So after watching a handful of TV series last year, I debated as to how I should proceed with this year. Do I try to separate the shows from the movies, or keep it all together as one continuous series through out the year? I decided on the latter, so my Last Watched format will include both for the foreseeable future. As such, I plan on covering a pretty wide variety of shows and genres, but I think this will be simpler for me in the long run, instead of having to finagle a bunch of articles at the same time. So! Here's what I've been watching lately!
After enjoying the TV version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, I think I'm becoming a big of a fan of John Le Carre's work. A few years after adapting the first of the Karla trilogy, they brought back some of the cast, most importantly Alec Guiness, to adapt the third book, Smiley's People. While the show is mainly much of the same, this one does have a slightly different tone, making it a distinctly unique effort that brings the story to a bittersweet close.
Years later, after George Smiley had retired (again), one of his former underlings called The General caught wind of a big reveal, and in trying to find Smiley, gets killed in England. Smiley is brought in to try and wrap things up on the down-low, as his superiors don't want another scandal. However, as Smiley starts digging, he ends up finding the opportunity of a lifetime to finally bring his rivalry with Karla to an end.
While the first show focused very much on The Circus and its systems, with Smiley getting plenty of support, this one shows Smiley having to travel around on his own, and eventually getting to mainland Europe, following the clues he finds as he pieces together what The General discovered. He still has friends in various places, but this one definitely feels like a greater personal effort from our hero. As I wasn't familiar with the story at all, I will say that it was a little tougher to follow the trail of clues, as there were scenes that seemed to meander quite a bit. Still, Alec Guinness was golden as Smiley, showing a lot of subtlety in the character as he shifts between moods. He definitely gives the character a bit more of an emotional range this time around, which helps reflect the personal nature of the case. The rest of the cast is alright, with a few standout moments, and of course Patrick Stewart comes back as a very silent Karla, still stealing the scene without saying a word.
While I do think that Tinker has a better story, this one provides a good sense of closure with everything that was set up. I know there is supposed to be another book between the two stories, but they ended up not bothering to film it, as the cost of filming the scenes around the world would have been too expensive. Still, these two series are certainly hold together pretty well (though Smiley's People does have more explicit content, such as more profanity and a scene in a strip club that was a bit much). I can certainly see why these have been so critically well-received, as they retain the dry nature of Le Carre's work and provide some interesting insights into a world of deception and intrigue and how it affects those who have to live in it and with it.
Going from dry British spy thrillers to over-the-top superheroic melodrama might be quite the shift, but I suppose that's what these articles will be now. So, the awkward sequel to Black Panther, then.
Right off, let me be clear that I thought the first movie was just okay. It had some neat ideas and cool visuals, but the plot felt a little too predictable, and unfortunately, much of the same could be said of this one, except now so much of the appeal of the unique Wakandan setting has worn off, resulting in a movie that feels like it's just stumbling around. Of course, part of the blame can be placed at the feet of sheer circumstance: not only did the pandemic hit this movie and delay things, the death of Chadwick Boseman certainly sent this movie's existence reeling. It might have been understandable to just set it aside until later, but I guess Ryan Coogler had some ideas and decided to carry on anyway. Perhaps there is a logic in that, not only giving a nice timely tribute to Boseman, but also ripping off the bandaid of what was going to be kind of a mess anyway so that things can move on.
Despite coming back from Thanos's snap, T'Challa passes away, leaving Wakanda in a state of grief while dealing with the geopolitical difficulties of being the only place in the world that has vibranium. However, when a machine built by an American scientist finds another strain of the ore in the Atlantic Ocean, only for the crew to be strangely slaughtered, the world assumes Wakanda is behind the massacre. The remaining Queen Ramonda and Princess Shuri of Wakanda are then approached by Namor, claiming the attack on behalf of his underwater nation. He tries to get Wakanda on his side against the world, turning things into a game of diplomacy. Namor wants Wakanda to find the aforementioned scientist for him as an act of good faith, which turns out to be a young college girl named Riri Williams who also just happens to have built her own Iron-Man suit because why not? From there, things get out of control, and it becomes the quest of Princess Shuri to not only understand the stakes at hand, but also find a way through her grief.
If it feels like it's a bit much, it kind of is, especially when so much of it blows by so quickly. As usual, the visuals are pretty neat, not only giving us more shots of the Wakandan culture, but also showing Namor's world of Talokan as this complex underwater Mesoamerican society. However, the story really just kinda plods along, and while each beat is performed and shot well, I couldn't shake this feeling of knowing how each scene would play out as I watched it, resulting in very few surprises (though a certain cameo before the big showdown end was pretty wild). There are some interesting themes regarding grief, revenge, and legacy, but otherwise, I found the movie to be largely tedious, where the action scenes felt like a distraction from a story that was heavy in tone without really being more than just an exercise of going through some very tired motions.
That's not to say that I think the film is bad. The cast does a great job, even if Martin Freeman isn't really given much to do other than provide a confirmation of the global stakes at hand. Those looking forward to more of the first film will find plenty to be pleased with. However, if you weren't already invested in the characters and world of Wakanda, you'll probably find this as just another Marvel film, albeit one with a properly somber tone.
Yeah, I saw the dinosaur movie with Adam Driver. I wasn't exactly holding my breath for it, as I figured it would be a pretty shallow sci-fi yarn about a space traveler fighting dinosaurs, after watching the movie, I was left very befuddled by what I had seen.
Our lead plays Mills, a space pilot who takes a big transportation job to help pay for the medical bills of his daughter's poor health. However, while taking people in cryogenic pods elsewhere, his ship gets hit by an asteroid, and he lands on our planet, 65 million years ago, at the height of Cretaceous period. While he survives, his ship is torn in half, with the essential escape pod in the other half, several kilometers away. At first, he feels like just giving up, but when he discovers that one of the cryogenic pods survived as well, who turns out to be a young girl named Koa who speaks a completely different language. This gives Mills the motivation to survive and help this girl get off the planet, so they trek across the savage wilderness and through caves, dealing with a variety of dinosaurs and other natural hazards.
For what it's worth, the movie does some things pretty well. Most of the dinosaurs are pretty cool and feel like genuine threats, and the special effects, if rather sparse, are done well enough. While the movie does have to largely hang on Mills and Koa, they're a decent pair of characters, often having to pantomime to each other to communicate. However, there are some massive problems. I don't quite know what happened between the filming and the editing of the film, but there were multiple times where it felt like the narrative flow just didn't make sense, and the continuity between scenes felt lacking, causing a lot of confusion while watching it. There's a particular moment where it seems Mills is stuck, without much of a way out, but after he fights a dinosaur, he just seems to walk out of the situation without the movie explaining how he did so. The pacing is a mess as well. At first, the movie seems to be in a massive rush to get to the planet with the dinosaurs, but once there, it often has scenes where things slow down, trying to create an emotional scene or build up some tension in anticipation of a jump-scare, but it never seems to gel very well. Overall, I came away just confused, as if I only saw a rough cut of a movie instead of the full thing. Unless you're big on dinosaur movies, I don't really recommend this one.
Well, this turned out to be quite the mixed bag. Still, I think this will be easier for me going forward. And I plan to watch plenty more movies this Spring, so I'm sure I'll have plenty more of these Last Watched articles to write for this year. It looks like my blog will be a little busier than usual this year!
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