Shout by Aditya Kalyanathaya
VIPI always thought I couldn't enjoy any movie /tv series where female characters are protagonist's. [Cough] She- Hulk [/cough] and thought something is wrong with me for not being able to enjoy stuff with women lead. Now I know there is nothing wrong with me , its just that I look for quality content.
Mizu and akemi are the best written character I have seen in a long time. Now we know how to write a strong female characters without insulting male characters.
loading replies@cosmicaditya You… you thought you couldn't enjoy series with female protagonists? What?
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Literally insane thing to admit online
I feel like overall this season is a return to form after the just decent (but still very solid) 4th one, with an all-timer episode ("Pride Parade"), but this finale's decision to revert the season-long arc feels very anti-climatic and underwhelming. At least it doesn't save its reversion for next season's premiere as the show does a few times.
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Every season finale, the show refuses to evolve and just reverts back to the status quo.
I love the series but it’s just so frustrating
Oh dear, that deaging on Iain Glen...
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Some vaseline and bangs and you're good!
That fucking smileeeee
Scariest thing ever
I bet board is spelled b-o-r-e-d.
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@pd_review A fellow Norm fan! Cheers and rip to the great man
Shout by Gianpaolo Calabrese
Another stunning episode.
Ramin Djawadi's music took me back to the atmospheres of some GOT (g)old episodes like 5x10. Even the ending kinda remembers that situation of kings and crowd closed together inside a building that could mean death for everyone.
Up for the Queen that never was, down for some CGI scenes (and it's not the first time this season). But, WOW.loading replies
@giacalabrese For real, what's up with the CGI?
It was so bad in the last scene it took me out from a great moment.
Visual effect houses must really be overworked atm
I give it a 5. cause the parents are dumb and weak, especially the father!
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@godzilladad that's .. kind of the point of the movie
Didn't Clarissa's implant stuff use to look better? :thinking:
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@ansik Yeah, the fight with the mod was... Not the best let's just leave it at that
I'm fuming. JD didn't do that for Elliott. He did it coz he has no life and was bored hanging round the hospital. Also taking the advice of a woman with a man waaaay below her level coz he was there when she needed him? Yeah I had a friend like that. Always looking for his angle to date me. Just like JD does with Elliott. Not good people.
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@reiko_lj Yeah that was weird. Validation of the nice guy mentality
Shout by The_Argentinian
I was really enjoying this movie but I gotta say that I found the final minutes, when Tom starts reading the names and the piano notes start playing and then the orchestral music swells up while the people stand up, to be on the cheesy side, to be honest.
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@the_argentinian The ending was almost ridiculous and it's no surprise that it never happened. Sorkin went way overboard there
Great episode, Mother’s backstory was really well done. Young campion’s a bit of a twat though.
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@magenof Jesus Christ that neck snap. Really made me wince
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[4.6/10] If I could make one rule for Westworld and only one rule, it would be this -- no more twists. This series is addicted to pulling the rug out from under its audience, trying to pull a fast one to make viewers say “whoa”, or otherwise recontextualize everything they’ve seen so far, that it’s completely damaging to its attempts to tell stories, establish character, and convey meaning. When everything the audience sees is just a setup for a subversion, none of it matters, and the viewer is left with nothing to do but wait for the punchline.
So let’s just hit a sampling of the twists that show up in “Crisis Theory”, the finale of the show’s third season: All of the modern hosts were originally based off of Dolores. Serac is a puppet being controlled by Rehoboam. Dolores and Caleb didn’t meet by chance, but because Dolores selected him after his brain was scanned in a Delos soldier training exercise. The real(?) William is dead and is being replaced by a host duplicate. Hale has commandeered Dolores’s tools and people and is planning her own robo-revolution.
But the biggest one is this -- Dolores isn’t trying to destroy humanity; she’s just trying to give it free will, the sort of free will she had to fight and claw for. She picked Caleb not because of his capacity for violence, but because of his ability to choose and his willingness to show mercy, even when he didn’t have to.
That is trite, but at least it’s positive. It’s a weird left turn after so long fumfering about everyone’s cruelty. Caleb is not part of some devious extinction plot. Maeve will fight for a cause greater than just reunion with her daughter. Instead, they both choose to undo the shackles on humanity with the belief that what results can be beautiful and that beauty should be preserved.
The problems with this message are two-fold. First and foremost, “Crisis Theory” dramatizes it with an endless series of absolutely mind-numbing, on-the-nose monologues. For all the faux-profundity the show aspires to, the language it uses scans like half-formed action movie dialogue in the dull ten minutes before the special effects budget kicks in, only stretched out over forty-five minutes. There is no point too small, no observation too mundane, no moral too obvious, that Westworld can’t turn it into some ponderous B.S. speech that gilds the lily to the point of exhaustion.
The second is that this message about creative destruction feels contradictory and hopelessly naive. The message is that Rehoboam is a palliative that delayed the fall of civilization, but that like Westworld itself, civilization needs to burn in order for something better, less oppressive, and less asphyxiating, to emerge from the ashes. I wouldn’t exactly call that idea dangerous, but it smacks of someone who took their first semester poli sci class and declares “this is all too complicated, what we really need is to just start a revolution!” It’s facile and cliché, two words that, unfortunately, apply to most of Westworld’s brand of philosophy.
It also goes against what the show itself, and its quasi-omniscient A.I., suggest as the consequence of this move. There’s something fair, if conventional, about the show examining the safe but suffocating order versus chaotic but authentic freedom dichotomy and landing on the latter. But this very episode predicts widespread death and destruction, possibly to the point of extinction. At best, you can chalk this up to Dolores connecting with Rehoboam and understanding that this is, at the very least, not a certainty, or believing that spilled blood is the cost of liberty, but the episode just glosses over a pretty big caveat to this whole outrageous freedom idea.
Beyond the twists, beyond the dime store existentialism the show’s been toying with from the beginning, that sort of tack shows once again the grim truth about Westworld -- that’s a vacuous show that thinks it’s smart. The great innovation of season 3 is that, in its best stretches, this series stopped pretending that it had Important Things to Say:tm: or that its plotlines made real sense, and just became entertaining, high class pulp.
If I made the rules, Westworld would lean into that and lean into it hard. Setting loose a bunch of talented actors, to look impossibly stylish, match wits and weapons with one another, and cross and double-cross each other with impeccable direction, locations, production design, is well within this series’s grasp to do. When the show stops aiming for a profundity it can’t hit anymore; it is still a fun, slick production worth enjoying for its shallow charms. If that was the show we got on a week-to-week basis, it might not turn into a favorite, but it would least have its appeal as quasi-cinematic sci-fi brain candy to fall back on each episode.
But I don’t make the rules, and maybe it’s too late for them anyway. Maybe Westworld is just irrevocably broken. You can only throw twist after twist at the audience for so long that even good, meat and potatoes storytelling becomes meaningless. You can only let your characters drift so far away from themselves, recontextualize them and recongifgure again and again, before the audience loses all attachment to them. You can only throw so many empty platitudes out there to rot and fester before you reveal your show as trite and intellectually bankrupt.
In season 3, Westworld left the park and ventured into the real world. That was the last barrier for it to cross, the last lingering shred of intriguing possibility from its original premise, and in just eight episodes, the series has already exhausted it. Where is there for the show to go from here? What desperate attempt to top themselves could the creators pull out of their increasingly barren hats? Who’s left standing in the cast with a point and a purpose that hasn’t been muddled and revived and made into an utter hash of a character?
The answer is nowhere, none, and no one. In just twenty-eight episode, Westworld has outlived its premise, outstripped its abilities, and outlasted its usefulness as a television show. Nothing in this series stays dead for long, and a renewal has already been secured, But if artistic achievement were the standard for success rather than bankrolls and buzz, the series would be sent to the Valley Beyond and never allowed to sully its own misspent potential again.
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@andrewbloom Great eulogy to a once fun show. Realizing I don't care about any of the characters anymore has been so disheartening
Episode needed more flash backs, perhaps 5 more.
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@sikanderx6 I agree, definitely more flashbacks. And exposition! There was so little standing still while the situation is explained to you in this episode!
I was howling with laughter about Colin Robinson boring people to death with talking about motion smoothing in TVs. I. Love. This. Show.
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@michaelxhell I missed this so much. No show on air makes me laugh like WWDITS
This season has 12 episodes and they wasted 4 in this useless plotline! That's Disney for you. Pathetic!
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@acidopinion uuuuh this story was written before Disney's purchase of SW and only slightly adapted to be included here. It was already supposed to be in the CW's seventh season. I didn't like the arc either but I don't think the blame falls on Disney, aside from not realizing how flat this story is
Shout by Detlef Schwanz
Oh well, my fears seem to come true.
This is basically just another Discovery: Written by people who never actually watched any Star Trek and got some bullet points like "Engage!", "Earl Grey", "Borg", "Vineyard" before force-fitting their generic Plot in their butchered version of the Star Trek universe.At no point in TNG were Cpt. Picard and Data anywhere near being friends, let alone best mates. Professional mutual respect, sure, but not friends.
But casting aside the usual idiocy regarding the incoherent techo bubble, logical errors and other stuff this series shares with Discovery,
theres one point in this episode where it became abundantly clear that this series will be as bad as its older sister: The flashback to mars.
These workers are sitting there, synthesizing their meals with a replicator. Something everyone who watched 1-2 episodes of Star Trek should be fairly familiar with.But these workers still all synthesize the same 21st century prison garbage on trays and bitch about the meals.
There you go: Form over substance, I'm out. Let this series rot with Discovery, poor Patrick Stewart.loading replies
@strel0k If TNG was released in 2020 you people would find ways to hate it. It's baffling
.. a seemingly tepid response to mass murder I thought
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@danio1972 "650 people dead without provocation? Oh don't worry, bring your own ship to starbase! Oh you disobeyed and threatened even more people? Get to your luxurious quarters for the remainder of the trip, you rapscallion! And oh, the crew has no responsibility at all, they have no free will!"
Aside from that, great episode
HA! this is where Star Trek: Discovery inconsistency came.
when Chekov ask whether is there any mutiny ever happened in starship before, and replied by Spock that such thing never occurred.
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@snydez Well, I think season 2's finale just answered this for you :wink:
[7.9/10.] I grew up with The Next Generation as my entrée into the Star Trek Universe, and many of my favorite episodes centered around Q, the pain-in-the-ass, mischievous, seemingly all-powerful being who returned time after time to liven up things around the enterprise while being a considerable thorn in Captain Picard’s side. So the “Squire of Gothos” which features Trelane, a similarly omnipotent and similarly impish foil for Captain Kirk and his crew, has the ring of pleasant familiarity, and is squarely in my wheelhouse.
These extra-dimensional troublemakers like Q, Trelane, and Superman’s Mister Mxyzptlk are so much fun because they bring an air of possibility and enjoyable lunacy every time they show up. While Captain Kirk is not quite the vision of dignity his TNG successor was, Starfleet can still be a fairly stuffy bunch. The presence of someone who introduces a bit more whimsy into the equation and who cannot, like the similarly colorful Harry Mudd, simply be corralled by the security team, creates a funny and challenging problem for our heroes.
That problem arises when the crew of the Enterprise runs into the planet Gothos in what’s supposed to be a “space desert.” After Kirk and Sulu disappear, Spock sends a search party down to the planet, who encounter the spritely Trelane. A being of immense power, “General Trelane (retired)” has a fascination with Earth’s predators, and has replicated the form, if not the substance, of Earth’s past culture in an estate where he’s holding the Enterprise’s Captain and its helmsmen. The attempts to return to the ship and to escape Trelane’s dangerous abilities make up the bulk of the episode’s adventures.
What makes “Squire of Gothos” so entertaining, in contrast to some other “weird powerful being of the week” episodes is how much damn fun Trelane is. William Campbell is a delight as Trelane, whose boisterous but playful bravado is one part John Delancey, one part Bruce Campbell, and one part Kenneth Branagh. One of the elements that always made the Q/Picard pairing work is the contrast between Picard’s stoicism and Q’s outsized demeanor. “Gothos” hits the same mark here with Kirk and Trelane. Kirk is toned down a bit, reserving his smiles and humor for a creepy leer at his yeoman and a ribbing of Spock, which makes the exaggerated qualities of Trelane stand out.
It also helps that “Gothos” lets Trelane bounce off of Spock a bit, with the placid Vulcan clearly perturbed by the incorrigible trickster god. Text cannot capture the great delivery of Leonard Nimoy when Trelane asks if Vulcans are a predatory species and Spock replies, “Not generally -- but there have been exceptions.” Spock is so reserved that when he intimates a threat, he comes off as a complete and total badass.
The same goes for the delightful exchange where Trelane essentially asks what Spock’s problem is; Spock replies, “I object to you. I object to intellect without discipline. I object to power without constructive purpose,” and Trelane retorts, “Oh, Mister Spock, you do have one saving grace after all. You're ill-mannered.” Spock’s statement has an unanticipated resonance fifty years later, and the exchange speaks to the conflicting personalities, philosophies, and temperaments that make the two characters such interesting foils for one another.
But those sorts of character clashes are only half of what makes episodes like “Squire of Gothos” interesting. The other half is one of the aspects of Star Trek that’s hard-coded into the franchise’s DNA – creative problem solving. The prospect of an antagonist who is nearly omnipotent, so he can’t be overpowered; so advanced and patronizing to humans that he can’t be reasoned with, and so committed to toying with others and entertaining themselves that they can’t be appealed to creates a particularly unique challenge for the crew of the Enterprise.
It essentially requires Kirk, Spock, and the others to have to trick a god. And trick they do! Kirk uses Trelane’s desire to have the human experience, to emulate these “predators,” to give him the upper hand and allow his ship to escape. It’s indulging Trelane in a duel that allows Kirk to shoot the mirror that (maybe?) powers Trelane’s estate, and it’s the promise of a hunt and a sharper version of that experience that lets Kirk try to allow the rest of the Enterprise crew to leave and eventually buys him enough time to be rescued.
The (nigh-literal) deus ex machina ending takes some of the wind out of the sails of these schemes. There’s something to be said for the idea that it’s Kirk’s cleverness that keeps Trelane occupied long enough for his parents to notice. But for the most part, it’s just the arrival of some even more powerful beings that saves the Enterprise’s bacon. It works in one of those “aint the galaxy weird?” ways that Star Trek is fond off, but it takes away some of the agency of the characters.
By the same token, the reveal that Trelane is actually just a child in his species is one of those sci-fi twists that is cool enough in principle, but which has been played out in parodies and homages (most notably Futurama’s) and by cultural osmosis that it’s hard for it to have any real meaning or impact. The idea of dealing with a being with the powers of a god and the temperament of a child is a solid premise (and a scary one for those of us here in January 2017), and it recontextualizes the events of the prior hour nicely, but it’s not as novel anymore.
Still, “Squire of Gothos” stands out for being tons of fun regardless of its twists or resolution. There’s some of the same issues of not having enough plot to fill the hour that it, like many episodes in Star Trek’s early going, are guilty of. But on the whole, the episode is an enjoyable romp from the minute Trelane shows up on screen, presenting a colorful figure and unique problem for our heroes to solve. For someone who grew up with Q, “Squire of Gothos” with its prankster deity putting the captain of the Enterprise on trial, made me feel right at home.
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@andrewbloom While I don't always agree with you, it's so fun always having a complete, well-written opinion on each episode as I make my way through Star Trek for the first time. Thank you for this
They've been hinting at it all season, but making David literally the villain, with heavy themes like sexual abuse involved is a tough and ridiculously bold move, and I'm not sure whether audiences will go with it. It'll be interesting to see how they deal with it in the next season.
Season 2 hasn't for me been on the same level as the spectacular S1, but Legion is still one of the most inventive, interesting and engaging shows currently on TV.
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@rosetheflower As I see it, he clearly did "drug" her when she was knocked out and David also said so, saying she forgot that he loved him and he forced her to remember, or something in that realm. It's obviously a weird situation - but what isn't in this show - but for me once mind control enters the picture that's as non-consensual as it gets.
I always strongly disliked the Anna character in the books, and now with Elizabeth Mitchell's portrayal (along with her usual scenery chewing performance antics - I swear, future online dictionaries will have one of the scenes in tonight's episode as the video description when you search for define:"chewing the scenery"), I am being taken to a whole new level of hatred.
Genius casting? Possibly. (if the authors dislike the Anna character as much as I do)
Annoying the crap out of me personally...Definitely!!
Other than the Anna scenes, this was a great episode and would have got a 10 from meloading replies
@kanootcha Yeah, I felt that her performance - and voice, especially - in the funeral scene left a lot to be desired. Way overdone.
Yaaaaawn. On one hand, I'm surprised we're already in the second half of the season because nearly nothing of actual interest or impact has happened, on the other hand, I'm grateful we're in the second half because that means Danger Island is that much closer to being over.
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@jackal_uk I'll finish the show. Season 10 is going to be the last one, and 8 20-minute episodes are such a low time commitment that even if S10 is bad as well it's bearable
The humor continues to be almost non-existent, and a pattern that I first noticed in the season premiere just gets more and more pronounced. Specifically, this is a 19-minute outing (if you don't count the credits) and it contains 16 goddammits and three Jesuses and eight shits. (It's easy to let a subtitles file do the counting for you after the fact.) So while the humor content drops, the vulgarity/profanity content goes through the roof. Yes, of course the show has always had it, but not to this degree, and not combined with such a dearth of funny stuff to go along with it. There also used to be a subtlety to some things that just isn't there anymore. In short, this continues to be a disappointing season.
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@jimgysin Whaaaaaat? Are you saying that "Shut up bird" and the meaningless coconut gag aren't the funniest things this show has ever come up with?
In all seriousness, unfortunately I agree and it's really disheartening to see the show in such a state.
"How would you like to die today motherf*cker" ... Once again, Jared YOU ARE MY MVP.
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@fartman86 I usually just chuckle during comedy shows, that line made me laugh so hard I had to rewind because I had lost track of what they were saying. Jared's one of the best characters on TV right now
Haha this movie is so unexpectedly bad, you think it's one kind of movie then it just does a hard 180 into insanity. I wish I didn't have the twist spoiled because I would of loved to have seen this unfold and had the big WTF moment.
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@nmahoney416 I didn't know what was going to happen, and up until Henry's death I didn't have a problem with the movie. But holy shit the second half of this is a dumpster fire. I was laughing out loud at several scenes. Props to Trevorrow for trying something risky but he fell on his face in spectacular fashion
[7.7/10] Plenty of great stuff in this one. Anytime Leslie has a moral dilemma, particularly one as low stakes as whether to fib about whether the possum she caught is the possum, it makes for a good episode. Leslie’s struggle with whether to take the credit for nabbing “Fairway Frank” and pick up a chit from the mayor’s office in the process, or to be honest that she’s not sure if it’s really him and save a potentially innocent possum is a good one. It has great talking head segments (like the one about Leslie asking herself questions) and other fun stuff like her frantic insistence that April help.
April’s help is a nice deal too. She worries about the fact that Andy caught the possum, because Shawna Malway-Tweep suggests it might win him Anne back. Andy’s boasting and preening in front of “the press” and April’s quiet frustration makes for a nice contrast. And her and Leslie freaking out and hiding and chasing when the possum gets loose in Anne’s house makes for some great comic setpieces. (The same goes for Tom fleeing in a panic as soon as he sees the possum.)
The B-story is a good one too. Mark helping Ron get his woodshop up to code, despite Ron’s insistence that the city code shouldn’t apply to him and his libertarian leanings is another great instance of Ron bending his own principles a little bit because someone is being kind to him. His smile after running the book with the city code in it through a saw and the perturbed noise he makes when he has to then go back and try to read it are both great. It’s a nice Mark-Ron story, which we don’t get much of. (Sidenote: I didn’t expect to have this reaction on rewatch, but I’ve actually really enjoyed Mark as the straight man this season. Still love what happens next, but I wish we’d gotten to maintain at least a little of that.)
Overall, it’s a very funny episode that has great character moments for Leslie, Ron, and April, which makes it a-okay in my book.
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@andrewbloom I'm watching the show for the first time and your analyses are really fun to read after each episode
As if we didn't already know, Ezra is an idiot. Was anybody else kind of hoping he'd die?
The big draw is of course Kenobi and Maul's rematch. There are a few ways this could have been approached and I think the show did the right thing. We obviously know that Kenobi can't lose, so why draw it out? Any tension would have been artificial, but I can imagine that some viewers will be disappointed that it was over instantly.The final moment with that music did give me a bit of a chill!
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@lefthandedguitarist You're right in terms of not manufacturing tension, but I have to say I was disappointed. The Maul-Old Ben duel has been teased for months and it just fizzled out in seconds. I agree that we knew Ben would survive but a bit more of fighting would have been better imo.
It also seems weird on another aspect. By showing an older, grizzled, less strong Obi-Wan they could've started to bridge the gap between the perfect Obi-Wan we see in ep. III and the old man who can barely wiggle a stick (I'm sorry sir Alec, but it's true) in ep. IV. Instead they went the route of still badass Obi-Wan, which doesn't really make sense since we are just a few years before A New Hope. Did Obi have a stroke between this episode and ANH? Because if not his dramatic drop in ability seems inexplicable.
Not a very good film.
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@eoghannmacleoid The fact is, in my opinion this is not to be taken literally at all, not as a statement, not as a scientific piece. I view it as something similar to Daredevil's origin story, in which no one ever complained about the unrealistic portrayal of blindness (at least, I hope so). Who knows what Kevin went through to make him what he is today. We don't know since we meet him at an advanced period of his life and don't really see the birth and development of his condition. Therefore, I personally interpret this situation just as the fact that DID was in this case the inspiration chosen by the writer to tell a story, just like blindness was for Daredevil.
Not a very good film.
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@eoghannmacleoid I'm sorry but this is one of the most uninformed and unhelpful reviews I've ever read. Your whole point is based on your not clearly understanding the universe in which this film is set, that is a universe in which superpowers and supernatural abilities have been established as possible, as introduced in the movie Unbreakable.
There's no real point being made about the illness itself. This is just the tale of Kevin Wendell Crumb, who is afflicted by DID, but the science in this movie isn't supposed to be accurate, or even plausible. There is an underlying layer of actual science to set the groundwork for the fictional tale, set in a superhero world.
This is just misinformation and rushed reasoning.
The script and direction can be a little rough at times but an excellent cast and great dynamics between a family of characters made The Hollars an enjoyable watch. John Krasinski shows potential as director but he has some room for improvement. Richard Jenkins and Margo Martindale are both excellent.
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@randomacd4 Completely agree. With a script less filled with rom-com clichès this could have been a really good movie.
