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Reviews
The Power (2023)
a great start
Those first three episodes were compulsive watching. Not quite edge of the seat but that's difficult to achieve when you've a bunch of threads to follow. Each thread has its tensions and I look forward to them meshing and growing as the story moves along. I don't know the book so have no idea how it's all going to pan out but what I've seen so far suggests it might sustain the same intensity for the whole series. Great acting all round. Nice to see a bunch of familiar and respected adult actors playing support roles for a group of unknown teen actors. Nothing more to say at this point. Can I go to sleep now?
Tenet (2020)
Clever, clever but not smart.
To make a name for learning when other ways are barred, take something very simple and make it very hard. Piet Hein wrote that.
Nolan is trying too hard. When you unweave the story from its telling it's not very interesting, and that is disguised but not improved by the way it is told. I'm sure it all looked good on paper and the backwards forwards stuff made sense in diagrammatic form but as a film it just went sideways into the territory of "who cares". The emotional content was sketched in rather than developed
There have been several films, including Following and Memento, where a simple story has been made more enthralling by telling it in a complex fashion. This was not one of them.
The Peripheral (2022)
Good start
I read the book recently for the first time, and would warn Gibson loyalists not to expect an adherence to the novel's focus and concerns. This is more like a riff on the novel's story than an attempt to recreate it on screen. The framework is the same ,but the story being told is rather different, no matter how many identical characters and situations. More clearly goodie/baddie with the sides in the fight getting more equal screen time than the book where the enemies of the protagonists are much more a hidden presence.
That said, the first two episodes have got me hooked and I'll now try to ignore it for a few weeks so I can binge more of it in one sitting.
Dark Winds (2022)
Not for Hillerman purists
It's more like a loving riff on the characters than an accurate representation, but Zahn McClarnon is perfect as Joe Leaphorn and Kiowa Gordon and Jessica Matten play Jim and Bernadette very well, even if they aren't exactly the characters from the books. Once I had entered the world as presented it became a gripping story, and a much better presentation of Hillerman's fiction than the previous outings with Fred Ward and Lou Diamond Phillips, and Wes Studi and Adam Beach, all of which I felt were underpowered. Well done all round and I look forward to further seasons.
When I was a lad someone pointed out the common mistake then of characters wearing glasses having plain glass lenses - you can see straight through when they are shown from an angle. It stuck with me and even decades later I watch for it. There's one character in this who is supposed to be wearing thick lenses, yet there in a final scene there's lots of half profile closeups and no distortion whatsoever. It kinda spoils the illusion! You'd think that film makers would have noted that by now but clearly not.
The Sandman (2022)
Excellent adaption of the stories
Watching the first episode I was reserved,but after two I was hooked. My initial reservation was only the oddness of seeing a many times enjoyed comic series in another medium. A treat for those who have long enjoyed the comics and I think it should appeal to those who have never read them.
The comic series is a bunch of short stories, sometimes Dream is only the common thread and not a foreground character and some of those stories are gems. Samuel Delany, no doubt a major influence on young Neil, described some of his stories as bright fragments. Neil learnt to craft his own and I hope the series is popular enough that he gets the chance to film them all.
As for the haters and whingers here - it's about relations between people, it really doesn't matter what sex, gender, inclination or colour they are - it's about human relationships, that's all. The fearful army of gay transgender BLM activists are coming for you!!! But only in your dreams!
Russian Doll (2019)
First series genius, the second merely good.
Ignore the disappointed reviewers, the second series is a good story, it's more that the first series was magnificent. I can imagine watching the first series many times, (two and a half times so far) while only revisiting the second one after a few years.
Goliath (2016)
A satisfying final series.
Season 4 may start weird but out of the dreamscape emerges a very good down to earth story, so well acted by both the regulars and the season's guests. And out of the initial incoherence of the dream sequences comes a deepening of Billy's character. Be patient and you will be rewarded.
Fallen (1998)
Almost excellent
But spoiled by a stupid ending. I gather a fan edit exists taking care of this issue. Well done them.
Had they used a feral looking cat the ending wouldn't have been quite so laughable, but a well fed tabby in a cabin in the middle of the woods, miles from nowhere - come on. Not so much deux ex machina as felix ex machina. The cat would have showed itself on Hobbes first visit had it been there. Even my alternative feral cat would have made itself known, in a hostile fashion. But it was beamed in by a lazy director who was more concerned with a sneaky ending than a plausible one. It spoilt what was otherwise a very good creepy thriller.
Sneaky Pete (2015)
Compelling watching
Noticed the new series was up, decided to have a quick look at how they played out the end of the last series and tore myself away from the screen 4 episodes later. Excellent acting all round, and storylines which flow naturally out of the characters' hopes and histories. Bravo to all the cast and crew.
The Fight of Our Lives: Defeating the Ideological War Against the West (2018)
Conservative propaganda on the cheap.
Nothing more than one speaker after another giving their views on the threats (internal and external) to Western Civilisation - their capitalisation - as they see them.
All the usual targets are covered, from feminism and multiculturalism to mass immigration and radical Islam, with minimal historical perspective and no mention of economic developments whatsoever.
The way this array of speakers presents the issues they exist only as contests of ideas in which Western civilisation is an enlightened citadel under attack by a horde of ungrateful ideologues and barbarians. There is no consideration of the historical and moral developments which have given risen to the various forces and perspectives that the speakers oppose.
A special mention must be given to Philip Salzman who states that 'post-colonialism' portrays Western civilisation as the root of all evil and claims everything was rosy before its onset. Definitely the most idiotic misrepresentation but by no means the only one.
Those who agree with the speakers will think that they have provided an authoritative underpinning for their viewpoints, and those who disagree with them will laugh or cry with exasperation at the simplistic and shallow worldviews presented.
Counterpart (2017)
Sheer class
We are told there will be no third season for this very excellent show, and personally I'm not sorry. The trouble with long form TV is often stories are drawn out way too long because they are popular, not because the writers have anything more to add. In other words storytelling is subsumed to commercial interests.
With Counterpart it may well have been commercial reasons that brought about the cancellation in which case as far as I am concerned there is for once a perfect alignment of commercial and storytelling interests.
We have had fine writing, excellent acting and a fantastic story, in both senses. We can imagine tales that could have been told before and after the timeframe covered by the two seasons but what we have had is utterly satisfying in itself.
Samuel Delany once referred to his short stories as 'bright fragments' - excerpts of an imagined world he committed to paper. With Counterpart we have just that, a bright fragment which we can enjoy again and again if we choose to. I look forward to the next outing from the writers and production team, they have shown themselves to be top rate storytellers.