grinningelvis

The Hunt is not a great movie. It is, however, shamelessly entertaining - wickedly creative in the way it subverts and satirizes its heavy-handed themes. To say it skewers both sides of the idealogical divide is beside the point (maybe the film knows how pretentious that goal is, maybe it doesn't). This is, after all, just another entry into The Most Dangerous Game canon played more for cheap laughs and wacky exits than social commentary. The argument is that both "sides" are intolerable, yet the Cuse and Lindelofs' script makes only a passing wink at centrism. What we're left with is a twisty, nasty little exercise, clocking in at a lean 87 minutes. There isn't much room for story or character development, lest the film get bogged down in its own murky messaging. You'll forget it the second it's over, but The Hunt's cool B-Movie vibe packs in a heap of satisfying, guiltless violence and suspense.

How many times can this show fall back on miracle solutions to life and death catastrophes? How many times can life and death catastrophes pause so that characters can talk about their feelings? How many times can Starfleet prevail because the all/powerful, mysterious enemy behave and react with deep, deep stupidity?

I don't really know what the goals of SNW are. The only consequences seem to be romance. Not planets, cultures, or titular strange new worlds. Just a bunch of cardboard characters pretending to have deep deep pain and deep deep complications. It's embarrassing - not just to Trek, but to the idea of quality television in general. This is prestige? Is there one second in this show in which the casual viewer believes that any if the stakes matter?

Bad writing, busy direction, laughable performances. Strange indeed.

A play within a play within a play within a play and every layer of the onion is flat, so much so that Shakespeare's actors as the fairy folk in Midsummer Night's Dream are ever bit as dull and uninspired as the demons that posture for Hell's key. The only novel idea here is turning Nuala into prominent voice - which, spoilers be damned - just doesn't work in concept or execution if she has any preknowledge of how her own choices unravel universe. My guess is that these writers really don't get that, or care. Nuala is just another IP with an opportunity to shoehorn in large chunks of an epic abbreviated for time. So much is sped up and woefully slowed down and none of it gracefully, none of it remotely interesting. Dream, after all, is not the protagonist of The Sandman. Not really. It's the humanity of the dreamers that shape the plot. Where is the plot here?