I Think We're Alone Now (2018)

 

Del lives alone.  Not 'alone' in the sense that he's the only one in his household - though he is.  'Alone' in the sense that as far as he knows, he is the only living human left on the planet.

Everyone else in Del's home town died, in an unspecified manner, "on a Tuesday afternoon", and there have been no radio communications or broadcasts.  Believing he is the last man on Earth, Del has set about leading a peaceful existence in his hometown, living in the library where he used to work and spending the day clearing out people's homes and burying the dead. 

And then one night, he sees fireworks.

The person responsible for this turns out to be a young woman named Grace.  Although Grace is noisy, and somewhat erratic in her behaviour, Del can't quite bring himself to force her to leave.  Instead, he slowly becomes used to her presence, and when he teaches her his methods for clearing the homes of the dead, it provides am opportunity for her to help him, and for the pair of them to bond.

Which of course means that things are about to get complicated ...

This post-apocalyptic drama relies very heavily on its two main cast members, particularly Peter Dinklage, who plays Del.  Much of the first act is just him; while the second act is entirely about how Grace's arrival turns his very structured life upside down and how the two of them must learn to live together.

Fortunately, in Dinklage and Elle Fanning you have the actors to meet this kind of challenge.  Dinklage in particular is great, especially at the non-verbal aspects of acting.  For instance, there's a sequence where only his eyes are visible, and you can see the emotional pain.  It's really great work.

I think the script also does a good job of balancing the two characters.  There's a hood dynamic, as Grace is feasibly both the kind of person who would drive Del crazy, but also the kind who can thaw his icy exterior.

Unfortunately, after all this solid establishing work, the script lacks a bit on the follow-through.  For instance, there's a sub-plot involving a disagreement about a stray dog - Grace wants to adopt it, while Del wants it gone (possibly because he thinks Grace will also go, if it does).  Del gets his way, and then the sub-plot just kind of stops; there is never a real acknowledgement of Del's actions, and he and Grace never mention the animal again.

Also, while it has been obvious all along that Grace has not been completely honest about her background, and there is another shoe to drop, the dropping of that shoe is a bit ... fumbled.

As you might have expected, there are more survivors, and they come looking for Grace.  But little about this sequence makes much sense.  How did they find her? Why did they go to the immense effort it must have taken to do so? The film doesn't present any convincing need or motivation.

On the plus side, I did like that the newcomers' sinister scheme of sinisterness is, in their minds, benevolent.  They're wrong, of course: what they are doing us deeply misguided and quite frightening. But they're not the usual 'evil for the sake of it' monsters that we often see in post-apocalyptic stories.  This does result in a rather more low-key denouement than might be expected.  Some people may find it a little underwhelming, in fact.  Still, I appreciate the effort to try to do something a little more nuanced than normal, in this regard.

I Think We're Alone Now definitely has its flaws, but it has enough strengths that I don't regret seeing it.

10 Things I Hate About You (2009)

 

Kat and Bianca Stratford have just moved from Ohio to California. As they start at their new school, Padua High, they have very different goals. Kat is a cool, smart, strong-willed, forthright feminist who is looking to save the world and get out of school as fast as she can. Bianca meanwhile just wants to fit in, preferably including becoming a cheerleader.

Both the sisters will of course meet handsome young men, with whom tentative friendship - and maybe more - begins to bloom.  This is a particularly fraught issue for Kat and Bianca though, as their widowed father is wildly over-protective.

I thoroughly loathe Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, but I quite enjoyed its significantly more pleasant 1999 film adaptation, 10 Things I Hate About You.  This review, however, is not about that film, but about the TV show it inspired 10 years later.

So how is it?  Overall, not bad.  It's definitely helped a lot by the likeable cast, who do a good job of making you like their characters despite them all being very flawed people.  For instance, Kat is overly proud and tends to be dismissive of others, while Bianca's obsession with being popular causes her to act in very selfish ways at times.  Their potential love interests are just as flawed.  Patrick, Kat's moody possible paramour, has serious issues with expressing his emotions, while Bianca's friend Cameron is deep in 'nice guy' self-deception, which is why she spends most of the season oblivious to his interest, and also why she rightly feels deceived when it is finally revealed.  Guys: use your words.  And accept 'no' gracefully.

Most flawed of all the characters is Kat and Bianca's father.  While the show plays his policing of their personal lives and their bodies for laughs, it is frankly rather gross.  On a related note to this: the early episodes often have at least one instance of going for a cheap and lazy gag at the expense of marginalised groups, like the guy claiming "my doctor says I identify as female" used as an excuse to be a peeping tom.  That's punching down, and it is something that good comedy doesn't do.  Thankfully, this tones down a bit over time.

Thankfully, despite the characters flaws, the show does a solid job of portraying that most of them - the peeping tom and a couple of others aside - are generally trying to be decent people.  They may not always succeed, but they try.  Plus, like I said before, the cast are very likeable.  That definitely helps!

At the end of the day, each 22 minute episode of this series was an easy watch, and I liked that the TV format allowed for more drawn out development of the 'core' romances.  However, I'm not sure that the TV show offers a huge enhancement over the film.  Perhaps if it had been given a second season it would have really come into its own - though I do wonder how many seasons the concept could really have sustained.  In the event, however, it got cancelled at the end of its first season (even if Disney+ claims it has two; it's actually one season that was aired in two blocks).  The series therefore ends on a bunch of unresolved cliffhangers.  There is an interview with the creator online, where he reveals the plans for if they'd been renewed, but the lack of a 'real' ending may put this in the 'nope' column for some viewers.

And I don't think they'd be missing all that much for making such a decision.  This show was a decent time-filler, but it was not especially memorable.

This Way Up, Season 2 (2021)

 

Áine (it's still pronounced more or less like "Anya") has made considerable strides in putting her life back together after suffering a nervous breakdown.  She's started a new romance - though, a little awkwardly, it's with the father of one of her students - and is slowly forming a genuine friendship with her flatmate.

This is not to say that she doesn't still stumble into a few misadventures.  The new relationship - while definitely overall a positive - certainly has a few ups and downs.  But overall, it's more Áine's sister Shona who finds herself drifting into a potentially tempestuous situation.

The second season of The Way Up picks up where the first left off.  It is overall a slightly lighter set of episodes this time around.  It is much less confronting series in terms of Áine's mental health, which seems significantly improved.  This is not to say that it doesn't still have its more serious and sombre episodes - notably the final episode deals with the suicide of a secondary character.

This final episode also foreshadows the arrival of COVID, essentially establishing that the show is set a year or so before it originally aired.  Presumably if a third season is released (none has yet been confirmed, as far as I know) it will deal witrh the impacts - or possibly after-effects - of the pandemic and how long periods of lockdown impact the primary characters and their relationships.

Those relationships and characters remain the core of the show, particularly Áine and Shona's sisterly bond.  The two women almost always have several scenes together in each episode, and their close relationship is convincing and entertaining.  Their respective romantic entanglements are perhaps a smidgen more classically sit-com-esque in their depiction, but they still make for engaging drama and comedy.

A fine show; I hope we will see a third season.

This Way Up, Season 1 (2019)

 

Áine (it's pronounced more or less like "Anya") is a young, single Irish woman living in London.  She recently suffered a nervous breakdown and is slowly putting her life back together after spending several weeks at a rehab centre.

Supported by her sister and best friend, Shona, who also lives in London, Áine slowly begins to put her life back together.  She resumes her job teaching English as a second language, tries - with decidedly mixed success - to get over her jerk of an ex-boyfriend, and covers up the many anxieties she still feels with flippant humour and good cheer.  It remains to be seen whether time, Shona's unwavering support, and the prospect of a new romance might finally bring Áine the happiness she so resolutely presents to the world.

This Way Up is a smartly written, well performed comedy drama starring Irish comedian Aisling Bea (roughly pronounced 'Ashlyn Bee').  It does get off to a slightly slow start: the first episode is a little sombre.  But this is necessary groundwork to contextualise the show's stories and characters, and it's worth trying at least a couple more episodes after that to get a feel for the 'real' show.  They're only about 25 minutes each, so that shouldn't present much difficulty.

One aspect of the show that I appreciated is that it shows that bubbly, extroverted, chatty people can still be depressed, or suffering mental health problems.  The face we show the world and how we feel inside ourselves can be very different things.  The fact that Áine presents in such a quirky, humorous way also allows for plenty of snappy wordplay and other jokes.  Her off-beat lesson plans for her English class are particularly fun.

I think however that the real strength of This Way Up, though, is in its depictions of relationships.  Not just romantic ones - though those are certainly a factor - but also platonic friendships and platonic bonds.  The slow thawing between Áine and her client Richard (whose French-speaking son she tutors in English) is done very well, for instance.  And the depiction of Áine and Shona's sisterly bond is excellent.

Good stuff!

Shivers (1975)

 

Shivers posits the idea of medical research creating 'beneficial parasites' that can could be introduced to the human body to supplement or replace malfunctioning organs.  'Beneficial parasites' is of course an oxymoron; parasites are by definition not beneficial.  A more correct term would be 'symbiotes', but either writer/director David Cronenberg didn't know that at the time, or he did not expect his audience to do so.

One member of the team conducting this research believes humans to be "too much brain and not enough guts", and secretly sets out to create a 'parasite' that will make people more sexual and less cerebral.  He incubates these creatures in his girlfriend, Annabelle.  Somehow, he expects this to have a positive outcome.

Surprise!  It does not.  The outcome is an orgy - I use that word very specifically - of sexual predation as the parasites violently attempt to spread themselves to more and more people.

Shivers was Cronenberg's third feature film.  At the time of its release it was the most profitable Canadian film ever made; and also one of the most controversial.  Its sexual and violent content offended many critics of the day, and even led to the film being debated in the Canadian parliament.

Even by today's much more permissive standards of content, parts of this film remain quite confronting.  In particular, some of the violent scenes have a significant sexual element.  There's an attack right near the start of the film for instance, where a young woman writhes, half-clothed, as she is choked into unconsciousness.  It is quite intense.  

If that kind of content is not too off-putting for you, there are some good elements to the film.  For instance, Shivers makes clever use of silence, and of the awkwardness that can exist between people within that silence.  

In other ways, though, it does show its age and limited budgets.  Scenes where the 'parasites' emerge from their human hosts definitely look dated and unconvincing.  They're not helped by the dubious quality of some of the supporting acting, either.

The film also begins with an introductory commercial for the apartment complex where its events takes place. This is hilariously dated: the place looks drab and grim and thoroughly unappealing, and the 'Olympic sized' swimming pool they claim to have is clearly at most half that length.  But perhaps that is deliberate irony: the drabness could be seem as a manifestation of the "too much brain and not enough guts" concept that the 'parasites' are supposed to address.

Overall, I think Shivers is stronger in its build up to the 'parasite' outbreak than it is once the outbreak actually happens.  Once it takes that step, much of the tension leaks out of the film and we mostly just titillation and violence (some of it very poorly staged) instead.

70s cinema was big on "they look like us but they're wrong inside" wasn't it?  This film, Future World, Invasion of the Body Snatchers ... there is a real theme at work.  Shivers is no Body Snatchers, but even at its schlockiest, it is considerably more entertaining than the turgid Future World.

Trucks (1997)

 

In an isolated scrapyard somewhere, a beat-up old pickup truck suddenly comes to life and kills the junk yard's owner.

Given the isolation, though, this bizarre bit of automotive homicide goes unnoticed.  The nearest town is the backwater of Lunar, New Mexico, and that's a fair few miles down the road.

Lunar is close the supposed site of Area 51, and local woman Hope has lived up to her name by starting a tour company aimed at UFO enthusiasts looking for their own 'close encounter'.

As more and more vehicles turn murderous, Hope and her customers are about to have an experience they will never forget ... assuming they survive.

Trucks is the second screen adaptation of a not especially good short story by Stephen King.  The first was the comically awful Maximum Overdrive,  a film starring a very young Emilio Estevez and (clumsily) directed by King himself.  

Ironically, the overall plotline of Trucks hews closer to King's original short story than the movie the author himself made.  It's still every bit as bad, though.

Firstly, we have the problem that all the characters are broad stereotypes, without any subversion or subtlety in their depiction.  We have the obnoxious redneck, the obnoxious townie, the aging hippie, the rebellious teen, the man of action, the voice of reason ... and absolutely nothing about any of these people will surprise you.  Well, except possibly for how stupid they are.  Like the guy whose response to being attacked by a host of killer trucks is to ... repair a truck that currently isn't running.  No-one suggests this might be a bad idea.  It goes exactly as well as you might expect.

Sadly, as stupid as the actions of the characters may be, the script seems determined to outdo them.  The trucks are shown adjusting their wing mirrors to spy on people.

I repeat: The trucks are shown adjusting their wing mirrors to spy on people.  Are we supposed to think that's how they 'see'?  Because if so, how do any of them ever successfully drive forward, given all the mirrors face backward?  And if they can see via other means, why are they mucking with their mirrors?

Don't worry that this might be a cherry-picked single moment of stupid.  There are plenty more.  For instance, there's a killer Tonka truck that we're supposed to believe successfully murders a postal worker, in a scene that is symptomatic of issue that the things the film wants - presumably - to present as scary, are in fact nothing of the sort.  Then there's the scene where an emergency response vehicle somehow inflates a hazmat stored within it and then controls said hazmat suit into axe-murdering two people.

Trucks is occasionally hilariously awful, but unless that's your thing, you should steer well clear.

Teenage Bounty Hunters (2020)

 

Fraternal twins Blair and Sterling are lifelong best friends who always have each other's backs, whether the situation is clique politics at their Christian high school, or concealing the fact that one of them is sexually active with her boyfriend - ironically, it is 'good girl' Sterling, not 'rebel' Blair - or accidentally stumbling into a career as bounty hunters after they have a traffic accident with a bail jumper.

One of these things is not the like other things, and it is of course the central hook of the show.  After subduing the bail jumper when he tries to run, Blair and Sterling need cash to repair their dad's beloved truck - hopefully before he notices the damage - and they cajole legitimate bounty hunter Bowser Simmons into letting them work as his 'interns'.  Which doesn't mean they're going to be able to ignore high school politics and romantic drama while they do so, mind you.  Sometimes both at the same time.

Teenage Bounty Hunters is a fun comedy-drama with engaging leads and snappy dialogue.  Sure, the premise is deeply implausible, but the writing embraces that absurdity by smartly contrasting it with the more plausible but also more absurd antics of their lives outside of bounty hunting.

Alas, despite being a smartly-written show with a great cast and some real emotional heart to go with its oddball antics, Teenage Bounty Hunters doesn't seem to have found an audience and was cancelled after this single season.  Which is a shame, though at least this one season we got has a satisfying conclusion.  Not every issue in Blair and Sterling's life gets resolved in it, of course, and I would definitely have watched a season two if it happened, but it's definitely still possible to watch and enjoy these ten episodes on their own basis.

The Tomorrow War (2021)

 

During the broadcast of the 2022 Soccer World Cup, soldiers from the year 2051 arrive to warn that, in their time, humanity is on the brink of extinction due to a war with alien invaders referred to as "Whitespikes."  These creatures appear in Russia in 2048, and relentlessly swep over the planet, driving humanity to the brink of extinction.

For some reason, humanity's response has been to research time travel, so they could come back nearly thirty years and draft soldiers to help them fight the war in the future.  Though they don't share the information widely, they only draft people who are known to have died before the Whitespikes appeared.  In essence, if you get called up, you're already dead.

The Tomorrow War focuses on James Forester, a biology teacher and former green beret who is drafted into the war.  What he learns in the future might not just save the world as a whole, but also his and his family's future more specifically.

I'm something of a sucker for high concept SF action films, so from the moment I heard about The Tomorrow War, I was keen to check it out.  Alas, sometimes movies do not live up to our hopes, and for me this was definitely one of those cases.  The Tomorrow War's execution is generally mediocre.  Its alien antagonists far less interesting and intimidating than it builds them up to be and its action sequences derivative and lacking in tension.  Worse still, its plot contrives to be both utterly nonsensical and utterly predictable, both at the same time.  Which is an impressive achievement, but not one to celebrate!

The Town (2010)

 

Four men in masks rob a bank in Boston. In the process they take Assistant Manager Claire Keesey as a hostage, later releasing her unharmed.

After learning that Claire lives in their own home neighbourhood, one of the four robbers - Doug - follows her to find out how much she has told the police, and to ensure that his more hot-headed associate does not kill her to eliminate her as a witness. 

Soon a romance grows between Doug and his unwitting victim, which the bank robber naturally hides from the other members of his gang.

He should, perhaps, be more worried about keeping things from the authorities.  The FBI have identified him as a likely member of the bank robbers, so when they see him spending time with Claire, they naturally develop suspicions about whether she was an innocent victim of the robbery, after all.  She was, of course, but you can certainly see why they would think otherwise!

As tensions grow with his fellow criminals, and the FBI closes in, Doug has to make some difficult decisions that will affect not only his own life, but those of the woman he has grown to love.

The Town is a decently-crafted film with a good cast, but my wife and I were a bit disappointed by it.  In large part, this is because we watched The Town on the back of its trailer, which promised a tense, high octane thriller.  The actual film is rather more restrained in tone and content.  It's probably also therefore more realistic and nuanced.  But expectations matter, so we were a bit disappointed by what we got, since it was not what we were looking for.

The film's other weakness, to my mind, is that I did not much care about Doug as a character, and was not wholly convinced by his and Claire's relationship, once his secret was revealed.  I think the film's grounded tone was also a factor in this.  In a more high octane film, I would probably have accepted "adrenaline-filled situations prompt strong feelings" as a justification.  Without that, I think the film needed to work harder than it did, to convince me that Claire would make the decisions that she did.

Ultimately this didn't quite click for me.

True Blood, Season 7 (2014)

 

"Hepatitis V" has swept the globe.  The disease can be carried by both humans and vampires alike, but is harmful only to the latter.  It is passed on by body fluid transfer, including blood, meaning that any infected human - and any human could be infected - a death sentence for a vampire that feeds on them.

Packs of infected vampires are now roaming the less urban parts of the US, threatening isolated towns with destruction.  Humans - and those uninfected vampires who hope to peacefully co-exist with them - must work together to stay safe.

And then if all this confusion and mayhem was not enough, there comes the possibility of a cure ...

This final season of True Blood is generally a reasonably enjoyable romp, and in particular I think that it ends strongly, which is a key checkbox to tick off for your show's finale.  That doesn't mean it is entirely free from flaws, of course.  I found its treatment of Tara and Pam to be very disappointing, for instance.  But on the whole, it wraps up its narrative - including the central question of 'can humans and vampires find a way to co-exist?', and the individual fates of most of the main cast - in a satisfying manner.

If you've come this far with the show, I definitely think it is worth coming back for the final 10 episodes.

Trollhunter (2010)

 

A group of college film students set out to make a documentary about a suspected bear poacher, but instead accidentally stumble into the operations of a secret government agency.  This agency is tasked with hunting and killing trolls, and in doing do without revealing to the public that these creatures even exist.

Naturally, the students - once they get over their initial derision of the idea that trolls exist at all - quickly realise that this would be a huge scoop for them.  And luck is perhaps on their side, for the 'poacher' is actually a disgruntled troll hunter who is tired of his dangerous and poorly recompensed work and more than willing to ruin his employer's day by blowing the lid off this whole thing.

Of course, the authorities are not exactly pleased about this, and it's safe to say that the trolls aren't real keen on humans poking around in their territory, either, so the scoop of a lifetime could also lead to the end of their lifetimes ...

I'm a little torn over how to rate this film because minute-to-minute, Trollhunter is reasonably watchable.  However, in the end I feel that the film as an entire work is not satisfying, so I can't give it even a qualified recommendation.  

The film's problems are multiple: no explanation is ever given for why the existence of trolls should be kept secret, for instance.  Which given the obvious difficulties and expense of maintaining this secrecy, is definitely something I was asking.  Then there's the basic through-line of the plot, which is somewhat meandering and just kind of peters out rather than arriving at a meaningful conclusion.

I liked seeing more-or-less traditional Scandinavian trolls turning up on screen, but at the end of the movie I was left asking "wait, is that it?".

Train to Busan (2016)

 

Investment banker Seo Seok-woo is a cynical workaholic and divorced father, living in Seoul. When his daughter Su-an wants to spend her birthday with her mother in Busan, at the other end of the country, he initially tries to refuse her. Ultimately though, guilt over his own absentee parenting prompts him to agree to her request.

Seok-woo does, however, refuse to let Su-an take the journey alone, and accompanies her onto the train.  This proves to be very fortuitous, as Seoul descends into chaos behind them due to a zombie outbreak.  Alas, one of the infected manages to get on board the train as well, and soon flesh-eating undead are rampaging through the carriages.  Seok-woo, Su-an and the other passengers must try to stay alive long enough to reach a place of safety - though with the speed the zombie outbreak is spreading, it's unclear if any such place exists.

Train to Busan is a solid and engaging zombie film from South Korea.  It has some great sequences as the dwindling group of survivors try to stay one step ahead of the zombie contagion, offering a few set pieces that are distinctive and memorable and don't immediately remind me of anything I have seen from the genre before.

If you're not one of those people who has become burned out on zombie media, this is an excellent example of the form, and well worth a couple of hours of your time.

On a meta-textual level, I also think the film has obvious parallels to the Korean War - where Busan formed the final stronghold for fleeing South Koreans before the the UN force's invasion of Incheon forced North Korean forces to withdraw.  I would be very surprised if this parallel was not entirely deliberate.

Creature (1985)

 

In the near-ish future, two companies - one American, one (West) German - compete to gather resources across the solar system.  So when a mission to Titan (one of Saturn's moons) discovers evidence of an advanced alien civilisation, there's immediately an urgent competition to seize what seems an astonishing resource.  Though perhaps both companies should be paying more attention to the fact that none of the original discoverers survived to make it back to Earth.

Because of course not all of these ancient aliens are dead, and the survivor is more than dangerous enough to slaughter any humans foolish enough to disturb it.  But I imagine you worked that out already, right?

With its 'spaceworkers stumble across a dangerous extra-terrestrial' premise, Creature (AKA Titan Find) obviously owes a considerable debt to the Alien franchise.  But I suspect that John Carpenter's The Thing was also a significant source of inspiration: and not just because this film very consciously and explicitly references the 1951 film based on the same short story as Carpenter's horror masterpiece.  Our alien nemesis here can infect and control humans, turning them into its agents, which allows it to use the same kind of infiltration and deception tactics as Carpenter's 'Thing'.  Of course, it probably also didn't hurt that 'it operates through human agents' allows this film to get away with a pretty minimal amount of actual on-screen alien action.

So with all that said, is the film any good?

Well, it's no Alien or The Thing.  The effects are bit rubbery and the plot isn't terribly novel, and there's some rather problematic, aggressive sexual content from Klaus Kinski's character.  

On the other hand, it is not without its 1980s charms, and the cast all know what they are doing.  Best of all, once we are past the rather disjointed opening sequences, the script doesn't ask the characters to behave in any too obviously foolish ways.

If you're in the mood for some space-based horror and you've not seen it before, you might enjoy spending 95 minutes with this Creature.

Do Not Disturb (2013)

 

Once feted as a wunderkind, screenwriter Don Malek now skulks in a grimy apartment in the roughest part of town, dodging persistent questions from his agent, Ava, about progress on his new script.

So Ava is understandably pleased when Don finally shows her what he's been working on, though she's a bit puzzled by his decision to stage an actual scene for her rather than just show her words on a page.  Still, his grisly murder scenario seems like the basis of a good story, so everything is good, right?

Well, maybe it would be, if the murder was actually just a story ...

This film was originally released in 2010 under the title New Terminal Hotel, but was re-cut into this shorter form a couple of years later.  It's hard to imagine that what they would have chosen to cut is 'a decent ending', so I can only assume that the way this movie finishes is the same as the original.  In which case I guess I can at least be glad that it took me 13 fewer minutes to reach it than it would have done originally!

It's rather a shame that the movie doesn't stick an ending as - despite its somewhat slow pace and obviously low budget - it has a pretty decent cast and a basic premise that could have gone in an interesting direction.  You see Dan's sudden change of career from author to killer is motivated by a desire to avenge his girlfriend and punish the men whose power - and willingness to abuse said power - led to her death.  A killer striking against toxic, narcissistic predators is a premise that could potentially create an interesting set of questions and dynamics.  After all, his motives are understandable and even sympathetic, but his actions are reprehensible.

Unfortunately, the film doesn't really engage with this and just goes down the "throw in a few grisly kills and horror buffs will be satisfied, right?" route.  But no, no, I won't.

Thunderball (1965)

 

The criminal organisation SPECTRE implements a plan to steal two atomic bombs and use them to blackmail NATO.  Unfortunately for them, random chance puts James Bond, codename 007, in the same place as the agent they're using for the mission.  While they still succeed in stealing the bombs, Bond's seen enough to have a good lead on how to find the missing weapons.  That said lead involves a beautiful woman is certainly not something to disappoint 007!

Thunderball was apparently considered as the first Bond novel to be adapted to the screen, but rights issues - or possibly finances - saw it pushed back, so ultimately it became the fourth novel to be filmed.  It leans heavily into the tropes now established for the franchise, with beautiful women, sardonic quips and quirky gadgets all having a featured role.  Structurally, the finale of this movie also seems to be heavily inspired by that of the immediately preceding film, Goldfinger.  The extensive underwater battle this involves is definitely the film's major set-piece, and one I deeply enjoyed when I first saw this film in the 1980s.  Nearly forty years later, I am not as much of a fan: the battle choreography doesn't hold up well by modern standards, and the sequence goes on rather longer than I think it should, contributing to the movie's comparatively long run time (it is about 15 minutes longer than the previous 3 films).

How is Thunderball?  If you like Bond, you should enjoy it.  It ticks all the expected boxes and does so in quite entertaining fashion on the whole.

True Blood, Season 6 (2013)

Inspired by religious fervour for the progenitor Lilith, the Vampire Authority has deprived its own kind of their only alternative to human blood. As increasingly hungry and desperate vampires become more and more predatory, more and more humans - and human authority figures - turn against the idea of peaceful co-existence. And it quickly becomes clear that those human authorities have been quietly preparing for this possibility ever since the vampires revealed themselves.

Meanwhile, Sookie Stackhouse finds herself the target of an ancient vampire named Warlow.  She's been a target of ancient vampires before, of course, but Warlow is a new kind of menace.  Not only is he the one who originally slew Lilith, but he was full-blooded fey before being turned, allowing him to walk in the daylight.

After the wayward and muddled season 5, this series sees True Blood find its melodramatic groove once more. The stuff that happened last season stays happened, with events here following on from that, but the connection between different characters' arcs are much better defined. It feels like the show is moving in the same direction on all fronts, rather than rambling incoherently. This is definitely a positive.  Also a positive is the show's acknowledgment that human governments would not sit idly by once they knew vampires existed.

This is a pretty fun, fast-moving season (helped I think by being two episodes shorter than previous series).  If you've enjoyed True Blood prior to this, you should find this to your tastes as well.

True Blood, Season 5 (2012)

As Sookie and Lafayette go to extreme lengths to avoid losing Tara, her vampire former lovers scramble to flee from the shadowy but lethally powerful Authority (spoiler: they immediately get captured).  Meanwhile her employer Sam finds his quiet community of shapeshifters become to target of hate crimes, her brother Jason stumbles across an invisible nightclub of fairies while trying to deal with his feelings for young vampire Jessica, and Sookie's possible next love interest Alcide finds himself facing a power struggle within his werewolf pack.

All of these storylines do eventually converge, drawn together by the season's main arc, but they take an awfully long time to do so.  This leads to much of the season feeling very disjointed and scattered, with the plots moving in parallel but without much interaction for many episode.

Perhaps more problematic is that that main arc that does eventually tie together all these threads?  It's dumb as rocks.  I mean, sure, in principle I can see how this whole 'vampire liberals vs vampire fundamentalists' storyline was probably intended as a mirror of the human liberals vs fundamentalists conflict that has run through every season thus far.  Unfortunately, the execution of an idea matters much more than the idea itself, and the execution here is long on tiresome, pompous vampires being tiresome and pompous while acting in wildly inconsistent manner as they do so.

True Blood has always been sudsy, sexy and somewhat silly, but nonetheless entertaining.  Alas, adding a fourth 'S' for 'stupid' does considerable harm to said entertainment.

The Twilight Zone, Season 3 (1961)

 

I was not a fan of season two of The Twilight Zone.  I felt it had a lot of weak scripts, and few new ideas.  Thoughts like "Oh it's (famous story)" or "This is like that first season episode" were a far too common experience while watching it.

I'm pleased to say that the third season mostly rights the ship.  Which is not to say that every episode is a winner.  With 37 separate stories here, that would honestly be too much to hope for.  So we still have a few failures here.  The conclusion of the episode "The Dummy" is obvious five minutes in, for instance, while the season finale is pretty much just It's A Wonderful Life but done in only half an hour.  And the less said about the pointlessness of the twist ending in "The Midnight Sun", the better.

Still, overall, the story quality is definitely a step up.  Perhaps this is partly due to there being some extension to the writing pool this season, but I think the key thing is a tonal shift.  The Twilight Zone of season three is a less sombre and menacing place than in earlier years.  There are still episodes that play out quote grimly, of course, but there are also a lot more tales that embrace whimsy or optimism or even, on several occasions, outright sentimentality.  This greater diversity of tone, and the increasing number of humorous scenes or stories, definitely helps alleviate some of the "we've seen this already" feel I got during season two.

I should mention that this is the season that includes the renowned episode "To Serve Man".  It is a pretty good one, to be honest, even if the final twist is likely thoroughly spoiled for most viewers by now.

True Blood, Season 4 (2011)

True Blood is back for a fourth year of Southern Supernatural and Sexual Shenanigans.  The writers immediately engineer an off-screen time-jump of roughly a year, which allows them to significantly shuffle the cast deck chairs and create a bunch of new dynamics, especially of the bedroom variety.  There's so much of that going on in fact that the season's inevitable Looming Supernatural Threat sometimes feels like it's the B-plot to the latest iteration of romantic relationship bingo.  I mean, there's a reason the DVD cover is all about Sookie and her three paramours, with nary a witch to be seen.

Yep, witches will be out antagonists this year, along with a little vampire-on-vampire action because True Blood vamps are really not good at getting along nicely with each other.  'Woman with magic powers leads coven' could easily have felt like a big re-tread of season two's 'woman with magic powers leads cult', and I will give credit to the show for working hard to make this season's main antagonist very different from season two's Maryann.  They did not, unfortunately, manage to make her especially interesting or memorable.  But she is different.  And her presence does lead to silliness like vampires with rocket launchers, so it's certainly not all bad.

True Blood is unashamedly melodramatic, over the top sex and violence and vampires.  By season 4, I expect you already know whether or not that is your thing.

True Blood, Season 3 (2010)

Sookie Stackhouse and company are back for another series of sexy supernatural shenanigans involving multiple conflicting vampire factions, Viking revenge schemes, and werewolf turf wars.  

The previous season of True Blood ended with all kinds of melodramatic events: deaths and disappearances, oh my!  This season hits the ground running on the follow-up to those developments, and keeps the action and the plot twists (and of course the gore and nudity) flowing at a fairly rapid rate for its entire twelve episode run.

True Blood is a show with a very specific formula: it's very over the top, sudsy stuff, with unashamedly histrionic writing that profits from the commitment of its charismatic and talented cast.  It certainly won't appeal to all people, and I think there's a very real risk that at some point the soapy silliness is going to overwhelm the actors' efforts to keep it engaging, but for now it is still managing the balancing act of treating all these shenanigans with utter in-character seriousness.

If sexy vampires are your thing - and clearly it hits a chord with a lot of people - True Blood definitely delivers the product you're after in season three.