corvidia

Season 1 was incredible, pretty consistently witty, clever & exciting from start to finish - like Game of Thrones as a Comedy, starring the amazing Elle Fanning.

Season 2 turned into a season of Gossip Girl, starting with ep 1.

I thought surely there must be new writers at work, and it seems what has happened is Tony McNamara used to be the lead writer, and used to work with Vanessa Alexander's support, and often a third writer to round things out. In season 2, Vanessa Alexander takes the lead - and it isn't completely jarring, but it takes the snarky, pop culture cheapness that used to garnish the show as an accent, are now being served up as the main course. All sense of gravity and balance is lost, and it's just a glib quip fest without substance or emotional weight. The show has become a vampire, lost all of its soul in season 2. Watching the same bodies perform in the same places, in the same costumes, surreally superficial, trashily modern versions of their earlier selves is really disappointing. Like a YA rewrite of a Nabokov novel.

And beyond the dwindling quality of the dialogue, the plot also suffered. It stopped making sense - despite all the dialogue exposition walking us through it - it walked us through logic the way a toddler might. And while, with Peter's somewhat childish character being what it is, that would have made sense for him, Catherine simultaneously is now written as 1) dumber, less logical, incapable of effective negotiation or leadership, 2) instantly being thrown into several situation as the Woman for the Job, just to give her more screen time, when another character could have done said job more effectively given their experience. Like, she is being increasingly treated as Superwoman, and looked up to, but also being (I think, accidentally) written as less intelligent, less confident. And whether it's deliberate or not, it doesn't play well - because the premise is that Russia is a bloodthirsty country, and no one would cowtow to her if she were really showing this level of incompetence and vulnerability. It stretches the stylized glittery oversaturated quality of the show far beyond credulity; knocks it off the thin line it walked between too silly, gentle & trivial and too grim, violent & somber. Now the violence is ever more trivialized, the emotions are shallow, and the discussions are as sordid yet trivial as 2 trailer park baby mamas on their smoke break at Circle K. The beauty & inspiration is gone. And since V. Alexander was the lead writer for the whole season, god knows where we'll find these poor characters and plot by season 3, even if more talented writers are allowed to try to salvage it.

The opening credits, Nicole Kidman, Roger Bart, and Glenn Close make this movie worth watching. It opens with a bang, promising more than it really delivers in the end. The ending is mediocre. But the aforementioned actors and opening scenes make it at least 6 or 6.5 stars regardless. The ending isn't terrible. The technical logistics of how exactly this science/process works is a little slack for my liking. The resolution is lazy because the sci-fi tech aspects are lazy. Very hand-wavey. The message is predictable and a little heavy handed toward the end. However, the dialogue is often cute and the costuming and lighting is also excellent. Writing overall is the weakest link in the chain - should have been a better movie with all the cast & crew clearly working hard and making magic where they could.

God! I'm soooo sick of these bait and switch didactic films that start with the premise of interesting characters who either "get redeemed" in some conventionally moralistic way to be good little livestock in the corporate, nuclear family machine - or, in this case - nearly escape the machine then get dragged back in through Orwellian brainwashing. This movie is such creepy, sinister Christian propaganda. It points out the utter horror show of Christianity - making a mockery of itself - then proceeds to embrace what it clearly sees as the lesser evil, the "beauty of faith".

What I can say to its credit is that it mocks "bad Christians" who are too proud, and addresses complicated aspects of spirituality. For Christians, this is probably a great movie, because it emphasizes tolerance and how to be the best Christian you can be.

But for the rest of us who broke out of the cult or were never in it and don't want to be sneakily prostheletized to for "Cult Lite", give this snake oil junk a miss. What I'd hoped for was another hard hitting, "goes there" film like *But I'm a Cheerleader*, calling these organized religions out for the creepy misogynist Bronze Age mythology that they are, but that one actually has a spine and follows through with its message. This film is a long con.

Even before it was a long con, it was showing the "bad kids" who were initially made out as heroes, smoking cigarettes as a show of rebellion. Why give the free PR to Big Tobacco? Why not having them smoke some joints? So already, this movie was playing it safe and square, right from the start, choosing more conventionally "acceptable" vices - the ones that pollute the air, trigger asthma attacks and give everyone lung cancer and respiratory disease versus the kind that make people slightly lazier.

Terrible film unless you're Christian. Then maybe a useful film to encourage people to be less insufferable acolytes.