Tuesday, February 27, 2018

The Walking Dead S8E9 "Honor" 2/25/18

Here we go, what may be the last The Walking Dead recap on Friend Mouse Speaks (I don't really know when Mr. Mouse is cancelling our cable).  And you know what, I am not going to miss this show at all.  I've been recapping it since the beginning - October 31, 2010 - and in the beginning, it was exciting and new and like nothing anyone had ever seen on television.  But over the last eight seasons, it has become a slog, a chore to watch, a suffer-fest not even enlivened by good writing.  I much prefer I, Zombie these days: there's still zombie action but with intricate plots, humor and characters I actually enjoy spending time with.  So, once more into the fray, my friends.  

In a nutshell: we have two through-lines this time around.  Carl got bit and he dies SPOILER throughout the episode; and Carol and Morgan rescue Ezekiel.  I just saved you 83 minutes.  Seriously, there is NO REASON this episode had to be 83 minutes long.

I'm sorry but I just rolled my eyes the whole time.  I have never liked Carl and to be honest, he got more character development in the initial Carl's-last-day-on-earth montage as he hid Sadiq away, took photos and painted hand prints with Judith, planted a tree and wrote letters to everyone.  Then, picking up right where the last episode left off, when Rick and Michonne catch up to everyone cowering in the sewers while the Saviors burn Alexandria down overhead, Carl lifts up his shirt to show them the bite on his stomach.  Throughout the rest of the episode, he gets paler and sicker and Rick and Michonne sweat and emote their pants off and everyone else sits around and looks sad.  In dying, Carl has become this missionary of peace: he has a vision of Rick rebuilding society, humans no longer killing each other but living together, making things grow and bloom.  He tells Rick and Michonne that they mustn't be sad or vengeful but must be strong for each other and Judith.  He also tells Michonne that she's his best friend which .... okay?  When did that happen?  Must have been earlier this season when we didn't see either of them for multiple episodes at a time.

Eventually the Saviors get bored with all the destruction and leave.  Rosita, Tara and Daryl decide to take the Alexandrian survivors - all of whom Carl did save, so there's that - to safety at Hilltop.  Daryl has Judith in his arms and promises a tearful, shaky Rick that he will protect her.  They leave, casting teary looks behind at Carl.  As he deteriorates, Rick and Michonne sweat and cry and stroke his face.   Then they decide to bring him up out of sewers because who wants to die there.  They manage to get him to the burned-out church where, after more sweaty, teary emoting, Carl grasps his pistol.  He says that he wants to do it while he still can, not wanting to put them through that.  They protect weakly for a little while.  Then, as Rick and Michonne stand on the front steps, we hear a faint shot.  They bury him.  Thus endeth Carl.

Interspersed among all the Carl death scenes is the more interesting Carol and Morgan show.  Carol leads the Kingdom survivors to her little cottage, telling them to hunker down there while she goes back to rescue the king.  Woman in a head scarf: "You versus all of them?" Carol: "Yeah." WiaHS: "They don't stand a chance."  Because Carol fucking rocks.  Young child Henry wants to help her - because Morgan taught him the staff and she taught him the gun - but Carol's all, no, you're staying here.  She sneaks back into the Kingdom (as does disobedient Henry), where Whatsisname and his squad of Saviors has captured Ezekiel, loading him and supplies into a truck to take back to Negan.  Carol runs into Morgan and the two of them systematically start taking out the Saviors.  Morgan has completely abandoned the way of the leaf (or whatever) and methodically stabs the Saviors to death with the sharpened end of his staff.  Carol is all, dude, you're getting a little scary, but this is what he does now.  Between the two of them, they take out about eight men, Morgan stabbing each through the skull after they're down to keep control of the zombification.

Whatsisname figures out things are going south when he can't raise his men on the walkie so he and his remaining Saviors grab Ezekiel and take refuge in the auditorium.  Carol and Morgan have collected semiautomatic guns from the Saviors they killed, however, and it turns into a full-fledged shoot-out.  Carol and Morgan and Ezekiel are ultimately successful but the Eeeeuww Moment of the episode comes when Morgan is wrestling with a Savior: the dude has a bullet wound in his belly and in order to beat the much bigger man, Morgan shoves his hand wrist-deep into that gut wound and pulls out the man's intestines with a squish and a splatter.  Whatsisname, fleeing with a superficial leg wound, looks back in time to see this and is all, HOLY FUCKING SHIT THAT IS FUCKED UP.  He runs off but Carol, Ezekiel and Morgan find him outside.  Morgan has to be talked down from stabbing Whatsisname to death.  He relents to Carol and Ezekiel's convincing - and then the man is stabbed through the neck from behind from young Henry.  The adults are slightly aghast.

The last scene, after all of the Kingdom rescue and all of the interminable dying of Carl, is Rick, red-eyed and blinking in the sun, sitting under a tree from which stained glass windows have been hung.  He seems to be alone, and bleeding from an abdominal wound.  Who even knows what that may be about.

If I find a way (without spending extra $$, I'll pick this series back up because I don't like leaving things unfinished (abandonment of True Blood recaps notwithstanding), but only until they kill off Daryl.  That really will be the last straw.  Ciao for now, those of you who only came for these TWD recaps.  Stop by for little movie reviews when you get the chance.

Previously on The Walking Dead / next time (...?) on The Walking Dead

Monday, February 19, 2018

Science fiction state of mind

Just so you know: We are giving up cable television at the end of the month - SO THIS MEANS NO MORE WALKING DEAD RECAPS UNTIL/UNLESS I CAN FIGURE OUT HOW TO WATCH THEM, FYI - so I'm going to have to step up my game with movie reviews and maybe GASP start reading and reviewing books again. 

In the meantime, I've watched a couple of science fiction movies this weekend since I have been sidelined from skiing with an ugly cough.  Neither of them were anything particularly special but I thought I'd share a few thoughts with you here.

Extraterrestrial - After recently watching and enjoying Colossal, and mostly watching and kind of enjoying Timecrimes, I thought I should check out director Nacho Vigalondo's middle feature, Extraterrestrial (2011).  In Spanish with English subtitles, this is a slight science fiction/romantic comedy (?) hybrid in which the science fiction is almost incidental to the rest of what goes on.  Julio wakes up in Julia's bed, not remembering hooking up with her the night before.  As they try to sort out what happened, they are distracted by the sight of a huge flying saucer hovering over Madrid.  They are further distracted by Julia's creepy neighbor Angel, who threatens to rat them out when Julia's live-in boyfriend Carlos returns home.  The film's focus remains on these people, with the aliens never making an appearance and only affecting things by making people paranoid.  I think what I have liked best about Vigalondo's movies is that while they are all about people dealing with extranormal things (time loops, aliens, kaiju), the people themselves are very real and relatable.

The Cloverfield Paradox - The third of the three loosely-connected Cloverfield movies is pretty much straight sci-fi, a muddle of all sorts of well-trodden movie cliches, none of which really pan out.  The Earth is experiencing an energy crisis and as tension mount, a group of scientists on the Cloverfield Station are trying to get a particle accelerator to come up with free, unlimited energy.  Things go wrong, as experimental particle accelerators are wont to do, and the team finds itself dealing with all sorts of things that don't follow the rules of logic or science.  The movie is entertaining enough but it is not at all original and the short clips back on earth, which try to connect this movie with the other Cloverfields, are distracting and largely pointless.  The cast is solid, though: Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Daniel Bruhl, David Oyelowo, Chris O'Dowd and a cameo by Donal Logue.

Image result for cloverfield paradox cast

Monday, February 5, 2018

Sundry, various

January has been a little zoo-ey in the Mouse House and while I've needed to distract myself with sci-fi/fantasy-based movies and t.v., I just haven't been able to bring myself to write about them.  Here are snippets of what I've been consuming:

The End of the Fucking World - I didn't fully binge this one but I cruised through it two or three episodes at a time.  I thought it was fantastic and I hope they don't spoil the ambiguous ending by adding a second season.  What there is now is enough.  A little bit road trip movie, a little bit YA romance, a little bit gory and murdery, this is a weird one and I liked it.

Black Mirror S4 - The latest installment of Black Mirror episodes is a mixed bag, with some very strong ("USS Callister" and "Hang the DJ") and some very much less so ("Black Museum," I'm looking at you).  Still, I'm a fan of anthology series and am generally game for whatever Black Mirror wants to offer up.

Timecrimes (Los Cronocrimenes) - I watched Timecrimes (in Spanish, with English subtitles) because it's by the same director as Colossal, which I so liked.  It's a twisty, turny time-travel story about a middle-aged Spanish man who suddenly finds himself being chased by a man with a bag over his head.  I'm not telling you more than that.  Roger Ebert really liked it; I thought it was okay but realized that it's not the best idea to watch subtitled films if you keep dozing off - difficult to keep up with what's going on.

I'm also plowing through the DVR (the CW's superhero shows, SyFy's Happy! and The Magicians, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and The Good Place), most of which are making me happy to some degree.  What are you watching these days?