FROM on Epix. Season One review.
The first ten episodes finished this past weekend and we have more mysteries than we started with. Normally, that’s not a good thing, but there were enough twists and turns to keep it interesting.
In case you haven’t seen it, quick summary of the premise: people driving along a road come to a tree blocking it. When they turn around they end up in a town and after driving through, the same tree. They are stuck in the town. And at night, creatures come out and tear you apart unless you are inside with a talisman on the wall to keep them out. There’s no way to escape, although people are trying in various ways. An interesting twist in episode 9 was a handful people actually floating the concept, which actually makes sense, that, except for, you know, the creatures that can eat you at night, it’s not a bad place to live.
I had a moment watching the last episode. I always try to figure out what the “original idea” for a story is. It all has to start somewhere. Since every idea has been done, it’s usually a question of finding the twist on an already done idea. Last night I thought: this is The Truman Show with horror. A self-contained area where the trapped people are being observed and played with. At times, torn to shreds.
I actually have a lot of different ideas about what is happening in this place where the people are trapped. I’m probably wrong on all counts. Which is good. It keeps me coming back for more.
There are some rough spots, and some not so good acting, but enough twists to make it worth watching I hope it gets another season and we actually do find out what’s going on.
Recommended.
What If Japan Had Succeeded in Developing an Atomic Bomb during WWII?
What if the Japanese had succeeded in developing a nuclear weapon at the end of World War II, but were stopped before deploying it? But the bomb is still hidden. At the base of the Golden Gate Bridge.
That’s the premise for The Gate: Shadow Warriors. I didn’t invent this out of thin air. I was wandering the stacks at the Fort Campbell post library one day and saw a book titled Japan’s Secret War. In the nonfiction section. I used to know the Dewey Decimal System pretty damn well. You know, before the internet. I’m still a big believer in reading books for research rather than googling stuff. Why? Because you need to know the question to google something. Reading a book raised questions you hadn’t thought of. Like this one.
The author laid out some interesting facts in this book. As the Third Reich was reduced to rubble, a U- Boat attempted to make the arduous journey to Japan. Its cargo? Scientists, enriched uranium, and two Japanese naval officers. The Japanese worked extensively on their biological and chemical weapons. Unit 731 in Manchuria was infamous and largely ignored by history. I use Unit 731 in several of my books particularly The Gate.
OSS documents indicate that Japan’s nuclear weapons program was also headquartered in Manchuria. Which the author speculates is why the Russians were in such a rush to seize that area near the end of the war.
What if the Japanese succeeded? What if they detonated one bomb in Manchuria at the end of the war to cover their tracks and the second bomb disappeared on board a submarine heading across the Pacific. Toward the United States? Toward the city where the 1st meeting of the United Nations will be held. San Francisco.
That nuclear weapon has been lost and forgotten about at the base of the Golden Gate Bridge since the end of the war. Lake, a covert operative for the US, is now on a race against rogue militia terrorists to find and destroy this weapon in order to prevent a nuclear disaster of epic proportions.
This book mixes a modern day thriller with uncovering history. The horrors of Unit 731; the Yakuza; North Korean commandoes and home-grown terrorists. All combine in this action-packed story of what could be.
The Shadow Warrior Series is on my web site in fiction. These are standalone titles and don’t need to be read in order.
Reign of Fire happened two years ago!
How time flies when we’re having fun. And we should have had flying cars the year before. But,hey. Dragons! Starring Mathew McConaughey and Christian Bale, and did I mention, dragons? this 2002 movie disappointed at the box office.
The premise is that while digging for the London Underground, they open up a cavern with a dragon that’s been sleeping, well, since it wiped out the dinosaurs. I’m happy when I get eight good hours of sleep. But, hey. Whatever.
I thought it was okay. Some serious plot flaws. The ending felt a bit anti-climactic. But what’s astonishing is to see what McConaughey did to his body. Then compare that to Dallas Buyer’s Club. That can’t be good for you.
If you’re bored it’s not a bad movie since it has—did I mention dragons? Not quite Smaug, though.
Update on From on Epix, which is like the only way to get the title across, which means: bad title. Really liking where this is going. Especially some of the thoughts in the last episode. I mean, a couple of people do have a point: other than the man-eating creatures in the night, is it really a bad place to live? Of course, there are no dragons. Yet.
I have, of course, written about dragons. They are in Area 51: Invasion, which, humbly speaking, I think is a kick ass book about Earth getting invaded by dragons, Cthulhu, Naga, kraken and more nasty things from our collective memory. Because they are part of the Ancient Enemy. Even though it’s like book 11 in the Area 51 series, I think it could be read on its own.
Did I mention the series is getting seriously shopped around. One of the co-creators to the Alien franchise wrote a screenplay on the first book and his name is attached. The key is to find a ‘name’ showrunner who sees the potential of what I pitch as The Expanse, except about history. It starts small and then expands to the universe. Here’s hoping.
The Tourist: If You Can’t Remember Your Past, Can You Change Your Future?
The six episode series, The Tourist, on HBO Max starts with a trope: a man is in an accident and when he recovers, can’t remember who he is.
Of course, the mystery starts when we see the accident is actually someone trying to kill him with an 18-wheeler and running him off the road. Who is that? Why are they trying to kill him?
Set in the Australian outback, this is a search by the no-name protagonist to find out who he is and why people are trying to kill him. Jamie Dorman stars as the unlucky man who peels back layers on this mystery to discover who he is.
Without giving spoilers, suffice it to say by the time you get to the sixth episode, things are extremely complex with almost no one being who they appear to be. The backstory is hard with every little detail you have seen being significant. It might be too complicated, but not if you sit and think about it.
The ending leaves a question mark, but not really if you think back through what the entire story has been questioning: can a person change no matter what terrible things they have done? Can they be redeemed?
The story is well done with some stunning twists. Every character has a strong backstory and is evocative.
Highly recommended.
Three Quick Reviews: movie Deep Water and TV series: From and Snowpiercer
Deep Water is based as a psychological, erotic thriller. Well, Hmm. It stars Ben Affleck as an older husband with a beautiful, younger wife who is, shall we say, lustful. She has affairs and Affleck kills the guys. That’s a brief summation and about all you need to know. It’s an extraordinarily slow movie with one of the worst endings. Ever watch victims so stupid they deserve to die? They’re all in this movie. Really. So there are rumors this guy kills his wife’s lovers, but you boink his wife anyway. And then when he invites you on a drive to the ‘gorge’ you go, ‘Sure, sounds like a fun outing!’
Or you suspect him and find him red-handed and hop in your car to escape and he only has a mountain bike and you’re like, okay, let’s be cool and get out of here? No, you drive as maniacally as Jack Nicholson wanting to get your ankles smashed and, well, enough said.
The kid was good. Actually, both kids were good and kind of an interesting observation.
But overall? Rewatch Last Seduction if you want a sexy thriller.
The TV series From suffers from a terrible title. I’m an expert on terrible titles. My sixth Green Beret book was titled Z. Yes, just the letter. So that was worse, okay? Mea culpa.
It also brings to mind Lost. And since the star, Harold Perrineau, was in that show, along with other people affiliated with it, there are flashing red lights approaching this series about a town of trapped people who are attacked at night by horrible creatures.
Overall, it’s a good show. Perrineau is very good. The mystery sucks you in. There is some bad acting, or it could be badly written characters, especially the father of the latest family that gets trapped.
But the premise of what the town is, why these particular people from all over the country are there, and who the creatures are, holds promise. The final two episodes of the season are coming up and hopefully releases a bit more information. At least we can hope they’re all not dead, aka, Lost.
There are some great twists and unexpected things, which are always good. I don’t want to do spoilers, but I would recommend it.
Snowpiercer has had its ups and downs. The dream episode was really cheesy and felt like filler. Melanie’s return might have been over the top (what was going on with her disappearance, like in the real world?), but it worked because of what she does after she comes back. Also, how they handled Wilford was excellent.
They certainly pack a lot into one train, no matter how many cars long it is. I took the subway to high school in the Bronx so I’m a little cynical about trains. And they predict having the California high speed rail line down by 2090 or so, so I wonder about all this massive track going all around the world, because I’m a guy who wonders, but if you accept the premise, well, okay.
Every time I look at Jennifer Connelly I have to remind myself she was the seductress in Mulholland Falls. Like two different people.
This season ended on a nice note with a bit of suspense, so I am looking forward to the next. I recommend binging it.
Dog: the Movie. Low-Key Humor, Drama and, of course, there is a dog
Dog, starring Channing Tatum and Lulu (played by a Belgian Malinois) is a charming movie, and I say charming in the positive sense of the word. The underlying themes raise serious issues of PTSD and the damage many of us veterans have suffered not just emotionally, but physically from various events in our careers.
Tatum is a discharged Army Ranger trying to get work with a contractor, but he needs a clean bill of health before they will hire him (this is one part that stretches credulity; as if they would care). He needs the endorsement of his former commander in the Ranger Battalion. But the death of a fellow Ranger presents a trade situation. The commander will endorse him if he takes that veteran’s working dog, also a hero of deployments, to the funeral as requested by the family. Unfortunately, the dog is considered too far gone for recovery and on the road trip he’s supposed to drop it at an army base to be put down.
This means, of course, road trip. The dog, Lulu, is also damaged in the same way he is. The termination order might seem extreme but the dog seems unredeemable. Before you act surprised, remember that NONE of our working dogs in Vietnam were brought back. Yeah. I know.
The road trip is enjoyable but also surprising at moments with people who appear to be one thing turning out to be something entirely different. This is a theme I always like. Tatum is fun in his attempts to get laid in Portland bar as a former Ranger. A scene with an Arab-American the dog attacks is also well done.
This is not necessarily a movie for children as the theme of being damaged and needing to deal with that is serious. However, there is enough humor sprinkled throughout to lighten the mood.
This movie is satisfying. There were scenes that would have been very easy to push and exploit for emotion, such as the funeral, but it was done with restraint; in fact, there was no dialogue in that scene. The military scenes were pretty realistic—sorry, but no one like MPs.
Well done and recommended. Maggie and Scout also recommend it.
Review: The Green Knight. Just One Question
Who gave the green light to make this thing?
There are movies so bad that it draws you in because you just have to see where the trainwreck happens. Then there are movies so bad there isn’t even a train wreck. It’s just bad.
The Green Knight is the latter. Every scene seemed worse than the one before it. Random things happen. For no apparent reason. In no particular order.
I’m not sure what the tone of the movie was supposed to be or the point of it.
Not only was the story incoherent for one based on an epic poem, it included a high on mushrooms psychedelic scene and a fake “this could be your future” sequence that we don’t know is fake until we’re suddenly pulled back.
Yellowstone: Bad People Doing Bad Things to Other Bad People
I’d heard about this series for a while before dipping my toe in. Once I did, I was engaged. Taylor Sheridan is a master storyteller. Between this and 1883 he can certainly spin a yarn. Not at the level of Larry McMurtry with characters, but damn good plots.
There’s a worrisome edge to Yellowstone though. As noted in the title, is there anyone in this story who is redeemable? Is this a reflection of the “American dream”? Is so, it’s more a nightmare.
My favorite character is Beth Dutton. Good acting. But, as even her father says, she’s evil. They all have good reasons to go to the dark side, if that’s a justification, which it isn’t, but it is reality. Her backstory with Jaimie is horrifying. Also, you DO NOT want to be her assistant.
The body count is ridiculously high. Who knew there were raging gun battles with automatic weapons in the modern west? Having spent some time out there I am aware there is a very different spirit in that part of the country than elsewhere. The law is viewed as a secondary thing to people’s own “God-given” rights. It’s the spirit that ruthlessly conquered that country from the Native Americans and survived the brutal weather. Which leads me to the only possible redeemable people: the Native Americans.
Spoiler alert: I see the ending. The land will go back to the Native Americans. Remember the prophecy from 1883: seven generations. It’s the satisfying conclusion. It can’t remain in the hands of the psychopathic murderers of the Dutton clan, nor should it go to the greedy developers.
I will say that the makeup team for this show definitely deserves an award. The various bruises and batterings are accurately displayed, although the characters do recover from such, and getting shot, relatively quickly. But, hey, it’s TV.
As a story-teller myself, I’m a big fan of keeping all the loops in a story tight and closing them out. So, I do have one minor gripe. What about the bomb that Kayce (an ex-SEAL, of course) put in the Beck’s plane? The Beck’s both die, but that bomb is still there. Is someone in for a big surprise when they test fly that sucker?
In a way, though, the lack of closing that detail out touches on what bothers me a bit about Yellowstone overall. Not only was it written as if the Dutton’s don’t care, I get the sense the writers don’t either. The thought that it’s okay to act like the Dutton’s do. That they have this special right to impose their will against everyone. Yes, they are threatened but John Dutton gets a half-billion dollar offer for the land. That would take care of his family, I think. And, as Beth points out, if he doesn’t take it, he’s not going to get much of anything and his family is screwed. Sure, seven generations in the land, but that didn’t bother them taking it from a people who were there for a lot longer. Yes, I know. The code. The land. Yadda yadda. But didn’t the Native Americans feel that way about the land? We live in an age of narcissism and there are few role models in this show.
Netflix’s Black Crab is a Thriller released at the wrong time
Set in the near future, this Swedish film starring Noomi Rapace, hits too close to home given recent events. Images of bombed cities and dead civilians are all too real now.
The plot is basic. Noomi and a small team must get a secret weapon to a research facility inconveniently (or conveniently as a writer) located behind enemy lines but luckily, or not depending on which disposable character you are, the water between here and there has frozen for the first time in 37 years and—while not strong enough for a vehicle (which I assume included a snowmobile?) it can be skated.
Yes, most of the movie is the team skating to their objective. I told my wife that’s one thriller angle I hadn’t come up with. I’ve got action on the ice in Eternity Base, set in Antarctica, but no skating, sorry. Skis, since I learned to skin 10th Speical Forces Group. We were the Special Forces oriented toward cold and mountain. We got paid to do things civilian do for fun, then we made it miserable by strapping on 100 pound rucks and deploying to places that weren’t vacation spots.
I remember when we deployed one time and I had to find out how thick the ice had to be to land a Blackhawk helicopter. Turned out the guys flying them in the Nightstalkers at the time, didn’t know either so I had to talk to Sikorsky. It was a lot of ice.
Anyway, the movie. Off they skate.
Things happen, people die. Standard thriller fare. None of the characters really jump out. After it was over, as a writer, I had a feeling that some scenes that might have punched things up were cut. The loop with the missing daughter of the protagonist, which was dangled as the carrot to get her to go on what she immediately called a suicide mission, wasn’t closed. There were several flashbacks to her, but then . . . . nothing. I suspected she was in those lockers in the facility at the end but none are opened. But it is a biological weapon research facility. On an island. Seems that— well, nothing is done with that.
This film works if you want to watch what those of who’ve served, and everyone else too for that matter, knows: war is hell. It’s often pointless. Does it prove who is right?
There is also a fundamental flaw with all biological weapons—they are indiscriminate in who they kill. Unless you have, like a vaccine? But that’s never touched on. Besides we now know many people don’t want to get vaccinated, which, like ice skating to the objective, was something I hadn’t thought about when I predicted an inevitable pandemic years ago, because, well, anyone with a brain knows pandemics are inevitable. (Yes, we will have another, but hey, we aren’t even out of this one yet). BTW—how to deal with biological warfare? HERE.
The ending brought to mind the old Lord of the Rings cliché: if the eagles could rescue Frodo and Sam on Mount Doom why the hell couldn’t they have just flown him there in the first place and tossed him in and rid the world of a great trilogy?
So. Can’t really recommend this one.
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel: The Making of An Artist
I’ve seen people grow frustrated with this latest season because Midge, the protagonist, still shoots herself in the foot. Whether it be inappropriate routines in front of the wrong people (in this season it’s Jackie K, plus feuding with Sophie in a put-down showdown which was kind of dumb but also inevitable) or bad business decisions. (Turning down opening for Tony Bennett seems a no-brainer).
But the last scene in Carnegie Hall with Lenny Bruce laid the problem out clearly. As an artist, he expressed to her what it means to be successful. If you want it bad enough. And frankly, she hasn’t wanted it bad enough. She’s been able to get by and get breaks no matter what happened. Yes, she got screwed over, especially by Shy’s team, but she recovered. She always lands on her feet, somewhat and has a fallback position.
I see the payoff coming in the next season as Midge finally gets her act together. There are also some dark clouds hinted at: we know what happens to Lenny Bruce. And Mai’s pregnancy and a potential wedding there seems cloudy.
The one-liners are unrealistic but punchy. Hey. It’s TV. Overall, though, I find Maisel to be enjoyable if a bit unbelievable. Lots of good characters in the supporting cast and the script often takes unexpected turns with those characters which is fun.
Definitely worth watching.
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