The Diplomat: Season 3 – TV Review

TL;DR – While there is joy in watching this cast eat up the screen in every frame, this is a messier season as they try to transition to something different.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for the Netflix service that viewed this series.

Warning – Contains scenes that may cause distress.

Military Helicopters flying over Big Ben.

The Diplomat Review

My background is in International Relations, and it does not come up here as much as I would like, other than the occasional The Hitman’s Bodyguard jaunt. Well, today, given the situation of the world, I thought I would take a chance to have some wishful thinking in a world where the right things still matter, integrity still matters, to pretend for a couple of hours that everything hasn’t just gone to shit everywhere. But to understand why Season Three feels so volatile, we need to look at where Season Two left us.

So, to set the scene, at the end of Season Two, things went from bad to worse when the person, Grace Hagen Penn (Allison Janney), behind the scheme that blew up the British Ship in Season One has become the new President of the United States after the former suffered a heart attack during a conversation with Hal (Rufus Sewll). What was the conversation you ask? Well, it was informing him that his Vice-President may have committed a terrorist act on an ally, that very same Vice-President who is now the President of the United States. This is not a good day for Kate (Keri Russell) because the person she wanted removed just became the most powerful person in the world. Now, from here, we will be looking at the series as a whole, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.

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Irresistible – Movie Review

TL;DR – Based on some strong character work, Irresistible is a riot of laughs from start to finish, but it still has something important it wants to say.     

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is a mid and end-credit scene

Irresistible. Image Credit: Universal Pictures.

Irresistible Review

It is rare for a film to catch me completely off guard these days. In the era of trailers giving most of the game away and the pretty standard plot structure that most films follow, you tend to know what you are getting yourself into before you sit down in the theatre. Well, today, I look at a movie that surprised me from the start and never let up.

So to set the scene, we open on the night before the 2016 Presidential elections where Democratic party representative Gary Zimmer (Steve Carell) and his Republican counterpart Faith Brewster (Rose Byrne) are giving their final pitches to the nation in the ‘spin room’. Well, we all know how that election turned out, and much like the literal depiction of a cannonball to the gut Gary is in a state of despair. However, a couple of years later as mid-terms approach he is trying to find a way to reconnect with heartland voters when he stumbles across a viral video of Colonel Jack Hastings (Chris Cooper) in Deerlaken, Minnesota. Jack is standing up to the local Mayor Braun (Brent Sexton) over his stance on immigration. Gary has found his gateway to the heartland and flies to Minnesota and agrees to run Jack’s campaign for Mayor.

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