Author of sci-fi/fantasy, horror and adventure/thriller fiction

FOR ALL MANKIND, Season 2

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Okay, today, I’m going to step in it. Feel free to disagree, but after a stellar first season of FOR ALL MANKIND (Apple TV), I was hugely disappointed in the second, which changed writers and leaned heavily into kitchen sink melodrama. What began a brilliant science show took a hard turn into becoming a soap opera.

It’s 1983, Reagan is president, and both the USA and USSR have bases on the Moon. As Cold War tensions escalate over rival lunar mining claims, the Department of Defense gets involved in the space program, resulting in militarization. To alleviate tensions, the superpowers plan a joint Apollo-Soyuz mission with astronauts and cosmonauts shaking hands in space, but it may not be enough to prevent hostilities from breaking out on the Moon and spilling down onto Earth as World War Three.

What I liked: anything having to do with the Moon and space program. Seeing Marines fly into combat on a lunar lander was fantastic. The Jamestown base is awesome. The problem solving at NASA is less prevalent but when it happens is terrific. One thing I particularly appreciated was seeing how the space program produced consumer technology far ahead of its time, just as the real space program eventually gave us things like videocameras and so on. I also loved how NASA licenses mining rights and tech to the private sector, resulting in the agency becoming self financing. It’s beautiful and sad to see what might have been, particularly in light of seeing billionaire tax dodgers taking vanity rides in space yachts. The season begins with a series of quick news images showing how history changed because of the space race.

What I didn’t: New writers were brought in to pump up the drama, which takes over the show, forcibly shoves out the hard sci-fi focus, and kitchen sinks it with melodrama in which characters do all sorts of what-the-hell things the show didn’t need and I didn’t care about. As a result, the climax, which is brilliant, wraps up too quick and neat, robbing the show of what really makes it work for me. As a side note, Reagan is continually lionized as some kind of poetic, saintly cartoon character of how he’s remembered rather than who and what he was, which was off putting.

Overall, I was disappointed, as the show’s roaring first season had set me on a path of high hopes for the second. I understand I’m in the minority here, as the second season was highly praised by critics and fans. For me, though, it took a bad turn into becoming a soap opera.

IT CHAPTER TWO (2019)

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Jumping 27 years ahead after IT, IT CHAPTER TWO (2019) brings the Losers’ Club back to face Pennywise again as adults. The sequel features the same terrific execution as the first, with a similar cast of great actors, but suffers from predictability and a lack of a satisfying group dynamic so heavily present in the first film.

The Losers Club of Derry’s brutal high school united to defeat the malevolent entity calling itself Pennywise, after which they made an oath to fight it again if it ever reappeared. Now, 27 years later, all except one have scattered, lost touch, and also lost their memories of what they did as kids. Mike Hanlon calls them to bring them back to fulfill their oath, leading to a final confrontation.

What I liked: The horror elements are again utterly freaky. The casting is terrific. If this were a standalone film, it’d be pretty solid.

What I didn’t: Because they lost their memories, the adults have all the same flaws they did as kids, so we have to see them try to conquer them again, this time not as neatly. The group dynamic, excellent chemistry, and terrific tension and stakes in the first film are largely missing in the second. The oddly timed jokes fell flat for me. A gay reveal appears grafted on for whatever. All of this would have been fine for me but watching it, I felt like I’d seen it before, resulting in a predictability of going through the motions to the point of numbness. Stephen King elements that work well on the page don’t always translate on the screen and come off as overly saccharine. Overall, despite all the fun bits, it was just damned hard to care.

Overall, I liked IT CHAPTER TWO but think the film would have benefited from a new group dynamic, maybe the adults having fixed their childhood flaws to the point of excess, and a refresh of the central conflict with Pennywise to create something new and less predictable.

LOKI, Season 1

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The Marvel movies don’t do much for me–for me, they’re terrific but ultimately paint-by-numbers epics–but I was impressed with WANDAVISION and came away equally impressed with my more recent watch, LOKI (DisneyPlus), which I liked quite a bit.

I absolutely loved Hiddleston in HIGH RISE, and watching him in this show, I totally get why LOKI is such a beloved villain, which has a lot to do with his acting. As for the story, it’s smart, fast-paced, and loaded with interesting ideas and characters. The false-antagonist-ally-antagonist, if you will, is excellent, and Loki’s path to something like redemption is convincing and engaging.

On the downside, the ending sags a little with an incomplete feeling of closure as it leaned into setting up a second season.

Overall, these Marvel series are really impressing me. The length and format allow the makers to take more risks and flesh out engaging, creatively stretching stories with a fresh identity. I like them better than the movies and hope they keep making them.

GAIA (2021)

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GAIA (2021, found on Google Play) is an intriguing ecological horror film that ultimately, for me, didn’t live up to its atmosphere and ambition. I liked it, but my feelings about it are mixed.

The film is set in South Africa, where Gabi, a park ranger, stumbles across two men living a primitive lifestyle in the forest, a scientist and his son. She discovers that the forest is laced with a mushroom network that is sentient, infectious, and wants to grow. She wants to return to civilization and take the son with her, the scientist wants to stay to study and worship the organism, and the organism wants everything. It all comes to a head in a story with Biblical overtones.

I liked it overall but just couldn’t connect with it on anything other than a base aesthetic level. The forest is beautiful, the actors interesting to look at, and the organism and creature effects are well done. Dream sequences seek to take the film to a higher artistic level and somewhat succeed in this.

There’s a clumsiness, however, to the plotting and character development. The plotting issues are just annoyances, but the character development issues were more problematic for me. I never really know who Gabi is or what she wants, and it drags down what otherwise could have been an interesting dynamic. There’s an environmental message here as well, part of which works well (nature is beautiful but something to fear) and some, while being correct, doesn’t (humans are destroying nature and will ultimately destroy themselves). As a result, when it wrapped up, I didn’t feel much of anything.

Overall, GAIA doesn’t quite live up to its ambitions, but it’s an intriguing, atmospheric, and beautiful ride. Check it out if you’re into ecological horror.

BLACK SUMMER, Season 2

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BLACK SUMMER (Netflix) is a terrific zombie series, brushing aside its low budget with constant tension, culling terror from even a single relentless zombie, interesting characters and set pieces, and a full range of genuine human reactions. Season 2 delivers the same winning formula as the first season, while amping up the conflict to be more human versus human and finding an almost Old West pathos to its grim story. At the same time, it sacrifices an important human element in its bleak depiction of survival, which was unfortunate.

Rose reunited with her daughter at the end of the first season, which saw the major characters either scattered, dead, or having made it to the stadium. Season 2 seemed to promise a story of how this tribe struggles and survives in a zombie-infested world similar to other shows like TWD and Z NATION, but this isn’t them. In this world, food becomes scarce, there’s a massive die off, our tribe is separated into virtually every man or woman for themselves, and various bands of people struggle in the northern wilderness, where the cold freezes many of the zombies.

An interesting antagonist is introduced, a cop who now leads a hardened band of survivalist-type warriors. He’s an intriguing character, a ruthless badass and a fitting antagonist for Rose, though the show doesn’t set up any real antagonism other than their paths cross searching for the same goal, which is unfortunate. If the show had them have a real run in, setting up personal stakes, their antagonism would have meant far more, and it would have been a better, less fragmented story. The camera often lingers on faces and landscapes, giving the whole thing an Old West feel not unlike THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY, though again wasting its chance at pathos by not tying the primary characters together more strongly.

Mostly, the story centers around various groups and individuals converging on a house that is a point of communication with a supply plane and supposed sanctuary, and then a race for the plane itself. In the midst of this, Rose will do anything to ensure her daughter survives, though her daughter, so accustomed to danger, may not be able to function in any place that seems safe. Unfortunately, Rose is often so ruthless, sometimes for no practical purpose, it makes you wonder who the villain is. It’s the same with most of the show–there’s so little trust, so natural an inclination to hurt and kill, that it seems to go beyond survival into a commentary about the natural brutality of humanity, brutality for its own sake. Which is unnecessarily bleak, as one of the things I liked about the first season was how people will form tribes and try to work together in the face of adversity.

Overall, despite its flaws and missed opportunities, I liked it a lot. Kinda loved it, actually. I hope it gets a third season.

BETWEEN TWO FIRES by Christopher Buehlman

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Christopher Buehlman’s BETWEEN TWO FIRES is a strikingly original portrait of spiritual warfare in medieval France. I quite liked this one.

God has turned away from his creation, inspiring Lucifer and the fallen angels to rise up against Heaven again. While angels and demons war in the heavens, devils roam the earth, producing war and the Black Death. In the midst of these horrors, a rogue knight and a young girl strike up an odd friendship, which leads them on a trek to Avignon, the home of the French pope, where they will make a stand against the demons. Part grisly take on the Canterbury Tales, part redemption story, and part religious story, the novel is dark, gritty, and is heavily immersive in its bleak medieval world.

I particularly liked the religious take, which is decidedly medieval in its outlook, and how the demons and angels are portrayed as both beautiful and monstrous. It’s the kind of thing where you probably shouldn’t think too hard about the theology of it all–it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense–and just run with it. Most striking for me was the perfect pairing between a dirty, plague-ridden, lived-in world with the heavily stylized devils and angels of medieval religion.

Thomas the knight is a highly sympathetic character, and his companion, Delphine, is witty and grows in mysterious spiritual power without being lecturing or grating. Their friendship is the kind of thing we’ve seen before–hulking protector with a precocious female child–but it’s done very well, and what’s more, it comes across as believable. The story is highly episodic, which makes the parts feel a bit overlong, but the sum was quite enjoyable for me.