:pray_tone2:63% = Fine! = Skippable!
Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!
THE ONE WITH THE ALBINO SIMON PEGG!
The Long Game is a satire on the media and a commentary on technological advancement, both themes that are prevalent in Series 1. It has a similar aura to Vengeance on Varos, but it’s not quite as bleak. It also seeks to teach us about the responsibilities of time travel and the consequences of misusing it.
Christopher Eccleston continues to show interesting sides of his Doctor, such as when he decides to break the Laws of Time to try and help a future civilisation improve, or when he determinedly throws Adam out. Billie Piper is also on a roll, so it's a pity that this one is so focused on Bruno Langely's unlikeable and idiotic Adam. Though having Adam be the one who wanders off and gets himself into trouble allows Rose to stay with the Doctor, where she is at her best,.
Simon Peggg is deliciously campy as the Editor, one of the more memorable Eccleston-era villains. Christine Adams is good as Cathcica, a likeable and intelligent supporting character.
From the beginning, it is evident that Nine and Rose share a close bond and primarily use Adam for amusement, as evidenced by the Doctor assisting Rose in demonstrating her time-traveling abilities to Adam. Nine also treats Adam much like Mickey, and at times much worse. This inadvertently makes Adam feel unimportant and prompts him to make a foolish choice that leads to his expulsion from the TARDIS. I know I should feel bad for him, but I don't because I have never been able to stand his nosy and attention-seeking persona.
Oh, Russell and his silly aliens. The Jagrafess is hardly one of his most memorable or effective ones (a blob with teeth hanging from the ceiling) and is overshadowed by the Editor despite being the main baddie of the story.
I quite like the Satellite 5 setting. It feels more lively and crowded than a lot of space station sets in early Modern Who, and you can clearly feel the contrast between the upper levels and the lower levels. The filming and editing techniques further enhance the authenticity of the setting. Despite the dated CGI, the production design maintains its exceptional quality.
Parts of this give me The Macra Terror or The Krotons vibes, in how unsuspecting people are used by their masters for nefarious purposes, only for the Doctor to shake up this power balance.
The Long Game is surprisingly slow. It manages to move the main plot of Level 500 forward while also developing the Adam-enteric B-plot without rushing things. It takes time to build the atmosphere and set up the encounter between Nine and the Editor.
The Long Game delivers a climax that swiftly escalates, failing to evoke a genuine sense of tension or dread prior to the fleeting resolution of the threat. The real climax, however, is the fallout of Adam's actions, which serves to show that this incarnation of the Doctor takes his work very seriously (and that final shot is priceless).
This is the first story in Doctor Who where the Doctor explicitly kicks the current TARDIS companion out of the TARDIS due to their bad behaviour.
The troubled production of this episode contributed to the introduction of the companion-lite and Doctor-lite episodes that were commonplace during the RTD and early Moffat eras.
We will return to Satellite 5, the setting for this episode, later on in this season, in a narrative development similar to the one from The Ark in Space to Revenge of the Cybermen or the first half of The Ark to the second half of it.
Keen-eyed viewers might notice that this episode has been shot on the same set as The End of the World. That's a cost-cutting measure for you!
Unless you're a devoted fan, The Long Game is mostly a typical, skippable filler episode, raising some good points and looking great in places.
As a completist, I'm forced to type up something about "The Avengers". Here goes. It's big, it's fun, it's bright, it's exciting, it's funny. There. All done. Hmmm...that doesn't seem complete really.
The most compelling characters are the Hulk and Iron Man. The Hulk is great here. But, and this is going to earn me zero comic book geek points, I find Ang Lee's Hulk monster more appealing. In that movie, you can knock him on his ass and shoot him up. He takes a second or two to shake it off and then he comes back for more. The "Hulk smash" scenes in that movie are intense and real. In "The Avengers", he's just another indestructible super-thing. Mark Ruffalo's Bruce Banner character is much preferable to Eric Bana's, though.
Robert Downey Jr. is once again perfect as Tony Stark. He wisecracks and outsmarts plenty here and is the one who holds the whole thing together.
Captain America seems a bit under powered being that Thor is effectively a god. They try to add a superpower for Cap with the shield, but he's relegated to fighting with the other second-tier Avengers crew. Speaking of Thor, he misses out on a lot here. Like Superman, he's just too powerful.
For as many characters as there are, everyone has their moments. The story does feel a bit under told, but the movie is so viscerally exciting and bombastic that the lack of clever or emotionally impacting moments can be forgiven. This is an ideal summer blockbuster.
The title really says it all here. Arnold gets silly as a tough guy cop, undercover in the classroom, who finds his young students twice as terrifying as the pimps and addicts he normally wrangles.
Following closely after Twins, his first lighter role, this represents a further softening of the Governator's image and a broadening of his popular appeal. He still gets to fire big guns, wear intimidating sunglasses, toss chumps around the room - actually, he probably does too much of that stuff - but he also reveals an unexpected gentle side and an effective, self-aware sense of humor. Sure, many of the laughs revolve around how the big guy speaks (anyone who was around in far-off year of 1990 has probably barked "It's not a toomah" in a bad Austrian accent once or twice) but it never comes off as mean-spirited or in poor taste and Schwarzenegger really leans into the stereotype for maximum absurdity points.
Arnold's great with the kids, too, and under the improv-friendly gaze of director Ivan Reitman, they more than hold up their end of the bargain. The best bits are where the youngsters go off-script and ramble, or climb all over the action hero like a jungle gym, or go silent and simply goggle at his reactions. Those moments give the film more staying power than its paper-thin plot really deserves. Granted, it leaves plenty of space for on-set serendipity, but it also takes forever to get started and fails to settle on an appropriate tone. Was this premise really calling for a bullet-riddled climax in the school bathroom?
This movie has always been a favorite of mine. It’s pretty long so I don’t watch it very often but I always enjoy it when I find the time. I think the story is very cute overall and it’s fresh, which is what I like about any movie, and the characters are all likable except for the protagonist of course.
A lot of people comment about how bad this is, but I respectfully disagree (rather than the toxic way the people tend to disagree with criticism on this site and the more toxic way Trakt allows it). The acting is quite good, the story might not be for everyone and there’s no action at all, just a light and dark drama that explores an interesting question of “what if death offered you a bit more time on this earth to show him around?”.
A couple people mention the Jamaican accent and how stupid it was, but it always made sense to me because death is something different for everyone and is everywhere and at all times, so why wouldn’t he speak in a way that is perfectly clear to those spoken to? I actually found it entertaining and a bit funny to see this blonde haired blue eyed Brad Pitt talking like that, and I think he did it quite well! When the movie starts, death talks to Parrish in Parrish’s own voice, but once he shows himself in Brad Pitt’s body the mannerisms and patterns are the same, only the tenor of his voice changed, so talking to the Jamaican woman, to me, is identical, except he’s in Joe’s body, if he wasn’t then the lady would presumably hear her own voice, and it would have the accent.
This was made when entertainment was entertainment, there was no narrative to prop up, no agenda to push, just a story told over a few hours that keeps you tuned in, I wish there were more like this today.
This movie caused me to get an instant crush on Claire Forlani, she is a beautiful woman and the role she plays is very cute, even in subsequent roles it comes out that she seems to be like this in real life.
My Content Analysis
Acting: :star::star::star: (Average)
Plot: :star::star::star::star: (Good)
Political Agenda: :star::star::star::star::star: (None)
LGBT Content: :star: (None Noticed)
Based on personal experience with this show or movie, LGBT content provided only as a representation of how much of the show is focused on queer content so the reader can determine if that type of content is not enough or too much for their taste and does not indicate my personal preference or bias, only my observations.
The Winter Soldier is a different kind of beast to most Marvel Cinematic Universe films. The franchise is largely known for its mix of typical superhero action and comedy one liners, but Captain America: The Winter Soldier delivers something different. Whilst, yes, it's still a Marvel superhero film and therefore contains all of the heroics that you would typically expect, the tone is much more grounded and serious.
I watched this film tonight on Blu-ray 3D, and let me tell you the 3D is absolutely incredible. Shields fly out, guns protrude out of the screen and Falcon (Anthony Mackie) flies right towards your eyes. It's a truly breathtaking experience, and one that I would recommend to anyone who is a fan of the MCU.
3D always tends to work well with films that contain plenty of intense action sequences, for reasons which are pretty obvious (3D being all about offering spectacle). So it helps that the Winter Soldier has some of the greatest action sequences in the entire MCU. From the opening fight on the boat to the amazing and truly iconic elevator sequence ("Before we get started, does anyone want to get out?"), the action is so well choreographed. The cinematography is on point too, shot with this shaky cam style that offers some real grit to proceedings. It feels like something straight out of a Paul Greengrass Jason Bourne movie, and it gives this film a really distinct and unique flavour away from the rest of Marvel Studio's filmography.
It's something that judging by the trailers, I can imagine the upcoming Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) movie having a similar style to, especially as her scenes here are some of the highlights of this movie by far. She's always been one of my favourite characters in the MCU, because she has this really mysterious back story that's honestly quite intriguing; we learn a little more information about it here, as well as get some fight sequences that honestly manage to rival Steve Rodger's (Chris Evans) superhero antics in the film.
One thing that's really weird is seeing Agent Carter (Hayley Atwell) as an old lady. It feels so odd seeing Hayley Atwell in elderly make-up, given that we are so used to seeing her look so much younger. Her scenes with Steve are tragic though, as Steve pays her a visit and we see she has some form of dementia. It's sad seeing her suddenly act as though she's just seen Steve for the first time since World War 2, and forgetting that she'd already seen him since. It's handled so well too, as this is what dementia is like when you know somebody with it. You live through that pain of them slowly starting to lose their memory of you, like this cruel disease that keeps eating away at their brain.
It's clever how this is reflected in the story of the Winter Soldier/Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan). Like Peggy, he too has been losing his memories in regards to Steve, although in this case it is due to his Hydra brainwashing rather than any form of dementia. The script really plays into this, as we see Steve's determination to trigger Bucky into remembering, and it recalls his stance from the previous film, 'I can do this all day'. Steve doesn't give up on his friend, he keeps pushing for him to break the immoral programming that Hydra have placed him under. He knows his friend is still there, and can bypass the killing machine Hydra have turned him into, and he won't stop until he gets through to him.
This film is also the first to introduce Sam Wilson/The Falcon (Anthony Mackie), who will of course later become Captain America himself. Already you can see the qualities that will later make him a worthy holder of the shield. He's someone who will always help, who believes in Captain America and shows a great degree of loyalty towards the cause of battling those who seek to spread hate or misery. Sam, in short, is the perfect fit for the tales of Captain America, and it's not hard to see what Steve Rodgers likes about him.
Armin Zola (Toby Jones) returns in this film, this time with his mind inside a computer. He has created an algorithm of those he considers to be a threat to Hydra, both in the present and the future, and Hydra plan to use 'Project Insight' to eliminate these threats. This is a prime example of one of the elements I like the most about this sequel. It brings back so many past memories for Steve Rodgers; from Bucky to Hydra and Armin Zola, it's like his past is coming back to haunt him, like ghosts who will not leave him alone. It means that despite the now modern setting, it still feels intrinsically tied to The First Avenger. The algorithm allows them to throw in some really cool hints to future aspects of the MCU, such as Stephen Strange (who would later pop up in his own solo film, entitled Doctor Strange). It has that really strong thematic through line of the past and present (with hints of the future) colliding throughout, and it works extremely well.
Overall, Captain America: The Winter Soldier is a prime example of how to write a sequel. It keeps its thematic ties with the original film, whilst also offering something fresh, new and distinct. This is one of those rare cases where the sequel is better than the first film, and it's no wonder that the MCU still looks to it for inspiration.
