Ahsoka: Season Overview

Summary

Rebels gets a meaningful wrap up.

Whilst Kathleen Kennedy lives out her days proving South Park right and thinks that forcing another chapter in the much hated sequel trilogy is the right way to go with a director who wants to make a large part of the audience ‘uncomfortable’, Dave Filoni proves that he is the one sane voice left in Star Wars.

I will admit this isn’t a perfect series, the pacing is really all over the place and it takes far too long to get good but once it does it really does. I think it is nice to see the Rebels family back together again and I think seeing Ezra, Eman Esfandi, is still carrying on with the force in his self-imposed exile is a nice parallel to Luke, Mark Hamill, who wanted the Jedi to die.

I think that Rosario Dawson did an okay job as Ahsoka, I am still not sold, but her scenes with Anakin, played by Hayden Christensen, where interesting and compelling especially if you have watched a lot of the previous animated material. However, I thought the best characters here by a country mile are Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Hera and Natasha Liu Bordizzo as Sabine. Winstead plays Hera with the right amounts of maternal feeling but also military prowess that both aspects of the character are realised well, I think the scene in the finale where she gets to meet Ezra again is particularly touching. Bordizzo’s Sabine on the other hand really is the anchor of the series, I think she is a great audience surrogate character and you really buy her quest to save Ezra, I also thought that turning her into a Mandalorian jedi, padawan for now, was a nice touch. I would be interested to see if the show keeps Sabine and Ezra as just friends, I have a feeling there may be another force baby on the way in the coming seasons.

The villains are strong, Thrawn, Lars Mikkelsen, is probably the least strong of the bunch maybe it was just because I didn’t get to see much of him but I thought that he just didn’t have the same menace he did in the shows. Elsbeth, Diana Lee Inosanto, was cool it is night to see more from the Nightsisters hopefully we get to see more of them in the next season. Baylan, played by Rey Stevenson, and Shin, played by Ivanna Sakhno, were both very interesting, I found Baylan’s quest to be very interesting and it is a shame we didn’t get a more definitive answer as to what he was looking for in the final episode. I would like to see flashbacks to his time in the order in the next season, they could do that to get around the tragic real world passing of Stevenson. Shin has a lot of potential to rise to be a Sith Lord in the post original trilogy pre sequel trilogy era, though I think they will have her turn to the light instead.

The plot is mainly just a quest to find Ezra and then to find Thrawn which really isn’t very much, hence the need to pad it out, but I think the season ends off on an interesting note.

Overall, there is still some hope left out there in the Star Wars universe

4/5

Pros.

Hera, Sabine

Seeing the characters reunited

Where the season ends off

More Nightsisters

Cons.

Pacing
Bad costumes/effects at times

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Only Murders In The Building: Season III Overview

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

The murders continue as the dynamic frays

You can have too much of a good thing, that simply is a fact.

The first two seasons of this show were good if not great, and did a lot for all involved whereas this season instead gave of the idea that the series was running out of ideas. It was not helped by the fact that a theme of this season was separation and the gang moving in different directions each of which feel a little too familiar. The show doesn’t seem to understand how to write solo stories for their central trio without them ending up in a relationship as all did here. I have no issue with Gomez or Short’s characters relationships as I thought they were well done and the two characters played off well with each other, but Steve Martin’s characters relationship storyline made no sense and was just ill fitting.

The mystery of the season is okay and it isn’t immediately obvious though I would say you can see it from the midpoint. Broadly, I would say the highlight of the season is Meryl Streep as she is easily the most compelling new character.

Overall, there shouldn’t be a season four.

2/5

Pros.

Streep

The new romances, bar Martin’s

Cons.

Its repetitive

It feels like it’s run out of steam

It wastes the talents of Ashley Park

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Futurama Season II: One Large Step In The Wrong Direction

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

Buckle up this will be a long one, this is my review of the Hulu season of Futurama.

Now first a little context, Futurama was and is my favourite animated series of all time, with American Dad a close second. I have watched Futurama all the way through more times than I can count and it has influenced my life in a number of ways. I like most people fall into the standard pattern, with one slight difference, I think that the Fox seasons were gold, I like the specials more so than some of the other fans, and I think that the Comedy Central run was fine but a massive step down.

The more I think over the new episodes the more I think they should never have been made, whether it was because they brought on new writers who didn’t understand the characters or whether it was because the show didn’t have solid ideas in coming back it remains to be seen but it could be either.

Really in my mind their were two major issues with this new season, firstly there is the fact it is obsessed with being topical, whether that is in talking about covid or cancel culture, which dates the episodes horribly and feels like the writers couldn’t come up with a new idea so they just went ‘what’s in the news’. Secondly, you have the fact that the series disrespects to an insane degree Fry and Leela’s relationship. You have Leela seemingly going off with other guys multiple times over the course of these episodes for no reason and at the end it will end with something like it was all a dream, it is awful.

I think the easiest way to review this season is to go episode by episode. The Impossible Stream as asinine and thinks it is far more clever than it actually is, it begins the long disrespecting of Fry and Leela’s relationship as well. Bad episode. Children of a Lesser Bog may well be the only good episode here, it carries over from the Fox era well adding a beautiful new chapter in that storyline and expanding out the side characters, it is a shame that it sets such a high bar as it makes everything else look like crap by comparison. How The West Was Won, is again the series needing to be topical and be like ‘aha crypto am I right kids’, are you beginning to notice a theme yet? Parasites Regained is entertaining again I like the classic call back and the Dune parody but it never really gets above okay. Related To Items You Have Viewed is an episode that you will forget about as you are watching it is dull, again the episode tries to do some classic Futurama science fiction but waters it down with topical references that amount to ‘Amazon bad’. I Know What You Did Last Xmas is one of the wors Christmas episodes as once again it takes the interesting concept of Robot Santa and makes it boring and dull, also Bender and Zoidberg don’t have chemistry. Rage Against The Vaccine and Zapp Gets Cancelled are both awful episodes and I think you can see why, it’s in the title, it is jokes that age horribly and that you have already hard at least a million times before, utter trash. The Prince and the Product is my most hated episode of the season as it flips off anyone who likes the Fry and Leela romance and then goes it was all a spell, it feels like the very worst kind of screw the audience story telling. All The Way Down is better, I would put it above Parasites Regained and below Children Of A Lesser Bog it does some interesting science fiction stuff and I like the questions it tries to explore, but it isn’t perfect.

So what’s that, three out of ten of the episodes this season are okay to good and seven are bad……. Yikes. If you are an optimist you could argue that it’s new writers trying to find their voices and old writers trying to get their groove back and that maybe the next half will be better but honestly I think that Futurama should have stayed dead and that pains me to say on a core level but it’s the truth.

Also a number of things carry over from the Comedy Central era yet Zoidberg’s girlfriend is not even mentioned, and that is one of the best episodes of the Comedy Central run, he is back to being pathetic and alone now and it feels like regression.

Overall, a massive shame.

1.5/5

Pros.

One good and two okay episodes

It is nice to see the characters back

Cons.

The need to be topical

The disrespect to Fry and Leela

Seven bad episodes

The new writers aren’t good

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The Equalizer: La Dolce Vita

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

Robert McCall, played by Denzel Washington, becomes a man about town in Italy.

I enjoyed this more so that the previous Equalizer film, and a damn sight more than that horrible gender swapped TV show, and would go so far as to say it was on a par with the first film. Again I think where these films shine is when it is just McCall going on a rampage against massive groups of guys, it works in very much the same way the John Wick movies do and I think that this film was able to capture that well.

I would say the film was a slog at the beginning and spent far too long in the little Italian town with McCall getting to know everyone and all this, I can see they did this to make it feel more personal later as the villains then try and destroy the community and life McCall has built in Italy, but I just think it went on for too long.

I think that Dakota Fanning’s interesting new character added something to the film and that the narrative as a whole did enough to make us care about her, though I would have liked to see her have a more active role in the action vs essentially getting taken off the board early into the third act. However seeing as she survives the film maybe she can come back later on in the franchise and be more proactive.

Overall, a better than average action film, better than the first sequel and the tv series probably on a par with the first film.

3/5

Pros.

Denzel

The action

The film makes you care about the characters

Cons.

It spends too long setting things up

It does Fanning’s character dirty

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A Haunting In Venice: A Macabre Puppet Show

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

Poirot, played by Kenneth Branagh, is back this time to face off against the paranormal.

I think this film was a much needed return to form after Death On The Nile or as I call it Gal Gadot’s vanity project. The decision to forgo some of Christie’s other better known works and to pivot into the supernatural was a strong way to make this film feel fresh. As an ardent fan of horror I thought that the scares here were actually quite good and worked.

I liked the friendship between Poirot and Tina Fey’s character, Poirot is at his best when he has someone to work off and is part of a duo, that was what worked so well in the first film. It was sad to see that in the end Fey was a baddy and had to go away but I would quite like to see Poirot have an assistant, ward or mentee in the next film.

The mystery itself was okay, it was better than Death On The Nile where it was painfully obvious early on what was going on, but I would still say it was not as good as the first film. The fact that they are all being poisoned and that explains away the spooks is fairly obvious from the jump, but the reveal about who was the murderer was better concealed until the end of the film.

Overall, a return to form.

3.5/5

Pros.

The horror aspects

The cinematography

The cast

The gothic feel

Cons.

The mystery is so so

Having Fey turn out to be a villain

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Star Wars Is Dead

Written by Luke Barnes

This piece will talk about Star Wars and the recent controversy around the comments made by the director of the next cinematic release.

Now for those of you who have followed me for a while you will know where I am going with this, why alienate your audience. Kathleen Kennedy seems to think that the force is female but if you actually want to be profitable, and be able to make streaming services that aren’t haemorrhaging viewers season by season it might be time to admit that the force is genderless and stop telling the male audience to take a long walk off a short pier.

Again Kennedy in her wisdom, and likely some kind of voodoo hold over Bob Iger, has hired a documentary filmmaker for the director of the next film. Now I have no issue with the director’s work on Ms Marvel she did make the best episodes, however, I think that you need professionals not activists. I have often said studios should have it in their contracts that anyone working on any of their projects cannot make divisive political statements whilst they are under contract it just makes sense. Anyway, the new director in an interview said that she likes her film’s to make men uncomfortable, again this is not the kind of attitude you want from a director of a blockbuster.

I won’t even engage with this from a culture war outlook, but rather from a business one the Star Wars brand is on life support and the last thing you want to be doing is saying something like this that will fracture and divide your fanbase even further and create bad PR for the film before it has even come out. Yes, there are people who would hate this anyway as it carries on the sequel trilogy, but why go out of your way to make it worse.

Again Kathleen Kennedy needs to realise that her rather glaring political positions are getting in the way of her making a good film, if you say the force is female and tell the male audience to take a hike, and take it further by making a film that is seemingly now designed to make them uncomfortable then it won’t do well at the box office and will bomb because lets face facts women aren’t turning out for Star Wars, any analytics you want to look at will still tell you men are the main audience.

If I was Bob Iger right now I would be livid, I would remove Kennedy as she cannot be trusted anymore, I don’t know how after the last Indiana Jones film that killed that franchise and the Sequel trilogy she is still in a job but hey. If nothing else if for some reason they can’t get rid of her I would veto her directing choice take the bad PR and then bring in a Brice Dallas Howard someone who knows the brand well the fans like and is still female so they can still tick that progressive box.

Lets face it folks Rey, a hated character, led Star Wars film that carries on the bad blood of the sequels and is directed by someone who wants to make the majority of the audience uncomfortable is destined to bomb as it has no fan excitement, it has no hype and it will go the way of Aquaman II after the whole Amber Heard thing.

Widely this is a step to kill Star Wars as Kennedy knows her days are numbered in the top job.

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The Nun II: A Superhero Showdown

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

Sister Irene, played by Taissa Farmiga, is back and now has super powers.

I enjoyed this a lot, but I have to say if you don’t like the Conjuring films and aren’t up to date on the shared universe then you won’t like this as much as I did. Again I have no idea what the other reviews for this film are like, but I think that this may be one of the cases wherein my own review is a little higher than others because I am so into horror and more ready to give stuff a pass.

I think the horror is good hear, I really liked the goat and thought that the scene early on with the little girls and the devil’s eye, or whatever they called it, was a lot of fun. I would say that some of the jump scares with the Nun were a little obvious, especially if you have seen some of these films before. Again the possession angle was a great way to reunite some of the cast from the first film though I think the film spends way too much time on it we need more Valek.

The third act showdown is a funny state of affairs, where rather than it being more horror focused it almost becomes like the end of a superhero film, with Sister Irene getting special powers from a saint and then going toe to toe with Valek for a bit. It feels very odd in terms of this being a horror film but at the same time it is nice to see a more even fight in one of these demonic possession films usually it is the demon has all the power and then the demonologists or priests manage to somehow best it when all seems lost but it is much more even here.

I think that Taissa is just as capable as her sister in the leading lady department and really carries this film on her shoulders, I think if there are any more Nun films which lets face it there will be Farmiga has to come back. I would like to see her interact with Loraine, played by Vera Farmiga, but I don’t think they could swing that as they like to say that the Conjuring proper films are based on real events whereas the Nun ditches all that. I will say that there is no reason on God’s green earth that Storm Reid needs to be in this film, she adds nothing, and her bad acting is distracting, was she put in for the kids?

Overall, another fun day out in the Conjuring Universe, but not quite as good as the first film.

3.5/5

Pros.

The superhero smackdown at the end

A few good scares

It is nice to see them tie it so well into the first film

Farmiga does a good job

Cons.

Some of the scares are predictable

Reid adds nothing

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