Tag: Netflix Reviews

EDEN: Humans Ruin Everything, AGAIN – Netflix Review

Netflix brings us an anime about a dystopian utopia without people.

SUMMARY

Humans managed to destroy the Earth (and have another FIVE world wars), leaving only our AI robots to watch over the planet. However, after humans have presumably been gone for millennia, two robots, A37 and E92 (Rosario Dawson and David Tennant/Kyoko Hikami and Kentaro Ito), find a small child in a suspended animation container on the factory farm Eden 3. They keep the child, named Sara (Ruby Rose Turner/Marika Kouno), but have to keep her in hiding from the robot overlord Zero (Neil Patrick Harris/Koichi Yamadera), who believes that humans are inherently evil and must be destroyed. They join a group of renegade robots, but after Sara grows up, Zero learns of her existence and now Sara has to find a way to survive and possibly resurrect humanity.

Two robots and a baby should probably also have some Guttenberg.

END SUMMARY

It’s a little weird that this is a TV show, since it’s just four episodes that, if you took out the credits, add up to only about 90 minutes. It’s not like this was just a “season 1,” either, since the show pretty much wraps everything up at the end. It really seems like this could have been a movie. I guess it just came down to how the crew making the show felt about it, or maybe how Netflix felt about marketing it. In any case, you can reasonably get through this entire series in the amount of time of a regular film.

The animation is very stylized, but I enjoyed it.

While the plot of this film is nothing particularly new, the movie does a great job of creating entertaining characters, particularly Sara’s surrogate parents. If you have ever asked, “would it be funny to have Scrooge McDuck voicing a robot,” ask no more, because it’s on full display in this film. David Tennant and Rosario Dawson are adorable as the bumbling pair who keep trying to take on human mannerisms in an attempt to be able to better relate to their new child. While they don’t quite ever manage to be “human,” they are still able to convey love and affection towards their young charge as well as most human parents.

It’s impressive that they can design clothes that well.

The theme of the series, as with many such set-ups, is that humanity can always be better. Even when we screw up, all we really need to do to fix it is to finally learn to work together and move forward. Unfortunately, while this may be true, it becomes very difficult to think that humanity will ever be decent to each other when we can’t even be minorly inconvenienced to protect each other, apparently. I’m not saying that we are doomed, I’m just saying that it’s harder to not believe that. Hopefully, enough people see stories like this to be convinced that we can work together to actually try working together. 

Also, this is one of the few futures where developing AI isn’t a bad thing.

Overall, it’s a decent series. The fact that it’s short makes it a bit easier to recommend.

If you want to check out some more by the Joker on the Sofa, check out the 100 Greatest TV Episodes of All Time, Collection of TV Episodes, Collection of Movie Reviews, or the Joker on the Sofa Reviews.

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Mank: Hollywood Loves Its Own Stories – Oscar Netflix Review

The story of the screenplay for the greatest American movie ever made.

SUMMARY

It’s 1940 and Herman J. “Mank” Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) is recuperating from a broken leg when he is asked to write a screenplay for a film by Orson Welles (Tom Burke). Mank dictates the story of a newspaper magnate named Charles Foster Kane to his secretary Rita Alexander (Lily Collins). Periodically, the story cuts back to the 1930s when Mank and his brother Joe (Tom Pelphrey) were working for Louis B. Mayer (Arliss Howard) of MGM fame and Mank became an acquaintance of William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance) and his mistress Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried). While they start off as friends, Hearst’s actions, particularly towards Upton Sinclair (Bill Nye) and other liberal platforms, and Mank’s alcoholism lead to a slow and painful separation between the two and eventually to Mank writing a screenplay based on Hearst.

There’s a lot of suits and pointing.

END SUMMARY

Hollywood loves stories about Hollywood, particularly during one of their “golden ages.” This story is probably the peak of that, since it’s almost entirely about the inner workings of MGM during the 1930s and about the events that led to the writing of Citizen Kane, a film that consistently ranks as being among the best ever made. I’m going to be frank, I think that it’s only because of this self-obsession Hollywood has that this movie was nominated for Best Picture. Even in a year with relatively few releases like 2020, this still should not have been considered in competition for the best movie of the year. Particularly when things like Hamilton and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and even Soul were not given such an honor. 

I think people liked the Sorkin-esque walk-and-talks.

That’s not to say this isn’t a bad movie, but most of it feels like it’s based on gimmicks. The film is shot in black-and-white and the sound is edited so that it seems like it was made in 1940, just like Citizen Kane. A lot of people have the fake “Mid-Atlantic” accent that was so popular at the time for actors, even when they’re not acting. The flashbacks in the film are structured similarly to the film Citizen Kane, a thing which even the movie acknowledges can be hard to follow. They try to make up for it by having a number of titles on-screen which describe the time period and location, but I actually think that addition is an admission that they couldn’t figure out how to convey the passage of time without them. 

No, being the period where “everyone wore hats” does not clarify it.

The performances, though, are amazing. Naturally, Gary Oldman does a great job portraying Herman Mankiewicz, a man frequently stated to be one of the funniest men in the motion picture industry in the 1930s. He’s witty at all times, but deeply flawed, mostly by his alcoholism and his mistreatment of his wife. Amanda Seyfried gives a lot of depth to Marion Davies by making her more observant and smarter than she lets on, something that is probably more accurate than most of her portrayals as a drunk and a golddigger. Charles Dance, who can play a bad guy better than almost any living actor, really just lets the historical Hearst’s dickishness and pettiness seep through and do a lot of the heavy lifting until the third act, in which he takes it up a level. 

Remember when she was the ditz in Mean Girls? God, Amanda Seyfried is talented.

Overall, it’s a well-performed movie, but I think it would be considered mediocre if it weren’t for Hollywood’s lust for its own history.

If you want to check out some more by the Joker on the Sofa, check out the 100 Greatest TV Episodes of All Time, Collection of TV Episodes, Collection of Movie Reviews, or the Joker on the Sofa Reviews.

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The Irregulars: Sherlock in Name Only, but Still Okay – Netflix Review

A show about a group of supernatural investigators working for a famous detective.

SUMMARY (Spoiler-Free)

Bea (Thaddea Graham) and Jessie (Darci Shaw) are sisters who make their living on the streets of London along with their fellow poor youths Billy (Jojo Macari) and Spike (McKell David). The four get hired by a doctor named John Watson (Royce Pierreson) to investigate a series of child kidnappings. Along the way, they are joined by Leopold (Harrison Osterfield), who introduces himself as a fellow working-class person despite his wealth and nobility, and aided by the Linen Man (Clarke Peters), an American mystic who contacts Jessie. Together, the group investigates into the strange and paranormal occurrences that surround Baker Street. At the same time, they are asked to help track down a missing person, the elusive detective and drug addict Sherlock Holmes (Henry Lloyd-Hughes). 

Guess which one is wealthy?

END SUMMARY

So, I will start off by saying that I am a major Sherlock Holmes fan, something I’ve probably brought up multiple times on this blog. Literally the only tattoo I have, and the only one I ever plan on getting, is a profile of the detective. Admittedly, this makes me a little biased when I say the following: This is not a Sherlock Holmes show. It’s not just the supernatural elements, because I have seen some solid Sherlock adaptations that involved mysticism. I’ve even seen some decent mostly out-of-character versions of Holmes and Watson (though not the terrible film Holmes and Watson), but this was not that. The characters bear almost no resemblance to their literary counterparts. This is not the story of the irregulars which Holmes regularly employed in the books, either. That’s not to say the show wasn’t bad, but if you’re a major fan of Sherlock Holmes, it’ll take you a bit to adjust. They’re not the central figures in the show, but they have a lot of impact and more screen time than I might have thought at first. 

Admittedly, not the traditional image of Holmes and Watson, but that could have been interesting.

The actual characters that the show focuses on, though, are pretty well-crafted. Bea is the leader and the one who tends to actually put many of the clues together. Leopold tends to have the education and the background knowledge to identify some of the more obscure elements. Jessie is the one who is actually a bit supernatural, but is constantly judged as being weak or fragile by Bea. Billy and Spike kind of vary a bit as the show goes on, from comic relief to muscle to tragic figures. It’s not that they don’t make an impact, but they are much less developed than the other three. 

Sets are typical for the time period.

That’s actually the biggest flaw with the show, is that it sometimes feels like it’s focusing too much on the mystery of the week and frequently doesn’t add much to the characters in the process. Despite a number of solid scenes with Billy and Spike, I don’t think we ever really got a good look at their characters. We find out their fears at a few points, mostly because the show has a supernatural horror edge, but even those seem kind of generic. That’s not to say the series isn’t enjoyable. It definitely is. The supernatural elements are entertaining and usually creative, the villains are sufficiently villainous, and all of the performances are solid. Once I got past the lack of real Sherlock elements, I found myself having an okay.

There are some good makeup effects.

Overall, if you like supernatural period shows, you’ll probably like this. 

If you want to check out some more by the Joker on the Sofa, check out the 100 Greatest TV Episodes of All Time, Collection of TV Episodes, Collection of Movie Reviews, or the Joker on the Sofa Reviews.

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The Yin-Yang Master: Dream of Eternity : Visually Brilliant, A Bit Too Long – Netflix Review

A great film from China that needed just a bit of editing.

SUMMARY

Many centuries ago, a serpent demon was going to destroy the Earth. Four masters came together to seal the snake within the body of the Empress, protected by four stone guardians. Since then, whenever the serpent threatens to be released, four masters must join together to stop them. This time, three of the masters are Longye (Jessie Li), Bo Ya (Deng Lun), and Qing Ming (Mark Chao). The fourth, Hongruo, was murdered by a hair demon. Yes, a hair demon. Under the guidance of Princess Zhang Ping (Olivia Wang), the three must investigate the death and, with the help of replacement priest He Shouye (Wang Duo), must release the four stone guardians and prevent the release of the Serpent. 

There will be some concentrated looks.

END SUMMARY

This movie is visually amazing. It’s largely CGI and green screen, much of it not particularly realistic, but the style of the film has a surreal quality that makes the imagery work really well. When nothing quite looks “real,” then nothing stands out as being fake, and this movie manages to use that to its advantage. Since they weren’t concerned about everything looking perfect like many American blockbusters, they instead put the effort into creative and interesting characters and settings. I particularly love the designs of the stone guardians and the demons that they encounter, which appear to be a combination of blockbuster effects and Chinese mythology. The costuming and makeup, likewise, are so stylized that they give the film an air of epic myth. The cinematography is done pretty much perfectly, in the sense of heightening all of these effects. Like I said, if you want a pretty film, this is it. 

Sometimes the art is less subtle.

As far as the story goes, this… kind of lets me down. In most Chinese epics, the plot is kind of weak, but they make up for that with a lot of extensive action sequences. This movie tones down the action sequences (not that there aren’t any, they just seem shorter than similar films) and tries to make up for that with more plot and background scenes. Note that I used the word “tries.” Really, a lot of these scenes would probably be fine if they were a bit shorter. Instead, this movie clocks in at 2 hours and 12 minutes with a plot that could probably have been done in 90. As such, there were a bunch of shots in the film that made me go “wait, are we STILL here?” I realize part of the cause of this is probably that the director was really proud of the visuals and wanted to indulge a bit, but sometimes you have to let things go.

We don’t need to cut more Bo Ya, I can say that much.

The performances are pretty solid, particularly Mark Chao as Qing Ming, who has to deal with a number of conflicts between his principles and reality throughout the film. His performance has a little more subtlety than I might expect from this kind of film, and since he’s the main character, that pays off, particularly when he’s having scenes of contemplative dialogue exchanges with others. 

Or using a needle with his mouth.

Overall, while I would cut the movie down (or watch parts of it on 1.5 speed), I still enjoyed it. If you’re a fan of Chinese cinema, I’d say it’s a quality watch.

If you want to check out some more by the Joker on the Sofa, check out the 100 Greatest TV Episodes of All Time, Collection of TV Episodes, Collection of Movie Reviews, or the Joker on the Sofa Reviews.

If you enjoy these, please, like, share, tell your friends, like the Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/JokerOnTheSofa/), follow on Twitter @JokerOnTheSofa, and just generally give me a little bump. I’m not getting paid, but I like to get feedback.

The One: What if You Could Calculate Love? – Netflix Review

A company figures out how to match soulmates, but it doesn’t make life much simpler.

SUMMARY

English scientist Rebecca Webb (Hannah Ware) is the CEO of The One, a company which uses someone’s DNA to find their perfect love match. The corporation is wildly successful, but everything gets put in jeopardy when a body turns up in the Thames. It turns out the body belongs to a former associate of Webb and her partner James Whiting (Dimitri Leonidas) named Ben Naser (Amir El-Masry). Det. Kate Saunders (Zoë Tapper) is assigned to investigate, but Kate is also using The One to find her match, Sophia (Jana Perez). At the same time, Webb is being investigated by journalist Mark Bailey (Eric Kofi-Abrefa), whose wife Hannah (Lois Chimimba) has secretly had him tested by The One, only to find out that she is not his perfect match.

Yes, there’s a TED talk, basically.

END SUMMARY

Years ago, there was a movie called Timer which was a British comedy about a world where almost everyone has a device implanted into them that tells them when they’re going to meet their soulmate. The movie did a good job of exploring how the world is changed by finding out that not only are soulmates real, but also that they can be found through science. However, where that film was mostly a funny character study of a person who doesn’t have a soulmate match in that world, this show tries to do a study of a number of characters but lets most of them get bogged down by the overarching mystery of Rebecca and Ben’s body. Too much time is spent trying to drag out what ultimately is not a super satisfying story. 

You can watch this in 90 minutes instead.

It’s even worse because most of the side stories actually could be super interesting. For example, Kate is bisexual but tends to date men, only to find out that her ideal match is a woman. That’s something that surprises even her. That would be a fun thing to explore, the idea that people might not even be able to guess the gender of the person who will be perfect for them. However, trying to play out any of these situations mostly falls to the wayside so that we can talk more about what Rebecca did to start the company and whether or not she committed a murder in the process. Each of the narratives that the show sets up could be interesting and bring up a number of points about how society could be changed when something that seems metaphysical, like love, can actually be conquered by science. But, no, instead we get a bunch of cliched drama. It’s really disappointing, because many of the performers in this show are great. 

They try to address the religious aspects, but mostly just gloss over it.

Overall, this show has a great concept, but the execution is not great. It’s even harder to deal with because apparently AMC has a show called Soulmates with a similar premise as an anthology. I’d probably recommend that one instead.

If you want to check out some more by the Joker on the Sofa, check out the 100 Greatest TV Episodes of All Time, Collection of TV Episodes, Collection of Movie Reviews, or the Joker on the Sofa Reviews.

If you enjoy these, please, like, share, tell your friends, like the Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/JokerOnTheSofa/), follow on Twitter @JokerOnTheSofa, and just generally give me a little bump. I’m not getting paid, but I like to get feedback.

I Care A Lot: Who Is the Real Villain? – Netflix Review

The answer is largely all of the people who do this in real life.

SUMMARY (Spoiler-Free)

Marla Grayson (Rosamund Pike) is a con-artist who makes her living by convincing the law to give her guardianship over elderly people, allowing her to shove them in assisted-living facilities from which she cuts off all outside contact. She is assisted by her former police officer girlfriend Fran (Elza Gonzalez), assisted living manager Sam Rice (Damian Young), and Karen Amos (Alicia Witt), the doctor who fabricates many diagnoses in order to convince the court, specifically the aloof Judge Lomax (Isiah Whitlock, Jr.), to permit Marla to take care of these people. After she runs her scam and commits a woman named Jennifer Peterson (Dianne Wiest) against her will, Marla discovers that Jennifer may not be who she seems. In fact, she may be connected to a former mob boss named Roman Lunyov (Peter Dinklage) who does not like having her inside of the facility and is willing to go to extraordinary lengths to get her out. Unfortunately, he may be underestimating Marla’s greed.

Don’t trust anyone who wears sunglasses indoors this much.

END SUMMARY

I would like to start off by saying that Rosamund Pike and Peter Dinklage are great in this film. So great that you genuinely find yourself wanting to see more of them, despite the fact that their characters are two of the worst people you could put on film without moving into gore porn. Roman is a mob boss whose reputation and behavior makes it pretty clear that he will murder almost anyone that gets in the way. However, in this particular situation, he is actually not in the wrong, since Marla has manipulated the legal system to essentially imprison Jennifer. Moreover, Marla keeps making Jennifer’s life miserable just to punish her for Roman’s actions, which makes getting her out seem more justified. It’s telling that in a movie where one of the characters is a murderer, that you would have difficulty determining which of the two is more ruthless and evil. After all, we see how horribly Marla treats Jennifer before she even finds out about Roman, and we can assume that she treats the dozens of people under her care exactly like that. If so, she is perhaps hurting people more than if she just shot them in the head. 

Even though Dinklage has that hair, he’s still threatening.

The key to this movie is that both sides keep pushing each other and refusing to back down, even when they’re each expecting the other two. Marla is offered several hundred thousand dollars to just let Jennifer go, but she stands firm with wanting millions, even when it’s clear that Roman will eventually move from the carrot to the stick in a very final way. Roman seems constantly surprised and upset over Marla’s complete lack of fear of him or his reputation. For both of these people, it’s obvious that the only thing that will ever stop them is if one of them gets a bullet through the heart. It doesn’t help that Marla often seems to try and justify her actions as being the only way to get ahead as a woman, or perhaps as a gay woman, which kind of fails as a feminist message.

You don’t have to torture the innocent because of “Feminism.”

It makes it even more tragic when you realize that, while people like Roman are hunted by most of society and forced to work in the shadows, Marla’s grift is completely legal and likely practiced by thousands of people across this country. Sure, there are likely a lot of people who do care for the elderly and treat them with respect and dignity, but a short search about nursing home bad practices indicates that there are a lot that don’t, too. Even when caught, they usually get fined less than the amount of money they made off of the mistreatment, so, much like this film, the only thing that might ever stop them is confronting someone who won’t let the legality get in the way of morality. Or legislation, if we weren’t governed by assholes (if you’re not from the US, apologies, maybe you’re not governed by assholes. But you probably are).

Jennifer has done bad things, but she probably doesn’t deserve this.

Overall, it’s a good movie, but it will probably not leave you with a great feeling at the end. 

If you want to check out some more by the Joker on the Sofa, check out the 100 Greatest TV Episodes of All Time, Collection of TV Episodes, Collection of Movie Reviews, or the Joker on the Sofa Reviews.

If you enjoy these, please, like, share, tell your friends, like the Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/JokerOnTheSofa/), follow on Twitter @JokerOnTheSofa, and just generally give me a little bump. I’m not getting paid, but I like to get feedback.

Firefly Lane: Too Soapy for Me – Netflix Review

And trust me when I say, never thought Katherine Heigl and Sarah Chalke could be TOO soapy.

SUMMARY (Spoiler-Free)

Tully Hart (Katherine Heigl/Ali Skovbye) and Kate Mularkey (Sarah Chalke/Roan Curtis) met when they were teenagers and have been best friends ever since, nearly three decades. Now, in 2003, Tully is hosting her own hit show and Kate is getting divorced from her husband Johnny (Ben Lawson) while trying to keep her relationship with her daughter, Marah (Yael Yurman). The show simultaneously plays through their teenage years, their twenties when they were trying to get started in the television industry, and the present.

Guess what decade this is?

END SUMMARY

I am a big fan of Katherine Heigl and Sarah Chalke and I was hoping that this would be a fun show highlighting both of their comic talents or, at least, their dramatic abilities. Unfortunately, this show did not do that. Not that Heigl and Chalke aren’t great in this show, they are, but the material frequently fights against itself. It constantly tries the most gimmicky and soap-opera-esque plots and the writing forces everyone to overact just to accommodate the lines. 

They are fun together, though.

I will say that I think that the girls who play the young versions of the characters do a great job. Ali Skovbye and Roan Curtis both look like they could be the younger versions of the present day and also do rudimentary versions of their future mannerisms that are just different enough to make you think that they will, one day, become Tully and Kate. 

They have great chemistry, too.

A big part of what doesn’t work is that the show’s structure tries to make many of the themes play out simultaneously in the present and both of the past storylines, but the fact that we know how the storylines play out often ruins the impact of the past ones. For example, you kinda know how Kate’s relationship with Johnny will play out, since they’re getting a divorce in the present. Also, in order to keep the past plots secret, people in the “present” of 2003 will seemingly intentionally avoid saying anything about it, which becomes really annoying the fourth or fifth time you notice it. It probably would have been better if they just had two plotlines running. Maybe just do the 70s and the 80s plotlines and save the 2003 for later.

Also, maybe it wouldn’t constantly undo nice moments with bad past moments.

Overall, just wasn’t a huge fan of this show. 

If you want to check out some more by the Joker on the Sofa, check out the 100 Greatest TV Episodes of All Time, Collection of TV Episodes, Collection of Movie Reviews, or the Joker on the Sofa Reviews.

If you enjoy these, please, like, share, tell your friends, like the Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/JokerOnTheSofa/), follow on Twitter @JokerOnTheSofa, and just generally give me a little bump. I’m not getting paid, but I like to get feedback.

The Queen’s Gambit: Sex, Drugs, and Chess – Netflix Review

A young woman takes the chess world by storm. Yes, that’s a thing.

SUMMARY (Spoiler-Free)

Beth Harmon (Anya-Taylor Joy/Annabeth Kelly/Isla Johnston) is orphaned when her mother dies in a car crash. At the orphanage, Beth stays isolated aside from her friend Jolene (Moses Ingram) until she sees the Janitor, Mr. Shaibel (Bill Camp), playing chess by himself. He eventually agrees to teach her and, by the age of 9, she has become a prodigious player. As she gets older, she begins to demonstrate incredible skill and starts to win tournaments with her adopted mother, Mrs. Wheatley (Marielle Heller), as her manager. She eventually goes up against American champion Benny Watts (Thomas Brodie-Sangster), Soviet champion Vasily Borgov (Marcin Dorociński), and a ton of sexism.

Once she’s got her eyes on you, it’s check and mate… if you’re lucky.

END SUMMARY

It’s tough to make chess interesting in film, which is probably why the movies Searching for Bobby Fischer and Queen of Katwe are the only ones I can name off the top of my head. Both of those are biopics, albeit dramatized, about real young people becoming chess prodigies, whereas this series is entirely fictional. However, since apparently there’s only one chess story to tell, it is still about a young person becoming a chess prodigy. 

There’s a lot of white guys standing around watching.

The reason this series works is because, like the above movies, it’s more about the person than the game. Beth is a broken person and, for much of the series, it’s not even her fault. Her mother died, she was put into an orphanage, and the orphanage drugged her regularly. She’s an addict by the middle of the first episode. The rest of the series pretty much just goes naturally from there, with her spiraling from vice to vice, sometimes under the watch of her adopted mother and sometimes not. At the same time, we see that Beth is not just a chess prodigy, but a brilliant thinker in math and science as well, just not to the same level. I like the depiction of a chess player as not JUST a chess player, but a person who has considerable talents and just dedicates them to chess primarily. Not that this wasn’t true of both Josh Waitzkin and Phiona Mutesi, I’m sure, but their biopics didn’t have the time to expand on it sufficiently. Also, both of those were limited by reality: Waitzkin quit chess in his early 20s and Mutesi, while she does appear to still be active, only has a rating of 1600, whereas chess champions are all usually above 2500. As Beth is fictional, she’s allowed to actually go out and win against the best of the best.

She takes enough drugs that it’s surprising she makes it to the end of the show.

Anya-Taylor Joy’s strength in the portrayal is her eyes. Beth is often depicted as playing games out in her head and visualizing the chessboard, and Joy conveys that perfectly. We see her moving between fierce concentration, anxious fear, and ruthless enjoyment of her victories. She’s got a mostly laconic wit, which Joy lays out well. The supporting cast are also great, although many of them move in and out of the series almost at random. The recurring character of Watts, played by Thomas Brodie-Sangster, is particularly interesting because his relationship to Beth changes so drastically during the series, going from being an idol to a rival to a friend. 

Yes, he is a chess champion who dresses like a vampire hunter.

Overall, great series whether you like chess or have no use for the game.

If you want to check out some more by the Joker on the Sofa, check out the 100 Greatest TV Episodes of All Time, Collection of TV Episodes, Collection of Movie Reviews, or the Joker on the Sofa Reviews.

If you enjoy these, please, like, share, tell your friends, like the Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/JokerOnTheSofa/), follow on Twitter @JokerOnTheSofa, and just generally give me a little bump. I’m not getting paid, but I like to get feedback.

 

Enola Holmes: Great Performance, Fun Story – Netflix Review

Sherlock Holmes’ younger sister gets her own adventure.

SUMMARY (Spoiler-Free)

Enola Holmes (Millie Bobby Brown) is the youngest child of the Holmes family after her older brothers Mycroft (Sam Claflin) and Sherlock (Henry Cavill). Raised alone by her mother, Eudoria (Helena Bonham Carter), Enola is taught to be independent (particularly for a woman in the 1890s) and is educated in cryptography, strategy, and even martial arts. When her mother disappears, the older Holmes brothers attempt to send Enola to a finishing school under the abusive Miss Harrison (Fiona Shaw), but Enola escapes. In her flight, she encounters a young man who is revealed to be a missing Marquess, Viscount Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge) who is being pursued by a menacing man. The pair escape together before getting separated. Enola now wishes to find the Viscount as well as her mother while avoiding the eyes of the greatest detective in the world and his smarter older brother. 

A family of some distinction.

END SUMMARY

While I do read a number of Sherlock Holmes spin-offs, I don’t think I’ve read the source material which inspired this movie. I’ve heard that the books are better, but I can say that it is hard to write a character that can match Millie Bobby Brown’s portrayal. It’s not just that she does such a great job of portraying a smart outcast woman in Victorian England, it’s that she is unbelievably likeable. Even though her character often breaks the fourth wall and falls back on some overused tropes, she’s so charming that you don’t even care. A big strength is how much she can convey to the camera with just a look. Comedy, concern, caring, things that don’t begin with C. She also has great comic timing when she does her breaks and the deliveries of the lines in them, but she also nails the more somber emotional moments. It reminded me of Fleabag, something that wouldn’t have shocked me if I’d realized that Harry Bradbeer, the director of this film, was also the director of that show. Given the heavy feminist themes of both, I feel like this is almost the young persons’ introduction to the same humor that Phoebe Waller-Bridge brought to the screen. If they want to cast Waller-Bridge as an older Enola Holmes in a future movie (or as Irene Adler), I want everyone involved to know I will throw money at the screen with such force that Arthur Conan Doyle’s estate will feel it. 

This look is so damned perfect. She’s so talented.

Henry Cavill portrays a different version of Sherlock Holmes than we usually see. He’s more grounded than Robert Downey, Jr.’s version and more human than Benedict Cumberbatch’s portrayal. He is still brilliant, but since he’s not the focus, it comes off almost more impressive because we just see him working things out in the background. He also seems more caring, possibly because this is the first version we’ve seen interacting with a family member who actually likes him. However, Sam Claflin’s portrayal of Mycroft, who is essentially the villain of the piece, stands at odds with most interpretations of the character. He’s a misogynist, a classist, and tends to shout loudly. Additionally, he’s often wrong, which is probably the biggest difference from the canonical version. But, I will say, he’s a fun villain, because he’s really just a representation of an archaic mindset and watching Enola rebel against it is cathartic to everyone’s inner teenager. 

He’s the only version of Sherlock Holmes that can block bullets.

The actual mystery of the film is pretty great, particularly in watching Enola slowly unraveling it. She’s clearly brilliant, but she doesn’t have the practical experience of Sherlock Holmes, nor does she have the ability to operate independently, due to her status as a woman. She does a good job to try and overcome it, but often ends up just dressing as a boy to get by. Still, it’s fun to watch her work.

Louis Partridge is great as the Marquess. He’s very surprisingly quick and fun.

Overall, I really liked this movie, but now I need a movie with Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Irene Adler. I’m going to start #IreneWallerBridge on Twitter and see if anyone cares (they won’t).

If you want to check out some more by the Joker on the Sofa, check out the 100 Greatest TV Episodes of All Time, Collection of TV Episodes, Collection of Movie Reviews, or the Joker on the Sofa Reviews.

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Dragon’s Dogma: It’s Formulaic, But A Guilty Pleasure – Netflix Anime Review

I take a look at an adaptation of a medieval fantasy video game series.

SUMMARY (Spoiler-Free)

In the medieval land of Gransys, Ethan (Yūichi Nakamura/Greg Chun), a hunter, loses his wife Olivia (Miyuki Sawashiro/Cristina Vee) and his surrogate son Louis (Yūko Sanpei/Jeannie Tirado) to an attack by a savage Dragon (Takayuki Sugō/David Lodge). The Dragon, sensing Ethan’s hate, takes Ethan’s heart and revives him as an Arisen. He is soon joined by a magical humanoid creation called a Pawn, whom he names Hannah (Nana Mizuki/Erica Mendez). Together, the two head through Gransys to slay the Dragon, and all of the monsters they meet along the way.

It’s good Ethan was a hunter rather than a baker. It’d be hard to cook the dragon.

END SUMMARY

This show’s apparently an adaptation of a video game, and that’s kind of what it feels like. Every episode feels like the next level that slowly gets to the “boss” Dragon. While this provides some boost to the structure and pacing of the show, it does get a bit repetitive, mostly because the characterization of Ethan and Hannah is really thin until the very last episode. Even the episode that fleshes out Ethan’s backstory doesn’t really do it in a way that evokes a lot of emotion. The monster designs are pretty solid, but only a handful of them are particularly creative. The rest are just picked from a DnD Monster Manual.

The Hydra works exactly like you’d think a hydra does, until suddenly it doesn’t.

Every episode is named after a particular sin representing one of the monsters in it or the general theme, which, at times, feels a little like a PSA. This is particularly true of “Sloth,” which generally comes off as being a Reagan-esque “Winners Don’t Do Drugs” fable. This vibe conflicts with the fact that the violence and nudity give the show a distinctly adult feel. This tonal inconsistency is only matched by the character inconsistency, with several supporting characters seeming to change motives at a moment. It’s particularly noticeable with Ethan and Hannah, who both seem to fluctuate between “help the people” and “kill the dragon, screw the people” depending on what the current episode needs.

Winners don’t use drugs; they use magical arrows.

In positives, the fight scenes are pretty good. Some of them are creative or at least have nice visual elements. I will say that the last episode does make me want to see more of this show, because they open it up for a completely new direction. At seven episodes, some of which are under 20 minutes, the show isn’t a major investment if you just have some time to kill. 

The Dragon has some of the best characterization.

Overall, if you like hack and slash, give it a try, but if not, maybe wait until we find out if Season 2 is any better.

If you want to check out some more by the Joker on the Sofa, check out the 100 Greatest TV Episodes of All Time, Collection of TV Episodes, Collection of Movie Reviews, or the Joker on the Sofa Reviews.

If you enjoy these, please, like, share, tell your friends, like the Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/JokerOnTheSofa/), follow on Twitter @JokerOnTheSofa, and just generally give me a little bump. I’m not getting paid, but I like to get feedback.