Medium Mashup

Category: Reviews

Reviews of Movies, TV, and Games

  • American Ultra Review

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    If American Ultra is a failure, then at least it’s a noble one. The film, starring Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart, is about a West Virginia stoner who finds himself the target of a CIA hit operation, suddenly able to fight and shoot guns and basically behave like an action-movie hero. Most notably, though, it is NOT a comedy. The storytelling is completely straight-faced, there’s great care put into the action sequences, it can be mercilessly violent at times, and the screenplay is genuinely interested in making us care about Mike (Eisenberg) and his girlfriend Phoebe’s (Stewart) relationship.

    The approach to take such a ridiculous concept and weigh it down with the central character’s fear, confusion, and relationship worries is certainly attention-grabbing, at least for a while. Eisenberg and Stewart are both great in their roles, sharing a strange chemistry that worked for them in Adventureland and continues to work here. Their performances and the movie’s undeniably-strong style make for a pretty engrossing first act, as we wonder what exactly the film intends on being.

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  • Daredevil Season 2 Review

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    Marvel’s Daredevil

    Despite their tonal differences, the first season of Daredevil had a lot in common with the original Iron Man movie. Both were entertaining and well-received, made the public-at-large care about long-ignored central characters, and opened the door for a whole cinematic or televised universe. I guess, then, that it’s not too surprising to see season 2 of Daredevil reflect so many of the flaws seen in Iron Man 2. Each sequel splinters its narrative in order to service the storylines of future movies/TV series’, and neither holds together particularly well as its own thing.

    The most problematic storyline in Daredevil’s second season is the rise of The Hand. No matter how big we’re told the stakes are, it’s simply hard to care about a clan of ninjas looking for a ‘weapon” called black sky that will give them unlimited power (or perhaps REAL Ultimate Power) The writers try to get our attention by tying in minor season 1 characters Stick and Nobu, but the whole thing just feels divorced from the world set up in the show’s first year. I’m sure that The Hand will play a big role in the Defenders series that will eventually premiere on Netflix, but they’re just not interesting here, and devoting the majority of this season to glorified foreshadowing was not the right call.

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  • The Visit Review

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    If there’s one thing that’s worn out its welcome in Hollywood, it’s the found-footage horror genre. If there’s another, it’s M. Night Shyamalan. The latter started out incredibly strong, with The Sixth Sense still being regarded as a classic, and fizzled out so spectacularly that he hasn’t directed a good movie since 2004 or 2002, depending on your thoughts on The Village (mine aren’t very positive).  So you can’t blame people for writing off Shyamalan’s return to horror, a found-footage horror/comedy about a couple of kids visiting their grandparents. But somehow 2015’s The Visit isn’t only Shyamalan’s best film in over a decade, it’s probably his best since The Sixth Sense.

    Maybe it was the low budget ($5 million, according to Box Office Mojo). Maybe it was the focus on family dynamics, which drove some of his best work in The Sixth Sense and Signs. But The Visit successfully operates on so many levels that it’s hard to see how the same man could have created a travesty like The Last Airbender.

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  • Better Call Saul Season 2 Review

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    There are two different moments in Better Call Saul’s second season in which a character defends Jimmy McGill to his brother Chuck while knowing that Jimmy i in the wrong. First, it’s Kim Wexler insisting that Jimmy did not alter the address of Chuck’s Mesa Verde documents, and then in the finale, it’s Chuck’s assistant Ernie claiming that he called Jimmy to help Chuck after his accident. In neither case is the audience actually told that the defending character knows what Jimmy is up to, but based solely on how well the characters are defined, we know that they’re aware. Beyond that, we understand why they lie. As sneaky as Jimmy is, and however unfair or illegal his methods, we know where he’s coming from, we like him, and it’s not at all surprising that the characters in the show feel the same way.

    Like Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul is sometimes subtle but rarely ambiguous. Vince Gilligan, Peter Gould, and the whole team of writers, directors, and editors are masters at getting complex characterizations across in the most direct (and often visual) ways. They use color, and montages, and careful scene construction to establish the tone of the show and the motivations of the characters.

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  • Quantum Break Review

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    Quantum Break is a highly-experimental, groundbreaking attempt to fuse the worlds of video games and television. It’s not the first time that some sort of synthesis was attempted; just three years ago Syfy and Trion Worlds tried a similar thing with TV show/video game project Defiance. However, Microsoft and Remedy Entertainment’s Quantum Break really goes all-in on the connection between the two by packaging them together and placing the episodes at particular points in the game’s narrative.

    The result is far more effective than I expected going in. While the episodes occasionally feature awkwardly-written dialogue and have trouble introducing the show’s central characters mid-narrative, later episodes are very engaging, and the production values and aesthetic are roughly what you would expect to see in a Fox TV show. The two mediums are used to inform each other in some really cool ways. While somebody could play the game without watching the episodes and still follow the events and character motivations, playing it with the episodes lends a lot of extra insight and depth to the proceedings. Certain moments are far more significant because of the background information gleaned from the TV show.

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