M*A*S*H, Season 3 (1974)

Active hostilities in the Korean War lasted three years, and M*A*S*H catches up with that duration in this, the third season.  The show is far from over, though - two advantages that fictionalised wars have over real ones are:

1. not ending until it is narratively convenient to do so; and
2. they kill much fewer people

I'm not going to use this review to re-hash the basic premise of M*A*S*H.  You can check out either of the previous seasons for that.  Instead let's talk a little about how the show is evolving.

Some of those evolutions are more obvious than others: it's hard to ignore that this is the last season for core characters Henry Blake and 'Trapper' John McIntyre, even though the impacts of that won't really be felt until season four.  But it's probably the less blatant changes that are more profound and telling.  Season three sees the beginning of more dramatic finesse in the scripts, to my mind.  Early seasons would occasionally add dramatic elements to the largely comedic antics of the cast, but they often felt a bit separated and distinct; not well integrated to the core of the show.  I'd say season three has more maturity and sophistication in that regard.

Not that it's stopped being a comedy, mind you.  Laughs are still the primary goal.  It's just that the non-jokey bits are better melded into the whole, now.

Recommended episodes for this season: "Officer of the Day", "Adam's Ribs", "Private Charles Lamb" and "Abyssinia, Henry".

Asterix the Gaul (1967)

Around 50 BCE, Julius Caesar completed his conquest of Gaul when he finally forced the surrender of Gaulish commander Vercingetorix.

Or at least, that's what the history books tell us.  In reality, Caesar's conquest was not 100% complete.  One small village of Gauls (none of whom are women, if this film is to be believed, as we see literally no female characters, even in the background) still holds out, despite being hemmed in by multiple legions.

How?  Well you see this village has a druid - named Panoramix here, though in the comics he's got the much more apropos moniker 'Getafix' - who can brew a potion that gives anyone who drinks it the strength of a hundred warriors.  With that kind of weapon in their hands, it's a wonder this village hasn't conquered the Romans.  Apparently they just lack much ambition.

Now as you might imagine the Romans are keen to know how it is that a single one of these Gauls can handily defeat dozens of their legionnaires.  So they send in a spy, and well ... supposedly funny shenanigans ensue.

As you might have gleaned from my use of the word 'supposedly', I wasn't all that impressed by this.  The Gauls are rather too smug in their overwhelming strength, making them quite unlikable, and for me that rather undercuts the humour.  The Gauls' situation is supposed to that of plucky underdogs, but they feel more like bullies.

Anna and the Apocalypse (2017)

Anna Shepherd is eager for school to finish so she can finally get out of her small town home in Scotland and travel the world: a plan she hasn't shared with her widowed father and of which he will most definitely not approve.  She's also dealing with the fallout of a failed relationship with the local bad boy, the unrequited pining of her (male) best friend, the tedium of her part time job, and all the usual stuff that accompanies the Xmas season.

(Come to think of it, the Xmas setting - which is why I am reviewing it today - is a bit odd in the context of "what I will do when I finish school", given that UK school years end in June or July.)

Ahem.  Anyway, all of this is to say that Anna has a lot on her mind, which is why (a) she has a tendency to break into song from time to time and (b) she is a trifle slow to notice the Zombie Apocalypse when it happens.  Because yep, what we have here is a musical zombie comedy, though one where the humour is generally rather lower key than in say Shaun of the Dead or Zombieland.

I had a good time watching Anna and the Apocalypse.  It could have done with a couple more songs, perhaps, but I enjoyed the ones it did have (especially "No Such Thing As a Hollywood Ending"), its wry tone and the well-judged balance it strikes between the horror and threat of the situation (and the necessary "bad things happening to decent people" that this means) and the fact that it is still a comedy.  To my mind, this was something that Shaun of the Dead failed to execute well, leading to me finding that movie to be half a funny film and half a decent zombie movie, but somehow less than the sum of its part.

If you're at all a zombie fan, check this one out.

Doom: Annihilation (2019)

In a secret base on Mars's larger moon, Phobos, scientists are conducting investigations into teleportation technology.  Technology with a decidedly unsettling "glowing red runes on black stone" kind of aesthetic to it.  But looks aren't everything, right, so I am sure it will all be fine!

... or not, as the lights go out and the screaming starts.

Walking into whatever just happened (spoiler: bad things) is a small group of marines, who at least initially are rather more concerned with their own interpersonal issues than any thought of battling for their lives against a demonic alien enemy.

I am a huge fan of the 1993 video game Doom and its sequel, and an active part of the game's fan community (to the point where I have my very own entry on doomwiki.org).  I dutifully went along to see the 2005 Doom movie (it's not terribly good), and was quite pleased to hear that this low budget offering was in the works.

That was not at all the universal reaction.  Violent outrage seethed in many festering corners of the internet, mostly because the film had the audacity to cast a female lead.  Some people tried to claim they were upset because the story was rubbish, but I call foul on those claims given (a) the film wasn't actually out at that time and (b) the video's game plot is literally "kill the monsters with the guns" - not exactly nuanced.

Anyway, how is the movie?  Well, it's cheap and cheesy space zombie action basically.  Like a lower-budget Resident Evil.  I had a good time with it.  There's nothing ground-breaking here, and the momentum flags a bit in the second half, but I didn't sign up for Doom: Annihilation for avant garde film-making.  I signed up for a popcorn sci-fi action/horror film, and on that front, I thought it delivered.

Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles, Season 2 (2009)

The war for the future continues, with ever-escalating intervention by the future, as Sarah Connor and her allies face off against the minions of Skynet and also begin to get inklings that there are factions within factions in the war against the machines.

"The best Terminator since T2" is perhaps faint praise, but The Sarah Connor Chronicles definitely gets the nod for it in my eyes.  I freely admit to having enjoyed the "kitchen sink" excess of Genisys, and Dark Fate was a solid "killer robot chase movie" (and might be some people's pick for that reason), but the former is very silly and the latter sticks a bit too close to the franchise's well-trodden formula.  The longer format of the TV show allows the writing staff to branch out a bit more and create more layers and complexities to the narrative.  Would the whole thing have ultimately collapsed under its own weight if the show had continued past this season season?  Possibly.  But we'll never know as this was the end of the road.  It seems likely the writing staff had some warning of this, as they deliver a fairly satisfying conclusion / revised status quo that also neatly echoes the 'stable time loop' of the original film.

If you've ever enjoyed a Terminator film, the TV series is worth a look.

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)

The end of Friday the 13th: Part III saw Jason Vorhees sprawled on a barn floor after being hung from the neck and then smacked in the head with an axe.  Paramedics arrive to pack him off to the morgue, but Jason's obviously a fan of The Princess Bride because he's apparently just mostly dead.  He hops out of his drawer at the morgue, murders the attendant and a nurse, and then heads back to Crystal Lake to find more teenagers to hack to bits.

He will be well-served on the teenagers front.  There are no less than ten of them on hand, and almost all of them are well and truly focused on getting laid, which in Friday the 13th-land is pretty much signing your own death warrant.  The next hour or so will be pretty much entirely occupied with (a) young ladies showing some skin and (b) people being murdered with various household items.

To the extent that the Friday franchise ever penetrated the public consciousness, the factors most commonly known were: Jason Vorhees.  Wears a Hockey Mask.  Carries a Machete.  Murders nubile teens.  And in this, the fourth chapter of the franchise, we have pretty much the exemplar of that popular perception.  The Final Chapter is replete with titillation of both the sexual and violent kind, and has approximately zero interest in anything but bosoms and murder.  It is unabashedly here to give its primary audience plenty of what they want and not to bother about any diversions or details that might distract from that (such as, for instance "how does a guy get whacked in the head with an axe, be pronounced dead and sent to the morgue, and then get up and go running all over the place murdering folks?").

Somehow, this cavalier disregard for anything but blood and nudity leads to arguably the most entertaining entry in the series (I personally favour Part VII, but that's not a common preference).  Certainly, if you're looking for the iconic Friday, I would say you should look no further.  This is the franchise distilled into a single ninety minute romp.  If you're a slasher movie fan, it is absolutely one you should check out.

Look, Season 1 (2010)

By 2010, there were 40 million security cameras, and hundreds of millions of camcorders and mobile phone cameras, across the US.  Even when people think they are alone, and free to act how they want, there could be someone watching.

That's Look's basic pitch, as all footage in the show is nominally shot from cameras that exist "in the fiction".  I say nominally because said cameras sometimes don't really act like I expect the in fiction cameras would, but instead act like ... well, regular movie cameras.

I think I could overlook that minor flaw, though, if Look was using the concept to do something interesting, but it doesn't seem to have a lot of ideas beyond "when people think they are alone, they act like jerks" and "bosoms".  It's just kind of tawdry and tacky and filled with a cast of characters who become steadily more unpleasant the more you get to know them (and some of them start pretty unpleasant to begin with).  Only Claudia Christian seems able to lift her character's narcissism and nastiness to the point where it tips into 'entertaining', and even then it's mostly in a "waiting for her to get her comeuppance" kind of way.

I'll give it this: in the last couple of episodes the show does do a good job of finally weaving together its many seemingly unconnected storylines and setting up a whole bunch of cliffhangers about what happens next ... but it is very much a case of too little too late.

Free Fire (2016)

In an unspecified city in what is probably the 1970s, a South African gun-runner meets with two IRA operatives who want to buy weapons from him.  The meeting is facilitated by an intermediary named Justine, and both sides bring a couple of low level grunts with them to handle the tedious business of actual loading and unloading the weapons.  And for added security, because lets face it everyone here is a criminal and nobody trusts anyone else.

Unfortunately, the choice of those grunts is going to prove to be a lit match in the powder keg environment of a high stakes black market gun deal.  Conflicting agendas and plans - not all of them obvious from the outset - are about to collide in a brutal (and often brutally funny) showdown of shifting loyalties, priorities and purposes.

Free Fire has a stellar cast who deliver strong performances and a tight, packed to bursting script that feels longer than its 90 minute run time, but in a good way.  If you at all enjoyed Reservoir Dogs but think that Tarantino's a little bit too pompous in his film-making, you definitely need to check this one out.  Alternatively, if you are at all a fan of quirky black comedies, then it is most definitely worth a look.

The Shield, Season 4 (2005)

Captain Aceveda is finally leaving The Barn and Vic Mackey should over the moon, given the two men's acrimonious history, but Vic's a bit distracted with the collapse of his marriage and the self-destruction of his beloved Strike Team.  Honestly, given the scant respect he gave his marriage vows, it's likely the latter hurts him more than the former.

Without his team, Vic's unmotivated and unfocused, barely paying attention to the assignment he's been given.  But the arrival of a new Captain with an aggressive new approach to policing presents him with an opportunity to get out of this rut.  But only if he can prove himself to her, and do so while keeping his nose clean.  For a man whose approach to policing has always been shall, we say, very flexible, this is a challenging time.  And it's not made any easier by the rise of an ambitious new gang boss with big plans of his own ...

Season four of The Shield continues the good work of the three previous series.  The cast remains strong (and is certainly not hurt by the addition of Glenn Close as the new Captain) and the writing is solid.  The characters go through a lot of turmoil here as they try to carve out new roles and places for themselves, and on the whole the progression feels natural and reasonable in the circumstances.  It's not necessarily "realistic", but it does have a sense of internal consistency and verisimilitude.