Fate of the Furious (2017)

Having thwarted the menace of Deckard Shaw, Dom and Lettie have retired to Cuba.  Not that "retirement" for Dom means "no longer participating in explosively dangerous car-based shenanigans" ... but by the standards of this franchise, they're definitely living the quite life.

Of course, there's always someone out there determined to stir things up, and this time it is Cypher (Charlize Theron), a mysterious super-hacker who turns out to have been the backer of Owen Shaw (from Furious 6) and Mose Jakande (a secondary villain in Furious 7).  Dom & Co have twice thwarted her plans (albeit unintentionally), and she's decided to make Mr Toretto pay for this inconvenience.

We're not immediately told what it is, but Cypher has apparently found something to give her leverage over Dom, allowing her to turn him against his old team and utilise his "in my hands, cars are basically magic" superpowers to steal an EMP device and a briefcase containing Russian nuclear launch codes.

Can Dom find a way to thwart Cypher, despite whatever hold she has on him?  Can his teammates help him stop her scheme?  Will Vin Diesel growl something about "mi familia"?  The answer to all these questions is as obvious as the franchise's continuing love for women's bottoms, really, but one doesn't come to a Fast & Furious movie with any doubts about the destination: one comes for the ridiculous high octane journey to get there.  And this film certainly delivers on both the high octane and the ridiculous.  Frankly, when I saw it at the cinema I found it a little exhausting, but re-watching it at home I had a great time.  I'll definitely be seeing the next film in the franchise when it comes out.

The Queen's Gambit (2020)

After the death of her mother, nine-year-old Beth Harmon is sent to stay at the Methuen Home for Girls.  There she discovers two things that will define the next couple decades of her life.  The first is chess, which she learns from the Home's janitor and for which she has a prodigious natural ability.  The second, rather more problematically, are sedatives.  It being the 1950s, the Metheun Home uses these to keep its charges 'calm'.  Even once she finally gets adopted, Beth will struggle with a tendency toward substance abuse that both facilitates and undermines her meteoric career as a professional Chess player.

It may be hard to imagine today, but in the Cold War, Chess was a big deal, with the Soviet Union's domination of the game being a running sore spot for the West.  The fictitious story of young Beth Harmon feels in some respects like a version of the events in Bobby Fischer's life.  Fischer was a child chess prodigy and the only non-Soviet player to hold the world championship in the entire Cold War period.  Fischer was also volatile and unpredictable, much as Harmon is.  Fischer also and espoused violently anti-Semitic beliefs in the latter stages of his life, which thankfully is not something Harmon seems to share.

Queen's Gambit is a well-made, well-acted period piece about one woman's struggle to both win respect in her career and to grapple with her own weaknesses.  Chess is a useful narrative tool in this regard, since its relatively clean win-lose-or-draw outcomes make it easy to signal to the audience that Harmon is good at what she does.  The chess that's played is actually rather good, too, and it seems to have led to a revival of interest in the game, with grandmasters like Daniel Naroditsky racking up 100,000+ subscriber counts on Youtube.  My only caveat would be that Beth's proclivity for self-destructive behaviour may test the patience of some viewers.

Dora and the Lost City of Gold (2019)

 

Six-year-old Dora Márquez lives deep in the Peruvian jungle with her parents, who are explorers and historians.  Dora spends her days going on imaginary adventures with her cousin Diego and a friendly monkey she's named "Boots".  Even when the day comes that Diego has to leave, her idyllic life doesn't change very much.

At least, not for a decade.  Around Dora's 16th birthday, however, her parents decipher the location of hidden Inca city of Parapata, a sight of fabulous cultural significance.  Also reputedly a site of fabulous wealth, though that's not a motivation for the idealistic Márquez family.

Dora is keen to join the expedition, but her parents don't believe she is ready for the reputed dangers, and instead send her to Los Angeles, to live with Diego's family.  There, she will attend high school and socialise with other people her age.

Given the metal detectors and bag checks required at the school, not to mention the dangers of cliquey, judgemental teenagers, you might wonder if Dora is any safer in LA than she would be in the Peruvian jungle.  But of course, if you think events aren't going to conspire to get Dora headed for Parapata, well, apparently you aren't familiar with the concept of "stories".  Which must make this blog very confusing.

So yes, villainous types also want to find Parapata - there's all that gold, after all - and their schemes soon have our eager teen explorer (plus a much less eager Diego and two of their classmates) back in the jungle, where hijinks quickly ensue.

Based on the kids' TV show that ran from 2000-2013 (with a handful of new episodes released just prior to the debut of this movie), Dora and the Lost City of Gold is a fun, comedic teen adventure tale.  It unapologetically leans into the goofiness of the original cartoon - semi-clothed, intelligent monkeys, larcenous foxes, and all.  It's helped immensely by Isabella Moner's performance as Dora, as she brings out the enthusiasm and innocence of the cartoon without it ever seeming forced.

I don't regret joining Dora on this adventure.

Smallville, Season 5 (2005)

As Clark Kent and his friends make their transition into their college years, they continue to face the usual "meteor freak" supervillains, as well as a major new threat in the form of a shape-changing, artificial humanoid created by the would-be Krypton dictator, Zod.  They do pick up a few new allies of their own, too, as Aquaman and Cyborg turn up (albeit in very different forms than in the recent Justice League feature film).  There's also one very unexpected source of assistance, though whether this would-be collaborator can be trusted is a question that will definitely plague them through all 22 episodes of the season.

Overall, I think this fifth season of Smallville is not quite as good as its fourth.  Lois Lane gets promoted to series regular but the writers don't quite seem to know what to do with her, just yet (beyond put her in outfits that highlight her admittedly fine bosom, that is).  There's also an ongoing issue with Clark Kent himself, which is that the plots sometimes require him to be so thick-witted that calling him 'as dumb as a box of rocks' would be insulting to rocks.  Basically, if there is a wrong decision to make, Clark can be relied upon to make it.

Mind you, "Clark making counter-productive decisions" is not exactly a completely new and novel thing in the show; it's just even more pronounced this season than it has been in the past.

This fifth season of Smallville is unlikely to make you a new convert to the show if you were not already invested in it, but it's inoffensive TV on the whole and if you've watched it this far, I think you'll probably stick around happily enough for the inevitable "multiple different cliffhangers!" final episode.

Palm Springs (2020)

Nyles wakes up, has unsatisfactory sex with his girlfriend Misty, and then attends the wedding of Misty's friend Tala.  At the reception, he delivers an eloquent, seemingly impromptu speech, and then sneaks off for sexy times with the bride's sister. Sarah.  Don't worry too much that he is cheating on Misty: she's doing the deed with another guest at the wedding.

In the middle of Nyles and Sarah's hook-up, things get weird.  A stranger turns up, apparently intent on murdering Nyles with a bow and arrow.  Sarah is understandably confused, though despite the arrow in his shoulder, Nyles seems far less surprised.  Telling her not to follow him, he runs off into the darkness.

Concerned for Nyles's safety, Sarah ignores his instructions and follows him, ending up in a strange cave ... and then she wakes up on the morning of her sister's wedding.  Nyles got some explaining to do!

So what we have here is your basic 'time loop' comedy with the wrinkles that (a) more than one person is caught in the loop, and (b) we start the film several thousand loops in, rather than the more familiar Groundhog Day approach of seeing things from the very beginning.  Those exceptions aside, though, a lot of the common elements are on show: Sarah and Nyles get up to all kinds of 'we have infinite time and can't actually die' shenanigans, learn some valuable life lessons, and - of course - start to develop those messy "feelings" things.

Execution generally matters more than innovation, though, and on that front Palm Springs benefits from a charismatic cast and a breezy script.  If you're looking for a hundred minutes of fairly lightweight rom-com fun, this should work for you.

Spartacus: Blood & Sand, Season 1 (2010)

When the Roman legate Glaber comes to Thrace seeking assistance against the raiding Getae tribes, the Thracians are initially reluctant to join up. But when one of their number wins a promise from the Legate that the objective of the war will be to permanently destroy the Getae as a threat, he and many others agree to serve.

Alas, Roman promises are not to be trusted.  When it becomes clear that the Legate intends not to destroy the Getae but to use his Thracian auxiliaries in a completely different war, the Thracians rebel and head for home.  The leader who first asked for the Legate's promise arrives just in time to save his wife's life from the Getae, but he has not reckoned with the spite of Legate Glaber, who has been humiliated by the Thracian rebellion.  The Romans capture him and his wife.  They consign her to slavery, and send him to the arena to die by gladiator.

Our still-unnamed protagonist is not a man to die easily, though, and he survives his intended execution, killing all four gladiators sent against him.  This wins the approval of the crowd, and also the interest of Batiatus, the owner of a gladiatorial training academy.  Batiatus purchases the Thracian with intent of turning him into a grand new attraction for the arena,. dubbing him with a name he is sure will become legendary: "Spartacus".

Batiatus does not know how right he is.

So, first things first: Spartacus: Blood and Sand is a hugely sexual, profane show with frequent cursing, sex, nudity (both male and female - and yes, I do mean full frontal in both cases) and gouts of CGI blood and gore.  There's a scene in an early episode where a topless woman arches her back, breasts up-thrust, and then suddenly blood sprays out of her head to coat the screen.  That's pretty much a one-shot summary of this show.

Crass or not, though, it is a compelling program.  Even the early episodes, which are decidedly creaky in their acting, writing and green screen effects, have a kind of car crash intrigue to them.  And around the fourth or fifth episode the gears really mesh and it starts to become a 'just one more episode' experience.  The scheming, skulduggery, and eloquent (though deeply scatological) verbal sparring are great fun.  Provided you are okay with lots of profanity, nudity and violence in your entertainment, I think you will be entertained.

After Earth (2013)

At some point in the future, after abandoning an environmentally-ravaged Earth, humanity bumps into some aliens, and the encounters are not of the friendly kind.  The aliens unleash a wave of genetically engineered killing machines named "Ursas", which despite their name don't look anything like bears.  Ursas literally sense human fear, which they use to hunt us down.  I can't help but think that "big guns" would kill us just as dead as six-legged skin-sacks, but wse need the latter for the plot so we'll go along with it.

In any case, it seems that Humanity is Doomed, at least until the improbably named soldier "Cypher Raige" discovers a way to transcend fear.  This makes him literally invisible to the Ursas, so he is able to kill them easily, and he begins teaching the technique to others.

None of this is spoilers, by the way - this isn't the plot of the film, it's a summary of the lifeless and overly long narration that begins the film.  The actual plot is about the son of Cypher Raige, his seemingly futile struggle to live up to the example set by his father, and what happens when they are accidentally stranded on the long-abandoned Earth with an Ursa, and their survival comes to depend entirely on the younger Raige.

After Earth was a film I was mildly interested in when it hit cinemas, but never got around to seeing, particularly since word of mouth was that it was neither particularly good, nor bad in an interesting way.  And honestly, "bland" is a solid one word review.  The "victory requires that you control your emotions" concept requires both Will Smith and his real life son Jaden to deliberately constrain and stilt their performances, for one thing.  Perhaps more damningly, the plot elements feel underdeveloped.  For instance, the film's title references Earth, much of the action is set on a post-human Earth, one of Cypher's few moments of emotion is when he realises they are about to crash on Earth, and he even says "everything on this planet is genetically engineered to kill humans".  But none of this has any real pay-off or significance.  It could have been set on any planet and it would have worked just as well.  The only real impact it has is that it gives the production guys the freedom to just use slightly modified real world animals as the main threats other than the Ursa, and preserve the Ursa's position as the one truly "alien monster" in the film.

After Earth is not bad, but it'd probably be more interesting if it was.

Killjoys, Season 1 (2015)

"Dutch" Yardeen is a Killjoy - a space-faring bounty hunter in a solar system known as the Quad (for its four inhabited planetoids).  Together with her partner Johnny, she takes on warrants to apprehend people or property under the authority of an organisation known as the Reclamation Apprehension Coalition (RAC).  In exchange for the autonomy they enjoy, the RAC's Killjoys swear to remain neutral in conflicts and owe no allegiance to any other organisation or government.

Of course, remaining neutral is not always compatible with doing the moral or ethical thing, and that's a balancing act that Dutch and Johnny are going to find more and more difficult to maintain, especially as their own pasts and secrets - as well as the secrets of the RAC itself - are about to catch up with them.

As you can probably tell from the synopsis above, Killjoys is an action-themed light drama science fiction.  In its component parts, it is nothing new or exceptional.  The individual episodes have plotlines that will probably be familiar to anyone who has watched any significant amount of other light drama SF shows.  The characters are equally familiar: we've got not one but two bad-asses with a tortured past, for instance.  But a show does not always have to be breaking new ground to be entertaining.  Executed well, the familiar can feel fresh and engaging.  On that front, Killjoys mostly delivers.  The cast are decent, the effects tolerable for the TV format, and there are enough amusing moments sprinkled into the dialogue and events to offset the basic grimness of rather dystopic setting that is the Quad.

If you are in the market for a new SF action-drama, the Killjoys might well do the job.

Pride and Prejudice (1940)

Look, I'll be blunt: this is the seventh time I've reviewed a film or TV adaptation of Pride & Prejudice.  If you still aren't familiar with the whole "girl meets bot, girl thinks boy is a bit of a jerk, but ultimately boy turns out to not be all that bad after all" love story by now, then go read one of those previous entries.  Or just go watch either The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (legally available on Youtube) or the BBC's renowned 1995 adaptation.

Or, for that matter, you could watch this film.  Because it's a fun little page-to-screen translation.  Certainly it's less faithful than the beloved 1995 mini-series, shifting the setting by 20 years, adding wholly new scenes, and significantly changing the role of Lady de Bourgh, but it's plenty entertaining for all that, and it is also only about one third as long.  Much easier to watch in a single afternoon or evening!

I'm something of a Pride and Prejudice tragic, as the whole "seven reviews" thing might give away, but I feel pretty safe in recommending this for anyone who wants a gently amusing, feel-good romance, and doesn't mind the absence of technicolour.