So basically . . . Mystery Team?

I always figured that Meryl was “trapped” on the show not thanks to some binding faux-marriage contract but because she had a deal that would pay her exponentially more if she gave birth to Truman’s son. In other words, she was sticking it out because of the carrot, not the stick.

As others have mentioned, the kid with the weird hair was the Technical Boy, but there was in fact an existing New Media character—the character of Media, played by Gillian Anderson, who explicitly mentioned that new media were part of her domain.

But this is something that was litigated extensively during the civil rights era, and ultimately the courts reached the opposite conclusion: that because the government has broad authority to regulate commerce, it can constrain the choices of business owners for legitimate economic reasons (e.g., to protect the…

Glad to hear it! I look forward to seeing it again.

Huh, interesting. I was so busy trying to deduce from the promos whether this was literally a retelling of King Lear that it never occurred to me to wonder whether it was a comedy. Are . . . are the promos not very accurate, or what?

Yeah, on rewatch the “m—” seemed less like the beginning of a word and more like a thoughtful exclamation, e.g., “Mmh.”

To me it sounded like she was saying “You might have m—” and then stopped herself. I wondered if she was pondering whether Philip might’ve married Irina but then realized she didn’t want to go down that road.

I saw this at Sundance and thought it was a lot better than a C. I found the direction more intimate and fly-on-the-wall than pedestrian, and I was impressed by how well the story avoided the pitfalls of hot-button storytelling by focusing on small human moments and matter-of-fact adult conversations. I especially…

It’s possible that they were creating a Delos-like version of Arnold, and making sure his memories were accurate. But I figured that they were testing Bernard’s programming to ensure that his personality was accurate to Arnold’s, by running him through Arnold’s old actions and making sure he responded the same way.

Dolores’s appearance doesn’t indicate when the fidelity test is taking place, though, since it has to match the event they’re testing against. She just looks and behaves like she did when she and Arnold were having that conversation in the real world.

Plus, the OBSERVER employs one of the most vehemently anti-Trump national security analysts in the biz. The idea that it would let John Schindler rant about how the president is definitely in the pocket of Vladimir Putin but conspire to discredit a tangentially related MeToo story doesn’t make much sense either.

Yeah, Cruise would’ve been a much better fit for the role. Though I’m less apt to blame Matthew Goode for botching the role than I was when the film first came out, since Snyder’s subsequent comic book movies suggest that he would have a problem directing anyone to portray a genuinely upright superhero. If he can’t…

I could quibble over a creative decision here or there, but for the most part I think Snyder’s film is a good and faithful adaptation. With one MASSIVE exception: he doesn’t understand the character of Ozymandias at all. Like, he gets the character EXACTLY ASS BACKWARDS, portraying him as a shifty, effete supervillain…

I mean, I know that’s the idea, but I don’t think you get to transfer the editorial properties of another type of expression to your own name just because you’re named after it. That’s like arguing, “No no no, my name is King Lear in *italics*. I’m named after the *title* of the play, not the character!”

The many other issues with this shit aside, you can’t just decree that your name has to be italicized. It’s like insisting that your name can only be spelled in Comic Sans; the fact that it’s your name doesn’t give you the right to dictate other people’s fucking typography. And demanding a particular font would only…

Agreed. It’s such a phony, cartoon imitation of a humane story, which ends with our heroes summoning Captain Planet, if Captain Planet’s message were that hot movie stars banging one another is basically the same as peace and dignity for all humankind.

Yep. I can’t think of a better example of “generally solid filmmaker kicks it up another notch” than Pan’s Labyrinth. It transcends its “fairy tale images brought to the screen” origins in a way, say, The Shape of Water never really does. It’s not just an A+ effort, it’s probably among my top ten favorite films of all…

I think the control module is the globe thing, which I’m guessing is the central processor within the larger, cupcake-looking brain units that were also lying around in the lab.

I don’t think William is playing the good guy. He tried to sell everyone out to Craddock, but the latter made clear that he wasn’t going to be useful.