I was excited by this idea and love black mirror so had high hopes. I’m sure if it’s done again it will be better. I think making choices like which cereal to eat, which cassette to play and which record to buy are ridiculous and just interrupt the flow of the story. Real decisions where a character actually takes an action that can lead to different plot/story would have been better. And instead of “choosing” and following that story instead you were made to feel like it wasn’t choosing for yourself but trying to choose the right answer which is not the same. If it’s just going to circle back around till you make the right choice then what is the point of having the choice...?
I think it was good once but would hope in the future that decisions actually had an impact.
[7.0/10] This is another kind of weird episode that I don’t really know what to do with, since it’s a lot of scattered bits that are all sort of built around, but not really connected, the one big conversation that anchors the episode.
But the bits are largely enjoyable! I liked, though didn’t love, the whole “being there” shtick where Henry Fondle is made the CEO of whattimeisit.com. The cold open reveal of Character Actress Margo Martindale was an absolute treat. The continued prestige drama satire of Flip’s speeches and description of his show was fun. I didn’t really like PC having to unravel the copyright dispute with the joke popsicle guys, but it was inoffensive.
And I really liked the continuing subtle growth of Mr. Peanutbutter! He is slowly but surely growing up, and you can see it in how he’s trying to be a good actor, and a little hurt that Pickles wasn’t into his show. The idea that he’s outgrowing someone for once is an interesting one, and I appreciate the development of one of the show’s most plain comic relief characters, even if it seems to be headed for a reunion with Diane that I’m lukewarm on.
But it really all comes down to BoJack and Diane. Their confrontation is well done, if a little over the top, and does a solid job at exploring what seems to be the main theme of this season -- whether someone can or should be able to be okay with and move past the bad things they’ve done. For her part, Diane feels like an enabler, and the reception to Philbert acts as a wake up call when she’s worried about people, BoJack in particular, seeing the vulnerability she introduces as something that excuses an “open wound” of a character doing awful things.
There’s a lot of meta-ness there, as BoJack Horseman grapples with whether it’s done too much to excuse its own protagonist. But it also doubles down on that at the same time, having BoJack admit how much pain he’s experienced, how much pain he’s tried to run from, and how being told that he could be okay is a balm, something that helps him to be better.
But that only works if he wants to keep improving. Diane is right. BoJack is still a mess, even before he downs his pill bottles and mixes it with booze (and tramples on Gina’s long-awaited chance to be in the spotlight). It’s good that he’s come this far, but also not enough, and doesn't excuse the bad things he’s done in the past.
That’s the push and pull of this season. We see BoJack making some legitimate progress, doing nice things for people, even if it’s in a very BoJack sort of way. But he’s also still the author of some pain and misery. How much he should be permitted to get past that an earn our sympathies, and how much he deserves the guilt that haunts him is a very tough question to answer, one that “Head in the Clouds” doesn't try to answer, just confront.
So BoJack and Diane have it out, both are hurt and vulnerable in the aftermath since each’s emptional well-being is, regrettably, at least somewhat tied to the other, and they both do stupid things. BoJack mixes pain medication and alcohol and jumps into things with his would be girlfriend for comfort and relief, and Diane invites her ex-husband is. Neither choice seems poised for good to come out it, especially heading into the penultimate episode of the season, where the most harrowing and heavy crap tends to rain down in this series.
But hey, time to get ready for the fun once more, I suppose. Go go sad horse show!
[8.1/10] Black Panther doesn’t have the aura of a Marvel Cinematic Universe film. Yes, it has the allies and enemies we’ve met in prior movies like Age of Ultron and Civil War. It has the jovial vibe among its main cast. And it has the mandatory, climactic third act battle, draped in CGI and the usual fanfare.
But it also stands apart from the rest of the MCU’s offerings. It is unabashedly Afrocentric in its focus and its approach. It is a plainly political film, meditating on the legacy of colonialism, the oppression of people of color around the world, and the push and pull of isolationism vs. global activism. Though squeezed into the standard, three act superhero structure, Black Panther takes its audience to a different space, one untouched by the rest of the world and, in some ways, untouched by the broader cinematic universe the film acts in concert with.
It is a uniquely, profoundly black take on the modern superhero film, one long overdue, if for no other reason than how it breathes new life into the familiar formula. There’s nothing wrong with comic book movies hitting certain standard notes of uncertainty, challenge, and self-realization. But Black Panther is a cinematic argument for broadening the franchise, showing the renewed, distinctive character these common stories take on, when they’re told from a fully-formed, confident, and different perspective.
That distinct atmosphere is the best thing about the film, alongside the clear camaraderie among its cast and characters. No hero is an island these days, and while the title character has a notable arc that’s done well, the most enjoyable portions of the movie emerge when the plot mechanics of that arc are set aside for Black Panther to chat, spark, and laugh with his tech-wiz sister Shuri (Letitia Wright), his altruistic ex Nakia (Lupita Nyong'o), and his fierce, principled guard Okoye (Danai Gurira). So much of these films depends on the chemistry and connection between the people the audience is asked to spend two hours with, and Black Panther soars on that front, building a rapport among those core characters that carries the day.
At the same time, Chadwick Boseman gives one of the best dramatic performances to grace a Marvel film. Thematically, the film centers on the notion of whether someone with a kind heart but also uncertainty about how and where to guide his people can be a good leader, and Boseman brings the inherent decency and heft to make these ideas land.
Black Panther constantly puts its title character between conflicting choices and impulses. T’Challa has to balance his inherent sense of mercy, shown to the leader of a challenging tribe, with his desire to deliver swift justice, shown when he threatens enemy of the state Ulysses Klaue in public. He has to reconcile his deep love for his father and his deep respect for his people’s traditions with his growing realizations that his forebears were men, not gods, who made mistakes, and that his homeland may need to change and evolve. He must square his country’s tradition of isolation, with the competing calls to share the nation’s wealth and knowledge in order to help those in need, or to use those resources to bring down the oppressors around the world who keep them in that state.
If there’s one area where Black Panther excels, it’s in creating a central character who’s pulled in multiple directions, on multiple dimensions, leaving him unsure what path to take and what sort of man to be, until the right direction is forged in fires of challenge and hardship. The film is a political story, a cultural story, a family story, and a personal story.
It’s just that Coogler and co-writer Joe Robert Cole seem not particularly interested in it being a superhero story. That’s not necessarily a problem. Films as tonally diverse as Logan and Deadpool have shown you can use the superhero framework to craft a multitude of different films with different approaches within the superhero framework. But there’s a sense in Black Panther that the comic book-y elements are perfunctory, that Coogler and Cole had a compelling story to tell about legacy, power, and obligation, couldn’t tell it without including the de jure superhero fireworks.
Black Panther is at its best when it shows its title character confronting his responsibilities as a citizen, son, and leader, or finding strength, challenge, and affection among his friends and family. And it’s at its weakest when it shows him punching and kicking those things in comic book movies that inevitably must be punched and kicked.
At times, Coogler and director of photography Rachel Morrison capture the same sort of raw intensity of combat that hews close to a boxing match from Creed. The close quarters combat of the challenges for leadership are tight and visceral, giving an immediate sense of the personalities clashing at the same time bodies are, and a digitally-stitched but nominally unbroken action sequence early in the film has the energy and fluidity of a splash page. But too often, the film’s fight sequences are a big jumble, edited to bits and nigh-impossible to follow from one blow to the next. Worse yet, the CGI is especially in these sequence -- digital characters move without weight, animated creatures and vehicles disrupt the immersion of a scene, and climactic fights between fully computer-generated figures in a computer-generated world feel like gameplay clips pulled from Mortal Kombat.
Despite the strength of the story that ends in that skirmish, the film ostensibly breaks little new ground in terms of its narrative. Notably, Marvel’s own Thor trilogy covers much of the same territory, from the prince questioning his place as king, to far off lands debating the appropriate level of engagement with the outside world, to unruly yet sympathetic relatives with an appetite to conquer angling for the throne.
But what makes Black Panther so refreshing is the perspective from which it approaches this material. There is a richness to the cultural wellspring that Coogler and his team draw from, one underutilized in big budget filmmaking. The film is rife with different hues, different pleasures and sore sports, that inform the movie’s sensibilities even as it applies them to the smash-and-then-find-yourself routine that the Marvel origin movies have nigh-perfected at this point.
It’s the critic’s crutch to see a film’s story as a metaphor for the film itself. And yet it’s hard not to see parallels between the story of T’Challa deciding to bring Wakanda into the rest of the world, and Coogler deciding to bring his Black Panther into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. One of the wonderful things about the MCU is the way that it can create a cohesive sense of place among different films, and foster the sense, through minor easter eggs and the occasional team-up, that all of these events are taking place in the same world.
But despite having a few of those continuity nods and connections, Black Panther feels like it occupies a world all its own, one full of its own color, character, and vibrancy. At the end of the movie, T’Challa opts for outreach, he decides to open Wakanda’s borders, and share his nation’s knowledge and culture with the world. With this film, Ryan Coogler & Co. do the same for Marvel, telling their own story in their own, but also bringing such a distinctiveness and a specificity to it that makes the world of these films a deeper, richer, better place for Black Panther’s presence within it.
I really loved this movie and the funny thing is I did not want to see it, I went by myself in a bad mood this was the only comedy playing so I went. I laughed so hard I was crying!!! It reminded me of when I was younger hanging out with my friends too. It really turned my mood around and I enjoyed it so much I went a few days later and saw it with a friend who needed cherry up and we laughed our buns off and I could not believe I remembered some of the "Kicker" lines was saying it in my head lol you know it's a great movie when you were so into it the first time that you remember it so well. I will be buying this one when it becomes available for sure.
“The Spy Who Dumped Me” doesn’t take the spy-comedy genre to new heights, however there is a lot of fun to be had with this one. It features stellar locations and a great comedic performance by Kate McKinnon.
This is one of my absolute favourite shorts. I just want to watch this little birdie all day long!!!
This is the sweetest thing I've ever seen. I'm in love with it!!!
This is a smart, funny and very entertaining movie with a killer soundtrack. The soundtrack has a little bit of everything and is choreographed perfectly into the action. Ansel Elgort is great and so are Kevin Spacey and Jon Hamm.
EDIT: Saw it again and it is still just as great.
[9.3/10] At first blush, Baby Driver writer-director Edgar Wright and fellow director Wes Anderson don’t seem like a natural pairing. Wright’s films, like Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead tend to be overtly comedic, include a good quotient of action, and bring an adventure-focused quality to the proceedings. Anderson’s, by contrast, tend to be quieter, more droll pictures, that are certainly funny and have their share of exciting moments, but which find their form in the more reserved, music box sensibilities of Anderson’s oeuvre.
And yet, Wright and Anderson’s films have something very much in common. They both create films where it seems like the world was built to fit their characters, rather than more typical films where the main personalities find themselves struggling in a world that’s indifferent to them or even more commonly, which doesn’t fit them at all. Whether it’s Anderson’s elegant dioramas or Wright’s “everything’s foreshadowing” rube goldberg machines, the environments of these films bend to our heroes, not the other way around, resulting in some wonderfully well-choreographed cinema.
Baby Driver is the apotheosis of this tack, brought to bear in the form of car chases, gunfights, and the best jukebox soundtrack this side of the galaxy (and any attendant guardians). Indeed, Marvel Studios’ Guardians is a nice reference point, as both films not only feature countless rockin’ tunes, but also center on roguish but decent young men, holding onto to the last holy artifacts of their mother, finding solace in music and falling in with a rough crowd before deciding to stand for something more. It’s kismet that star Ansel Elgort, who plays the lead (appropriately named “Baby’), is signed on to be the past and future Han Solo in the latest standalone Star Wars flick, a character who’s very much in the DNA of Guardians’ Peter “Star-Lord” Quill.
Independent of any comic book counterparts, however, Baby Driver doesn’t offer much in terms of an original premise. Baby is a badass driver and a decent kid, mixed up with some bad folks, tentative about the prospect of blood and his hands, wanting to start a new life with his lady love. There are a lot of tropes in the film: the quiet but effective young naif, the loose cannon gangster, the slimy mastermind, the ingenue who represents a beacon of hope, the inevitable moral dilemma.
But what the film lacks in originality in its setup, it more than makes up for in performance, texture, and execution. Baby Driver has a murderer’s row of performers who chew up and spit out Wright’s script and make what could otherwise be stock character come alive and compensate for any dearth of depth with the sheer vividness of their presence.
Kevin Spacey looks alive for the first time in ages, bringing a blasé menace as the organizer of each heist. Jamie Foxx is at his extroverted best, rolling through pointed monologues and bringing a lived-in flavor of crazy. Lily James has enough homespun, wanderlust charm to balance out her underwritten part. Elgort is necessarily more reserved, but equally endearing and a fine fulcrum for the movie. And Jon Hamm brings his Mad Men practiced-gentility in a fashion that makes him seem like that much monstrous when the scales fall.
But while the performances carry the film in its quieter moments, what sets Baby Driver apart is sequence after superlative sequence of breathtaking kinetic cinema. Not content to simply toss in explosive but empty action to keep the heart-pumping, Wright, cinematographer Bill Pope, and editor Paul Machliss create these elegantly constructed set pieces of gorgeous synchronous stunts, twists, and turns, the hum right along with the music, just like the protagonist.
That works whether Baby is blowing the doors off the film’s opening with a series of death-defying terms perfectly sequenced to his backing track. It works when the young man finds himself embroiled in a firefight where surprise shots and returned fire blast back and forth in time with the beat. It works in chases on foot as the rhythmic thump of the tune of the moment matches the energy of pursuers and pursued alike. Even when Baby goes to get coffee, the world moves with him; from the graffiti on the walls to the buskers on the street everything goes where he goes.
In the same way, the film doesn’t so much present action scenes as it does ballets of chrome and octane. Baby Driver oozes with style and tempo, knowing how to hold the audience’s attention through great escapes that and close scrapes that keep topping one another, and quieter scenes where the tension comes from sweet interactions juxtaposed with combustive elements, leading the viewer to wonder which will win the day.
It’s also a near perfectly-paced movie. Like a perfect mixtape, Wright knows when to kick things into gear and when to slow things down to let the audience catch its breath before putting his foot on the gas once more. While the film starts to feel a bit overextended at the very end, with the villain creeping into unkillable slasher territory, for the vast majority of its runtime it holds your attention from moment to moment and scene to scene expertly. In that, Wright matches the talents of his protagonist, directing and maneuvering this complex machine like it were a rough-and-tumble ballerina, full of slick thrills and inimitable grace.
He achieves this with a movie, a setting, and a lead character, that each move like clockwork in sync with one another. While Baby Driver is neither as quiet or twee as Wes Anderson’s work, it brings with it the film’s own sense of longing and melancholy beneath an intricately constructed world. Every scene is a dance, every moment a confluence of sound and imagery and movement, whether in the pulse-pounding races against cops or robbers, or gauzy imaginings of another life that might be. In Baby Driver, Wright has built his most elegant, intricate toy, and it’s a treat and a pleasure to see him play on the screen once again.
It's like this episode was from a totally different show. This episode was tripping major balls!
Wasn't expecting this show to pull off a satisfying ending in the space of an episode but it did it.
Loved the reveal of that final loop and how they both realised what they needed to do. Also glad that they didn't take this in a romantic direction/conclusion. Yes the slept together once but it was just sex.
The latter section of the episode, with Alan and Nadia both resisting the help of the other. It reminds me of those intense friendships where there might be times when one pushes the other away. But they persist coz even though there is a bump now, you both know you're better with the other person in your life. If anything that's the message we should take away from this. If someone truly gives a shit, let them in. Coz it's rarer than you think...
What a satisfying ending to a great season. I love how Nadia and Alan take care of each other and solve their problem, although I‘m a little bit sad that the other person can‘t remember what they‘ve been through together (at least in that universe).
This was a wild ride from start to finish. I loved every minute of this (even if it leaves with some questions like "I need to know!!")
Wow, I almost gave up after episode 2. So glad I didn’t. This turned out to be a great series and a very clever take on this type of plot. Final episode is great.
Ricky Gervais' actual misanthropy and love for animals being translated into a Netflix series is quite a joy to watch. Sure, the premise of the show is heartbreaking and there was a constantly depressive feeling throughout the whole episode, but the subtle humour wraps it all up just nicely.
Suicide. Heroin. Fishfingers. Elton John.
I wish I’d seen this last year when I was in a very dark place - it wouldn’t have made me cheer up much, but I would have seen how I appeared to others at times.
A brave tv program
Brilliant cinematography, brilliant soundtrack and a brilliant plot, this movie has everything going for it. The writing was steady and deliberate with every word and the film didn't make any mistakes in terms of dramatic idiosyncrasies; From the chekhov's gun of the punching bag to the repetitive drinking becoming a key element other than for character development. Everything was purposeful from the sets, to the costume design, to the sound. this is simply an exquisite film. Watch now
Alicia Vikander is striking,stunning and just so mesmerizing to watch.She is stealing the show here ; every other character(well 2?) seems to fade in ever so contrasting backdrop ; just speechless !!!
A unique and timely approach to a familiar sci-fi trope. Well acted, methodically paced, and altogether thought provoking.
Disappointingly more "boring" (for the lack of a better term) and hollow (plot-wise) than the pilot episode, this one struggled to get my attention. I feel that this episode in particular borrowed a lot from Legion (both the good and the bad).
I need more interaction between Emma Stone and Jonah Hill's characters and some plot advancement, otherwise this will be the letdown of the year (and I really, really enjoyed the first episode).
boring so far. I'll give another 2 episodes a try.
This is the Halloween sequel I've been waiting for. Thrilling. Suspense. Action and some honest scares. Get your tickets now. 9/10
Substantial, impeccable and Jamie Lee Curtis being perfect in every way,
Solid episode, was def entertained through out. The chemistry between Emma and Seth in this is great
I also like how the naming of the unborn son was the same as the truck driver who ran Annie and her sister off the road. You can tell it really threw Annie off guard which in turn made her remember an actual memory from her past Once she got back in the car.
Not only does Robert have a very nice hat, he also got the moves!
Annie, I'm a hawk.
