TL;DR – With the new season starting in a few weeks we catch you up on everything you need to know about Season 3 of Star Trek Discovery (Timeline, plot points, and outstanding questions oh my)
Star Trek Discovery: Season 3 Primer –
It is not long until the next season of Star Trek Discovery comes out, and with its big jump and all the new Star Trek and Sci-Fi, we are getting you might need a catch up as to where we are and where we are going. In this primer, we will sum up the critical story posts that led to where we are, give an overview of where all this fits in the timeline, and look at the outstanding questions coming into Season Three.
There are some filmmakers out there whose work has been consistently engaging that every new release gets immediately put on the must-watch list. For me, these are filmmakers like Denis Villeneuve, Ryan Coogler, Roger Deakins, Patty Jenkins, Taika Waititi, Wayne Blair, George Miller, and if I am honest with myself, at the top of that list for me is Christopher Nolan. His film Inception is still on my Top 10 Films list, and his work is always interesting even if like Interstellar the film does not capture me. Well, we live in precarious times, and I was not sure if I was going to be able to see Tenet in some form for a while, but thankfully I did get to see a screening today, and well, I think this is a film that is going to fall in the latter.
So to set the scene, we open in on an opera house in Kyiv, Ukraine, as a group of armed terrorists surge through the band and occupy the theatre. As the police arrive, one van is not what it seems because onboard is a CIA team led by our unnamed protagonist (John David Washington). This whole attack is a ruse to take out an operative whose cover has been blown, and it is our protagonist’s job to get the agent out. It all went wrong, but instead of dying to a cyanide capsule, he wakes up on a boat heading to an off-shore wind farm. It is here where he is informed that he is dead to the world, but a new opportunity has opened up. He is to explore Tenet, a mysterious phrase that is being used by arms smugglers and the like and which could be more dangerous than a missing nuclear weapon.
TL;DR – A fascinating look at an issue and how people would react to it as we watch a man’s life fall apart around him.
Score – 4 out of 5 stars
Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene
Review –
If you want my interest in a film, you need to take something familiar and
twist it, say a serial murder with more going on. Of course, once you have an
interesting premise, you need to follow it up, which is not always the case,
but today we see a film that comes very close to nailing those two parts. So
very close.
So to set the scene, it is a quiet night in Philadelphia when all of a sudden a
woman collapses while driving a bus crashing into multiple cars before being
taken out but a cement truck. When the police get to the scene they discover that
the driver is covered in her own blood after something liquefied her brain.
Three puncture wounds were in her neck, which would be bad, but across the city
three more people collapse in the same way. Beat cop Thomas (Boyd Holbrook)
makes the link between the three victims and after finding a forth still alive
they have a clue only to find everything is much more complicated than they
ever thought because the Jane Doe (Cleopatra Coleman) know who Tom is and that
his daughter is about to be born.
TL;DR – Beautiful and yet also a bit melancholy. It takes what is a quite tired trope of cinema and breathes new life into it.
Score – 4 out of 5 stars
Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene
Review –
Last week I managed to catch a showing of a new anime film Weathering
With You. It was beautiful, bittersweet, visually stunning, and
emotionally resonate. Well after having such a profound experience with that
film I had a look back at director/writer Makoto Shinkai’s filmography and came
across Your Name. I had missed it
when it can out in cinemas, so I made sure to check it out as soon as I could.
Well one week later and what would you know, here it was live on the SBS Movie
channel here in Australia and boy was it worth the watch.
So to set the scene, Mitsuha Miyamizu (Mone Kamishiraishi) lives in a quiet
village in the mountains of Japan’s Hida region. Itomori is a town with a long
history of tradition but also of tragedy with fires destroying much of the town’s
history. Mitsuha is a Miko (shrine maiden) in the Shinto temple that her family
runs under the watchful hands of her grandmother Hitoha (Etsuko Ichihara).
Mitsuha is frustrated with her life and where it is going and dreams of leaving
her small town and moving to the big city in Tokyo. Well one day she gets her
wish, but when she wakes up in the body of Taki Tachibana (Ryûnosuke Kamiki) a
high school boy living in Tokyo, things don’t quite go the way she plans.
TL;DR – Time travel, parallel
universes, and the end of the universe, oh my.
Score – 4.5 out of 5 stars
Review –
Time travel is a dangerous thing because you never know just what you may accidentally
do. Today we are looking at the second part of an interesting look at the past
of The Orville. It gives us time to
see characters in a new light, in new circumstances, and asks the question:
what could really happen when you know the future?
So to set the scene, at the end of Tomorrow, And Tomorrow, And Tomorrow Kelly (Adrianne Palicki) was meant to be sent
back in time with her memories wiped so she could not accidentally change the
crew’s past and her future because of the knowledge she knows. Well at the end
of last week’s episode we discover that the memory wipe didn’t take, and out of
a need to not cause any pain Kelly decides not to accept Ed’s (Seth MacFarlane)
proposal for a second date. I mean that can’t change anything, right, it is
just one date, right …? Well, as it turns out it might have changed everything. Now from here, we will be looking at the episode
as a whole, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.
TL;DR – We look to the past
and find out how much we have changed, the show included
Score – 4 out of 5 stars
Review –
Time travel, oy vey, nothing quite gives me a headache like a temporal mechanics
headache and today we are looking a doozy of one. Now, of course, this is not
the first time that The Orville has dabbled
in the world of time travel with Pria
happening all the way back in Season
One, which also set up some stuff that the show has yet to quite follow
through with. However, today’s temporal jump is a much more personal affair.
So to set the scene, we open with Ed (Seth MacFarlane), Kelly (Adrianne Palicki),
Talla (Jessica Szohr), and Gordon (Scott Grimes) sharing a drink and reminiscing
about the past. Talking about the past has Ed reminiscing about lost loves but
Kelly makes it clear that it would not be good for the ship or them if they
repeated the past. The next day Isaac (Mark Jackson) and John (J. Lee) are
showing Kelly a potential new temporal device when the ship is hit by a massive
gravity wave. Not only does the damage the ship but it interacts with the
device and all of a sudden a Kelly from seven years ago is standing in the
science lab. Now from here, we will be looking at the episode as a whole, so
there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.
TL;DR – Um wait, what, um did it just get all Borg up in
here?
Score – 4 out of 5 stars
Review –
This is an episode of reconnecting, finding purpose and watching that all fall apart because that is how life is. This week we look upon the precipice
where nearly everything is falling into place and we discover that the big bad
might not be as unfamiliar as we once thought.
So to set the scene, at the end of last week’s Red
Angel Michael (Sonequa Martin-Green) was brought back to life as the trap
the set to capture the Red Angel worked. Only to discover that the Red Angel
was not Michael (I mean causality theory should have let you see that one
coming) but was instead her mother Gabrielle (Sonja Sohn). Today we get to see
it all happen when one moment Mike (Kenric Green), Gabrielle, and Michael (Arista
Arhin) were sharing dinner and the next thing the Klingon’s arrive. Gabrielle
jumps into the Red Angel suit in the hopes of jumping back an hour to warn them
but is instead thrown 900 years into the future at which point her suit malfunctions
because no matter what she does, it keeps bring her back to that point 900
years in the future. Now from here, we will be looking at the episode as a
whole, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.
TL;DR – While the story was a
little inconsistent, it an interesting ride from start to finish.
Score – 4 out of 5 stars
Review –
We live in a world today where superhero team-up
projects are no longer a rare thing hidden in some comic book store. Today
people know and understand the thought of a group of people suddenly
discovering powers that they can use for good or evil. So in this world how do
you differentiate yourself from all the other shows out there? Well, you focus on one thing, and that is
family. Family can be complicated at the best of times, and well when you watch
The Umbrella Academy you find that I
don’t think there ever was a best of times.
So to set the scene, one day in 1989 a miracle happened (or a curse depending
on your perspective) when across the globe 43 women gave birth to babies, the
only issue was that they started the day not being pregnant. This drew the attention
of Sir Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore) who went around the world trying to buy
as many of the babies as he could … he got 7. However, there were not normal
children, with all of them, well most of them, having extraordinary powers.
Luther (Tom Hopper) has immense strength and take a beating that would kill
someone and get back up. Diego (David Castañeda) has the ability to make
anything he throws curve through the air, so he is a man who likes his knives.
Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman) has the ability to suggest things to people and
they are compelled to oblige. Klaus (Robert Sheehan) has the ability to talk to
the dead, Five (Aidan Gallagher) can phase through time and space, and Ben (Justin
H. Min) can summon tentacles to cause mass destruction. Of the seven, only
Vanya (Aidan Gallagher) didn’t develop any powers, being relegated to the sidelines as her siblings go off on missions
like stopping a bank heist. All of this is fine but time goes on and families
can drift apart even at the best of times. So at the start of the series, many of the siblings have not talked to
each other in years, but they are all brought back into the fold when their at
best eccentric and at worst abusive father is found dead under less than clear
circumstances. Now, for this point onwards, we will be looking at the season as
a whole, so there will be [SPOILERS]
ahead.
TL;DR – While we get more of those character moments that have been the highlights of the season so far, it just does not quite come together in the end.
Score – 3 out of 5 stars
As we reach the end of the 11th season of the new Doctor Who we have had the highs of Rosa (see review) and Demons of the Punjab (see review) but also the feeling that at times the show just was not quite coming together. It is with this duality that we hit the end of the shorter season than normal and you have to wonder will they stick the landing, and I’m not sure that they did.
TL;DR – A very odd episode filled with 80s Technicolor, monsters in the woods, talking frogs, and a sheep rebellion. It didn’t quite get therein the end, but it did have some interesting moments.
Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars
Review –
We are almost at the end of the 11th Season and Jodie Whittaker’s first as The Doctor. When you have a penultimate episode, sometimes you want to use it to give your audience a breather before the end, sometimes you want to build tension for the final episode. Today we went in a completely opposite direction by instead doubling down on the weird that can be Doctor Who, and boy is this a weird one.
TL;DR Movie Reviews and Analysis 