Musings on The Leftovers (or did Nora Lie?)

TL;DR – In which I wax lyrical or ramble about the series The Leftovers and its exploration of faith and truth.

Warning – Contains scenes which may cause distress.

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

Two men on a roof after an apocalypse that didn't happen.

The Leftovers Review

Today, we will do something a little different than usual in that we will be less of a review and more of a retrospective on a series. Well, it’s not quite a retrospective, but more some musings that have been rumbling around in my head for months and that I better put down on paper somewhere so I can let them go rather than pondering on them all the time. With that in mind, we delve into the world of guilt, trauma, religion, faith, and crisis.

So to set the scene, three years before the start of the series on October 14th, 2011, two per cent of the world’s population vanished instantly. One hundred forty million people were gone in a moment of time, with no rhyme or reason as to why they were chosen. A child was screaming one second, gone the next. A family was eating breakfast one moment and gone the next. The person you were holding hands with during a science experiment, the person you were making love with, all gone. How do you move on after an event like this? Can you? Can society? Can the town of Mapleton and the Garvey family? Now from here, we will be looking at the whole series as a whole, so there will be [SPOILERS] ahead.

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Movie Review – Storm Boy (2019)

TL;DR – A movie that has good moments, but is hamstrung by its narrative framing device that was unhelpful and unneeded     

Score – 3 out of 5 stars

Post-Credit Scene – There is a post-credit scene but not one you need to stay back for

Storm Boy. Image Credit: Sony.

Review

When you grow up there are these touchstone moments as you discover the world of cinema. For me, and I would say a lot of people in my generation that grew up in Australia, the original Storm Boy movie was one of those moments (well until you have to write an essay on it for English, which was the worst. Well, it has been many years since I have watched the original, so I was really interested when I heard they were remaking it, well that was until I saw it.

So to set the scene, we do not start with the story of the pelicans, but instead, we begin many years later when Storm Boy has grown into being an old man (Geoffrey Rush). He is back in Australia because his son-in-law (Erik Thomson) is holding a vote to allow mining on his company’s pastoral land. The old man’s granddaughter Madeline (Morgana Davies) is very much opposed to it, but he is all just a bit ambivalent to it because it is not really his business anymore. But before the vote could be cast a storm damages the building and we get a day’s pause. It is during this time that he decided to tell his granddaughter the story of when he was a child (Finn Little) and he and Fingerbone Bill (Trevor Jamieson) found some baby pelicans, orphaned after hunters killed their parents.

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Movie Review – Cargo

TL;DR – A beautiful, haunting, and often brutal look at what we do for those we love.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

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

Cargo

Review

There was a time not that long ago where zombies were this interesting subset of the horror genre. Now in a world where every second video game has them as an enemy and we have seen nearly every possible permutation of it on the big and small screen, it honestly feels like we have become saturated with the living dead. Now frankly, this is a great pity because out there in the world of media there are still very powerful works of art being made that deals with these issues, like The Last of Us and Train to Busan. Well, today we are looking at a film that is joining these lofty heights with Cargo.

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