Joe Rogan: Burn the Boats

Oddly enough, I have never listened to the Joe Rogan Podcast except for snippets found on YouTube with the guest du jour.  Mostly, that involves him asking some basic question and the guest greatly expanding on the topic.  I used to watch NewsRadio (1995-1999) in which he was a one of the regular cast.  That was back when he had hair.  Anyway, I was folding clothes and turned on the TV.  I needed something that was more listening than watching and this looked like just the thing.

Joe is very animated and frequently turns up the volume.  He's no Sam Kinison, but I was reminded of him occasionally.  Many of his bits focused on current political topics.  He riffed on COVID, which is on brand for him.  Prior to COVID, he viewed vaccines as a modern miracle but afterwards he has his doubts.  So many doubts.  He covered the Trans debate, suggesting that extra words were needed.  An off-road vehicle is still a vehicle but it has extra functions.  He didn't offer a word.  He talked about his days on Fear Factor, why aliens always use the anal probe (this is on brand for his character from NewsRadio), and his life in Texas - most memorably his love for Buc-ees!  Speaking of Texas, I was startled to see that the show was at the Majestic Theater in San Antonio!  Cool.

Entertaining?  Yes.  Funny?  Yeah.  Profane?  Oh, indeed, yes.  This is not a show for kids.  Certainly not for all audiences.

Yasuke (2021)

In 1579, a black man from Africa arrived in Japan with an Italian Jesuit.  The very idea of a man with black skin so intrigued Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582) that he wanted to meet this man.  Yasuke's original name is lost to history but this was the name he used in Nobunaga's service.  He became an armed retainer of the most powerful daimyo (feudal lord) of the era.  In 1582, Nobunaga was assassinated and Yasuke found his way to the heir.  And there ends the historical record of Yasuke, the black samurai.

The Netflix series picks up the action 20 years later.  Yasuke works as a fisherman in a small village when he is recruited to escort a young girl, Saki, and her mother, Ichika, to a special doctor.  En route, they are attacked.  It turns out that the girl has magical powers that could tip the balance of power in Japan.  Despite his desire to be a humble fisherman, Yasuke finds himself becoming Saki's protector and once again involved in the power struggles of Japan.  Yasuke proves to be the greatest of all the samurai, a natural talent who can only be defeated by those wielding dark magic.  Unfortunately, there is a lot of dark magic at the moment.

Though supposedly taking place at the beginning of 17th century Japan, the characters are ludicrous.  There is a robot!  Really?  The evil Catholic priest, Abraham, wields magic like some Dungeons & Dragons wizard.  Among Abraham's band of mercenaries are the futuristic Japanimation battle robot, a Russian warrior woman who turns into a werebear, an African witch doctor with arcane magical powers, and a scythe swinging lady assassin.  Yeah, this looks so much like historical Japan.

The heart of the series is the connection between Yasuke and Saki.  Though he views himself as her protector, it is often she who protects him.  Her magical powers increase through the series and she becomes a major power despite her youth.

The anachronistic presence of a wise-cracking battle robot and the other out of place mercenaries served to destroy the setting.  Why go to the effort of placing the adventure in a particular historical time if you are going to completely upend that setting with the inclusion of these oddities?  The flashy and ridiculously powerful magic unleashed by the greater forces at play made the soldiers and samurai merely a sideshow.  It was somewhat reminiscent of Avatar the Last Airbender.  Sokka may have been a fine swordsman, but he was no match for even a minimally skilled bender.  An army without benders vs. one with benders is doomed.  That goes for this show too.  As such, the central character is often just an observer.

Mediocre.  Skip.

Extraction II (2023)

Tyler Rake (Chris Hemsworth) miraculously survived his injuries and is recovering in Austria when a nameless man (Idris Elba) appears at his home.  He offers him a job.  Tyler isn't interested until the man says that Tyler's ex-wife is the client.  The Radiani brothers are drug dealers in Georgia (the country, not the state).  The younger brother has been incarcerated and, thanks to the influence of his brother, his wife and children have a cell nearby.  The wife is Tyler's ex-wife's sister.  Tyler accepts the job without first consulting with Nik Khan (Golshifteh Farahani), who normally arranges contracts.

After 6 weeks of training, Tyler, Nik, and crew are in Georgia.  Tyler infiltrates the prison and extracts the wife, Ketevan, and children, Sandro & Nina.  Sandro, an angsty teenager, wants to know about his father.  Inevitably, the alarm sounds and the most epic series of fight scenes during a prison riot ensue.  Once out of the prison, now they must evade Radiani's goons, who have had time to intercept.  Action!  Action!  Action!

The movie has more action than story.  The villain gets a grim backstory that tells of his abusive father and drug dealing uncle.  He has grown up to be a very hard man who cannot forgive or let go.  He is more than willing to sacrifice every man in his organization for revenge.  The story of Tyler's son is expanded and his wife, Mia (Olga Kurylenko), is introduced.  Nik, who was mostly a behind-the-scenes manager in the last outing, is a field operative here.  The story does have some weaknesses, especially how blind Tyler and Nik are to the angsty Sandro.  How do you allow him to access a phone?  You would think that extraction experts would know about Stockholm Syndrome and the like.

This is a high-octane action movie.  Like its predecessor, it knows what it is and delivers a smorgasbord gunbattles, fisticuffs, car chases, and more.  Great popcorn fun and highly recommended.

Arcane (2021)

The story opens in the wake of a battle on a bridge.  Vander, hulking man with steel gauntlets for weapons, escorts two newly orphaned girls away from the carnage.  The girls are Violet "Vi" and her younger sister Powder.  They are from the undercity of Zaun, which is the poorer section of wealthy Piltover.  Some years later, Vi has assembled a crew to sneak into Piltover and steal.  Their target proves to be the lab of a budding scientist who has been tinkering with magic, something long feared.  That they successful abscond with magic crystals triggers a strong response that sees enforcers invade Zaun to recover the crystals.  Meanwhile, Silco has been doing his own experiments with a drug called Shimmer that grants superhuman strength and speed.  The heightened tensions explode as competing factions clash for control of Zaun, threatening to create a rift between Vi and Powder.

In Piltover, Jayce Talis, the aspiring magic scientist, is facing potential banishment for daring to experiment with magic.  The world was brought to its knees by reckless magicians and Piltover had banned it as too dangerous.  Can he muster support from the council - notably Cecil B Heimerdinger - to not only avoid banishment but to save his research?

This is only the first act in this epic story.  The competing goals of the various characters lead to constant clashes that don't require good and evil or right and wrong.  These are solid characters with biases and dreams.  The writing is strong and at no point are characters required to do stupid things to advance the story.  That there are so many factions that find themselves sometimes allied and sometimes enemies is impressive.

On the negative, there is an inordinate number of strong females.  They aren't the usual Mary Sue (e.g., Rey Skywalker), so each of them has faults and make mistakes.  However, it was odd to see Piltover's sheriff as a woman, Silco's righthand thug as a woman, the muscular and scarred warlord as a woman, and Vi as a pugilist who takes on men who are twice her size.  Yes, this is a fantasy steampunk setting, but size and muscle mass is clearly a thing here.  There are a lot of masculine women in this world.  And, of course, there is the promise of a lesbian relationship should the series continue.

The series is based on a popular game called League of Legends.  Many of the playable characters from the game are central here, including Vi, Jinx, Jayce, Viktor, Ekko, Heimerdinger, and Caitlyn.  Each character has their special abilities and traits, which are faithfully reflected in the show.

Highly recommended.

The Sandman (2022)

In 1916, Morpheus (Tom Sturridge), the king of dreams and nightmares, has ventured from his realm to hunt for a nightmare.  The Corinthian (Boyd Holbrook) has escaped to the waking world to become a serial killer.  No sooner does Morpheus find The Corinthian than he is entrapped by an occultist, Sir Roderick Burgess (Charles Dance).  Burgess takes the Sandman's tools - a ruby, a helmet, and a bag of endless sand - and demands that Morpheus resurrect the son who died in World War I.  Morpheus doesn't deign to speak to his captor.  It is 100 years before Morpheus is freed when the enchantment holding him is broken.  He finds that his powers are limited without his tools and he quests for them.  Of course, he knows that The Corinthian is still loose.

This Netflix series based on a popular Neil Gaiman comic book series (1989 - 1996) is interesting but entirely too woke.  One of the common complaints on IMDb is that multiple characters have been race and gender swapped.  John Constantine (the same from the 2005 Keanu Reeves movie) is here Johanna Constantine.  The presence of blacks throughout English history is ahistorical and kind of goofy.  Really, so little of the series takes place in historic England that one wonders why black characters are prominently included.  However, these are small things compared to the LGBT representation and almost universal presence of mixed-race couples.  Johanna Constantine is a Lesbian and her girlfriend is black.   Alex Burgess, son of Roderick, loves Paul, a black man.  The princess - an unspecified British Royal - is seeking to marry Kevin, a black man.  In the diner where John Dee (David Thewlis) misuses the Sandman's ruby, we have a mixed couple (Filipino woman & bisexual black man), a Lesbian, a gay man, a bisexual waitress, and a heterosexual man; just your average random selection of people in upstate New York.  In Florida, we meet a drag queen named Hal who owns a B&B.  It also turns out that The Corinthian is gay, having several opportunities to express his affection.  Probably around 50% of all kisses in the show were homosexual.  Representation, don't you know.

The show has promise but the woke propaganda is hard to overlook.  Clearly, this wasn't present in the source material from 25 years ago.  No, this is something that modern Wokesters injected.  I don't mind the race swapping secondary characters (Idris Elba was great as Heimdall in the Thor movies) but gender-swapping and the flood of LGBT characters is grating.

Skip.

Cowboy Bebop (2021)

Our story opens with a robbery at a casino.  While the robbers threaten patrons, Spike Speigel (John Cho) wanders obliviously into the casino wearing headphones.  Seemingly startled to find the crowd of armed men, he surprises them with his martial arts.  Jet Black (Mustafa Shakir), Spike's partner, crashes into the fray while complaining that Spike was supposed to wait for him.  The epic fight sees a hole punched in the casino wall, at which point it is clear that this is a space station; everything starts getting sucked into space.

Spike and Jett are bounty hunters, colloquially called 'cowboys' in the future.  They travel the solar system on the Bebop, Jett's spaceship, and live a hand-to-mouth existence with their meager earnings.  In the first episode of the series, they find themselves working against another cowboy, Faye Valentine (Daniella Pineda).  She soon becomes an ally, more out of necessity than desire.  Each character has a tragic backstory that led them to the Bebop.  Spike was a syndicate assassin who had an affair with a colleague's girl.  Believed to be dead by the syndicate, he avoids talk of his past.  Jett had been a cop who was wrongly sent to prison.  He has a strained relationship with his ex-wife and barely sees his 8-year-old daughter.  Awoken from cryosleep with no memories, Faye was scammed by a woman claiming to be her mother.  Abandoned by her 'mother,' she seeks some way of finding out who she was and how she happened to be in cryosleep.

All 10 episodes of the series are mash-up storylines from the original anime series.  Many changes have been made, very few of them that were an improvement.  Ein the Corgi seems to have become a cyborg dog.  Ein was a genius dog but could not project holograms from his eyes in the original.  Faye has become a lesbian and has a faux mother, neither of which happened in the anime.  Her risqué outfit and gambling addiction are gone.  Jett had never been married and had no children.  Also, despite the name, he was not a black.  Radical Edward, who only appears in the series finale, comes across as a Pee Wee Herman wannabe in a crazy outfit.  Spike and his backstory are closest to the source material, though many of the background characters in his past have changed.  Vicious (Alex Hassell), Spike's former partner but now adversary, has married Julia (Elena Satine), Spike's love interest.  Julia's role has greatly expanded in the Netflix version and has a dramatic shift in the finale.

The series is entertaining.  The chemistry between Cho and Shakir is terrific.  However, fans of the original found many of the changes to be vandalism.  Some particularly egregious scenes were when Jett talked of using a restaurant bidet, Faye's afternoon lesbian fling with the mechanic, and Spike's potshot at Vicious which demonstrated Spike was an idiot.  Disappointing.  Though not terrible, it doesn't live up to the anime.

The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf (2021)

Rather than Geralt of Rivia, this tells the tale of Vesemir.  When Vesemir was a boy, Delgan the Witcher came to the estate to purge a demon.  Delgan was well-paid for the purging.  Vesemir, who is just a servant boy, now had dreams of being a witcher.  His desire for wealth and adventure outweighed his growing affection for Illyana, a servant girl on the estate.  Years later, Vesemir is the most successful of the witchers and also an admitted hustler.  Asked to assist an old acquaintance, Filavandrel the elf, to find missing elf girls, Vesemir declines unless he is paid.  Meanwhile, in the halls of King Dagread, the sorceress Tetra Gilcrest accuses the witchers of spawning the very monsters that they then extort money to slay.  Only Lady Zerbst argues against her, winning the king's indifference on the subject.  Further events move the king toward Tetra's view but still not to the point of attacking the witcher stronghold of Kaer Morhen.  Instead, Tetra and Vesemir are sent as a team to purge the forest of monsters.  There, they discover a mutated elf girl with a new breed of basilisk at her side.

Here is the story of how Kaer Morhen came to be the ruins that appear in the Netflix series, how Vesemir became the oldest remaining witcher, and why the ability to create new witchers was lost.  As this is animated, the magic is impressive and the monsters are immense and plentiful.  The special effects budget has no limit, and it shows.  However, the story likes to jump about on the timeline, which can be confusing.  There are scenes of young Vesemir as a recruit and then adult Vesemir as something of an obnoxious lout.  This gets most confusing when shifting between the current pool of young would-be witchers and Vesemir's cohort of youths.  When are we?  The story takes place over a 50 to 60 year period but there is no apparent difference in these times.  

At the end of the movie, Vesemir collects the surviving witcher candidates and takes up their training.  Among them is Geralt of Rivia, who is bald so as not to reveal him too easily.

Generally okay.  It provides some history for the world and gives some very good reasons why people would distrust witchers.  Why that distrust isn't equally applied to the sorcerers who made them is not explained.

The Witcher, Season 2

Having finally found Ciri (Freya Allan) in the finale of the first season, Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill) intends to protect her.  On their way, they stop at the Sodden battlefield.  Yennefer (Anya Chalotra), the third main character of the first season, is missing and presumed dead in the wake of the battle.  Heartbroken, Geralt resumes his journey toward home, Kaer Morhen.  Kaer Morhen is the home of the witchers, a fortress where they train and heal.  There are fewer than twenty left and no means of making more.  As part of his plan to protect Ciri, he begins training her to fight.  The other witchers join in the project and Ciri proves an apt pupil.  Meanwhile, Yennefer is not dead, but she lost her magic at Sodden.  She is crushingly ordinary and now just a captive of Nilfgaardians and later elves.  However, she learns that she may regain her powers by setting herself against Geralt.

As with last season, there are political machinations among the various factions and dissension among the mages of Aretuza (this world's Hogwarts).  Though various kingdoms and their noble rulers appear, it is hard to tell one from another.  Every kingdom is this multicultural melange, that makes it difficult to pick out who is from where.  Even the clothing is indistinguishable.  The world's elves are equally multicultural and seem no different from humans except for having pointy ears.  The world-building is atrocious.  All too often, a keep, fort, or city has not a single cultivated field outside the walls.  How do these people eat?  At one temple, the head priestess lights hundreds of candles.  Unless these are being manufactured by magic, that's unsustainable.  Sure, it looks cool, but really?

The world is tiny.  Several times, characters teleport from one realm to another only to have their pursuers arrive on horseback.  With so big a lead, you still get caught.  Then there was the pure lunacy.  The Black Knight was captured during the Battle of Sodden and is due to be executed.  The monarchs of the alliance are all in attendance as are several mages.  Rather than hacking off his head, his would-be executioner hacks off his manacles and the two flee.  No one pursues them.  Literally, they are just outside the place of execution and ride off down a brightly lit path and not a single arrow nor a single spell is sent to impede them.  What?  The dialogue is weak, often nothing more than the expected cliches answered by more cliches.  Too much of the dialogue is delivered as deep insight rather than the run-of-the-mill pap that it is.

It is not terrible, but it isn't good.  Still, I will watch the next season when it is released.

The Outpost (2019)

The story opens with a helicopter full of soldiers arriving at their new assignment at a remote outpost in Afghanistan.  Sergeant Clint Romesha (Scott Eastwood) is immediately aghast at the poor placement of the outpost.  It is in a deep valley with towering mountains all around.  He views it as indefensible.  Pot shots are a daily occurrence.  However, Captain Keating (Orlando Bloom) has a good relationship with the locals and manages to keep the conflict at a low simmer.  When his replacement arrives, the heat rises to a boil.  On October 3, 2009, hundreds of Taliban fighters attacked.  But for the tenacity of the soldiers and the arrival of air support, the base would surely have been overrun.

The story is told primarily from the views of Sgt. Romesha and Specialist Ty Carter (Caleb Landry Jones).  Romesha is a highly respected soldier who is competent and willing to speak his mind.  By contrast, Carter is a loner who has not bonded well with his fellow soldiers.  When the fight comes and Romesha repeatedly takes charge and presses the attack, that is expected.  When Carter repeatedly puts himself at risk to aid soldiers, one cannot help but admire him.  Caleb Landry Jones is amazing in the role, clearly the stand out performance.

All the soldiers are real and at least one played himself in this movie.  The Battle of Kamdesh resulted in the death of eight US soldiers and the abandonment of the outpost.  Both Romesha and Carter were awarded the Medal of Honor for their actions during the battle.

Highly recommended.

Iron Fist, Season 1

Fifteen years ago, Danny Rand (Finn Jones) was on a private plane with his parents en route to a city in China.  The plane went down in the mountains where Danny was the sole survivor.  He was rescued by monks from the reclusive ancient city of K'un-Lun, a place that was accessible only once every 15 years.  Today, Danny is in New York and trying to recapture his old life and join the Rand Corporation - the company that his father and Harold Meachum established.  Though Harold has since died, his children - who were also Danny's childhood friends - now run the company.  Both Ward (Tom Pelphrey) and Joy (Jessica Stroup) are doubtful that this young martial artist is really Danny Rand.

Danny is aided in his efforts to reclaim his birthright by Colleen Wing (Jessica Henwick), the master of a local dojo who occasionally fights in cage matches.  Then there is Clare Temple (Rosario Dawson), who joined Colleen's dojo on account of all the recent trouble she had encounter with Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and Luke Cage.  There is also Jeri Hogarth (Carrie-Anne Moss), Jessica Jones' lawyer, who manages Danny's legal affairs and provides sound - though usually ignored - advice.

Though the story arc is interesting and the villains are formidable, Danny is a sad excuse for a protagonist.  The trope about martial artists - especially the ones who could achieve the Iron Fist - is that they are even-tempered and unflappable.  Self-control and discipline are requirements.  However, Danny is a hothead, a guy with a short-fuse and no ability to stop and think.  The character made no sense.  He's this walking contradiction and it doesn't work.  Often, he does really stupid things because he can't control his emotions.

Some parts were particularly irksome.  In fact, after a couple, I abandoned the show completely for 2 years.  First, Danny is in a board meeting at the Rand Corp and argues that a drug should be sold at cost.  This is obviously stupid but not one of the board members is able to explain why beyond "This is how business is done."  Yes, corporations are evil.  Mwhahahahaha.  Then there was Colleen in the cage matches.  She isn't Wonder Woman or Captain Marvel, just an ordinary woman with extensive martial arts training.  If she meets some random goons in an alley, I have no problem excepting her pounding them to a pulp.  However, when she enters a cage match against two experienced fighters who tower over her and outweigh her by 50 to 80 pounds each, that's too much.

Easily the weakest of the Netflix MCU shows.  However, it does provide the foundation for the team-up series, The Defenders, in which Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist combine forces against the Hand.

Stowaway (2021)

The crew of the MTS-42 are set for a two-year mission to Mars.  There is mission commander Marina Barnett (Toni Collette), biologist David Kim (Daniel Dae Kim), and medical researcher Zoe Leverson (Anna Kendrick).  They have hardly begun their Mars Transfer orbit when Barnett discovers blood on the floor.  After unscrewing a panel, a man falls on her, breaking her arm.  The man is unconscious.  However, he had a badge that identifies him as Michael Adams (Shamier Anderson), a launch support engineer.  Unfortunately, the carbon-dioxide scrubber was damaged beyond repair and the ship cannot support everyone all the way to Mars.  The one potential solution is deemed too risky.  While Barnett and Kim are resigned to tossing Adams out of an airlock, Zoe is determined to save him.  The risky solution would have them climb the tether to the counterbalance that provides the artificial gravity.  It may have unused liquid oxygen.  Zoe is determined to try.

The movie only has the four characters.  There are no scenes with ground control.  In fact, all the conversations with ground control are one-sided since you cannot hear what ground control is saying.  Very different from Apollo 13.  Zoe is the central character and Anna Kendrick does a good job in the role.

There were some things that were annoying.  How did Michael get sealed behind a panel?  One expects a story about him sneaking aboard and having a cohort seal him in.  Nope, he just accidentally got stuck behind a panel where the mission critical life support system was housed.  Okay.  Speaking of the mission critical life support system, why is there no backup?  They couldn't even jury rig a fix.  Why weren't they using some sort of tether when doing their spacewalk?  They have special equipment to climb the tether but nothing to attach them if they slip.  Gah!  Since the stowaway angle was hardly explored, the movie could just as easily have been the same system failure that required all the same steps.  The stowaway angle added little beyond knowing which person was likely to get spaced.  Finally, why did the man have to be pathetic?  During the launch, he vomits in a bag.  When transferring to the space station, Zoe carries his bag.  When climbing the tether, he's winded and clumsy.  And it wasn't just him.  Michael is too uncoordinated to help.  Save us, strong woman, save us!  Ugh!

There were too many inconvenient coincidences to make the story work.  It looks good and the ship is cool, but the plot is too much of a stretch.  The plot holes just grated.  Skip.

Extraction (2020)

Ovi Mahajan (Rudhraksh Jaiswal) is the son of a Mumbai drug lord.  Though his father is currently in prison, Ovi lives in a mansion and has personal bodyguards.  Despite warnings of coming straight home from school by his father's chief lieutenant, Saju (Randeep Hooda), Ovi dares to go to a club at night to meet some friends.  This proves disastrous as he is abducted by a rival drug lord who demands a ransom that will ruin Ovi's father.  Saju gets the blame for Ovi's kidnapping and is ordered to recover Ovi without paying a ransom or his son will be killed.

Tyler Rake (Chris Hemsworth) is an Australian mercenary who served multiple tours in Afghanistan.  He accepts the job of recovering Ovi from Dhaka in Bangladesh.  With the support of a crack team, he arrives 'alone' to pay the ransom after he sees Ovi alive.  Once Ovi is thus located, the non-stop action begins.  Tyler proves to be a combat monster, a John Wick-type character who overcomes wave after wave of enemies.  Not only does he have to fight the goons of the rival drug lord, he also has to battle Saju's forces who intend to snag Ovi without paying Tyler.  Then the local police and even the military join the fray.

High adrenaline action film with great combat choreography.  Unsurprisingly, the director is a veteran stuntman who worked in Deadpool, Avengers, Thor: Ragnarok, Atomic Blonde, and a long list of successful action-packed blockbusters.  Lots of fun.  Recommended.

The Old Guard (2020)

There is a small cadre of immortals who find work as mercenaries.  They are led by Andromache of Scythia, an Amazon queen of Greek Myth.  She goes by Andy these days.  Andy (Charlize Theron) has a bad feeling about a new job that Booker has arranged.  Sure enough, they all get killed in an ambush.  A minute later, they stand up and slaughter their ambushers.  Clearly, their secret is out and they need to go on the offensive against Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor), the man who set them up.

It turns out that Copley wants to hand them to the unscrupulous CEO of a big pharma company so that they can be studied.  Maybe cures can be discovered.  It's for the greater good.  Besides, his wife died a horrible death from cancer, so Copley is really a good guy, just a little misguided.  Yeah, right.  His transformation from villain to ally was unbelievable.

No sooner does the team set out to find Copley than they dream about a new immortal.  The new immortal proves to be a US Marine stationed in Afghanistan.  Obviously, Andy just goes to Afghanistan, infiltrates a US military base, beats down several Marines, and extracts Nile (KiKi Layne) in a Humvee.  Yeah, how did that extraction work?  We didn't actually see her infiltrate the base.  No, she just appeared around a corner.  Nor did we see her leave.  It was Nile's point of view and she was unconscious from the fight until she woke up in the Humvee.  What strange powers do immortals have?  Ah, the power of plot.

The immortals are an odd bunch.  There are two hypermasculine women, the gay Crusaders, and Booker the Traitor.  Andy and Nile get along winningly.  Like most women, they have to get in a fight.  It's that standard fight between eventual allies, like Robin Hood and Little John.  Women do that, right?  I get the feeling this was written by a man.  Yeah, sure enough.  Just so we don't have too much masculinity, there are the gay Crusaders, a Muslim and a Christian who fell in love.  Yes, look at the tenderness between them.  Listen to one tell how these non-immortals cannot understand the depths of his love.  Even during a battle, when one is shot, the other has to go check on him because... well, of course he'll be fine but he needs to check anyway even though they are in the middle of a gunfight.  Love.  That brings us to Booker the Traitor.  Booker is French and he has given up.  What originality!  Yes, he took the job that got them all killed knowing that it was an ambush.  But then why didn't Copley just warn the ambushers to disarm them?  Wait, this makes no sense in retrospect.

There is a John Wick feel to some of the gunfights where Andy plays John Wick.  I have no issue with Andy mopping the floor with a score of men in a gun battle.  She has centuries of experience in combat.  However, when she gets into a brawl, the suspension of disbelief gets stretch a bit too far.  She may be immortal but she's still just 120 lbs. with ordinary strength.  She may heal quickly but that doesn't make her bones harder to break.  Not buying it.

The big villain, Merrick, is just crazy.  Once he has captured a couple of immortals, he tells them to their face that he is going to vivisect them until he determines what makes them tick and monetizes it.  He is supremely confident that the tables will never turn.  No, they will never... What?  They escaped?  Luckily, I have this pistol so I can shoot them.  Ugh.

It reminds me of Highlander, a far better movie about immortals.  In that, decapitation was fatal.  For these immortals, they expect to survive being burned at the stake.  What's left to heal?

There is a great idea here but the execution is terrible.  I don't like any of these immortals.  Nor do I like any of the mortals.  Skip it.

Daredevil (Season 3)

Daredevil (Charlie Cox) washes out of a storm drain and falls to the ground.  Some time later, a curious taxi driver checks to see if he's dead.  No.  Just able to ask for help, he is transported to the church where he grew up.  Sister Maggie (Joanne Whalley) tends to his wounds.  As he is believed to be dead, Matt decides it is better that way.  He is a danger to his friends.  Meanwhile, Wilson "Kingpin" Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio) has decided to snitch to the FBI.  Agent Ray Nadeem (Jay Ali) is thrilled by the unexpected coup.  In order to protect his source, he argues that Fisk is moved from prison.  Fisk's enemies attempt to assassinate him during the move, killing several FBI agents.  Only thanks to Agent Ben "Dex" Poindexter is the assassination averted.  Dex has an uncanny aim.  That's impressive.  With Fisk out of prison, Daredevil must act but always finds that he is several steps behind Kingpin.  Fisk seems to predict his every move before he makes it.  Eventually, he must ask his former partner Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) and reporter Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) for help.

The return of Kingpin and the introduction of Bullseye are the high points of this season.  Kingpin is the mastermind of most of the events, having planned well in advance to have leverage against virtually anyone who could stand against him.  With each person manipulated, he gains power and resources to turn more and more to his service.

Daredevil feels sorry for himself in the vast majority of the episodes.  His arguments with Sister Maggie were an endless stream of clichés.  The Man without Fear shouldn't be this boring. Then he spends several episodes arguing for the benefits of just murdering Kingpin.  But he sabotages himself in that.  Worse still, he is constantly beaten to a pulp.  How is he still walking?  Maybe he should get back in his armored suit if he's going to be fighting this much.  Sigh.  Let's get back to Kingpin.

Then there was Karen.  Ugh.  Karen is always on the brink of an emotional breakdown and her backstory to explain it is told.  It turns out that Karen spent a lot of time high on drugs or drunk when she lived in Vermont.  She dated a drug dealer and even dealt drugs for him.  Her relationship with her father was horrendous and she spent most of their shared scenes telling him that he would fall apart if she left for college.  So she stayed and killed her younger brother while driving drunk.  Wow.  Now I like Karen even less.

On the other hand, Foggy comes off quite well.  As annoying as he was in season 2, here he is the good natured paragon of law.  Like Daredevil, he thinks something must be done about Kingpin but wants it to be done in court.  Despite setbacks, he never lost faith in the system.  A constant contrast with mopey Matt, Foggy is well-adjusted and mentally sound.  It was always nice to see what Foggy was doing after the drudgery of watching Daredevil's moodiness or Karen's emotional wreckage.

The finale ends with a tease about the return of Bullseye.  Sadly, the series has been cancelled.  Disney, owner of Marvel, has its own streaming service and opted not to run content on their competitor, Netflix.

The Umbrella Academy

In 1989, 43 babies were born to women who - when that day began - had not been pregnant.  Billionaire Reginald Hargreaves adopted 7 of them.  As they grew up, most of them displayed extraordinary abilities and Sir Reginald dispatched them as a superhero team.  In 2019, the team has long since disbanded and only reunites now because Sir Reginald has died.  Only the surviving members attend.

Luther, Number 1, is a huge man with inhuman strength.  He had been the leader of the team though he has spent the last four years on the moon.  He was the most loyal to his father and never left home.

Diego, Number 2, is a knife-wielding vigilante.  When he throws a knife, it will navigate around corners to hit the chosen target.  He is mercurial and held a deep-seated hate for his father.  Unsurprisingly, he and Luther are often at odds.

Alison, Number 3, has the gift of suggestion.  If she tells someone a 'rumor' about themselves, that person immediately enacts it.  Thanks to her abilities, she is a successful actress though her personal life is a mess.

Klaus, Number 4, sees dead people.  He is so traumatized by it that he spends the majority of his time either drunk or drugged.  He dresses outlandishly, spending a good amount of time wearing his sister's skirt.

Vanya (Ellen Page), Number 7, has no powers though she is constantly seen popping pills for her nerves.  Hmm, that's peculiar.  She's been taking them as long as she can remember?  Hmm, what does this mean?  Oh, and her comment about an artist not 'blooming' until later life probably doesn't apply to her in any way.  Thanks to her lack of powers, she was never a member of the superhero team and didn't bond with her siblings.  She has been further ostracized for writing a tell-all book about the family.  She is a violinist in a local orchestra.

Number 5 has no name.  He had the power to teleport.  One day when he was 13, he decided to try time traveling and hadn't been seen since.  Until now!  Arriving during Sir Reginald's funeral, he still appears to be 13 though he claims he is 58.

Ben, Number 6, is dead.  The circumstances of his death are not stated but he does spend his time lurking around Klaus, because Klaus sees dead people.  Ben serves as a conscience to Klaus, trying to convince him to get sober.

Though entertaining in its parts, the overall show is disappointing.  The big story is that the apocalypse is only a few days from now and the team must prevent it.  Hey, that sounds fun.  Of course, they aren't a team; they are squabbling fools who haven't gotten over their childhood.  Worse, the very act of assembling the team is also the cause of the impending apocalypse.  Then there is the Commission, a time-traveling agency that keeps the timeline in order by assassinating people who threaten the 'correct' outcome.  All the blather about 'preserving' the timeline gets old fast and doesn't make sense anyway.

Despite failing to prevent the apocalypse, the show has been renewed for a second season.  This time, the team must prevent the apocalypse.  Oh, cool, something new.  Underwhelming.

Altered Carbon

It is the distant future and humanity has transformed.  Everyone is given a 'stack' at the age of 1.  The stack fits into the spinal column at the base of the neck and serves as a backup for the person.  If you die, just put the stack in a new body and you're up and running again.  This changed the view of the body to where it is called a 'sleeve.'  If your original sleeve is killed, time to re-sleeve but your new sleeve could be very different from your old sleeve.  If you can't afford a new sleeve, you might be spun up into a virtual reality to while away your time.  Or your stack might be left on a shelf for a century or two.  Of course, if your stack is destroyed, you're dead.  Thanks to this new technology, society has divided into two castes, the haves and the have-nots.  The wealthy, who are called meths (short for Methuselah) - can afford to have clones of their original sleeve and regularly backed-up their stacks so they are virtually immortal.  They live in palaces in the sky and view themselves akin to gods.

The central character is Takehashi Kovacs (Will Yun Lee), a man with a very complicated past.  The son of a Japanese mother and a Hungarian father, he became a member of an elite military force.  However, he went rogue and joined the rebels before he was finally killed.  His stack has been resleeved (Joel Kinnaman) and he learns it has been 250 years since he was killed.  He has been brought back by Laurens Bancroft (James Purefoy) to solve a murder.

"Whose murder?" Kovacs asked.

"Mine," Bancroft explained.

Bancroft was found with his stack blown in his office.  Being a meth, his backup was loaded onto a new stack and inserted into one of his many clones available.  However, the destruction of the stack meant that his last memory was almost 48 hours before his death.  What did he do in that time that resulted in his murder or possibly suicide?

Kovacs takes a room at an AI Hotel called the Raven.  Poe (Chris Conner) is the proprietor, basically a projection of the hotel.  He becomes an ally to Kovacs though he is incapable of leaving the hotel because he is the hotel.  The setup reminded me of the holographic doctor (Robert Picardo) on Star Trek: Voyager.

Though the story is very engaging and the setting has a Blade Runner vibe about it, the series is dreary.  It has the feel of a soap opera.  Every scene has an undercurrent of doom.  It's one long tragedy that is interspersed with little tragedies and sprinkled with unhappy people.  The funniest bit in the whole series was when Det. Ortega put her grandmother's stack in a hulking, tattooed, bearded skinhead with a nose ring.  Impressive acting from Matt Biedel!  How else would he get to play a kindly Mexican abuela?

Meh.

Lost in Space

The Robinson Family are sitting around a table on the Jupiter 2 and playing cards in Zero-G.  They are all in space suits.  And then alarms sound and the ship crashes on an unknown planet.  Evacuating the ship, they find themselves on top of a glacier.  Moments later, the Jupiter 2 sinks into a freshly melted pool of water.  That can't be good.  It gets much worse, both the situation and the writing.

The current events are interspersed with flashbacks that don't really explain the present situation but hint at some things.  Obviously, this will make more sense as the series progresses.  For an initial episode, it's mostly annoying.  That's a small complaint.  Stuck on the frigid glacier, they would need something to provide heat so Judy swam back into the ship to get a battery.  On her way back, the water froze solid so that she was a couple feet from the surface.  Well, that's impossible.  I guess the science advisor sucks.  Next, John and Will Robinson go hiking to get some magnesium to melt the ice and rescue Judy.  Yeah, that's a bad idea but, as we've already determined, the science advisor sucks.  Also, the distance across the frozen wastes to the magnesium is obviously too far to be practical but it does make for an impressive vista.  John, who is a military man, brings a child who will only slow his pace.  Sigh.  While digging out the magnesium in a cave where they have seen burning magnesium, John pauses repeatedly to talk to his son.  Of course, this delay is just long enough for the glacier to crack and Will to be whisked away down an icy tunnel.  Great job, dad.  Meanwhile at the crash site, mom is unconscious because her leg was broken during the crash and its worse than it looked.  So bad that Judy - still frozen in ice - had to talk Penny through an operation on her mother's leg.  Failing to follow his father's orders to stay put, Will manages to get trapped in a tree to avoid an alien robot just as a forest fire starts.  Sigh.

John (Toby Stephens) is mostly a bumbling idiot.  He really doesn't know what to do and repeatedly defers to his know-it-all wife.  In the flashbacks, it is shown that Maureen had intended to only take the kids on this interstellar move while John stayed on earth.  The flashback explaining why he wasn't left behind will likely appear in a later episode.  Judy currently hates her father, though I'm not sure he is her father.  She's black while the rest of the cast is white.  Doubtless this will be explained in later episodes.  Most of the flashbacks show that John was usually absent on account of military deployments.

Maureen (Molly Parker) is hard to like.  In flashbacks, she does some sort of shady deal to make sure Will's failed test scores are altered; if the writers are as bad as it looks so far, this deal probably led to the catastrophe that destroyed the Resolute and left the Robinsons stranded.  That she sought to take the kids off-world without their father looks really bad.

Will (Maxwell Jenkins) is a kid.  He seems all right if a bit nervous.  Unlike the rest of the family, Will failed the tests that would allow him to emigrate from earth, thus his mother's shady deal.  He came up with the magnesium plan which shows he has a knowledge of chemistry.  Does not appear to be the prodigy of previous versions.

Judy (Taylor Russell) is the oldest of the Robinson children.  As the show progressed, I liked her less.  She has advanced medical knowledge.  She was cheated with the magically freezing water but, once frozen, she started dispensing her wisdom.  Hey, who's frozen in ice here?  She lives in a universe where water freezes differently and foolishly got stuck.

Penny (Mina Sundwall) is the blandest of the Robinsons.  However, she is also the only Robinson who doesn't screw up.  She doesn't make stupid mistakes or stupid decisions.  Thanks to writer neglect, she is the smartest, most supportive, and most reliable character.  Her passivity allowed her not to do really stupid things like the rest of her family.

Doctor Z Smith (Parker Posey) only appears in the last few minutes of the premiere.  As the Robinsons are evacuated to the Jupiter 2 - which is just a pod on the immense colony ship Resolute, she flees from a robot - exactly matching the robot befriended by Will on the alien planet - that is slaughtering colonists.  She stops to 'help' a wounded man (Billy Mummy of all people) but just steals his jacket.  The jacket says Dr. Z Smith.  She uses the built-in ID card to access a different Jupiter pod to escape the unfolding disaster.

I am partly tempted to watch more episodes to see how much worse it gets or, less likely, see if it improves.  IMDB rates this stinker of an episode at 7.6 while the series as a whole is 7.3.  More reviews may follow.

The Witcher

The story opens with Geralt the Witcher (Henry Cavill) fighting a massive, spider-like swamp monster.  Once he has killed it, he takes part of the corpse to a local town for bounty.  It is quickly apparent that Witchers are strongly disliked by ordinary folk.  It is strange to see how hostile they are to someone who could easily slaughter them.

The series follows three characters: Geralt of Rivia, Ciri (Freya Allan), and Yennefer (Anya Chalotra).  Though all appear in each episode, it isn't until the 3rd episode that it becomes clear that their timelines don't match.  Yennefer's induction into an order of magic predates Geralt's adventures by 30 years or more.  Soon after, Geralt attends the wedding of Ciri's parents, placing him about 15 years ahead of Ciri.  This would work much better if people actually aged.  It seems that Yennefer stopped aging when she achieved her mage status and Witchers are long-lived thanks to their mutation.  However, other character who recur don't seem to have aged either.

Geralt's story is mostly episodic as he fights the monster du jour.  He is infamous as the Butcher of Blaviken but also famous thanks to the songs of Jaskier the Bard (Joey Batey).  By the end of his series of adventures, his timeline has caught up to Ciri's.  Geralt tends to be laconic and has a deep, gravely voice that is very unlike Superman.  His eyes are yellow and his hair is white, leading to him being called the White Wolf.  As an aside, avid fantasy readers will surely have noticed the similarities between Geralt and Elric of Melnibone.  Elric also has white hair - he's an albino - and is called the White Wolf.  Michael Moorcock was probably not thrilled about Geralt of Rivia.

Cirilla "Ciri" the crown princess of Cintra finds herself on the run in the first episode when Cintra falls to the invading forces of Nilfgaard, a dark and murderous nation.  Before she sets out, she is told to find Geralt of Rivia.  Her adventures are nothing but a headlong flight from one peril to the next.  However, she does manifest powerful magic in times of stress.  If she knew how to use these powers, she would be formidable.  Her story has the weakest character arc though it is the thread that ties the others together.

Yennefer starts as a hunchback girl in a backwater town.  However, she has some innate magic talents that bring her to the attention of the local version of Hogwarts.  Involuntarily enrolled, Yennefer is not a very good student but, when she does have successes, she demonstrates unusual power.  Upon completion of her studies, her body is transformed into a beautiful woman.  Of the central characters, she has the most interesting character arc.  She is uncertain what she wants and where her loyalty should lie.  Magic is described as chaos that must be controlled and balanced; it is clear that Yennefer has had difficulty finding that balance.

The greatest weakness of the series is the setting, especially after Game of Thrones.  When the nations of Cintra, Aedirin, Sodden, Temeria, or Nilfgaard are mentioned, it is hard to have any notion of them.  There is no apparent difference between them in language or culture.  Nor do we have a map to place things.  Really, beyond Nilfgaard being the Mordor of this world, it was hard to fathom the politics with the sole exception of Cintra.  With all three stories now synchronized, perhaps that will be resolved in season 2.

All in all, it is an enjoyable show and worth watching.  Thumbs up.

Luke Cage

Last seen in Jessica Jones, Luke Cage (Mike Colter) is working two jobs in Harlem to make a living.  He sweeps the floor at a barber shop and works as a dishwasher at a nightclub.  Interestingly enough, the night club owner is a crime lord known as Cottonmouth (Mahershala Ali) and the barber shop owner is a reformed criminal who used to run with Cottonmouth.  One night, Luke has to stand in for the bartender who has gone missing during a heist and meets undercover cop, Misty Knight (Simone Missick).  The bartender pulled the heist with a kid who works at the barber shop too.  Wow, could we include any more convenient coincidences to pull all the players together?  Yes, we can.  Cottonmouth's cousin is Mariah Dillard (Alfre Woodard), a corrupt councilwoman who gladly benefits from Cottonmouth's criminality.  The obligatory corrupt cop on the force just happens to be Misty's partner.  It is all very tidy for a 13 episode series.  Even when Luke's backstory is explored, it again turns into a tidy little bundle.  His nemesis in prison just happens to show up in Harlem and Luke's half-brother, Willis Stryker - who is responsible for Luke's imprisonment - happens to view Cottonmouth as a friend.  Interestingly, these 'friends' share zero screen time in the 13 episode series.

 

Luke had a big part in Jessica Jones, showing up in 7 episodes.  The two had a budding relationship and, in the comics, are married.  One kind of expects that she would have a cameo here.  Nope.  Instead, Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson) shows up to further tie the various Netflix series together.  She evolves into the clear love interest and at one point offered to put Luke in touch with a lawyer she knows.  Though she does not mention his name, it is obviously Matt Murdock.

The best character was probably Misty Knight, a tough smart detective.  She was too reckless, nearly getting herself killed on a couple of occasions because she went alone but overall I liked the character.  Alfre Woodard made Mariah come to life as a crooked politician who gets pulled deeper into criminality until she finally embraces it.  She will make a good villain in the next season.  Shades (Theo Rossi) was the best of the gangsters, not reckless like most of his superiors.  He was loyal to his superiors but also manipulative of them.  Cottonmouth was too menacing, always the gangster and never the musician.  When he finally begins to develop, he dies immediately.  Stryker is barely contained madness.  He makes a good villain but not a believable kingpin of a crime syndicate.  Either he needed to dial back the rage or be relegated to a gangster enforcer.

Claire frequently accuses Luke of being corny.  Some of the things he says are a bit corny but the corniest moment in the whole show was when Shades turned to Stryker and said, "Watchoo talkin' bout, Willis?"  Straight out of Diff'rent Strokes.  Stryker was not amused but I was.

The series ends with Luke heading back to prison though there is the potential of exoneration, with Mariah ensconced as the new owner of the nightclub and inheritor of her cousin's criminal empire, and his half-brother about to undergo the same process that made Luke almost indestructible.

The weakest of the MCU series on Netflix so far, it is still entertaining.  I look forward to the further adventures of Luke Cage, Hero for Hire.

Jessica Jones

Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter) is a private investigator who happens to have super powers.  She is strong enough to lift a car and tough enough to get up and limp away after being hit by a truck.  Her hard-drinking and generally anti-social personality can be traced to a couple events in her life.  First, her parents and brother were killed in a car accident which she survived and she blames herself.  Second, she had an encounter with a man named Kilgrave (David Tennant) who could mind control anyone to do anything, including murder or suicide.  She was his slave for weeks or months but finally escaped him when he was hit by a bus.  However, during her time with him, she killed a woman and cannot shake the guilt she feels.  Though she is rude and abrasive, Jessica does try to do the right thing.

Jessica is given a case to find a missing girl.  It is soon clear that the girl is Kilgrave's latest involuntary companion.  Somehow, he survived the bus crash.  It becomes Jessica's mission to somehow capture and expose Kilgrave, showing that those who did criminal acts at his behest should not be held responsible.  A tall order indeed.

 

Jessica is not alone in her efforts to stop Kilgrave.  There is Luke Cage (Mike Colter), a man who has unbreakable skin and impressive strength.  Trish Walker (Rachael Taylor) is her adoptive sister and a successful radio host.  Will Simpson is a police officer who Jessica saved after he had been controlled by Kilgrave.  Jeri Hogarth (Carrie-Anne Moss) is a lawyer who often needs her services and is roped in to the plot more than she might like.  Often, her allies proved more of a hindrance than a help.

 

The core of the story is great.  Capturing and exposing a man whose words must be obeyed is quite a challenge.  He can assemble an army of loyal followers who will die for him by just giving the command.  However, that story doesn't require a 13 episode season to tell.  Far too often, the story explores the thoughts and feelings of tangential characters who are entirely unlikable; I'm looking at you, Robyn (Colby Minifie)!  On more than one occasion, Jessica has Kilgrave in her power only to have some brainless character like Robyn release him.  Robyn was at the support group where everyone explained how Kilgrave must be obeyed.  Then she comes across Kilgrave, gagged and harmless.  What does she do?  Remove the gag!  Yes, that was a groan inducing moment.  Robyn was given virtually no positive characteristics, making her just an annoying shrew.  Do NOT bring her back for season 2.

Another facet that could have been excised was the lesbian love triangle with support character Jeri Hogarth.  Jeri is already a lawyer - a big negative to likability - and adding her effort to dump her wife for a younger woman, neither of whom is any more likable than Jeri, is mostly a distraction.  However, I did like how this subplot concluded.

 

In the comic, Jessica gains resistance to Kilgrave's commands thanks to some mental tinkering by Jean Grey - one of the great telepaths of Marvel Universe.  In the show, there is no apparent reason.  It is unexplained.

 

The casting of David Tennant as Kilgrave is brilliant.  His years as the bubbly, ever helpful Doctor Who makes him a great choice as villain.  He does a great job being truly vile and yet he is surprisingly charming and even occasionally a sympathetic character.  The brief effort to reform him was one of the best parts of the series.

 

It is made very clear that Daredevil and Jessica Jones inhabit the same Marvel Universe and there are cross-over characters.  Clair (Rosario Dawson) was a regular on Daredevil and shows up here.  Jeri Hogarth appeared in Daredevil with a job offer for Foggy Nelson.  There will be a Luke Cage series and an Ironfist series before they all get together as The Defenders.  I do like that the heroes aren't saving the world, just this part of Manhattan.

 

Not as good as Daredevil Season 1 but about comparable with Season 2.  Worth watching.