Ok wow that was good. Like really good.
Man just a lot of fun.
So plot wise this is a movie about two people both of whom are bad people. They meet happenstance and find out they're both going to the same destination wedding. Lindsay is the former fiance of the groom (he left her) and Frank is his half-brother. They both hate the groom Keith but it barely unites them as they both just hate everything.
This plotline sounds familiar because it's basically all you need to know to watch FX's absolutely excellent You're the Worst. But this is just a movie version of that pilot. So what you really look for in this movie is not so much the plot which we all know (Boy meets girl, ... , They get together), but the chemistry and how they get together. Ryder and Reeves have EXCELLENT chemistry and the writing was top notch. Which it had to be because this movie is 90% Lindsay and Frank riffing off one another. It doesn't feel improvy or forced. But the sheer endurance of the back and forth between them is impressive. They should be together based on that alone. But Keanu plays a character that in other people's hands would feel lazy and dull. I love Bruce Willis movies but ever since I learned he has a rider that says he films his parts in like 2 days and then collects his money and they film the rest of the movie. It suddenly clicks what is wrong with his performances lately. It's that he's not performing. Reeves does the oppsite here. He takes a character that is written as lifeless and stiff and he performs that stiffness. Ryder's Lindsay on paper is pathetic. Keith broke off their engnagement like a dick but she sues him and is still coming to this Destination Wedding performatively instead of saying no and sparing herself the pain. Ryder infuses her with pain and anger and spite. Yet she's develops a hesitant but honest and open affection for Frank that keeps her interesting.
This is exactly the sort of movie I would buy just to have on tap when I need something to watch that's entertaining but not stupid.
A solid episode of Manifest though flawed. Everyone is acting like Real_Dad attacked someone without provocation but mysteriously ignoring the fact that 828_Racist actually threatened his son.
This episode our new character Zeke (which will be the name of my future first son by the way). With his lack of desire to return there was a while when I thought he might be a serial killer or something. After all so far we haven't really had any 828 passengers who are bad people. We had a domestic abuser who lost his memory. We have the Spy_Passenger who I still don't understand.
So by the way 828 racists are a thing apparently. I don't know how people who write TV think hate groups work but these are Alex Jones like conspiracies and you see them in every show like this, Manifest, The Event, Flash Forward and each time it's just silly. No one would buy this. Much less successfully start an entire movement on it. After all there are people who think they're saviors where are they? Why aren't they debunking the livestream which should clearly show that 828_Racist threatened a child. Why don't the police know that matter of fact. Why isn't Real_Dad pointing this out. This is TV writing. People do things for reasons and then when asked about what happened they stutter "uh uh uh.. i just lost control". No you didn't. You had a reason for what you did. Oftentimes a mitigating one.
Another thing I don't understand. Why is it so hard to remove spray paint? that must be the most ingenious invention ever created because NO ONE can solve it. They just all use water and scrub uselessly. Why doesn't ANYONE go out and buy some solvent. There are pages and pages and pages on how to remove spray paint but all you ever see is a bucket of water and a scrubbing brush. It's my understanding that if you get it while it's wet, maybe that'll work but considering how long that X was there you're going to need more than that.
But look how minor my complaints are this episodes. Spray Paint and super effective "racism". Like the one where-- that was last episode. Like Last episode this was pretty good, even with my nitpicks. I didn't mind Olive_theDaughter even though there was plenty of potential for her to insist that she should have been filled in earlier. The whole "everyone who knows dies" thing kinda feels contrived. They're drawing conclusions with barely any evidence. Correlation is not causation. People who know have died but that doesn't mean knowing is what makes them die.
Oo ooo oo.. Also. they played Bananagrams. As a board gamer I like to see fun games being played. not boring family games like monopoly and connect 4. Bananagrams is an excellent family game. it's exactly the sort of family game modern families should be playing.
Wow, what an episode. The slow paced tension that's the characterization of the show and yet it doesn't have the agonizing drag of Hannibal. Still there were a few twists, a jumpscare, and the first major mistake. All things that pushed the forward momentum. Our subjects get a lot of characterization between Peach and our love interest and more information about Joe's backstory.
One of the things I like about this show is how, unlike Dexter, Joe is fairly human and flawed and prone to mistakes. Seeing him struggle with a concussion was interesting.
ummm no. It was bad enough when the main character died but that "he was the psychic all along" twist was stupid.
It kinda says something about jail, that, in this show, this dude is facing being imprisoned. Having already been there, he decides he'd rather blow his brains out than go back. This is presented casually. The show doesn't see this as exceptional, barely noteworthy. The average viewer just understands this. It doesn't need to be explained. That says something kind of terrifying about our society. His crime to go back was kidnapping. It's not like he hurt the kid or killed someone.
It's fine. Nothing special yet. Justin is ruggedly handsome enough. The secondary team is compelling enough to meet minimum standards. We have his weekly tropes of fighting for money now and "Contract becomes legally binding upon success" etc.
If you have a gap in your line up this is competent enough to fight for a spot. We'll see how it looks three episodes in. Right now could go either way.
Ugh. I didn't want to watch this. I thought it was a movie when the trailer started but I hit play by accident and it was effective. I got sucked in. A nice bob and weave with the story telling. Obviously a lot of mystery to come up with and a murder that might or might not be.
I can't say know to a locked room mystery. One of us did it is just my jam so hard. I don't have a handle on Darby yet what kind of detective she is going to be but I do have a rough grasp on what kind of person she's going to be and I like her intensity. I think it's going to serve her well though out the series.
Quantum Leap (2022) has at times struggled with what kind of show it wants to be. I would have preferred something a lot more intimate, very much like the original Quantum Leap. I've given up on that as no one makes TV shows like that anymore. Every show has to be an ensemble cast, every TV show lead has to have an entire team, not just a buddy.
I was willing to buy into that and I set aside my expectations for what Quantum Leap means and how much I enjoy the original. My personal preferences aside, it has mostly worked. I have issues with one episode but you can check my review on that. It's not like every episode of the OG was perfect either. This Season 2, however, has failed to spark anything within me (so far). I'm just not interested in a three-year time skip on a second season of this show. I don't know why it's there. I don't know what I'm supposed to be taking from this. It feels like in the TV world having someone move on so harshly in 3 years is wicked fast. Maybe it's not but regardless, I'm not an invested in their drama. This is weird because I like Ben and I like Addison. I weirdly never just cared about them as a couple. Unfortunately it looks like that's the only drama that is going on (at least right now). At first I thought this was just a ploy to make Ian the person in the imaging chamber and I was actually interested in that. I think Ian's an interesting person and it would have been fun to see Ian as a hologram. At this point, I'm not sure that's what they're doing.
This episode features a sort of modernism that I find really pretentious. There's a point where Ian is the hologram and Ian is standing in a desk. Ben notices and gestures to Ian that Ian should step aside. Ian looks down and screams in shock, but why? It's the silliest scene and it doesn't make any sense and it feels like it completely is there for modern weird jumpscare short attention span tick tock sensibilities. It would have been much more interesting to see Ian casually step aside. I'm pretty sure Al did that in the OG.
In general Al was a lot more "cool" about being a hologram than the people in this show are. It gave the sense that the hologram technology itself was so old hat. They didn't send a scientist or a specialist. They just sent his buddy. After all in the future holograms are just the way we do things. Except here where people get amazed and shocked at being a hologram. I suppose that's the effect of telling Quantum Leap that takes place in the future vs Quantum Leap that takes place now.
It was a pretty smooth affair but honestly I'm not sure I understand the difference between this any 90% of the MCU films. It's by that calculation a generic action blockbuster. I hear a lot of people saying this movie doesn't deserve to be this good with barely suppressed glee. I just don't see it. I'm a fan of science fiction and fantasy. I sporadically watched the D&D cartoon as a child. I enjoyed to an extent the previous D&D movie.
I just don't see anything in this movie worth getting overly excited over as someone who isn't steeped in D&D lore. That said this movie is like an MCU movie if it wasn't stuck with the framework of having to fit itself into a (at this point fairly rigid) context. It doesn't have to account for Captain America or give a nod to Marvel's Captain Marvel or have cameo by photograph of the Hulk or have Shield logo on some paperwork. This is an MCU movie if it wasn't beholden to the rest of the MCU. I mean there's a bloody hulk smashing scene at the end. Everyone loved that scene in The Avengers. it gets referenced every 5.8 MCU films. Here we have the fantasy version. It's still funny it's just.... well I've seen it before.
Maybe if you were into the D&D modern lore this might feel different. There were certainly nods I recognized by name only and certainly things I felt certain were nods I didn't understand. Unlike say Dune where I can understand how important a sandworm must be to this story even without reading it. I don't care about displacer beast. Looking back that was probably an audience clap moment. I was more impressed with the mimic myself.
But it's fun enough. I call it generic. I imply it's reductive but walking out of the movie I was very satisfied. Not the best thing I've ever seen. Not even the best blockbuster I've ever seen. But as a movie it was good and effective. I'd even watch it again. Even if it does have an overly-perfect-dead-wife trope.
Well to this I can only say the following: tilt's head Huh?
I'll give you this, for a six episode series. WOW does it pack a bloody punch. It's got some amazing tension right from the git go almost leaning in to horror as no one bothers to turn on lights throughout the entire series. The score builds, you expect a shadow to pop out and every once in a while someone does. Little Benjamin does a perfectly solid job of being the stoic Isaac. For his profile Capaldi wasn't as big of a role as I expected but when he was used he was excellent. Jessica Raine was a wonderful leading lady.
Very quickly this transitions from a natural thriller into a supernatural one and then in your head you play the guessing game. Is it ghosts? Is it time travel? Is it Aliens because as The Doctor (or was it Sarah Jane) once implied the others are stupid choices. Something has to explain the things Isaac appears to see and talk to. Something has to explain the flashes of (stronger than) deja vu that Lucy has. Something has to link the schizo grandmother and her son.
Then there's the ending. Honestly as great as episodes 1-5 were. I'd let pretty much anything go with episode 6. I kinda wish there was a second series so we could get a more conclusive ending but what we have here in the terminal side is an ending you'll have to watch two or three times to really let it sink it.
I recommend it. Aside from the lighting where no lamps are on it's a very tight series. It fails to come together in the end. Well I wouldn't say that. We do get answers and those answers are satisfactory. It just fails to do anything with it. Having run out of episodes the series ends before we really can see where it's going next.
I'm not afraid of an open ending. I think The Matrix (1999) and Awake (2012) Season 1 both ended with fantastic open endings. They brought all the elements together. Did something and then showed us where they go next.
Holy balls. I remembered that the trailer for this season had me halted at just how bad the geopolitics was, but I wasn't prepared for it to jump into this inane plot where the government, of the United States of America, is in utter throat-clutching terror of Venezuela gaining nuclear power. It's utterly ridiculous and it jars me out of the verisimilitude of the show.
This a pretty solid example of a movie that starts off the test with a 70% and then just never gets any pros and every con is just unopposed.
On the proside this movie has a plot that works. It's not the most original for sure but it doesn't need to be in order to be a good movie. It's just a solid good plot. The problem with this movie isn't the TERRIBLE CGI animals. That is a problem for sure. Hippos are huge and monstrous and somehow that one in this movie looked small on top of being fake. The acting is subpar but it's perfectly serviceable. The chemistry is average. The choreography is as uninspired as the weapons are silly.
The real problem is these movies follow an established order and the writing here is so bad it doesn't work. You really want Mason and Rina to have sexual chemistry. That it makes sense he fights so hard to protect her. Everyone talks like that's what's happening but we never see it. There wasn't ample time for it and what time they did have didn't work. Rina is a mob wife but she's feisty it's not unreasonable that as someone who works with bad guys all the time might appreciate and respect her for that but we never see it and it's a missed opportunity to justify this movie.
I read something in a review or a blurb that suggested this movie was better when it wasn't trying to be scifi and when I watched the first half of this movie I didn't understand but now having seen the back half. That's just the first of things wrong with this movie. I thought the initial time travel and technology from the future weren't bad. Until they get to Act 3 then it gets.... Marvel bad. Like every Marvel movie ends in a CGI fight scene that's always set at night so they can hide how imperfect the CGI is. It's ridiculous and it ruins the best movies like Black Panther and even Wonder Woman. That's utter disappointment you feel when that final fight in the dark comes. That's how I felt at the end of this movie. The third act is a cartoon. I have my issues with Act 1 and 2 but the end of the movie just ups the silly to ridiculous proportions.
The biggest non ending problem in the movie is the child actor. Walker Scobell is a perfectly fine child actor. I'd totally watch him in other movies but whoever wrote his dialog needs to be punched in the mouth. Repeatedly. Then allowed to heal. Then punched in the mouth again. It's AWFUL. This kid talks like he's Ryan Reynolds. It's literally pure Ryan Reynolds sarcasm and swagger but coming out of a preteen. If Ryan Reynolds talked like that he'd be bullied so hard he wouldn't have made it to adulthood. People write children terrible in general but this is one of the worst examples I've ever seen. It's not cute. It's bloody annoying. No kid has the confidence of an adult Ryan Reynolds especially not a bullied kid who gets literally beat up every day at school. At THIRTEEN? it's just stupid. It drags down the entire movie.
That said if they ever do a movie where Ryan Reynolds gets trapped inside the body of a teenager. This kid has his reel already prepped. He would absolutely destroy that role. He'd kill in some sort of Freaky Friday thing.
Anyway, outside of the kid and the constant grating dialog given to him. I was actually having a solid time. It's no blockbuster but it's a solid action movie with a fun cast and decent special effects and a story you can follow with minimal effort. It's a bit overly simplistic. But hey I don't need every time travel movie to be intricate. It is pretty violent though. For such a "fun" escapism movie they certainly do a lot of murder. Like i mean most of the people don't come off as "evil" but there's just so much casual murder. Didn't really seem necessary but it does let them use their fun disappearing body special effects. This just reminds me of the fact that vampires turn to dust in Buffy the Vampire Slayer because it made everything more tidy when dealing with dead bodies.
I think it's a rather successful remake.
I got nothing.
Haddish looks good with short hair though.
I like her insistence on empathy even though in the end it still only serves the same typical miracle policeman role but at least that makes sense in the role of a detective in a murder mystery rather than a police procedural. She's fun.
A great episode that finally fills in a lot of the dots. It also shows that even before instagram people will misunderstand perception vs reality
Sharon Stone was fun and I missed the answer but to be fair I apparently stepped out of the room and assumed I had enough information. I did not.
Holy wow. I did NOT sign up for this but Kim's Convenience can go toe to toe with The Office (US) for cringe. They be ruining one of my top 3 characters (Janet) with the cringe nonsense she does.
Tucci is excellent a very fun casting choice.
Honestly one of the worst episodes to date and that includes the Kill Bill 'Buried Alive' episode. This episode completely lacks heart. The most interesting part is Monk getting better only to backslide at the end. This entire episode was based on making a great trailer where you think Trudy might be alive. In the end there's no real mystery, the murderer isn't revealed and everything sort of collapses again just to re-traumatize Monk.
Well, as they say it's an ending. Considering how hard they pushed back against the inevitable romance between Shade and Angie this ending was always going to be a disappointment. They should have gotten together at the start of the season not the end of it. Instead this season has been filled with one guest star or another just casually remaking how good they are together.
This episodes features no less than three characters saying the obvious. The mystery featured some classic backwards twists and a half turn culminating in some blocking I can only call slapstick. People get knocked out too often on TV anyway but this was a bit silly in the end half.
Still I'm going to miss this show with it's classic downtown Toronto establishing shots. There's too many unsatisfying story bits in a show where someone won a political election. I'm still headspun from Zoey breaking up with Maz who left the show and then came back for a guest spot and at no point mentioned Zoey. Just a lot of weird decisions but a lot of fun Canadian guest stars. Jules and her boyfriend in the starter relationship that's going all the way just gets left hanging like the first Mrs Shade.
I have issues with cop shows. Mostly in the form of generalized copaganda but I also now have issues in the post BLM era attempts to respond to BLM. The Rookie is one of the few cop shows I've watched consistently and I've had this issue since Season 1. What I will say is that even with that context. This might be one of the best episodes I've seen of this show. Even in terms of copaganda and post BLM response its mostly reasonable. Across pretty much every story line this episode worked. Most impressively I finally care about the Brandon Routh storyline. I definitely give them points for bringing him back as a racist cop who was unfired now THAT is true to life. Even if everyone being against him from all the chiefs to everyone in whatever department Jackson and Nolan are in and yet he's still "just a cop" didn't. In this episode he comes back and it's such a good plotline that it almost makes up for the random "new cop is racist" storyline that preceded it.
These stupid stupid kids. It hurts so much how stupid these kids are. From Arlo the son who texts his father's undercover contact because he assumes... his father cheated on their mother and it's the mistress? Why would you text the mistress? Confront your dad bro, don't catfish her. To Stella the pouty brat who ... to be fair is semi relatable here.
But let's go back to Arlo the idiot son who steals into a secret box and sends out a random "You up" text. We find out this week that he thinks it's a "go-box" aka a buggout bag. Which is so dumb I don't want to spend 100 words on why a change of clothes and a phone does not make a buggout bag make. As someone who lives a country/ranch life he should know better. Does anyone else remember that Arlo was the good son? The one who stayed out of trouble because he missed his daddy. I mean there's room for the kids to swap roles as they process their long lost father coming back into their life but this is silly.
Speaking of the other kid Stella wants Daddy to come to a random soccer game with 7 other people in attendance or else it proves Daddy doesn't love her. I feel like when your Daddy is a cop maybe this is kind of a weird ultimatum.
Micki, who looks way too hot to be a Texas Ranger but honestly carries the role so well I often forget that I have that objection. She's earnest and loyal and she gets to spread her wings in a way that feels real here. Unlike Walker who for reasons unknown goes back undercover and tells NOONE. I understand going UC to settle the issue but why not leave a cryptic message for Micki your partner to solve if something goes wrong and you have to stay UC. Which is exactly what happens.
All this and I forgot to mention the hackiest scene in the episode. When boy-child Arlo somehow tracks down his father who is undercover and confronts him about leaving in the middle of the operation. HOW does he track him? WHY does he choose the middle of clearly something to confront him? Why not use his camera to take pictures and then demand to know what's going on later. That would make more sense. It would keep Arlo as smarter to gather proof. It would allow Walker to actually TALK with the kid (i know crazy idea). But nah he just shows up randomly.
The show has potential to be something new if they can just get these kinks out. Honestly they should do what they did with Supernatural and go monster of the week while we build up some relationships. I love Monster of the Week arcs.
a solid thriller. Sigourney Weaver does a pretty fantastic job as the profiler who got damaged.
There's this copaganda storyline that I think pads the movie too much on top of the fairly solid police drama. Kyra Sedwick, I mean Holly Hunter has this thing about being in control. More specifically her partner is a loose canon. In the opening scene they're doing a training exercise and this killer cop in the making kicks in a door, shouts "Police Freeze" and then IMMEDIATELY fires 15 shots one after another in to a training dummy, then pauses looks at Holly Hunter's MJ and then fires a 16th shot. His shots aren't precise they're all over the place as MJ criticizes rightly it's an insane amount of bullets and given that the subject would have had zero time to react it's... just insane. The guy has a screw loose. This guy is also our love interest. He's the only cop who treats MJ the lady cop like a person he doesn't use terms that even in 1995 were still sexist and old fashioned. He looks at Sigourney's Helen Hudson as someone who is sweet rather than as everyone else, including Helen, sees her, a broken dickish person. I thought the precision setup was going to be left alone. I thought it was just about establishing some reparte. It was effective in setting up MJ as a no-nonsense cop who deserved to be leading the case. It was enough imo. But there's a scene of random violence in Chinatown and the debate from the opening between MJ who thinks you should shoot enough to put the villain down and Ruben who thinks you should shoot enough to make sure they never get up is settled by the movie showing MJ use her technique in a picture perfect manner. She hits a hostage taker right in the shoulder as she said she would, He even drops the gun as she says he would and yet still for reasons that aren't explained don't make any sense and defy logic, this villain who has taken a cop hostage in a police precinct, has taken a bullet to the brachial nerve and is lying down in a police station filled with cops who were watching him can use his other hand reach across his own body pick up the gun just to shoot the hostage anyway. That hostage? Ruben Goetz and the lesson is learned. MJ's methods don't work. It was wrong to be concerned about killing people by accident, about worrying about the investigation, about showing lack of impulse control, about considering whether someone is surrendering, about whether you might get sued for wrongful death, about the karma of killing someone. None of this matters in the movie because she was "wrong" and a cop got killed. No matter that her superiors try to tell her she did the right thing and just got the wrong outcome. That's true but the movie isn't interested in that. No the movie wants our main character to have learned her lesson. This is her punishment for choosing not to kill. Which is why in the final confrontation she doesn't hesitate. She pops one in the shoulder and then keeps shooting, somehow this superman after taking 4 bullets is still capable of aiming his weapon and so we get to see the satisfying headshot with accompanying triumphant score to seal the deal.
Now there's no need to consider the practicality of shooting the subject in the shoulder to aim for hitting a specific nerve cluster. That's mostly movie nonsense the real considering is about restraint. In real life police are trained to shoot someone so they go down. The real restraint is about when to pull out your weapon and when to fire. But the copaganda of this movie is that cops that show restraint lead to dead cops.
Outside of this ridiculously over the top plotline I liked this movie. Sigourney as I said basically killed it. I didn't recognize Holly Hunter doing her best Kyra Sedwick's The Closer imitation (yes I'm aware this movie came out much earlier). I liked both our main female characters and i think even Ruben was interesting. I think more could have been done to enhance their relationships. The sorta gay but never confirmed, but he was attacked in the gay serial killing scene Andy was almost fleshed out enough for a secondary character but I would have liked to see HOW Helen relied on him and what their relationship was like a little more. There's a hint that Ruben is a playboy and MJ suggests he's into young bimbo types which didn't jive with his flirtatious relationship with Helen. You have to really work hard to infer whether Ruben and MJ were more than work partners or if it was just her jealous ex-boyfriend, also a cop in their department, Nico being paranoid. I think there was room to cut out the jealous ex-boyfriend who you work with storyline entirely and that would have left some runtime for flesh out the rest of it. I mean we already have her tough as nails boss Lt. Quinn who barely respects her as a woman. It felt a bit excessive at times to watch Nico try to mark territory too.
Season 3 is when I gave up on this show being subversive. It's laughably corporate. Ridiculously so. For a program that started out about a group of people who were all about the punk attitude and so anti-corporate they were working to take down the biggest corporation. The show has done nothing but suggest they were morally wrong for doing so. I expected the show might suggest how they did it was wrong. I expected the show might suggest things aren't better. I expected the show might push that they failed, but the last thing I expected is the show to constantly undermine the morality of taking down a literal evil corporation. To the point where this season is about restoring Evil Corp without a shred of irony. I realize 2017 wasn't 2020 but protests against racism and the government and corporations weren't uncommon. I don't understand how they can so frustratingly miss the point episode after episode, season after season. I kept expecting someone to realize the deeper layer. I figured there's no way this show is just going to ignore the bigger picture here. This is the season I realized I was waiting for it to happen and that it wouldn't ever happen.
I was absolutely floored for instance when they killed off all the minority characters from the f.society crew in such pointlessly racialized ways. Romero the black guy was killed in a literal drive-by off screen and the two brown characters were framed for terrorism. I believe even in the new f.society gang everyone I recall was white. It's so distractingly awkward it detracts from the general narrative because I keep expecting a deeper level at play. There isn't. It's a remarkably surface level show now that we're past the phase of unreliable narrator twists. Season 2 was a mess of the constant unreliable narrator and the backfill episodes and most of that is gone now so Season 3 is much easier to follow but that doesn't help the major themes and the issues with them.
It's hard to imagine films not giving you 80% plot in their trailers but there was a time when movies like Catfish, The Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield, The Matrix, even Super8 to an extent were advertised based on their mystery. These were films that you didn't talk about until your friends had seen it. Sort of a pre-"spoiler culture" spoiler. Of course in 2010 while social media was around it was a different beast than it is today.
If you're familiar with Catfishing, and it's 2020 now so it'd been about 10 years since this movie popularized the term so you probably are, then you can guess the outline of this movie. It might even seem ridiculous now to make a whole documentary-style film about it when it's now the storyline of b-lines in animated sitcoms or the backstory of a character in a reality show about love.
But while misrepresenting yourself online wasn't new in 2010. Catfish represented a sort of inflection point the basic understanding of how far someone would be willing to go both to engage with someone and to find out who they are, really.
The movie was compelling at the time. Both in ways that probably hold up and in ways that would probably be offensive now. Which isn't to say the movie itself is offensive. It's always hard to remember the details that far back but the things you enjoyed about watching this salacious story aren't necessarily the things you would enjoy in a more modern setting.
This was a rather dull episode as far as The Boys goes. It had an explosive ending but that's about it. As always it's a pleasure to see John Noble but his tough accent was a bit weak less subtle than his normal work. But we're probably not going to see a lot of him anyway. Shame because his acting itself was fine.
It was subtle. It was nuanced. It was sympathetic. THIS was a fantastic episode. Unfortunately I'm not convinced the show as a whole is worthy of it. Man GaTa is a first time actor? He put it all on the line here and nailed it. I think GaTa is a more full character than Dicky in ONE episode.
This movie is way more emotional and well done than even I remember. It's chilling how fair they are to all the women in this movie. It's emotional, it's heart felt, people make mistakes and act out but never for no reason. Columbus never lets you care so much for Isabel that you lose all emotion towards Jackie. And vice versa. All of this is culminated in a single piece of dialog and even hearing that sentence "My fear is she won't" is enough to make you cry. This is how you turn a movie about adversaries into something that shows both sides for what they really are.
Just a beautiful film
I still hate Red/Blue Harley. I much prefer Red/Black. That said I like her costuming MUCH better in this movie than Suicide Sqaud. Somehow between the costuming and the framing there's a LOT less "Look how sexy and skimpy Margot Robbie is dressed like a slutty Harley Quinn". I'd only seen one teaser video and I thought Harley looked stupid in her outfit. However on screen it worked a lot better than I thought it would. A lot of my biggest issues with the movie are weird shots and framing and the uninspired soundtrack. I mean I like Barracuda but I wish the score had more signature to it. Just generic pump up music and generic heartfelt music etc etc etc. The soundtrack need not be filled with covers of songs done better when they aren't slowed down RnB remixes or acoustic pop remixes. The James Brown joint (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H77fRz1rybs) was okay but honestly why not go full girl power out there. Why not give me a Spice Girls cover like maybe "Viva Forever". That would be interesting and in a movie with (level of violence) a little girl getting her face sliced and then ripped off maybe some of that creative energy could be spared to the music choices. I mean I hate Ariana Grande but women love her maybe a version of "Dangerous Woman" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnyBfSXdcTQ) would have been more fun and interesting or maybe Amy Winehouse who has choice jams beyond "Rehab" such as "You Sent Me Flying" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfZj2h1t0Jc) or "I Heard Love is Blind" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMM3HqKw9JA) and she has tons of club remixes for the fight scene rehash.
But there are inspired sequences in Birds of Prey like when Harley breaks into Gotham PD. It's a fun romp even if some of the physics completely break verisimilitude. The Breakup with Joker was great. Not seeing Joker was fine, and then roller derby. I liked how no one at roller derby really cared about Harley's level of violence. They just considered her weak for going back with Joker so many times. The eponymous Birds of Prey don't really have the character work that Harley has but they don't really need it.
When Huntress came on screen i didn't like her. I wasn't feeling this dark comedy take on Huntress but very soon I was flipped on that as well. Rosie Perez is still cute. Ali Wong was fine. I still don't see Ewan McGregor, man that guy's face has changed a lot. But everyone is good. The character are fun. The ones I complain about are the guys actually Zsasz was kinda odd, Black Mask is still confusing as a character. I don't know him, I don't understand why he has his mask or when he wears it. I thought it might be related to his gloves but we never really learn. Harley was mostly good. I think her best fight scene was when she had a bat though. That was some creative, interesting fighting that felt like Harley's character. It fit. I wish it was edited better with longer and/or wider shots. But uninspired fight scenes are a staples of action movies now and Harley Quinn is of no particular exception to this.
The funniest part of the movie was everyone staying to the end credits scene to get trolled. It was beautiful. The guy in front of me was literally upset "I wasted 3 minutes of my life for that". I say stay for it though just for the giggles. Birds of Prey is something the DC universe needs more of. Fun. It's dumb, there's scenes that don't make any sense. Bad guys standing around waiting to be hit but in the end.. it's just got fun. Genuine fun like Wonder Woman had genuine sincerity (as opposed to constant sarcasm). Well worth the price of admission even if it doesn't have Oracle.
annnd wow. Evil seals it's dominance over the utterly laughable Prodigal Son which actually had a great winter finale but Evil's winter finale manages to surpass it even with dumb characters like Ben Shakir's scoffing at the well known dancing epidemic. Not only is that one of the most well known examples of mass hysteria it's something a skeptic like him should be very comfortable with he should know it as much as he knows all about how mold contamination can change behaviour. Also Kristen finds her kids singing the creepy song and tries to get them to sing a different song and the one she picks off the top of her head is Good King Wenceslas? Really? For the random girls at the school she picked Jingle Bells. She could have picked Deck the Halls or We Wish You a Merry Christmas or any number of Christmas songs that kids might enjoy.
Still in spite of those two very very stupid moments there's a lot that goes here that works so well. Most of that goes to the choral girls. Their harmonizing was pitch perfect not too enthusiastic and not too apathetic. Just enough to disturb. Between the last episode and this episode it's possibly becoming clear they're going to lean too much on Michael Emerson. I mean he's a great actor to lean on but I had hoped for more of this mythology of The Sixty. I was expecting other demonic influences to be responsible for the last two events and the fact that he's was responsible kinda makes me feel like they're pulling another Lost where he went from a one time bit character to the most important character in the show strictly on the strength of how great an actor he is and how much the audience loved him.
So here's the spoiler question: the voice on the tape in the teenage range was Leland right? The girls never met or barely met Leland. Does this mean that if they hear his voice again that they'll recognize him as the voice from the Melindaz Challenge video?
It's a small thing but the fact that the girls don't eat salads and just subsist on fries was kinda compelling the myth of women who don't eat and are perennially on diets is pernicious it's always good to see that taken down.
