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Reviews
Dark Matter (2024)
Multiverse for Dummies
I'm not going to recap the premise or characters, plenty of other reviews have stated as such. Nor am I going to complain about the pace-I've plenty of patience if the potential seems worth playing out.
My main comment is that for a physics professor, the protagonist is so slow on the draw that it makes you wonder how he ever attained a degree. It's SO bloody obvious what's going on here that we feel forced to endure being trapped with an allegedly brilliant person who acts like he's forgotten everything he's been trying to teach first year students. The big reveal (he's kidnapped and forced to swap places with one of his alternate selves) should've happened in the first 15 minutes of episode one, and he should've been asking pertinent questions a moment later.
Anyone who's watched Quantum Leap or Sliders will instantly know what's going on, plot-wise. The fact that good actors have to act stupidly just makes Dark Matter all the more tedious. It's well shot and edited, but production values ain't everything. If not for my wife's insistence that it will "get a lot better" (she loved the book) I'd have given up by episode three. Personally my taste in science fiction is a lot more esoteric, but nonsense like DM and Silo that seem to be drawing bigger audiences than truly great material... like The Expanse.
Eileen (2023)
For adventurous viewers
Don't let the other reviews averaging in the sixes prevent you, the adventurous viewer from passing on this fresh and riveting film! It's an unusual character study that flirts with reality and psychosis, between the ordinary and utter wish fulfillment. Try not to read much about it, just jump in.
Cinephiles who enjoy a certain degree of ambiguity in this world of disappointing cookie-cutter movies will be delighted. Great performances all around, and an immersive 70s vibe (right down to the film grain) won we over. Give Eileen a chance and ignore the viewers who just can't grasp why the finale is so appropriate.
Mulholland Falls (1996)
Production design is the star
Plenty of people have reviewed the movie in detail. My quick addition is to boil it down: the film desperately wants to be another L. A. Confidential/Chinatown, but all it succeeds in doing is replicating the aspects of production design (and to a lesser extent cinematography) of the aforementioned films without coming up with a plot that is equally compelling.
Novelist turned screenwriter Pete Dexter is from the "new hardboiled" vein of writers like James Ellroy and Andrew Vachss. Unfortunately Mulholland Falls feels much more imitative than original. Director Lee Tamahori does what he can, and the movie is still worth a look if you enjoy this type of genre material. Entertaining, but not a hardboiled classic... let's say soft boiled.
Children of the Damned (1964)
soft reboot of Village takes a different approach
SPOILERS
I just watched this last night (HBO Max) and found it refreshingly different. It was more or less a soft reboot of Village, sans the alien impregnation and more of a mystery as to why the kids were telekinetics. The most horrifying part was when a benign psychologist asks, "what do you want?" their response is "we don't know."
It's full of metaphoric undertones -- set mainly in an abandoned church, where one of the kids is killed... and subsequently resurrected. Is it about the abandonment of faith? Or is it about embracing reason over faith? Is it about nations cooperating instead of making war?
What are the homoerotic implications of the two male leads, roomates who cook for one another and act like a quarrelling couple when debating the merits of the children's abilities?
Are the children, as implied, possibly genetic material sent into the past by future humans to help us negotiate a path towards peaceful coexistence? There are no pat answers, and that's what makes it such a damned interesting film.
Crisp B & W cinematography and on-point editing. Well worth 90 minutes of my time!