The Great Episode 1 Review - Lives Up To Its Name

The Great is a new Hulu original about the rise of one of Russia’s more famous rulers, Catherine the Great. And before the concept of watching another historical drama scares you off, it’s important to know that this show isn’t too concerned with taking itself seriously, it isn’t even very concerned with being accurate. That might turn some off, but for those who are willing to go along with the idea, the pilot at least seems to be setting up for a wildly entertaining show.

To begin with, the cast is phenomenal. Elle Fanning is terrific as both the naive and optimistic Catherine at the beginning of the episode and the more driven one at the end. Nicholas Hoult steals every scene he’s in as the delightfully dickish and unintelligent Peter, Emperor of Russia. He’s where most of the laughs come from in this episode while has the apparent time of his life taking no scene seriously in the best way possible. Although it’s too early to really get a feel for the supporting cast, they all seem fine enough and will no doubt rise to the occasion when it’s called for. Indeed, if there are any problems with this cast, it would be in Phoebe Fox’s assistant to Catherine, of which I have forgotten the name of, it’s not that she’s doing a particularly bad job but she’s rather dull against the flamboyant nature of the rest of the cast and not nearly enough time has been spent building up the friendship between her and Catherine so that beats later on seem, while not wrong, just slightly off.

All in all this was a delightful hour of TV and a delightful pilot that I really don’t have a lot to say about just yet. The show looks great, but for a streaming service original that’s hardly a surprise. Other than that there’s not much more for me to say then if you have access to Hulu you should watch it, and indeed you should find a way to see it even if you don’t.

P.S.

This doesn’t naturally come up in the review format but I must applaud the show for setting up what appears to be a generic rom-com (albeit a rather clever one) where the smart and practical woman smooths the rough edges of the flawed male character and eventually they become a perfectly ship-able couple, only for it to become more and more apparent as Hoult’s Peter became more and more dangerous, that that was not the story they were interested in telling. If only the lack of a real romance between the two hadn’t been spoilt by history. Oh well.

Personal Rating: 9/10

Entertainment: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Depth: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆

Story: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Writing: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Acting: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Directing: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Comedy: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Tension:⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆

May The Fourth Be With You - Ranking All The Live-Action Star Wars Movies

Today being Star Wars day, I figured a nice way to celebrate it would be to rank all live-action Star Wars movies. That means the whole Skywalker Saga plus Solo and Rogue One but ignoring the Clone Wars movie simply because I haven’t watched it and based on what I’ve heard about it, I have no interest in watching it. Now just a disclaimer, while I have watched all the films on this list and have enjoyed them all at least mildly, I would not consider myself a true Star Wars fan. I did not really grow up with Star Wars the way many have, and I don’t have quite the same amount of nostalgia for them as many do. I still appreciate it as a franchise and look forward to new entries but this list will not be or attempt to be a representation of the fandom’s general opinion of any kind. I don’t necessarily care as much about quote-on-quote “child-hood ruining” ideas such as those in The Phantom Menace or The Last Jedi, so midichlorians will not be counted against any movie. I’m simply judging the movies based on my personal enjoyment of it based on it’s own merits and not really how it fits into the bigger picture. Sorry if this introduction was rather long-winded, but what with the current environment of the Star Wars fandom, I decided it was better to play it safe. But, without further ado, let’s begin.

11) Attack of the Clones

10) The Phantom Menace

9) Revenge of the Sith

8) The Rise of Skywalker

7) The Last Jedi

6) A New Hope / Star Wars

5) The Return of the Jedi

4) Rogue One

3) Solo

2) The Force Awakens

1) The Empire Strikes Back

The Incredible Hulk Retrospective Review - Un-credible (Black Widow Bound)

Marvel will kick Phase 4 off in a couple of months with Black Widow (hopefully) so I figured it’s about time to go back to 2008 and rank all of the MCU movies in the Infinity Saga in preparation. These will be spoiler reviews, as you’ve had plenty of time to see these movies by now and they’ll be actual review reviews, not “why this is great” or “why this sucks”. Reviews will go up every couple of days and we will move through the franchise chronologically and today we continue with the oft-overlooked, The Incredible Hulk.

This was a disappointing movie. I’ve never had the urge to go back and watch it after the first viewing, but I don’t remember it being this bad. Let’s start with the positives before I start ranting. The opening credits sequence does a solid job catching us up on Bruce Banner’s (Edward Norton) backstory, even if it really dates the movie (not that the effects or anything about it is necessarily bad, it just doesn’t look like something you’d see today) and the heart monitor is a clever way of building tension even before you fully understand that at a point, Bruce Banner will turn into a monster. The biggest praise I can give it is in Tim Roth’s The Abomination. The portrayal by Tim Roth is naturally great, Roth has a way of elevating even trash material that is given him, but honestly the material he’s gotten isn’t complete garbage. Emil Blonsky is actually a pretty great villain all things considered (he doesn’t quite fit into the story, but we’ll get to that). His pre-Abomination story is pretty solid, an aging soldier looking to become more powerful and coming face to face with this unstoppable force and wanting to be like it so he unrelentingly pursues that power is an interesting set-up for a villain because it makes him the underdog but still a threat, I only wish that he had more characterization once he became the Abomination other than CGI monster for the Hulk to fight.

Unfortunately that leads into the biggest problem with the movie, that final fight. Not only is it just a rather boring and bad-looking CGI monster fight (I get that other people like it but honestly, it’s just not bad, name one other MCU fight that’s as bad as this) but it just doesn’t work with the story of the movie (yes, they did set-up Blonsky earlier on, but you could cut him and the first two acts remain the same). Here’s the problem, the central conflict of the story is that Bruce is running from the government because the government wants to create Hulk-soldiers, now his problem with this as he states multiple times is that the government can’t make Hulk-soldiers because they won’t be able to control them, Emil Blonsky is an example of a Hulk-soldier that they can’t control and so the final thesis of the movie is that no one can control the Hulk, fine. However, Banner’s big arc of the movie is to stop running from the Hulk and accept control over it. You see the problem here? Now theoretically this could be fixed by Bruce never gaining control of the Hulk, but then that fight can’t happen because the Hulk wouldn’t be fighting the Abomination in that scenario, and plus even if they did find a work around, that means that Bruce Banner isn’t ready to join the Avengers because he’s still running from the Hulk. However, if they did the Civil War or Winter Soldier route and made it clear that the government was not worthy of control over a Hulk (which is an easy point they could have made, the army does attack a college after all) and they changed the final fight so that it wasn’t just a rando army guy running around with super-powers but an actual government sponsored enemy, then the story makes so much more sense.

However, even then the story has major problems. Stanley the pizza guy (Paul Soles) and Doc Samson (Ty Burrell) exist only as plot devices to create specific situations and really could have just been cut. And Martina (Debora Nascimento), who by the way I don’t think is named in the movie, exists for literally no reason as I can tell, she’s just kinda there to look hot for a bit which is really weird considering how important a couple shots at the beginning make her out to be. Then Liv Tyler’s character is tacked on to be a love interest with no other purpose and we already mentioned how Tim Roth, while great, is unnecessary and that’s a lot of unnecessary. And I’ve not even mentioned that the second act campus battle is just there to have another CGI fight and adds nothing of value to the story. A couple days ago I praised the relative consistency of the patched together Iron Man but this movie, which had less production problems (although there still were some) just feels like an absolute mess.

Then we get to the acting, while not bad, isn’t great. Frankly speaking, Mark Ruffalo is a better Banner than Norton is and I’m glad that things with Norton didn’t work out. I realize that sounds horrible, but Edward Norton is just very boring in this movie and I don’t enjoy his Bruce Banner at all. William Hurt is fine as General Ross, he’s kinda uninteresting, but I don’t mind that he reappears in Civil War and Black Widow. Liv Tyler is, as I mentioned earlier, pointless (I guess you could argue that she shows that Bruce can control the Hulk but that’s kinda vague and they could have worked around that) and it really doesn’t help that Tyler gives a paper-thin performance that does what the script needs her to do in a breathy voice. To be clear that’s not to say that any of these actors specifically are bad, it just seems like no one wants to be doing this.

Frankly, this movie can and really should be skipped. There’s not much to enjoy and although it does really cleverly tie into the MCU, it’s unnecessary to watch in the context of the Infinity Saga. Maybe one day Tim Roth will come back and wow us all with Abomination, making this movie seem better in retrospect but until then I don’t see much to like about this movie. Now let’s move on to the other bad phase 1 MCU movie... joy.

P.S. This didn’t naturally come up in the review, but the comedy in this is god-awful. I don’t remember a single time where I enjoyed a joke and I definitely don’t remember laughing.

P.P.S. Mr. Blue’s (Tim Blake Nelson) sequel set-up is so annoying, not just in the fact that it never panned out but also that it happens in the movie. I’d be fine if it was an after credit sequence but the fact that it happens right before the climax was such a bad idea. Also, his line before that “I hate the government just as much as anyone else” is such a weird line. Like I get that the government is generally bad in the MCU, but really? I don’t even know what to think about that line. It just makes me wonder why the writers hated the government so much.

Personal Rating: 6/10

Entertainment: ⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆ ☆

Depth: ⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆ ☆

Story: ⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆ ☆

Writing: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆

Acting: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆

Directing: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆

Comedy: ⭐️ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Tension: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆

Iron Man Retrospective Review - Empire Starter-Pack (Black Widow Bound)

Marvel will kick Phase 4 off in a couple of months with Black Widow so I figured it’s about time to go back to 2008 and rank all of the MCU movies in the Infinity Saga in preparation. These will be spoiler reviews, as you’ve had plenty of time to see these movies by now and they’ll be actual review reviews, not “why this is great” or “why this sucks”. Reviews will go up every couple of days and we will move through the franchise chronologically starting with the movie that started it all off: Iron Man.

Iron Man is a good movie. I’m not sure if there is anyone who wouldn’t contest the point. The dialogue is snappy, Robert Downey Jr. is at the top of his game and the movie just looks good. It’s always an impressive accomplishment when a good movie is released but very few movies are this impressive. Sure, there are movies with bigger cinematic scope and greater filmmaking feats, but this movie should not have been as good as it was. Robert Downey Jr. was cast despite of the fact that he was a recently recovered alcoholic with a questionable track record, there was no script and the movie was being made up as it went along. And yet, twelve years later, this movie goes down as one of the greatest movies of the 2000s. How impressive is that?

There are a number of things that made this possible. For one, the script is as straightforward as possible. Where other Iron Man movies will get too convoluted and complicated for their own good, this one keeps it simple and focuses the movie around one idea: the man Tony Stark. It is clear from the very start of the film that both director Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr. know everything there is to know about Tony Stark, never for a second do you doubt that this is a real person. This is not a plot-based movie, if it were it would have very likely gone the way of The Hobbit movies, all style and no substance, however because the story is entirely focused on the growth of Tony Stark, we get a clear narrative from start to finish.

And now we get to perhaps the most crucial reason as to why this movie was a success: before this, there had never been a hero like Tony Stark, and frankly, we still haven’t got one. In any other movie, Tony Stark would have been the villain. He would have been the careless billionaire profiting off of war because it made his life fun that the hero would have to take down. For the ordinary viewer, there is nothing to empathize with in Tony Stark. However, Jon Favreau cleverly finds one detail that changes the way we think about him, as Yusuf says: “so you are a man who has everything, and nothing”. While Tony Stark was never unlikable before this revelation (Robert Downey Jr. doing an excellent job at being charming while also being an a**hole) this makes him empathetic and gives the audience a reason to root for them. Heroes are supposed to be good people and Tony Stark isn’t, but the fact that he still tries to do the right thing shows just how great of a character he is.

And now we get to the supporting cast. They’re all fine. Most likely because of the messy production they never get as fleshed out as Tony more than what the plot needs and what the actors bring. Terrance Howard is Robert Downey Jr.’s straight man best friend who’s there to help out when needed and there to lecture Tony when he’s being unreasonable, Gwyneth Paltrow is RDJ’s love interest because she’s a female and she’s in the movie and she’s there to be worried about Tony Stark (though, to give the movie credit, they don’t force the romance story farther than it needs to) and Jeff Bridges is there to be the bad-guy. That’s about it. There’s also Phil Coulson who literally serves no purpose to the plot other than to set-up SHIELD but it’s small and justified enough that it’s forgivable. But even though the characters in writing are flat, all of the actors do an admirable job at making these people feel alive (side note: I do think Terrance Howard is better than Don Cheadle, not that Cheadle is bad, but Howard feels like a military man that happens to be Tony’s best friend and Cheadle just seems like one of the dudes that drinks at the bar with Tony on the weekends (okay, he’s not THAT relaxed, but he does seem more quippy and less strict)) and the story doesn’t even really need them to be that complex. This is Tony’s movie, and he deserves the focus.

Speaking of Tony’s story, the biggest complaint often lobbied at this film is that Tony’s arc ends at the end of act II and that after that there’s a fight scene. Defenders of the movie will often point out that Obadiah Stane represents what Tony Stark was and could be if he hadn’t become a pacifist and while that’s true, I also think there’s more to it. See, everybody know’s that Tony’s arc in this movie is to stop being an irresponsible weapons manufacturer and take responsibility for the damage that he’s done, but the thing is, his arc doesn’t end when he destroys his weapons that are being used by terrorists because he’s still using the Iron Man armor as a weapon. During that entire battle, the Iron Man is shot to look like a monster, whether he’s hanging on to the bottom of a US military jet like some sort of parasite, being hit by a missed, falling into a large hole and then climbing out with a menacing look on it’s face, or punching through a wall behind a guy to grab him. Sure, we root for it because we know who’s underneath and he’s doing good things, but without context Iron Man could easily look like a villain. But then in the third act battle between him and the Iron Monger (cleverly shot like some monster as well, mirroring the second act), he’s not going to war against terrorists, his only goal is to protect as many people as possible from the Iron Monger. He begins the movie creating weapons, then he becomes a weapon (Obadiah “you tried to rid the world of weapons, you gave it it’s greatest one yet”), and then finally he becomes a protector.

That’s not to say that the movie is without it’s faults. As I mentioned earlier, Phil Coulson and the rest of SHIELD serve no real purpose to the plot other than to provide some cannon fodder for the Iron Monger (which Phil Coulson survives off screen to pop back up afterwards) and did we ever learn why SHIELD wanted to talk to Tony? Because I was waiting for some sort of reason other than “we need to talk to you about what happened”, but that never happened. Then there are some strange cuts and the timeline is a bit strange, it’s kinda hard to figure out if this all takes place in a couple of days or over several months or whatever. The first act does feel a bit slow. And even though thematically it makes sense, Obadiah Stane is revealed to be the bad guy kinda sloppily and there doesn’t seem to be much motivation to him other than keep the company alive which is kind of a small goal and doesn’t really explain why he just starts throwing cars with families in them. But even still this is a good, impressive movie.

P.S. The MCU has a tendency to be more comedic nowadays so it was strange to watch this movie and see how grounded it is. All of the jokes come from Tony Stark and none of them really get to the banter that the MCU is known for now. In fact this could really be called a gritty origin story. The people feel like they could be real and the story feels like it could happen and it’s dealing with a real-world problem with very little glamour. People said that at least the DCEU was trying something new by being gritty, but Iron Man is pretty dark and gritty but it’s still a super-hero movie and it doesn’t take itself too seriously. This is how to do a realistic super-hero movie.

P.P.S. Well that was my longest review ever. I had to use TWO pictures so it wouldn’t just be a block of text. Let’s see how The Incredible Hulk does...

Personal Rating: 8/10

Enjoyment: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Depth: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆

Story: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆

Writing: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆

Directing: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆

Acting: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Comedy: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆

Tension: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ⭐️ ☆

Doctor Who Season 12 Review - Well No One Can Say That It Was Boring

Alright, huh. So that was interesting. Was this season good? Yes. It didn’t have amazing episodes but none (except for Orphan 55) were anywhere close to bad. In fact there were a lot of things that got me really engaged. Right up until the big revelation in the finale that I’m... not a big fan of right now. On the other hand it’s not the worst. I don’t know, let’s get back to that.

I’ve already reviewed the early episodes of the series: Spyfall Parts 1 and 2, Orphan 55, and Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror, but all of the other episodes were pretty good. This is the kind of season that’s going to be impossible to talk about without talking about spoilers but suffice to say the second half of the season has about the same quality as the first half. I still maintain that Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror is the best episode of the season but the other filler episodes are harmless enough and are still very engaging. Then there are the episodes that push the story forward and these are all pretty good. The writing can be all over the place but the twists and turns of those stories are often enough to compensate. Ascension of the Cybermen especially was really exciting stuff and got me really excited for the finale. Then after some massive reveals lore-changing reveals in the finale and a cliffhanger unlike any series closer in the show’s almost 60 year history and you’ve got a pretty solid season. Whether or not you come away from the season liking it or not will depend on your opinion of the major twist in the finale, but I think that I can fairly say that this was a pretty great season of television all things considered. Not an outstanding one, but it’s definitely more than just good.

I’m going to put the rating here now because I’ll be talking about spoilers below.

Personal Rating: 8/10

Entertainment: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆

Depth: ⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆ ☆

Story: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆

Comedy: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆

Tension: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆ 

Acting: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆

Directing: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆

Alright, spoiler time. DO NOT READ IF YOU DON’T WANT THE SEASON TO BE SPOILED

I won’t start with the big twist here so we’ll start with episode 5, Fugitive of the Judoon.

I thought that despite the fact that the writing often felt kinda horrid, and the acting from the supporting cast left a lot to be desired (seriously, I don’t get why people love Jo Martin so much, she was fine, but she wasn’t great). However JACK HARKNESS IS FRICKING BACK!!! I don’t think it was possible to not be excited in that moment and it feels so good to have John Barrowman back, I wish that he was a larger part of the series other than a glorified exposition dump of a cameo, but hey, I’ll take what I can get. The other turn in the episode worked less well in my opinion, the reveal that Jo Martin was actually some other iteration of the Doctor was an interesting one, but one that felt like a very easy reveal to make and one that didn’t feel like it could really pay off well (which it didn’t really, but we’ll get to that). However, I was intrigued as to how it would work out even if I wasn’t excited at the prospect of this person being the Doctor (I just don’t think she was that engaging).

Then there are two very filler-y episodes with the exception of Can You Hear Me?’s rather pointless name-drop of the timeless child again just to get us ready for the finale and then we have The Haunting of Villa Diodati which was set up as filler but ended up being very crucial to the plot. Ignoring the episode’s wanting dialogue, it was a pretty great episode. It created the fantastic villain Ashad or The Lone Cyberman, who was a very effective Cyberman villain that actually made them pretty terrifying again. The Cyberium was a fine enough plot device and the Doctor sacrificing the Cyberium, starting a second Cyber War, to save one man was a pretty effective way to get us into the finale, even if the episode botched it a bit with the Doctor seemingly sacrificing the Cyberium twice for no apparent reason and the writers cramming in a weird monologue about how important writers are (which is especially weird because the important writer that it’s talking about is Percy Shelley when the more important Mary Shelley was right there for the writers to use). This episode neatly transitioned into Ascension of the Cybermen which was pretty short on reveals (and a bit on writing quality too (I promise that’s the last knock on writing (I should add a writing score to my reviews))) but was otherwise pretty fantastic and I was very excited for the finale.

And then there’s The Timeless Children, which isn’t a bad episode, in fact, it’s quite good, however the reveal that they cram into it is, well I don’t like it. I’m assuming that if you’ve read this far you know that it reveals that the Doctor is actually not Gallifreyan but some other entity that can regenerate indefinitely and gave the Time-Lords their regeneration ability. Which, on the one hand, I do kinda like the idea of the Doctor’s background being even more mysterious, not only do we not know what happened to them as a little First Doctor child on Gallifrey, but we also don’t know what they are or where they came from. However, I’m still not sure how I feel about them being this super important being. I think I like the reveal more than most people, and it is growing on me. We’ll just have to see how the next season turns out. However, everything else in the episode was solid enough. The Master is great, the Lone Cyberman is great, the companions are there and all that. And that cliffhanger is pretty cool. I would love to see a Doctor Who jailbreak.

Writing: ⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Invisible Man Review - Edge-Of-Your-Seat Terrifying

The Invisible Man, starring Elizabeth Moss as Cecilia and written and directed by Leigh Whannell, is a retelling of the H.G. Wells story of the same name. And wow is it effective. The story follows Cecilia as she escapes her abusive relationship and then finding shortly after that her ex-boyfriend, Adrian (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), has killed himself. However, Cecilia begins to believe that Adrian is still alive and has found a way to turn invisible and is now stalking and tormenting her. What follows is an exceptionally directed and exceptionally acted thriller.

Elizabeth Moss is naturally fantastic in this role. At this point it’s impossible to expect anything less than her. This movie would not work if the lead wasn’t believable and Moss is believable and is still a bit more believable in case you weren’t sure. The rest of the cast is pretty great too. None of them stand out the same way that Elizabeth Moss does but then again, they shouldn’t have too. If there is one weak point it’s the portrayal of one of the characters at the end but I’m not sure if that’s the actor’s fault or the story’s fault or my fault for not quite liking what I got.

Following up on that, I personally felt that the ending was kinda not great. That’s not to say that you’ll think that watching it, the person I watched it with liked it fine enough. But it feels like director Leigh Whannell wanted to add a curveball to the end while also wanting to follow through with what he had been building towards and it didn’t quite work for me. The third act in general was the weakest part story wise. The first two acts set up this really clever, really engaging story, using the titular Invisible Man as both a very dangerous physical threat and also an extremely effective metaphor for the aftermath of domestic abuse and how (I assume) survivors damage the people around them in a way where it feels like their abuser is damaging them (if that makes sense, you kinda have to watch the movie to understand it) but after a very surprising second-act twist, the story kinda becomes a bit more predictable. It’s still very engaging but it just isn’t where the first two acts were.

Speaking of the first two acts, that’s where Whannell really shines behind the camera. He cleverly uses shots of what should be nothing to imply the presence of the invisible stalker, keeping you on edge the entire movie even during happy scenes. The Invisible Man could be anywhere, and it feels like he’s always watching. The score is also fantastic. Very few movies can combine cinematography, acting, directing and score into this sort of edge-of-your-seat tension that this movie effortlessly pulls off. This movie is terrifying, in a way that very few horror movies, even ones that are better than this movie, are.

P.S. For such a tiny budget, the stuff that they’re able to do is amazing, the invisible suit can look kinda CGI at some points, but it still looks fantastic.

Personal Rating: 9/10

Enjoyment: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Depth: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆

Story: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆

Directing: 💫💫💫💫💫

Acting: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Comedy: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆

Tension: 💫💫💫💫💫

Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made Review - Doesn’t Fail You, Despite What The Name Says

I don’t remember the book being this good. I thought that a lot while watching this movie. I enjoyed reading the misadventures of the comically unintelligent Timmy Failure when I found those books in the library, but this movie takes that goofy kids’ book concept and mines so much heart and charm from it that I can’t shake the feeling that I really missed something while reading the book.

Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made is a Disney+ original about a fifth grade boy named Timmy Failure living in Portland, Oregon who runs an imaginary detective agency with an imaginary 200-pound polar bear named Total (gettit? Total... Failure...?). Timmy is stoic, professional and never says two words when one would do, which are all great traits for a detective, but not-so great when you’re a 10 year-old boy. This attitude strains his school performance and his relationship with his family and friends but even when things get rough and is asked to be a normal kid he steadfastly believes that: “normal is for normal people” a saying that his single mother (Ophelia Lovibond) taught him. 

Honestly there’s not a lot to say about this movie so I’ll keep it short. The cast is all pretty solid. There is some wooden acting from the child actors at points (that’s a demerit) but it’s all easily ignored. The plot is rather straightforward but is so full of heart and charm that you forget how straightforward it is while watching it and are constantly wondering what’s going to happen next. The ending is a bit forced (that’s a demerit) and the climactic car crash that serves as a sort-of cold-open doesn’t quite live up to expectations (that’s a demerit) but once again these are all easily ignored. 

Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made is very different from the source material. And that’s a good thing. What could’ve been a mediocre, whacky kids comedy that Disney put out to round out the Disney+ originals ends up being a really heart-felt, enjoyable hour-and-a-half that I wish more people were talking about. If you have the time, definitely watch this.

P.S. The one thing I do miss is the lack of Garbanzo Man (that’s a demerit)

P.P.S. Also “That’s a demerit” is going to find it’s way into my every day vocabulary.

Personal Rating: 8/10

Entertainment: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆

Depth: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆

Story: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆

Comedy: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆

Tension: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆

Acting: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆

Directing: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆

Birds Of Prey And The Fantabulous Emancipation Of One Harley Quinn Review - That’s A Mouthful

Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of one Harley Quinn (not going to say that every time) is the new DCEU film directed by Cathy Yan in her second outing as a director and stars Margot Robbie, Rosa Perez, Ewan McGregor, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Ella Jay Basco. And this movie, more than Shazam, Joker or Aquaman, really shows the potential of DC movies. In a cinema landscape that is dominated by Marvel’s safe, fun, action movies, DC’s new business plan of putting out a bunch of totally different movie shows real potential. Birds of Prey is unlike any other super-hero movie we’ve ever seen, the closest comparison being probably Deadpool, but even that doesn’t quite do it justice. It does have the R-rated comedy as Deadpool at several moments, but it’s less quippy and is able to get a lot darker. That’s not to say that Birds of Prey is a bold new movie, because it’s not. But it is a well put together, very entertaining and memorable blockbuster to kick of 2020.

Let’s talk about it’s greatest strengths. Cathy Yan directs the hell out of the action scenes. There’s an insane amount of visual polish that goes into every big action scene that makes all the fight scene such a joy to watch beyond the fact that the fight choreographer from John Wick came in to make the actual fights insane. The stand out is easily the police station fight scene that is vibrant and exciting in a way that few other super-hero movies have ever shown. Additionally, Margot Robbie IS Harley Quinn in much the same way that Robert Downey Jr. or Chris Evans embody their roles in the MCU. The movie ticket to see this film is worth buying on the merit of watching her alone and both the script and Robbie do an excellent job of telling a story through Harley Quinn’s brain. The other stand out is Ewan McGregor who chews every single scene he’s in to a point where he gives Robbie a run for her money. McGregor’s Roman Sionis is such a delightfully ugly human being that you both love watching McGregor have a blast with it and hate it. The one problem I had with him was less a problem with him and more a problem with the script in that I felt like I never needed him to be “Black Mask” because I didn’t quite buy him as a named super-villain, to me Roman Sionis was enough of an antagonist without a scary mask. 

Following that trail into the mixed aspects of this film, it is a bit chaotic. For my part I was able to follow the film just fine, but there have been plenty of complaints that the crazy plot structure is confusing and unnecessary. There is merit to these complaints and if you want a linear plot-structure then you will have some trouble with this movie but not seeing it because of that will mean that you’re missing out. Additionally, this is not a Birds of Prey movie and it doesn’t really convince me as a backdoor Birds of Prey origin story either. The three Birds of Prey are all fine, but only really work as background characters to Harley Quinn and nothing about this movie makes me interested in seeing a stand-alone Birds of Prey movie. That’s not to say that any actress is bad (with the exception of maybe Ella Jay Basco, who at 12 years old, can’t quite keep up with the rest of the cast), but they just aren’t really engaging in the way that Margot Robbie and Ewan McGregor are. That being said, Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Huntress is fun, but she’s so poorly drawn into the plot that we barely get a good sense of her character. 

Those nitpicks aside, there are no real movie breaking flaws with this film. The action is hella fun, the humor is on point 90% of the time, and it’s just a fun time. Honestly it’s a bit surprising how many people have taken grievance with this film because it seems to me as the type of movie that can whisk anybody up into itself if they’re willing. There have been a lot of complaints lobbied against this film, saying that it’s too much preachy feminism and to that I say, actually watch the movie, don’t just watch the trailers. Because the trailers don’t quite do the film justice. Sure, if you’re looking for a message that says “all woman good, all men bad” you can find that pretty easily, but that’s ignoring the smartness of the script. It is true that all the males in this film are psychotic a$$holes (with the exception of Doc, who’s adorable), but honestly everybody in this movie is kinda a psychotic a$$hole. It’s just that Harley and co. choose to be something more. This is a movie about defining yourself as a singular person while not isolating yourself from everybody else. It could be a bit more strongly stated but Ewan McGregor’s Roman Sionis is a character building himself from scratch after being kicked out of his father’s empire. The only difference between him and the Birds of Prey and Harley Quinn, who are all also defining themselves on their own, is that he finds himself unable to really befriend anybody and gets stuck being a sadistic a$$hole trying to create an army to control Gotham City. He’s so unable to trust that the very second time we see him, he’s cutting off a families’ faces because the dad didn’t agree to his deal. There is good stuff in this movie if you’re willing to watch it.

All in all Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn is not reinventing anything. It’s not the best super-hero movie you’ve ever seen and isn’t the best feminist super-hero movie you’ve ever seen. But it is a well-crafted, fun roller-coaster that deserves all the support it can get at the box office, because DC needs to know to make more of these movies.

P.S. Also the title is evidently “Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey” now? It’s a good decision, but why wasn’t it made before the movie came out?

Personal Rating: 8/10

Entertainment: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Depth: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆ 

Story: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆

Comedy: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆

Tension: ⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆ ☆

Acting: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆

Directing: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Doctor Who Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terrors Review - Now This is Doctor Who

So, with last week’s terrible disapointment out of the way we can finally move on to some good Doctor Who and boy does this episode deliver. Now it is a single-part filler episode about Nikola Tesla so don’t expect it to be astounding. But this quality of filler episode has not been seen since... Flatline, I guess. It’s nicely paced, the cast of characters is well-utilized, the monsters are well designed and intimidating and it’s just all around a fun time. The opening was also one of the greater openings in a while with Tesla and his assistant hiding from a strange man with a strange gun and the Doctor suddenly just bursting on the scene. Up until now, I’ve enjoyed Whittaker but never really quite saw her as the Doctor but that opening and how she handles the rest of the episode made her the Doctor for me. I really enjoy her quirky amicability that really covers this cruel alien beneath. When she first began her run as the Doctor a lot of people were saying that she was the most human of the Doctors but I don’t think that’s quite the case, I think she acts the most human, but especially seeing her deal with the Skithra this week, you can see a cold, unforgiving alien beneath.

Speaking of the Skithra, they are fantastic. It’s rare that you see a new-Who created monster that becomes a recurring threat, but I would definitely be game to see more of them. They’re not quite as scary as the Weeping Angels or the Silence (which are really the only new-Who monsters that appear in multiple stories) but the design is fantastic, their characterization is fantastic and the episode leaves a door open for their return. The only real complaint with them is that I don’t understand why the queen (Anjli Mohindra) had to be bipedal, but the bionic scorpion look of the actual species is fantastic and while I don’t quite understand what the zombie ones are, they look pretty awesome as well. Plus, the whole concept of scavengers that scavenge because they think they’re too great to build anything themselves is pretty clever and connects well enough to the morals of Edison (Robert Glenister) in the episode.

Speaking of Edison, in his rivalry with Tesla (Goran Višnjić), he is presented as the one in the wrong, but never in a one-sided-Doctor-gives-a-long-monologue-deprecating-him kinda way that might have happened had this episode occurred in season 11. (I realize I’ve attacked season 11 a lot in these reviews, and I want to make clear that I didn’t hate any of those episodes but they did tend to get overly consumed in yelling a timely political message, not that political messaging should not be a part of Doctor Who, but it’s more often handled better than it was in season 11). Edison gets some good counter-arguments in on Tesla and the episode ends more in a compromise than a victory over Edison. He’s portrayed as not a great person, but he also is visible upset when he sees all of his workers killed (more so than the Doctor, more proof that she’s the most alien Doctor yet) and his only real punishment for being a bit of an a-hole is that the aliens want Tesla and not him.

Višnjić is also fantastic. It’s really nice to know that after the abysmal ensemble of last week that Doctor Who can still write compelling side characters in forty-five minutes. Višnjić portrays Tesla as if he doesn’t quite operate on the same wave-length as the rest of Earth. He acts like a man who believes intensely in his ideas, but is ridiculed by the rest of the world so that his only option is to retreat further into his theories and concepts. He also really fits into the plot, something that a lot of other historical characters that have popped up in previous Doctor Who episodes can’t say. I don’t really get why the Skithra still want Tesla after meeting the Doctor, but them wanting him in the first place makes sense and it’s his belief that he’s contacted Mars (which actually happened) that starts the episode and it’s his invention that wins the day. Plus it also gives us a sky-beam which is always fun.

By the way, let’s talk about the ending. The Chibnall era has been in large part plagued by it’s anti-climactic way of dealing with it’s villains (see Spyfall or Orphan 55 or almost any episode of season 11), and it’s really nice to see a classic good guys come up with a plan that arises from the information given in the episode, bad guys throw a wrench in the plan and good guys win with another bit of information that appeared earlier in the episode conclusion. And although the farewell to Tesla is a bit on the nose, it’s pretty traditional Doctor Who on-the-noseness so I can forgive it.

All in all, while this was not a great episode, it also felt like a massive assurance that Doctor Who can still deliver fun stories and what I put in this review so far isn’t even all of it. I like the extended time in the Tardis and that it was actually part of the plot rather than a convenient mode of transportation. I liked that the Skithra were obviously related to the Racnoss, but that it never had to outright state it. I liked that Yas actually felt like part of the story, and they weren’t just finding something for her to do. So yeah, this episode was good. Let’s see where season 12 goes next.

P.S. It did really bug me though that the Doctor kept calling the Silurians aliens, because they’re not.

Personal Rating: 9/10

Enjoyment: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Depth: ⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆ ☆

Story: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆

Comedy: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆

Tension: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆

Acting: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆

Directing: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆

Doctor Who Orphan 55 Review - BENNIE!!!!... ugh

On the bright side, this was definitely a Doctor Who episode, not some weird season 11 whoey-ish thing. On the not-so-bright side, it’s not a good one. The pacing is weird, the story is confused, the characters are one-dimensional and largely pointless. But hey, it’s been a while since we’ve had a good base under siege story, and at least that feels nice. 

Perhaps the best part about the episode is the beginning. Not how the plot begins, that’s largely just a serviceable Doctor Who get the Tardis team to the story opening, but the fact that The Doctor is still obviously dealing with last week’s reveal. It only lasts for the opening two scenes but it’s nice to know that that’s still going on. Also the monster designs are pretty cool. That’s about the only positives for this episode.

To begin with, let’s look at the large ensemble cast. And it’s large. You’ve got Jodie Whittaker who’s once again pretty great, honestly, Whittaker is easily the strongest part of Doctor Who right now and it’s a shame that she’s getting so many bad scripts. You’ve got the companions: Tosin Cole’s Ryan, Mandip Gill’s Yaz and Bradley Walsh’s Graham, who are all just kinda along for the ride, maybe not Ryan but definitely everyone else. You’ve got the “you thought that the Cats movie had a furry fetish” character who dies right away. By the way, I’m spoiling this because you shouldn’t watch this. You’ve got the no-nonsense military person. You’ve got the other military guy who dies. You’ve got the lady in the picture above who is kinda there until they decide she’s a terrorist and her mom is the no-nonsense military person because somebody had to do it. You’ve got the old couple who haven’t been married and then the old man gets carried off by the monsters and dies after asking the other one to marry him and then the old lady screams about him for a bit until she dies too. And then you’ve got the green haired dad and son, who exist.

You see the problem here right? They’re all dumb and there’s too many of them. 

Now let’s talk about the story. So The Doctor and Co. show up on this alien resort that quickly becomes attacked by the pretty cool monster designs. They manage to fend them off but the old guy is taken away by the things. So they decide to take EVERYONE OUT INTO THE RADIATION FILLED ATMOSPHERE TO GET A DYING OLD MAN BACK FROM AN ARMY OF MONSTERS. THAT INCLUDES A LITTLE BOY AND AN ELDERLY WOMAN. Can someone explain to me why they thought this script was a good idea? And that’s within like the first fifteen minutes. So they all go out in this truck and they have these special oxygen tanks that replenish in oxygen environments so they can survive. And then they get attacked by monsters so the Cats rip-off and other military guy die and everybody else runs away into a service hatch that exists. Also, in that time the no-nonsense military woman kills the old guy because he asked her too. So they’re all in the tunnels and it’s revealed that the lady in the picture above is the no-nonsense military lady’s daughter so the lady in the picture teleports away with Ryan to blow up the resort. Then the old lady dies. Then they find out that they’re actually on Earth. Then the military lady dies. Then Whittaker is about to run out of oxygen but she stands near a cool monster design and it replenishes her oxygen because they breath in CO2 and release oxygen (which by the way shouldn’t work, because you can’t stand by a tree in an otherwise CO2 atmosphere and just suck oxygen out of it). Then they get back to the resort and Ryan has convinced the lady in the picture above not to blow everything up because that’s what the script says. Then it’s revealed that Earth looks like this now because global warming and that the cool monster designs are mutated humans. Then the little green-haired boy runs off because he’s mad at his green-haired dad for dismissing him. So The Doctor and the lady in the picture above save him and then The Doctor convinces a cool monster design not to kill her for a bit. And then the green-haired dad is complaining that he can’t fix the teleported to get them out of there because he’s not smart like his green-haired son and then the green-haired son shows up and fixes it. But they can’t all teleport away and so the lady in the picture above sacrifices herself so they can go. And then the no-nonsense military mom shows up to help her daughter and the resort blows up and everyone leaves and then they don’t save the daughter and the mom even though they’re in a time machine. And then Jodie Whittaker gives a speech about global warming and then we’re done.

So it was dumb.

The thing is, I kinda get what they were trying to do. The whole green-haired father and son sub-plot, though dumb, is supposed to show how the younger generation is going to have to fix things that the current one can’t. And I think global warming is bad, but the message is kinda just crammed down the audiences throat at the end because there wasn’t enough set-up before about global warming bad. So yeah. Don’t watch this episode. Watch something good with your time.

P.S. What did you think about 1917?

Personal Rating: 3/10

Enjoyment: ⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆ ☆

Depth: ⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆ ☆

Story: ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Comedy: ⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆ ☆

Tension: ⭐️ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Acting: ⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆ ☆

Directing: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆

1917 Review - The Mind Reels

1917, the new movie directed Sam Mendez, is a cinematic masterpiece and nothing less. The directing’s perfect, the acting’s perfect, the sound design is perfect, the cinematography is perfect, the script is, well the script is perfectly fine. It’s intense, it’s emotional, it’s stunning, it’s horrific, it’s a much-watch for everyone who exists. As you may or may not know, the whole movie is shot to feel like one take and it all serves to make you feel like you’re really down in the trenches with them. Everything is almost always in motion so the plot also always has forward momentum. There’s really not a single dull moment in this movie. It’s a treat to watch from beginning to end.

A lot of reviews I’ve read so far have praised the technical ingenuity of this film and I won’t go into that because they’ve all said it better than I could. Suffice to say, check out all of the behind the scenes stuff you can find because it’s almost as interesting as the movie. But one thing I really haven’t heard a lot about is the sheer brutalness of it all. The protagonists will be crawling through no-man’s land and you’ll see the corpses buried in the mud with ghastly holes in their bodies and an entire ecosystem feeding off of them. This movie is not for the squeamish. That’s not to say they shouldn’t watch it. In an industry all to preoccupied now with cramming fan-service and nostalgia down your throat or beating you over the head with a message or both (not that either are particularly bad things, I personally just feel like they’re over-played) It’s nice to see a film that just lets the story speak for itself. It doesn’t need Captain America wielding Mjolnir and it doesn’t need to scream at you war is bad, it just has to exist and it says everything it needs to and it keeps you engaged the whole way through.

Speaking of it’s anti-war message, that kinda leads to my one nitpick about the film. At one point, about halfway through, a character gives the protagonist a warning about his message that just kinda turns out to be nothing to worry about. That little scene felt like it was a remnant of a draft that was more explicit about it’s message and it just was never cut. Other than that the message works really well. The whole central conflict almost feels pointless (that’s not a knock against the movie, that’s a knock against WWI), and it really shows just how meaningless the war really was. There was one scene where the protagonists do a good deed and I quietly thought to myself, “Oh, here’s the scene that shows how great the British are” but no! The protagonists get punished for trying to be good people! And that’s the movie, it’s both nihilistic and optimistic in some crazy way. It’s literally shot so it looks like the protagonist got back to where he started! And yet, it also feels like some good came out of this. It feels like the protagonists helped people that otherwise would not have been helped and that even through the craziness of war there are still god people. It’s almost a shame that the technical aspects are so great because it means that not enough people are talking about the fantastic way it handles its themes.

The other aspect of the movie that is not talked enough about is the cleverness of how it resolves tension. It’s hard to get into specifics without giving spoilers, but basically the movie has its protagonist go through one stressful scenario that makes you worry about one thing, for example at one point early one they go through what they think is an abandoned German trench and the audience is on the edge of their seat waiting for the German army to pop up, only for the tension to be resolved in a completely unexpected way. It’s never clear until the very end if the protagonists are going to succeed on their goal because the movie throws so many wrenches, some little, some big, into what would otherwise be a very straight-forward plot into a riveting ride where you’re never sure what’s going to happen next.

The acting is also great. Dean-Charles Chapman and George MacKay were relative unknowns going into this but they are astounding in this. Their relative anonymity really makes them feel like actual soldiers and you’re not thinking of them as the actors, you’re thinking of them as young men in over their heads. In addition, the celebrity pop-ins, including the likes of: Colin Firth, Benedict Cumberbatch, Andrew Scott, Mark Strong and Richard Madden are all excellent. Most likely they were not getting paid a lot to do this and you can really tell watching them that they all really want to act in this movie. Nobody is holding anything back and nobody looks like their phoning it in. But HOLY SHIT Richard Madden! It’s one thing to not phone a performance in and it’s another thing entirely to own the movie with like two minutes of screen time. He probably was on set for like, half a day max, and he kills it. Like, whatever it is, he absolutely slaughtered it. He goes from excited and happy to absolutely devastated in just a couple seconds and he absolutely nails it. That one short scene has really cemented Richard Madden as a great actor and one that I excitedly anticipate following his career in the future.

But back to 1917. 1917 is a fantastic movie and definitely deserves the Best Picture nomination and would deserve to win it too if it can manage that. I walked out of that movie, my head spinning and my brain not working quite right. No other media has ever had that affect on me. So yeah, I mentioned before that this movie is not for the squeamish, but the squeamish should still watch it anyway. 1917 is not just a movie, it’s an experience, and it’s one that as many people should feel as possible. 1917 is a masterpiece.

P.S. This movie also has one of the most triumphant climaxes ever. Like, I found it more effective than Endgame’s massive CGI battle. Because it’s not about fictional superhero’s punching things. It’s about actual human beings pushing themselves to the limit and pervading against all odds.

Personal Rating: 10/10

Entertainment: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Story: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Depth: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Comedy: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆

Tension: 💫💫💫💫💫

Directing: 💫💫💫💫💫

Acting: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️