Better Man (2024)

SPOILERS BELOW

There might be some metaphorical reasoning behind portraying Williams as an anthropomorphised chimp in this - he's a performing monkey, an animal, a cheeky chap - or even pragmatism - it removes the distraction of using multiple actors and how much they each look like Williams - but I suspect the real reason is that they realised their script has no depth or subtlety and they needed to zhuzh it up a bit somehow. Making it into a jukebox musical of almost exclusively Williams' songs certainly doesn't help because, as this film lays embarrassingly bare for anyone who hadn't really been paying attention before now, they're all a bit samey and bland with painfully mundane lyrics and not really suitable to hang a story off.
The plot is pretty much 'witless mugging dickhead gets famous, does lots of drugs and upsets a few people, goes to rehab and fixes everything', there's really not much more to it than that. Any attempt at characterisation is delivered bluntly and repeatedly. Did you know that Robbie Williams only cares about getting attention and that he's sad his dad abandoned him? You will after two hours of being told that directly over and over again. "You're a nobody!" shouts a fellow player during a childhood game of backstreet football, like no ten year old did ever. "You're talentless!" shout his inner demons, who are also chimps and which he will literally struggle with in a big fight sequence then defeat at the end of the film by winning them round with a passable cover of My Way in a happy ending so cheesy and unearned I thought it was going to turn out to be an overdose hallucination.
Even when it pulls out the big guns and shows Williams accompanying his fiancée to an abortion clinic or contemplating a suicide attempt, it's difficult to care because it's all done via yet another heavy-handed fantasy sequence. Is this Robbie Williams holding a blade to his wrist, or is it a super-chimp in an apocalyptic snowscape?
In one particularly bad bit of writing, Williams says something like "Then there were the gay sex rumours. All the blokes I shagged said I was crap! I didn't mind that they said I shagged them. I just didn't like them telling people I was rubbish!" They take as many sentences to explain the tired old joke as they do to tell it. The film is as desperate for attention and undignified in its attempts to get it as Williams himself.
It lays its cards on the table in the final moment, as Robbie looks into the camera and says "yeah, I'm cabaret, but I'm fucking good cabaret. Fuck off." This is not bravura storytelling, this is the cinematic equivalent of William's appearance on Parkinson: artless noise in place of having anything interesting to say.

Rating: mugging and witless

Deep Cover (2025)

Some light chuckles, that's about it. It occasionally hits the sweet spot of making good on its premise but far too often characters are being either too incompetent or too competent, or it's taking up too much time with actual crime stuff and no jokes. And packed with Brit comedians (including three Taskmaster contestants - Nick Mohammed, Sophie Duker, Katie Wix - plus This Time's Susannah Fielding for good measure) but they all only show up for about two minutes each and don't have much to do.

Also, they make the utterly bizarre decision, in a movie about three actors pretending to be criminals, to include a pair of cops who act exactly like they're actors pretending to be cops but are actually just cops. I just had a look at the Wikipedia, and turns out they're played by the writers, so I guess they cared more about giving themselves roles than the movie working properly. Also pretty funny that one of their individual pages starts by saying that they were met with critical acclaim for Deep Cover, which is not something that any of the other massively-acclaimed actors have in their opening summary and has a whiff of the self-written. (The proof is that it got a 91% RT score which as we all know means fuck all, especially when you click through to the reviews and the positive ones are all just the faintest of praise.)

(Finally, this is a nitpick, but there's already a film called Deep Cover. It only came out in 1992. Pick another name! That's such a bland title and it doesn't even wholly reflect your premise!)

Rating: it's fine, but you'd be better off watching Galaxy Quest, Tropic Thunder or The Three Amigos again.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)

SPOILERS BELOW

The word I had in my mind when it finished was 'pleasant'. Which may feel a bit like damning with faint praise but is in fact just faint praise. Like, I enjoyed it the whole way through, and I probably liked it a bit more than Superman (2025). But that movie takes some big swings, this one just does exactly what you'd expect in a very competent way, less hyperactive way. It feels like the flipside of that movie - drops you in media res, lots of catch up to do, does what is needed to keep the cinematic universe on track (for DCU, a big bold explosive Everything Is Happening movie, for MCU a movie that feels a bit different to the others and is confident enough to not do much and just be well made - to not be Brave New World, basically). I liked the characters, I thought Galactus was cool and scary, I was invested in the drama, there was some good action and lots of delicious production design. And it's (unavoidably) unfair that the 60s setting and branding and all that may get dismissed as a good starting point that got fumbled, because it is a big strength of the movie and if some incredibly diligent spoiler-avoider went to see the new MCU movie and got hit with this, they'd be blown away by the audacity of setting it in the retro-futuristic 60s of a parallel Earth and the skill with which that is done.

Honestly, the one thing I felt it was missing was an early action set-piece where we get to see them use their powers and defeat some goofy Silver Age baddy without breaking a sweat, because it's pretty action and powers light. Wouldn't have minded them adding ten minutes to the movie to segue from the big intro montage into a fight against the Mole Man.

Rating: a competent, confident, pleasant watch

Superman (2025)

It's enjoyable, lots of fun ideas, a loathsome Luthor, lots of cheerworthy moments. But you do have to be in the mood for a Superman movie with big George Of The Jungle vibes that feels like a VFX showreel pretty much the whole way through. I was genuinely wondering throughout whether the projector set-up was correct because pretty much every single shot is a medium or close-up. And then on top of that the camera is constantly whipping and flipping, it's like one of those long choreographed GotG fights except for entire sections of the movie throughout.
Along with the 'not only are we going to skip the origin story, we're also going to drop you into this story in media res and have a bunch of other non-origin superheroes flying around too' approach, it did at times make me yearn for a bit of the old Donner pacing; this felt more like dropping into the middle of an anime show.
But I liked it more than any of the Snyders or the Singer and at least half of the Reeve movies, and it's probably what needed to be done to get this new DCEU going. I just hope any direct sequels are confident enough to take a breath every once in a while.

Rating: fun, but often hyperactive to a fault

Thunderbolts* (2025)

SPOILERS BELOW

Overall really enjoyed it! It has good writing and action and, like, actual characters. It makes the most of its dark hero/anti-hero/villain team-up concept, too: there's playful stuff like the moment where they're doing the standard 'all fighting each other due to misunderstanding' thing but because they're all Dark Characters a knife gets thrown at someone then caught out of the air three times in a row but also they don't pull their punches with the characters having done some shitty stuff as well as experienced it, and still being pretty messed up or just arseholes.
The banter's good and not just Marvel Quipping, the actors are good. Halfway through I was thinking "this is what the tv shows should have been like!"
There are some flaws - it loses energy once or twice, sometimes a bunch of the team fall out of focus for too long in a way that a Joss Whedon or James Gunn wouldn't allow, and while it's great that it has some themes they get extremely literal and blunt and not in quite an inventive enough way to push the climax over the top.
But I was still onboard by the end of the movie and I'd be happier to see more of the Thunderbolts than of the New Guardians Of The Galaxy, say.

Rating: has some issues, but overall very enjoyable and light on its feet.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993 - 1999)

Note: most of these are my posts copied over from a Star Trek group-watch going through the entire series in broadcast order, rather than properly written reviews.

DS9 S01E01&E02 'Emissary' Stardate 46379.1 Broadcast date 1993-01-03.
Wow, that pilot is a lot! There's so much stuff in there. A lot to like, too. Opening with the big action of Wolf 359 and also making it part of Sisko's backstory is a great idea. It's nice and crunchy to have a series crossover where the one lead can barely stand to be in the same room as the other. There's a ton of fun sci-fi concepts thrown in, like Odo, Dax and the wormhole inhabitants, and a bunch of fun characters introduced. The dialogue is a little pulpy and the acting is mostly naturalistic and earthy but with some Wild West and even Shakespearian tones thrown in here and there. And the concept of using a non-linear species to discuss grief is great. It's all directed and edited really nicely.
Probably the main negative to my mind, in fact, is that there's too much in there! It still feels like a show finding its feet, albeit more enthusiastically than TNG's beginnings. There's the Wild West vibe of a new sheriff arriving in town, meeting the locals and trying to clean things up, prophecies, a quest for a mystical MacGuffin, encountering a new species, and developing galactic politics. There's space battles and O'Brien kicking machinery to get it going, there's extended hallucinatory sequences. There are about ten different acting styles, most of them coming from Avery Brooks. It's a serialised show set on a space station and yet they're already off on missions, moving the station to a different location and introducing a second big local political football.
Basically, I enjoyed it, I think it's more successful than TNG's pilot, and I appreciate the energy, but also look forward to the show refining and controlling that energy a little more.

DS9 S01E03 'Past Prologue' Stardate Unknown Broadcast date 1993-01-10.
This one was okay. I do like the relatively complicated set-up of various factions all working their own angles, and the divided loyalties and priorities that Kira (and presumably others in the future) has to deal with. It didn't feel particularly deep or resonant here, but it's a good baseline to start from for a second episode. Also liked the Klingon sisters showing up, the doctor being a young naive dope rather than the usual worldly-wise grump/sage that we usually get, and the introduction of Garak who seems like a fun Varys-esque character.

DS9 S01E04 'A Man Alone' Stardate 46421.5 Broadcast date 1993-01-17.
I thought this one was really strong, a great mission statement of what this show can, or at least one mode of it. Winding between the multiple stories, with complex blocking and showy oners, overlapping them in the plot a little, showing the different styles of story that can co-exist like detective, domestic, romantic, and hinting at the continuing clash of cultures on the station.
Granted the detective story wasn't particularly deep or elaborate, but it was interesting enough and served well to highlight power structures and character histories. This episode made me more excited about the show's potential than Past Prologue did, certainly.

DS9 S01E05 'Babel' Stardate 46423.7 Broadcast date 1993-01-24.
I really liked the opening of this episode, O'Brien running around putting out fires and the station being in a state of unreliability that we're not used to after so much time spent on the Enterprise. There's in-built tension here before the plot even gets going. Then the idea of the rapid-onset aphasia is great. Though it's a shame they gave the game away so early with that shot of the doohickey in the replicator - why the hell did they make that choice?! It feels like the whole thing is set up to drop subtle but fair hints and then have a nice reveal when Odo catches Quark and works it out, but then they decided that audiences were too thick or impatient to wait fifteen minutes? Anyway, after that, I was looking forward to a Darmok style episode where the crew quickly fall victim to the virus and have to find non-verbal ways of communicating and solving the problem. Instead they all catch it very slowly and, conveniently, after providing their individual contribution to the solution, and then drop out of the story. The language aspect to the virus may as well not be included, they could just instantly fall unconscious for all the plot function they have once they become symptomatic. So yeah, a very slow investigation and a vague last-minute ticking clock didn't really stand up to my expectations.

DS9 S01E06 'Captive Pursuit' Stardate Unknown Broadcast date 1993-01-31.
I really enjoyed this one! It was a bit slow, but in a considered, purposeful way. I liked the Enemy Mine style growing friendship between O'Brien and Tosk (curiously similar reptilian alien name to Bossk!), the designs and culture of the new races, and just as I thought it was running out of steam, they had O'Brien come up with a smart solution. Guest actors were good, too.
I did think it was a little odd that they had that opening bit about Quark legally obligating his staff into sleeping with him only to not only immediately drop it but then have a couple of sympathetic comedy scenes with him. Stuff that didn't get thought about as much in early 90s tv, I guess.
It's funny that they've come up with this way to still have them encounter new species and have to think about the Prime Directive etc in the same way as the Enterprise shows - they just have the strange new worlds come to them via the wormhole!

DS9 S01E07 'Q-Less' Stardate 46531.2 Broadcast date 1993-02-07.
This is a rough one.  A complete waste of Q (I normally like his episodes and it was pretty cool to see him show up on DS9!) and aside from him a very dull and predictable episode. I think I liked Vash okay on TNG too, and she didn't get much to do here either.
The only good bit was the Promethean stone thing turning out to be an egg instead of just exploding. Even the "Picard never punched me!" scene was worse than I remember, because Q literally puts Sisko in a boxing ring with him and punches him several times. I expect Picard probably would have punched him at that point. I had it in my head as happening in Sisko's office, Q saying something particularly obnoxious and getting caught off-guard by a Sisko haymaker. (I probably was also picturing bald goatee Sisko!)
Also, I'm not sure why, but the SD/HD gap was much more noticeable this episode, it as pretty ugly. That opening scene especially felt like watching a contemporary episode of Neighbours.

DS9 S01E08 'Dax' Stardate 46910.1 Broadcast date 1993-02-14.
Just watched the cold open and uh oh ,think I'm starting to dislike Bashir. The 'hopeless romantic/gadabout' act is starting to curdle into creepy, and he was absolutely fucking useless in that fight. Almost knocked himself out against a wall by punching someone and then just stopped fighting because, what, he was so surprised that his opponent was a woman? It's the 24th fucking century, Julian!
Turned out to be a solid episode. Trials and hearings are always strong ground in Trek, and this one works nicely with the symbiotic nature of Trills giving it some unique things to argue about, and the different members of the crew going off to investigate different areas (even if really only Odo did much there). And wow, what a guest cast - Gregory Itzin, Fionnula Flannigan and Anne Haney, all doing good work. Oh, also cool to see DC Fontana get a credit on another Trek show!
Really the main drawback here was that it was fairly obvious what the truth was as soon as Enina confirmed that someone leaked the route - it's going to be someone we know about and that list is limited. Plus the overplayed sad look a few moments later when she hears Curzon Dax died makes it obvious that they were lovers, so Jadzia is keeping quiet to cover for her. Admittedly, though, I did guess that this meant Enina leaked the route, so I didn't get it 100% but then it's a bit weird that the general leaked his own route so I'm not surprised I didn't guess that. I suppose the implication is that he wanted them to pick him up so he could escape with them?
Also, might have been nice to get this episode after we'd gotten to know Jadzia a little better so we'd be invested despite her silence and we'd have experienced the quirks of Trill life directly a bit more.
Anyway, enjoyed it, and I continue to enjoy them experimenting with what this show can be. Feels like they have a LOST style approach at the moment - we have this ensemble of characters with different jobs, strengths etc, so at any time we can do a different genre of show.

DS9 S01E09 'The Passenger' Stardate Unknown Broadcast date 1993-02-21.
Unfortunately I spoiled myself on the reveal for this one, so I can't say how obvious I would have found it, but as a Child's Play fan I suspect I would have clocked immediately! Otherwise, it was okay but pretty slow. Kind of hard to find anything to say about it.
 I liked the opening scene with Bashir, where he was bragging and it clicked with me 'ohhh, they're writing him as an oblivious jackass', which they've been much closer to achieving than, I dunno, likable horndog. Maybe this is just what they're trying out with him this week, though. I also appreciated Siddig doing a different voice for the evil guy, because I often feel disappointed in body possession episodes of any show when the actor doesn't really change their speech patterns or posture or anything like that, but it just doesn't really work here because it's an 'impression' of a character we haven't met and basically all he does is put a pause between each word. I would have preferred if he stuck with the Voldemort whisper from when he grabbed Quark, I think!

DS9 S01E10 'Move Along Home' Stardate Unknown Broadcast date 1993-03-14.
I didn't like it that much. It has the seed of a good idea - they're trapped in the game figuring out riddles while Quark is also playing at a meta-level both using and resisting his gambler instincts to help them out. But it's all so overwrought and cheesy. There's a lot of over-acting in this show and it gets amplified here (mainly Siddig and Visitor), plus I hate it when an alien species is just some guy with awful facial hair and some doodles on his face. It's all a bit shallow, the connection between Quark's actions and the players' fates is ill-defined, and the threat is so vague as to be unconvincing.
Also, not particularly happy that Starfleet security officer is still around. I figured he was a one-and-done character. Feels like another Bashir right now.

DS9 S01E11 'The Nagus' Stardate Unknown Broadcast date 1993-03-21.
I found this one a bit slow, especially for the first two acts, and the Jake sub-plot is pretty flat and mostly serves to make Sisko look like a dick - angry at his son for no good reason, resigned to humans and Ferengi never getting along, and then acting all smug like he's had some big character growth moment when all he's done is spy on his son and see that he should have continued to trust him after all. The A-story does pick up once Quark gets named Grand Nagus, though, and it's fun to see more Ferengi culture. A bunch of great character actors brought in to play them all, too.

DS9 S01E12 'Vortex' Stardate Unknown Broadcast date 1993-04-18.
I found this one solid and satisfying if not particularly sophisticated in any way. The parts all work and fit together just fine, but agreed that it feels very tropey.
One subtlety I enjoyed, though, was how it can be easily inferred that Odo tarnished his honour by letting the two people go because between that and the emotional work required in taking on a surrogate daughter it was the lesser of two evils for him!

DS9 S01E13 'Battle Lines' Stardate Unknown Broadcast date 1993-04-25.
This episode is okay. Interesting concept, nicely placed as a reflection of Kira's internal struggles, but it's pretty slow and simplistic.
Funny to see Patricia Tallman again so soon after her TNG appearance!
Only Bashir would fix a computer and then say out loud to himself with no one else present, "Nice work Julian." What a prick.
From memory-alpha: "The necklace that Opaka gives O'Brien for Molly was not seen or mentioned in the series again." Booo, surely if you have a prophet give a gift to someone for no reason, you have that on the writer's room whiteboard until it's resolved! JMS would never let something like this happen. I just assumed the O'Briens would be taken hostage and saved by the necklace's religious significance to their captors or something like that.

DS9 S01E14 'The Storyteller' Stardate 46729.1 Broadcast date 1993-05-02.
Dreadful. I started skipping through for perhaps the first time since TOS (or maybe ever?). Two boys fight over a girl and an advanced outsider is worshipped as a god by a primitive tribe, two hoary old premises done in very dull and predictable ways with wonky acting from everyone involved. Except Kay E. Kuter, of course. And the Bashir-O'Brien arc, such as it is, is completely out of whack - at best, it can be summed up as 'O'Brien doesn't like Bashir, Bashir tries to make friends but eventually realises that actually he doesn't give a shit if O'Brien likes him or not'.
Apparently this was a repeatedly re-rejected TNG season 1 script. Explains a lot.

DS9 S01E15 'Progress' Stardate 46844.3 Broadcast date 1993-05-09.
A couple of interesting concepts, acted well, but both felt a little underdeveloped - the Jake/Nog one never really got past laying out its plot mechanics to make use of its comedic potential, and the Kira one never got messy enough. I did like that in the end she simply had to become the aggressive occupier, burning down Mullibok's homestead and relocating him by force, but she was so clearly painted as sympathetic that it didn't have a lot of impact. I think both of these could have benefited from getting an entire episode devoted to them. Hopefully the showrunners will realise soon that they can break the TNG rules a little more.

DS9 S01E16 'If Wishes Were Horses' Stardate 46853.2 Broadcast date 1993-05-16.
Painfully bad! A mix of Benny Hill level comedy and reams of meaningless tech gobbledegook, with a rubbish 'defeat the imaginary things by not believing in them' ending. Some of the worst Star Trek habits and tropes all thrown together.

DS9 S01E17 'The Forsaken' Stardate 46925.1 Broadcast date 1993-05-23.
I liked the Lwaxana/Odo plot. As formulaic as it was ('Lwaxana is annoying but then does something good at the end'), it worked, it was well-acted and the writing wasn't too overblown. I also liked the theme of attention (Odo and Bashir not wanting any, the non-organic lifeform wanting too much), and I thought the idea of that lifeform had a lot of potential for a fun, interesting story - an examination of the Starfleet engineers being so finely tuned to their ships and computers that they start to recognise moods and develop pseudo-relationships (or at least think they do). But unfortunately, it didn't really get taken advantage of - there was a lot of telling rather than showing in both that plot and the 'Bashir handles a situation well' one. We never see the computer trying to get attention, we never see Bashir handling the crisis. Again, it feels like the writers need to take advantage of their 20-episode seasons and delve into single plots more rather than cramming two or three of them in to a single episode (or just get good enough that they can manage the latter without compromising all the plots).
Funny how whenever I say the writers room should be trying to do something less, it turns out that they were specifically trying to do it more! Michael Piller, quoted on memory-alpha:
We were looking for A/B/C stories that gave us the opportunity to do lots of little stories in that same 'life on the space station' vein.

DS9 S01E18 'Dramatis Personae' Stardate 46922.3 Broadcast date 1993-05-30.
Ah, the old 'the crew get personality shifts' set-up, where the actors can all let loose a little. They are all great fun to watch here, but it's a strangely common mistake to do this kind of story too early in a show's run. It's a lot more effective once you've really got to know the characters, and we're only 18 episodes into a season that hasn't exactly delved deep into its main cast. Plus there's barely anything else going on here - as soon as Bashir starts acting weird, it's pretty easy to figure out 'everyone's getting turned against each other, probably due to something the Klingon brought over as he's one of only two new things on the station this episode and the ship already has a plot purpose whereas he doesn't, one character will realise and break the spell, probably Odo considering his sparkly head-fart, the obvious solution for him is to trick someone into finding the cure'. And that's, what, ten minutes in to the episode? The rest of it is just watching the cast chew the scenery.
Another issue with this episode is that El Fadil has been playing Bashir on and off as a psychopath anyway, so his character didn't really feel that different here.
Ira Steven Behr: "it was a third season show that we had the nerve to do in the first season. Anybody else would say 'You need to know the characters better before you twist them like this.' But seeing Kira come on to Dax – I don't care if it's first or third season, people are going to be interested in that!"
Good grief. The reason anybody else would say that is because it's true. Just write an 'everyone catches a sexy virus' story if that's what you're really invested in.

DS9 S01E19 'Duet' Stardate Unknown Broadcast date 1993-06-13.
Really powerful. Visitor is great, Yulin is incredible, and the messaging and tone is all on point without shying away from anything. Glad they got a strong, full-throated episode in before the end of the first season, a display of the show's potential that they haven't managed too often so far.

DS9 S01E20 'In the Hands of the Prophets' Stardate Unknown Broadcast date 1993-06-20.
Really enjoyed this one, a solid political thriller and a good way to wrap up the season. I wish I hadn't spoiled myself on the killer's identity by reading memory-alpha's continuity section on the previous episode, because I suspect I would have been none the wiser all the way up to the reveal. It would have been nice if their plans to establish her as a regular second-tier crewmember character had worked out, but still I think it works well. All the other detective mystery stuff is laid out nicely too. Louise Fletcher doesn't get to fully flex but she's still great at quietly terrifying. The only bum note for me really is the final action moment, where Sisko's plan is to simply shout "Noooo" and dive into the crowd. He doesn't alert anyone, or block the shot, or even get to Neela in time. It's even unclear as to why she misses. Are we supposed to infer that Sisko threw her aim off? Did she have last-minute reservations? Would have been nice if they could have spent a bit more time on that moment, seeing as it's the de facto big action climax of the season!
I only have vague impressions of the prophets stuff in this show, so I was glad to see here that, at least at the start, Sisko's involvement in the whole thing is a relatively grounded affair, basically a more sensible version of the 'being with advanced technology worshipped as a god by primitive tribe' trope.
One nice little touch I noticed - after the explosion of the school, you can see Morn in the crowd holding a jumja stick!
So, season 1 is over. I think overall it's about as successful as TNG S1. It has a few strong episodes and a lot of stinkers, it makes a little progress in figuring out what show it wants to be but not a lot, and there are some good characters right off the bat but some who are still barely sketched in.

DS9 S02E01 'The Homecoming (Part 1)' Stardate Unknown Broadcast date 1993-09-26.
Well, I think this is perhaps the first time that DS9 has been strikingly better than the TNG episode directly preceding or following it - compared to Descent this was a breath of fresh air! Good location shooting with some simple but satisfying action, a solid story with personal and political stakes, and intriguing arc developments. The Bajoran/Cardassian stuff just feels more... grown-up than that cowboys and indians stuff that TNG was just doing. And even the cliffhanger is a classy character-driven one rather than a goofy 'return of the moustache-twirling villain' reveal. It's great how suspicious I am that Cardassian Intelligence is behind everything and anything - did they let the earring get out intentionally? Are they behind The Circle? Are they cockblocking Jake?! (Okay, not that last one.)
A couple of great guest stars, too, plus Alaimo of course, and there's even a background crewmember with a funky undercut who might be my DS9 Jae counterpart.

DS9 S02E02 'The Circle (Part 2)' Stardate Unknown Broadcast date 1993-10-03.
Well, this one was a bit too grown-up! That is to say, it was very slow for the most part with a lot of political discussions delivered in a methodical, restrained way. It picked up a bit towards the end once Kira gets taken and we get revelations and reactions going on. Hopefully the next part of the story will continue at that slightly higher register!
Minor observations: I swear there's no consistency to Federation admirals' attitude to any given political situation except for taking the stance that causes most difficulty for our protagonists. Poor old Quark has been nothing but helpful this episode and doesn't even get a thank you!

DS9 S02E03 'The Siege (Part 3)' Stardate Unknown Broadcast date 1993-10-10.
A solid conclusion. Not particularly deep, and the victory perhaps felt a little too easily won, especially planetside, but overall it was pacy and satisfying.

DS9 S02E04 'Invasive Procedures' Stardate 47182.1 Broadcast date 1993-10-17.
This had a vaguely interesting set-up but it turned into just another hostage situation. Hopefully this series of events will change the Jadzia Dax character a little, because her 'serene monk' act is so boring. She's one of the characters I still feel I don't really know at all.
Plus, as pointed out on memory-alpha, it's another example of Quark doing something pretty heinous and not seeing any repercussions. I guess they just can't prove he did anything?

DS9 S02E05 'Cardassians' Stardate 47177.2 Broadcast date 1993-10-24.
Great episode! Politics, intrigue, personal drama and allegory all working together, no pat happy ending, and an impressive ensemble of regular, recurring and guest cast. It's good to see them not shy away from Miles having some unchecked biases that slip out when he's not consciously trying to be in diplomatic utopian Federation officer mode. I mostly find him a bit of a dull character, his interactions with Cardassians as a war veteran are when he gets interesting so hopefully the writers will use that as a springboard to continue rounding him out.
My only quibble really is a continuing one that Bashir seems to just fill any role going on the station - diplomat, detective, whatever. It's kinda sorta justified here by his friendship with Garak but it still feels odd when he's squeezing that gambler for info. It feels like the kind of thing that Odo or maybe Dax at a push should be doing, but I guess they've shot themselves in the foot here by making Odo too abrasive and Dax too passive to be applied in a variety of situations. I think this all ties in with the characterisation still not being there yet for a lot of the ensemble - they're not strong enough to only show up when they logically should and either make a splash with a single scene then duck out again or carry an entire episode. I never properly watched Deadwood, but I feel like that's probably a good comparison point for how DS9 could/should be handling things...

DS9 S02E06 'Melora' Stardate 47229.1 Broadcast date 1993-10-31.
What a half-baked episode. Bashir coming across as possibly more offputting than usual, infatuated by someone he's never met, but somehow managing to be even creepier than Geordi's usual MO because it centres around both exoticising/fetishing someone's disability fetish and wanting to 'fix' them. Melora herself has a pretty bland 'defensively proud disabled person' introduction and then a very simple arc of 'tries cure, decides against it'.
Lots of weird choices throughout, too. Melora saving the day on the runabout is framed as something only someone in her situation could have done, though anyone could have turned the gravity down and pushed themselves off a wall. It also would seem to be the perfect catalyst for her to make her decision not to finish the treatment, but she had already done that with the Little Mermaid conversation. Then her telling Bashir of her decision is played as if she's breaking up with him, like it's the only thing he cared about.  And finally, Bashir acting like experiencing a low-gravity environment is a wondrous thing he never thought possible. "You let me fly!" Mate, just go play some low-grav program in a holodeck or take a runabout out and turn the gravity down.
I did like the dig at the silly sci-fi set design - "what kind of architect puts a two-inch lip around all the doorways?!"

DS9 S02E07 'Rules of Acquisition' Stardate Unknown Broadcast date 1993-11-07.
I liked this episode, but I actually felt like it could have done with being a two-parter, all the elements got a little short-changed - the romance, the gender politics, the intrigue, the Dominion - so the episode ended up feeling a little rushed and shallow.
It's also odd how they seem committed to making the Ferengi less likable as they reveal more about them. Just having a character tell us that 'hey, yeah, they're awful, but they're fun' isn't really very convincing, especially when that character is groovy funky hippy-dippy Dax. At least they introduced the misogynist social structure via a character pushing against it, I guess. So perhaps the gameplan is not to reveal the hidden complexities of Ferengi as we learn more about them, but to show them actively evolving as the show goes on? I can only hope.
I actually barely know anything about the Dominion except they're going to be a big part of the show, but it's a nice touch to sneak the first mention of them in via a Ferengi expansion story. Also, I liked the design of the Dosi, and it was cool to see Brian Thompson!

DS9 S02E08 'Necessary Evil' Stardate 47282.5 Broadcast date 1993-11-14.
An excellent episode! So much great stuff going on, all tied in to an enthralling mystery. The noir opening, Odo's begrudging narration, the Rom/Quark comedy stuff, the nifty segues between current day and flashbacks, the glimpses of a Cardassian-controlled DS9 (or whatever it was called back then), more in-person Gul Dukat, a deepening of Kira and Odo's relationship as well as their individual character histories (love seeing a more submissive Odo come into his own as he gets into the investigation). Also, really liked the fun little nods to detective fiction with the good cop/bad cop scene (love that we've now got to a point beyond the cops discussing the technique beforehand and even the interrogatee recognising it and saying it won't work on them, where we can just recognise it for ourselves and see it work without being noted), and the Columbo "one more thing" move that Odo pulls. And an ambiguous/downbeat ending!
Now the show just needs to do a few more of these for the other ensemble characters and we'll be getting somewhere...

DS9 S02E09 'Second Sight' Stardate 47329.4 Broadcast date 1993-11-21.
Thought this one was a bit dull for the most part - the last five minutes may have been rushed but they were also pretty much the only bit where anything happened! Gideon was kind of fun but also kind of irritating. Bit of a Lwaxana.

DS9 S02E10 'Sanctuary' Stardate 47391.2 Broadcast date 1993-11-28.
I found it interesting as a 'failed diplomacy' story. Just, the best will on both sides for the most part, friendships being made, and then everything goes to shit and everyone leaves unhappy. Did kind of feel like the set-up for a serialised storyline with more meat to it, though, with the Skrreea forced to stay on the station for a prolonged period while negotiating with Bajor, but I know the showrunners were already fighting to include any serialisation as it was.
I did think to myself 'farmers could help with famine!' and also wonder if a solution could have been to let a few thousand settle on those plains and see if they can get something up and running, then bring more in for expansion if they do. In the meantime send the rest to that other planet with a bit of hope.
I liked the stuff with the universal translator taking a while. There was an episode a while back where it worked instantly for a species they'd never spoken a word to before, and I thought at the time it would have been good to have at least a couple of sentences come out in alien then for the UT to figure it out and kick in. Otherwise we have to assume it's accessing the new ship's logs or communications or something!
It also made me wonder - how is it that sometimes a character like the Klingon chef can speak in Klingon without Bashir understanding him? I guess some sort of tortuous explanation has probably been given for that somewhere by now!

DS9 S02E11 'Rivals' Stardate Unknown Broadcast date 1994-01-02.
Oof, terrible episode, just absolute filler. Directionless, nonsensical, boring, predictable.

group-watch in progress

Previous watch through notes:

Just watched the opening scene of DS9 and it was brilliant! A cool idea and a dramatic start to the series, the visual effect shots are a lot more dynamic and integrated (something that started happening towards the end of TNG - an example that caught my eye was Yar and Picard approaching the Enterprise in All Good Things), and it's very energetically directed.

the DS9 intro does reflect the series, i.e. BORING. I'm about to move onto season 3, hopefully it'll start picking up.

I did enjoy the Kafka-esque elements of Tribunal. It got a little slow in the second half, and O'Brien didn't have quite the same gravitas as Picard in his "four lights" episode, but overall it was pretty cool.

am on S4. DS9 is finally starting to get bearable (the changelings tend to perk everything up a bit, especially as they introduce the ever-reliable The Thing plot-mechanics, and Sisko definitely improves along with his hair stylings)

I'm giving up on DS9. Perhaps it's because I'm not watching the whole thing, but I'm at season 5 and even the cherry-picked episodes are nothing special. So I ended on a high note with the excellent "Trials And Tribble-ations" (it's a shame that Tribbles didn't become more of a tradition - TOS, TAS and DS9 got them, would have been nice for TNG, Voyager and Enterprise to get them too).

I enjoyed the three remaining DS9 eps that I watched - the Klingon one ("Soldiers of the Empire"?), Far Beyond the Stars and In the Pale Moonlight.

Just watched the end of DS9. As someone who has barely been watching it, that seemed like some pretty goofy, cheesy shit! First the Republic Serial stuff with Sisko and the prophet god dude, then all those badly-put-together flashback sequences! Also, that final shot tracking away from the window seemed really off-scale. But really, as I say, it didn't mean much to me as I haven't been invested in this series.

Conclave (2024)

SPOILERS BELOW

Looks and sounds lovely, lots of strong performances, but it inexplicably gives up at the end. Turns out the obviously corrupt guy probably did all the corrupt stuff (though he denies it and we never get full closure on that), the obviously awful guy is so awful he wants to start a war against Islam, and the lovely charity in war-torn countries guy is really lovely. But then a twist! The lovely guy is so lovely that he's intersex. The end. Why spend the whole movie acting like a mystery thriller and then not give it a proper ending? Why didn't we ever meet the mysterious Morales, why didn't it turn out the pope was murdered, why didn't we at least get a confession? It's so utterly unsatisfying, which I wouldn't mind so much if the underneath all the lovely dressing the film was anything other than 'detective story in the Vatican'.

Rating: lovely presentation, letdown of an ending.

Here (2024)

And I thought Nickel Boys' central conceit was distancing...

This just does not work. It's like a combination of a John Lewis Christmas ad and a flashback episode from a show like Lost where they use shorthand to show you all a character's important life events, but it goes on for 100 minutes. The frame-in-frame mechanic is the least imaginative transition method they could have come up with, and it feels so stiff, just like everything else in the movie - the acting (especially but not exclusively when via CG de-aging), the blocking where everyone steps perfectly into frame for their big speeches, the dialogue where historical echoes and period-establishing elements and hints at future illnesses are delivered with all the subtlety of a cheap animatronic park ride, and the centuries-old exterior settings feel about as real as a school play backdrop.

I can imagine a version of this that might have worked, if the transitions were more inventive, the dramatic moments smaller, the staging messier, the Forrest Gump of it all reduced. But alas.

Also, they should have left that tidal wave in.

Rating: stiff, cheesy, shallow.

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025)

SPOILERS BELOW

Bit of a disappointment after the high standards of so many previous ones. It's all very 'this might be the last one, global stakes' portentous and slow, it doesn't keep a light touch while maintaining the stakes and not winking at camera, unlike the best of them. There aren't any classic M:I heists or anything like that, and the action scenes weren't that thrilling; it's weird, this one felt more like it was COVID-affected than the last one did.
I didn't even really care about Luther dying, it just felt so rushed and perfunctory - why was he ill, how did Gabriel find him? Speaking of which, we never really found out the deal with Gabriel and Ethan's backstory, never got a proper confrontation between them. And the Entity doesn't have a personality so that can't really be the baddy either. Not that an M:I film needs one - Ghost Protocol did fine - but it helps! And all the 'Ethan must reckon with all his mistakes, This Is His Final Reckoning' stuff didn't work either - the Jim Phelps thing was so gratuitous, why should Ethan feel like he needs redemption on that front? And then the guy is like, I don't care about what happened with my father, I just think you're a maverick. And then there's Donlowe - I really liked them bringing him back and keeping him as part of the team, that was great, but of all the things Ethan has to atone for, it's getting this office drone reassigned? And then they contrive it so he did the guy a big favour! The whole thing just felt a bit rushed and unpolished, I think they really got a little high on their own supply and bit off more than they could chew with these last two entries.

Rating: It's okay, but I think probably my least favourite of all of them. I'd probably rather rewatch MI2 again than this one because as cheesy as it is, at least it's an hour shorter and it's got some proper action in it.

Rick & Morty (2013 - )

note: pulled from Discord posts, so the first three seasons don't get discussed week by week and some episodes get missed (which probably meant they were mediocre!). Probably some spoilers.

S01-S03 - Great!

S04
2&3 - The worst of the entire series so far, just really poor. I'm going to be severely disappointed if getting such a large episode order on one go means that they don't bother pushing themselves any more and take a Simpsons-style dive into lazy mediocrity.
4 - Terrible.
5 - A return to form. It's not a groundbreaking classic or anything, but it was funny and light on its feet.
6 - Great! Such a relief for the ratio to be going back up.
7 - Not awful but not particularly good either. Bit of a confused, unimaginative mess.
8 - Okay. Some funny stuff, wraps up a bit lazily. This seems to be the new standard - season 1 level laughs and ideas, but a little less care taken over it.
9 - The beginning and end were a little sweaty, but the middle section was great. It does still feel like the writers have got a bit lazy - there's stuff that definitely could have used more work.
10 - Proper good! Clever, funny, exciting, fast-paced, pulling off satisfying lore updates while simultaneously poking fun at them. Not in the top ten or anything, but not in the bottom ten either. Probably my only niggle is that they didn't add anything new to the ||'sad Rick ending'|| trope so it felt a little pat.

S05
1 - Okay. Not great, not awful. Felt a little derivative of previous episodes.
2 - I did enjoy it, and at times it felt quite fresh, but then other times it would hew too close to something from a previous episode and it would suddenly taint the whole thing. Plus I'd be thinking 'now I'm not going to be as excited if they do another Council of Ricks/Evil Morty' episode because they've done so many slightly-adjusted copies of it now.
As I wrote that, I suddenly realised that this episode is probably a metaphor for how they realise they're writing the same thing over and over and the episodes gradually turn into 'slightly worse copies' as it goes on :(
3 - Felt again like a remix of old stuff, along with whatever random ideas they had floating around, rote edgelord stuff, and a straight-up rip-off of the Funny Or Die Captain Planet videos. It wasn't as bad as that dragons/cat episode, but it was getting close.
4 - I was quite enjoying it at the start, felt like a fun low-stakes romp. But it kept getting worse as it went. I swear the show never leant on meta humour, pop culture references or 'lol random' stuff this much before. It's actually starting to remind me of Family Guy. I'm kind of scared to go back and watch the first three seasons now, in case it was always this bad and I just never noticed because it wasn't done so clumsily/lazily.
5 - Really good!
6 - Quite fun, but it ran out of steam a little in the second half.
7 - Mediocre at best
8 -  Really good! I think it's only one of two this season I've actually enjoyed (along with ep 5), and certainly the only one that's felt up to S1-3 standards.
9 - I enjoyed the Morty story, but the Rick one felt pretty rushed and flimsy. And the ending just had no emotional heft. As we've said previously, this show really needs to change or expand or something, and I guess they're not going to because they have this safety net of the 70(?)-episode commission or because vocal fans turned them off it or whatever.
10 - Watched the second one. For the first half I was like 'Jesus, this is weak. Another full-blown anime pastiche?' Then they just did a sharp turn into a Citadel episode halfway through, which was a fun twist, and it actually felt like they were trying again. The problem is, I could barely follow the serialised stuff! I don't know if that's because I'm not smart enough or I haven't been poring over wikis and fan theories, or if it's because they didn't do  good job. But it didn't really feel like it did anything new with the character arcs either - I liked the whole 'I'm only Evil Morty because I'm sick of him' thing, but it doesn't say anything about the Rick-Morty dynamic that the first Evil Morty episode didn't say. I wish they'd spent two episodes on this instead of mostly doing the crow shit. They even could have tied it in loosely with the Birdperson stuff. Oh well, if I ever do a R&M rewatch again I'll be skipping a lot of 4 and 5 but this one at least makes it onto the list, I think.
Okay, just looked at some story discussion, and these are two things I didn't fully grasp from the episode:
a) The Ricks specifically bred Morty to be the perfect sidekick by hooking their daughter up with some loser with the right DNA, i.e. Jerry. (I initially thought this was happening under evil Morty's rule.)
b) The reason all the universes have a super-smart Rick is that he’s walled off those universes, and has been visiting only a small (but still infinite) part of the multiverse in which he dominates – the central finite curve.
I think that was all told in a pretty muddled way, and also I thought there was a line there about how Rick created the Citadel, but it turns out his wife was killed by a Citadel guy? So what's up with that?

S06
1 - Enjoyed it! It was basically a lot of plot tidy-up but it was funny and interesting, and not lazy in a way they could have got away with. It probably worked a lot better with me having done a rewatch of the first three seasons plus the good episodes from the next two.
2 - It was okay. The Roy thing was a really interesting idea but didn't really develop into anything after the first half, and the Die Hard stuff was pretty uninventive. It's not like I mind them riffing on stuff - the Inception/Nightmare On Elm Street mash-up is still great - but when it's like this or the whole 'two crows anime pastiche' thing, it's just so 'South Park did this fifteen years ago'.
3 -  I don't mind them doing a slow character-based episode, but it wasn't particularly funny or inventive (shagging your own clone is like plot device 3 in a clone story).
4 - Really enjoyed it! Strong premise, well done. Not laugh out loud funny, and it even has a couple of Futurama moments (dynamite museum, ugh, funny Jewish stereotype robot, what the hell was that? I feel like I was missing some reference there, but still, eesh), but overall very enjoyable.
5 - Enjoyed it. There were a couple of elements that didn't really work, but mostly very funny and cool.
6 -  Bad. Just disjointed and tired and unoriginal and not funny at all. Utterly bland autopilot episode.
7 - Okay, but a less funny rerun of the story train ep.
8 - Pretty good, a funny metaphor for toxic online discourse.
9 - Mediocre at best. Total autopilot.
10 - This show is so tired. It's just 100% recycled bits.

S07
1 - I don't think it was in the five worst episodes or anything, but only because of its lack of ambition. It was like a better-written episode of Family Guy. Turns out the new voices are more convincing than the new writing.
2 - A little better just by dint of having a story idea and being a little less lazy, but also just felt like reheated elements of previous episodes while not fully examining its own premise.
The whole show needs some kind of shake-up. The 70-episode commission didn't do it, Roiland leaving didn't do it, maybe if Harmon leaves too that will do it? I guess the issue is that because it's animation, there are no enforced changes. Roles can be recast, characters are much less affected by their actors aging or having other life issues, locations never become unavailable, budget doesn't have as much effect. Simpsons at least had show-runner changes, though - R&M hasn't even had that.
Community losing Harmon for a year and having an awful season, then losing half of its main cast in quick succession probably led to a much better two seasons than if everyone had just stayed put for season 4.
3 - Dull. Doesn't do anything new with the Unity concept, relies mostly on dialogue being read out very fast rather than actually being clever and funny.
4 - Best one in ages. Probably better than the weakest S1-3 episodes. (Can't believe they went to the 'watch someone's whole life in a montage' well again but it was at least a good version of it.)
5 - This was okay, the fight and action choreography was fun and Evil Morty still works well as a character, but as a 'continuity' episode it felt perfunctory. There was nothing to it except moving the continuity on a step. I used to get very excited when these episodes came up but now it just feels like wiki fodder.
6 - Great! Good old taking a fun concept and squeezing it for all it's worth and writing good jokes instead of just making everyone talk real fast. Also, I genuinely forgot Roiland was gone until after I finished watching. (One could argue that the fake clip show format is something they've done a bunch before and is maybe easier to write than a full story but hey it shows they can still do some stuff well.)
7- So bland, felt like an AI wrote it. And almost every single joke had a line of dialogue explaining it directly after. Wondering if that 'rich dickheads thinking 69 is funny' bit was a jab at Musk, though. If so, either it got snuck past Harmon or he's finally come around on 'Musk is a useless tool'.
8 - Bad. Taking something that worked great as a post-credits gag and stretching it out over a whole episode without any extra layers to it. (I did like the post-credits scene to this one, though. Probably bodes poorly for about three seasons' time...)
9 - Another bland one, with some story stuff that didn't really track or at least was muddy. Also another example of the references getting lazier, just like naming and showing the actual thing (here Pokéballs and Pokémon) and that's it.
10 - Pretty good! The 'conquer your fear' mechanic didn't always make complete sense, which it didn't need to have done by the end but was a little distracting in the moment. And wow yet another 'live a whole life' sequence though at least it was quick. But overall interesting and fun.

S08
1 - mixed bag. The 'Summer and Morty have scarred middle-aged minds now' thing works really well, but it all devolves into the usual 'whole life montage'/world where everything revolves around one thing/wacky extreme action stuff, which is fine but directionless.
2 - Fine but very watered-down. It's essentially a standard sci-fi action story with a ton of lazy lampshading and Futurama-level 'comedy bad guy' stuff slathered on top. They can't even get their post-modern riffing right the whole time, they misuse 'foreshadowing' and mix up their unlikely ally tropes. The one smart thing they do is an idea I've had in my back-pocket for ages ('successful heist plan narration continues over the actual heist going tits-up') so even that was a bit annoying!
3 - So, another kind of story they can't do well anymore, the 'serialised side-story without R&M prime'. There was nothing really interesting, funny or satisfying about this one, it was just 'more Ricks and Morties fight'. It didn't really take advantage of the fact that it was all clones with their own stereotypical identities, it didn't move anything on, and there's a weird incongruence where they remind the viewer that all the non-clone Ricks and Morties got pulled back to their own dimensions but then there's a non-clone Rick here with no explanation. There's probably some way it makes sense, but for a show that complains a lot about doing serialised episodes, it sure made its own lore irritatingly complicated.
4 - Some fun ideas, but the lore was just too stuffed full. I know that was the joke, but it still meant that there wasn't any space for actual jokes (outside of 'puke is funny' and 'sex is funny', and if you're too scared to show sex or even nudity uncensored then don't try to make comedy out of showing it). Then there was the weird epilogue with Summer which was also overstuffed with lore, and perhaps that was supposed to be playing on the theme, but it didn't make sense (why has spring break gone on for so long and turned into its own hierarchical society just because Summer has a high drug threshold now?) and again didn't really have any space for jokes. R&M at its height would have just enough moment to moment story information to force you to pay attention but not so much that you couldn't keep up without focusing on anything else or that it stopped feeling like a comedy. It felt smart, but now it feels like they've read that 'you have to be smart to understand R&M' meme and actually found it inspirational.
5 - Mediocre. Picked up a bit with the Mad Mad Mad World stuff, wish they'd gone with that a bit more and actually put some mini-arcs in there and stuff. Otherwise, same old same old. Didn't feel overstuffed, but the jokes weren't that funny and the ideas were pretty bland.
6 - Okay! There were some fun ideas in both stories, and nothing too obnoxious or tired (though obviously we've done de-aging before). It all felt pretty aimless and lightweight, but it was a perfectly pleasant watch.
7 - Some fun stuff, but it did feel like the story train episode mixed with the Numericons (and also that one Black Mirror episode, though that's not their fault and presumably really bummed them out when it premiered) and so many of the post-modern jokes were over-explained or not quite sharp enough. (To just pick a few examples off the top of my head: the grate should not have faded in like magic, it should have been so flush to the floor that it wasn't noticeable until it opened; the line "I literally wrote us into a corner" shouldn't have "literally" in there nor be its own entire comedy beat; the guy with the sports car shouldn't say he forgot how to drive, he should kick a dog or reveal himself to be a paedophile so the theoretical audience doesn't feel bad when he gets hit by the bus.) It was fun to have Snyder and Gunn show up and have some actual comedy acting to do, though it still felt really stilted a lot of the time, and only occasionally in a post-modern intentional way (which still feels like a lack of confidence and serves the episode less well than fixing the problem).
8 - Pretty good! It felt like something they hadn't really done before (what if some Jerries were pro-active enough to not just get stuck in Jerry daycare, and they had their own Rick style social dynamics), there were some good jokes, it wasn't over-stuffed or too try-hard or lazy or anything. It didn't get out of third gear at any point, so I can't really put it up there with S1-3 or the two good episodes of each subsequent season, but it was a fun watch.
9 - Filler. A couple of okay story ideas raced through with overloaded shout-don't-show plotting rather than anything particularly funny or interesting.
10 - Pretty good! Probably the best of the season, a smart Kaufmanny/Nolanny story with no gratuitous bullshit in it. Only drawbacks are a) very little comedy, which would be fine -even good - for them to do occasionally, if it weren't for the fact that the comedy episodes comprising the rest of the season were mostly unfunny and b) the whole 'multiple versions of a character' thing is so tired now, especially when there are two of them in the main cast - the show needs to do a moratorium on it for a while, get back to Cronenbergs and bug cops and bird people (not literally, just that kind of thing, as bringing back old characters is getting dangerously regular and low-rewarding).
So yeah, this is the first season ever to not have a single episode in it up to S1-3 standards.

Cruella (2021)

It's actually pretty good! It's a bit too long and leans a bit too heavily on needle drops, but it looks great, it's really well directed, all the performances are fun. If all the Disney live-action remakes/prequels were as good as this or Pete's Dragon, I don't think people would be complaining about them half so much.

Rating: pretty good

The Monkey (2025)

SPOILERS BELOW

A too self-conscious Final Destination/Wishmaster mash-up.

It applies zaniness unilaterally, which just dampens the effect overall - if you have a toy monkey killing people in bizarre ways and a guy who starts worshipping it, you don't also need to make the local priest really insensitive at funeral speeches and the adoptive parents swingers (they mention this in a single line of dialogue, it doesn't come into play at all) and the new partner of the lead's ex a weirdo self-help guide writer played by Elijah Wood (especially when he's only in the movie for two minutes).

The story doesn't really kick in until very late on (basically when we learn what the bad twin has been up to) and there are some holes there too. Like, why did the aunt die if the brother hadn't retrieved the monkey yet but still had the key? Did the monkey just decide to show back up again and did it have one more bang of the drum left to use? Do the rules, which the movie seems to care a lot about, not actually matter? The movie simultaneously wants to be meticulously constructed and gonzo, and the two instincts clash.

It reminds me of a Chris Carter-penned comedy X Files episode, where he's trying to emulate Darin Morgan but doesn't have the comedic restraint and tonal control.

Rating: Kind of fun but a bit of a mess.

Flow (2024)

While it's a really chill watch full of strong animation, nice visuals, cool moments and adorable animals, there's not really any plot and it ends up feeling like watching someone play an incredibly impressive 80 minute videogame 'tram ride'. Also, while the world is intriguing - I wanted to go visit that windmill, work out what that key was for etc - it didn't feel hugely imaginative, it was pretty much South America jungle/temple setting with a +10% fantasy bump. So I would recommend it but I think it got a more enthusiastic response than it perhaps deserved, at least online, due to being not just  another Dreamworks snarkfest and to centring around a cat.

Rating: lovely but shallow

Love Hurts (2025)

Doesn't hit 80 minutes before credits roll and it's still too long.
The script is just one huge convoluted backstory being endlessly exposed via terrible clunky dialogue. There's so much of it that the film is covered in jarring ADR.

The fight scenes are technically impressive but overly choreographed and sterile with the actors doing a lot of the melee work but at the cost of seeming to have most of their focus on counting through the beats, barely making eye contact never mind actual facial expressions. There's no emotion or impact to it, so the viewer is left counting the beats too - a few melee moves, cut to stunt performer for wirework, cut to actor for ill-matched reaction close-up, Jackie Chan comedy moment, repeat.

I have a lot of goodwill for Ke Huy Quan, and maybe with a good script he would have shone, but he shows limited range here and this dud may well mark an end to his recent career blow-up. To be fair, no one gives a particular good performance, so it's likely not his fault.

Rating: terrible

Another Simple Favor (2025)

SPOILERS BELOW

Probably a little bit worse than the first one, as it throws more pointless stuff into the mix.

Otherwise it pretty much has the same issues. Firstly, the twists are obvious. Mention that stillborn triplet Charity was burned dropped into the conversation apropos of nothing? Clearly still alive, and we see a photo ostensibly of her sister scheming with the aunt but can't see her face so obviously that's actually Charity and she and the aunt are working together. (This is particularly weird, as they are identical and so hiding her face is completely pointless.) The rival mob boss of equal age and sexiness to his counterpart cries when the latter is killed? Clearly they're secret gay lovers. (This never has any effect on the story?) The kid is flying a drone with a camera around the whole time? Clearly that's going to be revealed to have recorded some evidence at some point, livestreamed a confession or whatever... well no, actually, they don't do anything that integrated with it, it just flies into someone's face during a fight scene. And that's about it for the twists through the whole story - turns out it wasn't the serial murderer doing the murders this time, it was her identical twin. Though this doesn't really make any functional difference either except to allow for the thriller-y second half to happen. Maybe one of these pointless extra details will get used in the next movie (which they awkwardly line up in a final scene), as the mention of a dead triplet in the first one did here (according to Feig the detail was not an intentional set-up and it took them a few drafts of the sequel before realising they should use it - it's a smart move, though one ruined by the loud signposting), like the FBI agent who is utterly useless and about whom the detective tries to tell Stephanie something but gets cut off and then is promptly killed having added nothing to the story.
And yes, that is the second repeated issue - the mystery is essentially tied up halfway through the movie.

The third issue, Kendrick being a dull lead, is one they try to fix by saying that she's toughened up now, but it is painfully awkward watching her aim for a Kristen Bell level of sass and landing on third-rate mean girl. The only time it ever works is when Stephanie is given sodium pentothal - perhaps they should have had her high through the whole movie. But sadly they don't commit to it so she spends the movie moving between original milquetoast mode and vague Karen energy. And as in the first movie, the nicey-nice /straitlaced protagonist concept isn't done in an interesting funny way as with, say, Hot Fuzz or Elsbeth.  I don't think most of this is Kendrick's fault, she's given bad dialogue to work with, but she isn't able to somehow spin gold out of it. And once again, the film has a bunch of good actors given fun characters but very little to do with them. At first I thought that having everyone on a small island this time would allow them to get more time and to intermingle, to interact with the plot, but no.

Sidenote: The movie's big creative swing, having Lively play two sisters in a scene where one roofies and then molests the other, is technically impressive but a tonal disaster.

Rating: Not good. All the issues of the first one, a little more cluttered, and Lively is less fun.

A Simple Favor (2018)

SPOILERS BELOW

This was just about okay. The performances are good to solid (Lively and Friend stand out) and it looks pleasant enough.

The mystery is mildly intriguing, though I was ahead of it on most stuff to the point where I wasn't sure if these things were supposed to be obvious. If you're going to have a kid in the first scene of the movie say while playing with toys "I'm not dead, I came back to life" with very clear enunciation and audio mixing, I'm going to assume that's happening at some point; if you have the victim receive a weird looking photo of themself with "got to have FAITH" written on it, I'm going to assume they have an identical twin called Faith and that's who the body was and so the 'victim' will come back to life. I'm not great at solving mysteries ahead of time and I mostly don't even try to, so if I'm this far ahead of a mystery then I assume it's too obvious. Plus, identical twins is a pretty cheap move.

The big problem is that it reveals most of this around halfway through the movie and the rest of the time is spent on drip-feeding the few remaining details, and a simplistic cat and mouse game, so it's no longer really a mystery, it's just a very tame thriller. Neither half is helped by the decision to have the protagonist be a milquetoast pushover as the lead. Kendrick is good at this, as always, but she never gets to let loose so there's nothing new for anyone familiar with her and the movie never gets out of third gear. The script gives her a dark backstory, perhaps to compensate, but outside of one momentary slip she's also a sweet little wallflower in those flashbacks, and it has zero bearing on the main story. Perhaps that time could have spent on building up the characters of Rupert Friend, Linda Cardellini or Jean Smart- as it is, they're all rather wasted here and they don't feature enough to help beef up the mystery.

Overall, it feels like it was made by someone with very mild tastes and no understanding of how mysteries work. It simply does not measure up to the likes of the Benoit Blanc mysteries or Poker Face.

Rating: milquetoast mystery.

Captain America: Brave New World (2025)

SPOILERS BELOW

What a slog. It is somehow all story and yet barely anything happens. It's just constant catch-up, there was exposition still happening in the last scene! Just to open the movie it has to go through 'hey, here's Sam, he's Cap now, you knew that; but also Ross is recast and has no moustache and is the president now; and also meet Joaquin, he's been training up as the Falcon; and also Celestial Island has adamantium in it and there's an accord being crawn up around it; and also Carl Lumbly is back and has been training Sam'. Then they get to stuff that's actually happening during the story rather than before it, and there's two new villains to introduce, a couple of White House characters, catch-up on Bucky (he's running for congress now, whoops, back to catching you up on inter-movie events again). And you've got Samuel Sterns (we also have to get caught up with his inter-movie stuff but at least we're learning that along with Sam) running a very similar scheme to Zemo in Civil War which is actually pretty simple but busied up with a load of details to make it seem smart and complex. But after all this, the story is basically: Sterns wants to ruin Ross' legacy by making him hulk out; he succeeds. The end. The only wrinkle is that thanks to Sam interfering, he has to turn himself in as part of a Plan B (this doesn't really make sense, incidentally - all he needed to do was release a statement and hack some White House speakers, would have arguably been easier not to turn himself in) and so he's neatly dealt with before the end of the movie. Otherwise we're back to where we started - as we find out in the final scene exposition dump of offscreen events from Sam, Ross isn't president again, everyone else is where they were at the beginning of the movie.

The action is kinda bog-standard Cap/Falcon stuff, it just washed over me. There's only one Hulk sequence (and they cut away for the transformations!) where he smashes up a few choppers, knocks Cap around a bit on an empty street, we've seen it all before with Banner but bigger and better. The writing is mostly dull with some shitty Marvel banter. It looks bland as hell. Mackie doesn't have chemistry with anyone, Ford and Nelson are good but underused. Waiting until the exact moment when Ross is recast to do a movie based around him and big surprising changes happening to him is a dreadful idea, up there with John Connor in Terminator Genesys, as is making plot elements of this so close to Civil War. The whole thing feels like a placeholder to get us to the reacquired from 20th Century Fox characters stage, and is utterly dull.

Rating: terrible.

Hellboy: The Crooked Man (2024)

Only two minutes in, the writing was clearly terrible, like 'are they making it shit on purpose as a joke?' level terrible. I had to give up half an hour in, it is absolutely awful. Confused clunky writing, hammy acting, and overbearing direction and score that are trying desperately to make every frame scary and failing. The kind of thing those low-rent horror channels pump out a hundred of a year.

And I still don't like his 'regular bloke with red paint on' face.

Rating: Awful.

Paddington In Peru (2024)

Very disappointing. All the charm and wit of the first two gone, replaced by an overly complicated adventure set-up and broad 'scary jungle' humour. A competent but unremarkable kids movie.

Strikes me that the Paddington series has so far followed the Wallace & Gromit pattern - first film is a quirky, idiosyncratic story that has an antagonist thrown in at the end but is mostly about British oddballs; second film keeps the idiosyncrasies but ramps everything up a bit for a clever caper; third film goes all in on the action and largely forgets the charm except to repeat bits from the first two occasionally.
So by the next one, I imagine Paddington will be stopping every two minutes to wave a book by JK Growling at the camera or whatever.

Rating: Not very good.

Black Mirror (2011 - )

(Note: For the first five seasons, these are posts from a group rewatch. After that, posts on a Discord as the episodes came out. Full spoilers throughout.)

S01E01 "THE NATIONAL ANTHEM"
A strong start, and I like the statement of starting out with one that barely has any sci-fi in it. I think it's all fairly well-pitched for satire. It is fairly unsubtle in getting its points across occasionally though, things get underlined heavily and the public are all working class sketches - less would have been more there, I think.
Mostly I find it interesting for the very 2011 point of view. I don't think Brooker would be making an episode today about the public's lust for humiliation and a semi-sympathetic PM!

S01E02 "FIFTEEN MILLION MERITS"
For me it's a little too on-the-nose, a little too clean, very 'I've read 1984 and Judge Dredd'. Daniel Kaluuya's great, but I almost find this one too comfortable a watch.

S01E03 "THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF YOU"
Still amazing. Quintessential Black Mirror - just a tweak of contemporary tech to show how it's having a massive effect on our lives and taking that to a logical extreme. It's a strong commentary on how having access to years of texts and emails and each other's social media has a massive effect on how we interact with each other and can lead to obsessive behaviour. Scrolling through an ex's Facebook, putting spyware on your kid's phone. Plus little notes thrown in of how employers and government have so much more access to our private lives (if we opt in). Really lean, a great eye for detail, and everyone's great in it but Kebbell is blisteringly good.

S02E01 "BE RIGHT BACK"
I really like it. It feels kind of like Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind to me, in that it's not really a commentary on tech so much as a use of a sci-fi conceit to examine the loss of a loved one (via death or break-up). The first time I watched it, I was waiting for the 'evil AI' turn and was pleasantly surprised when it never happened. If the first season had been National Anthem, History Of You and this, it would have been an absolutely incredible opener.

S02E02 "WHITE BEAR"
I like this one but it's not in my favourites. I think generally the ones that are about the people affected by the tech rather than the tech (or situation, whatever) itself are the most effective. Also, this episode lets the wind out of its own sails with those inter-credit clips which just explain stuff we could have figured out ourselves and dilute that final moment.
It's interesting how much focus there was on the media and reality/competition shows in the early parts of this show, I'll be interested to see how long that goes on for. Obviously they're a point of interest at this time for Brooker, a tv writer and critic, who has already written Dead Set (people take refuge in the Big Brother house during a zombie outbreak), but it did feel like a prevalent issue as a viewer too. I can't imagine a current satire would bother focusing on Britain's Got Talent or Love Island (reprehensible as they are).

S02E03 "THE WALDO MOMENT"
I thought the characters were well-observed and portrayed but yeah all very light sketches. The story is well-told but also well-trodden ground (idealist worn down by the system, politician succeeds by telling the truth but slowly sells out). And yeah, that ending is a comically sudden escalation, it's like Brooker just wrote "and then dystopia" at the end. For all that I do still quite enjoy watching it, though, because it's well-crafted enough, it's just that I'm thinking "this could be a really good film if Brooker got Morris or Iannucci in to help him give it some meat". I do think Waldo being annoying is the point - not just in a 'the public are morons' way but also in a 'it didn't take a genuinely witty, clever, insightful person to shake up the system, a Sasha Baron Cohen or whoever, all it needed was this childish angry shouting unfunny cartoon because the politicians are that out of touch and fake and untrustworthy' way.
(One tiny nitpick, which I only make because I'm so surprised that Brooker and however many other telly people would write it and let it through - "speed up the autocue, please". That's not how it works, autocues have a human operator who adjusts the speed to match the speaker on the fly, they don't just set it to 8 and let it run. If the speaker wants the autocue to speed up, they just speak faster. I guess it's in there to tell the viewer 'this is a rehearsal for a live show', and they decided that was more important than it being accurate, but it's the kind of thing I would have imagined Brooker would demand get changed to something better!)

S02E04 "WHITE CHRISTMAS"
I really like this one, it's full of cool ideas and all the twists are signposted fairly (how I didn't originally get the snowglobe thing within the opening ten seconds of the episode I don't know!). The first section is the only one that has much social commentary to it, really - a deft jab at PUAs, incel culture and the like. The middle bit might be a warning about how we'll treat sapient AI if it ever happens and the latter about the criminal justice system, I guess? But then, the show doesn't necessarily always have to be saying something, it can just be effective tech noir. I love the neatness of the ending, how they're both punished by being isolated in a snowstorm in two very different ways. Probably my main criticism of it is that the cruelty shown to the 'cookies' is very close to the punishment of White Bear.

S03E01 "NOSEDIVE"
Incredible. Howard, Eve and Jones are great, and it's full of amazing character actors (I recognised Daisy Haggard at the time but not Susannah Fielding, Sope Dirisu or Michaela Coel). It's a brilliant look at another aspect of social media, the upvote whores. All those people who give so much of a shit about forum post numbers and Discord name colours and blue ticks, who carefully curate the online presentation of their life to look oh so perfect and adorable. And it gets time for the weirdness of rating Uber drivers, and for inspirational tv programming (via the letting agent holograms and adaptive billboards), exacerbation of body image issues and enforced gender roles. It looks and sounds great, and it reaches a perfect crescendo.
Apparently, Planes Trains & Automobiles was one of their influences - it definitely has that 'person who has it all together goes on a dogged cross-country trip as things get worse and worse' structure. Like Clockwise and stuff as well. It's a really smart choice, actually, to hang it all on a solid well-tested frame like that.
I was a bit worried when Black Mirror became a Netflix thing and all these American creative elements were introduced, but then I saw this and was relieved, excited and blown out of the water.

S03E02 "PLAYTEST"
Another awesome episode. I love how it builds really gradually and then snaps and just keeps going and going and going. I actually was expecting there to be another couple of flips before the end because I'd remembered it as being so relentless towards the end. I remember being very happy at the time because I'd thought during the episode "wow, this guy is great, it's a really Kurt Russell-y powerhouse performance" and then saw his name in the credits and confirmed it with a google. Dan Trachtenberg directing too, after Joe Wright last week - pulling in some big names.

S0303 "SHUT UP AND DANCE"
I really like this one. It's kind of a White Bear except with internet vigilantes like Anonymous - how people cheer if they dox and swat the 'right' people, how much of it is a game for them rather than any kind of coherent ethical motivation.
Funny how this stuff dates so quickly though - this felt so current at the time but groups like Anon seem to have just disappeared now, for some reason.

S03E04 "SAN JUNIPERO"
I know this one's very popular, but I'm not really that into it. It spends a full half hour just doing a standard girl-meets-girl, then it gets interesting in the second half but then just does a Waldo Moment style mid-credits sudden resolution. 'And then, happily ever after!' I like the shots of the storage facility that add a little bite to it, but overall it just compounds the feeling that there wasn't really much to the story. What is there is all really well done, though.

S03E05 "MEN AGAINST FIRE"
This one has an incredibly obvious twist that it takes ages to get to, and then hammers home its metaphor in the bluntest way possible. Cool idea, zero subtlety.

S03E06 "HATED IN THE NATION"
This is a fairly embarrassing entry in the series. It's trite and contrived, it barely has anything to say about technology or social media, and it doesn't justify the feature-length runtime. It feels like a cheesy weekly cop drama whose writers just happened to read about Twitter hate mobs that week or whatever.

S04E01 "USS CALLISTER"
I really enjoy this episode. Yes it's another 'digital clone in a virtual world' episode after White Christmas and San Junipero (plus some overlap with Playtest I guess), yes it doesn't have much to say, and yes that happy ending is reeeeally convenient, but it's really entertaining and well-made, loads of great performances, it looks and sounds great, and I love how for the climactic chase it actually turns into a space action movie with them all working as a team in their roles, and then the happy ending of being given an infinite MMO to play in getting undercut by the reminder that most online gamers are dicks is really funny.

S04E02 "ARKANGEL"
Arkangel is a little weak. Lots of story strands disappear (like the grandfather and the biker), I never got to know a version of the daughter for long enough to care about her, and the ending feels a bit tepid. The tech themes are interesting - parents putting trackers on their kids' phones and laptops, and parental content locks - but I think the latter muddies the water a bit, because what's a parent supposed to do, not put a content lock on YouTube or whatever for their eight year old? The problem only exists with this fictional version of the tech. There's maybe a discussion to be had about how kids used to have access to more adult stuff via libraries and what have you and are actually getting more sheltered now that their primary intake can be throttled so heavily, but I'm not really convinced and I don't think this episode really tackles that anyway.

S04E03 "CROCODILE"
Better than I remembered it. A nasty little thriller with a tech twist. Feels a bit like a spin-off of The Entire History Of You but with slightly different tech rules. I guess what I probably didn't like about it the first time round was that it feels very clinical, everything is there to keep the plot beats going and nothing else - all the characters are basically non-existent. I suspect you can see Brooker trying to fix that in the 'she eats peppermint sweets!' quirk.

S04E04 "HANG THE DJ"
I think I enjoyed this more the second time, knowing the twist and just being able to enjoy the story. Especially since it's another fucking digital clone one so the disappointment isn't quite so sharp. The romcom stuff is really good fun (that "ahhh" halfway through the cunnilingus is hilarious) but it really drags in the second half when it's just slowly moving towards the reveal. I do like the idea that this dating app is basically simulating a Black Mirror episode a 1000 times for something so frivolous, but the build-up is too long and too sincere. I think this would have worked a lot better as a half hour Inside No 9 episode taking the piss out of romcom 'race to the airport' tropes (or even a Richard Curtis movie if he had a good writer to balance out his huge flaws).
Also, had a 'ohh that person was in it, I didn't know them back then' moment with Joe Cole as I've now seen him in Gangs Of London (also Green Room apparently). Guy's got a lot of range!
Weirdly, the POC lead in this was in BBC drama "Murdered By My Boyfriend" and the POC lead in the last one was in BBC drama "Murdered By My Father". Well, maybe tellingly rather than weirdly...

S04E05 "METALHEAD"
Very good. It looks amazing, it's so taut, just no weak spots at all. I love that like all good movie monsters the dogs have got rules, stuff you can use to escape them, gives it a bit of a Tremors feel as well (but those also don't get clumsily explained, you just work out what's happening). The end twist is arguably a little unnecessary and blunt, but also I do think it works, it sticks the knife in a little more - the survivors still have enough humanity left that they're willing to risk their lives just to make a dying kid's last few hours a little more bearable.

S04E06 "BLACK MUSEUM"
Okay, I was wrong when I remembered this as 'maybe a good one'. It's another portmanteau episode like White Christmas, but not half as good. The first story is a cool idea that's rushed through and mostly told through voiceover, and the second two stories are 'digital clones get tortured' again! The framing story has promise but it has to rush through a bunch of exposition at the end just to set up and then execute the twist. Plus having only the one guy present in all three stories really limits them.

S05E01 "STRIKING VIPERS"
I think I liked this one a little more than the first time I watched it, as I could see what they were setting up at the start of the episode with the male bonding behaviour etc. I really like the themes of this and how it deals with them, about social constructs of gender roles and sexuality and how technology can break them down or get assimilated into them. It reminded me of the People Make Games video about VR Chat and how a lot of guys just enjoy being women on there in a non-creepy healthy way. Stuff like how male friends can be incredibly aware of each others' bodies and that be seen as non-sexual and therefore impervious to homophobia in certain specific contexts, or how Karl's younger-generation girlfriend seamlessly switches from sex to phone browsing or integrates the two, was really well observed and layered in. But after Danny and Karl have cyber-boinked a couple of times, the episode runs out of things to say and kinda flips to a romdram which also doesn't have any meat to it. I think with a runtime shorter by 10 mins or so this could have been a top episode.

S05E02 "SMITHEREENS"
Not much to this one, really. Much like the robot bees one, it feels more like a standard cop drama episode the writer of which read an article about addictive algorithms that week. As usual, strong performances, well-directed etc, and the script was a lot better than the bees one at least.

S05E03 "RACHEL, JACK AND ASHLEY TOO"
Boy, this is a disappointing episode. I don't mind them just going out-and-out action comedy, the show's strength is in its diversity. And I don't completely mind it being another digital clone ep as they do something a bit different with it (though really, Jesus, another one?). But it takes a good 40 minutes to actually get to be the thing it wants to be, and even when it gets there it has no bite, no dark satirical undercurrent. There are nods towards post-mortem digital likeness rights, mistreatment of child stars, celebrity personas, artists' estates milking all their half-baked recording demos for years etc, but it's all just there to set up this mild adventure story. I even liked the stuff about the inhibited Ashley Too actually being a bad presence in Rachel's life because she's full of mindless empowerment mantras and can't actually read subtle social cues or use life experience like a human can, but that got dropped along with the absent father thread. It reminds me of Dead Set, Brooker's 'zombies in the Big Brother house' miniseries - it had a couple of clever satirical elements but mostly it just grinded through the usual zombie apocalypse tropes instead. This really needed Ben Stiller to come in and give it that Cable Guy/Zoolander/Tropic Thunder touch.
(One other thing that left a bad taste in my mouth was those former Ashley fans fleeing the gig at the end, like the show is saying 'yeah, fuck off, how dare you enjoy pop music!' I would have much rather seen them at the back a little taken aback but maybe getting their minds opened to some other kinds of music by what is, let's be honest, a fairly accessible NIN cover.)

"BANDERSNATCH"
I haven't given Bandersnatch another go yet, but I really enjoyed it on release. The one thing I will say to people who haven't played it before is to approach it as a lightly interactive tv episode, a cool idea for a show about tech, not as the next Sam Barlow game. I saw a lot of people in the gaming community at the time treating it like it was the latter and judging it far too harshly as a result.
I had a really good experience with it; at a certain point I was replaying to try to get a bunch of different events and endings and just as I was thinking "I've exhausted this to the point of diminishing returns" I got sent down this new long ending strand which just wrapped the whole thing up perfectly. I don't think I'm going to try to hit that again this time, I'll probably just play for 40 minutes and put it down, but I'm really glad it went that way the first time.
...
Just did a new play through. I'm not going to go back and hunt down all the different routes like I did last time, but I really enjoyed it again. I'd forgotten how much they tie the interactive thing into the story, it's so good when you become part of it and you're basically a demon possessing people by the end of it. Also really smart how they repurposed the White Bear symbol. I also thought it was actually really impressive how it remembered lots of small stuff and previous paths and integrated them into complex edits seamlessly - I'd be really interested to see some behind the scenes stuff of how they did all that.

S06E01 "JOAN IS AWFUL"
Really enjoyed Joan Is Awful! Very funny and yet a horrible 'what would you do' set up as well. I felt a little bit ahead of it for a while in the middle there, but the chemistry of Murphy and Hayek pulled me through and then the Michael Cera twist totally got me. And yeah, it is basically the digital clone thing again, but it did feel different to what they'd done before with it, so I didn't mind too much - it had a bunch of different stuff going on in there as well, like the whole free will thing.

S06E02 "LOCH HENRY"
Wasn't a big fan of Loch Henry. Good performances but very predictable and didn't have anything to say about modern technology. Also a few weird contrivances - their decision to shoot everything on VHS rather than spend a day or two gathering some equipment that would actually be broadcast quality (maybe they were going for a retro vibe to match the old footage, but the stuff about getting tourists in with 4K footage openly contradicted that), getting John Hannah and the son into the hospital via two separate incidents, and then Pia making a bunch of silly slasher victim decisions at the end. It was a bit better than Hated In The Nation or Smithereens but it was another of those 'we're just going to try our hand at a bog standard thriller this week' episodes.
And the exploitative nature of documentaries has been a topic of conversation for, I dunno, a hundred years?
Oh, Pod from GoT was bloody brilliant though.

S06E03 "BEYOND THE SEA"
Didn't think much of it. An interesting set-up very quickly devolved into a very predictable and incredibly slow thriller. Anything it's saying about people valuing their digital lives over their physical ones is undercut by that plus the spaceship meta-setting. This is one of those episodes where you have to find out what Brooker was addressing via interviews etc after the fact because none of it is actually in the writing.
Also, I know that this is a digital avatar rather than digital clone episode and there are slightly fewer of those, but fucking hell another one. I saw an interview snippet from Brooker about this season and he said that when he started writing he looked back at the previous episodes and realised how many were about digital versions of people. What happened, Brooker?! 66% of the new episodes are that again!

S06E04 "MAZEY DAY"
Very much enjoyed the last 7 minutes, then it just ended.

S06E05 "DEMON 79"
Well, I didn't think much of that one. Fairly predictable and not massively funny or scary or gross. Weird selection of episodes this season.

S07E01 "COMMON PEOPLE"
I had a lot of reservations about this as I watched - is it a bit predictable, is it taking too long to get going, is the 'medication as live service' idea actually a shitty thing that already happens (I think I've read about stuff like pacemakers getting messed about by bad updates or something, but maybe that was just some other speculative fiction!), is it a bit tacky to complain about stream subscription services as if they were life or death, is the cyber-augment stuff off-target? But by the end of it, I appreciated it for its theme of predatory practices, looking at shitty stuff like Prime Video making you watch ads even though you're already paying for the service, or those awful 'pay poor people to do nasty stuff sites' that people like PewDiePie use, or drug dealers (getting you hooked on brief moments of euphoria) and drawing a line to national healthcare (UK/US specifically, I guess) and private pharmaceutical companies. So, while I think it probably could have been 5-10 mins shorter and it's fairly 'standard' Black Mirror, it's a solid entry.

S07E02 "BETE NOIRE"
Enjoyed this one, though it was a little predictable and it only really got to the fun stuff in the last 20 minutes or so. Still a cool idea, well acted and written.

S07E03 "HOTEL REVERIE"
Thought this was pretty terrible, clunky nonsense. I almost gave up on it halfway through. I don't mind suspending disbelief for 'advanced computer is magic', but just the basic real world logic of it all was so broken I was constantly bumping against it. Plus characters constantly telling each other stuff they know and the show telling me stuff I know, infuriating. It's too long, it's yet another digital avatar story (please for the love of god if there's a season 8 make a rule that not a single episode can involve this), it's another of their 'let's make a Hollywood thriller, or love story or teen caper' attempts which always fall flat. I wish I could appreciate the show trying different things more, but it never really works. There's a seed of a good idea here, trying to get a known story back on track, maybe they should have taken an old episode of the show and done it with that, like The Entire History Of You or something, so they don't have to constantly tell the audience what the non-existent original version was and they can play with expectations, give it a cheesy Hollywood happy ending, that kind of thing. BTTF 2, basically. I'm already enjoying an idea I came up with off the top of my head more than the episode they made!

S07E04 "PLAYTHING".
Arguably a bit self-indulgent (sequel to an existing episode, overt references to stuff in Brooker's life like PC Zone and CEX) and limited (it's essentially a 'what if?' story that takes its entire duration to unfurl that 'what if?' without actually answering) but it's all done really well, it's exciting and entertaining. And I'm a big Bandersnatch fan so I enjoyed the indulgence. Also, scanned the QR code in the credits, got sent to a version of the Thronglets game and got stuck playing it for almost two hours! 

S07E05 "EULOGY".
Loved this. Very Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind exploration of break-ups with tech as a facilitator rather than the focus of the story. Giamatti is great and Ferran is good too, the writing is great (another argument for more non-Brooker or co-written episodes!), all the imagery is perfect, rich with detail. Just a gorgeous story, straight into my faves.

S07E06 "USS CALLISTER: INTO INFINITY".
So, as with the first one, this is basically just a really sold, fun episode. Looks lovely, great Daniel Pemberton score, the tech thriller stuff all works and the rules are clear without hitting any big real-world-logic bumps. The pace is relaxed but never sluggish. Really the only issue with it is that the element of surprise is gone, but they bring a few new things in, and the return of Daly works great.

Skiplist: "The National Anthem", "The Entire History of You", "Be Right Back", "White Christmas", "Nosedive", "Playtest", "Shut Up And Dance", "USS Callister", "Metalhead", "Bandersnatch", "Joan Is Awful", "Eulogy", "USS Callister: Into Infinity"
[White Bear and Plaything are close but remain in the high end of 'good not great'. Joan Is Awful is a new addition some time after the fact, could get removed again on rewatches.]