Category: 2018
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While The Nightingale never gets more brutal than in its first hour—it runs two and a quarter—it’s almost more hopeless with less viciousness. The film’s about how the British slaughtered the Aboriginal Australians. It’s about quite a bit more, but the historical context is Australia in the early nineteenth century when people could still buy…
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All for Nothing is an almost entirely different kind of Infinity 8. Creator Boulet is writing and illustrating (Lewis Trondheim shares the story credit), which gives the volume its own distinct feel. There are some obvious differences—it’s not about a fetching female agent (something the Lieutenant complains about on the bridge), but rather a tough…
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Much of Ultimate Knowledge is the best-written Infinity 8 has been so far, and Infinity 8 has been exceptionally well-written so far. But this volume pairs an odder couple than usual, so there’s constant banter. The partner is also a know-it-all, verbose historian, and he’s always got something to say about whatever they’re experiencing (or…
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For better or worse, once the film proper starts, Hereditary doesn’t have a single wasted moment. Every little thing is important in the end, whether it’s how dead grandma wanted favorite grandchild Milly Shapiro to be a boy or Toni Collette’s justified fears of hereditary schizophrenia. I mean, the title’s Hereditary and she’s got a…
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Apocalypse Day’s agent, Ann Ninurta, is the most reliably badass agent since the first volume. There are other comparisons between Ninurta and the first volume’s lead, like being blonde, midriff-revealing, and obsessed with babies. The first volume’s lead wanted to have a baby, Ninurta’s got a baby. Well, a toddler. Ninurta’s taking her to daycare…
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Essentially, The Favourite gives each of its three stars an act to shine. Rachel Weisz gets the first act, Emma Stone the second, Olivia Colman the third. They all appear throughout, but the script’s surprisingly segmented with its narrative perspective. Surprisingly because it means the first-act protagonists (Weisz and Stone) are accessories in the third…
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It’s impossible to say how Little Woods would play if Lily James weren’t terrible. As is, the film’s a waiting game to see if James will ever have a good scene. Spoiler alert: she doesn’t. She’s so bad I was expecting the production company to be “Lily James Productions.” She lets down writer and director…
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Oh, my. So, Kill or Be Killed does not have a bad ending. Nope, not bad. You see where I’m going? What’s a thousand times worse than bad? Horrendous? Is horrendous enough? Kill or Be Killed has a horrendous ending. Writer Ed Brubaker does a greatest hits of lousy writing choices, including protagonist Dylan telling…
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Based on the end reveal and what it means for the series-long narration… well, Kill or Be Killed, specifically writer Ed Brubaker’s work on it, goes from disappointing, tedious, and grating to pitiable. He’s even commented on the narration device to the reader before—when this arc started—so promising it’s not something lousy and then it…
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Writer Ed Brubaker, apparently unknowingly, cracks the Kill or Be Killed conundrum this issue. How could he tell the series and have it work? Individual issues about characters. Without Dylan’s terrible narration, obviously. Got to get rid of the narration. But this issue’s a return to detective Lily Sharpe. Unfortunately, it’s nowhere near as good…
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Does writer Ed Brubaker actually not see the possibilities he raises with scenes? It’s fascinating. For the second or third time, Brubaker’s started an issue completely invalidating a possibility the previous one raised. There’s an anecdote about a short story being a room in a house, a novel being a house. Maybe Gordon Lish (but…
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Well, writer Ed Brubaker is not overcomplicating matters with a last-minute reveal. He’s just stumbling along, as usual, the comic suddenly with far less momentum as Dylan’s in a mental hospital. The slowing down makes sense—after confessing to being the vigilante and finding out there’s still a red-masked vigilante in New York (a copycat, Dylan’s…
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Apparently, William Gibson’s Alien 3 was going to be one of those sequels where the franchise lead spends a bunch of time off-screen or unconscious; Ripley’s knocked out this issue, so Sigourney Weaver would be doing the Jamie Lee Curtis Halloween II thing in extremis. We get a couple scenes with Newt, but some more…
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But, wait, what if Dylan’s a ghost and he’s been dead the whole time? Okay, writer Ed Brubaker doesn’t end the issue on that reveal, but he ends it on one much more similar to it than I’d have thought. It’s definitely an intriguing cliffhanger, though Brubaker’s either going to do something interesting with it,…
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William Gibson’s Alien 3 is two levels of incomprehensible to the non-Alien franchise fan. First, you’ve got to know your Aliens, then you probably should know your existing Alien³. Familiarity with Dark Horse Comics’s original Aliens series might not hurt either, so you can better appreciate when Hicks shows up on the very last page.…
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Either writer Garth Ennis or editor Mike Marts doesn’t know corpses don’t grow hair. At least Ennis ought to know corpses don’t grow hair. Google’s free, people. I’ll bet it’s even on Bing. The issue opens with McGregor noticing he’s got facial hair, which would’ve taken a few weeks to grow, meaning they’re still alive…
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The art changes so much in the first few pages I thought Goran Sudžuka either left the book or got an inker. Nope, he’s just doing a slightly different style. His lines are thinner, sharper, and with less personality. The end of the issue promises we’re going into “Book Two” next, which will apparently be…
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So, this comic has an editor (Mike Marts). He looked at this script and said, “yep, that’s a comic.” Here’s the story: FBI agents Shaw and MacGregor are sitting in the hell warehouse, where Shaw is going to tell MacGregor a secret about their investigation into a child murderer. There’s going to be a scene…
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If it weren’t for the Goran Sudžuka art, you could probably convince me I was reading a Warren Ellis Avatar comic from the early aughts. It’s a time-warped FBI procedural with a supernatural but not ghost element. I keep waiting to see when it will feel like a Garth Ennis comic, and there’s nothing. It…
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It’s a better issue. There’s character work, not development because it’s flashback, but now MacGregor is a white gay man FBI agent who doesn’t understand he works with a bunch of bigots and, in flashback, is worried about the 2016 election. In the present, election’s already happened. We find out the white lady partner, Shaw,…
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I was geared up for a Garth Ennis war comic, but A Walk Through Hell is a supernatural horror police procedural; FBI agents are the leads (so far), but still. And it’s very modern; it opens with an active shooter situation at a mall at Christmastime, there are tweets, one of the characters bitches about…
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Summer Days, Summer Nights never really has any “grabber” moments. It’s got a couple big misses, one I’ve got a lot to say about, the other would technically be a spoiler. If it weren’t also a total cop-out. The movie looks the cop-out in the eye and blinks, with writer, director, and costar Burns deciding…
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If it weren’t for remake creators Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless getting the script credit, I would’ve thought there’d been a producer change in this season. This episode caps a maybe five-episode arc where they’re racing to get off the planet as fast as possible because it’s breaking apart, and their mothership can’t stay looking…
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It’s unfortunate Molly Parker and Parker Posey are only going to get antagonistic scenes together because they’re good opposite one another. “Lost in Space” hasn’t really tasked Posey, and this episode’s the closest so far. Posey has kidnapped Parker after inadvertently killing Toby Stephens and Ignacio Serricchio. How was Posey supposed to know Parker was…
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Will Robinson, falling for Dr. Smith’s shit since 1965. Having not seen the original show and not having great memories of the obvious evilness of Gary Oldman’s Dr. Smith in the Lost in Space: The Movie, I don’t know how this show’s version of Will Robinson, played by Maxwell Jenkins, falling for Parker Posey’s very…
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So, there’s a lot good about this episode. Director Tim Southam leans in heavy on the “we’ve got John Williams music anyway, let’s make it like a Spielberg” to good effect. There’s a very nice arc for Taylor Russell and Ignacio Serricchio (who still aren’t romantic, yay), and there’s a pretty good one for Molly…
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Another episode, another new writer and director. Also, the opening titles are back. It’s also the longest episode so far (I’m pretty sure), clocking in just over an hour. Because a lot happens, and everyone gets something to do. However, the script (credited to Ed McCardie) compensates for its numerous supporting players by sticking Molly…
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Even though this episode opens with Parker Posey trekking back through the forest after watching the Robinson kids hide the robot last episode… it seems like more time has progressed than a few hours. Unless all the survivors moved all their space-campers (the Jupiter space-camper) to the same campground overnight and legitimately elected, but dipshit…
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So Ignacio Serricchio is playing Don West, a character from the original show (Matt LeBlanc in the movie). If they mentioned his name before, I missed it. However, given Serricchio refers to himself multiple times in the third person this episode, maybe I wasn’t the only one confused. Last episode ended with the heroes finding…
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After two episodes making a lot of noise but not really doing anything productive, Toby Stephens finally finds something he’s good at—fighting fuel-consuming alien eels. It’s another job the killer robot could do better, but the killer robot is too busy protecting Maxwell Jenkins. Once the robot deems there to be too much danger for…
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