briancham1994
Joined Jun 2005
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Ratings1.8K
briancham1994's rating
Reviews1.7K
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I saw Eva Pau's Asian Kitchen on RTE and was pleased to watch her valiant effort to introduce the Irish to something more interesting than cabbage, potatoes and Guiness. Her TV show covered scrumptious popular dishes in a variety of Asian cuisines, skipping from Chinese to Japanese to Thai after each ad break. Although this makes the show culturally unfocused, its continent-wide scope gives it room to showcase the most enticing (and easy) dishes that Asia has to offer and maximises its appeal. To the benefit of all Westerners, Eva reassuringly explains Asian cooking instructions for absolute beginners, starting with the basics: you should wash rice, you should get a rice cooker to cook rice, you should cook rice in water, and so on (though it's interesting that she never pre-soaked the rice). The presentation of the cooking process is visually clear and appealing, with the best angles used to highlight every ingredient as they are chopped, mixed or added to the sizzle, and the final result is perfectly presented. During the cooking, Eva's explanations are clear, smooth and enthusiastic, even as she is busy going through each step of the recipe. The show has just the right amount of extra material, explaining some personal anecdotes or cultural background without becoming excessive fluff like in other shows. However, the extra material is quite basic as the show doesn't seem to have the budget to actually travel to Asia, so it is restricted to showing Eva's family photos, repeated stories about her aunt Beatrice and trips to the supermarket.
The Marvels is full of silly little moments that are fun on their own but don't mesh together into one story. Clueless heroines who swap positions across the universe, bringing alien soldiers with them? Fun. An equally clueless suburban family fighting off said alien soldiers with toilet paper? Fun. A starstruck teenage Ms. Marvel gushing over her idols while being teleported into space? Fun. "Flerken" cat aliens swallowing astronauts with tentacles to evacuate them? Fun. Yet in the end, what does it all amount to? A very messy and plotless story that pits an underdeveloped villain against superhero characters who are just stumbling from one planet to another with barely any motivation. Despite the lead actresses giving it their best shot to portray their characters as a loving trio, their performances can't make up for the dud of a film. Disappointingly, neither can the space CGI or the cats, sorry to say!. To cap it all off, the resolution of the film to fix Hala's sun is something that Captain Marvel could have done thirty years ago with ease, making one wonder why any of this was necessary.
Conclave is a political character drama with dressings of a sombre religious story. The ideological, ambitious cardinals would not be out of place in any other kind of election setting, giving the story a very human feel to counteract the gravitas of the ancient surroundings. The actors effectively portray the strain of the high-stakes election, especially the conflicted Ralph Fiennes who has to carefully navigate the conclave without wanting the papal position himself. The lingering shots on ornate architecture and rituals forms a contradiction with the backbiting and machinations of the candidates, highlighting the inner tension of Fiennes' Cardinal Lawrence. However, the overall plot relies on sudden swerves and revelations about the past that are sometimes grounded but sometimes come across as completely out of left field. This especially applies the last one, making the story feel like drama for drama's sake at times.
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