Category Archives: Television

Quick Review: The Gorge

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Dropped on Valentines Day this year was the action/horror/romance movie The Gorge. Two expert sniper/assassins are the latest people assigned to monitor a mysterious gorge with

Apple TV+

orders to prevent anything from leaving the site and maintaining strict no communication with each other. Since the pair stationed on opposing sides of the chasm are outstandingly attractive people (Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy) the no-contact rule is of course broken. By the third act of the film the pair find themselves at the bottom of the gorge, fighting for their lives and uncovering terrible secrets it has hidden for 80 years.

Directed by Scott Derrickson who gave us the first Dr. Strange film and the wonderful Black Phone I had hopes for The Gorge but while not bad the film in the end proved to be less than satisfying.

What works in the movie are the leads, Teller and Taylor-Joy works quite well together, have an excess of chemistry with each other and the camera, and are simply fun to watch. All of the movie’s troubles start at the bottom of the mysterious gash in the Earth. The secret they discover not only strains credibility but is actually lackluster. Their fight for survival is meant to the suspenseful but with a film boasting a cast this limited it can never leave your mind that both are going to survive. Additionally, once they reach the bottom of the gorge all character development grinds to a halt. They face no choices or challenges that impact on their character only on their physical survival.

I don’t regret watching The Gorge but it’s highly unlikely I will ever revisit it.

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Movie Review: Star Trek: Section 31

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Let me be upfront with the limitation of this review, I did not finish the film and abandoned it part way through its runtime of an hour and thirty-five minutes. That alone should tell you my opinion of this project.

Paramount +

Now, there are those who have been annoyed with ‘new Trek’ for political reasons; I am not counted among them. There are those that are annoyed with it for canon and continuity reasons, nor am I counted among those people. Star Trek: Discovery did not capture my attention, and I give up after a few episodes. However, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds I adore and cannot wait for the new season this year.

I went into Star Trek: Section 31 with limited knowledge, that ‘Section 31’ was effectively the ‘Black Ops’ division of Starfleet and with an open mind. Let the movie be the movie and see if I was entertained by it.

 

I despaired when it began with a ponderous and overly dramatic prolog. Prologs are tricky things, particularly when they ask the reader or viewer to accept things that are highly improbable, such as a ‘hunger games’ kind of deal to selected random persons who will become an Emperor. Despotic governments aren’t well-known for rigidly adhering to rules concerning the transfer of power.

Fine, we get through the prolog and go into another misused technique, the voice-over exposition, where Jamie Lee Curtis gives us the background for a central character. Minutes and minutes of screen time have been wasted that only served as exposition creating neither dramatic nor emotional tension. Now, with that past, the story itself can finally get going.

In a scene that was supposed to establish Phillipa’s (Michelle Yeoh) acute perceptions as she identifies the special ops team in her space bar the script comes to yet another screeching halt for more ham-handed exposition describing the team, which we get twice as the team leader goes over it again. It doesn’t not help that the team is comprised of stock, flat characters wholly devoid of any sense of any inner life.

Okay, we can get to the mission and at least start the story. Things go a little wonky and there’s a big special effects driven pseudo-martial arts fight scene that drags, is hideously edited and lacking in any dramatic or emotional weight because all we have been severed to this point is frying pan to the face exposition.

I mentioned that the film has a run time of 95 minutes, when this fight ended, we were about halfway through that. Mw sweetie-wife and I bored by the tedious affair stopped the stream and spent the rest of our evening playing the deck building game Dominion on-line.

As you can see Star Trek: Section 31 never engaged me on any level. There wasn’t enough story to be emotionally invested, the characters, what little time we had with them, were too bland and flat to care about and the plot never turned interesting. I could find nothing in this production that was worth any attention at all. We shall not finish it as life is too short to waste of such bland formless material.

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A lovely pairing

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This week my sweetie-wife and I started a rewatch of a beloved television series. It’s about a Federal detective who comes to investigate crime in an isolated logging town that harbors dark and supernatural secrets.

Oh, and last week we finished our re-watch of the groundbreaking American television series Twin Peaks what we started this week was Jordskot from Sweden.

It was December of 2020 when we watched the first season of this series and thoroughly enjoyed it. Even then without a fresh rewatch of Lynch/Frost’s bizarre and nightmare like Twin Peaks still echoing in my mind Jordskott provoked that comparison. Both shows start off as stories that present their fictional worlds as one that match ours, populated by varying kinds of people, good and bad, but rules by rational sane natural laws. Then things begin to twist, to turn, to become something darker with secrets older than the scientific method pushing the plot’s progression until what had been a police procedural has mutated almost imperceptibly into horror.

In 2020 when we watched for the first time both seasons were streaming on Shudder but before we could begin the next, the show vanished from the service. Over the next year or so I keep searching to see if it’d pop up on some other streaming site, but it did not and while it was never entirely forgotten it did fade from memory.

Late last year I wanted to look for it again, but the Swedish title had faded entirely from my mind, and it was a few weeks before I cracked locating the title and resuming my search.

Jordskott remained unlisted by all streaming services but for Christmas my sweetie-wife got me the DVDs imported from the UK. (I have never regretted purchasing a region free player) And so it is from disc that we have begun our rewatch and eventually our first watch of the second season.

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The Dreamer will not Awaken

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Filmmaker, Artist, and dreamer David Lynch as died. All artists are unique voices and visions, but few have the dreamlike quality that impacts generations such as was the films of David Lynch.

I first encountered Lynch’s visual language when along with a pack of friends I went to a local arthouse theater for a double feature of Roger Corman’s Little Shop of Horrors and David Lynch’s Eraserhead. I still have clear memories of sitting in that darkened theater telling myself that eventually the movie Eraserhead would start making sense. It never did, but its images stayed parked powerfully in my mind.

I next ran into Lynch with his big budget studio production of Dune, the least David Lynch film that man ever released. It is so unlike his vision that extended television versions do not credit him at his insistence.

My next encounter however transformed me into a fan when I went to the theater to see Blue Velvet. I came out of that screen struck with the beauty and the horror of his mind. The glory of a good and simple life, the depravity of a bad one and just how closely interlocked the two truly were.

When Twin Peaks hit the air, my take was that Lynch had brought Blue Velvet to television, but of course the series was both far darker and for more normal than that movie had been.

I cannot say I have seen all of his work, but what I have watched has stayed with me and haunts my thoughts more than most financial blockbusters.

Every death is the loss of a voice and every one touches the world in ways that vast and complex. Lynch touched many of us and he lives on in our dreams and nightmares.

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Folk Horror Review: Robin Redbreast

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Produced and broadcast December 1970 as part of the BBC anthology program A Play for Today is a modern set piece of folk horror. Originally broadcast in color the only surviving elements are a 16mm B&W copy due to the BBC’s notorious penny-pinching habit of recording over their master tapes.

BBC

Norah (Anna Cropper) a thoroughly modern woman, having been dumped by her boyfriend of eight years, decides to abandon the city and live for a few months in a country cottage that she and her ex-had purchased just before the dissolution of their relationship.

The isolated village and its inhabitant are quaint and strange to Norah’s modern sensibilities with the woman she hired to help clean and maintain the cottage a busybody and gossip. When Norah discovers that there is an infestation of field mice in her cottage she’s directed to seek out Robin a local man who can perform the extermination. She finds Robin (Andrew Bradford) in the forest practicing martial arts nude.

Robin, though simple-minded, attracts the lonely Norah but slowly it begins to seem that the villagers have arranged everything to induced Norah and Robin into a relationship with some dark unspecified purpose at their goal.

I first heard of Robin Redbreast on the documentary about Folk Horror but at that time aside from one massive collection of films, it what not available anywhere to view. Recently it has become available to stream in the Ad-supported service Tubi and at a brisk one hour and twenty minutes it doesn’t require a deep commitment of time.

I think that the accident of only as B&W element surviving actually works in the film’s favor, giving it the village a feel of something not quite of modern times, very fitting for folk horror which is nearly always about the collision between tradition and modernity.

Limitations of both budget and technical capability do hamper some aspects of the production. A sequence that is supposed to be from a frightened bird’s perspective is achieved solely through crash zooms and whip pans of the camera that are quite off putting. There are a few conveniences of plot but overall while not approaching becoming a favorite for me of the folk horror genre Robin Redbreast was worth at least a watch.

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Series Review: The Penguin

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2022 saw the release of Matt Reeves’ interpretation of the classic DC Comics character Batman. Taking a more film noir approach the movie emphasized Batman as a detective over the character as a martial artist. The movie also introduced us the Colin Ferrell as Oswald Cobb, The Penguin. Reimagined as a lower class criminal hungry to make a name for himself and now HBO/Max has released a limited series focusing on the character.

HBO/Max

The series opens just weeks after the events of The Batman, the underworld is in chaos following the downfall of its leading mafia bosses, the poorest areas of Gotham are devastated by disaster, and corruption remains king in the city and its administration. Oz, (Colin Farrell) doesn’t so much seize the opportunity created by the chaos as his hand is forced due to his impulsive nature and fragile pride. Scrambling to stay ahead of vicious gangsters including Sofia Falcone (Cristin Miliot) recently released from Arkham Asylum, and the consequences of his own poorly thought-out actions Oz has only on his side a naive street kid, Victor (Rhenzy Feliz), left homeless by disaster and Oz’s own mother slowly succumbing to a terrible wasting neurological disease.

Where The Batman lived with the constraints of an MPAA PG-13 rating, The Penguin thrives as a gritty R-rating equivalent, awash with language and violence that is only tolerated by the rarest of comic book movies. The series is part organized crime thriller with only a single shot to drive home that this is the home of Batman and deep character study of a people trapped and formed by their tragic histories.

The past weekend Colin Farrel took home a Golden Globe for his performance in The Penguin. Farrell is utterly transformed not only by the magical make-up effects that hold up even under insanely tight close-ups but by Farrell’s own fantastic performance. His voice, his accent, his physicality all belong to a man named Oswald Cobb (yest that changed it from Cobbelpot.) and it’s a powerful and moving depiction of a man that can charm and lie and always has his own best interests at heart.

Cristin Milioti, a performed I was unfamiliar with before this series, is another stand out talent in a cast packed with talent. With the subtlest facial expressions she informs the audience that this character’s mental health is always in question and the danger she presents is never far from the surface.

The Penguin is an outstanding series that twists and turns as it walks the viewer into the hell that is Gotham’s underworld where hope has long since died.

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Series Review: Dune Prophesy

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Set ten thousand years before the coming of the Kwisatz Haderach Paul Atreides the series Dune Prophesy concerns itself with the early Imperium following the Machine Wars when humanity freed itself from sentient computers and the founding of the Bene Gesserit.

HBO

Thirty years earlier the sisterhood, before becoming the Bene Gesserit, suffers a crisis with their found Mother Superior dies and power struggle erupts between factions, a struggle won by the fanatically dedicated and deeply emotionally scarred Vayla Harkkonnen and her sister Tula. With careful mechanizations over the following thirty years, they are now close to bring the emperor’s daughter into the sisterhood and through her placing one of their own onto the throne. Their plans are disrupted when a mysterious solider who apparently survived a sandworm attack appears in the court with a deep burning hatred of the sisterhood and strange inexplicable powers.

Dune Prophesy is the next cinematic adaptation of the novels and stories created by Frank Herbert and successfully brought to the movie screen by French Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve. With an ample production budget and a cast of veteran and new actors the series is a wonder of dramatic science-fiction television, a worthy follow-on to the pair of films from Villeneuve.

As has become typical of television of late the season is rather shot with just six episode none of which are bloated with any filler. Also, as it has become the practice in the industry the series doesn’t answer all the questions raised leaving some for further seasons.

I thoroughly enjoyed Dune Prophesy and anticipate further interesting and unsettling seasons.

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Season’s View: A Christmas Carol (2019)

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Charles Dickens’ novella A Christmas Carol has been endlessly adapted to stage, screen, and television often attracting some of each generations greatest actors to the role of Scrooge. The adaptations have run from dramatic to the farcical, but few are as unique as the one aired on the BBC and adapted by Steven Knight.

BBC

Produced by Knight and Ridley Scot this television adaptation retain the core plot, a miserly and mean businessman, Ebenezer Scrooge (Guy Pearce) is visited by spirits on Christmas Eve that by showing him the truth of his life and life in general effect a change to transform the man into a person of altruism and compassion. What Steven Knight however makes serious alterations to the nature of Scrooge’s cruelty and the deep emotional psychological wounds the man carries, while presenting the events in the truly terrifying nature implied by their mere existence.

This adaptation is a piece of horror fiction with the supernatural as something beyond comprehension and therefore something frightening to the soul. The series, for it was presented in 3 parts originally, is also visually fantastic. I can think of no other adaptation that wows with such amazing shots as this one. Instead of trying to make the three spirits the focus of inventive make-up or special effects director Nick Murphy works on the dream logic and unreal aspect of Scrooge’s vision and travels.

This program is not for family viewing. It deals with hard subjects of not only cruelty but also of abuse, exploring abuse in Scrooge’s childhood that he revisits in a manner on the world as an adult. Knight is clearly aware that victims of abuse often through their unhealed wounds become abusers themselves. As such Scrooge’s eventual transformation is not one created but ignorance of the world being removed but of a man facing the horrors of his past and understanding how they made him the monster he had become.

Dark, gothic, and a true piece of horror the 2019 A Christmas Carol is a wonder that terrifies and transforms. It is available for purchase on Amazon prime for a mere $2.00.

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Victory!

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Okay, it’s not a major victory like Midway, getting an agent, or a contract from a big 5 publisher but it is still a check in the ‘win’ column.

For a couple of weeks I have been thinking about a foreign tv series that my sweetie-wife and I watched on SHUDDER. We like it and there was a second season but before we could get around to starting that it expired from the service.

Years, many years, pass and here I am thinking it would be nice to locate and watch the second season except I can’t remember the title of the series. I couldn’t even be certain of the nation that produced it.

I remembered it was a Nordic nation, or maybe Germany. The title was a single word but not only was it a word in language I do not speak but it may have been a word from deep mythology as the series dealt with ancient mythological horrors in the deep deep forest. So, there was no way in hell that word was going to come forward for me.

A few cursory google searches for horror series in the possible nations of origin yielded nothing that sparked any memories.

Then, inspiration. While I did not remember the lead actress by name, I think this was the only project of note of her’s that I had seen, I suddenly recalled one of the supporting actors was the lead in the Finnish series Boarder Town. A quick look through his credits yielded the answer I had quested for; Jordskott.

Yup, that’s the series and there is no way in hell that title would have ever come to mind more than seven years after watching season one. (It was a SHUDDER exclusive in 2017.)

Sadly, it is not streaming anywhere.

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Return to Twin Peaks, not Twin Peaks: The Return

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During spooky season I posted that my sweetie-wife and I were doing a rewatch of the 90’s television series Twin Peaks.

I had some exposure to the uniqueness of David Lynch prior to the series. As part of a double feature at a rep theater I had seen Eraserhead, and it never made sense to me. Then I saw his adaptation of Dune, a flawed but visually stunning film that to me is the least David Lynch he ever made. However, I fell in love with Blue Velvet a surreal neo-noir that was both crime melodrama and an exploration of the twisted darkness that hides in all of us.

When Twin Peaks hit the air my very first thought was ‘Oh, this is Blue Velvet for television.’ I had no conception of just how strange, cosmic, and beyond rational the series would delve.

ABC Television

Our rewatch has reached the second of half of season two and it has been quite a ride. At times the series is a less than middling nighttime soap opera, with poorly executed noir styled plots that quickly fizzle out, at other times it’s a bizarre comedy with such questionable material as a middle-aged woman delusionally going to high school and using her inhuman muscular strength to sexually hares teenage boys. And yet it always retains those elements that are pure horror, of worlds beyond our own intruding with sadistic demons and entrapping human souls not only in depravity but with elements of furniture.

As we swing into the final episodes air back in the 90’s and the terrifying nature of the Black Lodge, the possessing demons, and a cliff hanger that went unresolved for 25 years I can’t help, despite all its flaws, to salute the inventions of the series.

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