• Following Us

  • Categories

  • Check out the Archives









  • Awards & Nominations

Star Trek: Voyager – Unimatrix Zero, Part II (Review)

Posted on July 30, 2018 by Darren

To be fair, the clue is in the title.

It is hard to overstate just how big a cultural impact The Matrix had. The film was the fifth highest grossing movie in the United States, the fourth worldwide and the highest-grossing R-rated film of 1999. The Matrix immediately entered the Internet Movie Database‘s top 250 movies of all-time at in the twentieth position, and only climbed from there. The Matrix was the first movie to sell more than one million copies on the the nascent DVD format.

Can’t see the forest for the trees.

More than that, The Matrix became a cultural shorthand. Phrases from the film (and its production) entered the popular lexicon; “I know kung-fu”, “the woman in the red dress”, “the red pill”, “bullet time.” Quentin Tarantino named it as one of his favourite movies of the previous quarter-century. The film lives on a context beyond its original production, its language coopted by fringe groups like incels or men’s rights activists or the alt-right. This just speaks to the impact that the film had upon an entire generation of young men.

To be fair, The Matrix did not necessarily articulate anything new, instead bringing together a wealth of science-fiction tropes with an Asian-influenced action aesthetic. After all, it was just one of a wave of films dealing with similar thematic ideas around the same time; The Thirteenth Floor, Pleasantville, The Truman Show, Dark City, eXistenZ, Harsh Realm. Even Star Trek: Voyager had riffed on similar ideas in stories like Projections or Course: Oblivion. Nevertheless, The Matrix seemed to speak to a particular millennial anxiety at the end of the nineties.

Love across light years.

The Matrix was the story of a future in which humanity had been enslaved, in which human bodies were treated as batteries for a vast and uncaring system. In order to keep humanity docile, this system fed mankind a shared illusion of life at the end of the twentieth century. This illusory world was reality for those dreamers trapped within it, touching on various anxieties about reality and unreality in the context of the late nineties. The Matrix packaged up a host of ambient fears about capitalism, virtual reality, illusion and the end of history in a clever and exciting action film.

It seems inevitable that Voyager would offer its own take on this concept. After all, the series had been playing with similar ideas dating back to its own first season. The fragility of reality and the dangers of convincing simulation are a recurring motif. Indeed, Unimatrix Zero, Part I and Unimatrix Zero, Part II are not even the only episodes that draw heavily from The Matrix. There are shades of it to Work Force, Part I and Work Force, Part II. Nevertheless, Unimatrix Zero, Part I and Unimatrix Zero, Part II are undoubtedly the most overt examples of this.

Unimatrix reloaded.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Voyager | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Teen Titans Go! to the Movies

Posted on July 29, 2018 by Darren

Teen Titans Go! to the Movies is a delight from beginning to end.

The go-to description of Teen Titans Go! to the Movies is “a G-rated Deadpool”, which is both accurate in general and interesting in specifics. Although the two Deadpool films have become cultural shorthand for “self-aware superhero parodies”, that is not what they really are; at their best, they are affectionate eighties action movie homages with a superhero veneer and a sheen of ironic self-awareness. Ironically, Teen Titans Go! to the Movies is a much better example of an affectionate and a committed parody of superhero cinema.

Cycles of violence.

Teen Titans Go! to the Movies is nonsense, but it is gleeful and self-aware nonsense, dedicated to both celebrating and gently mocking both the conventions and the specifics of superhero blockbuster filmmaking. It is too much to describe Teen Titans Go! to the Movies as a deconstruction of either superheroics or the modern cinema based around these characters, but the film cleverly plays on the tropes, conventions and history of these characters to do something that is highly amusing and occasionally gut-busting.

Teen Titans Go! to the Movies is cheeky fun, and it would be hard for anybody with any affection for either animation or superheroes to watch it without a grin on their face.

Teen work, people.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

91. El secreto de sus ojos (The Secret in Their Eyes) (#136)

Posted on July 28, 2018 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guest Aine O’Connor, 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. New episodes are released every Saturday at 6pm GMT, with the occasional bonus episode thrown in.

This time, Juan José Campanella’s El secreto de sus ojos.

Prompted by a desire to bring closure to an old case, retired detective Benjamín Espósito sets out to write a novel documenting his experiences during the turbulent seventies. Prying into his earlier investigation reawakens painful memories, and powerful emotions.

At time of recording, it was ranked the 136th best movie of all-time on the Internet Movie Database.

Continue reading →

Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Ant Man and the Wasp

Posted on July 28, 2018 by Darren

Marvel doesn’t get quite enough credit for its skill at scheduling.

Ant Man and the Wasp is an incredibly light film. Befitting its size-changing central characters, it might even be described as a very small film. In some ways, a distractingly small film. It doesn’t really have a central story so much as a collection of events and complications that occur as a variety of characters attempt to accomplish a number of varying small-scale objectives. It doesn’t really have a central villain so much as a collection of forces working in opposition to one another, locked in a handful of small-scale skirmishes over a variety of macguffins.

Ant Man’s reach exceeds his grasp…

None of this is a problem. Indeed, the relatively intimate stakes of Ant Man and the Wasp feel very welcome in this era of apocalyptic scale and epic urban devastation. At no point in Ant Man and the Wasp does a villain threaten an entire city, let alone the country or the planet or reality itself. That said, the disjointed and low-key nature of the film could easily be a problem under other circumstances; the central conflicts in Ant Man and the Wasp are never defined in any real detail, its characters never really grow, its outcome is never in any real doubt.

However, much like the original Ant Man worked very well as a contrasting counterpoint to the bombastic and bloated Avengers: Age of Ultron, Ant Man and the Wasp benefits as a refreshing change of pace from Avengers: Infinity War. The film seems almost tailor-made to serve as light relief following the epic stakes and universal devastation of the summer’s other Marvel Studios release. It’s debatable whether this serves to make Ant Man and the Wasp a better film on its own terms, but it does make it seem much stronger in contrast.

“We need some theme music!”
“Nah, just a nice sting.”

Continue reading →

Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Star Trek: Voyager – Season 6 (Review)

Posted on July 26, 2018 by Darren

The sixth season of Star Trek: Voyager was not an easy season, by any measure.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine had come to an end during the previous television season. Paramount had made a conscious decision not to launch a new Star Trek television series to fill the gap on the airwaves. This was a rather ominous decision. When Star Trek: The Next Generation had finally wound down in the mid-nineties, Paramount had committed to having two different spin-offs on the air at the same time and springboarding the cast and crew on to the big screen with Star Trek: Generations less than a half a year later.

In contrast, the silence following the end of Deep Space Nine was deafening. Following the critical and commercial disappointment of Star Trek: Insurrection, it would be four years before the Next Generation cast returned to the big screen in Star Trek: Nemesis. At the same time, there was increasing concern about declining ratings for the larger Star Trek franchise in both the fan and mainstream press. Although there were already plans in place for the series that would become Star Trek: Enterprise, it was decided that no new series would premiere before Voyager ended.

Voyager had never been more alone than it was during its sixth season.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Voyager | Tagged: , , , , | 7 Comments »

Non-Review Review: The Equaliser 2

Posted on July 25, 2018 by Darren

At one point in The Equaliser 2, Robert McCall is listening to a radio forecast of a storm front sweeping through the north east of the United States.

“It’s coming in slow,” the meteorologist explains. “It’s taking it’s time.” In theory, so is The Equaliser 2. The storm is itself a metaphor for both the film and its protagonist, a force of nature descending upon the characters with a slow and steady certainty. The Equaliser 2 is a film that is very consciously taking its time, the script structured in such a way as to prioritise mood and ambiance over plot and pacing. The Equaliser 2 is meant to seem a stately and poetic meditation on violence and the men who commit it. At least in theory.

Yeah, we don’t know why it isn’t called The Sequeliser either.

It is clear what writer Richard Wenk and director Antoine Fuqua are trying to do over the course of the film’s two-hour-and-nine-minute runtime, building a mounting sense of dread towards a cathartic release. However, there is something deadly unsatisfying in this. The Equaliser 2 is not nearly clever enough nor intricate enough to sustain that more relaxed pace. What should be profound is instead belaboured, what should be considered is instead clumsy. Plot threads are broached and disappear. The one that reach their conclusion arrive long after the audience.

The Equaliser 2 forsakes the grotty do-it-yourself brutality of its predecessor, aspiring towards something moving and insightful. Unfortunately, all of that gets lost in a haze. The storm passes overhead, and it seems unlikely that anybody would even notice.

A storm is coming.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Star Trek: Voyager – Unimatrix Zero, Part I (Review)

Posted on July 23, 2018 by Darren

Once again, Star Trek: Voyager takes its cues from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

The Next Generation bridged its sixth and seventh seasons with Descent, Part I and Descent, Part II. That season-bridging two-parter was focused on discord within the Borg Collective, with the crew coming into contact with a group of drones that had separated themselves from the hive mind. It was a somewhat underwhelming two-parter, and is unlikely to rank alongside anybody’s favourite episodes (or even favourite two-parter) from the run of The Next Generation.

Things come to a head.

Even then, Descent, Part I and Descent, Part II had a lot of weight behind them. Glossing over the quality of the episodes themselves, they marked the big reintroduction of the Borg into The Next Generation following their appearance in The Best of Both Worlds, Part I and The Best of Both Worlds, Part II. The only episode to feature the Borg in the three years between those two-parters was I, Borg, meaning that the return of the Borg at the end of the sixth season of The Next Generation was a big deal.

As such, this seems like a strange cue for Voyager to take from The Next Generation. After all, Voyager doesn’t have that same luxury of built-in anticipation. Voyager bridged its own third and fourth seasons with Scorpion, Part I and Scorpion, Part II, but the Borg have been a steady fixture of the series since then. Ignoring the addition of characters like Seven of Nine and Icheb to the core cast, the Borg have played important roles in episodes like Hope and Fear, Drone, Dark Frontier, Part I, Dark Frontier, Part II, Collective and Child’s Play.

Picking their brains.

That is a lot of focus, particularly in the context of a television series like Voyager, where there is less continuity from episode to episode. Including hallucinations, dead bodies, screen images and holograms, the Borg appear in twenty-three episodes of Voyager, as compared to six episodes of The Next Generation. By way of contrast, the Hirogen appear in between nine and ten episodes, depending on how one counts Flesh and Blood, Part I and Flesh and Blood, Part II. The Malon only appear in four episodes.

All of this is to say that Unimatrix Zero, Part I and Unimatrix Zero, Part II feel like a rather blatant rip-off of an already underwhelming two-parter, but without the core appeal. Voyager has reached the point where the appearance of the Borg is a source of dread, but not for the reasons that it should be.

She’s had some bodywork done.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Voyager | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments »

90. Incredibles 2 – This Just In (#183)

Posted on July 21, 2018 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and with special guests Graham Day and Marianne Cassidy, This Just In is a subset of The 250 podcast, looking at notable new arrivals on the list of the 250 best movies of all-time, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users.

This time, Brad Bird’s Incredibles 2.

At time of recording, it was ranked the 183rd best movie of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

Continue reading →

Filed under: This Just In | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

Non-Review Review: 2 Fast 2 Furious

Posted on July 20, 2018 by Darren

I’m rewatching The Fast and the Furious for a separate project, as solidarity with fellow film critic Jay Coyle for his “Cinema of Experience” project to look at the changing face of cinema in the twenty-first century. He’ll be writing up his account of how the experience of watching movies has changed in the past twenty-or-so years, but I found my rewatch of The Fast and the Furious interesting enough to write a longer-form review of it.

The Fast and Furious franchise exists somewhere in the space between The Fast and the Furious and 2 Fast 2 Furious, but is never quite caught on camera.

The Fast and the Furious is a late nineties undercover urban western about lawlessness in turn-of-the-millennium Los Angeles, of the dead end of the American Dream where young men (and occasional women) drive fast cars in circles to nowhere in particular, living their lives “one quarter mile at a time” without any purpose or any escape. It is a moral quagmire, a tribal wasteland in which law and order mean nothing. The film centres on a police officer sent to infiltrate this world of fast cars, who ultimately cannot bring his target to justice – because there is no justice in this empty and nihilistic world.

2 Fast 2 Furious is effectively a soft Miami Vice reboot. It is a bright and colourful thriller which follows former undercover police officer Brian O’Conner and his old friend Ramone Pierce as they are tasked to infiltrate a drug kingpin’s organisation in Miami. It is a much more conventional and delineated film, and also a much less existential. There are clearly defined good guys and bad guys, and O’Conner has absolutely no ethical objection to bringing in this particular criminal. The film is also appreciably brighter, both be virtue of its heavily saturated surroundings and by an increased emphasis on neon.

Watching 2 Fast 2 Furious, there’s a real sense that the production team had no idea what a hypothetical sequel to The Fast and the Furious would look like, only that it should exist… and maybe it should have some cars in it. Indeed, 2 Fast 2 Furious is pointedly at its most ridiculous when the script is forced to shoe-horn the “obligatory racing bits” into a conventional “undercover Miami drug bust movie.” There’s a weird disconnect between the two films, that goes beyond the absence of Vin Diesel.

Even with Paul Walker present and few small continuity references, there’s little to tether 2 Fast 2 Furious to The Fast and the Furious. It recalls the sort of old-fashioned Hollywood cynicism that produced sequels like Die Hard with a Vengeance, when familiar characters would be clumsily bolted on to a completely unrelated script to create a new franchise installment. Of course, with Dom Toretto in the wind, 2 Fast 2 Furious doesn’t even really have that many familiar characters to anchor it. Brian O’Conner was never going to be the franchise’s breakout character, after all. 2 Fast 2 Furious only has the name.

In some ways, the spark that would drive the Fast and Furious franchise is found in neither The Fast and the Furious nor 2 Fast 2 Furious. After all, the later blockbuster installments of the franchise feel like a completely different breed than either film; espionage-style superhero films involving the fate of the world. That spark is found in the gap between The Fast and the Furious nor 2 Fast 2 Furious, in the cynical idea that just about any kind of movie can be a Fast and Furious movie if you stick enough cars in it.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Star Trek: Voyager – The Haunting of Deck Twelve (Review)

Posted on July 19, 2018 by Darren

It seems strange that Neelix was not a larger part of Star Trek: Voyager.

To be fair, Neelix never disappeared into the ensemble to the same degree as characters like Chakotay, Kim and Tuvok. However, the series often struggled with how best to approach the character and how to make him work. It is notable that the production team went to the effort of writing Neelix off the show shortly before the seventh season finale, sending him to live with a colony of (very far from home) Talaxians in Homestead and consigning him to a cameo in Endgame. The character was often just there, his role hazy and undefined.

A Briefing With Death!
Errr, I mean, Neelix.

Of course, there were reasons for this. Neelix had been drafted on to the crew as an expert on the Delta Quadrant in Caretaker, and it made sense that this role would become increasingly redundant as time went on. By Fair Trade, Neelix was largely redundant, his knowledge exhausted. More than that, the early seasons of Voyager anchored Neelix’s character development to an abusive relationship with two-year-old. The toxicity of Neelix’s relationship with Kes in episodes like Phage, Twisted and Parturition made it hard to invest in Neelix as a character worthy of attention or effort.

However, across the seven seasons of Voyager, there is a strange sense that Neelix is perhaps the single character most perfectly adapted to Voyager. He is the character who has developed in the direction that is perhaps most compatible with what Voyager has become, both in how it tells its stories and what it uses those stories to talk about. More than any other character on Voyager, Neelix is the character with the deepest roots in Delta Quadrant history and the character who is most firmly committed to oral traditions of storytelling, both recurring motifs within Voyager.

Smoke and mirrors.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Voyager | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments »

Next Page »