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British Reviewer.

Until Dead Reckoning PT 1 a couple of year ago we'd never really paid much attention to the Mission: Impossible franchise, but to prepare for 2023's offering we (the GF and I) watched the whole back-catalogue of Tom Cruise as Ethan films.

This is by far not the worst of the eight films, I did like a lot of the action and feel warmth towards the established characters but the production wasn't of the same standard as even Dead Reckoning PT 1. The editing wasn't as good, nor the screenplay or the script. The casting is great as is the cinematography, score and of course, the stunts.

Apparently MITFR cost $400m which is a whopping sum. I'm sure it will do well and my score of 7/10 puts it in good company. The 2;51 runtime flew by and there are some very tense action sequences therein. I just felt the development of the supporting characters was way below par compared to other films and Gabriel, the antagonist, is basically a cardboard cutout of the Gabriel we met in 2023's MIDRP1.

British Reviewer.

I'm not sure what I thought this was going to be about. I've never heard of Melanie Martinez, I thought oh, a female writer/director and the stills looked great.

I just wasn't prepared (nor was my girlfriend who walked away at the halfway point) for an inane collection of samey auto-tuned pop songs. I suppose being a 47 year old British bloke living rurally I'm not the target audience but one can still enjoy films that depict points of view and ideas from anywhere in the world. The issue I have is that K-12 is devoid of any shred of originality.

The baby aesthetic, the magical school, auto-tuned pseudo-pop songs - it's all been done previously and better. You 10/10 people, go watch Sucker Punch, or Edward Scissorhands!

On a final point I found the racism a bit jarring, if you couldn't swap any of the racial roles around and be comfortable then I'd hazard that it's not right.

British Reviewer.

I'd actually gotten to episode 2.5 before I realised I had to go back and rewatch the whole first season. It, season one, is much better than I remember. After troughing season one I rewatched the whole of season two including the ones I'd technically already seen.

That's a long-winded way of saying I've watched a lot of Severance in the last month and am saddened to report that season two just has so little of the magic of the first. The writing is looser, the actors were not directed as well as before. The whole mystique about everyday people being essentially split in two to perform mundane jobs was binned in favour of... well... a confuddled mess of rehashing and style over substance.

I'm not sure what direction the second season should have taken, but that's alright as I'm just a punter. It's criminal that the writing team didn't seem to and you can bet your bottom dollar season three will be chronically disappointing. I hope I'm wring. I mean what as the point of Miss Wong? Of reversing the severing? All those flashbacks conveniently dried up when the writers wanted to blow smoke up Patricia Arquette's arrus in that shockingly poor episode seven. Lots of dead ends which is a bit shame as the story was so intriguing, well scripted and well written in the previous season.

I suppose, when push comes to shove, that to have the mass appeal which garners this finale to season 2 a whopping 9.6/10 on imdb you have to sacrifice the quirkiness and edge. That's the nature of pop culture. Remember the last season on GoT's was the highest rated on imdb after all and that was a skip-fire! I hope the next season is amazing, I really do. I will be watching but with baited breath as Severance is in decline.