oscosc-78586

Short: this series is breathtakingly ambitious. The first season is science fiction as it should be done on TV. It didn't expect it to go even further in the second season.

The story begins, no spoilers, with the idea of the first humans who upload into computers and how this triggers the SF concept of "singularity". All I have told you so far is what you can read on a "premise" of the show.

The show is animated but don't let that pit you off. The voice talent is stellar. The story in season 1 takes its time to get going as it begins in the mundane and then launches into SF. Trust me when I tell you it's nothing compared to where season 2 is eventually going.

It's a well made and intelligent science fiction TV show and deserves your attention.

If you haven't read the book (and I had not) then this series will need a second watch before it starts to make sense.

There is such a lot to take in, and it's told in a flashbacks jumping across time.

When I watched it the first time I missed so much detail - and still enjoyed most of it. Watching it again after a few months and so much slots into place this time.

It's well-acted (except for the western parts) and well-written... but it really does show that adapting a book for the screen does involve making changes. The written word allows you to go into more detail, slowly. The screen batters you with information at the same pace for all.

So either, read the books first or be prepared to watch the series again to get the full enjoyment of it.

As for its faults - it does feel like the timing is off. The series is very slow-paced until the 20+ episode and then seems to race for the finished.

Nevertheless it is worth the effort. They truly made the effort to pack everything in from the book (30 episodes of it).

Zack Synder's films are immensely frustrating. He clearly has bags of talent for striking visuals. He rarely seems able to turn that into a good film.

The same is. Sadly, true of Rebel Moon.

OK, so it's clearly choosing to take The Magnificent Seven as an influence. Fine. That's that a solid story to work with.

But this part 1 just blows it. It's annoying in almost every way - the constant slow motion, the lack of any logic. As you would expect, there are some really striking visual sequences, but they are just not enough to keep you engaged.

And it all ends in an empty sequence with characters you don't care about doing things you don't care about either.

And we've got part 2 coming - which you certainly aren't left eagerly anticipating.

Guardians 3 builds the entire movie around the trauma of Rocket's past.

Like all the other films it's about film and friendship, and it's jam packed full of small pieces of very human moments, both funny and horrible.

Gunn manages to do this simple trick with all his films. It's not complicated, or difficult but it's rare in Hollywood movies.

In the middle of all the FX and explosions are charming small moments. If I say "bad dog" anyone who's seen the film will understand. Or the panicked yelling of "Rocket, Teefs, Floor go now." that makes a hugely emotional moment unforgettable.

I'd heard lots of bad things about Guardians 3. Those aren't true. It's a good film. It's got a lot more traumatic moments previous 2, but that's no bad thing when you are ending the series.

It's a fine way to sign off and it's the best Marvel film for years. Gunn left Disney during this (finished the film). So did the final bits of credibility for what's left of Marvel after Disney.

Days Gone is a complex and confusing mixed of good and bad.

First the good:

When you've levelled up the game is hugely enjoyable - despite the control issues

The eventually horde fights can be giddily enjoyable

The story eventually captures you, and then captivates

The environment is well made with a variety of landscapes and weather

The bad:

The game won't be fun until 50 hours in. I know... 50 hours. I had nothing else to do so despite annoying me intensely, I stuck with it.

The AI is terrible. Seriously... marauders will stand around while being attacked by freakers. I've seen it.

The control system is infuriating. You will ALWAYS end up having the wrong item selected at least once per encounter. You'll end up using precious molotovs when you meant to fire a gun.

It's loaded with glitches and there are lots of basic quality issues. You can be getting messages from Rikki and be standing right next to her in the camp.

It has a nasty dose of woke. It's full of dumb politically correct inserts.

To sum it up: the game does eventually become really enjoyable. You need to invest 50+ hours of an annoying game to reach it though. It really needed more play testing to avoid this.

MK Ultra was a top secret US government program to test mind control techniques on people.

The words secret and test are the key there.

Lots of the MK Ultra program was voluntary (still kind of appalling), but this film focuses on something that always happens when you make things secret and throw money at it. You get abuses by the type of person attracted to acting out their worst fantasies.

Without giving away spoilers, the Dr Strauss (Anson Mount) is genuine in his desire to research whether LSD can help those with mental illness, addictions etc. He struggles to get funding. A benefactor shows up and Strauss slowly begins to realise his mistake.

Thankfully the film relies on showing not telling. It lets you try to work out what's happening. The result is an intense, grubby and depressing look at the darker parts of the MK Ultra story.

One criticism is that the beginning has a scene linking the program to race. The rest of the film is obvious that it wasn't about race. No-one was spared - MK Ultra even preyed on their own CIA agents. The scene was a cheap addition and the film is better than that. Also, the film kind of skips over the role Doctors played in the outright abuses of MK Ultra. The doctor here tries to correct his mistake. The real ones were quite happy to benefit.

Just like many of the worst excesses in human history, doctors (who should know better) involved themselves in the MK Ultra abuses in full knowledge of what was being done.

Should you watch it? Yes. While you're at it... look up the facts of MK Ultra. It's not a conspiracy theory. Lots of conspiracy nonsense was built around it, but the program itself and the abuses that went along with it were very real.

I'm old enough to remember the original Hellraiser (1987). That was a true horror film. There were horrible people, doing horrible things. It left you feeling really quite disturbed about the worst aspect of human nature.

The follow-up Hellraiser 2 (1988) managed to recapture a small part of that. But after that it was downhill fast. The sequels were nothing but parodies.

Well, for some reason, Hulu decided to remake it.

Shamefully, the film fails on nearly every level. It's not well written (terrible dialogue) and poorly acted. There's little horror and you simply do not care about anyone or anything happening in it. It doesn't give you a reason to care either.

Like the later Hellraiser films It has more in common with trashy slasher flicks than anything else. Poorly done ones at that.

As is common today they gender-switched the main role. Did it add anything? Nope.

Watch Hellraiser (1987) and Hellraiser 2 (1988) and stop there. They did it better on much smaller budgets.

The film deserves more credit.

The original novel was well ahead of its time. The use of gifted children, train them, prepare them, shape them into exceptionally skilled players in what they believe is a video game.

You're seeing this happen all around you. Weapons are becoming remotely controlled... and even AI controlled. You need a very different set of skills from previous conflicts

This movie adaptation tries to cram a lot in to its running time and the result is not much breathing time.

At the end you see the desperation of the formics... madly throwing themselves at the approaching ship that will end their planet if it makes it through. Sacrificing everything.

They are doing the same thing Earth did at the beginning of the story as it was being "invaded" by the formics.

The difference from then and now... Ender. Those who realised what was needed... found him, trained and prepared him and his friends. They lied to them... made them think it was all game preparing for the real thing. So he would sacrifice not-real people without a second thought to win the game. Those all made the difference.

Were they wrong to do this? That's a question to answer for yourself. Should they have negotiated first, or taken a more measured approach rather than the "them or us" approach. Was it worth co-opting Ender and his team with lies to commit a genocide?

It's a great story. It probably would have been much better film had it been given time to breath on screen a bit more - they could have included some scenes of the impact on the other kids for example. They were lied to also.

As it stands, it is a good film and one that deserves more credit than it got.

This is clearly a well-budgeted and well-made show.

However, I was left feeling out of place with it constantly. Maybe it's my fault - I did watch it sporadically so I kept having to catch up with the thread of the story.

Nevertheless I just didn't connect with it and didn't feel the sense of danger that (I presume) I was supposed to feel.

The acting is fine and it's full of nice shots and cinematography. But it all felt very clinical - even with the subtitles (I find dubbing often puts me off) and left me baffled why I should care.

A complex story really needs to get you involved and this one doesn't. So you're left with no reason to invest the time. However, I did manage to watch the entire show, but the final episodes felt more like a duty than a fun.

If they do a second series I may give it a try... there are the seeds of a good show in there.

There's really nothing bad to say about this film. It hits every bit of fan service without being gratuitous and the story beats are pretty much perfect.

It hits the mid-point and everything is going wrong... and without spoiling things, Mav rescues the situation and it all plays out awesomely.

Into the final act... which again is almost perfect. It stretches a little with one attempt at fan service (those who've seen it will know what I mean), but at this point I didn't care. I was just enjoying the thrill ride.

I'm sure there's an element of rose-tinted glasses here. So many films have been disastrously bad in the last few years. This one represents a major return to form.

Thankfully the money its raked in is showing that. It's been an enormous hit. It should be pretty embarrassing that a return to a style of film from 30+ years ago was needed to show filmmakers the way forward. I how the money men are watching... get back to crowed pleasing.

Make films that people want to watch. Not full of politics you want to preach.

This was supposedly based on the Foundation novels by Isaac Asimov. Those novels were a retelling of "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" by Edward Gibbon - with an SF setting.

However, this adaption has little or nothing in common with those novels.

You can basically split the series into two main threads. It's almost as if these two threads are written by different people - they differ so much in quality.

1. The Empire

The Empire story actually works. The creators of the show added an new section about a genetic dynasty of clones ... it actually works. The segments about the empire and its decline are quite watchable. Machinations of power etc. The Emperors are well-acted, compelling even.

2. The Foundation

The Foundation story is awful. I mean really badly written and shockingly badly acted. It's also laced with woke drivel. I don't know how better to express how bad these parts are written and acted than to say... I actually ended up laughing.

But the main takeaway is this: the series has virtually nothing in common with the books. It's completely and utterly missing the grandeur and shocks of the original Foundation novels. This is mega-budgeted nonsense.

The entire industry of film and TV seems to have plumbed the dregs to fill up the acres of space needed for content these days. It's embarassing.

Avoiding spoilers:

Unreliable narrator story

It begins quite effectively as the countryside where Harper stays get weirder and weirder.

It has some truly grotesque moments... but in the end it is deeply unsatisfying and really rather shallow.

Should you watch it? Well, if you're a fan of highly stylised film-making... sure. If you're looking for an intriguing or interesting film... no.

To be honest I flirted with the fast forward button several times.

The film is set in 1969 and based around the true story of the Parkes radio telescope - situated somewhat comically in the middle of a sheep paddock in Australia.

Parkes was chosen to be a critical part of the NASA network for relaying the live signals from Armstrong and Aldrin's moon landing.

As you can imagine that's an extraordinarily high profile job... with the entire world expecting to see the TV signals as Armstrong steps out on the moon.

So NASA sends one of their guys to be part of the team at Parkes... and all of the humour and friction that comes from that.

The Dish is a gentle, underplayed comedy. There are no raucous jokes. Just character humour and pathos from excellent actors. The humour revolves around the telescope team itself, but does spread out into the characters in the nearby town too.

It's a marvellous little film and deserves way more recognition. You don't need to have been alive in 1969 to enjoy it.

Watching this show made me realise why I've enjoyed many Korean shows recently.

There's no woke messaging. The young guy who find himself dragged into a working with a team that's very much a family.

The work out of a noodle bar and their job is to act as evil spirit hunters. The scenario is clearly inspired by video game mechanics... but don't let that put you off.

It's grounded in the characters and it takes the time to introduce them... and to make you like them.

Each character has their own space and mysteries... and one of the best is the 'mother' of the group: Mrs Choo. Who manages to combine comedy and pathos, especially in one of the mid-season episodes when you find out who her "Yung" is.

But it's all good fun. Perhaps the season was a touch too long but that's a minor complaint.

I hope it gets a second season.

Ok, Morbius is not a great film... but honestly it's not as bad as people claimed.

Lehto isn't that bad and has to work with a pretty poor script.

The action sequences are pretty poor - confusing, poorly lit and with a slow-mo/pause to give you time to see what's going on. But it doesn't help much. It's all a blurry mess.

It's mostly crass, predictable and dull... but it's better than Venom.

I know, "better than Venom" is a very low bar. But I actually did watch Morbius all the way through. Venom (and its sequel) just had me fast forwarding chunks of it.

So... I suppose if you have some time to kill and it's on a service you already have, then it might be worth a watch. But it's not worth going out of your way to watch it.

The bad:

The script is a complete mess Plenty of gratuitous terrible woke inserts

The good:

The music fight - which is highly original Zombie Strange Evil Wanda

Honestly I'm left kinda empty after watching it. The cameos fly past... the box ticking. It's all vacuous in the end and mostly doesn't make sense. I get it. Sometimes directors want to do go for a cool visual and ditch logic, but at least make an effort. This is mostly tiring to watch.

Should you see it? I'd recommend giving it a miss to be honest, or catch it when it hits a streaming service.

The MCU hit its peak with Infinity War and tied that up with End Game.

But the movies and TV shows you are seeing now are long after Disney sunk its claws in and infected the movies/shows from the start. It's not worth saving now.

Remember it as it was.

Each episode is short - between about 35-45 minutes.

And honestly, that's it's only saving grace. The show starts well, with a NATO solider hijacking a plane and demanding it fly West immediately to avoid the sun. Ok... but that's about the only interesting thing in the show.

The rest is just some unlikely coincidences and a lot of manufactured interpersonal drama between the passengers and silly logic. The show is extremely low budget... and it shows by rarely if ever leaving the plane interior. There are some very rudimentary occasional FX.

That said, low budget isn't really a bad thing - see the movie Cube for example.

But Into The Night starts to become annoying as you realise that the story doesn't seem to be really going anywhere beyond the sun. There's no real expansion on the mystery and in my case I started fast forwarding through the episodes towards the end of S1.

And then you realise that S2 has just moved from one interior micro-budget set to another.

I honestly don't know whether I can pluck up the stamina for S2. Maybe I will fast-forward through it.

Wow... episode 5 goes wrong. Episodes 1-4 are pretty smartly written. They build the tension and intrigue - and have genuinely scary moments.

Episode 5 rams this into reverse, the episode bores you to death... and you suddenly have a flash of insight when the woke insert arrives. Who were the writers on this... go look. It was a female writer from the atrocious Cowboy Bebop adaptation.

I really hope the rest get back to 1-4 quality and they send the writer of 5 out to write greetings cards or something.

This movie as a grand scope (eventually) - and clearly got money from China (it's always obvious with Roland Emmerich as he inserts Chinese characters).

The worst thing is... at it's heart is a large scale space opera with high concept ideas.

But it's stupidly executed with really dreadful dialogue in places. I mean stuff that lands like a lead brick dropped from a skyscraper.

To avoid the spoiler tag I won't talk about the reason behind the "moonfall" - but it could have been a deep, fascinating SF subject. But when you do it as stupidly as this, it's basically unwatchable.

Finally... Halle Berry is in her mid 50s and doesn't look a day over 30. Her surgeon doesn't get paid enough.

The movie is nothing special. It's Ryan Reynolds being himself with some amusing quips.

The story doesn't make a lot of sense, but it's time travel... and they rarely do.

I wouldn't go out of my way to watch it again and there are plenty of films that are more worthy of your time.

But it's ok... just ok.

The original film has a dumb premise. A perpetual motion train engine that keeps running around the world on the oddly still maintained single global track - despite a global catastrophe freezing the entire world.

It never made a lick of sense.

But ok... the film used this conceit to tell a fairly tight story about class.

So why turn it into a TV series? Desperation for content perhaps.

The result is a boring mess that after a reasonably competent opening then follows it up by showing how infected with "modern" writing it is.

I managed to get three episodes in before I just couldn't bring myself to invest any more time or effort in it.

I watched this as a teenager and loved every minute of it.

It's clever, funny and I've never forgotten it. Every character is beautifully constructed - presumably drawn from Andrew Davies' own experience. To this day when I see Peter Davison I think of Doctor Daker, not Doctor Who.

This was the BBC at its best.

Yeah, ok, this isn't going to win over critics. Especially the ones who can't get over the idea of white people playing roles (but are enthused when it's the other way around).

The story is mad. The FX are wildly over the top.

If you weren't being asked to take it seriously, you would have no problem with loving it as a parody.

But you are asked to take it seriously and that seems to bother lots of people.

I don't watch it seriously.

Maybe that would offend the filmmaker, but it also means that I enjoyed it. So if you're the sort that can just enjoy something for what it is... and not over-analyse it... then Gods of Egypt might be worth a watch.

The first 90 minutes are actually kind of interesting.

Maybe not what you'd expect from a Matrix film, but not bad either.

Sadly this is just the high point before the fall. After that it rapidly descends into all of your worst fears for what a 2021 Matrix would become.

The action scenes are not great - they use fast cutting during action that leaves you frustrated and disorientated. The original Matrix and even the two sequels were way, way better for action.

Even then I could live with it. I wasn't expecting ground-breaking action. I would have settled for an intelligent deeper dive into how the 'war' ended.

But even that's taken away from you.

The ending is simply insulting, stupid and lives down to every fear you may have had in advance.

What a shame and a wasted opportunity. Pretend this doesn't exist.

The show has a fast, intriguing and impressive opening that really hooks you.

And don't get me wrong, the rest of the episodes are decent but they drift off. It never really regains the flair and interest it starts with.

Absolutely worth watching, and it manages to stay watchable all the way through.

Just don't expect it to keep up the pace.