Bowtie Guy

VIP

4

What in the actual f*ck.

I'm a reasonable man, I realize I've been crapping on D&D even more than usual this season but I really do have to give them props for doing exactly what they set out to do. They hoped to subvert our expectations and they did just wonderfully in that regards.

We expected all of that buildup over the years to actually amount to something that at the very least passes for a presentable series finale but instead, we got an incoherent, steaming pile of shit. Expectations subverted!

We expected all of that character development to actually result in a beautiful pay-off that respects the journey of self-discovery each and every one of our beloved characters went through to get to where they are now but instead, we got a painful, disrespectful cycle of character regression. Expectations subverted!

We expected the final season of this show to keep us at the edge of our seats with thrilling writing that didn't subvert our expectations for the sake of subverting our expectations via low-quality shock value-seeking writing, but to introduce plot twists that make sense within the overall narrative of the story but instead, we got CW-level predictable, cringe material. Expectations subverted!

I get it. I really do. GRRM let them down by not getting the books ready in time and so they had to improvise away from his influence, but this? This? For a long while, Game of Thrones lived up to the slogan of its parent network, it wasn't just TV, it was something different, something unique and now to have to see it come to this... it's nothing short of disappointing.

On the bright side though, at least this episode didn't suck completely. The acting, score and cinematography were all on point, so I guess it's nice that I didn't walk out of it having appreciated absolutely nothing about it.

So why do I even bother anymore? I honestly could not tell you, though it's probably a mixture of masochism and a faint sliver of hope that they won't flush our collective investment into this series down the drain by the end of it, just one more episode dammit.

[8.2/10] What a blast this is. I’m impressed both at how well WandaVision is able to replicate the 1950s sitcom vibe, especially for supernatural-themed comedies like Bewitched mixed with The Dick van Dyke show, while also including a subtle but palpable sense of existential terror beneath the three camera confines of the show.

I really enjoy how this first episode plays on the classic sitcom tropes: a couple not remembering an important date on the calendar, a wacky neighbor, a boss coming over for dinner who needs to be impressed. The show does a nice spin on them, while also feeling true to the sitcoms it’s paying homage to. I’m particularly stunned by the cast, who are able to replicate that acting style, and the editors and other behind the scenes craftsmen, who are able to replicate the rhythm, to such perfection.

What’s neat is that the episode works pretty perfectly separate and apart from its larger MCU connections as a solid old school sitcom pastiche. There’s a lot of nice setup and payoffs of gags, like Wanda repurposing a magazine's “Ways to please your man” article to distract her husband’s boss and his wife, or Vision singing “Yakety Yak” after decrying it earlier. Even the lobster door knocker routine was a fun and comical grace note to an earlier bit. As cornball as it is, there’s something charming about this sort of thing, right down to the “What do we actually do here?” gag about the computer company. And despite the light spoofing at play, this works as a solid meat and potatoes sitcom episode.

But the show goes a step further and has real fun with the fact that its leads are a self-described witch and a magical mechanical man respectively. There’s tons of amusing gags, starting with the intro, about the pair using their powers in trifling 1950s household sorts of ways. At the same time, it does well with the jokes about hiding their true identities. Vision writing off Wanda’s behavior as “European”, Wanda reassuring her neighbor that her husband is human, and Vision taking offense when a coworker tells him he’s a “walking computer” are all entertaining bits that make the most of the weird premise.

And yet, what really elevates this episode is the unnerving hints that there’s something terribly wrong going on here. It’s not hard to guess that after the events of Endgame, there’s still concerns about what happened to vision. The show plays with the melodic rhythms of the sitcom form to suggest something off at the edges here, in a really sharp way.

For instance, there’s an interstitial commercial featuring a Stark toaster, and not only does it feature the only bit of color in the black and white presentation with the beeping light, but the toasting takes just a beat too long for comfort. Likewise, the fact that Wanda and Vision can’t remember their story or how they got married is initially played for laughs, but then it becomes creepy when Mrs. Hart demands answers.

The peak of this comes when Mr. Hart chokes on his broccoli and the artifice freezes for a moment, leaving everyone paralyzed by the departure from how things work in this sort of situation. It’s a great piece of work, of a piece with the likes of Twin Peaks and Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared in its quiet horror.

I’ll refrain from speculating about who’s watching the broadcast we see or who’s in the monitoring room we seem to have an eye on, but the hints at what's really going on, and how that influences the images the audience witnesses, creates a great organic mystery and another layer to the proceedings.

Overall, this is a boffo debut for the series, and I’m excited to watch more!

I tried to be more than fair to this film, given its cast. It has Michael Barrett's excellent photography, the original premise is also quite interesting and there are bits here and there where the writer-director tried to flesh out some characters. In paper, it has an outstanding cast. I loved Brendan Fletcher's performance. Eliana Jones is amazing, stealing all her scenes. And that's about it. Nomis a.k.a. Night Hunter has some of the worst acting I've seen lately. Henry Cavill couldn't be more cliché and honestly he's seems like he's just going by the motions, not even trying to be more than your typical burnt out cop. Alexandra Daddario looks so out of place that I was surprised she wasn't edited out of the movie. Her performance couldn't be more flat, totally coming across as a nuisance in all her scenes. Stanley Tucci, Nathan Fillion and Ben Kingsley seemed only interested in cashing their checks, and that's utterly sad. Alex Lu's score is intrusive, and repetitive. Heck, it even sounds like stock fare from any given music library. It's a very disappointing film and pretty good example of a nice premise going the wrong way. This is David Raymond's first "real" film as a director with a "real" cast, and I don't know who was financing this bloody mess, but I hope they get at least a third of it. They made a good choice to make it VOD.

I liked the premise of this episode... but the execution was sloppy at best.

First of all Jim Kirk... why does he hang around on Enterprise for hours? Doesn't he have somewhere else to be? And the ending seemed awfully forced when Jim and Uhura were in the bar and all of a sudden Spock joins them... why exactly would he do that? I would have understood if Jim or Spock had played chess and the other one was eager for a challenge... but for Spock to join Uhura and Kirk whom he doesn't know at that point... no, too far-fetched. Also the family drama with Sam... urgh... who cares if Sam thinks his dad might not be as excited about his career in science as he is about Jim's career? Sorry, but I don't need Jim Kirk on this show (especially not one who's as far away from being Kirk as Quinto was from being Spock...

Then there's the resolution about the deuterium aliens... again, I liked the premise... but the ending was way too rushed... it's like they ran out of time. Uhura rushes to the bridge, tells Pike that her hallucinations are actually aliens without any kind of scientific proof... and Pike hurries to destroy a whole station? It's not the resolution itself that bothers me, it's the way it's shown. (And let's just abandon common sense in that apparently there's no big manual emergency button to stop the station from collecting deuterium or just some way to cut the power to the system other than destroying the whole station...)´

Anyway, it's back to rather mediocre episodes - or poorly executed plots, to be more precise. The ideas are there.

So they took their only working weapon to Kaylon Prime and the only two people who can operate it to an diplomatic mission into the enemy's headquarter? Hmm... Plus, it's way too easy to capture the weapon. But for dramatic purposes, I'll accept this.

Apart from that, this is an other solid episode. I like the massive space ship armadas fighting. Sometimes even I like some Star Wars action (which begs the question whether that's the next franchise they are about to take on). I like the peace making (be strong and negotiate from a position of strength but don't humiliate your enemy). I like the alliance building. I like the contemplation about the implications of such a WMD. This philosophical question is clearly not the core of this episode but it's nice to see that this has been noticed (and drives the plot forward in the first place).

And they got the emotional part just right (she's also a proxy for all lives been lost in the battle). I always liked her. Not sure why others didn't. Yes, admittedly, she was annoying at times but all in all her background story was credible and her character development until this point was well-explained. But her fate was more than just an emotional outburst. It served a real purpose with wider political implications. Kudos to the writers.

Make no mistake about it. This is a B-movie and should really be judged as such. As a B-movie it is a decent enough movie. It ticks off quite a few of the WTF points that B-movies tend to, well, just do for no good reason. It does tick off one or two good points as well and on the whole I cannot say that I regretted spending a bit more than two hours on this movie.

The story is not really bad but rather overused and predictable. The science, especially the computer science, is written by someone rather clueless when it comes to informatics.

On the other hand the robots are not really bad at all. The look sufficiently menacing but at the same time they look like a concept that could actually work. My two biggest gripes with the robots are that they shoot worse than imperial stormtroopers and their sensor suite sucks. I mean, come on, they do not seem to have anything else than normal visuals and audio. No radar, lidar. Not even thermal imaging for Christ sake!

The characters and in particular their acting sucks as one would expect from a B-movie but it is tolerable. What is less tolerable is perhaps that they have chosen to include another classical B-movie trait. Most of the characters are useless and dysfunctional, screaming and arguing all the time. The two groups of people in the story are totally dysfunctional as groups and the only difference between the good guys and the bad guys is that the latter have a bunch of bona fide psychopaths among them.

As I wrote, the story is decent for a B-movie but overused and very, very predictable. Unfortunately the ending is really crappy. It is like the writer run out of steam and just wanted to get it over with. It is a bit of a shame because the rest of the movie could easily be shortened 20 or so minutes. There’s some rather unnecessary fillers. With that time spent on a better ending this might have gotten a 3 out of 5 stars rating instead.

Verdict, if you are a sci-fi, and to a lesser extent horror, movie fan it is worth watching as a popcorn flick when you have nothing better to do but that’s about it.