documents is her name along with a mention of Duane Barry. She tells him he has to figure out why her name is in the docs. Mulder investigates the boxcar and finds piles of alien bodies. While taking with Scully on the phone, he notices that the aliens have smallpox vaccine scars on their arms. Just then, the CSM flies in via helicopter. CSM and his troops search the boxcar but there's no sign of Mulder, so he has it burned. Flames leap from the boxcar and we are left to wonder if Mulder is inside and whether the CSM now believes Mulder to be dead or not, but at least from his point of view, he has destroyed evidence of the alien experiments.
Walter's transportation device used to break Jones out of prison. Vibrating device is used on safe.
Mr. Jones is "beamed" to Little Hill.
At this point in the series, this seems like it's going to be an important episode going forward.
Butterflies kill a scientist at Massive Dynamic. Actually caused by drug that causes mind to do it
John Scott keeps tormenting Olivia.
The newly introduced character of Ulana Khomyuk is an amalgamation of several actual characters who worked with Legasov to prevent the second explosion. Even though she is fictional, she provides invaluable insight into the even greater danger of a potential second explosion. The possibility of that second explosion is fact. It would have happened if not for the bravery of the three men who volunteered to drain the water tanks.
The conflict between Legasov and Shcherbina was remarkable. This series continues to amaze with its recreation of the event, but adds just the right amount of dramatization without being offensive to those of us who find the facts as, if not more important, than just being entertained.
There's a lot going on this time around. Things have gone from bad to desperately horrible in a moment. The Tuunbaq might be the least of the crew's problems. It's good to see that the captain is back and played flawlessly by Jared Harris. I'm currently watching "Chernobyl" and "Fringe" along with this series and it wasn't on purpose, but he's in all three shows.
Boy finishes music, providing an equation which allows Agent Loeb to pass his hand thru a bank safe. Hypnotizing lights. Walter-nate?
Agent Loeb has parasite around heart. Loeb is saved but we find out he is another FBI mole. First appearance of Mr. Jones
Cure for rare disease turns them into weapons who can cause brains to boil. Gory opening sequence
