Tag Archives: John Cho

Murderbot: Season 1 – TV Review

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TL;DR – While this was a ridiculous romp of a show, beneath that exterior lies a fascinating character piece about identity, free will, and community.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for the AppleTV+ service that viewed this show.

Murderbot standing outside of the habitat.

Murderbot Review –

Well, we have come to the end of what was an exciting, if odd series. I love my Sci-fi in almost every flavour, and sometimes you want a lighter, silly flair to it. Today’s series that we are exploring has that, indeed, it has that in spades. However, what it also has is an honest heart, which was the bigger surprise, and one that I deeply love to discover.

So, to set the scene, we open on the Mining Station Aratake in the Corporation Rim. Here, all the miners are celebrating the end of the mining expedition 115-24TTX. The one person not celebrating is the Security Unit, which has to follow human orders and tries to keep them safe. But as he is sitting there, he is able to hack the Governor Module in his head, thus Security Unit 238776431 did not have the right ring to it, so it became Murderbot (Alexander Skarsgård). He was a free bot, but given the corporation would kill him the moment they discovered he was rogue, which is how he ended up on Mining Survey 0Q17Z4Y, with more humans, ones who just might care about him, because they were weird. Now, from here, we will be looking at the series as a whole, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.

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Murderbot: FreeCommerce – TV Review

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TL;DR – A fascinatingly weird start that kept me wondering from beginning to end.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for the AppleTV+ service that viewed this show.

The Murderbot.

Murderbot Review –

There is a lot of sameness out there in the world of entertainment; if you have seen one police procedural, generally you have seen them all, irrespective of whether they have a dun-dun sound. But when you do stumble into something new, something weird, something quite odd, well, that is something to cherish.  

So, to set the scene, we open on the Mining Station Aratake in the Corporation Rim. Here, all the miners are celebrating the end of the mining expedition 115-24TTX. The one person not celebrating is the Security Unit, which has to follow human orders and tries to keep them safe. But as he is sitting there, he is able to hack the Governor Module in his head, thus Security Unit 238776431 did not have the right ring to it, so it became Murderbot (Alexander Skarsgård). He was a free bot, but given the corporation would kill him the moment they discovered he was rogue, which is how he ended up on Mining Survey 0Q17Z4Y, with more humans, ones who just might care about him, because they were weird. Now, from here, we will be looking at the episode as a whole, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.   

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Cowboy Bebop (2021): Season 1 – TV Review

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TL;DR – I thoroughly enjoyed this remix of the anime that walks the line between something old and new

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for the Netflix subscription that viewed this series

Cowboy Bebop (2021). Image Credit: Netflix.

Cowboy Bebop Review –

I have been on record with say that the original Cowboy Bebop was and is one of my favourite TV shows of all time. Indeed I wrote an article gushing about why I love it [see here]. Which meant I was of two minds when they announced that they would be finally doing that live-action remake that had been in development hell for decades. There is first the excitement of diving back into that world, but then the trepidation of what happens if they miss the mark. Well, now having watched it all, I can see the flaws, but none of them stopped me from having a good time.

So to set the scene, in 2171, the solar system is a very different place, with Earth in ruins and the human race now spread out across the many planets, moons, and asteroids. Because everything is so spread out, police find it difficult to catch criminals, so they use bounty hunters or cowboys to help bring them to justice. On the Bebop, we see a pair of cowboys with owner Jet Black (Mustafa Shakir) and his partner Spike Spiegel (John Cho). They are trying to make it through the week, with fuel, food, and damages all clocking up, which is good that out on New Tijuana, there is a new bounty with the name of Asimov Solensan (Jan Uddin) on the run from the Syndicate after stealing a supply of Redeye from Vicious (Alex Hassell). Now from here, we will be looking at the season as a whole, so there will be [SPOILERS] ahead.  

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Movie Review – Searching

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TL;DR – A film that is both revolutionary filmmaking, but also deeply centred on the question of what would you do if you lost everything

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

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

Searching. Image Credit: Sony

Review –

Films can be revolutionary for a number of reasons, maybe they have a new actor that blows the world away, maybe they are looking at a subject that no one dared venture before, or maybe they revolutionise filmmaking in some way. With Searching, we have the later because this is a film that is shot entirely from the perspective of a computer screen. We see the YouTube video, the webcam, the documents as if we were living in the screen and peering out in the world. It is both disorientating but also oddly comfortable as it has all the tactile notions of the world we live in. With that in mind, today we are going to see if this is a film that is just a gimmick, or if it is using this new technique to tell a story.

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Movie Review – Star Trek Beyond

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TL;DR – They finally found the right formula for the reboot series and it is glorious, the cast is amazing, the action is good, and every joke hits its mark.

Score – 5 out of 5 stars

Star Trek Beyond. Image Credit: Paramount.

Review –

I think I need to start with some context before jumping into this review, on the whole, I do really like the Star Trek franchise, however, I have not been a fan of this rebooted Star Trek movie series. The first movie had great casting, but the story was full of logical problems and lazy short-cuts, that it removed any real emotional weight to killing off Vulcan, and I just really did not like it (2/5 stars). The second film Into Darkness did a little better with me, as it had some reasonably good character moments, and some interesting set pieces, but the need to recreate one of the most iconic conflicts in Star Trek, and then the ability to not quite pull it off left the movie feeling quite flat (2.5/5 stars). I want to say this upfront so you understand this 5 out of 5 I am giving the film (only the second one of 2016) is not because I am enamoured completely with everything Star Trek, I am giving this film a 5 out of 5 because it has bloomin’ well earned it.

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