Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts Review

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Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts premieres January 1 on HBO Max.

Harry Potter fans are in for a holiday season treat as a hefty franchise reunion special lands on our laps this New Years' Day (which is enough wiggle room to still feel Christmas-y). Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts is a warm blanket — er, Invisibility Cloak — of nostalgia that mixes cozy cast reunions and fond friendship memories with a film-by-film approach to the eight-movie saga. In its attempt to be everything, though, it may run a bit long for some casuals' tastes, occasionally feeling more like supplemental Blu-ray material, but the time and care devoted to sentimentality and heartfelt reminiscence is always wonderfully on display.

"It doesn't feel like we've earned a reunion," Harry Potter star Rupert Grint smirks, while he and co-stars Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson sit and reminisce in the Gryffindor Common Room. And while Grint makes a good point, since the final Harry Potter film was only ten years ago, there's also something to be said for not waiting too long for an official look back. So long that one finds themselves striking while the iron is lukewarm at best. Recent years have shown us that legacy material — whether it's reboots, sequels, or reunions — can be hit or miss when it comes to finding an audience, even if what's produced is something truly excellent.

Potter fanatics probably won't find anything new to chew on within this almost two-hour special, but if you're that big a fan it won't matter. You can hear all about the kids' audition processes (including how Potter fan Evanna Lynch nabbed the role of Luna Lovegood) or about the various on-set crushes over the years (Watson pining for Tom Felton, Radcliffe wishing he were older in the case of Helena Bonham Carter, etc) all day until the Hippogriffs come home and it'd still be a joy.

No, not everyone is back for this juggernaut of a time capsule, but the key players are here. The triumphant trio, plus the saga's most important mid-carders. Some were clearly more available than others (Watson appears in the storybook style opening credits and several breakout chats while Grint was only on hand for the Harry/Ron/Hermione fireside chat) but enough shuffling of the deck is done so that everything flows nicely. Again, this is a feature-length endeavor that also brings out the four directors — Chris Columbus, Alfonso Cuarón, Mike Newell, and David Yates — for lengthy dives into their movies, so definite attention was paid to the pacing of the project. It never gets hung up on anything for too long but it also sits with things enough to impact you emotionally.

Presentation matters and what's front and center here is a very hearth-centric gather-round. Having (most) everyone back at Hogwarts, which as a cold-weather castle is designed to feel gothically soothing and comforting, makes this all feel like a festive family reunion. A family filled with love, but also one with members who don't regularly see each other. Or even check in. Which makes it feel even more like a real family in certain ways, to be honest.

Radcliffe, Watson, and Grint have an immense sibling-style love and affection for each other but were so deeply immersed in each others' lives during a decade of formative years that they've also had their fill of each other, in a way. If that makes sense. They will always be special to one another but they also, all three of them, represent each others' past, very starkly and assuredly. We live in a world where fans dream of co-stars being best friends who are inseparable for the rest of their lives but that's rarely the case so one of the reasons these types of reunion hangs are so popular is because, well, they wrangle and herd everyone back into close proximity.

As Return to Hogwarts approaches the end, we stumble into one of the best recollections of the bunch which is the awkwardness surrounding Ron and Hermione's kiss in Deathly Hallows: Part 2. Of course, as characters, on page and on screen, they're fated to be together and many things over the years had been building to this moment, but for Grint and Watson it was immeasurably tricky. Unlike, say, the Friends cast, where Jennifer Aniston and David Schwimmer were an on-screen couple who did fancy each other (and were also just part of an HBO Max reunion where dating rumors started swirling once again), this was definitely not the case here. And the saga is sweeter for it. Their love for each other runs deep, but it's platonic and pointedly unique.

Return to Hogwarts is at its best when it encapsulates the specialness of this decade-long project, and how nothing's ever been done quite like it with regards to having its young stars grow up on screen, with no recasting of the kids, for the entirety of the story. The trio have a good laugh about how they were all so young when they started that they had nary a clue about the parade of British acting royalty they were doing many of their scenes with. Then, as they moved into Prisoner of Azkaban and Goblet of Fire they started becoming more aware, and nervous, about the pedigree of performers — like Gary Oldman, David Thewlis, and Ralph Fiennes — entering the mix.

Addressing the J.K. Rowling in the room, the author/creator, who can't seem to not constantly tweet out her gross and harmful anti-trans positions (to the point where the principal cast of Potter had to put out statements reaffirming their transgender allyship), is relegated to a few mentions and snippets from an interview done in 2019. It can be distracting but not enough to sidetrack the special, especially given the length of the thing.

Hearty laughs over past jokes and japes, tears wiped away in remembrance of friends and mentors lost along the way, and a filmic exploration of the the characters' journeys from beginning to end, Return to Hogwarts covers all bases and makes for a pleasant and gratifying tuck in for the phenomenal franchise.

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The Book of Boba Fett Episode 1 Review

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The appearance of Boba Fett in The Mandalorian season two was a welcome yet surprising return. After all, the last time Star Wars fans had seen the bounty hunter was when he unceremoniously fell into a Sarlacc pit in Return of the Jedi. Now, the opening episode of his own spin-off series, directed by showrunner Robert Rodriguez and written by Jon Favreau, takes a pensive approach to fill in the gaps of Fett’s past. However, it does slow the pace and gets in the way of moving Boba Fett’s story forward in the present.

“Stranger in a Strange Land” (a nod to the Robert A. Heinlein 1961 sci-fi book maybe?) wastes no time reminding viewers of the traumatic events Fett (Morrison) has been through. Giving new meaning to the water bed, he sleeps in a rejuvenating bacta tank and dreams of both his watery “birthplace” of Kamino and the moment he picked up his father Jango’s helmet after he was killed by Mace Windu during the Battle of Geonosis. More importantly, Fett dreams of his escape from the Sarlacc’s belly on Tatooine, which is a slight departure from the Star Wars Legend narrative by having him burn his way out with his flamethrower and, upon breaking through the desert surface, is left for dead by Jawas after they steal his armour.

Meanwhile, in present-Tatooine, Fett with his right-hand-Shand (Ming Na Wen) are discovering that the transfer of power to him as the new crime lord of Mos Espa isn’t going to be as swift as his murder of former boss Bib Fortuna. It’s a surprisingly humorous scene where the early kinks in Fett’s underworld takeover are laid bare. They struggle to understand some locals paying tribute without a protocol droid, are awkwardly reunited with a former employer and are greeted by an arrogant representative for the mayor who makes clear Mos Espa’s government authority would not be bending the knee. In fact, the mayor expects the new crime lord to submit instead or expect a less friendly delegation to return. “Should I kill him?” Fennec asks matter-of-factly, but as much as Fett’s brutality has preceded him, he’s taking a far more measured approach to leadership rather than ruling with an unforgiving Beskar fist.

This is how the flashbacks begin to inform the more practical bounty hunter we see today. Tusken Raiders had captured Fett after his Sarlaac escape but he soon earned their respect by protecting one of their younger members from a Goro-looking beast rising up from the sand in ferocious fashion. It’s a short and sweet bit of action that gives a fun nod to the way Princess Leila killed Jabba on the desert planet and showcases the brute strength, quick thinking and heroism of Fett. But, as we know from The Mandalorian Season 2 opener, these nomadic people are far less barbaric than the prequel series painted them. Their qualities of loyalty, bravery and respect are those Fett hopes to be known for. He doesn’t want to follow the slimy trail of the Hutt clan, with their airs of superiority and torturous conduct. “I’m not being carried around the streets like a useless noble,” he tells Shand as they head to a cantina called The Sanctuary. “Jabba ruled with fear. I intend to rule with respect.”

Of course, the people of Mos Espa are creatures of habit and this attitude is seen as a weakness rather than a strength. An attack on the streets by ninja-looking assassins tests their authority as they’re kettled in by laser shields and spears. It’s a tightly delivered street fight, and our antiheroes take a fair few knocks before Fett gets to blast someone with his arm rockets and Shand flexes her muscles with a short-but-dynamic parkour chase across roofs to secure an assailant alive for questioning. Jabba’s former pig-looking guards, the Gamorreans, also get a chance to prove to their new boss their lives were worth saving.

Wen shines as the cunning enforcer and martial artist who will hopefully have her skillset challenged with more formidable fight choreography. She delivers her lines with ruthless indifference but her deference to Fett can be keenly felt. The bounty hunter has been long seen as the more stoic character but Shand is playing that role now and it works well against Fett’s more pragmatic command.

There’s almost a world weariness to Morrison’s depiction of a man that has been through the ringer and onto a redemptive path with a more idealistic outlook. The Clone Wars and The Bad Batch proved just how three-dimensional a Jango clone could be, whose personality was informed by their individual experience. Morrison’s grounded delivery and dry humour fleshes out a formally unreadable character.

The same can be said of Ludwig Goransson’s score, first heard in “The Tragedy” episode of The Mandalorian, directed by Rodriguez, and delivered in this series with a guttural, primal blend of human voices, powerful drum beats and strings. As a New Zealander of Maori descent, Morrison’s influence seems to have expanded the diversity of the Star Wars beyond the aesthetic and into the symphonic.

Dedicating so much to Fett’s backstory certainly deepens our understanding of his character evolution but that means plot development is limited. There aren’t many wow moments; the fight sequences are restrained and not as elegant as previously seen in the legacy sequels and The Mandalorian, but the introduction of a potential ally in the form of Twi'lek Madam Garsa Fwip (Jennifer Beals) does add intrigue. “Stranger in a Strange Land” is a fun and assured opener teasing even more obstacles and threats Fett will face in order to consolidate power while reinforcing the legend of Morrison’s iconic bounty hunter.

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Dexter: New Blood Episode 8 Review - "Unfair Game"

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The following contains spoilers for Dexter: New Blood's eighth episode, "Unfair Game," which aired on Showtime on Dec 26. For more, check out our review of last week's episode, "Skin of Her Teeth."

"Unfair Game" could have easily wound up being a running-in-place entry for New Blood but instead, as we close in on the finish, it brought most everything to a head, building up to an exciting climax for both Dexter and Harrison as Kurt finally revealed what his "nice guy" act was all about.

Dexter has always dealt with adversaries who thematically lined up with his seasonal arcs/journeys. That's just been the lay of the land for the series overall, and it's worked well sometimes. Kurt's whole deal of reaching out to Harrison and trying to swoop in as a "better dad" always felt like a stretch since the dude's relationship with his own son, Matt, was strained and Matt had grown up to be a total jackass. Also, for someone who's had his guard up most of his life, and also spent months traveling across the country by himself, Harrison's inability to spot an outright creep in sheep's clothing felt clumsy too. His "stranger danger" tingle should have been better than this.

But this week's episode went a long way in explaining much of this. Sure, Kurt's ability to ingratiate himself to Harrison mostly worked because of a series of convenient misunderstandings between him and Dexter, but finding out that Kurt's plan, since the first time he came by to thank Harrison for what he'd done to protect the school, was to kill Harrison in front of Dexter -- that was pretty freakin' cool. Kurt has known Dexter killed his son since right after Episode 3, "Smoke Signals," so this has been in the back of his mind the entire time. Maybe not this exact scenario, since everything seemed to escalate following Kurt's arrest, but definitely something along these lines.

Even back when Kurt started warming up to Harrison by offering him a job at the diner, there was a question as to whether or not he was lining up Harrison as a victim (to quickly replace Kurt's ruined/tainted kill). Now we discover that was, in fact, half-right. Harrison was in Kurt's crosshairs, but for something totally different. This adds way more depth to Kurt as a manipulator, to know that his small town outreach act is meant for all types of potential murder victims. His fuddy-duddy dopiness is to get everyone to let down their defenses. Though, Harrison still should have been more wary of a guy who wanted to break into the school with him and hit the batting cage -- and super suspicious of an invite to a remote cabin for drinks.

There was certainly a version of "Unfair Game" that could have ended with Dexter killing Kurt, instead of this season's monster just running off into the night (where he'll now definitely be hunted by the police, for real) but this now sets up Kurt, in the next episode or two, to be Harrison's initiation kill, possibly. Also, by no actual machinations of his own, Dexter got what he's wanted for half the season now. Harrison got to see Kurt for the a-hole he is, and in the worst way, too, since Kurt was literally going to shoot down Harrison himself after spending half the day being super sweet to him. Dexter couldn't have hoped for better, really, and it all ended with him revealing the bare basics of his "born in blood" backstory to Harrison and the kid being receptive to it. Hooray!

It would seem everything's lining up just perfectly for the Morgans, if it weren't for the fact that all throughout this episode, while Dexter was doing his best to not get murdered in the snowy woods by Kurt's lackey, Elric (who was also the guy pretending to be Matt in New York), Angela pieced together that he was the Bay Harbor Butcher! At this point, with all the dots connected, it wouldn't be surprising if Dexter and Harrison returned home to their house being surrounded by cops (though she may need a bit more to go on to make an arrest).

Is Dexter ultimately doomed or can he have the perfect murder family he's always dreamed of?

This might set up Angela for, maybe, a LaGuerta Season 7 fate, but there are other avenues to explore here rather than a retread of that. That's not to say she won't meet a sad, gruesome end, but one would hope New Blood finds an alternate route to the one that's been taken before. It will all come down to the two most divergent endings for the series since day 1: Is Dexter ultimately doomed or can he have the perfect murder family he's always dreamed of?

"Unfair Game" revved up the tension and action (Dexter got to squeak in a third kill, even) while also working as a retroactive explainer for the previous Kurt/Harrison wonkiness. Like, it always felt weird that Dexter was in competition with a guy who clearly wasn't a good dad. Ghost Deb's role in this episode felt typical, more or less -- as most everything she's done aside from the premiere and a few other spare moments has felt -- but at least it gave Dexter someone else to bounce ideas off of while being stalked in the abandoned summer camp. It is curious though, speaking of ghosts, that John Lithgow returned to the series just to be naked and bloody in a brief flashback. Deb's presence feels like the type of shallow phantom role we expected. Lithgow, however, feels like a missed opportunity in a different way, so let's hope we see him again before New Blood calls in a night.

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Cobra Kai: Season 4 Review

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This is a spoiler-free review of Cobra Kai Season 4, which hits Netflix Dec 31. You can check out our Season 3 review here.

The battle for the soul of the Valley continues, but this time stakes are higher than ever. While Cobra Kai has been on Netflix for some time, Season 4 marks the first one produced by the streamer since its purchase from YouTube TV. Though the creative team remains the same, there are a couple of growing pains that are pretty evident in this new era. But, all the same, it’s still one hell of a ride.

Now that Sam (Mary Mouser) and Miguel (Xolo Marideuña) have managed to convince their respective senseis to work together, Eagle Fang Karate and Miyago-Do have one final hurdle to conquer on the way to the All Valley Tournament: getting Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) and Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) to grow up. Despite agreeing that they’ll have to work together to take down Cobra Kai — now run by the wicked John Kreese (Martin Kove) — Johnny and Daniel spend a whole lot of time trying to get past the whole “mortal enemies” thing. This will take up a good hunk of the season to varying degrees of success (and varying degrees of viewer frustration).

[hold for SSF vid — in prod]

Feuds don’t end in a day. But, the problem here is that Johnny and Daniel have already spent three seasons gradually learning that maybe there are some grey areas in their whole yin and yang relationship. Seeing it remain such a plot point after we’ve spent three years with their “on again off again” frenemyship is a little frustrating.

Part of the weirdness of Season 4 comes from a kind of hokeyness that wasn’t expected, and it’s not because they’ve brought younger characters into the fold. Cobra Kai has always been cheesy, but that cheese has worked more often than not because the series does nostalgia so well. Whether some of that magic was gone because the story focused more on Daniel and Johnny or because Netflix added some strong “why is this happening?” moments is anyone’s guess. There’s a needle drop (it’s not a proper needle drop, but we’re calling it that for a lack of better term) in the penultimate episode that will either leave you hooting and hollering with joy or turn you into a proverbial anime character with little question marks floating above your head. It is an extremely Netflix move, and that is not a compliment in this case.

Still, that hokeyness is met in kind by a more emotionally challenging season. Tory’s (Peyton List) story most certainly wins MVP this year, with Hawk (Jacob Bertrand) coming in at a close second. Each of them find their dynamics challenged in completely different ways, continuing Cobra Kai’s strong success with its large ensemble.

Perhaps the most complex ride is that of Terry Silver, though. Thomas Ian Griffith’s return to the franchise just hits different. Kreese’s evil is an easier kind. The Cobra Kai leader is manipulative, to be sure, and he knows how to play the game better than anyone out there. Except, maybe, one Terrance Silver. No one was more successful at breaking Daniel LaRusso than Silver and his mindgames. The thing is, the Terry we meet is well-adjusted and happy to live his life as a (seemingly) retired entrepreneur with a hot vegan girlfriend. But with Johnny and Daniel’s tumultuous team-up, Kreese needs his second back in the dojo and has no concerns over ruining his war buddy’s life if it gets him back in Cobra Kai. Which sensei will break first? That’s a “tune into Season 4” question!

What’s most compelling is that nothing really goes the way you’d expect it to.

So far as team-ups go, the most exciting pairing by far comes from a completely unexpected source. Amanda LaRusso is mad as hell that this karate nonsense resulted in a bunch of hooligans breaking into her home and threatening her kids’ lives, but we see a surprising amount of empathy from her once she learns the story of one of the offending Cobra Kai. The growth we see from both her and this character is perhaps what leaves me most excited for Season 5.

What’s most compelling about this recent chapter is that nothing really goes the way you’d expect it to. Johnny and Daniel are unable to break their patterns, but that doesn’t mean the kids who look up to them have to get stuck in their respective sensei’s ways. The partnership between the dojos may be rocky, but the results of the pairing are undeniable. No “hooligan” can’t be reached and no goody-two-shoes is above becoming a bratty little bully, regardless of who’s teaching who. The complicated relationship dynamics will also both strengthen and stretch the connection between Johnny and Miguel in ways that will make you both cheer and cry.

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The Wheel of Time Season 1 Finale Review: "The Eye of the World"

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The following contains spoilers for The Wheel of Time’s eighth episode, “The Eye of the World,” which aired on Amazon on Dec. 24. For more, check out a review of last week’s episode.

The vast ambition and resources behind Amazon’s adaptation of The Wheel of Time is on full display in the show’s dramatic Season 1 finale, in which a battle with the scope of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers is just a side plot. The writers aren’t afraid to lean into high fantasy and big emotions while delivering a ludicrous level of spectacle that ends the season with a bang and provides a terrifying glimpse of what’s to come.

“The Eye of the World” starts with a flashback to Lews Therin Telamon planning the assault on the Dark One that would lead to the Breaking of the World. There’s a lot of exposition, but the best part of the scene is the brief look at the Age of Legends, a time more of science fantasy than the medieval high fantasy of the show’s present day. It’s an impressive visual reminder of how much was lost the last time the Dragon failed to stop the Dark One and thus how much the world stands to lose again should Rand fail.

Look closely and you can see Lews Therin is wearing the same odd multi-finger gold ring that Ishamael is sporting when he goes into his human form and lets everyone refer to him as the Dark One. It’s possible this is the Ring of Tamyrlin. I’m sure more will be revealed in later flashbacks to the War of Power.

The Blight didn’t look nearly so imposing from the outside as it does when the characters are in the thick of it. The writers, set designers, and special effects team have done a fantastic job showing how destructive this corruption is from the extremely unfortunate young man feeding mushrooms, to the decayed Seven Towers, to the unsettling nightmare where the grass is growing into Rand. It feels oppressive, and Rosamund Pike and Josha Stradowski sell the mental and physical toll traveling through it takes.

Back in Fal Dara, everyone’s freaking out about Rand running off with Moiraine to go be a hero, though they do pretty much take at face value that she’s right when she says anyone who isn’t the Dragon who goes to the Eye of the World will die. That turned out to not be true given that she herself survived, but she was stilled, which is arguably a fate worse than death, so it’s probably for the best that no one else was in that scene.

The romance between Nynaeve and Lan continues to be sweet, a relationship complicated by their devotion to other people. But Nynaeve has seemingly accepted that she will be an Aes Sedai and presumably have her own Warder who isn’t Lan. This is another great episode for Nynaeve who continues to make braid tugging, one of the weirdest quirks in Robert Jordan’s writing, into something meaningful — a way of finding comfort in a culture that embraces female strength.

Season 1 of The Wheel of Time ends with a bang.

It’s a very good move for the show to give Ishamael a human face, which he uses to pretty expertly try to win Rand to his side. These scenes are some of the best of the episode, combining with Padan Fain’s monologue and the darkfriend who almost captured Rand in episode 3 to show just how persuasive the agents of the Dark One can be. They prey on doubt and despair, pointing out that the world is broken and that the forces trying to fix things seem very ill-equipped to change anything. Who wouldn’t want to be on the winning team?

Speaking of, you have to appreciate Min’s decision to get out of dodge once she has a vision of what’s to come. Of course, our heroes stay to help rather than fleeing themselves. The defenders of Fal Dara leave a lot to be desired, with Agelmar Jagad falling almost instantly to a Trolloc. The fight is pretty impressive in scope even if the special effects don’t always look good in closeup, which is probably why they needed to rely on darkness and torches to obscure the army.

Luckily Agelmar’s sister Amalisa Jaga does better in uniting Egwene, Nynaeve, and two random doomed channelers for a display of absurd power. It’s a great way to show just how impressive multiple channelers working in concert can be, even if they’re weak or untrained. It also demonstrates that it’s not just men who can go mad with power.

Moiraine’s ruthlessness is impressive to the last as, deprived of her magic, she holds a dagger to Rand’s neck, prepared to slit his throat should he make the wrong choice. This whole season has put a distinctly feminist spin on the already women-centric The Wheel of Time, so it’s fitting that the real test of Rand’s goodness comes down to him accepting Egwene’s ambition rather than creating a version of her devoted only to him. That selflessness also shows in Rand’s decision to go off on his own to avoid potentially hurting the people he loves. The show is significantly departing from the books, but it seems like he might be heading towards the Aiel Waste to find answers about his parentage.

I don’t believe Loial is actually dead, but the fact that Nynaeve gets back up and he doesn’t could mean the end for the charming ogier. Perrin’s arc has been mixed, but this episode does cut to the key conflict he faces throughout the book series when it comes to how he uses the ax. It makes for a great scene with Padan Fain smugly pointing out how quickly he’ll turn to the dark when he feels threatened.

The theft of the Horn of Valere sets up the events of the second book, The Great Hunt, as does the appearance of the Seanchan at the very end. Their fleet looks terrifying and I can’t wait to see more of one of the most fascinating and horrifying factions in the series next season.

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Parallel Mothers Review

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Parallel Mothers debuts in theaters on Dec. 24.

As is the case with most Pedro Almodóvar movies, Parallel Mothers is an unexpected, sometimes crazy ride that keeps you off-kilter to the very end. A contemporary melodrama, Almodóvar peppers his story with a medley of disparate topics including but not limited to the ongoing fallout from the Spanish Civil War, middle-aged motherhood, sexual experimentation, and generational trauma and privilege. None of that should work together but in the hands of writer/director Almodóvar, he mostly succeeds in connecting them together into a coherent and deeply absorbing drama that packs plenty of emotional punch.

Almodóvar retains his gift for telling women-centric stories, and casting them with actresses who make even the most heightened of stories feel grounded and at least emotionally relatable. Parallel Mothers features his frequent muse Penélope Cruz as Janis Martinez, a single, 40-something, high-end magazine photographer. On behalf of her family and the town she grew up in, she takes on a personal side project trying to get the government involved in confirming, and exuming, a mass grave of murdered Francisco Franco dissenters, including her kin. She connects with Arturo (Israel Elejalde), who is part of a state-run anthropological project that is cataloging and documenting similar sites around the country, to get the site on a waiting list. The pair connects in a more carnal way too, despite his married status. And surprise, Janis ends up pregnant. Desperate to be a mother, she breaks off the affair after telling him he does not need to be involved and she goes all in on her shot at motherhood.

Nine months later in the hospital in labor, Janis meets her roommate Ana (Milena Smit), a 20-something single mother who is a lot less excited about her own impending motherhood. She’s got an extremely self-centered, actress mother (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón), a father who kicked her out, and no real prospects. The polar opposite women bond over their shared labor and become friends after the birth of their daughters.

It’s that aftermath that Almodóvar is most interested in exploring, as Janis and Ana are both resilient and dedicated mothers. Both want to give their daughters the kinds of childhoods they didn’t have, with Ana’s mother, Teresa, serving as an ongoing object lesson in the truth that not all women are cut out to be parents. What’s refreshing about Almodóvar’s approach is that he keeps peeling back the layers on all the women, who are all remarkably candid about their sins and failures leading them to this point. As their lives dip in and out of one another’s, Almodóvar is making a subtle but strong case about the traumas that shape people, and how those experiences infect the next generation even when it isn’t intentional.

Cruz and Smit are exceptional in the naturalism of their performances. A lot of very melodramatic things happen for the two women stemming from their shared time in the maternity ward, but to Almodóvar’s credit, the film never spirals into histrionics and telenovela territory. The grounded performances, framed by the absolutely exquisite in-camera lighting techniques by cinematographer José Luis Alcaine and the moving but tempered score by Alberto Iglesias, achieve an incredible balancing act in making it all work. In lesser hands, the inciting incident and subsequent domino effect that ensues for Janis and Ana should be some eye-rolling stuff. But Almodóvar is more interested in seeing what choices these women will make in light of their own experiences, and the even more painful ones wrought on their ancestors of the near past. These women exist within the harsh realities and disappointments of their lives, and that’s shown with a pragmatism and resoluteness that informs everything in Parallel Mothers.

Almodóvar and his cast are fantastic about capturing all shades of life.

Plus, Almodóvar and his cast are fantastic about capturing all shades of life, from the funny, to the absurd, the sad and the sexy. The story goes to all these places and more and that means the story zips by in terms of pacing and the overall destination of the story. Because of that, the only major quibble is with how the narrative comes back to the mass grave story. It is the emotional top and tails of the whole piece, so when it returns so abruptly after fading from the movie, it’s a bit emotionally jarring to get reinvested. Perhaps, if it was given more space to come back to the forefront, it would have felt less rushed. But it does effectively help tie together the overall themes of sacrifice, motherhood, and the intentional steps needed to connect Spain’s past with its present.

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Scarlet Nexus: The Series Review

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Scarlet Nexus is now streaming on Funimation.

The Scarlet Nexus game that was released this past June was a pleasant surprise for me. It had an above-average story with fun real-time action gameplay. Its futuristic cyberpunk setting and psychic motif, dubbed “brainpunk,” intrigued me as well. Given that this was a brand new IP from Bandai Namco, I was also surprised that it also got an anime adaptation, which told me that the company had faith in this new property. Unfortunately, that anime adaptation is mostly just a watered-down version of the game.

By the very nature of, well, being a show and not a game, it strips away much of what makes Scarlet Nexus enjoyable: the gameplay. However, the series does provide extra context for certain events and fleshes out more prominent side characters from the game. In this context, the TV show is most enjoyable as a supplement to playing the actual game.

What we said about Scarlet Nexus the game

IGN's Mitchell Saltzman gave Scarlet Nexus the game an 8/10, writing: "It’s understandable to take a look at Scarlet Nexus and write it off as 'just another anime game,' but doing so would be a big mistake. This is an ambitious undertaking from Bandai Namco, one that attempts to blend the two disparate genres of character-action game and large-scale JRPG, and achieves an impressive level of success. Its combat and thin enemy variety don’t hold up all the way to the end of the combined 40 hours of its dual campaigns, but its story and characters absolutely do, and make for a surprise breakout hit of 2021.

Scarlet Nexus takes place in a society where humans have developed supernatural powers and have technology based on the human brain. There are antagonistic creatures called Others who feed on human brains. The Other Suppression Force (OSF) use their psychic abilities to protect humanity from the Others, while finding out the truth about a phenomenon in the sky called the Extinction Belt, where the creatures supposedly originated from.

The game was already well paced, consisting of 12 chapters. The show manages to replicate the same pacing, hitting pretty much all of the major plot points within its 26-episode run. This can be really hard to pull off because cutscenes and story beats from video games don’t always translate nicely into TV episodes with time constraints, which we saw in Persona 5: The Animation. Trying to fit a 100-hour JRPG into just 26 episodes is a near impossible task when trying to capture the emotional rollercoaster that also comes with exploring the dungeons and watching the cutscenes.

The Scarlet Nexus show does a better job in this respect because the game’s story can be completed in about one-third of that time, roughly at around 30-35 hours. But like Persona 5: The Animation, the Scarlet Nexus show also had to drop its social interaction mechanic. In the game, the two main characters, Yuito Sumeragi and Kasane Randall, can interact with their teammates in “Bond Events,” which work similarly to Persona’s Social Link and Confidant mechanics that the series helped popularize. These are one-on-one interactions where you get to learn more about your teammate’s backstories and motivations, and viewing these also boosts their combat abilities; these are completely absent from the TV series.

In sacrificing Bond Events, the show is able to retell the game’s main story beat by beat. Unfortunately, the Bond Events and interpersonal relationships between the characters are a big part of what makes Scarlet Nexus appealing. Without these, we don't really know much about the main cast of characters and why we should even care about them.

While this isn’t ideal, the show does provide more flashbacks and scenes that weren’t present in the game that add to its side characters. In particular, Yuito’s best friend, Nagi Karman, and Kasane’s sister, Naomi, are a bit more fleshed out here. Since both of these characters weren’t playable in the game, it was nice to see them get more attention in the show. This is especially true when it came to showcasing Nagi’s wind-based powers and Naomi’s precognition abilities during the show’s fight scenes.

The final episode actually both ties up loose ends and sets up a better baseline for a potential sequel to the game better than the game does itself. In the game’s epilogue, you’d speak with the entire playable cast to learn about what their future plans were now that the world is saved. However, the final episode takes it further by fully dedicating its time to go over the consequences and subsequent political fallout that came with defeating the main antagonist. For that fact alone, I do think the final episode is worth watching at the very least for those who’ve already finished the main game.

One of the criticisms I had about Scarlet Nexus was that there was a massive info and lore dump around the latter half of the game. At that point, it was entirely too much exposition. The show attempts to alleviate that issue by foreshadowing some of its bigger plot points much earlier in the beginning episodes. Even the main antagonist is revealed at the very end of the first episode. It’s just another reason to play Scarlet Nexus before watching the adaptation, as some viewers could consider this a spoiler for the game.

Because of the TV show format, the fast-paced gameplay that made Scarlet Nexus so fun is gone. The anime replaces it with really boring fight choreography against the Others. They just simply do not match the intensity that the game’s combat mechanics provide. In some high-tension moments, the show will just feature a plain colored background with still images of the characters, which is just creatively uninteresting.

One of the game’s core battle mechanics, the Struggle Arms System (SAS), where Yuito and Kasane can borrow their teammates’ abilities to augment themselves, is completely absent in the anime adaptation. In the game, for example, you can borrow Shiden’s lightning powers to increase your attack range, or Kyoko’s duplication ability to increase the number of objects thrown with psychokinesis. There’s no such synergy or representation of this in the show, making the fight scenes even duller to watch.

This is easily the worst part of the anime adaptation. I suppose it’s unavoidable that some of the magic is lost in the transition from a game to a TV show, but the substitute here with the lackluster fight scenes is such a letdown.

That’s not to say it’s all a letdown. Rock group The Oral Cigarettes provided the game’s opening song, “Dream in Drive,” and they returned to perform the show’s two opening songs as well. “Red Criminal” and “MACHINEGUN” are some intense Japanese head-bangers. Surprisingly, the end credit songs, “Fire” by Yamato (.S) and “Stranger” by Ayumu Imazu, take a more introspective route, and are much less intense than the opening songs. It’s a nice change of pace.

Scarlet Nexus boasts strong performances across the board.

Additionally, there’s some cross promotion between the anime and the game. Each episode of Scarlet Nexus features a hidden code somewhere that you can actually redeem in-game for a reward. This is a pretty cool tie-in that earns you additional lore, cosmetics, and items.

I also applaud the effort that went into bringing over the English dub cast from the game to reprise their roles in the anime adaptation. This show could have stayed as Japanese audio with subtitles only, but as someone who does prefer listening to English dubs when watching anime, this was definitely appreciated. English dubs have greatly improved over the last decade, and Scarlet Nexus boasts strong performances across the board.

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Krampus: The Naughty Cut Review

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Krampus: The Naughty Cut is now available for purchase on Blu-ray.

Directors’ cuts are having a moment. Earlier this year, I was very pleasantly surprised to see the foundational changes made to Zack Snyder’s Justice League result in an appreciably better movie. Francis Ford Coppola and Sylvester Stallone have both recently re-cut less stellar entries from the Godfather and Rocky series. DC fans have been pushing for Warner Bros. to let David Ayer deliver on his original vision of Suicide Squad. The common line I can draw through the above movies is that none of them were all that well-received upon their original release, so you can see how a new cut is kind of a “can’t lose” prospect. While alternate cuts of theatrically released movies can become the preferred choice for fans (looking at you Lord of the Rings: Extended Edition), they can also be a marketing ploy to get fans to double-dip and buy a version of the movie that restores footage better left on the cutting room floor. Krampus: The Naughty Cut doesn’t go so far as to add back scenes that detract from the experience, but the alterations are so slight that it’s hard to recommend it over the version released in the theaters.

Director Michael Dougherty’s (Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Trick ‘r Treat) bleak, funny take on the modern meaning of Christmas was already pretty well-regarded, so any new material would have to make that much more of a case for itself to feel like the easy choice over the theatrical cut. The Naughty Cut’s embellishments are incredibly sparse, and ultimately add very little to the story. Most of the new dialogue scenes reinforce the family drama at the heart of Krampus. Sisters Sarah (Toni Collette) and Linda (Allison Tolman) lament how far apart they’ve grown, main kid Max (Emjay Anthony) makes a peace offering to his cousins amid the chaos being wrought by the Shadow of St. Nicholas and his minions… but nothing that alters the trajectory of the plot or radically recontextualizes anything we already knew.

Krampus (2015) - Theatrical Cut Verdict

IGN’s Max Nicholson gave the theatrical cut of Krampus an 8.3, saying: “Krampus hits that ‘Nightmare Before Christmas’ sweet spot by blending gleeful horror with holiday cheer. While genuine frights are slim, the movie is packed with great imagery, solid commentary, and laugh-out-loud moments -- not unlike director Michael Dougherty's last film Trick 'r Treat. The cast and creature designs are also great. While the film moves a little slow in spots, Krampus is sure to satisfy horror and comedy fans alike. Consider it another good Christmas movie staple to add to your collection.”

The more enticing prospect of an unrated Krampus cut was the chance that the savage little beasts that tear their way through the Engel family one by one would be even more savage. Now, I decided not to rewatch Krampus before screening The Naughty Cut -- it’s a perennial of mine, so I think I watched it with a better-than-average knowledge of the movie’s beats -- and I can’t honestly point to any of the shots they added back into the scarier scenes. Maybe Tom (Adam Scott) got stabbed for a few extra seconds by a murderous toy? Maybe? Anyone hoping for protracted set pieces that were entirely missing from Krampus’ theatrical cut or particularly gruesome new wrinkles to the Engel family’s struggle to survive through to Christmas may come away feeling like they pulled coal out of their stocking.

In the end, recommending Krampus: The Naughty Cut really isn’t a question of which version of the movie is better; it’s more about what you want your home viewing experience to be. The Naughty Cut is the only home release of Krampus in 4K and with Dolby Atmos, so if your home theater setup can take advantage of those standards, there’s no real reason to pick the older transfer over this one.

Stocking Stuffers

This review and the score are only meant to represent the new edit of Krampus, not the quality of the film’s new 4K transfer, new Dolby Atmos track, or special features. For the record, Krampus: The Naughty Cut includes nine new interviews with members of Krampus’ cast and crew. The rest of the special features -- filmmaker commentary, gag reel, featurettes, deleted/extended scenes -- were on the original Blu-ray.

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Aggretsuko: Season 4 Review

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Aggretsuko Season 4 is now streaming on Netflix.

We've gotten to know the impossibly adorable yet rage-filled Retsuko (Erica Mendez) quite well over the course of three seasons. The diminutive red panda is a kind young accountant by day, and a die-hard death metal karaoke singer by night, a hobby she uses to vent all the frustrations that come along with her everyday life as an office worker. Who hasn't been a ticking time bomb at the end of a particularly stressful day at work? You might zone out with your favorite TV shows or take a bubble bath. Retsuko finds catharsis when decked out in corpse paint, screaming at the top of her lungs. Same difference. That formula mostly continues to work in its fourth season, tackling workplace conflicts with empathy, even if it does become mired in some romantic comedy tropes.

Since we met Retsuko, she's grappled with a whirlwind romance with a vapid tech CEO, an overbearing boss, the dangers of overworking, and a short-lived idol career. Now that she's put all of that behind her, she's facing a new set of challenges: changes in the workplace between her and her good friend Haida (Benjamin Diskin), and the struggles that come from being a young adult in the rat race of everyday life.

What we said about the first season of Aggretsuko

Aiden Strawhun gave Aggretsuko Season 1 an 8/10, writing, "Aggretsuko is definitely much more mature than your average Sanrio character, and the Netflix series drives that point home. Even with its somewhat nihilistic undertones, the series shows the struggle of finding fulfillment very accurately, and it’s a journey I think just about every young person can relate to. It’s funny, it’s silly, it’s serious, and it’s a bit morose. Even so, it still gives me hope in a strange, bittersweet kind of way."

Retsuko's just moved from her old apartment in a bid to escape from peeping paparazzi and terrifying fans since she ended her idol career. She's invested in a ton of weapons to keep herself safe, and she even lives atop a store at night, which has plenty of light to scare away would-be harassers. It would sound overly cautious if this type of behavior weren't what happens in the real world, but Aggretsuko has always been able to bring those types of worries into the animated realm to create a relatable atmosphere.

To ensure Retsuko feels totally safe at her new place and to finally push Haida into confessing his obvious love for her, Fenneko (Katelyn Gault) suggests Haida walk her home at night. This seems like a great idea, until it isn't, and Haida handles these many moments to confess his feelings to Retsuko about as well as you'd expect, which is to say absolutely terribly. This sets the stage for an incredibly awkward season that amps up the "will they or won't they" factor, which has been bubbling under the surface for the entirety of the series.

Unfortunately, it becomes a dominant, driving force throughout the rest of the season, and it ceases to be funny or entertaining the fifth or sixth time in this run of episodes when Haida continues acting erratically. Of course, Retsuko seems inexplicably unable to act rationally in response either, even when she daydreams about potentially dating Haida. But the amount of frustration this will cause viewers is almost off the charts at times, and a rote trope that the series seemed it might avoid at first.

Luckily, there's a lot more at stake this season than Retsuko and Haida's potential romantic relationship. Carrier Man Trading Co. Ltd., the company they work for, has a new CEO: Himuro (Trevor Devall). Himuro is a no-nonsense leader who seems to care only for numbers and the bottom line, which leads him to force director Ton (Josh Petersdorf) to lay off a few employees. When Ton refuses, he's given a "new" assignment, prompting a chain of other changes at the workplace, none positive.

The result is something of an abusive office where workers are afraid of what might happen next, who's going to be reassigned, and who's going to be without a job. It's certainly commentary on the state of office politics and the tendency of corporations to put profits over people, and a fascinating part of the season that tends to take a frustrating backseat to Retsuko and Haida's dalliances. Aggretsuko has always been at its most powerful and entertaining (and relatable) when it doesn’t dwell too long on couples that obviously aren’t perfect for each other, and Season 4 certainly suffers from the staid storyline between nervous Haida and fed up Retsuko. Still, it swims by when it leans on what's worked in previous seasons.

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Hawkeye Season 1 Review

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This is a mostly spoiler-free review of Season 1 of Marvel’s Hawkeye, which is now streaming in its entirety on Disney+. Some themes and characters are alluded to, but no main plot points are discussed in detail. For a deep dive into the show, you can read our spoiler-filled individual episode reviews.

• Hawkeye: Season 1, Episode 1 & 2 Review
• Hawkeye: Season 1, Episode 3 Review
• Hawkeye: Season 1, Episode 4 Review
• Hawkeye: Season 1, Episode 5 Review
• Hawkeye: Season 1, Episode 6 Review

Among the slate of Disney+ Marvel shows in 2021, Hawkeye is the most unusual. It’s the outlier not because it’s weird or cosmic, but because it's precisely the opposite. This is the most grounded Marvel Cinematic Universe fare of the year. And yet, despite its lack of seismic shifts for the multiverse, Hawkeye is the most successful of all these shows, thanks to its narrower focus and confident balancing of familiar elements. Hawkeye is Marvel giving us what first it did to make us fall in love with the MCU; a fun tale of superheroes just saving the day, with some interpersonal depth hiding not too far beneath the surface.

Most of that depth comes courtesy of Jeremy Renner’s Clint Barton. Surprise! The dullest Avenger is finally given a personality, and it comes via a much more interesting journey than you may expect. Rather than simply grafting the Clint personality from Matt Fraction and David Aja’s popular Hawkeye comic run, from which this show draws much of its visual iconography and broad ideas, Renner’s new depths are discovered by digging into events he’s endured during his on-screen career. No longer pushed to the sidelines by bolder Avengers, we find that Barton is a surprisingly downbeat man struggling to deal with his past traumas. He is, afterall, someone who watched his family turn to ash. And how did he deal with that? He dressed up as a ninja and hacked apart gangsters with a sword. Clint is a severely damaged man trying his best to overcome the tragedy of losing his best friend, Natasha Romanov, and Hawkeye deals with this using a gentle, understanding hand. Renner carries this admirably, often hiding the weight of Clint’s issues behind his eyes while being a little more stoic with the rest of his body. I’d stop short of saying Renner makes Clint an essential Avenger in Hawkeye, but here he has the space to be notably more complex than he’s ever been.

Unlike in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, this heavier side never becomes the focal issue of Hawkeye, which ensures the six-episode run doesn't feel like an extended therapy session. The darkness is always there, but only in the shadows. Instead, Hawkeye’s main interests lie broadly in being a fun superhero detective show. Clint’s mission is to deal with the Tracksuit Mafia, a gang of eastern european gangsters with a shadowy boss only ever referred to as “the big guy.” This framework means Hawkeye is always digging for the next clue or link, which results in fun reveals each episode (although surprisingly few agonising cliffhangers, considering the tropes of the genre).

The investigation angle also means Hawkeye is a little lighter on action, but when Clint does draw his bow it’s frequently exciting and energetically directed. His reliance on trick arrows works for impressive spectacle and a little childlike wonder; missiles that spray goo or electrocute baddies feel like cool Christmas toys, and those are just the most pedestrian examples. That “box of toys” tone is matched by the condition in which Clint walks away from his fights. While battles see him more beaten and bruised than most other Avengers, it’s always played for fun. The cuts and scrapes emphasise that Clint is only human and not a Super Soldier or Asgardian God, but little montages of him patching himself up and strapping ice packs to his aching bones is always done with a smile.

Hailee Steinfeld effortlessly embodies the good-natured, thrill-seeking Kate Bishop of the comics.

Detective stories do, of course, frequently pair a rough-and-tumble investigator with a fresh-faced, eager partner. Enter Kate Bishop, played to goofy perfection by Hailee Steinfeld. She effortlessly embodies the good-natured, thrill-seeking character of the comics, and so feels the most “pulled from the page” of any of Hawkeye’s elements. Having idolised Hawkeye since childhood, Kate has grown up to become an incredible archer and wannabe superhero, although her skills in the former vastly outweigh the latter, at least to begin with. Kate’s rookie nature means she’s constantly getting into trouble, embroiling herself in sinister plots far above her level in the name of trying to do a little good for the world. This naivety forces Clint to reluctantly take Kate on as a student, which gives birth to one of the most enjoyable double acts in the entire MCU.

This is a different form of partnership compared to most in the MCU, though. Where usually Marvel puts together big, contrasting personalities that grind each other's gears to produce quip-laden sparks, Clint and Kate have a far more naturalistic relationship. They couldn’t be more different, but Hawkeye’s writing team never forces them into loud confrontations or over-inflates any of their personality quirks. And so while there is a surrogate father/daughter dynamic going on (Clint is definitely a grumpy dad dealing with an excitable kid), they mostly come across more like a couple of friends. This makes the pair genuinely enjoyable to watch, particularly when they’re just hanging out and learning to appreciate each other’s company.

As for what they bring out in each other, it’s not what I initially expected. The usual teacher/student setup involves the mentor also learning plenty from their prodigy, but Kate doesn’t impart all that much wisdom to Clint; she’s too busy telling him to brighten up his brand and embody the superhero ideal. And while this does aid in Clint gradually taking some pride in work he’s become jaded about, much of his self repair comes from his own convictions. Hawkeye’s introspective layer is very much about learning to cope with and heal from your own personal trauma. Clint’s relationships with Kate and his own family work as supporting structures for this, but his journey is very much one of his own making. As a story of the power of self-healing and reframing your view of yourself, it’s surprisingly successful, even if it always feels as if it's going on in the corners rather than centre stage.

Also kept to the corners are the Christmas vibes. Despite being advertised as a holiday show, Hawkeye doesn’t actually lean into all that many festive tropes. While this does mean that it feels a little more “timeless,” quite honestly, I’d have liked it to have embraced the cheese of the period. More lights, Santas, and snow would have granted Hawkeye a unique feel that would have perfectly complemented Kate’s energetic, goofy nature and emphasised the fun of the duo’s escapades. Instead, Christmas time is more of a backdrop and framing device. Clint is stuck in New York City fighting against the Tracksuit Mafia when he’d really rather be home with his children and wife, Laura (Linda Cardellini). This adds a certain amount of tension to the whole season -- will our exasperated dad make it home in time for the main event? -- but it never feels like an important part of Hawkeye’s identity. It does, however, mean we get plenty of festive needle drops, and that’s nothing to grumble about.

Hawkeye remains remarkably consistent where its peers wobble.

Threatening to cancel Christmas is Maya, a senior member of the Tracksuit Mafia who has a very particular vendetta to settle with Clint. Played by Alaqua Cox, both character and actor are deaf, which provides a little common ground between Maya and Clint, who is shown to now require a hearing aid thanks to his literally explosive career. Wisely, Hawkeye makes deafness an aspect of their personalities but not defining elements. Maya is instead characterised by her anger, which fuels some memorably violent run-ins with Clint, and her relationship with fellow Mafia member, Kazi (Fra Fee). As with Kate and Clint, Maya and Kazi’s relationship is remarkably understated for a Marvel show. While I appreciate that Hawkeye’s villains don’t feel like spandex-clad inmates leaping out of the pages of a comic book, the downplaying of any tropes is perhaps a little too much, and so we’re left with characters who -- as far as personality goes -- don’t leave a strong impression. I really like that Hawkeye takes cues from the Netflix MCU shows to make for a more grounded experience, but characters like David Tennant’s Kilgrave demonstrated that a more earthy texture doesn’t have to forgo an impactful screen presence. In fact, Maya’s journey is so slight that I’m also left wondering what exactly is there to further explore in her solo spin-off series, Echo.

Similarly, the Tracksuit Mafia goons themselves, which are some of Marvel comics’ most fun street-level thugs, are sadly underutilised. Hawkeye is very much a show about Kate and Clint more than it is the villains they face, but a better use of the Tracksuits would have complemented the goofy charm of that central dynamic. They also feel an appropriate match for the tone being struck by that Christmassy backdrop (they are effectively an army of Harrys and Marvs from Home Alone). We still get a nice handful of moments (the finale in particular makes good use of them) but I’m left wanting more from these red-uniformed idiots.

But while Hawkeye lacks a little oomph in its villain department (not including a particular reveal in the final act, which is genuinely exciting), its simplified approach ensures it is not overburdened. Unlike WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Hawkeye does not attempt to balance a dozen plates laden with grand ideas. Instead it plays straight and focused, much like the arrows in Clint’s quiver. And by not overreaching, Hawkeye remains remarkably consistent where its peers wobble, particularly in the final act when deep-seeded plot threads begin to pay off. It makes for a highly satisfying finale that, while not having the grand impact on the MCU, provides a fitting conclusion for its characters. Hawkeye isn’t about big ideas around the multiverse and breaking the next piece of ground for Marvel; it’s about doing good by its characters. And it definitely lands a bullseye on that target.

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Hawkeye Episode 6 Review

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This review contains spoilers for episode 6 of Marvel's Hawkeye, ‘So This Is Christmas?’, now available to view on Disney+. To remind yourself of where we left off, check out our review of Hawkeye episode 5.

Is there a better Christmas gift than a fantastic season finale? Because that’s exactly what Hawkeye delivers. Its final hour is the best of the six-episode run, and completely fulfills its promise of festive-flavoured fun with plenty of heart beneath the action-packed wrapping. It also satisfyingly brings Kate and Clint’s first story together to a close, and while not every other character gets the same victory, this is a chapter that doesn’t leave you wanting for much else beyond a second season.

Episode 5’s introduction of The Kingpin suggested that Hawkeye’s roster of heroes and anti-heroes would be united for the finale, all with Wilson Fisk in their crosshairs. That never happens, but is actually more interesting for it. The last hour is broadly split into three showdowns; Clint versus Yelena, Kate versus Fisk, and Maya versus Kazi. While this means the characters are somewhat siloed off from one another for most of the second half, by splitting the action into separate encounters Hawkeye is able to more intimately wrap up its individual character arcs. Thankfully, this format never allows the storylines to stray too far from each other, and so the end result remains a very cohesive conclusion for the tale at large.

The most important of these individual conflicts, of course, is Clint’s, who has spent this entire season quietly battling his grief over Natasha’s death. Yelena’s insistence on killing him, despite her conversation with Kate and (presumably) a fantastic intelligence network, does feel somewhat contrived. The special whistle moment that interrupts their fight also feels a bit convenient and a little too close to the ‘Martha’ get-out clause from Batman vs. Superman. But their grief-drenched argument allows Clint to express his regret for not stopping Natasha from sacrificing herself, and voice aloud that she was only able to do that because she was better than him. Clint has never been to therapy, and so just talking about what happened with someone who shares the same kind of love for Natasha seems to be the final step required on his path to healing.

Yelena splitting Clint and Kate up means our pint-sized archer must go up against The Kingpin of Crime solo, which is a mismatch for the ages. Vincent D'Onofrio’s Fisk is shown to be substantially more powerful than he was in Daredevil, able to send Kate flying with a punch and even tear a car door from its hinges. It raises the question of whether this even is the same Kingpin from the Netflix show, especially with that horrendous dress sense. Regardless, the situation provides a bit of a David and Goliath aspect to the fight, which Kate entertainingly overcomes with smarts rather than brawn.

Kate doesn’t get the final blow in on Kingpin, though. Instead, Kate’s big finale moment is actually with Eleanor, and it’s satisfying to see her mother treated as a villain for what she’s done, rather than someone accidentally in too deep. It creates a massive moment for Kate, in which she rejects her biological family and embraces Clint as her partner and surrogate dad. I’ll confess, seeing Clint bring her back to his family for Christmas made my eyes a little misty. So much of the MCU has worked with the theme of found family, and Clint and Kate’s relationship has been one of the most effective examples of that.

Kingpin’s fate is instead left in Maya’s hands, who naturally has the most personal vendetta with him. Looking back over the series, Maya never really experienced the growth she required to make her part of the finale ring true, but it’s still enjoyable to see her settle the score with both Kazi and her ‘uncle’. Shooting Kingpin point blank in the face is a surprising moment, largely because Vincent D'Onofrio has only just arrived, but the act happening off-screen seems almost certainly television code for “things aren’t as they seem”.

It would be a shame for Kingpin to be gone already, because D'Onofrio is once again a phenomenal presence as Fisk, even if this single episode doesn’t allow him the nuance that Daredevil did. His ability to blend sophisticated giant and unhinged mob boss personas means he still remains one of the MCU’s greatest villains, and the terror he provides completely outmatches any of the threats Hawkeye has served up in its five preceding chapters.

By bringing the conflict with Kingpin to a head, the finale also serves as the most accomplished episode for action. We finally get a scene in which the Tracksuit Mafia throws bro after bro at Clint and Kate, who fight them off with a brilliant assortment of trick arrows. There’s a Home Alone vibe to this sequence, thanks to the toy-like nature of the arrows and the increasingly absurd ways in which the Tracksuits are dispatched. That feel, along with the ice-rink setting, really delivers on the ‘superheroes at Christmas’ promise, something that Hawkeye has never quite wholeheartedly embraced until this moment.

Between all these big scenes are dozens of smaller moments that only add to the joy this finale brings. Jack fencing with a bunch of goons is a lovely nod to his Swordsman persona from the comics. The LARPers helping out in the final investigation and battle turns them into something akin to Sherlock Holmes’ Baker Street Irregulars, which perfectly fits into Hawkeye’s detective show framework. The Tracksuit Mafia thug thanking Kate for her earlier girlfriend advice is one of the best jokes of the series, and is quickly topped by the even funnier Pym shrinking arrow gag. And, finally, Clint burning the Ronin suit is a lovely metaphor for the end of his dark period. With the expulsion of his grief comes a new, better Hawkeye that I hope we see more of in the future.

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GTFO Review

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At the end of C1, one of the many brutal missions currently available in GTFO, your expedition team will be trapped at the bottom of a long-forsaken botany lab. An orange circle appears on the floor, and everyone needs to stand in it at the same time to fill up a bar at the top of the screen. The circle lazily paths through the damp corridors and stairwells, and the party of four crams together in its borders, staring down iron sights, shooting at anything that moves. An absolute onslaught of horrific aberrations lays siege to your defenses as GTFO demonstrates just how mean it can be. I have watched my comrades crumble at the 98th percentile as a final wave proved too much for our dwindling ammunition. I have watched a friend get trigger happy and wipe the group with an errant team kill in a narrow hallway. I have watched a number of pick-up groups disintegrate by the forth or fifth attempts as it became abundantly clear that our coordination simply wasn't up to snuff. It is one of the most frustrating trials I've endured in a co-op video game – but the more GTFO breaks my heart, the more I've developed a dangerous taste for its unwavering cruelty.

Your objectives differ with each level, but most of the time your team will be asked to dredge up some sort of deserted mcguffin from the bedrock and return to safety with everyone in one piece. But unlike its clear inspiration – Left 4 Dead, Payday, and their ilk – GTFO demands an intense, uncompromising degree of execution. There is no scenario where this is a simple shooting gallery – victory is rarely achieved by emptying clips blindly into the horde – instead, it brings to mind the white-knuckle logistics of a tough World of Warcraft dungeon. There are sequences in GTFO where your quartet will need to creep through the muck in total silence, as to not alert the goliaths sleepwalking in your wake. There are twisted, toothy enemies that can wipe your group in nanoseconds; you'll need to avoid them in total darkness. My party members once spent a good 15 minutes divvying up resources and walling off chokepoints before a particularly elaborate encounter, only to die almost instantly.

The difficulty is going to turn off a lot of people who come looking to play casually, but I greatly enjoyed GTFO's willingness to punish me, over and over again, until I produced results. So many shooters require the slimmest amounts of brainpower, but here I was forced to do something I haven't done in years: wander into a random Discord channel, put out an LFG beacon, and join a voice channel with total strangers in the hopes that they might be the kind of dedicated teammates I needed.

Games have become increasingly streamlined, but GTFO is a loud, proud step in the reverse direction.

It’s an old-school sensibility. We’ve watched games become increasingly streamlined over the years, with even the likes of Monster Hunter losing some of its trademark impenetrability. GTFO is a loud, proud step in the reverse direction, and that is perhaps its greatest strength among those of us who appreciate it. It’s exemplified by the fact that, just to get oriented in each zone, one party member will need to jump onto one of the terminals littered around the compound, log in, and use a DOS command prompt to, say, locate health packs or uncover a keycard. On top of that, there is no generous signposting in the complex; instead, each player shares a map that can be drawn on it with their cursor, as if they're stewing over a midnight D&D session. And I love how the whole party needs to count down from three and connect their melee strikes at the exact same time to silently topple some of the larger enemies. You hold your breath, make sure it's dead, and move on to the next one. There is something strangely intimate about drawing a hasty escape route on the map, or hugging the walls in a smoky room, inches from the dozing monsters. GTFO makes it clear that there is no savior coming for the rescue, and that your only option is to have faith in the party. For better or worse, our fate is in our hands.

This emphasis on analog teamwork offers GTFO a wonderful sense of tactility. The firefights are fine, but the best moments come when you and your friends are back at the drawing board after a couple of wipes. (Should we place a sentry on the eastern flank? Maybe our mines were off-center.) Due to its breadth of options in weapons and equipment, GTFO never made me feel like I was groping around in the dark looking for one specific prescribed solution.

That is not to say that GTFO doesn't have any modern FPS trappings. Each level is laden with limited-use perks that can be deployed on future expeditions, and all of them offer some rote boosts to typical FPS attributes; damage output, revive speed, and ammo supply to name a few. I also unlocked a handful of cosmetics that outfitted my greyscale shocktrooper with nearly imperceptible costume alterations. (Notably, though, GTFO is a 100% microtransaction-free game.) All of this stuff felt pretty tacked-on and weirdly contrary to the rest of the hardcore GTFO ethos. This is a video game where I might need to hold off a band of mutants with a speed-dampening foam gun while a buddy bangs codewords into a computer. It's a little weird to return to the lobby, where we can all strap on our seven percent increases to our projectile resistance.

10 Chambers Collective audaciously scraps all of the existing levels with every major update, replacing them with new ones.

A game like this lives and dies on how much content is available, and to its credit there are currently a healthy 10 missions available in GTFO. However, developer 10 Chambers Collective makes the audacious choice to simply throw out all of its hard work with every major update and scrap all of the existing levels, replacing them with new ones. (So, when GTFO gets its next patch, all of the levels I’ve played will disappear forever in favor of an entirely new campaign.) That ephemerality adds to GTFO's sense of mystery. It's eye-opening to mingle with veterans who can regale you with war stories from past crusades

The world 10 Chambers has created is relentlessly, almost hilariously oppressive. From what I could glean, you’re cast as a convict frozen in some sort of permanent stasis. We are defrosted only to accomplish the worst, most suicidal contracts conceivable. So no, GTFO doesn't have an arresting story, and what is there is mostly relayed through the worst video game technique in existence: stray voiceovers emanating from an intercom. (To be clear, some players are passionate about the lore, and the studio has experimented with some ARG-ish methods to showcase its universe.) That said, I was impressed by the plot curveballs 10 Chambers managed to deploy in some of its gameplay sequences. Almost all of the action takes place in the complex, but without giving too much away, your party might find themselves spirited away to more colorful arenas if you interact with the right doodad. It's a welcome change of pace from the chronic concrete bleakness, and proof that the studio is switching up its own formula as GTFO finally exits its early access period after two years.

The world is relentlessly, almost hilariously oppressive.

GTFO's 1.0 release also marks some of its first overtures to a mainstream audience. For the first time ever, we get some conservative checkpoints; your progress will no longer be fully deleted after a team wipe. (That’s a controversial change among some diehards, as you might imagine!) The other big addition are the bots you can staff your party with if you don’t have a full squad of trusted friends ready to go at all times, and I found the A.I. to be surprisingly competent in my runs. But don't let those compromises with accessibility fool you: GTFO remains a game built for a group of human beings in constant communication. In fact, the main menu contains a link to the official Discord, which is good because the built-in matchmaking system is pretty hit-or-miss. (I had no luck with it myself.)

Naturally, that means GTFO is subject to all of the social annoyances parceled with so many cooperative games. These levels are long — some more than two hours total — and it really sucks when someone drops out halfway through. (Though players can join mid-mission in a pinch.) It's even more aggravating when a slight tang of lingering early access jank rears its ugly head; one of my parties actually had to call it a night after a mandatory terminal went on the fritz. GTFO is already a maddening game, but incidents like that, which are in no way your own fault, can make it downright exasperating. Oftentimes, I found myself pining for some sort of save function so my party could cut our losses. By 2am, it became clear that the boys and I were not going to finish the harsh finale of C1. Would it really violate the GTFO doctrine to allow us a chance to return the next morning and give it another shot without starting from the beginning?

That said, I don't think I've ever encountered a game that so brilliantly put me on a highwire. By the time I reached GTFO's advanced missions, I found that my own neural instincts were being affected. My voice was reduced to a whisper as the party ventured into another dingy chamber, teeming with monsters that could send the whole swarm after us if stirred from their slumber. I knew they couldn't hear me through the screen, but it still didn't feel right to speak up. That level of immersion can only be achieved when four players are ensconced in total blackness, scribbling instructions on a map, smelling a wipe around every corner. It comes from the knowledge that GTFO will break your spirit and mash you into a pulp – and that only then will you feel alive.

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Cuphead: Fast Rolling Dice Game Review

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When Studio MDHR revealed Cuphead to the world back in 2014, it took the world by storm due to its striking classic animation style and catchy big band-style jazz music. Three years later when it was finally released, it became an instant classic, offering a mix of difficult retro bullet-hell gameplay and memorable presentation. Now, as the Cuphead universe expands further with a dice-based tabletop game, it has enormous cartoon-sized shoes to fill. Cuphead: Fast Rolling Dice Game offers a fun romp through the Inkwell Isles once more, but fails to capture much of the charm that makes Cuphead so iconic.

What’s in the Box

Under the lid you’ll find four large character boards that include Cuphead and Mugman, of course, but also the star of the upcoming DLC, Ms. Chalice, as well as Elder Kettle to round out the group. Each features a large character portrait, description, and blank spots to place dice and other components throughout the game. Additionally, each character has a color-matched set of five Action Dice and one EX Action Dice. Each die contains one of six icons on each face: shoot, parry, jump, dodge, duck, and a diamond.

A large cardboard punch board contains various tokens made in a style that fits the theme, with some icons ripped straight from the Cuphead game, such as the timer and HP icons. Below that, you'll find Boss Deck tuck boxes that contain the unique decks required to face each of the eight bosses. To round out the boss area supplies, you’ll find a foldable boss board, a rotating boss health dial, a plastic boss stand, and 30 Wallop cards.

Additionally, there are four sealed Super Art Envelopes that can only be opened by completing the specific requirement listed on the outside. Once unlocked, the contents can be equipped and used by anyone in the party. Lastly, there’s a large pad of Save Sheets that allow you to “save” your game by notating your character, equipped items, and progress on each of the eight bosses. This system makes it easy to pack up and resume right where you left off without much delay.

While it’s not technically in the box, there is also an optional free companion app available on iOS or Android which can be used to keep track of your time during each round, as well as calculate your score after completing the final phase of a boss deck. I couldn’t imagine playing without it as it removes much of the tedious manual work and even plays a jazz-inspired song during each round.

Rules and How to Play

After reading through the rather short instruction manual to familiarize yourself with the flow of the game, you’re ready to go. Setup is quick and can be done in a matter of minutes. Each player selects their character, grabs their corresponding dice, and starts with three health tokens. Cuphead: Fast Rolling Dice Game is playable solo or with up to four people, however, each character begins the game with the same amount of health and starting Peashooter weapon.

Cuphead: Fast Rolling Dice Game features a lite campaign that requires players to progress through eight bosses in chronological order. You can only move onto the next boss once you’ve successfully bested the previous one. As such, players will begin the fight against The Root Pack using the first boss deck. After successful completion of a boss, players are graded on their performance, from how much health each character has remaining to how many Wallop cards still remain in their hand. This grading system, much like in standard Cuphead, allows for a ton of replayability as you try to score an A+ on each boss.

Setup is quick and can be done in a matter of minutes.

The general flow of the game is completed in multiple phases and is relatively easy to pick up for new players. Each boss has a number of different phases that players will need to overcome, just like in Cuphead proper. Boss phases use a small section of the greater boss deck, creating smaller decks that are used only during that specific phase and contain unique mechanics to add some flavor to the otherwise standard attack sequence. Once players are ready to start, three boss cards are flipped over and added to the boss board in the order they were revealed. These telegraph the “attacks” the boss will perform during that round, and players will need to react accordingly once the round timer begins by rolling their Attack Dice.

Each boss card revealed during a given round features one or two icons that correspond to icons found on the Action Dice. The goal for the players is to roll their dice in quick succession and match the dice pictures to those icons in the allotted time frame. Each icon matched means they successfully avoid the attack and any damage that would result from it. If players are feeling extra brave, they can assign an extra die to attack the boss, with the goal of whittling its health down to zero as quickly as possible.

While this sounds easy, it relies heavily on luck, and RNG plays a huge factor in the overall gameplay. This is really where it deviates from the source material as in the original Cuphead, you could practice and learn boss patterns to eventually get better. In this dice game variant, you’re at the mercy of a one-in-six dice roll every time you throw, with almost no way to actually improve your overall performance short of rolling faster, identifying dice icons more quickly, and assigning them to your board more effectively -- all of which aren’t really feasible after a certain point.

While Cuphead: Fast Rolling Dice Game is playable solo, it becomes slightly easier with each successive player added. Sure, the bosses feature more health to compensate for the added headcount, but the fact that every character uses the same set of dice means the odds are the same for everyone. This spreads out the variance in dice rolls and allows for more consistent damage to the boss during each round -- meaning rounds don’t drag on as long and generally end in victory for the players. Plus, characters can be revived fairly easily after being knocked out, allowing for the fight to continue. Some of the bosses require near-perfect rolls at times, making it a much more difficult experience if you plan to play through the campaign by yourself.

Each round of the boss phase continues until either every player or boss loses all of their health. If the boss deck runs out of cards, the group must shuffle the current boss deck to create a new set of randomized attacks while also collecting a time token -- something that negatively affects the final grade upon completion. After each boss KO, players move to the next phase, until they eventually reach the final Knockout! card, where they can collect their spoils, receive their final grade, and unlock new purchasable items for the shop before cracking open the next boss deck.

The main strategy in Cuphead: Fast Rolling Dice Game employs a similar risk-reward mechanic as something like Yahtzee, but on steroids. As you roll, you have the option to spend as many extra dice as you can afford to attack the boss, limiting the number of future dice you’ll have available for the remainder of the round, thus reducing your overall chance of blocking future attacks. It’s these quick moment-to-moment decisions that really make it shine, and where most of the fun is had.

One of my biggest complaints with this dice game variant, though, are the actual bosses themselves. In Cuphead, boss fights are big spectacles with gorgeous animation, unique mechanics, and always accompanied by a stellar soundtrack. Most of what makes Cuphead so special is missing here as boss mechanics are largely the same and boil down to minor variations on standard rules, or gimmicks like requiring your assigned dice to be stacked on top of one another in order to be counted. Obviously, it’s hard to translate an audiovisual experience like Cuphead 1:1, but so much of the original game’s charm is lost here.

What Cuphead: Fast Rolling Dice game does get right, though, is the sheer chaos and sense of panic you’d expect from a bullet-hell style game. It’s largely a fun solo experience that’s made better with friends -- as most games are. If you’re a fan of Cuphead, this is definitely worth checking out. If not, you may find it to be a fairly average dice game with some cool retro artwork on the cards.

Where to Buy

Cuphead Fast Rolling Dice Game is available now for an MSRP of $49.99, though it may be priced lower or higher at any given retailer.

• See it at Amazon
• See it at The OP

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