Category: 2016
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If Nosedive is any indication, “Black Mirror” having guest writers isn’t going to help things. Rashida Jones and Michael Schur wrote the teleplay (they’d previously written “Parks and Recreation” together) from a story by “Mirror” creator Charlie Brooker. The episode also kicks off the show’s Netflix run; it had been on Channel 4, but Netflix…
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Despite having read this comic before, I did not heed Mag the Hag and was surprised when the last story in the anthology really is a straight Greek tragedy. The comic opens with Mag the Hag introducing herself—she’s Shadows’s Crypt-Keeper—and then going on at length about the contents of the issue, including the story of…
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Infinity 8 is very high concept. It’s a series of eight stories, originally published in European volumes, published in the United States as eight, three-part limited series. It’s a combination of hard and soft sci-fi: a passenger ship has encountered a space graveyard and needs to investigate. They send a single agent. Agents are intergalactic…
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The most unrealistic thing about Kill or Be Killed is Dylan isn’t a white supremacist. Like, historically speaking. Also, his classes in graduate school. Much of this issue’s about him trying to find his next target, starting with a subway fantasy about taking out a couple punks, but then it turns out he’s just watching…
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What is the deal with the heads? Seriously, this issue starts with talking heads between Dylan and Kira—which has numerous issues—and it really looks like artist Sean Phillips cut out a head and pasted it on a body. But without adjusting the scale. It’s comically weird, though it does improve in the rest of the…
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I’m not reading the back matter on Kill or Be Killed for lengthy reasons, but if there’s some explanation why artist Sean Phillips is drawing the twenty-somethings with odd bodies—their heads are too big for their bodies and slightly too round—I may regret not knowing. May. This issue opens with another of the illustrated micro-prose,…
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Kill or Be Killed kicks off with approximately thirty-three pages of story. I feel like it’s got to be thirty-two, but the quick count was thirty-three. And writer Ed Brubaker packs those thirty-three pages. The comic starts with a bunch of gory action killing as our hero, Dylan, shotguns a bunch of bad guys. Well,…
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There are a lot of stories you can only tell in sci-fi. For instance, only with time travel can you have young mom Kacey Rohl wake up after two thousand years of cryo-sleep and be paired off with her unknowing son, Tom Stevens, now grown up. Yuck. It’s unclear why you’d want to tell this…
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Wayward Pines, the town, is in dire straits. The creatures outside the wall have destroyed their food supply, and they’re out of MREs. They’ll only survive another thirty days (or, more precisely, two episodes). So teen dictator Tom Stevens decides everyone’s going back in cryo-sleep for fifty-seven years or whatever. Only Djimon Hounsou then discovers…
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So, with “Wayward Pines” entering the season’s final act—there are only two more episodes after this one–it’s unclear where they’re going, but it’s clear they aren’t going to get there gracefully. This episode’s all about female creature Rochelle Okoye escaping and wreaking havoc around town, including leaping between the buildings on Main Street. There’s also…
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After an inglorious character arc in the regular story, Djimon Hounsou finally gets his own episode, albeit a flashback one. Turns out Hounsou’s job—before “Wayward Pines: Season Two”—was to wake up every twenty years and take care of the people sleeping in cryo-pods for two thousand years. He also tested the soil, played chess with…
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Vincenzo Natali directs this episode. I’ve never seen any of his movies, but he’s far and away the best director of the season so far. He even knows how to do a Toby Jones cameo—as few lines as possible, as short of a scene as possible. Jones shows up at the beginning for a flashback…
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Toby Jones is back this episode, which has a flashback subplot about how architect Nimrat Kaur actually designed Wayward Pines, the town, and lied to husband Jason Patric about it when he asked a few episodes ago. Jones looks much older in the flashback than he did last season on the show when he was…
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It’s like “Wayward Pines” heard my complaints there weren’t enough bad performances on the regular and felt the need to deliver. This episode features the return of Tim Griffin from season one, who was an entirely personality-free white man and goes on to one-up him with Josh Helman, who’s got even less personality and might…
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“Wayward Pines: Season Two” really is committed to the bit. There’s a scene where schoolmarm, monster researcher, and psychotherapist Hope Davis tells a group of girls there’s nothing wrong with them not having their periods yet. They just don’t get to participate in the Davis-supervised orgies with the other thirteen-year-olds yet. Not in those words,…
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Djimon Hounsou arrives this episode as the town farmer. He’s supposedly a protege of first-season villain Toby Jones, though there’s no explanation why he wasn’t around before. It stands out, of course, because Jones’s villain was pretty plainly racist; the whole project—in the first season—was about breeding white babies. In the second season, the show’s…
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The season two premiere opens with Charlie Tahan, set up as the new lead in last season’s finale, narrating a recap of the first season. It’s a terrible recap, writing-wise. It does not bode well. But then the first real scene is Jason Patric in Hawaii, in the middle of a spat with wife Nimrat…
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I recently joked to a friend I wanted to claim “audacity” as a complementary phrase, but just for Stanley Kubrick. Something simple like, “Stanley Kubrick: Audacity can be a compliment.” But then she called me on it being gross. The Nice Guys is basically, “Shane Black: Humility is for [slur we’re allowed to use because…
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I kept waiting for something to go wrong in Hunt for the Wilderpeople. The first act is this exceptionally tight, efficient narrative—but with time for montage digressions as director (and screenwriter) Waititi gently examines lead Julian Dennison as his life goes through a pastoral upheaval. Dennison is a tween on the edge of teen and…
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Bastille Day is an abject waste of time from the start, which opens with some very bad “video stock” only it turns out to be supposed to be “bad” video from a smartphone. Not even getting into the opening sequence, a terribly directed one, seems more appropriate for an eighties Porky’s rip-off more than a…
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I’m going into “Fleabag” fairly cold; I know it’s supposed to be great, I know Phoebe Waller-Bridge is supposed to be great (and she was funny in Star Wars Han Solo in a voice performance and men hate her Carrie Fishering the new James Bond), and I know she talks to the camera. And I…
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Sadly, the Writers Guild of America does not publish their arbitrations for writing credits, because the one on Rogue One has got to be a doozy; I desperately want to know how they go to this script. Did it actually start as a video game or did director Edwards really have no idea how to…
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The middle of Train to Busan is excellent. The first act is iffy, the ending is forced, but the middle is where the film excels. It’s where director Yeon just gets to do action, not getting slowed down with the humanity of it all (which he’s uneven on), and just executes these breathtaking action suspense…
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This episode very nicely balances the sitcom potential of corporate sending a secret shopper to spy on the cast as they work with some character development on leads America Ferrera and Ben Feldman. Feldman has just aced a store policy exam, which he can’t stop bragging about, aggravating supervisor Ferrera. It comes up in relation…
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The cold open has Jonah (Ben Feldman) and Garrett (Colton Dunn) discovering a dead body in the store, which doesn’t turn out to be foreshadowing because neither Feldman or Dunn have anything to do with the resulting dead body in the store C plot. Dunn’s just around this episode, checking in for the occasional one…
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“Superstore” significantly ups its game this episode. The cold open has Jonah (Ben Feldman) trying to show off how well he’s bonded with his coworkers by unintentionally insulting most of them. The sequence ends in a great banter showdown between manager Mark McKinney and assistant manager Lauren Ash (foreshadowing their subplot this episode) but also…
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Beautifully made short about teenager Marcela Okeke going to live with cousins. The dialogue is off and the brief subplot inserts don’t work, but Reeder’s direction is outstanding, the cast is appealing, and the plot is good. Streaming.Continue reading →
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Well-made (particularly well-photographed by Cooper Ulrich) but ultimately pointless short about young mother Alixzandra Dove dealing with a naughty toddler who doesn’t want to go to bed. Dove’s okay, director Bloch’s okay; the writing does it in. DVD, StreamingContinue reading →
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Sensitivity Training is… an easy (but not in a pejorative way) comedy with winning (but not in a sarcastic way) lead performances. It’s never daring, but it has some good laughs. It’s better than middle of the road but it there’s not much exciting about it. Director Finell does a great job with a low…
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With Hello Destroyer, writer and director Funk spares down a character study. He saps the action from it–and there’s a lot of potential action, as the character the film studies is a rookie pro hockey player (Jared Abrahamson). Abrahamson’s a quiet loner who fits in well enough with the team, but is rather passive. Outside…
The Stop Button 