Reviews

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Doctor Who: Robot of Sherwood First Impressions

This is late.  I had a long day yesterday and I went to bed right after the episode.  Deal.

  • This felt a bit like a Sixth Doctor episode.  At least, Twelve was acting very Six-ish.
  • The Doctor fights a man wielding a sword with a spoon, I’m really not sure what to make of that.  Also, where did he get that glove?
  • Boy, the Doctor really stuck with that “None of this is real!” thing up until the bitter end, didn’t he.
  • Nice bit of business with the Doctor wondering where Clara got her belief in heroes, and Clara being all “Duh!”  What Clara is doing here is what a companion should do, showing the Doctor the best parts of himself.
  • The sheriff was suitably dickish for the setting.  I liked it.
  • Check out Robin Hood getting all Merida up in here!  Or was Merida getting all Robin Hood?  Whatever.
  • And the Doctor showing off in order to get captured.  Nice plan.  /sarcasm
  • I actually kind of liked the design of the robots.  I’m sure it was just a function of where and when they crashed, but it shows the amount of thought that Gatiss put in to the writing.
  • The part in the dungeon with the Doctor, Robin and Clara was the part that reminded me the most of Six.  With Clara being a much more proactive companion than Perri or Mel were.
  • Props to the Merry Men for figuring out what was so weird about the sheriff’s plundering of the people.
  • This show has a long history of overly ambitious humans allying with bad guy robots, and it never turns out well for the human.  In short, the sheriff really should have known better.
  • There’s a neat little easter egg in all those Robin Hood pictures that the databank on the ship displays.  I didn’t notice it until someone pointed it out; but apparently, Patrick Troughton once played Robin Hood.
  • You have to feel for Robin when he finds out that as far as history is concerned, he never existed.  For a minute there, I was convinced he wasn’t real either.
  • Of course Robin has a sword fight with the sheriff.  Why wouldn’t he?
  • I liked that Robin came to terms with being a legend instead of a slightly flawed real person.  Of course the Doctor has been a legend in the past (the whole Oncoming Storm thing) it didn’t exactly work out well for him.

Overall this really did feel Six-ish to me.  Not that that’s a bad thing, I happen to like Six, but the humor did seem to overwhelm the episode.  But I didn’t hate it by any means.

Next week looks to be really creepy, things grabbing people from under beds and all that, I look forward to it.

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Netflix Picks: Friday Chinese Detective Story

I love a good mystery story, I’m a big Sherlock Holmes fan, and I like Agatha Christie, Midsomer Murders, and the Murdoch Mysteries series from Canada.  So when I found a Chinese version of the kind of thing I like, I figured “why the hell not?”  Enter Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame.

Based on the real life Chancellor of Empress Wu Zetian, the story starts off with the sudden death of an architect working on a giant Buddha commissioned by the Empress.  He dies by what seems to be spontaneous combustion, of course there’s more to it than that; especially when another official dies the same way.  Advised by her Chaplain, the Empress summons Dee (who was imprisoned after opposing the Empress’ rise to power) to take charge of the case.  She doesn’t entirely trust Dee though, so she sends her servant Jing’er to keep an eye on him.  Penal officer Pei Donglai joins the investigation as well, and the trio sets off to find the killer before he can target the Empress.

Unsurprisingly, the movie plays fast and loose with the actual history.  But if you aren’t well versed in Chinese history, I doubt you’ll notice.  There’s also quite a bit of the wire work action sequences that Chinese film has become famous for.  While the movie doesn’t exactly have the budget that a Hollywood backed production would have, the production values are still pretty good.  The costumes and sets are impressive, and while there are a few hiccups where the CGI is a little too prominent, the wire work stuff makes up for it.

The mystery itself is fairly well done, but the reveal of who the Chaplain is seems a bit off to me.  Maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention, but it really did seem to come out of nowhere.  That said, the acting is pretty good; Andy Lau does well as Dee, but the real stand-outs in my opinion are Carina Lau as Empress Wu and Deng Chao as Pei.  Carina Lau brings a ruthless grace to Wu, making her an interesting character to watch.  Chao makes Pei a relatable character, even if he’s a bit hot-headed.

Overall, it’s a pretty good and fun movie.  If you like Chinese action movies, I think you’ll find a lot to like about this movie.  If you’re a mystery fan, this is an interesting take on the genre.

Overall rating: 6.9/10

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Doctor Who: Into the Dalek First Impressions

To quote Madam Vastra “Well, here we go again.”

  • I don’t like the new version of the theme.  The opening sequence isn’t bad, but the theme just isn’t working for me.
  • Capaldi is growing on me.  Slowly but surely he’s really starting to fill out the role nicely.
  • A Fantastic Voyage reference, a Sherlock Holmes reference, and a Star Trek reference, all in the same episode.  Truly, the nerd is strong with this one.
  • Danny Pink is adorably awkward, I approve.  Also, it will be interesting to see how he and the Doctor react to one another.
  • Is the Doctor a good man?  More on this later.
  • Clara is the Doctor’s carer.  This is something that has come up before with other companions, and I like that it’s come up again.
  • Is the Doctor giving odd nicknames to enemies that he’s using for other purposes a thing now?  If it is, I kind of like it.
  • Concerning not killing the Doctor before he can save you: Oh, Clara.  Honey, that’s as old as the Doctor himself.
  • Clara slaps the Doctor.  Honestly, I’ve been waiting for someone to do that.  He really does seem to need a good whack upside the head.  I mean I know he’s just regenerated, but he really does seem to be forgetting who he really is.
  • Gretchen Alyson Carlyle.  Remember that name, ’cause she was one badass lady.
  • And Missy once again.  Still not sure what her deal is, but it can’t be anything good.
  • The second I saw the Doctor giving Rusty a peak into his mind, I had a feeling it would backfire.  And I was right.
  • The theme of goodness comes up a lot in this episode; is the Doctor a good man?  Can there really be a good Dalek?  In the end, it depends on whether or not you’re willing to work towards being good, no matter how bad you’ve been.
  • And we get a nice callback to the episode “Dalek”.  When it happened I literally said “There it is again!” out loud.  I really do think that the Doctor “making a good Dalek” is something that needs to come up to remind the Doctor that there’s still a lot of anger that he needs to deal with.
  • Would Journey have made a good companion?  Maybe, but I don’t think that the Doctor is ready to deal with all the stuff that she would bring up for him just yet.
  • And to answer the question of whether or not the Doctor is a good man, I’ll just reiterate what Clara said; he tries to be, and that’s the whole point.  He’s not perfect, he doesn’t always do the right thing for the right reason, but he tries and that’s the important part.

So that’s episode 2 in the can.  What did I think overall?  Not bad, better than the last episode in my opinion.  Looking forward to the Doctor meeting Robin Hood, that should be really interesting.

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Netflix Picks: *Sniffle* *Cough*

Ok, so I’ve been sick for the past couple of days.  And consequently, I haven’t wanted to move much from the couch.  So what does one do when you’re in misery and just want something mindless to watch?  Well, I can tell you what I do; I watch Godzilla movies.

I generally prefer the older ones, but I will watch something from the Millennium series if that’s all that’s available.  These movies are a bit like comfort food for me.  I have fond memories of watching marathons of them with my mom on weekends and riffing them a little.  I’m generally not paying much attention to the plot, I’m in it for the monster fights.  And the toy tanks that they use to attack the guys in rubber suits.

Some of my favorites include, pretty much anything involving Ghidorah (or King Ghidorah), Mothra works too, Godzilla vs. Hedorah (a.k.a. Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster) is fun; if utterly ridiculous.  There’s quite a few on Netflix, mostly from the Showa Era, but you can find a few on Hulu as well including the aforementioned Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster; and Crackle has some as well, mostly the Millennium stuff.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go crawl under a blanket and watch some guys in rubber suits beat each other silly.

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Netflix Picks: Speaking of Doctors…

Fair warning, with the series 8 premier on Saturday, I’m going to be focusing on Doctor Who for the next couple of days.  Starting with today’s Netflix Pick.

If you’re new to the series, you probably haven’t seen much of the classic series that aired from 1963 to 1989.  And it’s high time you changed that.  Now, Netflix doesn’t have a lot of the classic series episodes (Hulu has a whole bunch more, but most of them are under Hulu’s premium service.) But they do have some classics like City of Death, and today’s Pick The Mind Robber.

The Mind Robber is a trippy piece of work.  It starts with the Crew of the Tardis landing in the middle of a big white void, and it only gets weirder from there, especially when fictional characters like Rapunzel and Gulliver from Gulliver’s Travels start showing up and helping the crew out.  Eventually the Crew finds their way to the Master of the Land (as opposed to The Master) who controls all the strange goings on in the Land of Fiction.  This particular master wants The Doctor to take over the control of the Land of Fiction as he’s getting old.  I won’t spoil how the Doctor gets out of this one, because it’s arguably the best (and in some ways the silliest) part of the episode.

Like I said, this one’s a bit trippy.  There’s a whole surrealist feel to the episode that works really well in context.  Random castles, clockwork soldiers, it kind of feels like the Tardis crew have fallen down the rabbit hole and ended up in Wonderland, a really dangerous Wonderland at that.  There’s also a lot of humor in this episode, which also works well with the surreal setting.  Now, the acting is a tad stilted, but that’s normal for an early TV show like this.  But the writing does make up for that on the whole.

There are a few things to be aware of; first of all, this is old TV.  Early Who and other shows like it had miniscule budgets to work with, and the effects technology of the time was extremely limited.  That said, the effects do have a certain charm to them.  At least, I think they do.  The other thing to be aware of is that while I call this a single episode (and it is, in terms of the show) it’s really more of a short serial.  There’s four episodes in all, and they clock in at about twenty minutes each.  So again, not a big time investment.  But the parts of the serial were meant to be watched with a week in between each part, which makes binge watching a bit of a trial at times.  Especially when there’s a long recap of what happened at the end of the last part at the beginning of the next one.  But if you can look past those slight faults, this particular episode is a lot of fun; and well worth watching for anyone who’s looking to watch some Classic Who.

Overall rating: 7.5/10

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Netflix Picks: In Revolutionary Russia, Young Doctor is Clueless

I think it’s about time I explained how I pick what I’m going to review for this series.  I go onto Netflix, have a quick look around, and pick the first thing that looks interesting that I haven’t seen yet.  Which brings us to today’s pick, A Young Doctor’s Notebook.  I had already heard of this British mini-series thanks to the cable channel Ovation, but I’d never gotten the chance to watch it until now.

The show stars Daniel Radcliffe (a.k.a. Harry Freakin’ Potter) as the titular Young Doctor, and John Hamm (of Mad Men fame) as the older version of the young doctor.  The show is set in early twentieth century Russia, it actually splits it’s time between 1917 and 1934, in a hospital in a remote village.  A trip to the local shop will take half a day to get there, and half a day to get back, and the shop doesn’t open until August.  That’s how remote this place is.

Even though it’s called A Young Doctor’s Notebook, the story really centers around how the young doctor becomes the older one.  Most of the action takes place in the older doctor’s memories of what happened.  He then injects himself into those memories, giving his younger self the advice and encouragement that he wishes someone had given him at the time.  Before he became the man who’s being questioned about forged prescriptions.

The writing in this mini-series is pretty strong, essentially, this is a comedy; but a comedy of a pretty dark kind.  The characters have a quirky, but dark tone to them that works well in the Russian setting.  Speaking of the characters, the acting is well done.  Hamm and Radcliffe do well, as expected, and the supporting cast works hard to bring life to what might well be one note characters.

If you like black comedies, or just want to see how well Daniel Radcliffe has been doing since Harry Potter, I can definitely recommend giving this one a watch.  There’s two seasons, split up into four episodes each.  And each episode is only about twenty-three minutes in length, so this one isn’t going to require a big time investment.

Overall rating: 7/10

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Guardians of the Galaxy: An Awesome Mix of a Movie

I’m sure that no one needs me to tell them that Guardians of the Galaxy is really good.  Really, really good.  Well worth seeing.  And all that stuff.  Every critic that I’ve heard of has said the same thing.  And it really is that good.  So go see it already!

But if you want a little more than that, Marvel has hit it out of the park again.  At some point they’ll mess it up (Ant Man isn’t looking too good right now, but they may yet salvage that one), but until then Marvel will continue to widen the gap between themselves and DC.

The movie itself sound kind of silly at first.  A human, an assassin, a walking revenge film, a genetically enhanced raccoon, and a talking tree all going up against one very angry alien with a massive chip on his shoulder who has one of the extremely powerful Infinity Stones to help him get his revenge on the planet Xandar.  There is a nice mix of action, pathos and comedy going on here.  The characters are engaging (Rocket and Groot are real stand-outs, but the whole cast works really well.), the pacing is well done, and (of course) the soundtrack is, in the words of the movie, Awesome.

So if you haven’t seen it yet, or were wondering if it really is that good; yes it is, and you should quit stalling and go see it.

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Netflix Picks: Manliest. Space Pirate. Ever.

I have a pretty casual interest in anime on the whole. I’m not nearly as knowledgeable about it as I would like, but goodness knows that never stopped anyone from giving their opinion on the internet. Today’s pick is based on one of the most popular and influential animes of the 70’s, in Japan at least. It’s never really caught on here the states. And that’s really a shame, because it’s a pretty solid franchise on the whole; and this particular movie is a pretty good introduction to it. It also has the manliest character in the history of anime. More manly than a whole barrel full of Kaminas. More manly than Arnold Schwarzenegger and Chuck Norris arm wrestling Grizzly Bears in the middle of the Super Bowl. I speak, of course, of Space Pirate Captain Harlock.

The story itself is relatively simple, or at least as simple as a Leiji Matsumoto plot ever gets. In the far distant future, or possibly the past (that part’s a little hazy), humanity has spread throughout the cosmos. Eventually there was a call to return to Earth. But the planet couldn’t support the sheer amount of people who wanted to come back. Thus began the Homecoming War. Out of the ashes of that war two opposing forces rose to put their stamp on the galaxy. On the one side was the Gaia Coalition, the authoritarian central government. And on the other side stands Captain Harlock, Space Pirate. Harlock is on a mission to exorcise the demons of his past, and save humanity in the process. Maybe. It’s kind of hard to tell with Harlock.

Without giving away a lot of spoilers, this is a pretty damn good movie. The animation is spectacular, with detailed backgrounds and character models. Even if the characters do look a little plastic-y from time to time. Now, there’s a fair amount of techno babble being thrown about during the course of the movie, but I don’t think that it hurts the movie too much. There’s also the story to consider. Without giving too much away, there’s a really big twist about halfway through the movie that could change your perceptions of the characters dramatically. But that’s the whole point of plot twists, and this one didn’t bother me much at all. But as we all know, you don’t go to an action movie expecting a cerebral drama. And that’s where this movie really shines. The action scenes are jaw dropping. There are multiple moments where you just might find yourself jumping up and cheering, even if you’re wearing headphones.

Overall this is one of those “sit back and enjoy the ride” movies. And what a ride it is. It should really say something that after I finished watching it the first time, I immediately put it in my Netflix queue and had to restrain myself from watching it again right away. So, yeah. I think I liked it.

Overall rating: 8/10