Star Trek: Discovery -- Season 2 Episode 1 (Brother)

It took me a while to watch the first season of Star Trek: Discovery.  I refused to subscribe to CBS All Access.  So, I had to wait for it on DVD.  I then had to reserve it at the library and wait for it to become available.

I still refuse to pay for All Access just to watch the one show, but when the second season became available, I didn’t have to wait as long.  It turns out that Netflix has the DVDs available to rent.  So, I was able to get the first disc of the second season pretty quickly.

The story starts out where last season ended.  Captain Christopher Pike has assumed command of the USS Discovery, leaving the Enterprise to be repaired.

What happened to the Enterprise?  The ship detected seven red signals.  When the ship attempted to scan one of them, many of the ship’s systems blew out.  Pike is now taking emergency command of the Discovery to complete his mission.  Pike has brought with him two officers to help.

What they find is a collection of debris.  It has abnormally high gravity…and the wreckage of a Starfleet vessel, complete with survivors.  A rather large sample of the debris is brought onboard for study, the survivors are rescued and the crew of the Discovery has a new mystery on its hands:  What are these mysterious signals?

You might be wondering where Spock is in all of this.  After all, he is the chief science officer of the Enterprise and Michael Burnham’s foster brother.  That’s discussed more in the next episode.

This episode is more concerned with setting up the next story arc.  I wouldn’t say that this season is less ambitious.  Instead, it would seem that the series has found its footing.  I suspect that it’s going to go for a more even pace.

Last season, we had a war with the Klingons and a prolonged venture into the Mirror universe.  (I had issues with both.)  From what I’ve seen, the writers decided to stick with one main story and use Burnham’s relationship with Spock to move it along.

The show would also seem to rely more on a new story than canon, which is odd considering that the first episode has two established characters, one of which will be sticking around for the remainder of the season.

My only issue is how to abbreviate the name of the series.  ST:D never really sat well with me.  ST:Disco isn’t an option, either.  Has anyone used ST:DIS yet?

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Playing with Fire (2019)

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to review this movie.  There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to admit that I sat through the whole thing.  Then again, I did learn that smokejumpers are a real thing.  So, there’s that.

The movie focuses on a team of smokejumpers (Jake Carson, Mark Rogers, Rodrigo Torres and Axe) who have to take care of three children (Brynn, Will and Zoe) that they rescue.  Due to a safe-haven law, the smokejumpers have to take care of the children until the parents can arrive.

You’d think this would be simple.  Four grown men with should be able to manage three children for a few days.  If that’s the case, there would be no movie.  The children tend to be difficult.  The adults are inexperienced with children.  Oh, and Carson is up for a promotion, so the division commander might be dropping by.  Add to this that Zoe’s birthday is coming up and.  You get the perfect storm of a movie that most adults won’t find funny.

I suppose it would have helped if I was much younger.  Maybe the movie would have appealed to me.  I honestly don’t know what I was expecting.  The one saving grace was that I saw the movie while school was in session, meaning that was a lack of small children in the theater with me.

This is exactly the kind of movie that parents will just have to sit through.  There are no redeeming qualities.  There’s not even a lewd joke that might go over a kid’s head.  (The closest thing is some scatological humor.)

If your kids aren’t begging you to see it, don’t suggest it to them until it comes out on DVD.  It’s exactly as childish and moronic as the coming attractions would suggest.

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Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)

It’s not often that I get really excited about a movie from the coming attractions.  It’s maybe once every few years, on average.  When I heard that there was going to be a new Terminator movie that had the involvement of both Linda Hamilton and James Cameron, I got excited.  I mean, I knew kind of what to expect.  It was going to be an action movie and maybe have some sort of paradox to think about.

I didn’t get exactly what I expected.

The trailers presented an action movie, and there was a good deal of action.  They hinted at the return of Arnold Schwarzenegger, but not as much as I would have expected.  It seems like the movie is trying to do something new, but is instead putting a new face on the same idea.

We now have a new savior of humanity in the form of Dani Ramos.  Skynet is gone, but there’s a new, similar threat that humanity needs saving from.  Grace is sent back from the future to protect Dani from the REV-9, a new two-in-one Terminator.  It has a solid-metal endoskeleton with a liquid-metal terminator covering it, making for an extra target when the script calls for it.  Sarah Connor finds them all because she’s getting texts from an anonymous benefactor.  (I’ll give you three guesses who that benefactor is.)  So, the race is on to save Dani and figure out exactly what her role is in the future.

The movie was entertaining.  It had the action I would expect from a Terminator movie.  There’s an advanced robot from the future trying to change that future with lots of guns and explosions, plus at least one protector that’s above average in terms of comb at skills.  Still, I found the movie lacking.  It’s almost like the movie was written to what we would expect of it.

Part of the problem is that there are only so many directions you can go with a new Terminator.  They had the basic robot.  They had the liquid robot.  It’s hard to think of how you could one up that.  There is also a sense of fatigue.  While this movie continues from Terminator 2, there are a few other movies and a TV series.  It’s hard to think of the movie without bringing at least some of that into it.

I wouldn’t say that I was disappointed.  It’s more that the movie didn’t quite live up to what I was expecting.  It’s not a bad movie.  It’s more that there was a mismatch.  It is an enjoyable movie.  I’m just curious as to where the franchise will go from here.

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Jumanji: The Next Level (2019)

I’d like to think I’ve been pretty lucky with sequels in recent years.  Many have been good.  It really hasn’t been since Home Alone that a sequel basically repeated itself so blatantly.

I’m not really sure what I was expecting with Jumanji:  The Next Level.  When Welcome to the Jungle was made, it made the leap from board game to video game and even had new characters.  The Next Level has Fridge, Bethany, Martha and Spencer back that same video game.  The only new additions are Grandpa Eddie and his former business partner, Milo.

Even if you haven’t seen Welcome to the Jungle, you can see many of the jokes coming, at least from the coming attractions.  Eddie and Milo get to play to the elderly stereotypes.  They don’t really understand how a video game works.  They are happy that they can move without stiffness.  Other than that, they mostly serve to rehash the rules for new viewers.

Here’s my issue, though.  Even with Zathura, it was a new board game and a new setting with new characters.  From Jumanji to Welcome to the Jungle was the same thing.  Newness all around.  This seems like what Home Alone 2 was to Home Alone, in that it’s a thinly veiled rehash of the previous movie.  The Next Level didn’t really do much to contribute to the franchise.

Granted, I’m not sure where you can go with it.  Virtual Reality might seem too literal.  Even the Internet might not be different enough.  At best, one might hope for some hints as to where the games came from, but it’s hard to do so without giving away too much.

I think people that have seen the previous installment will be disappointed with this one.  I’m not saying that there shouldn’t be a Jumanji: Welcome to the Next Sequel.  I’m just suggesting that, if there is, the writers might want to take a hard look at what the script is doing with the material.  It’s an interesting premise, but it’s getting difficult to really work with it from here on out.

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21 Bridges (2019)

I would have liked 21 Bridges to have been more of a mystery.  I went in knowing that it was about a robbery gone bad and that it was a matter of figuring out the details.  There might be some bad police officers and the criminals were likely set up.  The questions were who and how.

Andre Davis is a good police officer.  He’s been investigated for several shootings, but was cleared on all of them.  He became an officer (and eventually, detective) after his father, also a police officer, was killed.

He’s called to investigate the aforementioned robbery.  Seven officers were killed, so it’s important that the people who killed them are caught.  (Not as important is whether or not they live.)  And so, Davis has all 21 bridges leading of Manhattan closed.

Having seen similar movies before, it was fairly obvious to me who was going to be dirty.  It was mostly a question of the details surrounding the actual robbery.  Exactly why were they sent to steal all those drugs?  Were the criminals supposed to kill the officers?  Were the officers supposed to kill the criminals?

Sadly, I’m still not sure.  I couldn’t quite sort out exactly what happened.  I’m guessing that it was the criminals who were supposed to die, as I don’t imagine a manhunt would have been part of the plan.  I’m not entirely clear, though.  It’s one of those things that if it had gone according to plan, we wouldn’t have a movie.

On that note, shutting down the island doesn’t seem to be for anything other than effect.  It’s a way of saying that the movie has begun.  The two criminals don’t really try to escape.  There doesn’t seem, to be much backlash from stranded motorists.  Granted, it’s late at night.  However, it would seem that it was unnecessary.

The movie was good, but it could have been better.  I’m not sure if it’s that I’ve seen too many movies like this one or if it just wasn’t that well-written.  It’s not a good sign when the best I can say about a movie is that it held my attention for 100 minutes.  It seems like the kind of thing that would have been better suited for a shorter movie.

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