LordJiggy

Wow. Tedious to begin with, and Wednesday's lines feel so very forced. Anytime one character says something about her, the Weds has to contradict them with pronouncements about how dark and wicked she is.

Tone is weirdly off, and creatively, it feels like some judicious cut and paste has happened. Look at the location...a school for kids with magical...I mean, special powers...set in the middle of nowhere, next to a large lake and surrounded by forests. Gee, where have we seen that lately? Then there was burning flying beast that had a HUGE resemblance to an early scene in "The Fellowship of the Ring."

The first season had a kind of charm to it, but so far, Season Two feels like it was written as the result of several scripts being dumped into a Cuisinart.

Not the film you'd expect from Ron Howard, but interesting and compelling tale of people's ego writing checks their body (and soul) can't cash.

It is the dream of our intellectual betters everywhere: to escape the humdrum grind of daily existence to see if it is possible to think their way into the "better world." In the film, a would-be philosopher attempts to throw off the shackles of convention (along with luxuries like electricity, running water, and antibiotics) and build Eden anew with himself as Adam and his consort as Eve.

Predictably, things go badly with the introduction of, well, other humans.

The landscape is stark, the settlers are variously misguided or mendacious, and in the heat and privation, envy boils into murderous rancor, while the musical score weaves doom-haunted themes under the visuals.

Some of the characters are so obviously manipulative that parts of the film are very frustrating to sit through. You keep wondering "why don't the other decent human beings do something?" Annoying as it is, it's accurate to human behavior. "Nice" people can tend to expect other humans to be "nice," and will let themselves be walked on by the manipulators. When the nice people grow tired of that kind of abuse, terrible things can happen.

A very well-done movie, with Sidney Sweeney delivering an unexpectedly touching performance. Worth your time, but it does take its time to arrive at the conclusion.