Black Doves: Season 1 Review – TV Review

TL;DR – This was a series that was full of equal parts fun and suspense, and it shows that one of your best strengths is just letting your cast do what they do best.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

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

Helen looks down at a church service.

Black Doves Review

I love a good spy mystery with betrayals, twists and turns, and some good quality suspense. A lot of countries can make this work, but few do it as good as the Brits. So, when I heard there was a new series coming out and then that it was headlined by Keira Knightley & Ben Whishaw. Well, I had to check it out.

So, to set the scene, it is Christmas time at an English pub, and the vibe is cheerful, with people singing along to the carols and ignoring the death of the Chinese ambassador on the news. However, there is one person, Jason Davis (Andrew Koji), who is not having an enjoyable time. He is moving at speed because he thinks someone is following him. It turns out he was right, as all of his friends are murdered, and he is shot making one last call. That last call was to Helen Webb (Keira Knightley), the wife of the now Defence Secretary, Wallace Webb (Andrew Buchan). It is odd that someone would spend their last moments calling another person’s wife, but even odder when Reed (Sarah Lancashire) shows up to the Christmas party and we discover that Helen is not what she seems. We will be looking at the season as a whole from here, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead. 

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Bullet Train – Movie Review

TL;DR – Several interesting ideas are going on here, but they never coalesce into something worthy.    

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene

Disclosure – I paid to see this film

Brad Pitt punching a life sized mascot.

Bullet Train Review

When you are making an action film, there are many different styles that you could employ. There is the grizzled machismo of movies like Rambo, the high-octane yet safe for families action of the Fast and the Furious films, or the grimy rawness of films like The Northman. But one of the more recent action styles has been this smooth, free-flowing, and fast-talking style of cinema that was thrown into the spotlight with Deadpool. While that style has been divisive, I have generally enjoyed it, and today we see another example of it in the form of Bullet Train.       

So to set the scene, it has been a long road of recovery for ‘Lady Bug’ (Brad Pitt) since he got shot doing a job in Johannesburg. But he is finally ready to take on a new mission, and his handler (Sandra Bullock) has picked an easy one for him. He must go on to a bullet train stationed in Tokyo, Japan, retrieve a briefcase with a train sticker on the handle, and remove it before the train reaches Kyoto. The only issue is that ‘Lady Bug’ is not the only operative working a job on that train as “Lemon” (Brian Tyree Henry), “Tangerine” (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), “The Wolf” (Benito A. Martínez Ocasio), “The Prince” (Joey King), “The Father” (Andrew Koji), and “The Hornet” (Zazie Beetz) all have their own plans in how this will go.     

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