Dune (1984)

It is the year 10,191. The most important strategic resource is the spice, melange, which is (a) vital to space travel and (b) found only on one planet: Arrakis, also known as Dune. How did space travel to Arrakis happen in order to find the thing that space travel needs? Don't ask awkward questions!

Anyway, the emperor of known space has just ordered that House Atreides take control of Arrakis, replacing their loathsome rivals the Harkonnens. This is a poisoned chalice, however. The emperor fears the growing popularity of the Atreides and is secretly conspiring with the Harkonnens to destroy his potential rival.

In fact, there seem to be an awful lot of people who want the Atreides family - and in particular, the heir to the House title, Paul Atreides - destroyed. Why does Paul in particular evoke such hostility? Because he's just too awesome, basically. Seriously, the guy's just always doing things no-one is supposed to be able to do, and being generally amazing and frankly it's a bit tiresome how Chosen One-y he clearly is.

Dune is a very flawed film. The structure is a mess, with fully 75% of the running time effectively being prologue, and large chunks of what should probably actually be the plot being elided with a montage and some voice over. As an example, Paul's entire romance with his love interest, Chani, consists of: (1) seeing her for a few seconds in a dream, (2) exchanging a couple of sentences with her when they first meet in person, and (3) a narrator telling us they fell in love over an image of them kissing.

The film was also, apparently, quite incomprehensible in its original cut which probably explains why it has so much voice-over narration and "inner voice" segments where we hear what characters are thinking.  These do make the film easier to follow, but they're clumsy and clunky and certainly don't help to make it more engaging.

Here's hoping Villeneuve can do a better job in his upcoming adaptation of Dune than Lynch did here.

Arrow, Season 5 (2016)

Oliver Queen is the mayor of Star City by day, but by night he is the masked vigilante who patrols its streets.  Through his efforts in these twin roles, and with the help of compatriots new and old, he hopes to stem the city's seemingly inexorable decline towards squalor and lawlessness.  Yes, there is irony in the fact that he wages a large part of this crusade via technically illegal means.  Oliver's not really the kind of guy to see the funny side of it, though.

And neither are his enemies, one of whom begins a vast, coordinated campaign to not only tear down Oliver personally, but to invalidate the very foundations of his quest and destroy everything he believes about himself and the world.  

Unfortunately, I found that vast, coordinated campaign to be horribly contrived and overwrought, with this season's nemesis apparently being some kind of super-genius or mind-reader who always knows exactly what Oliver & Co are going to do, even when they deliberately try to go against their own instincts. At several points, the villain's actions would be pants-on-head stupid if they didn't have 100% foreknowledge of the script.  And frankly, even with that foreknowledge, their ultimate scheme is pants-on-head stupid anyway.

The above paragraph may be a controversial opinion, as I know some people - including the show's lead actor - really like this season's villain.  One argument I have seen for this is that he is a good villain because his issue with Oliver Queen is personal, rather than merely a case of the Arrow being in the way of his schemes.  To which I say: meh, this was true of season 2's Deathstroke, as well, and that arc built on material we'd already seen in season one, rather than being invented whole cloth at this late stage.  Also, I'm beyond tired of Oliver Queen's manpain, and his whole storyline wallows in that manpain ad infinitum.  That in the process it also sabotages the Arrowverse's version of one of my favourite DC comics characters is the final cherry on the top of my discontent.

Definitely a highly qualified recommendation on this: if you're not planning to watch Arrow all the way through, I actually recommend you quit watching at the end of season three.

After the Dawn (2012)

When a chemical attack spawns what can only be considered a zombie outbreak, things quickly slide toward the typical undead apocalypse.

Cassie Becker is one of the few survivors, steadily picking her way eastward across the country in the possibly forlorn hope of finding her brother and his family still alive. Initially she is entirely alone in her quest, but then she stumbles across a teenage boy who becomes her companion in the journey.

This human contact is welcome, but it prompts a resurgence of memories of Cassie's life before the disaster, and the more she recalls the past, the more she struggles with the present, and the stranger things seem to get.

You may well guess where After the Dawn is headed before it finally reaches its destination.  I certainly did.  I can see why, as an idea, it would have excited someone to make the film, but I feel like it would work much better as a Twilight Zone-style 25 minute short rather than a 90-minute feature.  As is, the journey to get there is just too long and drawn out.

The Flash, Season 3 (2016)

 
Traumatised by the violent murders of both his parents, Barry Allen uses his metahuman power of super-speed to race his way into the past and change history. But while the new reality he creates - dubbed 'Flashpoint' by his nemesis Eobard Thawne - sees both his parents survive, it proves worse for everyone else who is close to him. Guilt-ridden, Barry restores the timeline to its original state ... or something close to it, at least. There are many minor differences between the pre-Flashpoint reality and the one he returns to.  More than that - as Barry is about to discover - when you mess with time, time messes back, and even the Fastest Man Alive can't outrun the consequences.  

For the third season in a row, The Flash pits Barry and his friends up against an evil super-speedster, at least ultimately.  This makes me roll my eyes a little because it's getting rather tired as a motif, but there's at least more to the motivations of this season's nemesis than just "I wanna be the fastest that ever speeded".  Still, I really hope we're at least going to see some kind of variation from this next year.  Barry facing a dark reflection of himself has become very (very, very) played out by this point.

That complaint aside, this is a mostly pretty good season.  The cast remain solid and have good chemistry, there's plenty of humour and fun banter in the show, and for all the melodrama is laid on with a heavy trowel, I found it a lot less turgid than I did the second season.  If superhero media is something you enjoy, its worth checking out.

Extinction (2015)

When a zombie apocalypse sweeps the planet, old friends Jack and Patrick, as well as Jack's baby daughter Lu, are among the few survivors.  Jack's wife, alas, doesn't make it.

Nine years later, Jack and Patrick live in neighbouring houses in the tiny town of Harmony.  Their properties are separated by a chain-link fence, and Lu is living with Patrick, whom she believes to be her biological father.  As the film will (eventually, glacially) reveal, Jack became an alcoholic after his wife was killed, and neglected his daughter.  Patrick took her away and has raised her as his own ever since.

The one positive thing is that they haven't seen a zombie in years.  Possibly the undead were wiped out by the ice age that seems to have swept the planet?

Actually, no they weren't, they've just evolved into a new form, white-skinned, blind and possessed of hyper-sensitive hearing.  How dead things can evolve, how this can happen in a mere nine years, or why there was any need for them to be zombies in the first place, and not scary spindly monsters all along, are all questions for which the film will offer no answers.

Anyway, eventually the new monsters turn up, and then a new character arrives to explain things to Jack and Patrick, and there's finally some action to enliven things, but it's very much too little too late.  It's a shame, because the main cast here are all capable of solid work and I'd be interested to see them in something with a bit more oomph to it.

Pacific Rim: The Black, Season 1 (2021)

 

After their defeat at the Breach and then at Mount Fuji, the alien Precursors mount their third assault on the Earth by unleashing a flood of monstrous Godzilla-style kaiju across Australia.  Humanity's Pan-Pacific Defence Corp is unable to stem to tide and abandons the continent, bringing down all telecommunications networks and evacuating as many people as they can in the process.

Of course, not everyone makes it out, and five years later teenage siblings Taylor and Hayley are part of a secret community somewhere in the Australian desert.  Where exactly is not clear: the geography of Pacific Rim's Australia clearly bears little relation to the real thing.  

It's at this point that Hayley stumbles across a secret bunker containing a still-functional Jaegar; one of the massive robots humanity developed to battle the kaiju.  This discovery proves to be something of a cursed chalice, however, as it brings one of the kaiju down upon them.  Everyone else in the community is killed, and the two teens are faced with a long journey to try and find a way to escape from the isolated continent, the killer kaiju still on their heels.

Of course, even the kaiju may not be the strangest, nor the most dangerous, threat they will encounter ...

This CGI animated sequel series to the two Pacific Rim movies is a pretty entertaining ride, adding something of a Mad Max / Road Warrior vibe to the films "Monsters vs Mecha" formula.  It's not a show that pulls punches (as evidenced by a bunch of 12-17 year old kids getting killed off in the opening episode) and it manages to pack a whole lot of stuff in its seven episode run.  I'm not fully convinced it will be able to satisfactorily weave together all the threads it has going, but I'm definitely intending to check out the second season to see whether they do.

Jules Verne's Mysterious Island (2005)

 

Near the close of the American Civil War, three POWs at a Confederate prison stage an escape with the aid of two of the civilian medical staff. They seize an aerial observation balloon, and along with a Confederate soldier who ends up dangling from the balloon's anchor line, they fly off into a fierce wind that blows them across the whole continent and out to sea.  Fortunately, just as the balloon begins to founder and sink toward the waves, they catch sight of an island.

Less fortunately, said island is plagued with both monstrous animals and treasure-hungry pirates ...

If any of this sounds at all familiar, it's likely because I reviewed the 1961 adaptation of Jules Verne's novel about six months ago.  Spoiler, that version is considerably more entertaining than this one, and not just because it features Ray Harryhausen stop motion monsters (though that sure doesn't hurt!).

The biggest problem here is that this was originally conceived as a TV mini-series, and its three hour running time feels very padded and drawn out, with a lethargic pace that is by no means helped by a somnambulant lead performance from Kyle MacLachlan and by the clumsy way they've tried to integrate Patrick Stewart - who obviously did not travel to Thailand for filming with everyone else - into the film.

Watch the Harryhausen film, instead.  It's no more high art than this is, but it's much more fun.

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Season 1 (2010)

 

When the studious and conscientious unicorn Twilight Sparkle discovers a prophecy forecasting the imminent return of the wicked Nightmare Moon, she immediately rushes to warn her friend and monarch, Princess Celestia.

To Twilight's consternation, however, the Princess seems unconcerned, and instead instructs the young unicorn to travel to the small town of Ponyville to organise the annual Summer Sun Celebration.

An order is an order, of course, and everypony in Ponyville is very welcoming and helpful, but Twilight is a unicorn of considerable stubbornness and she is determined not only to organise the celebration but to also single-handedly find the Elements of Harmony, which are said to the only thing that can defeat Nightmare Moon.

Of course, her new Ponyville friends may have something to say about her intent to go it alone ...

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is perhaps best known now for its unexpected popularity with adult men, who were definitely not the target audiences.  These "Bronies" became the subject of considerable media discussion, and even a documentary film.

There's also this pretty good post-mortem of the whole phenomenon by Jenny Nicholson

I never self-identified as a Brony, but I did watch and enjoy the first series of the show when it came out, and picked up the DVDs.  Any show where a pegasus does battle with a manticore is OK by me, and the show's wholesome message about standing by your friends, and respecting their passion for the things they love, even if they aren't your cup of tea, is a good one, I reckon.

The only reason not to check out this first season of Friendship is Magic would be that you're embarrassed to watch a show that was developed 'for little girls'.  And that would be a shame for you, since you'd be missing out on a bunch of fun.  The opening two-parter, 'Winter Wrap-Up' and 'A Dog and Pony Show' are particular highlights.  Maybe skip 'Feeling Pinkie Keen' though, as that one episode is a bit of a misfire.

Human Tornado (1976)

 

On the run from a vengeful and racist sheriff whose wife he has been sleeping with, the reformed gangster Dolemite heads for California and his old ally Queen Bee.  Little does he know that he's walking into yet more danger, as the Queen and her Kung Fu Ladies are now under the thumb of a mobbed up nightclub owner and his entourage of mafioso thugs.

On the other hand, little does the mob know that Dolemite is a Human Tornado.  He's soon bringing his two-fisted martial arts and smack-talking skills to bear on these new enemies, while staying one step ahead of the sheriff.

This is the second of Rudy Ray Moore's Dolemite films, based on the crass gangster character he created for his stand-up routine.  The movie actually begins with several excerpts from his live performances, which I found painfully unfunny.  Apparently "You're fat, fatso" was considered hilarious stuff in 1976.

Fortunately, after that's done we're mostly just subjected to comical displays of Dolemite's alleged combat skills, which principally involves Moore waving his arms in the air and making weird noises, before they speed up the footage for the 'fighting' itself.  This seems a good use of screen time when you have actual kickboxing and karate champion Howard Jackson on set, right?  Well, it's better than the time spent on cringe-inducing homosexual stereotypes, I guess.

Human Tornado does occasionally bust out some funny moments - there's a stunt that gets a literal 'action replay' for instance, and some of Moore's mock martial arts antics will likely draw a chuckle since they're so clearly meant to be absurd - but you definitely have to be willing to put up with the tiresome, lowest common denominator 'jokes' to find them.