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Cobra Kai: Head of the Snake (2022)
The show is fun but lacks the depth of earlier seasons
I feel like what made Cobra Kai so great was the yin/yang concept. Danny Larusso may have been the inheritor of a pure and magical karate style, but the guy was arrogant and shallow. Johnny Lawrence was rough and a down and out, his style was more like street karate, but he was authentic and his teaching helped kids who were being bullied. And in this way it was balanced.
Even the addition of Kreese seemed for a time to maintain this balance. For though he taught aggression, striking first, having no mercy, it was put into context by understanding that this was a man with PTSD, that these principles were absolutely essential to survive in a war scenario like Vietnam, that there was a place for this approach.
It started to fall apart for me on a more symbolic level when Kreese could not find any redemption but instead just became pure evil. Because if someone is just pure evil how can you relate to them? They cease being human.
I thought the return of Terry Silver was amazing because here was yet another kind of life journey, someone more cerebral who had had a dark past but had turned his life around after a lot of self-transformation and inner work. Here was someone who could perhaps be seen as dark by some, but who for others could be an example of self- mastery.
But ultimately, he was made more evil than Kreese.
Psychopathically evil. Cartoon evil. And that means no-one can relate to him, we can only hate him. So this entire 5th season has become an old school good vs evil narrative, and the story suffers for it.
Since all the established characters are good, we have a cobra kai class full of faceless extras, a spy in the case of Tori, someone who's there almost by accident (Devon), and Kenny who is just stuck on angry mode even after getting even against his bully Anthony.
It's so lop-sided they introduced a bunch of
new Sensei who have no personalities but are simply evil for no reason. (One even has an eye patch!) Faceless extras are only there so our heroes can get free hits in. So Johnny Lawrence defeats 4 of these 4 Sensei simultaneously. If Silver is so intelligent with such high standards, how come he hires such sub-par sensei? No explanation.
And if he's so evil, how come his great master plan is to win an international karate tournament? I mean isn't that a laudable aim? No explanation, no great motivation for all our heroes to get so worked up about it either.
Silver is also portrayed as a better fighter than Daniel destroying him in the fight in Raymond's apartment, yet inexplicably he is beaten easily in the finale by Daniel. Why? Well because he's evil so we have to have him lose at the end.
It's this kind of thing which I find breaks something that was really special in this show in earlier seasons. Don't get me wrong. I still love the nostalgia, Johhny Lawrence is often still really fun, and there are moments of great psychological depth which still take my breath away - like when Kreese is talking to the prison psychologist and we see these different layers of meaning he has attached to people from his life.
So I'd give this season an 8, and this finale a 7.
Peaky Blinders (2013)
My qualms about this show
It's amazing that people like this so much.
I get it, the atmosphere, historic setting and music are really cool and immersive.
But what I struggle with is the moral centre of the whole show. I need to see stories that uplift, that have some sense of goodness about them.
And what I find with this show (and a bunch of other shows as well to be honest), is that we have inherently unlikeable, in fact murderous and frankly evil characters - it's just that the adversaries they are up against are even more depraved and evil than they are, which makes us identify with Tommy et al and root for them. Especially as they also show some good qualities such as loyalty to family and love for each other, as well as the war service.
But it's this toxic mix of virtue and wrongdoing which we're made to relate to and immerse ourselves in that feels kind of unpleasant to me to be a part of.
I started feeling this way towards the end of the first season. I thought the balance was there when you had this criminal lowlife Tommy, up against a firm and overbearing cop (the Sam Neill character) and the earnest Irish protestant spy. And I was rooting for the cop to bring this guy to justice. But then they made the cop this evil corrupt depraved person, and had the protestant spy lady fall in love with the criminal!
And from then on it simply became a cesspool, and the more powerful the forces arrayed against Tommy became, the more plot armor was put on him, for him to survive and outsmart everyone else.
Interesting enough to watch. But not the amazing amazing so many other reviewers seem to think it is.
The Terror (2018)
Erebus and Terror RIP
Just great to see even an attempt to depict the fated Northwest Passage expedition of Sir John Franklin who was governor of Tasmania.
Harrowing, haunting but also a lovely watch. Interesting supernatural as well as historic themes and lovely scenery.
The Crown (2016)
From Glory to Soap
My rating of this show has dropped from a 10 after 3 seasons, to an 8 now.
The first two seasons portrayed historical world events and the connection of the Royal Family to what were important times for Britain. The third season was more intimate but was in some ways more intriguing in spite of, or perhaps because of this. Prince Charles's investiture in Wales for example, or Mountbatten's speech to the Burma society.
But by the 4th season we have descended to the level of soap opera. I'm not necessarily a fan of the Royal Family but here they were portrayed in the worst imaginable light. And I found myself thinking, this event is made up, that dialogue is a fiction. etc. Which I didn't in the first 3 seasons. There's no way that Thatcher had a dislike for the Queen in the way portrayed here - have a look at the interview on YouTube of Thatcher praising her.
I did think the production quality was very high and I loved the settings. The acting was very good in parts. And I loved seeing the Concorde, Land Rovers and Westland? Helicopter.
Battlestar Galactica (2004)
Amazing show
What a great show. Intense, suspenseful stuff, certainly for the first 2 seasons. Very heartwarming as well, and at one point I thought this show was depicting a full on spiritual awakening. Towards the end I felt it lost its way a bit, and some of the ending I felt was a bit dissatisfying. Overall though there was so much great stuff along the way, I had a great time binge watching this over the past few weeks.
Highly recommnd!
The Great Indian Wars 1540-1890 (1991)
Great!
Really enjoyable, exciting documentary about the wars on the great Plains between the American Indians and the US cavalry. Covered a number of skirmishes and engagements which I had not heard of before, along with the more famous characters such as Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and Geronimo. Recommend on Prime.
The Nightingale (2018)
Unpleasant.
A brutal, violent film portraying all the tropes of the current zeitgeist - British bad, Irish good, indigenous Australians saintly.
A long walk through the forest with far too much rape and very little plot.
Rebellion (2016)
Easter Rising : A Victory for Feminism
I quite enjoyed this, it felt quite immersive and gave you a sense of the time period, good locations, costumes etc. Also gave a variety of different perspectives - rich and poor, Catholic and Protestant, pro and anti-British.
Amazing to me though how there's never any attempt at objectivity in these shows, the British always have to be portrayed as thuggish and pointlessly evil.
To prop up the identity of these smaller countries.
Just like Kesari which I watched a few weeks back about the Sikhs defending British India against Muslim tribesmen - had the British officer calling Indians 'cowards' for no good reason.
And there was the feminist angle. What was the point of the Easter rebellion again? Well it was because men have always told women what to do, and joining the rising meant freedom for women..or some such.
identity politics is truly bizarre.
The Indian Wars: A Change of Worlds (2016)
I enjoyed it despite itself
What is there to say about this bizarre documentary?!
It's so bad, that it's good!
The narrator can't get his intonation right, it sounds as if he hasn't read the script beforehand and keeps changing the tone mid sentence! It's the most amateurish narration I've ever heard!
The actors used in this thing, mostly they had the same 2 Native American actors used over and over again throughout the 7 episodes, and one of them was a white guy in face paint!
The photography used was wildly out of place, talking at a war in the 18th century they'd show black and white photographs, What?! And then they'd cut to a painting, then another 'reenactment' with the 2 actors, then another black and white photograph! It was totally bizarre.
Plus you got the feeling you weren't actually learning anything, because it was all so muddled going back and forward in time, I vaguely got that I should look into Sitting Bull, Geronimo, the Trail of Tears and or two other things, but I'm not retaining anything here.
Oh and it was incredibly left leaning. Just hammering the point again and again about how evil the White man was and how noble the Native Americans were.
But despite all that I kind of connected with it. It touched me somehow. I'm grateful just to have the opportunity to watch a documentary about the topic through Prime, and something made within the last few years. And somehow the beauty of the Indian culture and the massive impact of the interaction with the European immigrants came across.
Cheers.
Kesari (2019)
Pointlessly made into an anti-British film.
This would have been a great movie but it's needlessly anti-British. Britons didn't say to the face of Sikhs that they were cowards. That's just a fantasy to conjure up nationalistic feelings as well as resentment. We fought together. We are brothers.
Apart from that, pretty cool.
The Vietnam War (2017)
Great documentary series with some possible limitations
Well, I thought that was an amazing documentary. I think Ken Burns does an epic and moving job covering the events from a big picture political perspective. You really get a sense of the weight of history, and the scale of tragedy, particularly how decisions made by presidents and governments set in motion forces that led to catastrophic suffering. Millions of deaths and unhealed emotional wounds. I also thought the documentary was very good at the military level, describing battles and engagements that I had never heard of, in a reasonable detail. And the music and photography was epic. Seeing those pictures of old-time American life juxtaposed with the chaos of Vietnam was so moving. I also thought the reconciliation part at the end was really beautiful.
There were three things about the documentary that I did think were weaknesses.
1. There was such a focus on the protests, and starting so early on in the series, it kind of overwhelmed the narrative in some ways. I have read that the vast majority of veterans were proud of their service in Vietnam, and did not have this tortured sense of regret and shame that you see with those interviewed in the series. Some did but not most.
(for evidence see this article - https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/ken- burnss-vietnam-is-fair-to-the-troops-but-not-the-cause-1507324058)
2. I wonder about the conspiratorial angle of things. This documentary portrays the North Vietnamese as almost magically destined to win, as if it was inevitable, as if nothing the Americans could have done would have made any ultimate difference. I just wonder if part of the reason the Americans lost is because they weren't allowed to win. I mean, had the Americans occupied Hanoi and Haiphong Harbour, would not the North Vietnamese have been unable to prosecute the war? Surely if the Ho Chi Minh trail was permanently occupied in several places there wouldn't be the communist resupply into South Vietnam? But perhaps none of this would have been possible without China directly entering the conflict. Who knows.
3.Because the documentary is so long, and also attempts to cover the bigger historical events, I don't think it captures the day to day experience of the Vietnamese villagers that well. I mean, what made someone turn to the VietCong? What was daily life like? There is another, Vietnamese documentary "the face of the enemy" which I think does a better job of this.
Overall, a fascinating time spent watching this, and I recommend it to all with caveats.
The Pacific (2010)
Brilliant at times, boring at times.
I would like to rate this an 8 or and 9, because the battle scenes on Okinawa, Iwo Jima and Pelaliu Airfield were brilliant. However, there were a few things about the series that bothered me so much I had to reduce the rating. 1. the depiction of the American marines. I know we are several generations out from 1945, but back then, people generally behaved in an honourable way. For example, the veterans did not for the most part swear at that time. They also for the most part did not fall apart psychologically or question the war, they believed they were engaged in a just war. (yes, of course there was PTSD). The marines here are depicted as sadistic and without a moral compass. Why the emphasis on cutting out the gold teeth of dead Japanese soldiers? That was just weird. 2. the depiction of the Japanese soldiers. The Japanese were depicted as if they were a weak and pathetic foe here. They just ran straight into machine gun fire. They were butchered in the thousands here for only a handful of American casualties. That is straight out wrong. The casualty ratio was around 5:1 . The Japanese were a fierce, intelligent and formidable foe. On the other hand, there was a complete whitewashing of Japanese atrocities here. The Japanese tortured those they took prisoner. They were brutal. They disembowelled prisoners. They had forced death marches. Yet here they are portrayed as the moral side somehow.
3. sex and romance. You have a 10 part series, and the whole of episodes 3 and 8 were dedicated to slow-moving romance stories, with a lot of graphic sex. Why on earth were we shown the sex of Basilone's wedding night? I didn't want to be there. 4. no depiction of naval battles. It was weird going through the pacific war without Midway, Leyte Gulf, the Battle of the Coral Sea etc etc. It wasn't a clear picture of what the pacific war was. 5. Hard to warm to the characters. Basically all the main characters were depicted as scoundrels of one form or another. So it was difficult to care about what happened to them.
As I said, the battle scenes were raw and brilliant at times, powerful.
Doctor Who: The Zygon Inversion (2015)
A decent episode
I enjoyed the episode for the most part. There were a lot of entertaining moments, for example the blink communication . cool.
I have to say, though, I don't concur with some others here that the Doctor speech scene was great in some way. I thought it was naïve...
How can an invader, who has spent a lot of time planning and executing this secret plan, just give in so easy, on account of a ten minute speech! This reveals him as having no real convictions - a spineless and confused extremist. No genuine leader acts this way in real life.
Further, I found the doctor's moralizing kind of ridiculous. Firstly, evil cannot always be reasoned with. Secondly, war, though it is a terrible, awful thing, sometimes it is necessary. Or if not war, then bold, courageous action. Confrontation. A fight.
Bold, courageous confrontation can't be dismissed as if to say, everything occurs in cycles in the very long term, so there is never any point in fighting, there is no cause worth fighting for, you are all children, let's all just get along.
This is wrong. Evil must be confronted. If the Zygons truly have been wronged, then they must fight for a just outcome. If, on the other hand, they have not been wronged, and Zygella is a terrorist acting essentially in an evil way, she will not give in after an impassioned 10 minute speech, and she will have to be confronted, and stopped.
That conclusion was just bizarre to me.