Rather than start with a plot summary, I just want to point out director Shinsuke Sato’s eye for spectacular imagery and his team’s ability to pull it off. Arisu walking around the outskirts of the city and discovering that entire streets and skyscrapers have been somehow overrun with vegetation. Usagi and Arisu playing a lethal game of tag in a huge open-walled power plant or something, the camera gliding around outside it as we watch players wearing red and blue light-up vests run and climb and dodge like crazed worker ants in an anthill someone’s spraying with a hose. Ann (remember her?) traveling as far as she can away from Tokyo only to discover a mountain range that would give Mordor a run for its money. (It’s a better shot than anything I saw in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, that’s for sure.) This is the kind of shit that keeps you coming back.

I reviewed episode five of Alice in Borderland Season 2 for Decider.

The second episode in a row to feature a sort of halftime break between different stories, this installment of Alice in Borderland is, I think, the least relentless ep in the second season so far. Which is fine! Everyone needs a breather now and then, and that extends to the audience as well as the players. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still plenty of murder going down, but following the intensity of the three-episode-long King of Clubs arc and the Saw-like start of the Jack of Hearts game, this is relatively — relatively — chill stuff.

I reviewed the fourth episode of Alice in Borderland Season 2 for Decider.

The third episode of Alice in Borderland’s second season is a terrific hour of television that should probably have been two terrific half-hours of television.

I reviewed Alice in Borderland Season 2’s third episode for Decider.

Well, this may be the simplest Alice in Borderland episode of all time. Not the rules of the game that Arisu and company are playing mind you — those are the most convoluted in the history of the series, though you can get the hang of it quickly. (The players do!) The plot, rather, is streamlined and straightforward. There’s a game, they play it, they don’t leave the arena, they don’t even finish the game and move on. The result is an Alice in Borderland that reads as 100% pure and uncut Alice in Borderland. This is what it’s all about.

I reviewed the second episode of Alice in Borderland‘s second season for Decider.

So here’s the pitfall for those of us who want to sound smart while enjoying Alice in Borderland. You know how Squid Game, the similarly themed Korean show about average joes forced to kill or be killed by mystery-shrouded game masters, is sort of about the dehumanizing power of capitalism? Alice in Borderland is pretty much just about the pleasure of watching gorgeous actors run around killing and rescuing each other.

This is not a complaint! That’s cinema, baby!

I’m covering the Japanese thriller Alice in Borderland‘s second season for Decider, starting with my review of the season premiere. Woo!

Well, you’ve certainly got to give it up for Jennifer Coolidge, that’s for one thing. A lot of Coolidge fandom is that weird performative thing that all actor fandoms seem to do at this point where it’s more like you want this person to be your parent or best friend than a dude who happens to be really good at acting, but let’s put that aside, because she really is good at acting! It’s hard to convincingly play a stupid person without it devolving into a million old jokes, and Coolidge has consistently pulled that off as Tanya. This episode in particular is the ne plus ultra of the role, as Coolidge portrays Tanya’s final realization that she’s surrounded by men who intend to murder her for her money like a cocker spaniel figuring out calculus.

I reviewed the season finale of The White Lotus for Decider.

Are there dramatic moments that moved me, or comedic moments that made me laugh? Very much so! Bert’s open distress as he connects his failed family reunion with the fact that he’ll never be romantically or maternally loved again. Quentin telling Tanya that doing coke after a prolonged period of abstinence is like “riding a bike.” Jack semi-drunkenly asserting that we live at the best point in history despite all the signs to the contrary, which have been brought up by Portia primarily to burst his bubble rather than to make any kind of real point. Harper and Ethan’s grueling conversation about whether or not their marriage is dead, the tightest and hardest-hitting discussion of relatable human misery in the show’s history, I think. Ethan’s increasingly insufferable stone-faced fury at it all. The revelation that Isabella and Rocco are engaged. The genuine sexual chemistry between Valentina and Mia.

I reviewed this week’s episode of The White Lotus for Decider.

My emotional journey with Season 2 of The White Lotus continues to take unexpected twists and turns. I’ve been entertained, bored, vaguely disdainful, but as of this week’s episode (“That’s Amore”) I’m disconcerted. Like, what if Mike White is right? What if people really are like this — all of them grasping, self-deluded, hypocritical assholes? What if my friends and loved ones are secretly like this. What if I’m secretly like this? How can I ever have a healthy, trusting relationship of any kind ever again? How can society survive???

I reviewed the fifth episode of The White Lotus Season 2 for Decider.

So it was a mixed bag, this White Lotus ep. In a way, I can’t help but admire White for trying to stuff so many different things inside that bag, and the result may have been the most entertained I’ve been by an episode this season. I just wish the results more consistently matched the ambition.

I reviewed episode four of The White Lotus Season 2 for Decider.

If anything ties Andor together, it’s this: a conviction that great things are made from small pieces, painstakingly assembled. It was true of the bomb, it’s true of whatever they were building in that prison (a post-credits scene reveals it to be components for the planet-killing weapons system on the Death Star), it’s true of the growing Rebellion, and it’s true of Cassian Andor himself, a lowlife who’s gone from scrambling to survive to fighting for something much larger than himself. It’s amazing to see a Star Wars story this thoughtfully constructed, adding brick to brick to brick until the most impressive story that universe has seen in two decades is right there before our eyes.

I reviewed the season finale of the truly excellent Andor for Decider.

Thinking about the show overall, the hamfisted, ill-fitting music cues seem part and parcel of Friese and bo Odar’s decision to abandon the slow and subtle approach that made their first Netflix series Dark so effective and affecting in favor of balls-to-the-wall pacing and storytelling. There are more MiNd-bLoWiNg ReVeLaTiOnS in any given 1899 episode than there were in Dark’s entire first season. While I respect the decision to just go buckwild in theory, in practice, it just didn’t work out.

I reviewed the season finale of 1899 for Decider. It’s a bummer this show isn’t better.

But the stars of this particular episode are, well, the stars of this particular episode. Virtually every actor stranded aboard the Kerberos seems to be going for broke in this one, digging into depths of grief and despair and hope and love only hinted at previously. Emily Beecham, Aneurin Barnard, Andreas Pietschmann, Miguel Bernardeau, José Pimentão, Isabella Wei, Yann Gael, Mathilde Ollivier, Jonas Bloquet, Rosalie Craig, Maciej Musiał, Clara Rosager, Maria Erwolter, Alexandre Willaume, Isaak Dentler, Fflyn Edwards — just go-for-broke work from all of them, top to bottom.

I reviewed episode 7 of 1899 for Decider.

But behind the show’s genre elements are, ostensibly, human stories designed to give those elements heft and weight. Nothing we’ve seen thus far feels weightier than what we see Tove survive. What’s more, to the extent 1899 is serious at all about its by-now obvious allegorical resonance with real-world refugee and resource crises, accurately depicting an act of violence as hideous and traumatic rather than stylized and dramatic is necessary to get the point across. The show is treating this as the terrible crime it is, and not allowing the audience to look away. 

I reviewed the sixth episode of 1899, which took a turn for the brutal that was both upsetting and necessary, for Decider.

As previously mentioned, I grow less and less convinced that 1899 has big things to say about anything in particular as the show progresses. To the extent that it’s any fun at all, it’s purely down to the sci-fi hijinks and the overall murky tone that accompanies them. It’s binge-y stuff, and who knows? Maybe that’s enough.

I reviewed episode five of 1899 for Decider.

Okay, I get it now: 1899 is Lost. It’s just Lost! I mean, it’s Lost with no jokes and no heart-tugging Michael Giacchino score, which is to say that tonally it’s way, way different — different enough, I think, to insulate it from rip-off charges. But: trapped in the middle of the ocean because something went wrong with the vehicle you were using to cross it. A motley crew of passengers fleeing their troubled pasts. Secret connections between them. Mechanically induced teleportation. Mysterious strangers. Mysterious symbols. Maybe an eccentric gazillionaire behind it all. A boy with special powers. (Remember, that was an important part of Lost, once upon a time, before the showrunners realized children age in real time even if the characters on your show do not!) And flashbacks, hoo boy, flashbacks. Literally and figuratively, it’s Lost at Sea.

I reviewed the fourth episode of 1899 for Decider.

One thing 1899 has going for it, despite my present reservations, is its apparent determination to barrel full speed ahead into the weird. I mean, this is only the third episode, and already entire steam ships are disappearing into ruptures in the spacetime continuum opened by strange machinery. It took Lost years to get there; it took 1899 three hours. That’s storytelling confidence, is what that is. Let’s just hope it’s warranted.

I reviewed the third episode of 1899 for Decider.

What is the difference between a mystery-box show and a show that is purely mysterious? Is there a difference? Since J.J. Abrams coined the term to describe Lost, the seminal science-fiction series he co-created (and then largely left to its own devices, under Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse), I’ve seen it used to describe everything from the kids’ cartoon Gravity Falls to HBO’s once-upon-a-time next-big-thing Westworld to shows that predate the term entirely, like Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner. At root, the phrase seems to be used to describe shows that create a sort of “What the hell is going on here?” feeling: The stories in question do not contain a mystery or multiple mysteries, they are one big mystery, leaving the viewer scrambling (and, ideally for the creators and networks, tweeting and Redditing and tumblring and so on) to figure out what is happening and why at basically all times.

For me, the phrase has taken on an almost purely pejorative connotation. It describes shows that hide things from the viewer almost arbitrarily, not because the story demands it or benefits from it, but because the goal is to keep the audience engrossed and guessing at the expense of creating emotional and intellectual investment more organically. So for me, The Prisoner wouldn’t qualify, as its sinister surrealism requires a lack of explanation to establish that tone; Westworld, with its ginned-up “who is he? when is he?” riddles, does qualify, as it’s obscure mainly for the sake of eventual revelations that don’t really pay off the delayed gratification. More recently, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power attached a series of needless question marks to seemingly half its characters and storylines, for no ostensible purpose other than to get the viewer to tune in next time to find out who the heck Adar is or whatever. Mysteries push the story forward; mystery boxes are substitutes for stories.

By this (entirely invented for the purpose of this review) definition, 1899 is not a mystery-box show. Oh, all the hallmarks are there: an entire cast of characters each with their own mysterious past; an implied or explicit but uncertain connection between several or all of them; flashbacks and flashforwards and hallucinations and dreams that reveal new layers of story; portentous symbols; mysterious strangers; the strong suggestion that there’s some kind of temporal rupture or loop involved. 

But — here’s the key — it doesn’t make me feel trapped like a mystery-box show does. I’m not banging my head against the walls of this thing, trying to find the writers’ way out before they reveal it. I’m taking each new revelation and secret and strange occurrence as they come, treating them as seasoning for the real main course: a collection of sad and broken people who have discovered a calamity, and who may be next in line. 

I reviewed episode two of 1899 for Decider.

1899 features dialogue in English, French, Spanish, Cantonese, Danish, German, Polish, and Japanese. The opening credits list a lead cast larger than your average Game of Thrones episode. Creators Jantje Friese and Baran bo Odar already proved, with their mind-melting, time-warping German-language science-fiction masterpiece Dark, that they know their way around a dark genre story with a sprawling cast; here, it’s as if they looked at themselves and said “Hold my beer.” You have to respect their ambition, and this pilot episode proves you have to respect their execution, too.

I’ll be covering 1899 for Decider, starting with my review of the series premiere. Due to some personal stuff these reviews will probably not be rolling out as quickly as my Netflix coverage normally does, but they will roll out, I promise!

There had to be a comedown. By the standards of Episode 10’s for-the-ages, nothing-left-to-lose prison break, the penultimate installment of Andor’s first season is a quiet, somber episode. It’s more concerned with moments of individual sadness than collective action, with frustration and powerlessness rather than catharsis. But still there are unexpected reprieves, dry humor — and, in a move that ought to delight longtime fans of the franchise, some of the most Star Wars-y stuff this Star Wars TV show has ever attempted. That these attempts are so successful should come as no surprise: This is Andor, and Andor doesn’t miss.

I reviewed today’s episode of Andor for Decider.

Let’s talk about The Godfather. More specifically, let’s talk about The White Lotus talking about The Godfather. 

The colloquy in question happens between family members Bert, Dom, and Albie and Albie’s would-be inamorata Portia, at the tail end of a Godfather-themed sightseeing tour. Portia, who hasn’t seen the movie — whether that’s writer/director/creator Mike White making a point about ignorant youth or the out-of-touch olds who would view such youth as ignorant is anyone’s guess, but you can bet a point is being made — has to get filled in on the details by Bert, who recounts the murder of Michael Corleone’s Sicilian wife Apollonia with relish. Portia, noting the replica of Apollonia’s blown-up car complete with a female mannequin inside, finds the whole thing a little tasteless for a tourist destination, which, y’know, fair. 

Here’s where things get interesting, or annoying. Bert says hey, let the place do it, the best American movie ever made was filmed here. Albie scoffs at him, then argues that the reason older men like The Godfather is because it’s a patriarchal fantasy that glorifies violence, philandering, and the loyal wives kept at home. Now pay attention to what the magician’s hands are doing: Rather than take issue with this take, both Bert and Dom agree, arguing that there’s nothing wrong with men having such fantasies.

So to sum up: When presented with Albie’s moronic argument — only a real dum-dum could watch The Godfather and conclude Francis Ford Coppola is saying “and this is fine,” not that there’s any shortage of such dum-dums — Bert and Dom, two of said dum-dums, make an equally moronic argument in return. 

Is Mike White’s point of view really that The Godfather glorifies the life of Michael freaking Corleone? Or is he simply presenting us with three characters with separate but equally stupid opinions about art? Perhaps a better question to ask is, does it matter? Either the creator of The White Lotus thinks something very dopey about a much better work of art, or he’s so intent on making the same “rich people are stupid assholes” point in different ways over and over that he’s exploring a new frontier. Not my idea of a good time on a Sunday night either way, I’m afraid.

I reviewed last night’s episode of The White Lotus for Decider.