The Queens Gambit

from USA Today.com
https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2020/10/28/the-queens-gambit-review-one-best-shows-2020/3753873001/

'The Queen's Gambit': This Netflix miniseries about chess is one of the best shows of 2020

Kelly Lawler

USA TODAY

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Even in a year as bleak as 2020, the right TV show can come along and happily surprise you. 

Smart, enthralling and a little sexy, "The Queen's Gambit" has jumped to the No. 1 spot on Netflix in the U.S. for good reason – it's just that good. Even if it's about chess. 

Based on the novel by Walter Tevis, "Queen's" (streaming now, ★★★½ out of four) follows the rise of fictional chess prodigy Beth Harmon (a stunning Anya Taylor-Joy), a Kentucky orphan in the 1960s who learns the game from a janitor (Bill Camp) in her orphanage's basement. As a teen, she makes her way onto the international chess circuit, traveling the globe and handily beating men twice her age. She also spends that time battling addiction, a much harder fight for Beth than any chess match. 

Thanks to Taylor-Joy's performance, a strong supporting cast and the right balance of trials and triumph, "Queen's" is a surprisingly gripping adventure (yes, a chess adventure) that still manages to find levity and happiness. It's a show that seems tailor-made for our joy-starved minds in a somber modern world. It might make even the most skeptical among us take dust-covered chess sets out of the basement

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The series begins with Beth as a quiet 9-year-old who has just been orphaned by a car crash and is delivered to a depressing orphanage that hands out tranquilizers like candy to keep the kids docile. She quickly discovers that stockpiling them, and taking multiple doses a few nights a week, leads to exciting highs. One day, she walks in on the janitor playing chess against himself in the basement, and is drawn to the game. He teaches her the rules and is awed by her natural talent. She spends her nights popping pills and imagining chess games on the ceiling of her dormitory, one of many arresting visuals in "Queen's" over the course of its seven episodes. 

As a teenager, Beth is adopted by the Wheatleys, an unhappy married couple. While the husband spends weeks on "business trips" out West, Beth gradually bonds with her new mother, Alma (Marielle Heller), a functional alcoholic. Beth wins local chess tournaments, and after Alma discovers how much money her new daughter can make, she acts as Beth's agent and manager, pulling her out of school so they can travel to national and international tournaments. 

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As she rises through the ranks of professional chess, Beth becomes entwined with her almost exclusively male opponents. There's Harry Beltik (Harry Melling, best known as Dudley in the "Harry Potter" movies), who becomes obsessed with Beth after she beats him for the Kentucky state title at age 15; D.L. Townes (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd), a dashing older player who immediately catches Beth's eye; and Benny Watts (Thomas Brodie-Sangster), an American champion who initially dismisses Beth's talent before eventually helping to train her to take on the world's best chess players, the Soviets. 

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Written and directed by Scott Frank, an Oscar nominee for his "Logan" script, "Queen's" is electrifying. Frank's direction is full of quick cuts, artful framing and beautiful shots. Paired with the superb score, "Queen's" gives the series' many chess matches near Olympic tension and gravitas, as exciting as any great sports film. 

But "Queen's" wouldn't sing without Taylor-Joy, who turns in one of the best performances of her already celebrated young career. Her expressive face and even more expressive hand movements are a key part of what makes the chess matches so mesmerizing. She fits so perfectly into the 1960s fashions and mannerisms that she may well have been born in the wrong decade. 

The supporting cast is also terrific, especially Heller as Alma, who acts as both an enabler and support system for her surprisingly smart adopted daughter. Known mostly for her work as a director ("A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood"), Heller makes Alma so much more than just another disillusioned housewife. Newcomer Moses Ingram, who plays Jolene, Beth's best friend from the orphanage, also stands out brightly in a limited amount of screen time. 

There have been many films and TV shows about geniuses and the burden and costs of a great mind, but few with a woman's story at the center. Beth is as messy, mean and ultimately brilliant as the likes of John Nash (Russell Crowe in "A Beautiful Mind") or Will Hunting (Matt Damon in "Good Will Hunting"). 

Beth Harmon could probably beat them both at chess.  

from NPR.com
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/15/912693066/the-third-day-makes-mysterious-but-predictable-promises

THE THIRD DAY

***************
HBO Miniseries "The Third Day"

'The Third Day' Makes Mysterious But Predictable Promises
by Linda Holmes, NPR.
September 15, 2020

Jude Law plays a man who's in over his head in HBO's The Third Day.Robert Ludovic/HBO

A community of strange locals, closed-mouthed about their history and their practices but firmly separated from most of society, is a staple of mystery stories. So is the person who stumbles upon them, fascinated and frightened and seduced by the unknown.

That's the basic set-up for The Third Day, a six-part HBO miniseries that premiered Monday night. Jude Law stars as Sam, a man we first meet while he's in the middle of a frantic phone call, stopped by the side of a deserted road. We quickly learn that he's got problems at home, but he's also on his way to complete a ritual related to grief in his past. He encounters a young teenager in distress, and he wants to help her and take her home, so he follows her directions to Osea Island. Sam finds it — you guessed it — odd, beguiling, confusing, full of mystery.

The series is divided into two parts. We will follow Sam's story for the first three episodes, called "Summer," and then we will follow a woman named Helen (Naomie Harris) and her daughters — who also find themselves at Osea Island — for three episodes, called "Winter." How this all comes together into a single narrative is something it wouldn't be fair to explain (critics were given five out of the six episodes, making reviewing it something of a challenge).

The Third Day is an effective creepy mystery in the early going, setting up question after question — why did that person do that? What is he talking about? What's that mysterious-looking thing? -- that it will eventually have to answer in order to be satisfying. Many of those questions are answered over the course of the first five episodes, and they do hang together in a coherent fashion. The problem is that the story they tell isn't all that interesting, nor is it outside the ... well, the expected set of explanations for a community of creepy locals. It calls back to numerous other stories of those who stumble into towns from which they probably should skedaddle posthaste, to the point where you could almost diagram at the beginning the flow chart of options for where this is all going, and you wouldn't have to move very far off the chart by the end.

Law is a talented actor who's expanded his image since his impossibly pretty youth, and this is certainly one of his less glamorous roles. (But let's face it: He's still one of the most facially symmetrical actors we have.) He's always been more interesting when used at an angle, either in a way that makes his beauty tragic (as in The Talented Mr. Ripley) or that transforms his charisma into something almost grotesque (as in Spy). Sam is certainly a tortured man with a pained history that gives Law a lot of room to emote, but is the character particularly complex? I'm not sure. It feels at times like The Third Day has confusion where it should have nuance, the blunt sense that you're waiting for an envelope to be opened where you should feel engrossed in the fates of the characters.

The cast is solid, even outside of Law, who carries the first half: Harris is a good and protective mom, Emily Watson is fun as one of the townspeople whose entire demeanor should be a red flag for Sam, and Katherine Waterston is just the right amount of normal as a woman who explains to Sam that she came to Osea to study it. It's possible that choosing any of those characters, rather than Sam, to carry the first three episodes might have been wise, if only to change up the point of view.

It's hard to knock a show that knows what its mood is (in this case, creeping dread) and carries it through. Genre pieces feel like the genres they belong to, and it's unfair to ding them for that. But there's something that just never quite takes off about these five installments (I'd love to tell you whether the sixth solves the problem, but who knows?). The setting is there, but there's something disappointing about the reveals, and a little hollow. You want the resolution to a mystery to be expansive like an essay, not just a multiple-choice question where you can finally circle the right answer.

Avengers #26-30: Starbrand Reborn

 STARBRAND REBORN

Written by Jason Aaron

Penciled by Dale Keown, Ed McGuinness, and Andrea Sorrentino

Published Nov 2019-Jan 2020

   So the Starbrand is a magical cosmic force, right? And it was in the pre-historic Avengers as Hulk that Iron Man has currently been transported back in time to. But either way, that was then (and sort of now) but in the present, the Avengers have a more pressing situation on their hands. The Starbrand has put itself in a pregnant migrant woman from Kansas, and now Gladiator and the Sh'air want her dead to prevent the universe from ending.

   Fear not though. Because although Silver Surfer and some other cosmics are involved, the Avengers + Ghost Rider + Blade covered in Man-Thing + Black-Widow-In-Stark-Armor are here to save the day. Plus appearances from Captain Marvel and She-Hulk, this one goes off the rails pretty quickly. At the end, the baby is born with the Starbrand mark as her poor mother passes away. But what will happen in the future? We'll have to wait to find out.

I give this one a 7/10. 

X-MEN #1-6

Written by Jonathan Hickman
Penciled by Leinel Francis Yu, RB SIlva, and Mateo Buffagani
Published Oct 2019-Feb 2020

   In a series of stores that goes all over the place while still managing to keep everything in check, Jonathan Hickman has proven that he’s the real deal. Obviously after the events of creating Krakoa, nothing is going to come easy. Hickman touches on that while navigating both some visitors from the Savage Land as well as some creepy plant obsessed horticulturalists. 

   Plus dealing with espionage as well as a missing mutant from the Vault, this one really checked all the boxes. Everybody is coming for Krakoa and what Magneto and weird, young helmet classed Xavier have built. But in the immortal words of Omar Little, if you come for the king, you best not miss. I give this one an easy 10/10.

NEW MUTANTS #1-7

Written by Jonathan Hickman and Ed Brisson 
Penciled by Rod Reid, Flaviano, and Marco Failla
Published Oct 2019 - Feb 2020

 So the first 7 issues of this book are two different stories. That kind of thing usually annoys me, but this time, it totally worked. Basically Sunspot misses Cannonball, who is in space. So he gets a group of mostly original New Mutants to head off to rescue him. Guest starring the Starjammers, Gladiator, and lots Sh'air stuff that usually irritates me, this one was pretty solid.

   The second was a group of more obscure but familiar X-Men like Armor missing her other obscure friend Beak. So she goes through a portal but inadvertently lures a bunch of drug dealers out to Nebraska to hold his entire bird family hostage. Luckily everyone lives...for the most part. 

   Not a bad series so far. It's definitely what this title has historically been and Ed Brisson and Jonathan Hickman are just amazing writers. I'm dreading what X Factor and the other X books will hold but so far, this one is a winner. I give it a 10/10.

from Vulture.com
https://www.vulture.com/article/away-episode-6-season-1-recap-a-little-faith.html

Away S1 Ep 6: A Little Faith
****

Away Recap: The Space Botanist
By Maggie Fremont


Photo: Courtesy of Netflix

Can this mission to Mars be simultaneously cursed and blessed? Because on one hand, now the water supply has been compromised and the one person onboard who could fix it has space blindness, but on the other, Kwesi is there and he is an angel person. It’s really a toss up.

Okay, fine, mostly it feels cursed because really, what else could go wrong before even dealing with the actual landing on Mars? And having a diminished water supply is a biggie — do not mess with dehydration, people. I was just trying to stay positive! And I do mean it: Kwesi is an angel person. We finally get a deeper look at both his backstory and who he is now throughout the latest crisis to plague the Atlas crew.

Kwesi’s over in his mini-greenhouse just, you know, creating life on a spaceship, when he realizes there’s a clog in the water supply. It seems like this has happened before, and he tracks down Misha — who’s in his pod playing chess with Lu and having trouble seeing which piece is which, and that cannot be a good sign re: his eyesight — to check the situation out, only to discover that it’s much more than a clog: The heart of the ship’s water recovery system, the distillation assembly, is dead.

They have a back-up system, but as Misha notes, it’s more like a spare tire — it’s not meant for the long haul. He comes up with a plan to take the distillation assembly out of the backup and put it into the main system so that they can actually make it to Mars without dying of dehydration. There are several obstacles from the get-go: The system and the transfer of the DA is extremely intricate (it’s basically heart surgery on their spaceship), their communication with Ground has a half-hour lag, so they’re pretty much on their own, and oh yeah did I mention, the person who has to perform the bulk of the job is going blind.

The repair gets even more difficult as they go along. The crew starts to split on whether or not to let Misha continue trying to fix the main system or hedge their bets and just reinstall the heart of the backup and attempt to use that until they land on Mars where their new supplies will be waiting in the unmanned ship NASA will be sending. Misha pleads with them to let him finish; this is what he was brought on this mission to do and his last eye exam showed a marked improvement. The crew leaves it up to Emma to decide. You can see how badly she wants to trust Misha to do this job and save their lives. She tells him to continue.

It’s the wrong choice.

They know this the moment a screw goes floating past Misha and he doesn’t even see it. Things get heated on the Atlas and finally Misha admits that he memorized the eye chart to make it look like he was improving. He can’t even see how many fingers Lu is holding up when she’s standing right in front of him. The crew is apoplectic. This was a betrayal, Lu tells Misha. She cuts to his core! They decide to change course and have Ram try and put the backup water system back together again. It’s their best chance at survival, and it isn’t even a guaranteed one. Space is real fun, guys.

Tensions are high because of how fatal this situation is, plus no one’s been drinking water so everyone is severely dehydrated — WHICH I WARNED YOU ABOUT — and things quickly devolve into a shouting match, until Kwesi, our sweet little space botanist, steps in.

Kwesi has always been the Man of Faith on the mission. Devoutly Jewish, we saw him praying with his mother over video chat, one of his few belongings he brought with him was his Torah, and he’s the one who turns to prayer for his crewmates in the most dire situations. Here, in this heated moment, he tells the crew that they’re being tested. But no one wants to hear about faith and prayer and God right now. But, he explains, this is about having faith in each other. And yes, I know that writing that out here makes it sound beyond cheesy, but Kwesi sells the hell out of it, okay? It is not just a speech, but a Speech. And it works. The rest of the crew takes a breath and remembers that they’ve all been chosen for this job because they’re the best at what they do. And then they get to work.

Just because Kwesi’s faith seems unwavering on the Atlas doesn’t mean that was always the case. In his flashbacks, we see tiny Kwesi newly adopted by a couple in England who work for the World Relief Fund, after Kwesi’s family died in Ghana. His adoptive father Sisi, a gardener, also came from Ghana, met his wife Miriam, through the World Relief Fund, and fell in love. Judaism became a huge part of their relationship. As a young boy, Kwesi doesn’t buy it and he’s extremely wary of his adoptive parents. Sisi tries to explain that he and Miriam aren’t trying to impose their religion on him, nor are they trying to replace his parents. He gives him a gift: A papaya flower tree, or Flame Tree, to plant in their garden here. Kwesi recognizes it immediately as a tree in his garden from home. It’s not meant to thrive in the English soil, but Sisi says they’ll try their best to help it grow. This show is doing a lot of cool space stuff, but that shot of teen Kwesi and Miriam memorializing Sisi after he’s died in the English fog, next to that bright, beautiful tree? Now that’s a shot.

Plants became a way for Kwesi to understand his adoptive father, and a way to understand the world. It’s why he became a botanist. And it’s why what happens next is so particularly devastating. LOL, sometimes I can’t believe how sad this show is. Mars better be worth it!

Working together, the crew gets the backup water system online, but after disassembling and reassembling, the very sensitive system is only working at half the capacity it was before. This is bad, but they do have an contingency in place for something like this: emergency water rations. This, heartbreakingly, means there’s not enough water to use on Kwesi’s plants. Within a week or so, they’ll all die. All of his work is just gone. He takes it surprisingly well — he, more than anyone, seems to understand the greater mission at hand. He takes it even better than his fellow crewmates, who one by one arrive at his greenhouse, looking to get some final moments in this place that has become a peaceful refuge for all of them — a piece of home. Even Misha! I truly can’t believe I’m crying about plants in space, but times are weird people.

Mission Control

• As the crew is lamenting the dire water situation while saying good-bye to Kwesi’s plants, Ram mentions that they’re like sailors who die of thirst in the middle of the ocean — the walls of the ship are full of water, but it’s meant to protect them from radiation. Dropping this bit of info doesn’t seem like an accident. Don’t tell me about water in the walls and do nothing about it!

• Sure there’s a lag in communication between the Atlas and Houston, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t working on the water problem, too. Guess who’s baaaaaack: Matt Logan! Emma sends him a message about the water problem and he immediately heads to NASA for the first time since his stroke. He wants to get back to work. Darlene informs him that he can only work as a consultant and not on the mission control floor because he’s just too emotionally invested. Um, no duh. Wouldn’t they have figured he’d be too emotionally tied to this mission from the start? The commander has been his wife the entire time!

• After hearing about the result of the repairs, Matt’s sole focus is fixing the water problem and he tells Darlene as much: He doesn’t care about his title or where his office is, he is working on this! He is going to save his wife, er — this mission to Mars!

• In other Matt news: He finally meets Isaac. While driving home from NASA and trying to message Emma, Matt’s car ends up in a ditch on the side of the road. He’s fine, but Lex, who happens to be with Isaac at the time, ends up coming to his rescue. He grills Isaac with questions until he makes himself look like an ass when he forces Isaac to open up about his father who was KIA. Matt’s on board with Isaac after spending some time with him, although he warns Lex not to move too fast and to never get on one of Isaac’s bikes. Meanwhile, Lex is kissing Isaac in the driveway and has already taken a liking to #thatbikelife.

• Emma finally receives Matt’s message of reassurance that everything will be okay after they announce emergency water rations, but it still manages to calm her. He records the rain falling, which you would think would be a slap in the face at the moment, but it seems to be healing for Emma, as she imagines it falling all over her.

• Seriously guys, drink water.

X-FORCE #1-6

Written by Benjamin Percy
Penciled by Joshua Cassara
Published Oct 2019-Jan 2020

   As we get a look into what is going to make Krakoa successful, it’s clear the X-Men will need their own CIA. That’s where this group comes in. From an assassination of Xavier to Domino being skinned alive, not even killing these X folk will keep them down. Xavier navigates a new world that is jealous of what the mutants have, even though he gave them everything in return. We see a still cautious Magneto, a somewhat unwilling Jean Gray and a really scheming Beast. This isn’t your standard old boring Cable lead New Mutants squad... this is a ruthless group of actual X-Men. And it’s written almost perfectly. This one is getting good... I give this story a 10/10.