Category: 2020
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With “Devs,” writer, director, and creator Alex Garland manages to be at least twenty-one years late to be original with what he’s going for. Though he’s also apparently in the zeitgeist because the big twist is also another show this year. Does he bring anything new to the table? Not really? It’s not the point.…
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Lots of “surprises” this episode as far as how the show’s going to go into its final episode. Like three deaths surprises, as writer, director, and creator Alex Garland starts paring down the cast to something more manageable. The funniest thing about the death scenes is how anticlimactic they all are. Everyone on “Devs” acting…
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Unloved and Misunderstood “Space Force” | Season one, 10 episodes | Netflix, 2020 While comedic sitcoms usually take a while to find their footing on the way to a successful vehicle, the creators of “Space Force” seem to be striding the fence here in their pursuit of a balance between comedy and darker social satire.…
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Unloved and Misunderstood “Space Force” | Season one, 10 episodes | Netflix, 2020 While comedic sitcoms usually take a while to find their footing on the way to a successful vehicle, the creators of “Space Force” seem to be striding the fence here in their pursuit of a balance between comedy and darker social satire.…
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This episode introduces “dumb Jamie,” which is writer, director, and show creator Alex Garland’s way of making Sonoya Mizuno clearly smarter than Jin Ha. It just requires Ha be really dense all of a sudden. Even though he just got done doing the superhero move of breaking Mizuno out of a mental hospital. Doesn’t matter…
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One Woman show The Wrong Missy | Directed by Tyler Spindell | Netflix, 2020 Alright, I’ll come clean early and confess a weakness for rom coms. Especially after a few beers, and featuring lively young talents. When I saw the commercial for this one evening while pursing Netflix series, the presence of Lauren Lapkus as…
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So last episode ended on two pretty significant cliffhangers for intrepid hero Sonoya Mizuno and her loyal sidekick Jin Ha. This episode opens with a “stylish” composite shot where involuntarily psychiatrically held Mizuno remembers life in her apartment with ex Ha as well as recently deceased boyfriend Karl Glusman simultaneously. Different versions of Mizuno walk…
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I believe the technical term for what writer, director, and show creator Alex Garland does with the “cold open.” Artsy-fartsy. I mean, it’s not bad or anything, it’s just blandly stylized. Though in a somewhat different way than usual. It doesn’t have that “compare it to Kubrick” desperation Garland fills the rest of the series…
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Pulp is good. I would’ve liked it a lot more with a different ending, instead of the same ending writer Ed Brubaker has used at least once before—but it’s such a distinctive, painfully obvious a reveal it sticks with me a decade after I first read it in Criminal. Though maybe he’s just trying to…
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About three-quarters through this episode, when I was wondering if Alex Garland had indeed both written and directed this episode as well because it sure doesn’t have as much of the directorial flourish as the two previous episodes, I also realized the show’s closed its open questions. Three-quarters of the way through episode three of…
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The start of the episode introduces some more of the Devs at work—there’s also a concerning assault in a garage—before getting to Nick Offerman’s Stallman-bearded tech giant telling lead Sonoya Mizuno she’ll have a job and secure income forever. Her boyfriend lighting himself on fire in front of the giant statue of a little girl…
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Something about the episode having three credited writers (Sam Johnson, Stefani Robinson, Paul Simms) foretold it being a grandiose season finale. I can’t remember there being another episode with three writers. It’s got to be big. And it’s big. It just takes a while to get there. The episode begins with Kayvan Novak waking up…
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Did you ever see the movie, Before and After? I haven’t. I haven’t read the book either. So I’m not sure if the dad covering up the teenager murdering someone or the mom covering up the teenager murdering someone talks about how it’s “before and after” when it comes to the murdering teen. On “Defending…
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I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a director more desperately want to be compared to Stanley Kubrick than “Devs” creator, writer, and director Alex Garland. The show’s a stylistic mash-up of 2001 and The Shining, maybe with some Eyes Wide Shut thrown in (for the street scenes). It takes place in San Francisco at a…
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Finally the start of the courtroom episodes, which are apparently going to be two because it’s the second-to-last episode. It opens with a flashback to Pablo Schreiber with a goatee getting advice from—oh, look, they were friendly once—Chris Evans. Evans gives Schreiber a list of things to work on so if you want to wait…
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Last episode they were at like seven weeks from the trial, now it’s ten days before the trial. Apparently nothing interesting happened in five weeks, which is believable given “Defending Jacob.” The episode opens with Chris Evans and lawyer Cherry Jones looking at the dead kid’s cellphone, which prosecuting attorney Pablo Schreiber was going to…
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The episode opens with Chris Evans driving to see his father in prison to get a DNA swab so they can test for the murder gene intercut with the middle school graduation Jaeden Martell is missing. The school choir is singing Circle Game by Joni Mitchell, which is a great song but a very odd…
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I jumped shift halfway through the original Nailbiter series, so I think I missed the part about the serial killer antihero (the Nailbiter) having a daughter with the hero of the series. It’s been so long I can’t remember if the first series felt like a pitch for McFarlane Toys, but Nailbiter Returns feels it.…
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This episode is the “What We Do in the Shadows” equivalent of a dick and fart joke episode. Literally in the former’s case—the episode’s about a coven of witches kidnapping Laszlo (Matt Berry) because they want his immortal seed. Turns out they use vampire semen to stay young. Witches, I mean. The show hasn’t gotten…
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The episode opens unironically with Michelle Dockery going to the grocery store before it opens at 6 a.m. and waiting to go in and be alone while shopping while Chris Evans does the same thing… only with the swimming pool. Makes me wonder if the Dockery character is such a non-entity in the William Landay…
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I am a fan of both Chris Evans and Michelle Dockery. I’m not a fan of them together but, individually, I am a fan. Though, sadly—and “Defending Jacob” proves it—Evans is not working with the right directors in the right projects. He comes off in this thing like a not-fun period Dennis Quaid but still…
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I sometimes forget “Legends of Tomorrow” is at its best when it’s completely unconcerned with continuity. It’s a fun, heart-y, and then time travel time travel show. I went into this season finale worried how they were going to wrap things up in one episode after Greek Fates Sarah Strange, Joanna Vanderham, and Maisie Richardson-Sellers…
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About twenty minutes into this episode it felt really familiar then I realized I was just watching scenes from a bad Presumed Innocent remake. What with Chris Evans and his investigators and his coworkers and whatnot—it just feels like a retread of that film (and novel). I’ll bet source novel author William Landay read the…
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I wasn’t expecting to see Mark Bomback’s name on the opening titles of “Defending Jacob.” I wouldn’t have thought anyone, not even Apple TV+, would trust Mark (Total Recall: The Remake) Bomback with an eight episode limited series. The episode opens with a very sad Chris Evans walking into the courthouse. We don’t know it’s…
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Traditional sitcom writer team—seriously, IMDb them (“Frasier” and “Newsradio”—Sam Johnson and Chris Marcil contribute this episode’s script and… well, maybe things make more sense now. Also they don’t seem up on the show because they don’t know how to use Natasia Demetriou at all. Distressingly don’t know how to use her. Anyway, the main plot…
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At no point does Miss Fisher & the Crypt of Tears introduce viewer unfamiliar with star Essie Davis’s television show, to which this film’s a sequel, “Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries.” The movie opens with an action sequence setting up Davis as an exquisitely dressed combination of Indiana Jones and James Bond. The action—a title card…
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I’m not going back to count, but I feel like at least half this season of “Legends” is them getting knocked off track for an episode then getting back on track by the end. It’s fine, there have been some great episodes, but there’s no momentum on the main plot. So while this episode is…
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How’s “Dead to Me” going to finish up its second season? How’s it going to resolve all the dangerous situations its characters have put themselves in? With one deus ex machina after another. One could say it’s lazy, but given how hard the show tried to be more than an easy black comedy the first…
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Okay, this issue is even better than last issue and not just because creator Craig Thompson has Black Jesus, White Yahweh, and a Chinese Holy Spirit, which is an amazing panel. Lots of amazing illustrative panels this issue, in fact, because the main plot isn’t about Thompson working on his comic or anything with his…
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The episode opens with some post-morning sex freaking out for Christina Applegate while Linda Cardellini is off to the big house. The show’s real cheap about the Cardellini thing, making me think I missed something in the previous episode, but she’s really there to see mom Katey Sagal, who’s not dead, but in prison. Again.…
The Stop Button 