friendful

If I'm going to write a review I have to include a warning that if you're wanting to watch The Bletchley Circle Series 3, this isn't it.Tonally it's just different, which to me seems appropriate given the change of setting. It's also functionally different given the skills this new group of ladies brings to the table. The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco is a spin-off series that brings us a quite different post-war perspective. I thought the first couple episodes were middling. They were very conscious of the history but I'm not sure how successful they were in communicating it. It's not that it's inaccurate, it's just that they're trying to shove a lot of background/world-building into a very small space due to time constraints. That meant there were conversations/interactions that came off more stilted than the (apparent) intent. The series might have remained an okay 2.5 star watch, but about halfway through they started to really hit their stride. It's like the writers finally relaxed into it a little. The dynamics between the American and British women started to gel as well. I try to give every series I start at least four episodes to convince me, and in this instance I'm glad I do because otherwise I might have stopped watching after the first. I read that there are more episodes set to air next year. Fingers crossed they maintain their momentum. If they do it's going to be fun.

I have to start by saying this trope is my utter catnip. Leon, Man on Fire, The Man From Nowhere, Safe, heck I even watched Rocky Handsome! If there's a dangerous killer with a PAST protecting a kid I will watch. What I'm saying is that I was definitely the target audience for this movie. When I saw the initial teaser I was excited because Henson is a fave and action movies are a fave, so yay! Then I saw the blurb and be still my heart, catnip. I was so disappointed that it didn't show in my city for some reason. I checked regularly and it still makes no sense to me that we never got it as it showed in podunk but not a metro area. But FINALLY I got to see it and it was better than I expected. It's very easy to mess a trope like this up (I'm looking at you "Security"), so I appreciated that it wasn't afraid to slow the pace and have those quiet moments that show us the emotional connections involved. That said, it had its flaws. We were supposed to feel the Mary's emotional connection with certain characters, but the filmmaker made the unfortunate decision to do more telling than showing. I understand time constraints but if you're going to choose to approach this trope in this manner... you need to provide that screen time. I actually think most of the flaws would have been avoided if that one issue had been fixed. They all kind of flow from it, directly or indirectly. If it weren't for that (sadly common) mistake this could have easily received full stars from me. It's probably going to go on the catnip rewatch list, but I'd be careful who I recommended it to because not everyone has the devotion to this trope that I do. My mom? Not so much. My step-mum? Probably. My siblings? My dad? My step-dad? My auntie? Definitely.

I was raised on Star Wars, Star Trek, Lynch's Dune, and The Day the Earth Stood Still. My stepfather would buy the SW novelizations and I read them obsessively as a kid. I also read the kid series that he didn't buy (support your local libraries!). I think it's safe to say that I have some well-grounded, pertinent knowledge. I feel when rating a movie like this (with the well-publicized reactionary reviews) I have to present my bona fides first thing. I liked this movie a lot. Was it perfect? No. Was it the worst movie in the series? HAHAHAno. How does it compare with the original trilogy? I think it compares rather well. But that also means it suffers from some of the same weaknesses of the original series while facing an audience less willing to handwave said weaknesses away. The main thing I saw people who weren't being reactionary complain about were plot holes. Were there as many as people say? Well...not really. The phrase gets thrown around a lot when people are ragging on a movie, but the accepted definition is still the one in common usage. There were plot WEAKNESSES, definitely, but a plot hole is a gap in the narrative that (and this is the key point) "goes against the flow of logic *established by the story's plot*." Which means if something follows the internal logic that has been established...it's not a plot hole. There were a couple narrative choices that made me roll my eyes, there were moments that seemed illogical to me but fit the previously established characterization, and there was one section that just seemed so pointless. I didn't like those bits and it took this movie from a 10 to an 8 (well, more like a 9.5 to a 7.5). They weren't plot holes, they were just poor choices. Overall, I think this movie has a solid standing in the Star Wars pantheon. I know fans who raved and put it as their new number one, I wouldn't go quite that far. But it's definitely in the top half of my rankings.