Review by Jordy
VIP8Denis Villeneuve is the man!
There’s only one word that came into my mind after watching it: finally.Finally, a blockbuster that isn’t afraid to be primarily driven by drama and tension, and doesn’t undercut its own tone by throwing in a joke every 30 seconds.
Finally, a blockbuster that puts actual effort in its cinematography, and doesn’t have a bland or calculated colour palette.
Finally, a blockbuster with a story that has actual substance and themes, and doesn’t rely on intertextual references or nostalgia to create a fake sheen of depth.
Finally, a blockbuster that doesn’t pander to China by having big, loud and overblown action sequences, but relies on practical and grounded spectacle instead (it has big sand worms, you really don’t need to throw anything at the screen besides that).
Finally, a blockbuster that actually feels big, because it isn’t primarily shot in close ups, or on a sound stage.
And of course: finally, a blockbuster that isn’t a fucking prequel, sequel, or connected to an already established IP somehow.(Yeah, I know Tenet did those things as well, but I couldn’t get into that because the characters were so flat and uninteresting).
This just checks all the boxes. An engaging story with subtext, very well set up characters, great acting (like James Gunn, Villeneuve's great at accentuating the strengths of limited actors like Dave Bautista and Jason Momoa), spectecular visuals and art design (desaturated but not in an ugly washed out way), pacing (slow but it never drags), directing, one of Hans Zimmer’s best scores: it’s all here.
I only have one real criticism: there’s too much exposition, especially in the first half.
It can occasionally hold your hand by referencing things that have already been established previously, and some scenes of characters explaining stuff to each other could’ve been conveyed more visually.
Other than that, it’s easily one of the best films of the year.
I’ve seen some people critiquing it for being incomplete, which is true, but this isn’t just a set up for a future film.
It feels like a whole meal, there are pay offs in this, and the characters progress (even if, yes, their arcs are still incomplete).8.5/10
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finally, a blockbuster that isn’t a fucking prequel, sequel, or connected to an already established IP somehow.
nobody tell him.
Not a bad show by any means but if I'm honest I liked WandaVision more. I feel like I am missing a lot of background.
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@paulvincent83 I totally understand your point. But I only remember very basic things from the movies and when they talk about stuff here I don't think I get everything. And they seem to be drawing from the comics which I don't know at all. That's not the shows fault. And you're right, this and WandaVision are two different animals. Wanda just had me more intrigued.
Nevertheless I will continue watching. Maybe everything falls into place at the end.
Holy hell, what did I just watch?
Did this women escape from a mental hospital, leave a trail of dead bodies and be like 'oh let me just pull out my pussy pass' to get out of jail free?
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@htpcmac what are you talking about? There was MAYBE one dead body among the guards as she left the mental hospital. At no point did anyone let her go. The guards were all taken out by Adrian at the front door she used her gun to stop the guards from approaching and she snuck into a car after the driver got out because he was just in an accident. No one gave her anything. At best one of the guards saw her and told her to stay down but even he didn't let her go he was also the guard who saw two other guys knocked out when she was 15 ft away from them. Hence why he was looking for someone while she was saying "He's right behind you". Watch it again it's actually a pretty low body count film. All those guards were knocked out and not killed.
She got freed from jail more permanently not because of her gender but because she found and killed "the real killer" aka Todd as far as the justice system proved. The suit with Todd in it plus what the guards saw and what James and Sydney saw means she has reasonable doubt as to her guilt. Even if some of the guards would have thought Cecilia attacked them. A majority of them would have seen that she couldn't have attacked any of them. At best she could be guilty of resisting arrest, escaping prison and brandishing a weapon all of which are negligible and have mitigating circumstances in movie logic.
The real question is why does a secure facility (all the policemen) have such an easy means of exit. The entire jailed sequence I almost considered that he wasn't there because he would have been locked in with her since he couldn't escape. Not to mention all the human needs. Even a minimum security psychiatric care facility should have been harder to escape from without an ID badge or something.
I’m still confused, is the cp his son’s or not? Maybe i missed something, the wife seems to make it even more confusing and makes it leave towards it being for their son . From what i remember it should be for the guy at the church that gave him the drive. Is it another drive? That would be one hell of a coincidence.
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@j_345 The drive and the contents belongs to Edgar the church member. Vicar Harry took the drive from him and kept it. Apparently THIS is the stuff his mother was berating him for.
When Harry realized his son gave the teacher the flash drive he said basically "oops it's porn" and the kid played along to try to take the fall for Harry "Oh that's my porn I'm a growing boy lol" not realizing what kind of porn it was.
What's unclear so far here is how much Harry and his wife knew about the situation. It SEEMS like they knew Edgar had a porn issue which is why as a vicar's wife she might be aware that Edgar has an issue with pornography. It's unclear whether or not they knew it was a c porn issue though it's clear if they didn't know before Harry told her now.
My confusion is why Janice would be so quick to presume that the porn was Ben's not just because he said it jokingly but she refused to believe a literal vicar when he tried to say it belonged to a parishioner. Do they not have the Seal of the Confessional in the UK? Priests keep secrets. It's what they do.
Okay, well that was confusing. The most notable storyline in this episode is the one involving the maths tutor, well specifically the maths tutor and the vicar.
Good lord woman why are you so.... and I struggle to find another word for this but stupid. Just one stupid moment flipped the entire path of the story for a character who honestly was amazing before then.
When you know someone so well why would make the presumptions she makes. Being shocked at CP I get. That's awful stuff I can't imagine. But assuming that Ben your math student is gleefully and casually taking ownership of it is ridiculous. The worst part is that in spite of the fact that his father is a vicar she can't imagine any other outcome than it's Ben's "He told me from his own mouth". Now Harry is also a moron for being unable to explain a simple concept like "it belongs to a parish member" without going through three fumbles. Just explain. How this ended up with her bleeding in your basement is beyond belief.
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@wolfkin you explained this so well, I went on a crazy rant i feel like lol. I feel the exact same. I dont want to sit here and blame Janice because she’s ultimately the victim here but her unwillingness to trust people or even like people got herself into more trouble than she ever needed to be. Theres no way to explain what Janice is without sounded like we are victim blaming so ill just leave it at shes a handful.
Then the Priest is an idiot for allowing her to bully him into submission, when all he had to do was call edgar and say something along the lines of “hey can you come by the church to pick up your harddrive because i dont want my son or wife to find it” something like that or any other way to get him to admit it was his.
Man, I hate this show for making me cry in every single episode... But that's about it when it comes to hating this show. Pretty much everything else about it is great! This episode was no exception. We still don't know who's behind the God account but, quite honestly, I don't really want to know. I like the whole mystery about it. I like having Miles, Cara and Rakesh helping people every week. They have a good thing going on, there. If you think about it, once they figure out the "who" and "why" behind the God account, the show loses its purpose. So either they reveal that in a series finale or they have to get really creative to keep the show going on after that. With that in mind, let's see what the season finale coming up next has in store for us...
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@wolfkin I've never watched Person of Interest, but Prison Break had a superb first season and a truckload of appalling ones after that (with the promise of yet another one in the works, yay...). I honestly can't see how this show will go on after revealing the origin of the God account, the whole premise will fall flat after that. So, best case scenario, this will be a one season show.
6.9/10. This was a very confused episode, that was trying to do a lot of good things, but never really manages to get them off the ground due to, at times, incoherent plotting or just plain dumb logic. Let's go through them!
Clare and Dr. Burstein managing to fix Luke was a fairly tense scene...that didn't make much sense. I mean, to some degree you have to go with comic book logic and accept the technobabble, but why heat was necessary to make Luke's skin more pliable, when that level of heat was what made his skin strong in the first place, is fairly puzzling. Still, the show replicated the sort of ER hecticness of a patient flatlining to keep the intensity of the scene up, so you can kind of let them get away with it.
But that's not the only piece of dumb logic in the episode. When Diamonback is trying to frame Luke, and get him tarred as copkiller, it's pretty ridiculous that he himself goes out in a hoodie and uses some superpowered punch thing to do it. The reveal of his shared biology with Luke means there's the grain of a good idea there, but the two don't really look alike, in build or in their facial structure, and Diamondback yelling out "I'm Luke Cage!" just seemed humorous. Maybe you can cut the show some slack for trying to provide a commentary on the problems with cross-racial eye-witness identification, but I'm not sure I give the show credit for such headiness, and either way, it doesn't really work within the logic of the show.
But it works flawlessly, to where Misty is the only person who seems to doubt that Luke was the one who punched that nice cop to death. What, however, is her argument beyond the fact that she just doesn't think Luke would do that (despite the fact that there's dashcam footage of him punching other cops across the block when feeling cornered)? This assailant was wearing a backpack. Luke doesn't wear a backpack! This case is airtight! It's not like Luke could have just put on a backpack for some reason! Yet again, the show tries and fails to show that Misty is a sharp detective. It knows how it wants to present her, but doesn't have the writing to actually demonstrate that she's good at her job beyond the "visualize the crime scene" ability.
Of course we jump back to Dr. Burstein's barn, where Luke uses the laptop to discover that Reva was in on the whole thing. What should be a piercing emotional reveal falls flat due to Mike Colter's acting, which continues to be not quite enough at heightened moments like these. It's an interesting story, feeling betrayed by the one person who gave you hope in a dark place, but Colter can't really sell the moment. His anger and destruction of Burstein's lab/barn feels more like a plot save than a canny narrative choice. it's supposed to be cathartic and feel like justice in Luke preventing someone else from going through what he's been through, but it's shortsighted since he may need those facilities again if he gets shot once more.
It also leads to more dull non-chemistry between Luke and Clare that doesn't really add up to anything but Luke going back to visit his dad's old church in Georgia. I really like the way the scene is shot and edited -- with smooth transitions between the past and the present as Luke stares at the dilapidated chapel and remembers what happened when he was a kid -- but the reveals are underwhelming. There's a fairly direct Isaac and Ishamel parallel going on, and I can I appreciate that as thematic subtext to the issues between Luke and Diamondback, but the show does a pretty weak job at showing how young Luke could have missed his Dad having an affair with Diamondback's mom, while adult Luke can put the pieces together. The things he remembers aren't exactly subtle, and while you can handwave it with Luke having repressed the memories until the site of his dad's church made them all flood back, it seems very strange that he wouldn't have put this together sooner.
Things get dumber still after the cops start beating around the block trying to get info on where Luke is. Again, I like what the show is trying to do here. There is a The Wire-esque quality of these scenes of cops being angry at the loss of one of their own, and taking it out on the streets, hassling corner boys and being needlessly rough. That side of things rings true and feels motivated, even if, again, everyone feels like a sucker for falling for Diamondback's ruse so easily. The cop interrogating Little Lonnie and going too far feels like a bit much, a bit too calculated to tug on your heartstrings, but it works for what the show's going for.
The problem is that since Mariah is being strongarmed by Diamondback to try to sell the public on Luke Cage and powered people generally as a threat, the show has to tie her pitch for the police department buying superpowered weapons from Diamondback to the cops beating up this kid, and it doesn't really add up. There's a strange "the cops abused their power, so we should give them really powerful weapons" logic that doesn't make any sense, but for this episode in particular, you just kind of have to go with the flow and accept that nothing makes sense and the story's just going where it needs to go regardless of the demands of basic logic.
So of course, Luke returns to Harlem (this whole thing seemed to happen very quick, how long did his trip and curing take and visit home take?) and Misty is after Diamondback at Harlem's Paradise and Luke jumps into save her as we hit a cliffhanger. Why the hell not? It's vaguely action-y, and it gives us some cool scenes of Mariah riling up the crowd and showing herself as an expert manipulator and showman even when the pitch makes no sense. With Alfre Woodard's delivery, I almost believed it.
That's the big problem though. This show wants to traffic in real life tensions between police and the black community. It wants to play in the realism of its setting and the genuine issues facing the people of Harlem and similar urban areas. But it has to marry all of that with an out there comic book storyline, involving secret brothers, magic labs in barns, and elaborate schemes to sell superguns. The result is something that often feels very stitched together and not really doing justice to either side of the equation. You can employ comic book logic the whole way through, or you can try to ascribe for something approaching realism, but finding the balance is a tricky business, and it's something that all of Marvel's Netflix shows have struggled with to some degree. Luke Cage in particular seems stuck in the middle, with no clear idea on how to reconcile its hardscrabble atmosphere and its superhero roots.
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@andrewbloom What your describing is about a 5/10 or maybe a 6/10 episode and that's on a hard 10 point scale not the 100 point scale you use. You present a well thought out review which I liked. It was compelling. I agree with some but not all of it. However your score of nearly 7 (69/100) I think doesn't match up to what I read. That score is way too high for your thoughts. That's all. Carry on.
Review by wolfkin
Oh man the copaganda is strong with this one. It hit me pretty hard in this episode. Had a bit of whiplash. I like Selena as a character but why is she allowed to be so close to this case? I think her entire character is written to be "gets too close to the case and flips out in appropriately so everyone can dress her down". It's silly. I don't blame this on the actress. Heck I don't even blame it on Selena. I blame it on everyone else who keeps letting her participate. It's ridiculous from the times she goes "I can handle whatever it is... tell me" and then right after finding out goes "NO... no... you're wrong". And then everyone dresses her down like "Hey Officer Juarez, be objective". Ironically they aren't being objective they're wildly speculating. Cops who do this are the problem IRL. But because it's TV their wild speculation is 100% on the mark with no errors. Her problem isn't not being objective. It's being emotional. Openly emotional. You could have an argument about the sexism in that scene but generally I don't think The Rookie has as big a problem in that area.
I like how this is the second cop show this week where I've seen cops threaten someone with rape. I don't know what else "or do you remember what it's like to be a pedophile behind bars" is supposed to mean. Oh maybe it just means assault. That's ... better?
This show and other cop shows want you to think if you just talk to cops and you're empathetic enough cops will believe the words coming out of your mouth. Never talk to the police more than required. Never volunteer information. Always get a lawyer. Cops will use what happens on TV to trick you. On TV the cops will just ask you to talk to them and just tell them real quick and they'll let you go and find the real guy. In real life if you say anything that can be used out of context to make YOU look like the bad guy they'll just do that. It's easier and they don't have to hunt down someone they might or might not find. After all cops love to talk about how many crimes they solve. Doesn't matter if they solve it correctly. That number doesn't get publicized. Cops will convince you that you don't need a lawyer and if you talk now it won't be as bad for you. It will be as bad for you. They're under zero obligation to treat you better because you were cooperative. That's just something cops say they do on TV. Like asking suspects to just confess.... because?
The cops find a convicted pedophile they're legally allowed to harass any time they want for zero reason (and yes that's harassment but because it's a pedophile we're supposed to think "well good. He deserved it. They need this power to harass scum like that" but IRL this get used against a single mother with two kids working three jobs who doesn't even have time to get sexually assaulted by a PO today but hey whatever). They find this guy. He's super cagey. He has mementos of the missing child. Then, when they bring him in, he acts shocked and they stop thinking he might be responsible. Now they stop looking at him for the crime because it has to be the stand-up cop who has no evidence against him. Nah couldn't be the pedo where the only evidence was found. And of course again, because it's TV, there is a super tight conspiracy where a cop does everything right and frames someone while committing horrific crimes repeatedly every year like a criminal mastermind. That's way more plausible than the guy who did it repeatedly and shows zero remorse did it again. The hidden message of this portion is that cop guts are how policework should be done. The cop suspected another cop based on gut instinct. The cop let go of the creepy man based on gut instinct. Honestly the irony of "We can't arrest him. That starts a 72 hour clock after which we have to let him go if we don't have a charge" and then they solve the mystery and find the girl in like 5 hours just baffles me. Cops do this stuff all the time. But because it's a fellow cop he "knows all the procedures". Cops don't have special procedures. Cops don't even have good procedures. What they have is money and numbers. LAPD Patrol isn't some silent hero-team doing elite work on the streets that no one appreciates. They do what they want, when they want and they have the legal authority and weaponry to get away with anything. On top of all the random legal corruption and illegal corruption, there are semi-organized gangs within law enforcement and no one has the authority or will to do anything about it. They rape, they murder, they kill pets, they steal but The Rookie wants me to buy that one of the most infamous beats in the nation dresses down their rookies for being "not being objective".
And that final showdown? I don't know what I supposed to take from this except that cops want to kill you. Because there's no reason to breach an empty abandoned house RIGHT AFTER the only hostage was freed. They keep talking about wondering if they could have talked him down and whether it was necessary and honestly. It wasn't. There was no rush. No urgency. no concern and yet they ran in as soon as possible. Who was he a danger to? Himself? Well lucky he didn't kill himself then. Oh he was suicidal guess we should bum rush him. And this is how they treat one of their own.
And Officer Juarez forgiving her mother saying it wasn't her fault it was her sickness when two episodes ago she was saying functionally how dare her mother blame this on her sickness and it was her fault. Pick a lane sugar (I'm trying to pick a pejorative to her age not her gender), either you understand addiction is a disease or you don't. You don't get to pick and choose when you care. More specifically you don't get to pick and choose and then dress down everyone else for not understanding when your understanding is conditional. You just know before this arc started she would have dressed down anyone just like every other TV cop who refused addiction as a disease. I mean how the mighty have fallen seeing Wesley talk about how he can "sell" a scenario where one person did the crime and not the other one in spite of zero evidence is gross. It's exactly the kind of prosecutorial overreach that Wesley used to talk about when his character was introduced. It's entirely the sort of thing that leads to people getting convicted for crimes they didn't do.
There are far too many people in /r/TheRookie who seem to love Schmitty. He's an awful character but he is everyone's favorite incompetent does something effectively and efficiently.
In another show these wouldn't be a big deal. Cop shows are cop shows and they're lies from the opening credits to closing credits. Everything about them is a lie from how much they hate IA, to how cops will lie to other cops about whether they're being investigated, to how cops will sit across from you in an interrogation room, to how cops won't lie and make up evidence to get you to convict yourself. We all know these are laws and every cop show since the dawn of the cop show in the 60s or 70s has been feeding us this lie to the point where too many people don't understand it as a lie until they're faced with the reality.
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Just sit and wait it out?
Yes. That's my point. It's an abandoned building. not a maze. There's no secret tunnel exit. They have plenty of time and man power to just stand watch at the exits. Call in a hostage negotiator and get him to come out alive. Because that's part of their job. To get the criminals in jail ALIVE. Forcing a stand-off is stupid. They knew it was a cop. They knew he let go of the only person in the house. They knew the cop might be emotionally unstable. There's no reason not to consider he might take "the easy way out" as it's often put in cop shows when criminals self-terminate.
As for the other bit. I maintain I'm right and you're wrong but that's because I don't think you understand what I was saying. Shock and surprise don't have any thing to do with what I'm referring to.
I’m still confused, is the cp his son’s or not? Maybe i missed something, the wife seems to make it even more confusing and makes it leave towards it being for their son . From what i remember it should be for the guy at the church that gave him the drive. Is it another drive? That would be one hell of a coincidence.
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@wolfkin My confusion is why the vicar brought the drive home and just casually threw in a bowl with his keys. Even if he doesn't know what type of porn is on the drive, he shouldn't have been so casual about it!
Decent actors, acting poorly, terrible dialogue, terrible sound track and audio effects, terrible stunts and visual effects. Must be embarrassing for David Rodriguez to screw up so badly. He should definitely look for a different line of work. I’m sure the actors and the crew hate him for adding such crap to their resumes. Some scenes are so bad they seem like spoofs. The inception folding city scapes are particularly hilarious. It starts off bad and gets worse and worse… I was very tempted to turn it off at minute 110 and I should have. The end is mind bogglingly pathetic. They actually have a final “twist” that would make you think there could be a sequel lol. How is this movie even possible… didn’t anyone read the script before agreeing to participate?
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@wolfkin darn it I got the time wrong! I’m definitely not watching it again to fix it lol.
People have all sorts of thoughts on what it means that so many protagonists are white guys who are serial killers, drug dealers and thieves but such as it is I do enjoy the occasional serial killer show. As long as it's more thriller than horror of course. It's part of why I couldn't stomach Hannibal. I think I made it two seasons of that torture porn television and I just didn't want to go back for the final season. Anyway my point is there's a lot that I could enjoy about Prodigal Son. The premise of the son of a serial killer worried he might be a psychopath and using his father as.. well as a Hannibal to solve crimes is compelling. It's why I watched the show in the first place. I'm already in a positive place and that makes me willing to overlook things I don't even notice until I read negative reviews.
But there's something odd about the plot that no one in the show is pointing out. This is a live action television show set in a contemporary era. If there is some part of the premise that doesn't make sense you're supposed to highlight it or explain it. Instead the show ignores it. Bright is the son of The Surgeon. Now Bright's mother I'm pretty sure was Bright's mother on Everwood but that's not cogent to my point. My point is that The Surgeon was arrested and locked up in a 3 sided jail. That's when they put you in a cage attached to a wall. It's a ridiculous thing that I'm pretty sure never happens in real life but on TV and Movies happens all the time. This way you can enter the room and see that inside the room they're in another cage. The Surgeon is very clearly under guard in his cage when Bright is a little boy. But in the present we learn he performs surgery on the black market. Which doesn't make sense. Either he's locked up or he's performing black market surgery. How is he using black market money to improve his cell when that's not a thing that would be allowed. It's not even presented in the show as something we're going to learn. It's presented as just another thing. It's ridiculous.
The rest of the show is tolerable. The main lead is a weird looking white guy with light eyes and the ugliest haircut you can imagine. The father is a more handsome and compelling character. Lou Diamond Phillips is great as always and we have a guy and girl cop to fill out the "work" cast. She's gonna be the Jekyl and he's going to be the Hyde. It's expected, it's forumlaic, it's what I'm here for. Honestly there's not a lot to go on in this first episode to judge the path of the series. But that weird gap in logic really stands out. Still you need three episodes to judge and a pilot is often workshopped so much it's rare to be able to use it to judge.
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@wolfkin The part of your review describing hannibal made me laugh out loud. Torture porn television is decently apt. Oh and fyi the "worst" as you may call it, isn't even in the first two seasons so.....
Review by wolfkin
One of the most easily enjoyable Spike Lee movies. This isn't as gritty and dark as Bamboozled though it does borrow a lot from it. There are a multitude of reasons why I've had this waiting to be watched mostly because I'm never sure if I wanted to have to watch yet another movie with so much racism but this was much more palatable than a typical period piece. The comedy isn't over the top as it shouldn't be. The racist characters did their job without chewing up the scene the way I expected with all the talk about Toby McGuire's David Duke (and seeing Duke at the end of the movie. I can see now that Toby does make a decent fit).
From a narrative perspective, this is everything the trailer promised it would be. A black cop signs up for the Klan and when he needs to meet in person a white Jewish cop pretends to be him. One of the big things that arise in that situation is that they don't sound the same. But even though phones were much more clear in the 70s it's both understandable and laughable that this doesn't really come up. They infiltrate and try to stall out Klan activities and keep getting accepted deeper and deeper into the hierarchy.
What little I've heard in terms of reviews have focused on the ending which if you've seen Bamboozled you can prepare yourself for. A lot of people call it ham-fisted. I'll agree it's not subtle. Some will say it was unnecessary and I'll disagree. I think that ending footage is what will elevate the movie out of it's time. It seems cheesy and overdone now but in 10 or even 5 years from now that's the sort of thing that will have more punch. I grew up watching Merry Melodies and all those classic cartoons and seeing them at the end of Bamboozled was the talk of the movie for me and my friends when we walked out of the theatre. America is a country under white power and white power is something that always finds a way to suggest racism presented as bad as it was is disingenuous. "It was bad but not as bad as all that" and while it's not a perfectly encapsulated here as it was in Bamboozled the end scene does serve the purpose of showing viewers later on that yes, it was as bad as we said it was.
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@wolfkin Just read your comment, and I watched this movie while the Minneapolis riots are still gripping the US - what you said about the final sequence elevating the movie are so accurate (just 2 years and not 5, but still...)
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.
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@wolfkin so much talk about music, IN A MOVIE. I literally don't care for music in films or shows. So I can't understand your points at all. Other than that, a nice movie but pretty forgettable, like suicide squad.
It's not enough that they're in the quarantine. But EVERYTHING has to go wrong. Not just that they had a pregnant woman but she has to give birth then and there.. not just that but the baby isn't angled right not just that but after the cesarian that baby is suffering AND the mother is suffering. It's just .. frankly it's just ridiculous. Because that's just one of the maybe 5 medical plotlines going on in this episode.
And on this episode of Shawn is the worst doctor: I thought the lightbulb thing was stupid last episode but it turns out he literally meant the lightbulb AND the yelling. Dude if you're an ER doctor and yelling is going to throw you off your game. Why are you an ER doctor? This doesn't make sense. There's been plenty of yelling before and he's not going thought an emotional crisis. As sad as it is I actually found the lightbulb messing with him more credible than the yelling. Which is doubly funny because one of the plotlines to this episode is that Shawn isn't a delicate flower and you don't have to treat him with kid gloves.
However in contrast to the last episode Edit: almost nobody dies. Which is whatever. Maybe having 5 stories going on at once actually helped because there was less room for stupid nonsense you typically see in a show of this budget.
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@wolfkin The father donating marrow died . . .
Man, I hate this show for making me cry in every single episode... But that's about it when it comes to hating this show. Pretty much everything else about it is great! This episode was no exception. We still don't know who's behind the God account but, quite honestly, I don't really want to know. I like the whole mystery about it. I like having Miles, Cara and Rakesh helping people every week. They have a good thing going on, there. If you think about it, once they figure out the "who" and "why" behind the God account, the show loses its purpose. So either they reveal that in a series finale or they have to get really creative to keep the show going on after that. With that in mind, let's see what the season finale coming up next has in store for us...
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@wolfkin my short attention span prevents me from reading walls of text (also because I was about to go to sleep when I was notified about this). But I promise I'll keep the e-mail notification in my inbox to read your comment some other time. Please don't take this wrong :)
6.9/10. This was a very confused episode, that was trying to do a lot of good things, but never really manages to get them off the ground due to, at times, incoherent plotting or just plain dumb logic. Let's go through them!
Clare and Dr. Burstein managing to fix Luke was a fairly tense scene...that didn't make much sense. I mean, to some degree you have to go with comic book logic and accept the technobabble, but why heat was necessary to make Luke's skin more pliable, when that level of heat was what made his skin strong in the first place, is fairly puzzling. Still, the show replicated the sort of ER hecticness of a patient flatlining to keep the intensity of the scene up, so you can kind of let them get away with it.
But that's not the only piece of dumb logic in the episode. When Diamonback is trying to frame Luke, and get him tarred as copkiller, it's pretty ridiculous that he himself goes out in a hoodie and uses some superpowered punch thing to do it. The reveal of his shared biology with Luke means there's the grain of a good idea there, but the two don't really look alike, in build or in their facial structure, and Diamondback yelling out "I'm Luke Cage!" just seemed humorous. Maybe you can cut the show some slack for trying to provide a commentary on the problems with cross-racial eye-witness identification, but I'm not sure I give the show credit for such headiness, and either way, it doesn't really work within the logic of the show.
But it works flawlessly, to where Misty is the only person who seems to doubt that Luke was the one who punched that nice cop to death. What, however, is her argument beyond the fact that she just doesn't think Luke would do that (despite the fact that there's dashcam footage of him punching other cops across the block when feeling cornered)? This assailant was wearing a backpack. Luke doesn't wear a backpack! This case is airtight! It's not like Luke could have just put on a backpack for some reason! Yet again, the show tries and fails to show that Misty is a sharp detective. It knows how it wants to present her, but doesn't have the writing to actually demonstrate that she's good at her job beyond the "visualize the crime scene" ability.
Of course we jump back to Dr. Burstein's barn, where Luke uses the laptop to discover that Reva was in on the whole thing. What should be a piercing emotional reveal falls flat due to Mike Colter's acting, which continues to be not quite enough at heightened moments like these. It's an interesting story, feeling betrayed by the one person who gave you hope in a dark place, but Colter can't really sell the moment. His anger and destruction of Burstein's lab/barn feels more like a plot save than a canny narrative choice. it's supposed to be cathartic and feel like justice in Luke preventing someone else from going through what he's been through, but it's shortsighted since he may need those facilities again if he gets shot once more.
It also leads to more dull non-chemistry between Luke and Clare that doesn't really add up to anything but Luke going back to visit his dad's old church in Georgia. I really like the way the scene is shot and edited -- with smooth transitions between the past and the present as Luke stares at the dilapidated chapel and remembers what happened when he was a kid -- but the reveals are underwhelming. There's a fairly direct Isaac and Ishamel parallel going on, and I can I appreciate that as thematic subtext to the issues between Luke and Diamondback, but the show does a pretty weak job at showing how young Luke could have missed his Dad having an affair with Diamondback's mom, while adult Luke can put the pieces together. The things he remembers aren't exactly subtle, and while you can handwave it with Luke having repressed the memories until the site of his dad's church made them all flood back, it seems very strange that he wouldn't have put this together sooner.
Things get dumber still after the cops start beating around the block trying to get info on where Luke is. Again, I like what the show is trying to do here. There is a The Wire-esque quality of these scenes of cops being angry at the loss of one of their own, and taking it out on the streets, hassling corner boys and being needlessly rough. That side of things rings true and feels motivated, even if, again, everyone feels like a sucker for falling for Diamondback's ruse so easily. The cop interrogating Little Lonnie and going too far feels like a bit much, a bit too calculated to tug on your heartstrings, but it works for what the show's going for.
The problem is that since Mariah is being strongarmed by Diamondback to try to sell the public on Luke Cage and powered people generally as a threat, the show has to tie her pitch for the police department buying superpowered weapons from Diamondback to the cops beating up this kid, and it doesn't really add up. There's a strange "the cops abused their power, so we should give them really powerful weapons" logic that doesn't make any sense, but for this episode in particular, you just kind of have to go with the flow and accept that nothing makes sense and the story's just going where it needs to go regardless of the demands of basic logic.
So of course, Luke returns to Harlem (this whole thing seemed to happen very quick, how long did his trip and curing take and visit home take?) and Misty is after Diamondback at Harlem's Paradise and Luke jumps into save her as we hit a cliffhanger. Why the hell not? It's vaguely action-y, and it gives us some cool scenes of Mariah riling up the crowd and showing herself as an expert manipulator and showman even when the pitch makes no sense. With Alfre Woodard's delivery, I almost believed it.
That's the big problem though. This show wants to traffic in real life tensions between police and the black community. It wants to play in the realism of its setting and the genuine issues facing the people of Harlem and similar urban areas. But it has to marry all of that with an out there comic book storyline, involving secret brothers, magic labs in barns, and elaborate schemes to sell superguns. The result is something that often feels very stitched together and not really doing justice to either side of the equation. You can employ comic book logic the whole way through, or you can try to ascribe for something approaching realism, but finding the balance is a tricky business, and it's something that all of Marvel's Netflix shows have struggled with to some degree. Luke Cage in particular seems stuck in the middle, with no clear idea on how to reconcile its hardscrabble atmosphere and its superhero roots.
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@wolfkin I have to admit, I struggle with translating my thoughts on an episode or movie into a raw number, particularly for a show like Luke Cage where I may think an episode was fine immediately after watching it, but my opinion of it weakens and weakens the more I actually sit down and think about it. Just to let you in on how the sausage is made -- I typically come up with a score first and then adjust it up or down after I finish the review. And I also try to review a show against itself (e.g. an episode that was a 7/10 for The Sopranos might translate to a 10/10 episode of Agents of Shield for me). This is all to say that I find coming up with a number to represent my feelings about a show really hard.
But anyway, thanks for your kind words about my review! Sorry the score seems out of whack!
