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Reviews
Last Sentinel (2023)
Save yourself 1hr 57mins!
Starts off with a good premise and plot, albeit zero background on what caused the sea level to rise so rapidly.
One of the first scenes is the crew preparing to withstand a giant tidal wave, the origin of which is not confirmed - is it from an underwater earthquake or a herbal regular occurrence following extreme climate change - and although the station can survive such events it's not clear if such waves would continue building and moving across the sea and reach the two remaining continents.
Following this we meet the four central characters, none of them likeable, all a bit unhinged and all bearing a grudge against each other in some way.
The film then just melts into absolute dribble as the guy in charge stops piercing together what happened to the lit relief boat and upon learning what happened at the 11th hour keeps it to himself, albeit sharing one line with another member of the crew.
One by one the crew is bumped off until two remain, who are entangled in a romance. And the guy whose been left scratching his head trying to make sense of everything finally recalls that the photo his love interest keeps whist fully pulling out and staring at, showing a family on a pier during a rain storm, must be of the enemy as his continent doesn't get rain...something that would truly be obvious to anyone growing up without knowing rain.
However the demise of plot line aside the worst thing about this film is the audio, seriously the worst audio track for a film, all sentences uttered are unintelligible and your only hope is to max out your tv sound or if lucky enough turn on subtitles...which on Freeve there are none.
A film that showed a lot of promise, but waiting too long to introduce the twist and idea of a spy/mole in the crew ultimately meant that a lot of this should have been left on the cutting room floor.
Is It Cake? (2022)
Now I just want to eat cake
Compared to other cake shows where they make contestants make a giant cake to potentially feed an event if they win the episode and has a lot of waste and annoying judges/hosts putting doubt into the contestants heads while they rush against the clock...this show feels the complete opposite and it's really refreshing and shows a whole new side to the skill of cake making, with everything created being edible.
It's a lot less pressurised and not having judged intimidate the contestants allows them to focus on their creations.
Mikey Day is a great host, having not seen his work before, he comes across genuinely funny and providing great improvisations, which is amazing compared to the usual forced humour of similar shows.
The structure of the show and the relaxed completion with very decent prizes make this a worthy watch, and 40m runtime is perfect.
Secret Invasion: Betrayed (2023)
Show is getting worse
So we start off seeing three members of Gravik's resistance getting on board a British nuclear sub, yet further into the episode we only see one the three have an active role in trying to launch a missile from the sub as the captain is questioning the orders...so why didn't they assume the identity of the captain?
The whole build up to going to the Commodore's home to get him to rescind the launch order was about saving lives and not killing innocents...moments later Talos and Fury are shooting sailors left and right to get to the Commodore. So on the basis that they can't tell Skrull from Human they are killing folk without any prejudice in order to save lives. It's notable that none of these sailors revert to Skrull form so it's therefore assumed that they have killed innocent people, which I will assume will be glossed over in the next episode.
The whole scene on the sub is just awful and smacks of poor writing and low budget for the shot, the CGI is fine and the internal of the sun looks ok, albeit more akin to a warship control room given the size of the room, but the real issue is that there is a middle about to be launched without any pre-launch sequence, no one talking about confirming target, etc. Everyone is quiet in their seats doing business as normal and it's just the captain and Skrull exo talking about following orders and launching the missile. And then there is the automated messaging service announcing that a missile is to be launched and again it sounds to confirm the aborted launch, that in itself is ludicrous yet it's made so much worse by a claxon sounding to alert the crew to the impending missile launch, it's as if the writers don't care that a sun is supposed to be hidden and quiet and going out of its way making such noise goes completely against submarine warfare/operations.
Secret Invasion: Promises (2023)
Everything episode one should have been
Much better episode, less jarring and muddled than episode one and filled in a lot of missing pieces that episode one ignored. A greater tie in to the story from the films, in terms of what's happened with Fury and where he has been.
The only major issue in this episode seems to be with the ability to move from one country to another and back again in the blink of an eye. So Fury needs to go on the run from Russia and Talos helps him on the train out of Russia, but a little into the journey they part ways and Fury is left on his own and completes his travels off screen...so why was Talos so important for the journey in the first place if they can split up after a fight. Then Fury happens to be at the British air base to see Hill's body being transferred from one plane to another plane...so train travel across the continent is believed to take the same duration as a flight. And that leads me to the transfer of Hill's body via a British air base, surely the diplomatic situation following the bombing in Russia would not be so bad that they couldn't fly the body from Russia to USA, going east rather than west across the whole of Europe.
And it seems out of character for Gravik to let the council member not of his side to leave without any issue yet he is happy to kill anyone else that doesn't agree with him.
Secret Invasion: Resurrection (2023)
Slow and muddled
Episode was very slow in building up the story, and the backstory of how things have changed since the Spider-Man far from home end scenes (Talos as Fury) needed to be fleshed out a lot more. There was little to no explanation about why Fury was in hiding off world.
The scene in the pub with agent Hill seemed like after thought, and was slipped in to reinforce the line that is being forced at the viewer, that Fury is "old and different". The scene appears out of sequence in the context of the episode, and the nature of the candid conversation they share seems to ignore the previous 30 minutes of the episode.
I also found it interesting how Cobie Smulders was interviewed about how much more she could flesh out her character in the show...yet by the end of the episode her character is killed off.
The series has potential but this episode of definitely a miss and based on the events that happened not sure it can be saved in the remaining 5 episodes of the season.