TV
The Last of Us - Season review
Well here we are. The Last of Us took us to great heights with its beautiful first season and this second season was… not quite as high. It’s hard, I'm sure to keep bringing the magic over and over again, but writers Craig Mazin and Neil Druckman, along with new-to-this-writers room Haily Gross did their damndest. It unfortunately just didn’t work.
The season started well enough, episode 1 set up what we thought would be this season’s central conflict with Abby (the daughter of the doctor Joel killed to save Ellia), and gave us some secondary conflicts as well. The main problem with this season though is that this main conflict never sees any movement past the shocking death of episode 2 and then the season finale adds a bit more to it. The middle episodes, while having some hi points, just feel like the wheels are spinning.
In episode 1 we learn that Gail, the therapist Joel sees (an always welcome, but somewhat out of place, Catherine O’hara) resents him for killing her infected husband. Later in the season we get a whole episode dedicated to that story, and while it does resolve that conflict, the resolution only serves to further explain the wedge between Ellie and Joel. In doing this it takes all the punch out of the conflict between Joel and Gail. And that sort of sums up this season. Lots of things are pushed to the background or set ups for the next season.
After Joel’s murder by Abby we expect this to be the central conflict, but then Abby disappears for much of the season. So then we come to explore the breakdown of the relationship between Joel and Bella. Episode 6 does this beautifully through a series of vignettes and while this is heartbreaking it just somehow didn’t hit me as hard as I think it should have.
The problem is there is just way too much going on in this season and we seem to move at breakneck speed to things, and then we get there and we have to wait. We spend some time with the great Jeffrey Wright playing the leader of the WLF, we get the Seraphites, we get the war between the two, we get the budding romance between Bella and Dina, we get a beautifully staged attack on Jackson, we get some good zombie shit, but everything just feels… blech. We jump around too much trying to serve too many different plot threads and then we leave on a sort of cliffhanger that feels jarring to the nth degree. I know we are beholden to the game here (I didn’t play TLOU 2), but something just didn’t click here. Here’s to hoping the next season brings us more of the greatness that was season 1.
Star Wars - Andor – Season review
Ok ok ok. Now this is what I want from a season of tv! Did Star Wars finally grow up? Take Rogue One, Andor seasons 1 and 2, you’ve got the best Star Wars trilogy since the OG one. It has taken them a long time, but I think now it finally shows that Star Wars can be great without falling back onto its original characters.
This season used tension masterfully, both throughout the season and within specific episodes as well. This is used to its best effect in episode 20, “Who Are You?”. Some characters meet their end here and some meet see their rebirth. It’s an excellent episode in a whole season full of them.
Love has no place in this rebellion and Cassian and Bix’s romance is not the only one to fall by the wayside on the road to freedom, Vel loses Cinta in a tragic friendly fire incident, Syril learns he is nothing but a blind cog in the Empire’s machine and Deedra knowingly used him. And finally the love of family suffers as well as we explore the father daughter relationship between Luthen Rael and Kleya Marki which ends in a tragic death. The rebellion succeeds only on the funeral pyre of love and death.
There’s so much more to this season. The spy games, the backstabbing and ladder climbing in the empire, the bureaucracy, Vel’s verbal beatdown of the poor soul who accidentally killed Vel, Saw Gerrara’s monologue in episode 5, Ben Mendelsohn interrogating Deedra. And the music! The soundtrack is simply amazing! Everything and I mean everything mattered in this season.
On a final note, and this is what I mean about Star Wars growing up, this series never got quippy. In episode 21 “Welcome to the Rebellion”, during the rescue of Mon Mothma, Cassian kills a rival spy. Mothma, in shock says, “you just killed that man” and Andor didn’t say anything. I feel like in any other Star Wars series there would’ve been some cool line here, but this series knows exactly what it is and it didn’t feel the need to put in unnecessarily quippy dialogue. I love it for this and so much more. I will miss these characters dearly, but I will rewatch all of this so I can bask in their memory and thank them for their sacrifices, albeit fictional ones.
Finally, (I know I already said on a final note, but it’s real this time), when reviewing media, I always think it’s important to note the time it was created. The fact that this series is showing up now, at a time when fascism has taken root throughout America, is one of the sharpest and clearest mirrors one can hold to the image of the USA today. We must do all we can to prevent the Empire from taking a further hold of America. We must take to heart the lessons this show is trying to teach us and we must not ignore the suffering of those next to us. If all we do is search the horizon for some image of hope and help it will not come, we must first look to the person next to us and ask “how can I help?”. And then we must look around once more and hopefully then we will see the boat that we are both standing in.
MOVIES
Freaky Tales - What’s this? This is fun! - This was an unexpected find and it was exactly the kind of carefree movie I was looking for at the time. Boasting some heavy hitters, like Pedro Pascal and Ben Mendelsohn I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I was rewarded with something that was some good lighthearted fun.
This movie consists of 4 loosely connected vignettes and boasts some heavy hitters like Pedro Pascal and Ben Mendelsohn. There’s a lot of other faces you'll recognize like Jay Ellis (Lawrence from Insecure), Dominique Thorn (Ririi from Black Panther and the upcoming Ironheart) and Angus Cloud from Euphoria who sadly passed away in 2023. There’s also a couple of really fun cameos to boot!
As with any movie consisting of vignettes your experience may vary. Fortunately here, even the stuff that’s just ok, is a lot of fun. The movie opens with “Strength in Numbers: The Gilman Fights Back.” about a group of punks banding together to protect their community from Nazi punks. It ends in an over the top fight sequence that is both cartoony and bloody.
Up next is “Don’t Fight the Feeling” about two young ladies who are in a rap duo called Danger Zone. This one, while a nice empowering feel good story, is probably the one I liked the least.
In the number 3 spot is “Born to Mack” starring Pedro Pascal. This short story shows that Pedro can make even the smallest of tales feel bigger. It’s a straightforward tale about a gangster trying to escape a life of crime, but somehow Pedro makes something watchable out of a paper thin story.
The directors, Anna Bodena and Ryan Fleck, saved the best for last with the ludicrously gloriously fun “The Legend of Sleepy Floyd.” This one took me right back to my childhood spent watching terrible ‘80s action flicks where the good guy pulverizes any bad guys in his way. It’s got samurai swords, kung fu tracksuits and gallons of blood! It’s a short simple revenge tale with some super fun kills. The violence here is way over the top and way fun.
Warfare - This is a war movie with no heroes. There are no big action set pieces. There is only tedium and terror and mishaps and damage and destruction. There is no mission here, just the insufferable rolling of the war machine.
Warfare, directed by Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland, is trying to do something different with a war movie. As said earlier, there are no heroes here, and there is no mission either. The events of the movie are largely mundane, soldiers take a house that is deemed necessary to take. Nevermind the family living there. Said soldiers then set up shop and… wait. For orders or for enemy soldiers or for some other thing we are never told what the mission is.
It’s hard not to see Warfare’s attempt at casting an unbiased eye on war, but it’s also hard not to see the admonishments as well. Soldiers both Iraqi and American are either killed or maimed. A rescue attempt goes horribly wrong, lives are risked to retrieve a sledgehammer, injured soldiers are tripped over. And we are never told what for. This to me is intentional and meant to show the fallacy of war. I left this movie feeling all kinds of ways, but mostly feeling sick about how the American war machine keeps on turning.
Thunderbolts*
Is Marvel back? I wouldn't go that far, I’ll wait until I see Fantastic Four to proclaim them back, but this is a helluva good start. Boasting a bunch of B team heroes with big name actors like Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan and David Harbour behind them, this movie brings some unexpected life back to the MCU.
Make no mistake this band of misfits is not saving the world per se, but they do save each other, (well we do lose one Thunderbolt early on, but man that was just too easy. I don’t believe they’re really dead though.) The story relies a lot, and smartly so on the fabulous Florence Pugh’s Yelena and her performance lifts this movie out of the swamps and into something highly watchable.
As the story moves along we find Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Valentine Allegra de Fontaine is still grating in the most fun of ways and she sends our heroes on a mission to cover her own ass. As you can expect, things quickly go wrong. After the Thunderbolts end up in the wrong place at the wrong time they meet a guy named Bob (Lewis Pullman). Soon enough Bob turns out to be a super powerful survivor of de Fontaines’s Sentry program. Bob is suffering from all sorts of trauma and his head can go a little haywire sometimes. When this happens it brings forth his Void alter ego and he slowly flies around the city turning people into dusty fart stains on the pavement. It’s a really cool and creepy effect.
And we all know what happens by now, the heroes win, but we don’t end up in some big CGI battle. Instead it’s a smaller battle inside the mind of Bob and our heroes have to deal with their own issues while helping Bob out with his. It’s all anchored by great performances and makes this movie well worth seeing.
In the end we also learn what that asterisk in the title of the movie means and while it’s not a big reveal it is a somewhat fun one. This movie seems to have righted the Marvel movie machine, but like I said, I’ll wait until Fantastic Four comes out to proclaim them great again.
Alas, that is all for this month. Short and sweet like my career in fistfighting. I will see you all next month with more than a mouthful of new media to belch unto you!