Category Archives: 2019 Reviews

TV Review – Star Trek Short Treks: Runaway

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TL;DR – A beautiful character piece that makes the most of the short run time.

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

Star Trek Short Treks: Runaway. Image Credit CBS Studios.

Review –

Today we are going to be doing small mini-reviews for all the Star Trek Shorts, starting with an exploration of what it means to step forward and change your life.

So to set the scene, it is after Will You Take My Hand? and Sylvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman) has officially entered the Command Training Program, which is a huge achievement, which is completely lost on her mother Siobhan (Mimi Kuzyk). As this is going on a standard cargo run is interrupted by a stowaway and the two are about to crash together.

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TV Review – Sex Education: Season One

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TL;DR – It a show where sex is very much front and centre, however, it is actually the relationships that actually shine through.

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

Sex Education. Image Credit: Netflix.

Review –

There are some people who would like a do over, go back in time and do high school all over again, or indeed there are those people who never left. I would never go back to that hellscape of hormones, and finding yourself while the world gets ripped out from underneath you. Well today we look at a series that explores that very time period in all its uncomfortableness.

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TV Review – The Good Place: The Book of Dougs

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TL;DR – While it does not always quite get there, it was still an interesting ride.

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

The Good Place: The Book of Dougs. Image Credit: NBC.

Review –

After three seasons of trying the gang is finally in the good place, and after all this, the emotional and social capital to get us here does it actually hold up? Well no, but then I think it does something a little more important, maybe.

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TV Review – Sex Education: Episode 1

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TL;DR – It a show where sex is very much front and centre, however, it is actually the relationships that actually shine through.

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

Sex Education: Episode 1. Image Credit: Netflix.

Review –

Sex, it is in the name of the show, and if there is any confusion the episode opens with a very explicit view of two people engaged in it. Pretty much there is no misunderstanding in the first five minutes as to what you are going to get with this show. However, as things went on, the one thing that struck me was how caring it all was.

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TV Review – The Orville: Home

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TL;DR – In Home, The Orville finally finds that balance between the absurd and the sincere and creates one of their best episodes so far.

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

The Orville: Home. Image Credit: Fox

Review –

So far this season The Orville have continued on in its mission to highlight the juxtaposition between the absurd and the sincere. Now, this is something that you can completely do, but the show in both Season One and so far this season just couldn’t quite find that right balance. Well with Home I think they really are starting to head in that right direction and it doesn’t hurt when you throw in some great guest cast and beautiful art design help along the way.

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TV Review – Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Honeymoon

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TL;DR – Honeymoon brings everyone back together, hits all the right beats, and propels the show forward, so a great opening episode of a season.

Score – 4.5 out of 5 stars

Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Honeymoon. Image Credit NBC.

Review –

I have been around long enough that the list of shows that I love that got cancelled without closure is a decently long list. When it happens you always hear of trying to get it picked up by another network, but this barely ever happens. So when Brooklyn Nine-Nine got cancelled, I lamented the stupid decision, but I knew it was unlikely to change, and if there was ever a time I was happy to be wrong this is it. Well, now we are back and even more extraordinary we have a full season pick up, so let’s dive into the first episode of the season Honeymoon.  

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TV Review – The Orville: Primal Urges

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TL;DR – With Primal Urges we see how The Orville is not afraid to tackle really important issues, but that it has yet to quite get that balance right  

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

The Orville: Primal Urges. Image Credit: Fox.

Review –

One of the issues facing the world today is porn addiction, free porn is literally at most people’s fingertips if you have an internet connection and it can be devastating to a relationship. The Orville looks at Porn Addiction in the context of a relationship that has completely soured but there is still a child involved, which is a situation that is very familiar in the world today.

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Movie Review – How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (How to Train Your Dragon 3)

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TL;DR – Beautiful, joyous, funny, emotional, a film for everyone, and one of the best sequels I have seen a very long time   

Score – 5 out of 5 stars

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene, but the credits are delightful

How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World. Image Credit: Universal Pictures

Review –

The How to Train Your Dragon series has been one of those little gems that keeps binging quality films, time and time again. It is a really simple premise, you live in a world with dragons, and you can either fight them or make friends with them. It is a simple but effective morality tale about fearing what you do not know and finding a new way forward. Well, today, the third film in the series is out in cinemas and we thought it was really good, like really, really good, like you really need to go see it good.

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TV Review – Bloom: Season One

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TL;DR – This series explores the temptation and addiction that we can have with capturing the past. However, while it introduces a lot of important themes, it does not really have the space to digest them all.   

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

Bloom. Image Credit: Stan.

Review –

If you could be young again for a day or so, would you take that opportunity, would you try to fix some part of your life? However, what would you do to keep staying young, would you hurt people, would you kill, what if going back meant losing who you were? These are all really deep questions and I don’t know how I myself would answer, but today we are looking at a show that posits these exact questions and more.

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TV Review – Doctor Who: Resolution

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TL;DR – With the last episode for a year, we get the return of a villain past, and not really a whole lot else, which leads to an interesting if forgettable episode.  

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

Doctor Who: Resolution banner with the whole gang. Image Credit: BBC

Review –

The debut season for Jodie Whittaker and Chris Chibnall has come and gone, and while I generally enjoyed it, it has been divisive among the fans, and no not just because The Doctor is a woman now (though there are still those people, sigh). The show pretty much used this season as an opportunity as a soft-reboot and a good entry point for new people joining in without years of storylines to catch up on. All of this meant that we got some amazing episodes like Rosa and the Demons of the Punjab but there was also an awful lot of filler and constant use of ‘oh the bad guy is not the actual bad guy.’ All of this lead to many episodes feeling undercooked and the drive to have all new enemies for the series probably didn’t help. Well, today we look at the epilogue for the series and its first ever New Year’s special and see how well it does for the last Doctor Who episode for over a year.   

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