I’m always willing to give a movie with an interesting premise a shot – especially if that film has a solid trailer. This was the case with My Hindu Friend, a film that sounded like I might enjoy it. While I don’t often watch films that fall into a strictly realistic genre, I can enjoy a good one. But the trailer for My Hindu Friend made it look like something more unique than any of the other films that have tackled this kind of subject. And, to be totally fair to the movie, it probably is unique from most other films of its ilk – but I wouldn’t say that’s really a compliment in this case. Let’s be clear – there are moments of brilliance in My Hindu Friend, but it takes the better part of an hour to find any of them and much of the rest of the film just feels like a jumbled mess of scenes, ideas, and characters that never fully coalesces into a coherent story. But, hey, at least those few moments of brilliance are fun to watch.
My Hindu Friend (written by Hector Babenco and Guilherme Moraes Quintella, directed by Hector Babenco)
Diego (Willem Dafoe) is a film director very close to death, surrounded by people who are having trouble dealing with his current tempestuous mood. Chances are he won’t survive, but if he does, that means he needs to relearn how to live.
Ed Hime’s previous Doctor Who episode, It Takes You Away, was one of my favorite episodes of the previous season. I thought it had a perfect balance of character stuff and plot stuff and it was just a whole lot of fun to watch – especially with that whole bonkers idea of a sentient universe presenting itself as a talking frog. With that episode being as good as it was, I was definitely looking forward to what Hime would do in his second episode. I mean, there’s no realistic way it was gonna be quite as weird as his first, but I hoped it would be pretty fun. And, to be fair, it was very fun. Orphan 55 has a great premise, some great characters, a poignant message, and some truly scary monsters. It’s an extremely entertaining episode that’s let down a little bit by a very on the nose ending. (Spoilers follow!)
As I said in my review of the first volume of this new run of The Dreaming, one of my favorite things about Neil Gaiman’s original Sandman run was the way the comic’s story was partially about the very nature of stories. Gaiman played with various structures to examine the fabric of storytelling and why it’s always been such an effective means of communication. Everything else was the icing on this theme of a cake. This examination of storytelling is one of the key things that brings readers back to those comics time and time again. Simon Spurrier continued this approach in the first volume of his run on The Dreaming, and he continues it in this next volume – a volume that helps bridge the story of The Sandman with this new story being told here. It’s a really good graphic novel.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that I love a good musical. There’s something that’s just so fun about musicals. Something so heartfelt about that. I’ll also be one of the first to admit that it’s incredibly difficult to pull off a TV show that’s also a musical. Musical films are a little easier to do, but musical shows seem unable to find a way to balance all of the necessary elements in a way that’s sustainable in the long term. Glee came the closest, but its writing quickly fizzled out after a few seasons and both SMASH and RISE failed to attract a large enough audience to justify their existence. But along comes Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist, a show that owes a lot to those previous attempts at musical tv shows. Having seen the first four episodes of its first season, it seems that Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist might have found a way to balance all of the elements of a good musical with the necessary elements of a long-running TV show. But the question still remains if it can find an audience and/or maintain its quality writing and energy in the long term. All of that aside, these first four episodes are pretty darn good, though.
I love a good two-parter, I really do. But I’ll also admit that it’s extremely hard to stick the landing on one. The best two-parters have pretty explosive (sometimes literally) cliffhangers that have to be satisfactorily dealt with before the rest of the episode can focus on actually concluding the greater story being told. This was something previous eras of Doctor Who had struggled with a bit; RTD tended to write himself into corners that required a deus ex machina solution while Moffat’s two-parters often were more spiritually connected than narratively. Both of them frequently struggled with figuring out a way to properly conclude the stories they were telling. With Spyfall being the first two-parter from the new showrunner, Chris Chibnall, the hope would be that he’d find a good way to thread this needle. And, for the most part, he does a pretty good job, delivering an episode that’s most definitely a narrative continuation of the previous and providing some solid answers while setting up an intriguing throughline for the rest of the season. (This review will contain spoilers for Spyfall, Part 2. Proceed at your own risk.)
I was one of the few people who remained a fan of Moffat throughout his tenure on Doctor Who. His episodes certainly weren’t perfect, and often ranged dramatically in quality, but I was mostly on board with what he was doing with the storyline – even if his grasp on writing the companions’ character arcs was always weak. I also really enjoyed the first two seasons of Sherlock – even two of those first six episodes weren’t particularly good. While Moffat’s run on Doctor Who was mostly consistent, his and Gatiss’ work on Sherlock took a noticeable dip in quality during the third and fourth seasons, completely blowing any goodwill they’d accumulated from the fanbase by the end of the fourth season’s finale. And it’s this trend of inconsistent quality that brings us to Dracula. There is something appealing about the writers who revived Sherlock Holmes for a new generation tackling another literary legend like Dracula. In that sense, I was very excited to see what they’d do, hoping it would skew closer to the first two seasons of Sherlock in terms of quality. Unfortunately, it skewed heavily toward the last two seasons of Sherlock, giving us a mess of a show that tries to be more clever than it is and eschews telling any kind of coherent story in favor of distracting plot twists that don’t work half as well as Moffat and Gatiss think they do. (Spoilers for all three episodes of Dracula.)
After a full year, Doctor Who has finally returned to our TV screens! While I may not have totally loved Chris Chibnall’s first season as showrunner, I did quite enjoy Jodie Whittaker as the 13th Doctor. She brought a lot of energy and commitment to the role and it was hard to dislike her as the character, even if I wish the writing of her episodes was stronger. The same was true for her friends, Ryan (Tosin Cole), Yaz (Mandip Gill), and Graham (Bradley Walsh) – all of whom brought such energy to their characters, but many of whom felt underdeveloped. Luckily, all four of these actors have returned for this sophomore outing for the 13th Doctor, and if this first episode is anything to go by, it looks like they’re in for quite the adventure. It’s always hard to judge a two-part story when you’ve only seen its first part, and that remains true for this story. That being said, Spyfall (Part 1) is certainly an excellent first half of a story, ticking every box you’d want ticked and perfectly setting up a pretty exciting second half. (Major spoilers for Spyfall, Part 1 follow!)
One of the things I’ve most wanted from a Star Wars story was something that felt similar to Firefly. There’s just something I find endlessly fascinating about watching a group of loveable outlaws struggles against an oppressive government. That’s exactly what Firefly excelled at and it would seem that the Star Wars universe would be perfect for such a story. And for a long time, George Lucas was working on a show that explored the underworld of the Star Wars universe, but it was ultimately deemed too expensive to do in the latter half of the first decade of the 2000s and was completely shelved when Disney bought Lucasfilm. A glimpse of hope seemed to shine, though, when the first trailers for The Mandalorian hit the internet and it genuinely seemed as though The Mandalorian might be the show I was longing to see. You had the leader, Pedro Pascal’s unnamed Mandalorian, appearing to assemble some kind of crew to accomplish some kind of mission. Unfortunately, the actual show we got was less Firefly and more Saturday morning cartoon. Is this necessarily a bad thing? No, but it probably shouldn’t have been advertised as anything more than that. Regardless, there’s a lot of enjoyment to be found in The Mandalorian, even if it is often poorly paced, seemingly aimless, and occasionally frustrating to watch. (Spoilers for all eight episodes of The Mandalorian’s first season.)
As the saying always goes, if the BBC won’t give Doctor Who a Christmas special on TV, then the comics will pick up the slack! And pick up the slack they do as writer, Jody Houser, and illustrator, Roberta Ingranata, team up once again to tell a new story with Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor and her friends – this time as they go against a holiday threat as scary as anything they’ve faced to date. It’s fun, it’s festive, and Houser and Ingranata continue to show the vast understanding they have for these characters.
Oh, Star Wars. Is it the curse of nearly every Star Wars film made after 1983 to be extremely divisive? While I wasn’t one of the people who abhorred The Last Jedi, I also wasn’t one of the people who adored it. There were some solid ideas (that, admittedly, weren’t executed very well) mixed in with some less-than-stellar ideas, and the movie didn’t really do a great job at setting up the final film in the trilogy – which, really, is the entire purpose of a trilogy’s middle film. So, in the wake of all of that, was it ever really possible for The Rise of Skywalker to actually be very good or remotely satisfying? I’d argue it wasn’t, which is exactly the mindset I went into this movie with. Somehow, I was still disappointed, though. In fact, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is a deeply frustrating film. In trying to please everybody, it pleases nobody. It tries to cram too much plot, and too much poorly-thought-out fan service into too little a runtime to make something remotely interesting. (Very mild spoilers may follow; you’ve been warned.)
Thoroughly Modern Reviewer 