henrycoles9

"Black Snow" is a riveting story of a detective who works on murder and missing persons cold cases in Queensland, Australia. Travis Fimmel shines as the down-to-earth, mysterious, complicated Detective Jimmy Cormack, who also happens to have his own demons from a troubled childhood to deal with even as he investigates the trails of young women long gone around the State.

But he's also pretty funny sometimes. You'd see him lackadaisically grabbing something to eat or drink while his sidekick (the amazing Megan Smart in season 2) questions people in their own homes or searches someone's bedroom for evidence.

Here are two hilarious lines that left me in stitches:

From season 2, episode 5, "Money" (at 03:20 minutes): Constable Philip Tort: "My shout at the pub tonight, sarge?" Detective Jimmy Cormack: "Ah, sorry, mate. I can't make it; me grandma died... again!"

And from season 2, episode 6, "Sapphire," (at 01:15 minutes): Constable Samara Khalil: "Didn't the brass say that that was off limits?" Detective Jimmy Cormack: "Yeah, but the dentist tells you to floss too, doesn't he? But do you actually do it?" Samara: "Yes." Jimmy: "Oh."

Interestingly, I didn't manage to guess the killer in season 1, but my guess of who the murderer in season 2 was turned out to be right!

This is one of those hyped-up, elite-level blockbuster franchises that make you go into them feeling obliged to love and think the world of them as if your life were about to change forever and your eyes were about to open like never before, and then they make you feel guilty when you don't.

Where is the story?

Seriously, where is the plot?

Please name me one twist and turn; I dare you. I'm not asking for an audible-gasp, life-altering, earth-shattering twist and turn - just any twist and turn.

Not even one.

And I'm not even gonna go into the cultural appropriation nonsense.

I don't mind a little cultural appropriation, especially of my own Middle Eastern culture even, as long as you make it the least bit palatable and bare-minimum watchable. I absolutely would enjoy the prophecy of a White Man Savior (and his Maryesque-figure White Mother Oracle) who delivers the Arab-adjacent Native Desert Dwellers to Green Paradise, if you actually made an effort into making him and his Native love interest more likeable than the sleepy Timothée Chalamat and Zendaya.

"Lisan al Ghaib" this, "Lisan al Ghaib" that - I seriously cannot believe I had the physical stamina to sit through five hours in total of this mind-numbing, soul-crushing, mortally boring script!

You'd think a movie franchise of this magnitude would have better writers, but hey, at least you saw a bunch of wannabe-Arabian-Bedouins ride giant sandworms into a sandstorm, and then into another sandstorm, and another, and another. My goodness.

Aside from all that, the movie looks terribly disjunct throughout. There's little logical sequential continuity from one scene to another. And believe me - I'm one for artistic leeway; I'm a big, huge fan of unconventional ways of storytelling in film and TV. But making a movie out of such obviously disconnected pieces strung end to end is definitely not the avant-grade artistic flair you think it is.

I rewatched Dune Part 1 before watching Part 2, and then I could not for the life of me understand how in all good conscience I'd given Part 1 a nine-star rating here on IMDb when I first watched it in theater four years ago. Still, it was certainly less horrible than Part 2, though. Perhaps Oscar Isaac was the one redeeming feature then.

And I certainly won't be holding my breath for Dune Part 3.

There are many franchises that didn't deserve to be cut short because of Big Corporate decisions, but somehow this one will survive. Because no matter what a tasteless, soulless, odious piece of pseudo-art these filmmakers will churn out, the millions upon millions will flock to the theaters for a chance to watch a superstar play hero and win the girl on an alien planet.

What a disgrace.

This was a mash-up of so many of my favorite TV shows. "The OA" was "The Man in the High Castle" meets "The Leftovers" meets "Impulse" meets "Lost."

I can't get over how obsessed I've become with this show. Brit Marling is both a superb actress and a genius show creator and producer. I can't emphasize this enough.

Like the aforementioned shows, "The OA" is exquisite science fiction. But it's not the kind of pure science fiction with the nifty futuristic gadgets and gizmos and the grand earth-shattering stories of multitudes of people.

"The OA" is a very personal show and it dives the deepest a show has ever done into the inner meaning of life, humanity and, above all, love. Brit Marling plays Prairie Johnson/Nina Azarova who in her mid or late 20s has recovered the sight she'd lost when she was a young kid in her native Russia. The degree to which Brit explores the full gamut of human emotion - love, hate, hope, desperation, joy, resentment, compassion, vengeance - through this young woman's never-ending hardships in life is unfathomably out of this world.

It was so supernatural and spiritual and yet it all felt so natural and real.

The power of dreams, the exploration of near-death experiences and of the multiverse, the portrayal of young love - pure, true, young love that transcends universes and realities - and the meaning of reality itself, will have Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij's "The OA" seared on my heart, mind and soul for the rest of my life.

This show was so personally emotionally touching and intoxicating and riveting and captivating that I had to write this review nearly two years after my last post on this website.

My life won't be the same.

Canceling this show was the greatest crime in the history of TV. Shame!