I loved it!
It's not Firefly, and budget restrictions do take its toll in every aspect, but it still ticks all the boxes I want in the genre, with the potential to grow and become something spectacular.
Yes, the crew needs to gel, the writing has to get clever and the fresh actors need to learn how to deliver. But that's just how it is these days. A new show rarely starts off "perfect".
I had moments of utter joy whilst watching the pilot, and that's enough for me
It is the best episode i have seen in a very long time. As good as Dexter and Breaking bad
Okay, this show has been Fight Clubbing for a while now. Disillusioned protagonist tries to take down global financial industry through his schizophrenic alter-ego? But the end scene, where they just start playing The Pixie's Where Is My Mind? There's homage, and there's just straight up copying. This show is great, but it is seeming more like a gritty, modern reboot of Fight Club rather that its own thing.
Wish I could rate this an 11. I need to go back and rate every other episode of other shows down one.
This is a horror movie.
Gets better after the pilot but best thing about the show so far: the soundtrack.
The Imitation Game was a fairly typical and good biopic, even if it did stray a lot from the reality of the events. Turing definitely wasn't the lone wolf who single-handedly cracked Enigma he's portrayed as being, and was in fact supported by thousands of people, with many playing integral roles that don't even get mentioned in the movie. Most of the dramatic conflicts in the movie are just completely made up, with the real Turing being well-liked by his colleagues, not being so in the closet, not having issues with his superiors, never being threatened with getting fired, having entirely different bookends to his relationship with his fiancee and a far less "simple" end to his life. In fact, Joan Clarke never experienced such pressure from her parents and women in Bletchley Park outnumbered men four to one, so a major part of her role was practically fiction and just "hurr, women had it so tough back then" which, while it was indeed the case, isn't something that this particular story should be representing.
Of course, this is a dramatic movie so it does make sense to have some artistic liberties taken but at this point the entire movie's "based on a true story" only so far as its plot synopsis is accurate. In adapting it to a movie, there were also a number of unconvincing contrivances and convenient coincidences to move the plot along, with your typical chance happening causing a eureka moment, as well as entirely downplaying his homosexuality, presumably to appeal to a larger (older) audience. Now, excusing all the historical inaccuracies and keeping in mind it is meant to be just a movie, it's still enjoyable. Cumberbatch is fantastic, even though Turing's personality is largely exaggerated, and the rest of the cast are good too, even if the story doesn't care about any of them. Desplat's score's great as usual and there was a surprising number of comedic moments which I wasn't expecting at all from the promotional material. There was too much repetition of aphorisms and wink wink casual mentions of things that had happened earlier in the movie which all seemed pretty forced. If you're okay with biopics completely misrepresenting their historical figures, it's a pretty good movie.
That being said, I have to stay I was blown away by the movie in itself and the sheer brilliance of Cumberbatch's performance which will not be the first time..
The movie not only includes a brilliant performance but the script and the story line is captivating from beginning till end making it totally worth to be nominated for four academy awards this year which are best picture, best supporting actress for Keira Knightley, best directing, and best actor for the ever so deserving Cumberbatch to which I would be so very disappointed if he did not snag that baby home.
As far as the Critical response goes, Another incident where the Critics and I agree. I really ought to have my temperature checked
The film has received positive reviews, with critics particularly lauding Cumberbatch's lead performance as Turing.
Rotten Tomatoes sampled 216 critics and judged 90% of the reviews positive with an average rating of 7.7/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "With an outstanding starring performance from Benedict Cumberbatch illuminating its fact-based story, The Imitation Game serves as an eminently well-made entry in the 'prestige biopic' genre."
On Metacritic, the film has a score of 72 out of 100, based on 47 critics, indicating "generally favourable reviews".The film received a grade of "A+" from market-research firm CinemaScore and was included in both the National Board of Review's and American Film Institute's "Top 10 Films of 2014".
If you have not watch it already, you really have to, even if it did not win the Oscars this year.. This movie is really NOT something you should miss..
Another 5 minutes of this and I'm gonna be mad! It's not my fault this is happening!
I am really tired of drone episodes. That being said, I liked this episode much more than the pilot. Jane is still kinda whiny and constantly repeats "But I don't know who I am", but she felt a little bit more real this episode. If Jane really is Taylor, then they would have uncovered more in the first two episodes than all of season 1 The Blacklist or Lost. I love that the mystery is slowly being revealed right from the get-go.
The secondary characters (other agents) are taking a larger role - I hope that this continues. Series are always better when secondary characters are distinct and well-thought out. Anyways, I look forward to next weeks.
Calling it now, for the season finale, he discovers he's been taking placebos this whole time...
6.8/10
Lincoln is one of the most boring characters on a show that has had to fight accusations that it's dull. Focusing the main story of the episode on him was a recipe for doldrums that the show lived up to. Even seeing him go all Static Shock on the power lines or bus or guards didn't do much for me. Accidentally killing a friend who's mistrustful of you should be a meaningful event, but it was constructed so haphazardly, and with such an uninteresting character, that I barely cared. The lack of chemistry between him and Skye/Daisy meant that I only groaned when they kissed. Daisy herself has had to overcome bland mary sue characterization, and pairing her with a piece of stubbly milquetoast doesn't do anything to help that.
I did appreciate Coulson's part of it. I go back and forth on his interactions with Rosalind. On the one hand, at times it feels like a dinner theater version of Hepburn and Tracy. On the other hand, when things are clicking, it makes Coulson feel like a human being and not just a delivery mechanism for exposition, high-minded ideals, and ill-fitting quips. I'm cautiously optimistic about the storyline, and especially pleased that they tied it to Coulson learning lessons from the "Real Shield" debacle.
Hunter and May's storyline worked well enough, as they're two of the better characters on the show, even if the "fight club to get into Hydra" plot felt a bit tacked on. May struggling to not just get right down to business in the pub while Hunter and his mate were Brit-ing it up was amusing, and her and Hunter feinting toward what happened during May's vacation was nice. I was surprised at how bloody they let the Hunter fight get, and it's always nice to see May kicking some ass, even if it felt shoehorned in. Again, we'll see where it goes.
And as usual, Fitz and Simmons are the best thing about the show, with Fitz doing everything he can to get things back to normal even if it's not what Simmons needs, and Simmons convincingly showing the psychological scars from her experiences. Are Fitz and Simmons's storylines any better than anyone else's? Probably not, but they're better actors than most on the show, and they sell the emotional undercurrent of all of their stories, which gives them greater weight than anyone but May can muster.
(Oh, and what was with all of the dutch angles in this episode? Seemed like a weird quirk in the way the episode was shot.)
When they showed off the hard drives they took from the suspect in this episode, they showed a power supply. This is like saying they took a generator and showing an extension cable.
Far and away the best episode Agents of Shield has ever produced. The only episode that can give it a run for its money is last season's spotlight episode on how May earned her nickname. There's a lesson there -- centering an episode on an individual story, particularly one that centers around one of the better actors in the cast, gives the show a focus that is often lacking when trying to juggle multiple intersecting plotlines at once.
This was a hell of a showcase for Elizabeth Henstridge. The production design team helped. (Production design as a plus in 'Agents of Shield"? I"m as surprised as you are.) The blue tint was a cheap way to sell the alienness of the world, but it totally worked, and the dessert topography really sold the desolateness of the environment and contributed to the sense of hopelessness in that world.
But Henstridge is what made the episode work. She sold the isolation, the small moments of crestfallen loneliness and discouragement, the little joys of success and friendship, the simple humanity of a survival story. Her burp, her wistfulness when she says "My dad would like you," and her conversations with an imaginary Fitz (a nice nod toward Fitz doing the same routine last season) all made her feel like a three-dimensional person in an extreme situation. There's a sense that this is Marvel's take on 'Castaway' or even 'Last Man on Earth', and doing this kind of laser-focused narrative requires a lot of the actors involved. These types of stories are, by necessity, character pieces; Henstridge was more than up to the challenge, and it deepened my appreciation for Simmons.
The actor who played Will was pretty good as well, and while his story could have felt too cliche, it worked in the context of the episode as a whole. Really, this felt like a well-structured science fiction short story as much as it did an episode of an ongoing series, and that's not a knock. Knowing Fitz and Simmons's relationship helped give certain moments more weight and significance, but it could almost work as a standalone piece. That's how strong and self-contained this was.
There was also a legitimate sense of menace from the planet. The zomibe-like astronaut, the tentacle creature, and the dust storms all suggested something frightening and alien about this world. It prompted so many great emotional moments from the two characters stuck on it. Doing an episode like this, so unlike AoS's usual M.O., was something of a gamble, but it paid off like gangbusters here.
Oh my fucking god. During the conversation between Daisy and May' husband, I was struck by a random thought: what if he's Lash? It would work for him surviving that ambush, maybe explain why he supposedly left May, the thing they made all mysterious and shit, and would be ironic because of him evaluating other inhumans while also being shocking, personal and impactful for the main group of characters. And now the show reveals that is true. proudly brushes dust off of my invisible detective badge
"i've just got science stuff. stuff i've got to science the stuff out of" i love barry omg
Yeesssss, I was really missing Dr Wells. Love to see him being a douchebag. This episode was dope. Honestly, I love this new dick and badass Dr Wells. I was hoping to see Tom Cavanagh again in the show. He is absolutely amazing. But I have one quetion, is it a coincidence that Zoom sends Linda Park to kill the Flash? or does he knew more about it? I really think that Zoom is Barry from Earth-2 or from another time line. This will be awesome. I just want to know more about Zoom.
Anyhow, this was the best episode of the season so far.
I enjoy so much Tom Cavanagh's performance of another different character and the way he reacted when Caitlin and Cisco told him about his counterpart from Earth-1
Good episode that one. Lots of things to comment on. I love coincidences and casualities and seeing Barry in Dr Wells wheelchair was incredible. Not to say seeing Harry Wells in the Reverse Flash suit (I have to confess that I got excited). I love the way Tom Cavanagh plays his roles, absolutely different to one another, but brilliant. He is amazing. Indeed, Cisco training Harry to be Wells was hillarious, even when he asked him to say that famous sentence. It was cool to see their different reactions to that sentence (Cisco's expression was like holy crap! whereas Wells was like wtf). The Wells dynamic is gold! When Cisco said "give me Your best Wells" I couldn't laugh more. The same happened when he said "up the creep factor". That one was pure gold. And seeing Wells back in the Reverse Flash suit was wow, pretty haunting. Even the way he talked to Grodd made me think that he is still hiding something. I love seeing a bit of the Wells we all knew.
Besides, as Barry spends most of the episode on the wheelchair, we get to know more of the dynamic Cisco-Wells, which is something I've been eaiting for since Harry appeared at STAR labs.
This episode was not only about Grodd, but also about Barry's fears and trauma, which I liked a lot. I still think that Zoom is Barry's dad and, until someone tells me the opposite (which I wish, otherwise it will disappoint me to know it from the very first episodes) I will think the same. And come on, he appears just after Zoom, too obvious to tjink that Henry csn be Zoom. Anyway, seeing Henry back is so great. He shouldn't have left so soon and the way he did.
I love what the scriptwriter do in The Flash, those film references! That ending reminded me so much to the Rise of the Planet of the Apes, but with giant ones. Moreover, Caitlin's clothes and the fact that Grodd keeps her locked in a huge building...absolutely amazing.
Thea has the best line. "A bunch of superheroes hiding out at a farm house, I feel like I have seen that before in a movie."
RIP to all the phones who gave up their lives in this episode :P
Great episode this week. Some intense stuff. Coulson going all Captain America haha, loved it :D
Sad to see Ros and Banks die. Really thought they'd stay for longer.
Love to see what'll happen next. This is getting really exciting. Loving every bit of it!
9.5/10. One of the most intense episodes AoS has ever done, for all the right reasons.
On Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s spiritual forebearer, a character was killed with little-to-no warning. In the aftermath, their significant other changed, became irrational, vengeful, and impulsive. It's hard not to see the echoes of that storyline here as Coulson becomes coldly focused on taking out Ward in the wake of him killing Rosalind.
But isn't that just like a Whedon show? Or even a Whedon-lite show? Take a couple of characters who have affection for each other, let them circle around one another for a while, and then right when they move past their issues and get together, kill one of them off? It's an old trick, and a pretty convenient one when you're trying to maintain conflict in a show, but damn if it didn't work like gangbusters here, both as an unexpected shock in the opening minute of an otherwise placid scene, and as a motivation for Coulson to go full commando in his single-minded pursuit to bring Ward to justice.
And one of the things I love about the show at this point in its lifespan is that it's been around enough that it can recognize and invoke its own history. As the show was still getting off the ground, it had to hunt for scraps from the Marvel films to give it legitimacy and weight in the broader scope of the MCU. But now, with two and a half seasons behind it, AoS can use its past to inform its present. To the point, we have mentions of Garrett, of Ward nearly drowning FitzSimmons, of Daisy sympathizing with Ward after remembering how she was suckered in by her mother, and Ward talking about the lessons he's learned about not following someone or something blindly. There's layers to the characters' development on this show, and it's nice to see the series mining that.
To wit, we finally have a bit more clarity as to what happened with Ward and his family through Ward's younger brother Thomas. I like the decision for the show to have its cake and eat it to on that front, with Ward's parents and brother genuinely having been abusive, but having Ward be legitimately cruel in the wake of that abuse. It helps explain who Ward is without justifying his actions, and the story told by Thomas, along with the actor's performance, went a long way toward bringing that point home.
Make no mistake, this was Ward's episode as much as it was Coulson's. The dialogue, as usual, is a little too on the nose, but Ward's not wrong when he tells Coulson that they're not so different. They each have cell-phone throwing fits after being thwarted and out-guessed by the other. They both have a revenge mission. They're both putting their personal issues ahead of their broader goals. I've gone back and forth on Brett Dalton's performance in the show, but he cut the right streak of eerily calm, coldly sadistic, and angry-yet-vulnerable in that distress.
Clark Gregg wasn't quite as impressive on that front, but still managed to do a very good job at selling Coulson's immediate and understandable turn from casual, if dad-like Lothario to trained spy ready to put his skills to use in service of taking out his enemy whatever the cost.
There's a lot more going on in the episode as well that shows promise. I'm running out of ways to talk about how good and compelling the dynamic between Fitz and Simmons is. Fitz's pained reactions to Simmons being tortured, and Simmons distress at Fitz planning to enter the portal and plea that he let them kill her instead were both emotionally piercing moments. Mallick has grown on me, and his speech to Ward about leading, about hoping to find someone who could seize the opportunity with him, was delivered superbly and made Mallick more than just a cackling villain.
And now we have DIrector Mack! He's been one of the more likeable and charismatic characters on the show lately, so it's nice to see him get a more prominent role. Daisy is officially leading a team of Inhumans, and while that has less promise in my book, it's still nice to see them finally pull the trigger on something they've been teasing for so long. And Bobbi and Hunter are once again playing the "this is an unnecessary risk" game, with Coulson in tow this time. Not all of this contributed to the meat of the episode, but each, at a minimum provided a solid building block, and in the case of Fitz and Simmons, raised the stakes of the episode's main plot.
It wasn't perfect though. The score was particularly overbearing here -- we didn't need sad violins to know that Coulson was upset by Rosalind's death. And even in a show with aliens and super powers, it's pretty implausible for Coulson to be able to jump out of a plane and land perfectly into a portal the size of a kiddie pool. Still, throwing three of the show's main characters, two of whom have tremendously bad blood with the other, onto an alien planet that was the site of the series best episode to date, is a hell of a way to head into the midseason finale. This was a thriller of an episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and helps bring the slower parts of the season together into a rollicking finish. I'm looking forward to it.
The best new Star Wars film in three decades and one of the most satisfying films of the year.
The whole theatre burst into spontaneous cheers several times, and the whole theatre completely went silent - people literally stopped chewing their popcorn - on numerous occasions.
Like you've probably already heard, the movie REALLY is a phenomenal throwback to the original trilogy, with an extra oomph and insane amounts of creativity and new found inspiration that will take the franchise to a whole new level.
The characters are three-dimensional, it's nowhere near as strictly black and white, good vs. evil like in most of the previous movies, and Adam Driver as Kylo Ren is the best example of that. Hands down, the best villian to appear in the Star Wars franchise other than Darth Vader.
Daisy Ridley & John Boyega are thrilling to watch, the old cast members, popping in during the movie were just as fun to watch.
J.J. Abrams and the writers somehow managed to create a plot that was very confined in space and time, yet they effortlessly captured the grand universe that is Star Wars with some pretty great throwbacks to the old trilogy plot-wise. Some might argue that it's lack of creativity and unnecessary repetition, but I thought it was a wonderful homage. It flowed naturally and there really was no dull moment.
Absolutely phenomenal. :)
A Perl vs Python rant? Really? It's like the show writer went on USENET to pilfer for quotes for the technobabble.
I really hate this anti-Putin and anti-Russian propaganda that is going on on american tv. There is no "mass corruption" in Russia as they say, and all those "anti-Putin bloggers" are just pets of american government who are spreading lies about "corruption" in Russian government and if any danger will get close to them (by the way, Putin did not pursuit ANY "opposite" blogger at all), they will flee to america to their masters. I bet that creators were forced to put this story about bloggers and Russian spies, because it seems to be totally out context.
HANDS DOWN TO THE SASSIER TRIO ON TELEVISION: CAPTAIN COLD, HEATWAVE AND WHITE CANARY.
Starts off pretty bad then all of a sudden you've been awake for 20 hours and binge watched the entire thing.
Persevere through those initial few bad episodes and you're in for a right treat.
I was pissed the whole time at Barry for not saying to Patty about him. He was so retarded for being mute all the time she started talking about them and even letting her go in the end like that when she said she's leaving the city. I was like "JUST FREAKING TELL HER ALREADY YOU IDIOT, DON'T BE MUTE LIKE THAT". Jesus. And Wally made zero sense to me, the way he was bitching to Joe about him, and it was him who came to them in the first place. WTF he wants then? Bad script really.
WTF! I definitely did NOT see that coming. Killing one of your main characters in your pilot (albeit part two) is unheard of. I'm really shocked. Hawkman is the shortest-lived main character in the Arrowverse
I hate characters like Pike, you just know that the only reason they exist is to cause trouble... Come on writers of The 100, you can do better than that...
