Reviews

First off, there's things I do like about this series - Superman is portrayed nearly perfectly portrayed (sometimes he's a bit too passive, but he is learning on the go), this Lois is a treat and portrayed as damn smart; her dopplegängers, though, not so much. Jimmy takes all of the hyper, hustling parts of the original and rolls them into a funny sidekick, though he's more lightweight than I like. I loved the way M. Mallah and the Brain were handled.

But then we have the rest. The frankly tedious Task Force X stuff that we've seen over and over and here turns into kid-size torture porn. A Slade Wilson who's an unremitting psycho. The awful portrayal of Sam Lane as a slow-talking thug who seems short of brainpower. The whole "hated and feared by a world he's sworn to protect" stuff that was old hat in 1969. The plan to save the world that's more dangerous than the situation it supposedly tackles. Yet another Dire Cosmic Threat - Brainiac? Zod? Both? Who cares?

And another godsdamned Mystery Box. Jor-El can't make himself understood! What's the connection to the attempted invasion? Why has no-one ever investigated the giant spaceship buried in a Kansas cornfield? It's okay, we'll answer that in season 2. Or we won't. What's behind all of those murderous multiversal Supermen? How is the League Of Lois Lanes able to traverse the multiverse? Season 2! Or not.

So...disappointed.

This was a Dollar Tree pickup and I realized within minutes that I overpaid for this. I'm not sure what they did with the post production on this, but for a bit I thought the thing was actually CGI rather than live action shot with a cheaper HD video camera. The sets replace any real dressing with masses of video screens, meanwhile. The director stars as Tex and has an ever-evolving generic southern accent (and a tendency to say "massa-cure" rather than "massacre", and as bad as the male actors are, the women are *worse*, apparently cast for shapeliness rather than talent. Not that it matters; the script is a bowl of cold, lumpy oatmeal.

I'm about to use a whole lot of words to praise an old, old episode of a TV show older than I am. Worth it, though, to sing the praises of Helene Stanton, who'd do one more project after this and drop out of the business in favour of married life. Here she plays a woman taken hostage by a mentally troubled ex-GI, the two of them ending up in a construction blast zone with time running out. Stanton plays the woman entertainingly quirky, by turns desperate, terrified, sultry, and then *compassionate*. She could have had a solid career, and had enough charisma to be at least a minor star. Less lofty, but also true...she was hot.

It's a credit to the series, too, that they had more than a few excellent episodes despite having no budget and a hopeless alcoholic in the lead.

...but god knows it ain't good. Between the fictionalized life story of popular songwriter Stephen Foster (complete with the happy ending he never had), it's rife with racism, a long stretch of the Christy Minstrels in blackface, annoying performances and a lack of focus - a lot of it just tracks over to E. P. Christie, who here assumes responsibility for promoting Foster and getting him paid. The blackface and racism make this hard to watch in particular, however - it's sort of accurate, but the emphasis, just a few years before blackface stopped being accepted in musical performances, is disturbing.

Also, why is there such indecision over whether or not this is a full blown musical? Initially it's pretty much depicting music in relation to Foster and company, but by the end it goes full tilt musical.

I frankly expected more from the series - yes, it's lightweight, surface stuff, but it's just *dull*.

Dr. Kaku is good at writing about science for a general audience, but in this he has a tendency to just drone his way through one big concept after another. I kept losing focus during the parallel universe episode, and that's one of my favourite subjects. Making it worse is the choice to do this series as a half-hour show, so there's never any depth. I think in the future I'll stick to Dr. Kaku's books when I want some lighter science material.

The site is demanding 600 characters, but I'm not sure what I can add! The show looks decent despite the low budget? Let's hocwith that.

It could have been a goofy fun episode end to end, but halfway through "Dr. Aspen" turns into a moustache-twirling gurning and laughing twit of a villain. Worse yet, the story makes little sense -if they're capable of taking down the Enterprise, they can yoink an internee out of a Vulcan rehab colony with far less chance of encountered Chris Pike's awesome hair and cooking skills. At the same time, what *are* these pirates? The Orion boss is a green teddy bear with the brain of an orange cat, the crew is a disaffected lot who haven't had a good meal in forever, and they seem like the gang who couldn't shoot straight - they're as threatening as a bowl of Spaghetti-Os. Then, for good measure, they retcon things - Sybok is no longer the product of a full Vulcan union, but now the Vulcan equivalent of a bastard. And Spock gets awfully chatty about that brother when talking to Chapel, when the information has to be dragged out of him in Star Trek V: The One We Don't Talk About.

Jen is supposed to be *really* tall in Hulk form - though 6ft 7in rather than the 7ft 6in of the comics - but she seems to vary from shot to shot in both height and heft. There's some shots where she seems skinny, others where she seems huge, and then in the mid-credits she's sporting an enormous butt.

That said, this was the funniest episode yet, and watching Dennis get punked was an utter delight. There's a great balance of Jen as Jen and Jen as Shulkie, and Maslany does a great job of showing Jen learning to deal with *and use* this unwelcome celebrity thrust on her. Next she needs to figure out that she needs an outfit, as she can't keep trashing her suits and shoes.

I still feel Emil will have a heel turn down the line - he's going into the Thunderbolts, I expect. Val is on the periphery.

Funnier than the debut episode, which had a lot of heavy lifting to do. They also seem to have a handle on the VFX at this point, so Jen looks great in Hulk form, which makes a great contrast with Jen's permanently frazzled look in human form. Tatiana Maslany pulls at the comedy chops in a big way here, too. This is another MCU show with an adorkable family.

Speaking of adorkable, I hope we're not getting a heel turn from Pug.

The revelation of what was really going on with Titania is hilarious to me, and making her an over amped influencer is a great idea - and has paid off in expanding the ad campaign too.

I'm not buying Blonsky's reformation in the least. Which is fine...they need to get him into the Thunderbolts somehow, right?

I thought it rather fitting that the coda ended on Pink Floyd's "Brain Damage." There were tried and true concepts being revisited here, but the plot got ridiculously convoluted and action-oriented, and characters were extremely inconsistent. Also, other significant characters were under-utilized, like Bernard and Stubbs, while Serac and his brother were a missed opportunity. From the looks of things we get to leave the world as it falls into apocalypse...of which there's suspiciously little sign in SeE1.

I understand what's going in with Maeve here, but the Nazi sequence is just gratuitous (if satisfying because, you know, Nazis piled dead in the town square) - I know they needed to get into Maeve's survival and other elements, but this was a real glancing at the watch moment. Then there's Serac, whose thing with Rehoboam I understand...and whose pivot to destroying Delos I don't get - it's pretty much "we need to give Dolores something else...oh, and give Maeve a ticking clock too." Serac just abandons Rehoboam after the Dolores hosts trigger the data dump. Which brings up another point: Dolores has sent everyone their Incite profiles. How many people are actually going to believe it? Plus, the apocalyptic fall of humanity exposed to the truth is a bit weedy. This is a remarkably empty world (yes, I know, COVID...but, again, there's compensatory VFX.) Halores gets upset that Serac had Brompton murdered in broad daylight...but there's no-one around to see any of it. Apparently no surveillance cameras, either (security in this future is near non-existent, mostly provided by Generic Thugs-R-Us.)

And then there's William. Tell us you love Ed Harris without telling us you love Ed Harris, guys.

I'm a little bit surprised that more people don't catch how funny this episode is. It's full of chaotic bits that go sideways constantly, especially once Cakeb gets fixed with genre - I wish they'd shown us his perspective at least once. Then they hit us with the mood whiplash, and the end of civilization...something you don't speedrun.

I was a bit disappointed that they let themselves down on the VFX/design front in places, especially with the subway - they just used a regular Los Angeles Red Line station and train - and that rolling stock is getting up there in years. Inside, it looks like any other Red Line train. The lack of unity in the aesthetics of this world is sometimes baffling. They didn't do anything to the station, either.

Anyway, now we see the shape of Dolores plan and...huh. This is a "Person Of Interest" sequel, isn't it?

Not to disparage the action and thriller elements, but this is a wide-ranging comedy-thriller, going from Ricky Gervais-style workplace comedy to fish out of water humour to straight-up Road To... daffiness right out of Hope & Crosby. Meanwhile, the narrative swerves all over like a drunk in a Maserati, and we get the most unique interpretation of the Egyptian afterlife ever (with the Barque transformed into a wheelchair.) The cliffhanger is a hilarious moment.

I'm beginning to believe that by the end we'll find out that this isn't happening on Earth-MCU, but elsewhere in the Multiverse, and that this will be our one visit with Moon Knight for at least a few years.

You'd think with actual show runtime being down to 42 minutes that the stories would be so tightly written and edited that the show would occasionally squeak. Unfortunately, not so. It plods, it's dull, the characters are underwritten, and the stories are ripped from the news more than ever, barely being massaged. Anthony Anderson is great, but Jeffrey Donovan's Cosgrove is an unbearable jerk. The DA crew are ineffectual on their best days.

This seems to have started as a student project and grew up into a full (if short-ish) film, delivered with a completely straight face. If you quit after ten minutes, you'll miss the clever and mostly subtle elements (once in a while they throw a brick, just to be sure you're paying attention) as the film...changes. It's very low budget, true, but it parlays that into looking like a typical cable documentary, and it'll catch you unawares at times with what's being done here.

It's not perfect, honestly. There's some errors in the science that are unfortunately pretty typical (time displacement requires location displacement, else you'll pop out in deep space due to the transit of the solar system through the galaxy, plus the galactic movement itself - even H. G. Wells muffed that one) and the ending is pretty short and sudden, so much so that I was momentarily taken aback.

Overall, though, I liked this mockumentary.

I got tossed right out of this early on, and never recovered - John Lunn's spare score has a theme running through it, used as much for Ann as anything, that sounds like a direct lift from the score for PHANTASM, progressions and all (though it's missing the bass counter line, I think.) Given the story, I can't help but think this is deliberate, an attempt at homage to a spooky, weird classic.

I'm sticking with my ratings; it's a counterweight. IMDb needs to go through and clear out the troll and bot entries.

As for me, I stand by what I said last time...Osyraa and the Emerald Chain could have been a pretty epic storyline. The Discovery coming to grips with the time and with the state of things, and having the Federation come to grips with them could have been epic. I'm not sure the Burn storyline could have been epic, but it could have accentuated the psychological aspects more. Unfortunately all of these had major issues (the Burn conclusion was so lame that it inserted the Gray/Adira story), and Osyraa was wasted on a Die Hard rerun that ends with her backshot by Michael. Cast members were working hard and did great, but they were ill-served by the major story beats. Some of the action beats were pretty silly, too - the conception of turbolifts in modern Trek is, to say the least, very goofy (we see them in Short Treks: Q&A as well.)

Osyraa is a lame, lazy character who's written as Al Pacino's Scarface - no nuance, no cunning, just a childish lurch into tantrums behaviour when the least bit of push for compromise comes up. What's meant as preliminary diplomatic negotiation blows up murderously because she's an incomprehensible rage monster. Osyraa could have been a *great* antagonist if written with intelligence and thought...but instead we get the Die Hard knockoff. Sure, it's a great showcase for the cast, but the Emerald Chain story could have been great in conjunction with the Discovery crew coming to terms with this future and figuring out what caused The Burn. The failure to do the Emerald Chain story Justice has weakened the season overall, and it lets Janet Kidder down as an actor.

...kudos to Anthony Rapp, Wilson Cruz, and Doug Jones too. Their performances elevate an episode that's not great at baseline - the Emerald Chain stuff is dreary, Janet Kidder is a terrible villain, and the solution to the Burn is frankly lame. It's entirely saved by Martin-Green trying to connect with Su'Kal by acting the part of a holographic teacher and using emotion - an offshoot of her continuing discovery that Vulcan logic sent her along the wrong path.

Next up: the required Die Hard knockoff episode all Trek shows after TNG end up doing.

Unlike a lot of folks I'm seeing Discovery as being *very* Star Trek, focusing on ethical dilemmas and thorny problems that can't be resolved by pewpewpew. TOS was rife with these, if less emotional, and TNG was full of talky scenes, emotional dilemmas, and a Captain who was emotionally shattered *a lot*. And so on.

This episode dives into the new Vulcan/Romulan culture using the ingrained logic of Vulcans to go on an emotional rollercoaster. I loved it.

The blip is Tilly being booted into first officer position. As much as I love the character, this was an awkward bit of story and only adds to the perception of Saru as a rather mediocre captain.

I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised that a film released by Apple is a heavily sanitized look at the VU. I *am* surprised that Todd Haynes did this - I was expecting something with teeth. And why was Laurie Anderson completely left out? She was Reed's ultimate connection with that art world, even though she came along later.

Not surprised but still disappointed at the elision of Doug Yule's attempt to keep the band going after Lou Reed left. SQUEEZE isn't even in the slideshow of later album covers. Then again, the film also ends on a 1972 performance with Reed, Cale, and Nico, and just ignores the later reunion tour and record.

There's so much not even touched on. It's not awful, mind you...just, well, curiously corporate.

Look, one thing the book absolutists aren't being honest about is that a reason it's hard to bring the Foundation series to screen is that the books a) weren't books, but stories ranging from short to novella length, and b) they range over hundreds of years, weave through constant character refreshes, and hop around locations. Even Foundation And Empire, with the Mule at its heart, does this. Plus c) Asimov stretched the timeline even more with sequels and prequels and d) complicated things with even more cast refreshes by tying in his Empire and Robots series - Demerzel is a bolt on to Foundation, and didn't occur in the original.

Because of the anthological nature of the source, a lot of work is being done to craft a narrative. To stay at all true to the original works they're going to have to do time jumps - frankly, so far this is nothing. Plus even Asimov failed to actually follow his timeline to the Second Empire, while the authorized "3Bs" additions went the prequel route. So it's likely that this series will, if it goes all the way to the Second Empire, cover 15,000 years of galactic history, and how it very nearly goes horribly wrong over and over.

Yes, this episode is slow, we're missing some information, and it's a bit baffling - but trust me: it's setting things up. Plus the Cleons are an important marker - aside from providing a thread of continuity by being sort of unchanging as cast refreshes occur with the time jumps, we are seeing the decline of the Empire through their gradual degradation - the clones aren't living as long, it seems, and fade fast, plus they are losing connection with their world, hence Brother Dawn 35 years on erasing the living mural that the Dusks seemed to have an affinity for. Empire is in decline; the center cannot hold.

I really enjoyed this entry in the Legendary Monsterverse. It's utterly bugnuts in every way, the b-plot is a complete mess despite Millie Bobby Brown and Damian Bechir, the pulp sci-fi insanity is off the charts (I'm surprised we didn't get Deros and Hollow Earth Nazis/savages), and it moves like a rocket so the more ridiculous bits don't linger. The clash between the Big Two is ridiculous fun, and the climax is grand (though between this and PACIFIC RIM I feel sorry for the population of Hong Kong.)

Fantastic visual work, and brilliant sound design. Tom Holjenbirg;s score is head and shoulders above his score for JUSTICE LEAGUE.

It's been an open question as to whether anyone would make a concerted attempt to adapt any of Dennis Wheatley's stories into a more contemporary style of film. This adaptation of "The Haunting Of Toby Jugg" doesn't really answer that question. The occult cant of the original is replaced with a psychological leaning, but this doesn't much matter as the adaptation is, frankly, clumsy, obvious, and heavy-handed. There is not one ounce of subtlety anywhere to be found in the piece -- whether it's the protagonist's memories of bomber runs, or the blue-grey tone slathered all over the photography, or the hallucinations of the PTSD-afflicted Toby Jugg.

I suppose this is in keeping with Dennis Wheatley's own work and philosophy, however, as Wheatley didn't consider himself any sort of stylist and his books are notably light on quality and long on gung-ho plot, with dialogue redolent with cliché and childishness at times.