The Expanse (Season 4)

The Expanse; science-fiction series, USA, 2019, D: Breck Eisner, David Petrarca, Jeff Woolnough, Sarah Harding, S: Steven Strait, Wes Chatham, Cas Anvar, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Burn Gorman, Frankie Adams, Dominique Tipper, David Strathairn 

A blockade of the wormhole ring is ordered, but a group Belters, settlers of the asteroid belt, manages to go through, enter a new Solar system on the other end and start a colony on the habitable planet Ilus. Later, Earth sends an expedition to Ilus, but gets into an argument with the Belters, who want the planet’s lithium reserves. Holden has visions of Miller who tells him to remove a root from a panel of the building of the extinct alien race, but this triggers an explosion and a tsunami that will flood a third of the continent in ten hours. Belters and Earthers hide in the building. They get an eye infection from microorganisms, but Holden’s cancer medicine neutralizes them. Miller orders the destruction of a power ring, which turns off all protomolecules. On Earth, Gao is elected the new UN Secretary General, replacing Avasarala.  

The 4th season of “The Expanse” improved some issues by condensing the overstretched standard 13 episodes per season to 10 episodes in this edition, yet it once again failed to perceive the most obvious omission, namely to be even shorter: it only should have focused on the exploration of the habitable planet Ilus, a former base of an extinct alien race, since all the other subplots of ploys and schemes on Earth, Mars and space station Rocinante have only a tenth of an engagement power compared to it. They are simply uninteresting. The long, arduous dialogue is again tiresome. If they still need so much exposition, at least make the lines fun or interesting. Here, only three work (“Bad news again? They must be contagious!”; the political debate between Avasarala and Gao, when Avasarala says to the public: "How would I have saved Earth from an asteroid threat? The same as last time!"). Since the only subplot that matters is the exploration of Ilus on the other side of the wormhole, it should be mentioned. And it has some fascinating moments, a sense of mystery as the human colonists encounter unusual things on a planet that is supposedly uninhabited. For instance, an abandoned alien building, that looks like a brown pyramid; Holden accidentally activating a panel that starts a lightning bolt hitting the ground and moving forward in equal intervals; swathes of cubes from the ground moving towards the settlement. The best part is the mysterious detonation on the other side of Ilus, seen from the orbit, while the settlers are informed that the shock waves and a giant tsunami will reach them in 8-10 hours, so they have to hurriedly evacuate and find a shelter. Indeed, the most suspenseful and successful achievement of the season, reminiscent of the problems of colonists experiencing a foreign land. Sadly, the rest is too grey, monotone and too slow. One wonders how they have made such a tantalizingly imaginative story so underwhelming at times.  

Grade:++

V (Season 1)

V; science-fiction series, USA, 2009; D: Yves Simoneau, Frederick E. O. Toye, Dean White, Jonathan Frakes, S: Elizabeth Mitchell, Morena Baccarin, Morris Chestnut, Joel Gretsch, Logan Huffman, Lourdes Benedicto 

Erica Evans is an FBI anti-terrorism agent in a strained relationship with her teenage son Tyler. One day, dozens of UFOs appear over numerous cities across the world, from Cairo, Paris, Rio de Janeiro up to her city. The alien visitors, nicknamed Vs, look like humans, speak English and announce they come in peace and only want some of Earth's resources. They are represented by Anna, the alien queen who appears on a giant screen of their spaceships as they hover over cities. Tyler joins an exchange team which visits their spaceships to strengthen ties, and falls in love with Lisa, Anna's teenage daughter. However, Catholic priest Jack is given a document by a wounded man which warns that Vs want to take over the Earth. Jack teams up with Erica and Ryan, a V disguised as a human who is a member of the "Fifth Column", alien dissidents who oppose their homeland attacking Earth. Erica remains in FBI and warns the column whenever they are threatened by the Vs who try to slander them.

26 years after the original TV series "V" caused a lot of hype, this remake series was made that gives a rather well made recap of the concept. The original "V" was engrained in pop-culture memory due to its imaginative plot (reptile aliens disguised as humans deceive humanity by claiming they come in peace, but in reality secretly plot to take over the world) because it was quoted by several conspiracy theorists, including even David Icke, yet it is basically just a typical historical allegory of imperialism, colonialism, assimilation and irredentism just done in a science-fiction edition. This new series has the same problem as many other TV shows: its first two episodes and the last episode are intruiging and suspensful, but all the other episodes in between are so overstretched, routine and diluted that they lose the viewers' interest and seem to run on 'autopilot'. The main virtue is the excellent Elizabeth Mitchell in the leading role of FBI agent Erica, but even she is narrowed down by the often conventional narrative which leaves her little room to parade her charm and potentials. 

There are some nice bits and pieces where Mitchell comes to full expression—for instance, in the scene where her teenage son Tyler asks to talk with her, and Erica sits down on the couch next to him, Indian-style, and says: "I'm all yours", or when Erica encounters Tyler stalling in front of his room, so she opens the door, goes inside and spots Lisa in underwear, exits, and then has a serious mother-son talk with Tyler—but most of the story are just simple action or chase or exposition sequences which could be done by anyone. The scary implications of the Vs are initially effective—the human protagonists discover the Vs have been on Earth for years before they initially appeared in public, and have been taking over and corrupting institutions in society, which is relatable even today—and some of their methods to perform one good deed to use as a cover for a hundred evil misdeeds in order to sway the public and gain followers are disturbingly logical and sneaky (a reporter finds out he has aneurysm on his brain, undergoes a therapy by the Vs and thus becomes their proponent, all until he finds out the Vs actually gave him aneurysm in the first place). Some more thought-provoking elements that contemplate about counter-terrorism and the notion that you should not become a monster to stop a monster are welcomed, though they were underused (for instance, in episode 9, Erica and her team capture a sniper who admits he supports Vs because they cured his crippled daughter, so they debate if they should torture him to find out valuable information from him). The aliens are sadly only shown as humans, without revealing their true reptilian shape, making this first season a good, albeit conventional remake of the original.

Grade:++

The Return of the Pink Panther

The Return of the Pink Panther, comedy, UK / USA, 1975, D: Blake Edwards, S; Peter Sellers, Christopher Plummer, Catherine Schell, Herbert Lom, Peter Arne  

The famous Pink Panther diamond is again stolen, this time from a museum in Lugash, so the authorities demand the French Inspector Clouseau to investigate. The retired thief Charles is the main suspect, so he travels to Lugash to try to find the real perpetrator and clear his name. Charles’ wife Claudine is trailed by Clouseau in some Swiss town. When Charles returns, Claudine admits she stole the diamond. Clouseau then enters the room, and Chief Inspector Dreyfus starts shooting at him from the window because he hates him, but is arrested and sent to a mental asylum. The Pink Panther is returned to the museum.  

11 years (!) after his last performance in “A Shot in the Dark”, comedian Peter Sellers returned in big style to play Inspector Clouseau again in this 4th “Pink Panther” film, after the ‘intruder’ instalment “Inspector Clouseau” from ‘68 proved that nobody could replace him in this role. Just like all the movies in the film series, this is also a hit-or-miss affair: some jokes work better, some worse. The director Blake Edwards again suffers from an overindulgence of relaying on Clouseau tripping, falling or getting stuck on some object, which gets tedious pretty fast and feels like forced humor, and thus the weakest points in the film are Inspector’s overlong shenanigans with a table and a vacuum cleaner. However, Edwards also has some better, occasionally even truly funny jokes. One of the craziest is when someone rings the doorbell and gives Clouseau a bomb, the Inspector takes it, but then realizes the danger and throws it away. Cut to the next scene of a grandma living next door, watching TV in her room, getting lifted up for a moment from the neighboring explosion, and hitting Clouseau who crashed through the wall in all the commotion. At one point, Dreyfus says: “Compared to Inspector Clouseau, Attila the Hun was a Red Cross volunteer”. The gags in the Swiss town are so ridiculous they are again comical: Clouseau enters a cab, says: “Follow that car!”, and the taxi driver starts chasing it on foot (!), leaving the cab behind. Clouseau enters a hotel, a random stranger asks him: “May I have your coat? And your gloves?” As Clouseau gives it to him, the stranger randomly walks out and escapes with said robe. Edwards relies on sight gags that pay homage to Tati’s Monsieur Hulot, not caring so much about the arbitrary storyline as much as just tickling the viewers until they at least chuckle, yet he and Sellers won’t reach the stride of the series until the next instalment, the funniest “Pink Panther” film, “The Pink Panther Strikes Again”.  

Grade:++

The Banshees of Inisherin

The Banshees of Inisherin; drama, Ireland / UK / USA, 2022, D: Martin McDonagh, S: Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon, Barry Keoghan, Gary Lydon  

Irish island Inisherin, 1 9 2 3. Farmer Padraic is surprised that his best friend Colm suddenly stopped all contact and doesn’t want to talk with him anymore. Colm wants to compose music on his violin alone. When Padraic insists on contact, Colm starts cutting off one of his own fingers each time he speaks with him. Padraic lives with his sister Siobhan, but she leaves the island to accept a far away job. When his beloved donkey Jenny dies from eating Colm’s finger on the ground, the angry Padraic sets Colm’s house on fire. Later, Colm and Padraic have a chat on the shore.  

Overrated and overhyped, “The Banshees of Inisherin” are a peculiar depiction of Irish mentality that doesn’t lead to any particular point at the end. The screenplay is disappointingly bland, conventional and overstretched, with routine, underwhelming dialogue. There is no wit or inspiration in the way these people talk. A rare example that proves otherwise is after Colm cut off his own finger and threw it at Padraic’s door, in order to warn the latter not to talk to him anymore and leave him alone: the bewildered Padraic actually goes to Colm’s house later on, and tells him he is crazy: “How many fingers do you have to prove you are not fecking mental? Nine fingers is the epitome of mental!” The story is an allegory on the Irish Civil War (Colm suddenly turns his back to his lifelong friend Padraic, until this escalates at the end), Irish emigration (Siobhan leaves the island because she found a job abroad) and the slow death or Irish mentality and traditions (Padraic isn’t married and has no kids). However, allegories and symbols alone don’t make a movie. A movie also needs a good story, cinematic techniques, inspiration, dialogue... all of which “Banshees” are lacking. Why did Colm suddenly stop talking to Padraic? Because he suddenly felt Padraic is “boring”. But that doesn’t explain why Colm would go to such extreme lengths such as cutting his own fingers just to not talk to him. Something drastic obviously must have happened between them that lead them to this drastic point and that would make Colm cutting off his fingers justified. But the script honestly believes that just being “boring” is sufficient for someone to perform self-mutilation. There simply needs to be a better justification than this in order for it to make sense. Even if the cut fingers are an allegory on Northern Ireland being cut off from the rest of Ireland, this still needs to be translated into a valid reason for why Colm would suddenly stop talking with Padraic under any cost. This way, this thin movie is lacking, and no artistic obfuscation can compensate for that.    

Grade:+

Dark (Season 3)

Dark; science-fiction drama series, Germany, 2020; D: Baran bo Odar, S: Louis Hofmann, Lisa Vicari, Dietrich Hollinderbäumer, Nina Kronjäger

Alternate dimension Martha saved Jonas and left him in a timeline where he was never born. They are trying to find out the origin which caused the time loop. Jonas and Martha have sex. They find out Eva is the old Martha, and orders a Martha from a different timeline to shoot Jonas. Eva is fighting Adam, the old version of Jonas, and claims she wants to save the world, while he wants to destroy it. Adam informs the now pregnant Martha that her child will be the origin of the time loop, so he captures her and synchronizes both apocalypses from two dimensions, activating the God particle, to kill it. But the world is still left intact. An old Claudia appears and tells him that there is a third dimension, the origin, created when Tannhaus activated a time machine to try to save his family who died when their car crashed over a bridge. Jonas and Martha travel to that dimension before the accident, save the family by preventing them to cross the bridge. As Tannhaus now never activated the time machine, the other two worlds with Martha and Jonas disappear with all the people created through time travel.  

The third season of the overhyped “Dark” series over-complicated everything, but it’s complications are inversely proportional to its enjoyment value. It is intelligent, it is well made, it is professional and modern looking. And yet, it fell into the trap that many TV series often fall into when they run long enough: at one point, it all becomes a routine, and the story just starts running on autopilot. Grey, lifeless, too serious, pretentious, sterile and monotone, this third season both pleases and disappoints due to its stale narrative that simply leaves the viewers feeling that watching it seems like homework. Moreover, the various plot tangles were not all connected in the end, and some are even illogical. Jonas’ transformation into Adam was poorly done and is a cop-out: we were not explained as to why he would change from a person who wants to save everyone from the time loop to someone who just wants to destroy the entire world to end it. Even if Adam’s pain from time travel was unbearable, would killing all life in the world be a reasonable solution? Even if a hundred people were suffering unbearable pain in New York, would blowing up the entire city be the solution? It is actually something even worse. The story owes us an explanation that is better than the one we got here. Sadly, numerous subplots were stuck in a dead end and are unnecessary. The last three episodes which sprint to the finish line are arguably the best because they were running towards a point, the “tunnel of atoms” in the final episode is impressive, and yet, instead of a cathartic reaction, the viewers only feel a sense of relief that the whole series finally ended. For a story about time travel, it ironically ignored to use its time more efficiently and instead delivered an 18-hour series, running so long until it passed its prime.  

Grade:++

Modern Romance

Modern romance; comedy, USA, 1981, D: Albert Brooks, S: Albert Brooks, Kathryn Harrold, Bruno Kirby, James L. Brooks, George Kennedy  

Los Angeles. Film editor Robert decides to break up with his girlfriend Mary, since he thinks they are incompatible. At first, Robert enjoys his alone time at home, but quickly starts to become nervous and unstable. He buys jogging clothes to run. He calls a woman he knows to go out on a date, but when he picks her up in his car, he suddenly decides to cancel the date. At the studio, he is finishing editing a movie with George Kennedy. Robert phones Mary and they make up. On a love trip in a cabin, he admits he found a costly phone bill to New York at her place, accusing her of meeting another man. They argue, but then Robert proposes her.  

Albert Brooks’ second feature length film as a director, “Modern Romance” is a semi-successful depiction of indecisive people who cannot make up their mind, who are neither happy with their partner nor happy with their status of loneliness. “Modern Romance” is more personal than it is cinematically satisfying. Brooks isn’t able to craft an engaging or intriguing storyline, but instead presents a loose ‘slice-of-life’ set of vignettes with jokes that are of varying degree of inspiration. One good one is the opening, where the protagonist Robert announces his breakup with Mary by comparing their relationship to a dead-end: "You never heard of a no-win situtation? Vietnam? This?" In another, Robert is driving in his car, but whenever he changes a radio station, each one plays a romantic song, much to his grudge. However, Robert is too coiled and nervous character to truly gain sympathy. The movie editing subplot is rather routine, though it has a neat cameo from the legendary director James L. Brooks as his co-worker. The ending also feels unsatisfactory vague and abrupt. Take away the style, creativity and ingenuity from “Annie Hall” and you get “Modern Romance”, though it is still a good film with honest observations about modern problems with relationships.  

Grade:++

Asterix: The Mansions of the Gods

Astérix: Le Domaine des Dieux; CGI animated comedy, France / Belgium, 2014; D: Louis Clichy, Alexandre Astier S: Roger Carel, Guillaume Briat, Alexandre Astier, Serge Papagalli, Géraldine Nakache

A small Gaul village is still resisting the annexation by the Roman Empire in 50 B.C., so Caesar envisages a plan: his architects will build a Roman city near the Gaul village, which will attract the Gauls to move there, interact with the Romans, become dependent on them and eventually merge into the Roman Empire. Surprisingly, the plan works: Asterix, Obelix and Getafix get into an argument with the village chief and decide to rent an apartment in the Roman town. The Romans buy fish from the Gauls, and thus the Gauls become dependent on their cash. However, since there are so many new people in the area, the wild boars disappear, causing Obelix to become weak from hunger, and to thus get captured by the Roman soldiers. Since Getafix is also arrested, there is nobody who can make the magic potion for the Gauls anymore, so the Roman soldiers attack them. Getafix is freed, makes a potion, gives it to the Gauls, and thus the Roman soldiers are beaten once again.

"Asterix: The Mansions of the Gods" is the first good Asterix animated film in 28 years, ever since "Asterix in Britain" unwillingly became 'the last bastion' of quality of the film series, and the first CGI animated film in the entry. The main plot is at first weird—Caesar wants to build a Roman city near the Gaul village in order to make the Gauls interact with the Romans, get seduced by their money and urban life, until they will become assimilated—but when carried out, it actually turns into a surprisingly sane and coherent strategy of subtle colonialism. The jokes are much better this time around, and thus feel fresh: in the opening sequence, Caesar, in his palace, is finalizing said plan with his associates, but then contemplates about how he should call it. He then has an idea, he will call it "The Mansions of the Gods". Cut to the opening title of the film, but then the movie cuts back to the previous scene with Caesar, who is suddenly having second thoughts, trying to think of a better title, but then just settles with the one he has, and the movie cuts again to the title, "Asterix: The Mansions of the Gods". There are a lot of good jokes later on, as well: in the Colosseum, right before the fight of the Gladiators, a Roman kid is playing by hammering his two toys off each other, and the parents wonder where does he get such aggressive behavior; the long back-and-forth between the Romans cutting off trees from the forest to make room for their construction site, but Asterix and Obelix keep throwing magical seeds on the place which causes trees to grow instantly on the same place; the spoof on contrarianism when the heroes give Roman slaves the magic potion so that they can escape the Roman captivity, but a slave gives the counter-intuitive reply: "But isn't freedom just another form of slavery?"; the whole sequence where Asterix feigns he is drinking a nonexistent magic potion in order to fool the Roman army, so he stages a fake fight with the chief. The inspiration falls substantially in the second half, where a certain routine and occasions of 'empty walk' creep in, so the movie doesn't return to its fun roots all until the charming finale (including even a chicken that accidentally drank the magic potion), yet it still gives an impression that the famous animated character was rejuvenated in this edition.

Grade:++

Everything Everywhere All at Once

Everything Everywhere All at Once; fantasy / action / drama / comedy, USA, 2022; D: Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert, S: Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, Jenny Slate, Harry Shum Jr., James Hong, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tallie Medel, Brian Le

Chinese American Evelyn Wang is married to Waymond, and they both run a laundromat. Her daughter Joy is a lesbian, but Evelyn hides that from her grandfather. While going to an IRS office, Waymond's mind is replaced with the mind of Waymond from another universe, who informs Evelyn that she must fight and defeat Jobu Tupaki, a villian with superpowers who wants to destroy all the universes through a black hole shaped like a bagel. It turns out that a version of Evelyn from another universe was a scientist who discovered how to jump through one universe to another, but her daughter Joy obtained all the powers and used them against her. Joy admits she wants to die because she thinks life is pointless in the universe, but Evelyn manages to talk her out of this plan and embrace her as her daughter. Evelyn and Joy make up, and the world is returned back to normal.

One of the most unusual and notable movies of 2022, "Everything Everywhere All at Once" by the Daniels is another movie about the multiverse, but still done with enough uniqueness to feel fresh and original. This is something like Wong's "The One", "Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse" and "Avengers: Endgame", just done with an overload of bizarreness and a more philosophical touch, and thus the viewers will have to see the film several times to get all the overcomplicated subplots and narrative levels. The idea that the heroine Evelyn (excellent Michelle Yeoh) can tap into all the hundreds of different universes and obtain a talent from an alternate self is brilliant, and comes in handy—in one example, she taps in to an alternate self who is a Kung Fu fighter, "downloads" that ability and uses it to fight the bad guys. In another, she taps in to an alternate self, a master of spinning signs on the street, to take a shield from a SWAT team member and use it to battle all the people in the room. Through it, the story contemplates how many hiden, unused potentials lie in a person, and what skills someone could perfect under different circumstances in these worlds, revealing that people are more than the sum of their parts. However, not all jokes work. At least two are stupid: the universe with people having hot dogs instead of fingers is lame; the two henchmen who have to do a "butt plug-in" to gain access into their alternate universe self, so they they jump onto a trophy to insert them into their butts, seems more like something from an "American Pie"-style vulgar comedy series. However, even the former is somewhat alleviated when Evelyn gives a speech which implies the hot dog fingers are an allegory on disability. The joke involving a spoof of "Ratatouille", but featuring a raccoon instead of a rat on a cook's head, pulling his hair to control him, also doesn't have a good of a punch line (Evelyn jumps on the cook's shoulders and pulls his hair to make him run). 

Also, the touching moment in which an alternate universe Waymond, who was never married to Evelyn, gives her a confession ("I wanted to say, in another life, I would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with you.") would have been more powerful hadn't the similar multiverse episode #1.8 of "Rick and Morty" beaten it to the punch. The martial arts action sequences are surprisingly well choreographed, the Daniels use several cinematic techniques (a split screen with two Evelyns in two universes; different color palettes or aspect ratios for different universes; match cuts to transition from a character doing one move in one universe to another universe...) and creative metafilm ideas well (in the middle of the film, the closing credits suddenly appear, saying "The End", "A Daniels Film", etc., only to be revealed to be a screening of a movie Evelyn is watching in the cinemas, in an universe where she is a movie actress; Evelyn and Joy as rocks in an alternate universe, contemplating some deep thoughts shown only through subtitles). Even though it is also assembled as an action film in which a heroine fights a villain with superpowers, the movie is first and foremost a symbolic drama about a mother-daughter relationship, which gives it an emotional anchor and advantage. Evelyn's daughter, Joy, the villain, wants to symbolically destroy every universe because she is a nihilist ("If nothing matters, then all the pain and guilt you feel for making nothing of your life goes away") and feels intergenerational cultural conflict, which becomes remarkably emotional near the end, a meditation on each new young generation falling into depression or despair, and contemplating suicide because they think nothing matters, until the more experienced Evelyn realizes she carried her frustrations on to Joy, inherited from her own father, and as Evelyn finally heals herself ("It's okay if you can't be proud of me. Because I finally am.") she is able to break the cycle and heal Joy, too, nicely showing her that kindness is the way out of misery—even depression is just a phase that will go away with time. As absurd as the movie may seem, it is equally as sincere: an abstract depiction of a broken mother-daughter relationship that is repaired in the end. The movie does turn into "Too much, too many all at once" at some parts, but it has a purposeful complexity—in just 140 minutes, it creates a multiverse world equally as rich and dense as James Joyce's "Ulysses".

Grade:+++

Vortex

Vortex; drama / tragedy, France / Belgium / Monaco, 2021; D: Gaspar Noé, S: Dario Argento, Françoise Lebrun, Alex Lutz

An elderly couple in their 80s, living in a house in Paris, is having trouble. The wife wonders around the store and gets losr in the city, so the husband has to find her and return her back home. She suffers from memory loss, and takes medicine daily. Their son, Stephane, comes to visit them and recommends they move to a retirement home, but they don't want to hear about it. The wife takes the manuscipt of her husband, who was writing a book about movies and dreams, tears the papers and throws them into the toilet, angering her husband. One night, the husband has a stroke and falls on a floor. The wife finds him only in the morning, and contacts Stephane. The husband dies in the hospital. The wife wonders around the streets, aimlessly, until she commits suicide in her bed.

Gaspar Noe's least controversial film became also his most critically recognized one, since "Vortex" was hailed by critics, dedicating the story of a dying old couple to everyone who's "brains will dissolve before their heart", as the title puts it. Similarly like Haneke's "Amour", "Vortex" is a minimalistic, bleak and depressive depiction of old age as a trap from which there is no escape, and Noe actually cast Italian director Dario Argento in the lead. Except for the opening and the ending, 95% of the film is filmed in a split screen, one following the old woman, the other the old man, which features a few neat ideas that play with this concept (sometimes both of them in both screens; in one scene the camera shows her with her husband in the same frame on the one side, and her and Stephane in the other frame, featuring only a small camera tilt...). However, while this split-screen 'gimmick' is interesting in the first 30 minutes, once the viewers get use to it, "Vortex" turns out to be a very conventional story with banal dialogue, and with a running time of 140 minutes, it is definitely overstretched and needed to be cut by a third. The sequence where the husband walks across the house at night, has a heart attack and falls on the floor, convulsing in pain for a minute while his wife is asleep in the bedroom, is painful to watch and not for everyone's taste. The events of the husband coping with his wife suffering from dementia are rather stale, sterile and grey, and one wishes they were done with a broader spectrum of a viewring experience, featuring a more versatile writing. We get these realistic characters, but they don't grow on us, nor do they emotionally engage us as much as we wished for.

Grade:++

Asterix & Obelix: The Middle Kingdom

Astérix et Obélix: l'Empire du Milieu; comedy, France, 2023; D: Guillaume Canet, S: Guillaume Canet, Gilles Lellouche, Julie Chen, Leanna Chea, Vincent Cassel, Marion Cotillard, Jonathan Cohen, Linh Dan Pham

A small Gaul village, 50 BC. A Chinese Princess, Fu Yi, and her female bodyguard Tat Han, arrive via carriage to ask the Gaul chief for assistance. Namely, a Chinese rebel Deng Tsin Qin imprisoned the Chinese Empress in order to take over the Kingdom. Asterix and Obelix accept to travel to the Chinese city with Fu Yi and Tat Han, and both fall in love with them. However, following his break-up with Cleopatra, the angry Caesar orders his Roman Army to travel to the same Chinese city to help Deng Tsin Qin conquer the Kingdom. Luckily, Asterix and Obelix save the Empress from the prison, and she assembles a million soldiers that force Caesar to retreat. A wedding between Fu Yi and a Chinese Prince is held in the Gaul village.

The 5th live action Asterix film, filmed 11 years after the weak reception of the last one, "God Save Britannia", obfuscated the characters and events so much that after it the viewers are unsure what a good Asterix and Obelix live action film could even look like anymore. There are some solid ideas here, but even more misguided ones. "The Middle Kingdom" starts off surprisingly good: Asterix and Obelix (Gilles Lellouche replaces the problematic Depardieu) stumble upon two Roman soldiers in the forest, Asterix punches one of them, the camera pans up to follow the catapulted soldier flying up, and reaches the title of the movie in the sky, so then the camera pans down for a neat match cut to the Gaul village underneath. The rest is less inspired, though. Throughout the story, it is surprising that the Kung Fu fights of the Chinese characters are somehow more effective than the stale fights of the two Gaul protagonists. Some gags work. In one of them, a Chinese Zen monk stretches out the palm of his hand with a coin on it and dares a Gaul to try to be fast to take it, but the Gaul just slaps the monk and thus takes his coin. Other jokes are almost good, but don't go anywhere. One interesting attempt at a joke is when the Roman commander Antivirus (Zlatan Ibrahimović!) leads the army in an attack in tune to his version of the Queen song "We Will Rock You", but there is no pay-off. The soldiers chant and fight while the song plays in the background, but it doesn't make the sequence any better. Other attempts at jokes backfire: for instance, the Druid mixed a "strange" potion, which causes Asterix to go into a crazy mode after drinking it, stretching his giant tongue for 10 feet and obtaining elephant ears (?) for a moment. What was the point of that? The melancholic-bitter subplots of Caesar's, Asterix's and Obelix's unrequited love feel strangely depressing and weird for this type of film, and the camaraderie of the two protagonists is nonexistent, yet the movie is still overall solid and easily watchable.

Grade:+

The Expanse (Season 3)

The Expanse; science-fiction series, USA, 2018; D: Breck Eisner, Jeff Woolnough, David Grossman, Ken Fink, S: Steven Strait, Frankie Adams, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Elizabeth Mitchell, Wes Chatham, Thomas Jane, Shawn Doyle

The UN politicians on Earth declare war against Mars. The Outer Planets Alliance (OPA) becomes the government of the "Belters", workers on the asteroid belt and Ganymede. The crashed asteroid with protomolecule on it emerges from Venus as a spaceship which floats away to an orbit beyond Uranus, and assembles a giant space ring with a green-blue matter inside it. Mankind of Earth, Mars and the asteroid belt unites and sends ships to investigate the ring. Once inside, ship captain Ashford wants to destroy the ring, fearing it might cause a danger to all humanity, but Holden has visions of Miller, who leads him inside the base of the ring spaceship. Holden has visions of the death of the alien civilization that created the protomolecule. He persuades the crew to turn off their generators. This causes the ring to conclude that human spaceships are not a threat, and releases them through a portal / wormhole to 1,300 habitable solar systems.

The third season of "The Expanse" finally managed to align its episodic story into a clear storyline with a goal, yet some flaws still remained. The authors still cannot differentiate what parts of the gigantic story are worth the time and which parts are not worth wasting time on. This can be demonstrated in episode 3.10: it ends in a fascinating, almost surreal sequence in which Holden places his hand inside the circuit inside the alien ring and suddenly gets visions of the past (DNA particles floating in space; a dozen portals / wormholes with solar systems seen through them, which start blowing up one after another; a beam of light which causes a yellow star to turn blue and explode). After it, the viewers get excited and stimulated to see what will happen next. But the entire next episode, 3.11, is spent only on showing injured people on their space station, and it isn't all until the last two minutes that Holden gets to talk about what he has seen with Frankie. Nobody cares about showing every single injured astronaut in this episode, everything is clear already after five minutes, which makes the entire episode a symbol of excessive stalling instead of focusing on Holden and his amazing discovery. And unfortunately, this is symbolic for the entire season. 

There are some "polished" bits in here. The first episode starts with a gorgeous space scene in one take, in which the camera drives away from Venus where the protomolecule is creating someting, passes by Earth with its satellites and radio signals that war is inevitable with Mars, then passes by Mars and "catches" its radio signals about Earth's imperialism, and then goes all the way to Ganymede, with "Belters" shooting with their spaceships, thereby encompassing all the key players across half the solar system. The new character of Anna, a philanthropist pastor of a Methodist church, played wonderfully affectionate by the excellent Elizabeth Mitchell, gives the story something fresh: a character with compassion that is endearing to the viewers. In her first appearance in episode 3.2, Anna witnesses a riot police officer hitting a protestor with a police stick, so she actually stops to comfort the injured protestor, ask his name, and then ask the name of the police officer, only to order the official to bring the injured protestor to a hospital. There are also other good bits and ideas (Holden, in a spacesuit, floats in space while he has a vision of Miller, without a spacesuit), but after watching the last episode, one realizes that "The Expanse" didn't need 39 episode to get there: the last episode of the 1st season, where the protomolecule was introduced, should have already been the first episode, and the last episode of the third season could have been the last episode of the first season. All those overlong and overcrammed subplots of one faction fighting the other, or one group scheming against the other one, prove to be unnecessary. At least half of all episodes could have been cut. The main focus is on humanity discovering a portal of a dead alien civilization, and this is all what matters. Everything else is just an attempt to obfuscate the viewers and prolong the running time past its prime. 

Grade:++