The Four-Faced Liar (2010)

Shortly after moving in together, Molly and Greg go out for a drink at a local bar, The Four-Faced Liar.  There, they bump into a college classmate of Molly's named Trip.  He introduces them to his girlfriend Chloe, and to his flatmate Bridget, an out and proud lesbian.

Greg and Trip quickly bond, and - initially because she doesn't have anyone else to talk to, and later because they begin to discover shared interests and values - Molly starts spending more and more time with Bridget.  You can probably see where this is heading, even before I mention that Greg and Molly's relationship begins to founder as living together exposes differences and issues that they never previously noticed.

The above probably makes The Four-Faced Liar sound like a very standard coming out relationship story.  And honestly, if you just look at the bare bones of the plot, that's exactly what it is.  But a film doesn't have to break new narrative ground to be well-executed and effective.  This is well-cast, well-acted, and consistently entertaining.  If you're looking for a quiet night in with a queer-friendly romance, you could definitely do a lot worse.

M*A*S*H, Season 5 (1976)

A big challenge of reviewing seasons of a long-running TV show is that the basic premise and structure of the program doesn't usually change much over the years.  This can make it hard to find things to say about it that you haven't said already.  Season four of M*A*S*H made my job easier by having a couple of significant cast changes.

This season is not so obliging: it's pretty much just twenty-five episodes of the usual 4077th shenanigans.  This isn't a negative thing from the perspective of entertainment value, mind you.  M*A*S*H's cast and writers have by now refined their formula to a pretty precise art, and if you've been enjoying the program up to now, you will almost certainly continue to do so.  But it does make it rather hard to find new things to say about it!

One thing I can mention though is that there has been a slight shift in the overall tone of the show over the five years so far.  The characters in general are softer and more rounded, less acerbic if no less witty.  Personally I appreciate the change as I found the first season a bit mean-spirited (and definitely showing its age in its attitudes toward gender).

For my tastes, highlight episodes for this season include "Lt. Radar O'Reilly", "Dear Sigmund" and "Movie Tonight".

Lost Girl, Season 3 (2013)

Having defeated the Garuda, which wanted to feed on all Fae, succubus-and-private-investigator Bo might be forgiven for thinking things would quiet down for her and she can focus on her budding new romantic relationship.

She is, of course, not going to be that lucky.  As always, there's machinations from the leader of the Dark Fae to worry about.  And then there's a series of murdered Fae, at least one of whom looks uncomfortably like a succubus kill.  Oh, and above and beyond all that, there are some seriously weird things going on for Bo herself ...

Lost Girl season three continues the entertaining adventures of Bo and her friends.  It builds well on what has come before, with the relationships between the characters continuing to evolve based on past events, including shifting alliances and allegiances, as well as the introduction of a fun new character in the shape of Tamsin the Valkyrie.

It's not flawless, of course.  There are a couple of moments where new Fae lore is revealed in a "clearly the writers just came up with this for this season" kind of way, but they do at least make some effort to explain away why the subject has never come up before.  And the season opener with the Amazon jail and the sadistic warden is (a) a bit on the nose in general with some squicky sexual abuse themes and (b) somewhat transphobic.  The latter issue was hopefully not intended by the writers, given the show's general LGB-friendliness, but it's there nonetheless.

iZombie, Season 3 (2017)

Ever since she became a zombie, forced to eat human brains to stay sapient, Liv Moore has done her best to keep the secret not just of her own nature, but indeed the very existence of the undead.  So far, she seems to have managed it.  But as a functional cure continues to elude her and her friends, and the numbers of zombies in the world continue to inch upward, it becomes ever harder to keep a lid on the truth.

Forestalling the inevitable public exposure of zombies, and preparing for the day when those efforts fail, is a major theme of season three of iZombie.  I rather like how this whole effort plays out, personally.  The players aren't always who they claim to be, of course, but they also aren't necessarily who you might expect them to be, given typical story beats.  It can be hard to pull off subversions of common plot beats - those beats are common for a reason - but I feel like the show does a good job of it here.

Overall, if you have enjoyed seasons one and two of iZombie, I don't see any reason not to continue to follow the adventures of Liv & Co.  The cast remains engaging and likeable, the plot takes some unexpected but not illogical turns, and there's plenty of nerdy humour for those of us in the geekosphere.  This latter element can occasionally be somewhat problematic in that it sometimes drifts into punching down, but on the whole it is entertaining stuff.

Friday the 13th, Part VI: Jason Lives (1986)

Back in the ever-less-accurately-named Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, a twelve year old Tommy Jarvis finally slew the mass-murderer Jason Vorhees "for good".  But despite the seeming finality of that event, Tommy has never been able to shake the conviction that Jason would be back.  Which is why, now aged roughly twenty, he decides to break into the cemetery where Jason is buried, exhume the body, and sent it up in flames.

Given his pyrotechnic plans, Tommy probably should have chosen a less storm-wracked night, particularly because with one errant bolt of lightning into a maggot-inspected corpse, Jason Vorhees is not just back, he's back and undead.  His nigh-supernatural resistance to injury now escalated to actual supernatural levels, Jason narrowly misses out on killing Tommy in this first encounter, but is soon merrily hacking his way through anyone else he happens across.  Meanwhile Tommy desperately tries to persuade the authorities that they've got a zombie killer on their hands, which goes about as well as you might expect, though the local sheriff's attractive daughter seems rather more willing to believe him than does her dad ...

Fans of the Friday franchise were apparently less-than-enthused by the fifth film's attempts to set up a new killer in place of Jason Vorhees (and to be fair, the film wasn't very good).  So with this one the studio apparently decided to give them what they wanted.  Jason's resurrection kicks off this movie and is by far the best scene in it, particularly for slasher fans, since it is one of the very few moments where the movie actually gets gory.

Because for some reason - probably the mid-1980s moralist pushback on gory, sexualised films - this movie seeks to give answer the question "what would a Friday the 13th film with no boobs or blood be like?".  Which I can assure you is not a question any fan of the series was asking.

The answer, at least as it turned out in this case, is "not very good".  The film-makers attempt to recompense the lack of prurient content with ham-handed attempts at comedy.  Oh, the guy slammed his face into the tree and it make a bloody smiley face!  Oh, the kids at summer camp are making droll comments about their chances of survival!  The laughs, they barely start.  An effort to actually inject some tension and menace would have been a much more effective tactic; but also probably much harder to pull off, and "making an effort" has never really been the franchise's strong-point.

For Vorhees-completists only.

Warehouse 13, Season 3 (2011)

At the end of last season, the Warehouse 13 team saved the world again, but the emotional and personal cost has been high, leaving them down an agent and strained for resources.  The 'regents' who run the warehouse are working to find a new operative to relieve theses issues, while the team prefers to hope for the return of their former colleague.

These matters and their outcomes will soon need to take a backseat, however, as - much like in season one - it emerges that there is a new threat to the very existence of the warehouse itself.  Someone has formed a conspiracy to not just steal the artefacts the warehouse was formed to preserve and control (a reminder: artefacts are items and objects that have developed uncanny powers from their association with famous/notorious people), but is kidnapping, interrogating and killing regents to do it.

This third season of Warehouse 13 is a bit of a mixed bag.  On the one hand, it does a pretty good job at introducing a new member to the team/cast - not always easy - and most of the individual episode plots are decent, with some fun artefact shenanigans.  On the other hand, there's the "shadowy conspiracy" season arc, which is rather a misfire.  The bad guy's motives are not unreasonable, which is good, but he's simply not very compelling and the specifics of the plot arc rely an awful lot on the warehouse bosses juggling a heck of a lot of idiot balls.  Bad guys should not (nearly) win because the good guys were dumb.

Overall, if you're into Warehouse 13, this season probably delivers enough entertainment that you won't be turned off; but if you aren't a fan, it's definitely not going to change your mind.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015)

It is the 1960s.

Napoleon Solo is a former thief and current (not especially willing) CIA agent.  He's charming, clever and good at improvisation, but kind of a jerk.

Ilya Kuryakin is a KGB agent.  He's taciturn and thorough, and very strong.  He's also a bit bullish and hard-headed.

Solo and Kuryakin first meet when the latter attempts to thwart Solo's mission to help Gaby Teller, the daughter of an alleged Nazi scientist, escape from East Berlin to the west.  Solo wins that round - barely.

Neither man is very impressed when their respective bosses inform them that they will now be working together.  Gaby's father, you see, has disappeared and is believed to be working with a secret organisation of former Nazis to develop a nuclear weapon.  Only by combining forces can the US and USSR prevent this threat from coming to pass.

And thus the scene is set for 'odd couple' spy antics.

The Man from UNCLE has a great cast, stylish direction, cool 60s fashion, capable villains and neat action sequences.  Unfortunately, it is somehow less than the sum of these parts.  I think this is due to two factors: tone and structure.  In the first case, the film comes across as a bit smug, and rather too impressed with its own cleverness (when it is not, in fact, all that clever - the plot-related surprises, frankly, aren't surprising).  In the second case, the final act of the film loses momentum and direction.  We're set up to expect an exciting special forces assault, a la You Only Live Twice, but said assault turns out to be straightforward and instead we get a long chase scene (in a movie not exactly short of them), and then a very talky final resolution to the plot.

The final film is still fairly fun and enjoyable, especially if this kind of thing is in your wheelhouse, but I do feel a little disappointed that what we got fell short of what it could have been, given the components on hand.

The Last Ship, Season 2 (2015)

The crew of the USS Nathan James would be forgiven for thinking that once they found a cure for the lethal pandemic known as the "Red Flu", the hard part of their job would be over. But of course they would be wrong. It soon emerges that major threats to their success still remain, whether it be those who want to ensure that only the 'right sort of people' get the cure, or those who are immune to the disease and would really rather let everyone else die so they can inherit the Earth.

Naturally, thwarting all these evil-doers becomes the responsibility of our intrepid crew (though they do get some help from a few new faces that join up this season).

I was not terribly impressed by the first season of this show. It was very bog-standard TV action stuff, with cartoonishly evil bad guys and blandly heroic good guys duking it out in not especially interesting or innovative ways, compounded by some unfortunate casting choices.

All of those issues are honestly still present here in this second season.  It even adds a new flaw by blithely hiking up the rate of immunity to the Red Flu to levels that make the whole premise of the first season seem rather far-fetched. 

Despite all that, however, it is a bit more engaging overall, and even has a little more ambiguity to it.  It probably also didn't hurt my enjoyment that they wrapped up the wince-inducingly ill-advised season 1 cliffhanger in only 2 or 3 episodes and never mentioned it again.  Honestly, had the first season been of this standard, I'd probably have given both a (very) qualified recommendation.  As it is though, the improvement here is not enough to make me say "sticking with it through the rough start is worth it".