Girls Trip (2017)

Four women grew up as seemingly inseparable friends.  But then life, as it is wont to do, find a way to separate them.  So when lifestyle guru Ryan is offered the role of keynote speaker at the Essence Music Festival, she sees it as a chance to re-unite the gang and rebuild her connections with single mom Lisa, wild child Dina, and gossip site owner Sasha.  All three bring baggage and issues with them of course, but as the weekend will quickly reveal, not even Ryan's seemingly picture perfect life is quite as comfortable as it seems to be.  There will be hard moments as well as joyous ones on this Girls Trip.

Frequently crass and occasionally schmaltzy (especially at the end), Girls Trip powers through its occasional missteps on the back of its rapid fire dialogue and the charisma of its four main players.  It's bright and breezy and there are plenty of laughs to be had in between the particularly off-colour moments or the the more drama-focused ones.

If I were to quibble with the movie, it would probably be to say that I wish a film that seems so enthusiastic about female friendship spent a little less time focused on their relationships with men.  But honestly, that wasn't an issue that occurred to me while I was watching the movie; only afterward.  Like I said, it powers through its missteps.

Californication, Season 4 (2011)

One of the many sins of Hank Moody's life has caught up with him - the one that actually anchored the very first episode of this show, in fact - and he's on trial for a crime that could very well see him incarcerated for several years.  Will it?  Well, that's what this season is pretty much entirely about.  Will Hank learn anything from his latest tribulations?  Well, if a magic 8-ball could burst out laughing, I am pretty sure it would for that question. .

If I can wax nerdy for a moment, Dungeons and Dragons has two mental ability scores for the characters in it: Intelligence and Wisdom.  Early editions of the game described the difference as "Intelligence is knowing it is raining; Wisdom is knowing that you should go inside".  I submit that if the game had been written in 2011 instead of the early 1970s, they might instead have said "Intelligence is Hank Moody knowing it is a bad idea to sleep with this woman; Wisdom is Hank Moody actually not sleeping with this woman".  Because Hank's a pretty smart guy, but he's incapable of making a good decision or of learning from his mistakes.

Of course. "making good decisions and learning from their mistakes" is not something that anyone on Californication seems very skilled at, and as I've said before a whole lot of the show's appeal seems to be about seeing how these fundamentally broken people manage to repeatedly ruin their own lives, despite the many, many chances they are given to actually be happy.  It's surprising how entertaining that turns out be.

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006)

Following his latest high speed hi jinks, high schooler Sean Boswell is packed off to Japan (where his father lives) in order to keep him out of jail.  There, he is introduced to the world of drift racing, which is basically all about racing cars sideways around corners.  His first efforts do not go well, and he finds himself paying off a large debt for the car he wrecked in the process.  Of course, the guy he owed the debt is also a drifting master, so Sean also gets to benefit from tutelage while this is going on.  Doesn't seem like that bad a deal, really.

Of course, there's a also a woman involved in all this, and Sean spends most of the movie butting heads with her arrogant, Yakuza-connected boyfriend DK (which stands for "drift king").  What are the odds the movie will end with some kind of drifting race between Sean and DK, do you think?

Tokyo Drift is often seen as the low point of the Fast and Furious franchise (which financially, it certainly was). It's easy enough to see why.  It's about a wholly new group of characters, so it loses the instant buy-in of any returning faces, and it feels both too familiar and too different at the same time.  Too familiar because boy-oh-boy does the story hit a lot of action movie cliches; too different because as a friend pointed out, it's pulling those cliches from 80s martial arts films.  It's basically "The CAR-ate Kid".

Check this one out only if you are a Fast and Furious diehard.  Otherwise you're really not going to lose a lot by jumping straight to the fourth entry in the series, which turned the seemingly-declining franchise's fortunes around.

Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Season 1 (1979)

In 1987 a freak accident sees a NASA space probe and its one man crew (William "Buck" Rogers, of course) snap frozen and hurled into an giant elliptical orbit that will mean 504 years will elapse before they return to Earth.  An Earth that has naturally changed quite substantially in their absence, and that is now threatened by various alien enemies.  Buck's got a lot of catching up to do.  But of course, there might be a few 500 year old tricks that have been forgotten since his time ...

Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (which is quite a mouthful of a title) was produced by Glen A Larson, who also gave us Battlestar Galactica and would go on to Knight Rider and many other much less fondly remembered science fiction shows.  Also Magnum P.I., though his involvement with that was a lot less.

With the exception of the theatrically-released pilot, which features a much more grim vision of future Earth than the ongoing TV show, as well as some mild swearing and a James Bond-esque credits sequence of scantily clad women, the tone of this show is resolutely that of lightweight action-adventure.  Leading actor Gil Gerard apparently disliked this and wanted the show to feature more serious storylines, but obviously lost the fight.  Every story arc (whether one or two episodes long) ends with Buck chuckling away at some amusing anecdote or event, often involving his comedic robot sidekick Twiki.  Frankly though, I think Erin Gray has more to complain about than Gerard - she gets second billing in the credits for the show, but she's playing at best the fourth banana here, behind Buck, Twiki and a character named Doctor Huer.

A lot of Buck Rogers is frankly a bit silly and shallow, and the show leans pretty hard on PG-rated titillation (there are a lot of very attractive women in tight outfits) and the supposed witticisms of Twiki to help distract from the sometimes threadbare scripts.  Still, I found the silliness to be somehow endearing on some level, and I think I will always have a soft spot in my heart for goofiness like "Space Rockers" (if you see only one episode of the show, make it this one).

Samurai II: Duel at Ichijoji Temple (1955)

Musashi Miyamoto has become a fearsome fighter and a master duelist, but his quest to become a true Samurai is as much spiritual and mental as is is physical; and on those two fronts he has been much less successful.  As he struggles with those challenges he must also confront his abortive romance with the one-time fiancee of his former friend, the machinations of another young woman who sees him as a means for revenge, and the dishonorable actions of those whom he has embarrassed with his superior skill.

Much like the first film in this trilogy, Samurai II: Duel at Ichijoji Temple is a beautifully shot, stately film that is likely to prove somewhat difficult to engage with for modern western audiences, as well as feeling more like a section of a larger work (in this case, the trilogy as a whole) than a complete film in its own right.  Certainly it makes little effort to re-establish who supporting cast members are: much like Avengers: Infinity War it just assumes you remember who these people are.

Because of that feeling that it is only part of a bigger work, which I have not yet finished, it's actually pretty hard for me to say whether or not I'd recommend this film.  In and of itself, if it was a standalone project, the answer is "probably not". But it's not a standalone project, and it feels like it might be a little unfair to try and judge it as one.  So I am going to put "Qualified Recommendation" on it for now, with the qualification in this case being "wait for my comments on the final film before you decide whether to commit time to watch this one".

Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles, Season 1 (2008)

Four years after blowing up Cyberdyne Industries, Sarah Connor and her son John are keeping their heads down from the authorities and looking over their shoulders for any sign of implacable cyborg killers from the future, even while hoping against hope that their actions might actually have prevented those cyborgs from ever existing.

Spoiler: the cyborgs turn up.

And as with Terminator 2, at least one of them - who has the form of a young woman - appears to be on their side.  This terminator, known as "Cameron", helps John survive an attempt on her life.  She informs John and Sarah that they only delayed the rise of the machines (from 1997 to 2011), they did not prevent it, and persuades them to leap eight years forward in time to 2007, in an attempt to avert the "new" Judgement Day.

Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles posits that both sides of the Skynet war have sent numerous agents back in time to try and affect the outcome of the future conflict, which I think is a necessary conceit to sustain a weekly show.  It would rapidly get very repetitive to have only a single terminator pursuing them.  This structure, plus the human entanglements they inevitably experience, gives plenty of potential challenges and adversaries (and the occasional ally) for the Connors to face.

This first season of the show was cut short by the 2008 Writers' Strike (which would also cause certain plotlines to be dropped or altered in season two, as I understand it), but the nine episodes that did get delivered are pretty solid in both scripts and performances.  Lena Headey is a good casting choice as Sarah Connor IMO - though apparently a controversial one at the time - and Brian Austin Green shows that he's got a lot more to him than Beverly Hills 90210 in his turn as future soldier Derek Reese.

If you liked the first two Terminator films, and don't mind that the lower budget of TV will mean far less spectacular effects and action scenes, then this is a decent if "non-canon" way to kill some time until Terminator: Dark Fate si released in the latest attempt to revive the franchise.

Mega Shark vs Kolossus (2015)

After three massive megalodons have wreaked havoc on the world, and only been defeated at great cost, the world's governments are actively monitoring for and taking action against any potential "mega-shark" that appears ... not that this proves to help at all when the inevitable fourth coming does in fact eventuate.

Simultaneous to the first predations of this latest piscine monster, a group of tough-taling mercenaries infiltrate a mothballed Soviet base in search of wonder fuel 'red mercury'.  But oops!  All they actually succeed in doing is unleashing a massive killer robot.

Now the world is faced with not one but two potentially humanity-ending threats, and of course movie logic means that the way this will ultimately be resolved is by having them fight one another!

You know, a film that full on embraces the silliness of the premise above could potentially be pretty good, and the trailer for Mega Shark vs Kolossus certainly suggests it might be a gonzo good time.  Alas, this is an Asylum film we're talking about, and those deliver good times only by accident, so literally every entertaining moment of this tedious flick is packed into said trailer.  Save yourself some time and just watch that, instead.

Seriously, every entertaining moment.

The Shield, Season 2 (2003)

Things are getting more and more complicated at the Farmington precinct of the LAPD.  First and foremost, there's a civilian auditor on site, investigating the way the precinct is run and the conduct of the officers who staff it.  Even honest cops have the occasional screw-up or mistake they'd prefer not be broadcast in a public report, and all of their careers are potentially at risk if the findings are bad.

Of course, for some officers the threat is even more significant.  For instance, it's a very serious problem for Captain Aceveda, since a bad report could torpedo his political ambitions.  And then there's Vic Mackey and his Strike Team, who are more than a little dirty and not at all eager that any of their extra-curricular activities are found out.

For Vic in particular, there's a lot going on: his marriage is in jeopardy, his less-than-high ethical standards are becoming more and more obvious to his colleagues, and a new player in the crime world is threatening to blow holes in the Strike Team's cozy relationship with the local drugs business.  Oh, and there's the small matter of a truck full of cash that he'd like to grab ...

Season 2 of The Shield builds strongly on the foundations laid by the first.  The show is not afraid to evolve the roles and relationships of its characters, adding dynamism to the narrative and helping to distinguish it from more traditional 'case of the week' cop shows, where such changes tend to happen glacially, if at all.

If you've not seen The Shield, and you were a fan of shows like The Wire or Breaking Bad, it's definitely worth checking out.