November | 2017 | the m0vie blog

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Season 7 (Review)

Posted on November 8, 2017 by Darren

The seventh season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is a remarkable accomplishment.

The seventh season is not perfect by any measure. Taken as a whole, it lacks the consistency that made the fifth season one of the best twenty-odd-episode seasons of television ever produced, particularly in a dire mid-season run of episodes that includes Prodigal Daughter, Field of Fire and The Emperor’s New Cloak. The fifth season (and even the sixth) never hit a run of three consecutive episodes that drag that hard. Similarly, there are moments when the production trips over itself during its epic run of ten closing episodes.

Similarly, it lacks the sheer quantity of all-time great episodes that made the sixth season so exciting and compelling, like that opening six-episode arc or Far Beyond the Stars or In the Pale Moonlight. However, the seventh season does quite well for itself; episodes like Treachery, Faith and the Great River, Once More Unto the Breach, The Siege of AR-558, It’s Only a Paper Moon, Chimera, Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges and Tacking Into the Wind are massively underrated and count among the best episode that the franchise ever produced.

However, the seventh season has a very clear sense of direction and purpose. After all seven years is a long time on television. By the time that the other Star Trek series hit that mark, there was a sense of exhaustion creeping in around the edges. The final season of Star Trek: The Next Generation often felt aimless and meandering, the production team waiting to transition to feature films. The final season of Star Trek: Voyager felt similarly worn out, a faded photocopy of an approach that had worked on the previous three seasons.

In sharp contrast, the seventh season of Deep Space Nine knows roughly where it is going. From the opening scenes of Image in the Sand, the production team are cognisant of the fact that the curtain will be coming down at the end of the season. As a result, the seventh season is written with an ending in mind. The writers might not have known that ending from the outset, and were still working on it even during the sprawling final arc at the end of the year, but they knew that it existed and was waiting twenty-six episodes in the future.

As a result, the seventh season of Deep Space Nine has a very strong sense of identity and compelling sense of urgency. These attributes distinguish the season the final years of The Next Generation and Voyager, but also mark it out as one of Deep Space Nine‘s (and the franchise’s) strongest years.

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Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: arcs, Bajor, Cardassia, deep space nine, endings, season seven, serialisation, star trek, star trek: deep space nine, symmetry, the dominion war | 4 Comments »

CinÉireann – Issue 1 (November 2017)

Posted on November 7, 2017 by Darren

Sin é Cin É!

Announcing CinÉireann, a new monthly magazine focusing on Irish film. It’s full of interesting and exciting news about Irish cinema, including films in development and on release, as well as long-form articles on everything from Irish filmmakers to co-productions to the changing multimedia landscape.

It is largely the work of the wonderful Niall Murphy over at Scannain, and I am thrilled to have provided two articles to the opening issue. (One of them is even the sort-of cover story, a piece focusing on the themes of The Killing of a Sacred Deer.) There’s a host of talent involved. You can read CinÉireann as a digital magazine directly. You can even subscribe and get future issues delivered to you directly.

Or click the picture below.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: ciné, cinéireann, niall murphy | Leave a comment »

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – What You Leave Behind (Review)

Posted on November 6, 2017 by Darren

Ending a television series is always a daunting proposition, even with ten episodes allocated to that purpose.

There are very few “perfect” television finales, very few final episodes that perfectly encapsulate everything that made a television series great. Indeed, many popular television series end with underwhelming finales. Some are even retroactively tarnished by this legacy; The Finale for Seinfeld, Daybreak for Battlestar Galactica, The End for Lost. To its credit, the Star Trek franchise arguably has one perfect finale with All Good Things…, the final episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

A touching conclusion…

It might have been greedy to ask for two such perfect finales, especially in such close proximity to one another. What You Leave Behind is not a perfect finale by any measure. It is clumsy in places, it makes bad choices in others. The audience can feel the budgetary constraints on the production team at certain points, and the time constraints on the writing team at others. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine does not end with a “perfect” two-part episode. It ends in a messy fashion.

Still, even if What You Leave Behind is not a perfect television finale, it is a good one. What You Leave Behind doesn’t do everything that it could do, but it does everything that it needs to. While clumsiness and awkwardness hold the episode back from perfection, they exist in such a way as to add to its charm. What You Leave Behind captures the spirit of Deep Space Nine, in its successes and its failures. What You Leave Behind is a finale that speaks to the core essence of its show, to its best and its worst selves in the same breath.

The big goodbye.

The result is a finale that feels satisfying and earned, despite its narrative miscalculations. What You Leave Behind is true to Deep Space Nine, and focuses primarily on trying to pay off seven years of character threads and two years of story. Its gravest mistakes are inherited, the result of decisions made more than a year earlier in episodes like Waltz or The Reckoning that were allowed to fester and grow over the following thirty-odd episodes. Even in its failures, What You Leave Behind is trying to do right by its story.

There is a large gulf in quality between All Good Things… and What You Leave Behind. However, that gap is smaller than the space that separates What You Leave Behind from Turnabout Intruder, Endgame or These Are the Voyages… For all its issues, there is something heartbreaking in What You Leave Behind. There is a sense that this is truly the end of the line, that things have changed and the world keeps right on spinning.

We all need a little space…

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Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: closure, conclusion, continuity, Emissary, ending, Ira Steven Behr, resolution, star trek, star trek: deep space nine, the dominion war, what you leave behind | 15 Comments »

51. The 250 Anniversary Special 2017

Posted on November 4, 2017 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users.

This week, to mark the podcast’s one-year anniversary and passing the fifty-episode threshold, we decided to bring back as many of the guests from the first year as possible. So, joining Andrew and Darren on this podcast are:

Phil Bagnell, who recorded Les Quatre Cent Coups (The 400 Blows), Dunkirk and Chinatown
Tony Black, who recorded Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2
Marianne Cassidy, who recorded Wonder Woman
Jay Coyle, who recorded Dunkirk and Blade Runner 2049
Graham Day, who recorded John Wick: Chapter II and Ah-ga-ssi (The Handmaiden)
Grace Duffy, who recorded Get Out and Ah-ga-ssi (The Handmaiden)
Niall Murphy, who recorded Dunkirk
Babu Patel, who recorded Lagaan and Dangal
Alex Towers, who recorded Braveheart

We thought we’d take the opportunity to have a talk about the best and worst of this list, both in general and over the past year.

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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: alex towers, anthony black, babu patel, grace duffy, graham day, jay coyle, marianne cassidy, niall murphy, phil bagnell, The 250 | Leave a comment »

Star Trek: Voyager – Season 5 (Review)

Posted on November 3, 2017 by Darren

It is hard to discern a central arc or purpose to the fifth season of Star Trek: Voyager.

There are certainly recurring preoccupations and ideas simmering through the twenty-six episodes of the fifth season, reflecting the interests of the creative team. Indeed, many of these themes culminate in Equinox, Part I, the fifth season finale. However, there is never a sense that any of these ideas are being assembled in service of anything, never a sense of what exactly the production team want to say about these themes or where they want to go with these concepts.

The fifth season of Voyager feels rather listless. This may be due to a combination of factors. Most obviously, the fourth season of Voyager was arguably the show’s best season, one marked by a sense of purpose and forward momentum. Thanks to the introduction of Seven of Nine and the miniature arc focusing on the Hirogen, along with the clever bookending of Scorpion, Part II with Hope and Fear, there was a sense that the fourth season of Voyager had ended in a different place than it began.

The big issue with the fifth season of Voyager is that it feels like the series is running in place.

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Filed under: Voyager | Tagged: Brannon Braga, ethics, Jeri Taylor, malon, reality, star trek, star trek: voyager, themes, voyager | 6 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

Posted on November 2, 2017 by Darren

Murder on the Orient Express feels like a very conscious effort to disprove the notion that “they don’t make them like this any more.”

Lead actor and director Kenneth Branagh clearly relishes the opportunity to create a decidedly retro murder mystery. Murder on the Orient Express might contain a handful of action scenes and copious amounts of computer-generated imagery, but Branagh is very clearly channelling a more classical style of film making. Released in early November, Murder on the Orient Express has the look and the texture of an old-fashioned Christmas television treat; a fantastic ensemble reenacting a classic murder mystery on lavish sets with heightened melodrama.

Like a train in the night…
Or, you know, the day.

Branagh’s imitation is affectionate, but it is also laboured. Murder on the Orient Express feels like a nostalgic homage to the old ensemble-driven melodramas that were a dime-a-dozen, but there is something uncanny about it. Early in the film, the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot deduces that a fellow passenger is a dealer in forgeries, passing off unconvincing copies as historic artifacts. There is a sense that Branagh is attempting something similar, trying to construct something with the texture of a more classic piece of cinema, but without any of the spirit or the energy.

Murder on the Orient Express is charming and engaging, its enthusiasm for its premise and setting infectious in places. However, it also as lifeless as the corpse at the centre of the mystery.

Cold case.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: film, hercule poirot, kenneth branagh, Movie, murder on the orient express, non-review review, review | 2 Comments »

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – The Dogs of War (Review)

Posted on November 1, 2017 by Darren

The Dogs of War is the penultimate episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

As such, it has lots of important things to be doing. The episode’s primary function is to streamline the ongoing narratives so that they might all neatly feed into What You Leave Behind. The goal of any penultimate episode is to set up the shot so that the finale might punt the ball into the goal, in a manner that leads to a satisfying conclusion. Given that The Dogs of War is arriving towards the end of a seven-season series, a two-year war story, and a ten-episode closing arc, that is a lot of setting up to be done.

The best is Yates to come.

There is a lot of work to be done on paper. The plot thread focusing on the Pah-Wraiths has been dangling since When It Rains…, the Federation has not reengaged with the Breen since the disastrous encounter at the end of The Changeling Face of Evil, and Bajor hasn’t even mentioned the possibility of joining the Federation since Rapture or In the Cards. With that in mind, it makes perfect sense of The Dogs of War to focus on getting Bashir and Dax together while Quark thinks he is about to be Nagus as Damar is forced to hide in a cellar.

However, there is something inherently charming about how The Dogs of War chooses to prioritise threads over story beats that might seem more relevant or important, to dedicate a sizable chunk of the penultimate episode of Deep Space Nine to tying up a clumsy “will they?”/“won’t they?” romance and telling one last Ferengi story. The Dogs of War is an episode that speaks to what Deep Space Nine was, both in terms is esoteric plotting and its skewed-but-optimistic outlook. There might be better ways to wind down a series, but this is very Deep Space Nine.

Love in a turbolift.

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Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: capitalism, Cardassia, change, Dominion, ferenginar, Liberalism, Nagus, politics, Quark, star trek, star trek: deep space nine, the dogs of war, zek | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The X-Cast X-Files Podwatch – Episode #19 (Aubrey/Irresistible)

Posted on November 1, 2017 by Darren

I’m thrilled to be a part of The X-Cast X-Files Podwatch, a daily snippet podcast rewatching the entirety of The X-Files between now and the launch of the new season. It is something of a spin-off of The X-Cast, a great X-Files podcast run by the charming Tony Black. Tony has assembled a fantastic array of guests and hosts to go through The X-Files episode-by-episode. I’m honoured to be a part of it.

My second appearance of the second season is covering the episodes Aubrey and Irresistible with the wonderful Zach Moore. I should be doing roughly one episode per season with Zach, who is a bit of a deft hand when it comes to podcast hosting and a shrewd eye when it comes to X-Files criticism. This episode is particularly worthy of note because I’m a big fan of Aubrey and find it somewhat overlooked and underrated.