Reviews

This films sits between the horror and the action genres. It navigates this really strongly as an adventure. The switching between the past and present is not a style I normally like but it works very well for this film.

The point of this story is not the invisible monsters or who makes it. I can see why some people may be thinking that these are the important parts because most films of this style hyperfocus on those things to build the tension. The problem with those stories is that they are very shallow - either the characters you most identify with live or die and well, that's about all there is to it. What makes this film so much stronger is that really it's all about Bullock's character arc. She goes from considering letting go of her own child for adoption to being a mother of a child that isn't ever hers.

This might seem trivial or trite but I think that we should celebrate this type of film more. It is about looking down the barrel of human nature and understanding how it works by looking at how it reacts in unusual situations. Bullock's character softens and at critical times you can see how she is not just trying to do the right thing because it is expected of her, but because she loves the children. And whilst the final part of the tension is a little forced, you can see from her pleading (and some excellent acting) what the children mean to her. She doesn't change the story - the story changes her.

There are a few elements that let the film down a bit, but you often find this in film adaptations that struggle to get all the narrative into a faster paced medium. But one thing that should be celebrated is that all the characters act as intelligently (or more so) than you expect of them. Especially in the 'present day' sections which they have had 5 years to hone their survival skills. Small touches like this really add to the immersion, especially when in so many films characters have to act incredibly stupidly to advance the plot.

In summary it doesn't matter from the opening scenes that you can work out things that have yet to happen in the film, and it doesn't matter that we never really understand what the enemy is. What matters is how people act in trying times, and the story of the lead character's development.

I really enjoyed this episode. It fell away a bit near the end, but a haunted cabin in the woods, the weird not-universe realm, and some nice twists made this a great adventure. There were some really strong touches as well, such as the writing on the wall, and of course mirrors are a wonderfully spooky plot device.

I thought the acting was stepped up a lot as well, and mostly because the dialogue was much stronger. The writing here was done more as a series of shorter interactions which is more realistic to how people actually converse. The light hearted moments seemed in keeping with the characters as well (cheese and pickle sarnie), rather than jarring quips for the sake of it. They could have acted a little more scared at the scary parts, but that's a minor quibble - overall very strong. The series also continued with its high production values, and there were a few things that looked deliberately retro in design as well. As much as I have been critical of this series I cannot fault the art direction which has been spot on other than the first episode.

But once again we see an episode miss out on being a great episode through missed opportunities. There have been some good ideas badly executed which is why many of the episodes of this series I'd rate personally as a 4 or 5. But this was begging to be a 10 - and it could have been a true classic. But then we get the final form as being a frog and ... well it's all a bit bland. What a let down.

Now imagine this as a rewritten ending. The room goes white and the doctor finds herself in the same place as before. Only this time the universe is not collapsing, because we have established that one person can be held there safely - even a time lord. But now the doctor has to go through her own test and reject the person she loves the most. Who will it be? River Song? Clara? Billie?

The doctor walks up to the chair and there sits Rose Tyler. We find out that they are just a few miles from Bad Wolf Bay. The doctor comments that she is not the real Rose. Rose comments that the Doctor left her with not the real Doctor. We have a heartfelt expression of a love never manifested. The Doctor rejects Rose as not being real. Rose does not accept that the Doctor does not love her. The Doctor then has to lie to convince her that she never actually loved her, and that he found other better companions. The portal opens and the Doctor turns and walks out, a single tear running down her face.

Or, you can get force blasted out by a talking frog. Either or.

One of the things I like about films is when they pretend to be one story but are another. I think that's why I'm one of the minority of people that really liked Stakeland, a coming-of-age story pretending to be a zombie horror film. And so it is with that in mind that I say I liked this film because it was not about romance it was about healing.

The main character is an awful person. As he puts it himself at one point is he not a "fully fledged adult". He got caught up in a world which doesn't care much about individual people as long as they bring in the money. That doesn't make him bad at heart, but you are what you do. So when he comes back to his home town through an accident of circumstance he knows that he doesn't belong. He is completely lost.

Where this movie gets it right is by focusing on how others forgive him when really the main plot arc is in how he is trying to forgive himself. The movie pretends to be one about rebuilding relationships, his ex, his dad, his daughter - but really it is about him coming to terms with his own actions and taking responsibility. He grows as a person.

The actors in this film do a great job as well, remaining convincing in their roles the whole way through. They are all a little inconsistent, as people are, whilst remaining true to their characters. The show is stolen by the little girl - she delivers perfectly. Many children when they act seem to be taught to act like adults with childlike qualities, but her fidgety stumbling nature reminds me of my niece a lot.

There are two parts of this film that I think let it down. It is typical in these romantic films to have an act 3 breakup to then have the final resolution to close the film. This bit of the film felt forced, and I would have liked to have seen them take a different route here. It would also have helped it stand out by subverting people's expectations. But the main mistake I think they made was in giving the main character a get-out-of-jail clause in having him damaged by his mother's death. In particular the scene where he opens his heart to his dad only to have his dad apologise back ruined much of the plot of the film - it reduced the level of healing that he undertook by making it so that he wasn't such a bad person. This is too common a trope in films, that people are only bad because of a trauma in childhood that made them that way. We could have just skipped that part and focused on him just having made some crappy decisions that made him a bad guy and that would have made the healing all the more important.

That said the film is good throughout and not only worth watching, but probably worth a rewatch, if only to hear about the stats on convertibles.

I'm a bit of a sucker for these types of films - something that will just let you shut off for a bit and relax. It doesn't make it a great movie, but it does mean that it is not a bad one. And actually with a few changes in a couple places it could even have been pretty good.

The interesting thing about the protagonist is that she is likeable. She's a shopaholic 'it' girl simply because she had never been asked to grow up. But when things get tough she steps up to do her part. In many ways this is a bit of a coming of age story for her.

But the rest of the characters are a bit oddly written. There's not much likeable about any of them. The main guy is mean and almost completely devoid of personality. I mean he has a banging body and all, but in almost every scene he is dead inside. No insult to the actor who was given nothing to work with. Instead we're meant to bond with him simply because he has had a tragedy in his life. I think they could have done a bit better. The rest of the farm crew are a little better, but I can't get over what age the daughter is supposed to be - she looks about 12 but in the film seems to be portraying someone about 8. It doesn't work.

But the really curious thing is the ending. We have the typical late 'break up' between the two main characters (the predictability of this film should mean that comes nowhere close to a spoiler), so that we can get the resolution to end the film on a high. Now normally this part comes with about 20 minutes or so of the film left so that there is time for some growth or character arc. In Harvest Moon this happens with about 7 minutes to go. And then... well we cut forward a year and they are together and everything is great. It's like 10 minutes of the film just got chopped out.

I'd like to see films of this sort start to subvert these endings a little. One of the characters definitely needs to go through some sort of arc, but it would be nice if it was some other daemon or task they achieved rather than a breakup makeup scenario. This film had the potential to do that.

Still if you are looking to kill a couple hours to zone out you could do much worse.

One of the things I like about teen dramas is that they are great at allowing the exposition of current modern affairs through the eyes of people coming of age and thinking about this issues really seriously. For this to work the presentation has to be subtle and thoughtful - after all if you can deliver a great line that makes the protagonist see something in a new light then chances are a lot of the audience will as well. What doesn't work is when you have a single message that you constantly just scream over and over. That just makes people retreat into their trench. The delivery backfires.

And this is what we see with this series. It opens up some really interesting questions but the antagonists are so unrealistic and one dimensional that it no longer becomes thought provoking. And I'm not talking about the witches here - the most unrealistic characters are the mortals. If you have not heard of intersectionalism then you should know that it is the idea that there is a power hierarchy of oppressor and victim, and the more minority boxes you can tick off then the more of a victim you are. This then combines with the idea that any form of hate / discrimination is only bad if you are doing it to someone more of a victim that you are. I present this as it seems like this is the main idea behind the writing of the show. And this becomes a problem because instead of presenting the ideas of "we are all equal, but look what this person has to go through compared to you", it presents the idea that anyone with more 'power' on the intersectionlist pyramid is a valid target of attack. This backfires because rather than trying to use empathy to bring people together, it uses hate to drive people apart.

And there is just no escaping it in this show. If it were a reference here and there then it would be absolutely fine - all shows have some political perspective (if you think it doesn't then that's probably because it has the same one you do). But the problem is that it becomes jarring because the writing is so bad it contradicts itself.

The most obvious example is when Susie is being bullied by some football jocks. Without any evidence Sabrina decides to take matter into her own hands and exact revenge on these boys. A witch hunt, although Sabrina says she does not care for the term, is exactly what she decides to go on. Guilty until proven innocent and it is all completely acceptable. A few episodes later Sabrina is accused of breaking a promise. Again no evidence is provided, but as Witch Law is guilty until proven innocent she could be in trouble. She protests at the unfairness of a situation which she herself was recently a perpetrator of. But no lesson is given as to her behaviour, it is simply presented as her being the victim.

And that's the main message of the show - all men are bad (but the black ones are not quite as bad as the others). Harvey's dad, for example, wants him to give up on any future he might have (at age 16) to start working down the mine with him, as if male parents never want to work hard to give their children a better future than they have had themselves. Indeed it is curious that all 4 friends are from dysfunctional families none of which have a mother. And when a stag is killed on a hunting trip and Sabrina asks "who would do such a thing?" the obvious reply is "men would".

And it makes you lose empathy not increase it. If the Headmaster is unwilling to allow books with tough controversial topics to be allowed in the school (as if he has total control over these things), then it is a perfectly reasonable thing to torture him so that he takes a day off of work so that a club can be formed that he may not approve of.

If the writing were better they could have presented these things in a much stronger light that would not have people turning away but actually thinking about the situation. See the great comedy show Nanette by Hannah Gadsby as a way to present a situation that evokes thought and empathy as an example of how these issues can be further brought to light.

Oh, and the schoolkids all look about 30. Otherwise the acting is good (especially the 5 main adults), and some of the plot points are interesting. I like how they took one episode off to present a perfectly in-keeping with the narrative one off thriller episode. And other than Sabrina all the characters are quite consistent (even if it makes them a bit bland).

Worth a try to see if the politics won't put you off. I've made it to the end despite it being jarring in places. It's entertaining enough to make it worth the effort, but you may get to the end and wonder if your time was better used to something else. Wasted potential that better writers would have fixed.

I was not a big fan of last week's episode. I thought it tried too hard and a lot of the problems in the writing an acting were hidden behind high production values and an attempt at an epic score that ran through the whole episode. This one did have some of the problems of the first one, but at 25 minutes in I was hooked.

The best thing about Dr. Who has always been the mystery. Think back to the greatest episodes of old or new and there has always been a great shroud of mystery about them. It feels like you are on an adventure, especially because the Doctors (and Whittaker is no exception) has always seen the universe as if through the eyes of a child. The mystery planet with affable but strange characters, and the clever idea to make the group always moving forward across the planet as they moved through the story. A lot of the timing issues and cringe attempts at comedy had gone, and the acting had improved.

And then it fell apart. Robots called sniper bots who could not hit anything from really close. A weird call of duty attempt at humour that was pure cringe. Alien rags that could be defeated with a pocket knife. See the danger of the flesh eating microbes in the water were far scarier because they implied a strong threat. The rags and robots showed how ineffective they were immediately and the suspension of disbelief just ended.

Whittaker is settling into the role well (it takes all new doctors a few episodes), and the creating team have done well in going back to a more Tennant style techno-babbler. Three companiions I think is too many for the writers to be able to cope with as we keep getting little moments of dialogue from them that are out of character from what we have seen, seemingly because they haven't talked in 30 seconds so must be given a go. All Walsh scenes felt very forced. The two pilots stole the show in terms of quality here, so I hope the writers have improved in future episodes.

If the second half was as good as the first this could have been a classic episode. But we learnt nothing about the new doctor that we would not already have guessed and all the mystery did not pay off. There were no memorable performances and so I think that this will end up being a pretty forgettable episode. I hope that this is not the sign of things to come. Still, it was better than Dinosaurs on a Space Ship.

Back in episode 6 I wrote a pretty scathing review of what happens when bad writing badly lets down an episode and throws out all immersion. For me it was especially annoying as it ruined not only a strong regular cast but a fantastic performance from a talented actress. This episode is the antithesis of that one.

+++ SPOILERS +++ stop reading now

One of the hardest things to do in this sort of serialised drama is create tension because ultimately unless you are GoT you know the main characters are not just going to get bumped off regularly. Writers, therefore, have to work much harder to create losses to the audience that are both meaningful and allowable. We saw this in the previous episode (come on he was never going to die). This episode is sci-fi at its greatest, because by rewriting some of the rules of what is possible, and then properly sticking within those rules, you create some incredible situations that really leaves the audience wondering.

Is Marcy still Marcy? I once read, in the excellent Iain Banks culture novel, Surface Detail, that it is explained to a character that the clone of her that was created is more similar to her at the moment she was cloned than she would be from going to sleep one night and waking up in the morning. It really makes you wonder what a transfer of consciousness really entails, and as Mac puts it in this episode if we are more than just the sum of our memories.

But this is more than just an academic question to the characters. Marcy (& David) suffer a real loss. And the episode (and previous ones) are excellent and building up to it. There is a real tenderness in their relationship, a finally fulfilled ache. The cinematography that accompanies their scenes is wonderful, and both are accomplished performances.

But like in episode 6 the show is stolen by the performance of a member of the cast who is not a regular, but even this just adds to the wonderful craftsmanship of the episode as a counter-point to the emotions felt. Where Marcy is soft and loving Grace is cold and calculating; but then I suppose when you hold the very essence of someone as an algorithm that is how you would view the world.

No poor writing here to create false drama. No-one acting stupid. All characters set in motion from the start and playing out naturally. The loss was painful, yet leaves hope. Bittersweet. A perfect blend.

There all too sadly often comes a point at which the writing of an excellent show $h17$ the bed. I'm not talking jumping the shark bad, but still something which is so mind boggling and dumb that it kills all immersion.

These guys are supremely talented and stop at nothing to achieve the mission. It makes sense therefore that they have protocols to prevent them from going too far. We saw in an earlier episode what happens to you when you break these protocols so it is entirely within the character of the crew to keep them.

The problem is when they simultaneously keep and break these same protocols and do it is such an incredibly dumb way that it breaks immersion.

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When the military show up the crew know that if the laser fires then the military will all be killed because they are so close. This is seen as unfortunate but acceptable. It therefore makes absolutely zero sense that they wouldn't just shoot the military people when they tried to enter the complex.

They basically have a choice: kill the military as best possible to prevent them entering the building and stopping the laser, or don't kill them and hope that they don't make it in time to stop the laser in which case they will be killed by the blast. So they are dead either way.

But in order to create false drama the military are allowed into the building, they kill the only person left to trigger it (more on this in a second), just to create this dumb scene where the soldiers are taken over one by one.

And the crew fleeing as well is a real problem because if it works they know that the future will change in such a way that they almost certainly won't be there (the final line of dialogue confirms this). So if they are going to be dead from never having existed why do they need to escape? Either way on success they will be dead. So by leaving all they do is jeopardise the mission by leaving one person alone against a squad of military people.

It is just such excruciatingly bad writing. And it totally ruins an otherwise great episode with some amazing acting and effects. In fact it gives away the ending that the mission is a failure because the only way that the writing has any purpose is to keep the crew alive and that only happens if it fails. So the whole episode writes itself into a hole.

It won't be remembered as the episode where the rapture gang see a dog and save the world. It won't be remembered as the episode where Karin Konoval steals the show with an incredible performance. It will be remembered as the episode where everyone turned out to be a moron.

A great series that I really love, but boy did they mess up this one.