At the end of 2016, I caught THE OA (Netflix original), a trippy sci-fi series with strong spiritual and a few horror overtones, and quite enjoyed it. Season 2 was a long time coming but worth the wait, delivering some answers while continuing to challenge with its trippy ideas.

In THE OA, Prairie Johnson (Brit Marling), a blind woman who went missing seven years ago, resurfaces in a public suicide attempt. She survives, and now by some miracle she has regained her sight. Back at home, she recruits five people to hear her story about being held captive by a scientist nicknamed Hap (Jason Isaacs), a psychopath obsessed with discovering evidence of an afterlife by subjecting his subjects to temporary death states to capture their near-death experiences. Instead of an afterlife, Prairie discovered a way to travel between dimensions revealed through “movements,” a strange dance that must be performed with perfect intent and feeling. At the end of season 1, Prairie is hurt. What happens next?

Season 2 opens with Prairie awaking in a hospital bed, but she is no longer Prairie, as her father hadn’t been killed during her childhood, she’d never been in an accident that resulted in her losing her sight, and she was never adopted. The dance worked; she is in an other dimension similar to ours but with some distinct differences. Hap and the other people from the experiments are already in this world, and now she has to find them. This story line is joined by two others that increasingly weave together, one involving a PI hired to find a missing girl, which takes him into a strange game and a house that holds a bizarre mystery; and the other involving the people the OA left behind in the other dimension, who have to find it in themselves to get to Prairie. All three plot lines are equally strong.

As I said, the show is trippy, but it always takes its crazy subject matter just seriously enough, and it is revealed so organically, that the show never quite jumps the shark the way LOST did on an almost constant basis. If something crazy happens, it isn’t because Brit Marling wants you to watch the next episode but because it is integral to a complex, developing plot. For that, I have to give it respect, and while in the end it was all a bit much, including a very meta finale, I really enjoyed it, and I’m anxiously awaiting season 3.

DAVE MADE A MAZE (2017) is a whimsical adventure comedy about a frustrated artist who decides to build a cardboard maze in his living room, only to become trapped in it as it takes on a life of its own. When his girlfriend leads a rescue team into the maze, they discover it is far larger than they imagined, and it is alive. This was a fun movie that gets an A++ for childlike wonder and set design and a B for storytelling. The end result is fun if a little flat, but overall I liked it quite a bit.

There’s a great deal of inventiveness about this movie, from the fantastic design made out of cardboard and household objects to the booby traps that kill some of the maze’s visitors (who spurt confetti and wool instead of blood and guts) to the engaging scene that brought Dave and his girlfriend back together. There’s a lot of silliness to the character interactions, which you just run with as it’s part of the show. While I didn’t fall in love with the protagonist and his girlfriend, I was rooting for them–particularly Dave’s friend Gordon, who brought a lot of personality to the film.

There were some distracting elements, such as the documentary crew (some of Dave’s friends) who come along; the odd ending that doesn’t resolve much, outright abandons two characters, and leaves the maze’s effects permanent (belying the childlike fun that fuels the story atmosphere); and the lack of character development, as the solution to the maze is a reflection of the answer to Dave’s character flaw, though once it’s accomplished, aside from Dave’s relationship with his girlfriend, nothing much seems to have changed.

So while DAVE MADE A MAZE wasn’t as fulfilling nor deep as I’d hoped, it was a lot of fun, with some amazing visuals, loads of weirdness, and plenty of wonder. Overall a B+ for me.

MORTAL ENGINES (2018), based on the novel by Philip Reeve, rolls out like a Mad Max movie for the YA crowd. The film adaptation is fairly derivative of other films, but overall it worked for me. After reading bad reviews, I went into it with low expectations and had fun with it, hoping for another READY PLAYER ONE and getting something much tighter and emotionally engaging.

Hundreds of years after a fantastic weapon called Medusa destroyed civilization, the last cities are equipped with engines and treads and roam the earth competing for the last resources. This Darwinistic game is coming to a close as the big cities have gobbled up the smaller ones. To survive, London has come to mainland Europe in search of fresh hunting grounds.

When London devours a small mining town, Hester Shaw (Hera Hilmar) boards the city and attempts to kill Thaddeus Valentine (Hugo Weaving at his Hugo Weaving best), an archaeologist working on a secret project involving old tech. After historian Tom Natsworthy (Robert Sheehan) stops the assassination, he ends up stranded with her and learning about her past and reasons for wanting to stop Valentine, resulting in him joining forces with her.

I understand the movie is very different than the books, but it worked for me. The world building is pretty incredible, the action sequences are put together well, and the characters, while fairly lightly developed, are nonetheless engaging. Shrike, the last of the Lazarus Men, is actually more emotionally engaging than all the rest put together, he’s a great addition to the film. There were plenty of obvious jokes that fell flat for me (like statues of Minions being confused in a museum as ancient deities, and our current time being called the Screen Age), everything rolls out pretty much how you’d expect, it’s got a real YA bent, and it’s pretty derivative even for mainstream Hollywood, but in the end I didn’t care, I just enjoyed it for what it is. Overall, a B+ watch for me.