Netflix has made a thoroughly satisfying, emotionally resonant, action-packed series it’s hard not to love… despite Marvel’s best efforts.
Some season one spoilers below.
Month / January 2016
Movie Review: “Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens”
(Warning: This review contains spoilers.)
Star Wars Episode VII was marketed as a continuation of the Star Wars saga. The realization that this film was not truly a sequel, but rather a 2015 remake, has inspired reactions from fans ranging from unbridled joy to seething rage. With nearly every plot point of The Force Awakens taken faithfully from the original 1977 film, there is no doubt that the goal of this movie was to re-create the original story, rather than continue it, with the high-profile returning cast mainly used to inspire nostalgia and draw adult fans of the original trilogy back to the theatres. So the question becomes, with a rich expanded universe of content from which to draw, why did Abrams decide to simply make a reboot instead of a true sequel? And what might this mean for the future of the franchise?
“Sherlock: The Abominable Bride” Review: Everything Old is New Again
(Warning: This review contains spoilers.)
Fans of BBC’s Sherlock have been waiting an awfully long time for a new episode. In fact, with the cast and crew in such high demand, new installments of Sherlock are a rare commodity. This show has not always responded well to the pressure of success, and the difficulty in scheduling production has made this pressure higher than ever. Fortunately, the result is a clever and complex episode that almost succeeds at re-capturing the sense of fun and adventure missing from the most recent series, without getting lost in its own twists and turns.
I’ll admit, the idea of re-imagining the modern adaptation of Sherlock Holmes to be set in Victorian London (would this qualify as re-re-imagining, or un-re-imagining?) struck me immediately as something of a self-indulgent stunt designed to stall for time as the show continued to figure out how to get unstuck from the mire of tangled arc story in which it’s been entrenching itself since the end of series two. However, upon viewing, the strengths of this approach were obvious, surprising, and thoroughly entertaining.
Slovenly Arts 