TL;DR – ‘A Free Ranger’ is a quieter episode than last week, but in doing so it lulls us into a false sense of security so when the feels hit, they hit hard.
Score – 4/5 Stars
Review –
We have reached the half way point in the first season of Cleverman, and while ‘A Free Ranger’ is not as action packed as last week’s ‘Containment’, it deftly moves all the major players into position for the coming confrontation. People make choices that will no doubt come back to haunt them, players pick sides, people are being pushed aside, alliances are being sought, and double crossing is afoot.
TL;DR – A film with a lot of promise, held down by too many competing demands.
Score – 2.5 out of 5 stars
Review –
So there is this stigma about movies based on Video Game franchises, that they simply will never be good, indeed Good Game did a whole episode on this very issue. To be fair, at best we have only ever got passable Video Game movies, and the only good film in this genre was Wreck-It Ralph and it only used Video Games as a setting, and of course the less said about Pixels the better. So with all this, is Warcraft the movie that will break the curse? No, no it won’t. So before we go on I should qualify that I never played World of Warcraft, so I am coming to this movie with only the knowledge that you get from being on the Internet, Alliance and Horde and all that jazz. That being said, for a movie to be good I should be able to understand everything without playing the source material, and a good adaption would make that happen.
TL;DR – ‘Containment’ continues ‘First Contacts’ strong start, with one of the most confronting scenes on Australian TV, whilst also dropping hint as to some of the mysteries that we will be uncovering this season.
Score – 4/5 Stars
Review –
“The past is the past, you can’t change it. All you can do is try to do better“
Last week heralded the start of one of the most important shows that has graced Australian TV in a long time. While it wasn’t flawless, it showed you can have a cast that flips the norm and not only can it work, but people will tune in and jump on board. This week if you thought the creators would give you a rest from last week’s revelations, well then you are going to be sadly mistaken, as Cleverman ratchets up the tension and delivers on the powerful ending to the pilot episode.
TL;DR – A good pilot with an interesting story and characters, but needs to work a little more on world building to give the story context
Score – 3.5/5 Stars
Review – First Contact is the first episode of an interesting new Australian TV show Cleverman, a show that blends a future dystopic Australia, with its mythological past, whilst taking a megaphone to its present. The main thrust of the show is the story of two brothers Koen (Hunter Page-Lochard) and Waruu (Rob Collins) who grew up in a walled off part of future Sydney called The Zone. Koen escaped his life and family, and runs a bar outside The Zone, as well as other less than legal business activities, while Waruu has become a pillar of the community in The Zone.
I had this noble plan, to abstain from the TV show until the next book came out, alas it was a noble but ultimately futile, when you work in a large department that starts putting up Hodor pictures in elevators you end up relenting to survive, so relent I did and here you go my TL;DR reviews of the first 5 episodes of Season 6, oh and of course Spoilers ahead, a lot of people die.
Episode 1 – The Red Women
And so we enter a new phase, we are past the books for many characters, so spoilers abound, and for the first time, the book readers are just as likely to be surprised about what is coming up. The opener has a lot to do it has to remind us of where everyone is and then it need to propel us forward, and for a most Part The Red Women does all of that. Jon Snow is dead, but alas that is but just the first coup of the episode. Look at this point we have to accept that they have really messed up Dorne, and we will just have to accept it, for most of the deviations like Talisa there were good reasons and there was a payoff, here I just can’t see how they can recover it. But besides Dorne and that weird English graffiti in Meereen, what a strong way to end the episode with the reveal that Melisandre is much older than we thought. A good opener, a good moment to catch our breath before the next onslaught.
Episode 2 – Home
Well episode 2 of the season wastes no time in continuing the killing off of some supporting characters, if you include Jon Snow from episode 10 last season we have now had 4 coups in 3 episodes (Castle Black, Dorne, Winterfell, & Pyke). But amongst all the carnage we also have the return of some old friends, Hello Bran, Hello Hodor, Hello Greyjoys, it’s been a while. We learn just how narcissistic Ramsey is, and wow if that scene wasn’t full of tension, and we finally have the offing of Balon, he been dead for ages. Also, this is how you use giants. The episode does end on the most unsurprising surprise in TV, but you have got to respect that framing, right out of a renaissance painting.
Episode 3 – Oathbreaker
This is one of those episodes where a lot happens but no much of consequence, as it is just about moving people into place for the episodes to come. But within that we get some great moments, we get Sansa finally taking charge after a false start last season, we get a lovely awkward Small Council session, it seems like Davos might be the only sane person left in the north, and Sam dropping truth bombs in the middle of the ocean, as well as all his lunch. The stand out moment has to be the flashback sword fight at the Tower of Joy, I think this might be some of the best sword choreography that we have seen in the series so far, and indeed the nod to the popular but still not completely confirmed theory was a nice touch. To finish it off we are down another direwolf, only three more to go.
Episode 4 – Book of the Stranger
Ok we are now up to 5 coups so far this season, and only 4 episodes, wow, and it is also the season to bring back characters only to kill them off quickly, it’s going to be a brutal run to the end. So after a lot of running around Daenerys finally ends up back in Vaes Dothrak and shows that she is not afraid of exterminating an entire ruling class to move forward, playing on that notion of if she will or won’t become another mad Targaryen queen. Much like Dorne, The Eyrie seems lacking, it was Sansa that really forwarded that along and without here, it is almost why bother. Also yes Jorah we all saw you use pocket sand with no effect. “we should not have gone south” well if that was not the understatement of the season, also I see you Tyrion laying down some sick Realist rhymes, be careful you don’t get everyone burnt with your beats.
Episode 5 – The Door
This episode is titled ‘The Door’, it could be also titled ‘the episode Bran stuffed everything up’ or ‘the episode George RR Martin was crueler than the Red Wedding’. Before we go to that, the other strength of this episode was the Kingmoot in the Iron Islands, this shows that you can adapt and condense story lines without Dorneing it up, and it is good we get to see more of those elements. Ok let’s talk about it, the reason Hodor is Hodor is because Bran messed up his powers, and messed with Hodor’s head, ‘hold the door’, we had warning it was coming but wow, and also another Direwolf bites the dust 2 more to go.
By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.
Have you watched Game of Thrones?, let us know what you thought in the comments below, feel free to share this review on any of the social medias and you can follow us Here. Check out all our past reviews and articles Here, and have a happy day.
TL;DR – You will forget this movie within moments of watching it, I mean I had to take notes so I didn’t forget, average in every possible way.
Score – 2 out of 5 stars
Review –
Ah Gods of Egypt, you are the very embodiment of mediocracy, you are the ‘slice of white bread’ of cinema, nothing wrong with white bread, but it is inherently lacking in substance. So before I go ahead and rip into the film for the next few paragraphs I should make it clear that Gods of Egypt is just average, not necessarily bad, but just tremendously average. So what I am going to do is use Gods of Egypt as a case study on how an expensive film can come out just so bland.
I honestly don’t know where this film went wrong, it has a good cast, it clearly has talent working behind the scenes and it has an interesting premise, but in the end, it kind of feels like we have a movie that is just paint by numbers.
TL;DR – I feel like I have seen this movie, this is the same story over and over again, but it has its moments
Score – 2.5 out of 5 stars
Review –
Pan is a story of how Peter Pan became the boy that never grew up, how Hook becomes Captain Hook and how Hugh Jackman decided that we was just going to have fun and ham it up for an hour and a half.
TL;DR Movie Reviews and Analysis 