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Review: Netflix’s Stranger Things – Season Four, Vol. 1

May 29, 2022 by krisis

Stranger Things Season Four, Vol. 1 is WILD, y’all!

(This post will be utterly spoiler free up until I give you a bold warning, below!)

Stranger Things Season Four PosterI didn’t meant to do it, but somehow I managed to binge all nine hours of Stranger Things Season Four within a single 24-hour period this weekend. Honestly, I just couldn’t turn it off, even if it meant almost completely sacrificing a day of sleep.

For a moment early in the season it seems like Season Four shared the same weakness as the past two seasons: The Duffers are convinced their breakout stars need their own storylines, which often feel like entirely separate shows within the show.

For a few episodes, it does feel like this story has become too big, too discursive. The core quartet of boys are fractured across multiple plots, and there are even more plotlines that don’t include them or Eleven.

Even as the plot feels bigger than ever before, Season 4 finally acknowledges that the show has never been about singular stars. It’s not a show about Eleven, Hopper, or even Hawkins. It’s about how your circle of friends grows and changes as you change how you define yourself. It’s about how things that used to be scary are now commonplace, and how the newest hurdle in your life always feels the highest.

Stranger Things could’ve become a horror anthology series returning to Hawkins again and again without our core cast of misfits. However, this time it really feels like a story about the misfits (like S1 did) as much as it is about the horror around them… and what caused it. The show’s ever-growing ensemble of actors makes it work the best it has since Season 1 (which I crushed on back in 2016).

Be warned: Stranger Things Season 4 is bloodier and scarier than any of the past volumes. There are fewer jump scares, but more outright gore and onscreen violence.

Also, the first few minutes of the first episode focus on the aftermath of graphic violence that might be triggering for some viewers – this week, especially. It received a special content warning in the states, but we didn’t get it here in New Zealand. If you’re sensitive to images of violence against children, you can safely skip from the big “knockout” blackout at the 7-minute mark to the end of the opening credits. You’ll see the same scene again in a less disturbing fashion later in the season.

(Continue reading if you want very minor spoilers about the characters and their arcs as of the beginning of the season.) [Read more…] about Review: Netflix’s Stranger Things – Season Four, Vol. 1

Filed Under: reviews, teevee Tagged With: Netflix, Stranger Things

Crushing On: Netflix’s Dark

December 10, 2017 by krisis

It’s pretty hard to convince me to sit down to watch a non-drag television show these days.

TV is a time suck and its decompressed storytelling can be stultifying. It’s a lot like back in high school when I wouldn’t partake in slow dances at the prom. “They’re just really long, boring hugs,” I would say, “They make perfect bathroom breaks. Come get me for the next fast song.”

(I still mostly feel this way about slow dances.)

That’s why I am relatively surprised to inform you I have binged all ten hour-long episodes of Dark, Netflix’s new German import, in a matter of days. And I loved it, aside from some questionable dubbing.

If you are a fan of Stranger Things and either Lost or Primer, I strongly suspect you will love it, too.

Dark is set in 2019 in Linden, a small German town that has built itself around the economic stability of a local nuclear power plant. The same people have lived in Linden for years, so that families have aged into multi-generational conflicts stretching back to the years just after World War II.

It is June in the opening moments of the show. We hear a disembodied monologue about the cyclical nature of time and then witness a man, Michael Kahnwald, die by suicide. Kahnwald leaves a letter behind, with instructions not to open it until November.

We return to the town in November, just short of the letter’s open-by date. Kahnwald’s son Jonas is trying to reacclimate to the daily grind of school just as teenage classmate has gone missing.

It’s not just his disappearance that unnerves the town. It dredges up memories of another boy that went missing, 33 years prior.

That boy was never found.

At first it seems as though the show will simply be about how Linden refuses to accept its roiling undertow of darkness, both in the present and from the past. Both parents and teens seem to recoil from the emotions surrounding from the elder Kahnwald’s death, and from Jonas and his troubled mother, Hannah.

The town also is hesitant to deal with the teen boy’s disappearance in any realistic way, from widening their search to more closely watching their children. Residents seem uncomfortable when the school principle urges them to take care and action.

At the end of that first episode, we watch as another young boy disappears – seemingly into thin air, much as Will disappears in the first episode of Season 1 of Stranger Things. 

It’s an easy comparison to make, and for an episode it seems like the shows will be going to a similar place. However, just as Stranger Things exploded at its halfway point, Dark turns into a totally different kind of story at the end of its second episode. Maybe an entirely different kind of show!

The subsequent hour of television a revelation, but also a sizable speed-bump to your binging. I almost quit watching.

Even when I am riveted by a TV show, I am awful at character names. It takes a show like Battlestar Galactica, full of constantly repeated unique call signs, for me to remember what anyone is called.

Dark starts out with over a dozen named characters, all of whom are vaguely similar-looking Teutonic white people who I could barely tell apart. Then comes the massive third episode twist that felt at points like a quiz on how well I had been paying attention to the first two episodes.

I thought I was done. I briefly turned the show off. Luckily, I found the straightforward recaps on Father Son Holy Gore, which worked well as a character-name cheat sheet and also a plot refresher.

Armed with knowledge (or, at least, a rudimentary amount of name-and-face recognition), I pressed forward. I’m so glad that I did. Despite some truly dreadful English dubbing and an overbearing, ominous soundtrack that sounds like something that Forgetting Sarah Marshall‘s Peter Bretter might have cooked up during a bender, the intricate story and strong cast of Dark makes it 10 episodes of TV that reward your attention.

That said… you have to be willing to leave it there. Time might be cyclical, but Dark ends in a very different place than it began – one that means its multi-generational web of lust, deceit, and vengeance likely won’t dominate a second season as it did the first. Add to that the Lost problem – despite leaving at least 27 major questions unanswered, showrunners Writer Jantje Friese and director Baran bo Odar don’t have a darn clue of where they’re headed in Season 2 [heavy spoilers in both those links!].

I’m fine with that. I think Dark works perfectly well as a twisted low-fantasy allegory about how the radiation of a nuclear plant poisons the relationships in a town, forcing its residents to live out the same little acts of violence again and again. I don’t need a wider world with a higher stakes plot.

As much as the final frames are meant to be an unpredictable shock, they line up surprisingly well with restarting first episode, so that you can watch this on an endless loop, digging deeper in to the relationships that drive the mysteries on each pass. (Thus, my comparison to all-time-fav Primer.)

Filed Under: reviews, teevee Tagged With: dark, Netflix

Updated: The Definitive Guide to The Defenders Comic Books

November 2, 2017 by krisis

Today I’ve got a comprehensive update to a team guide – The Defenders – The Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order!

The Defenders have waited a long time for their year in the spotlight – since their debut as a team in 1972! Finally, 45 years later, it’s The Defenders time to shine with their own Netflix series and no Avengers or X-Men movies to outshine them.

But, wait… do these 2017 Defenders have anything to do with their 1972 counter-parts?

It’s kind of a long story, but I’ve got the Cliff Notes for you Keep reading to learn all the highlights, including Defenders 1972 vs Defenders 2017, all the newest collections, and the overall percentage of Defenders comics we’ve seen collected in color.

[Read more…] about Updated: The Definitive Guide to The Defenders Comic Books

Filed Under: comic books Tagged With: Defenders, Netflix, New Defenders, Updated Comic Guide

Review: Netflix’s Stranger Things, Season One

July 19, 2016 by krisis

As with the release of any of Netflix’s “bing it all at once” television seasons, this weekend my social feed went from a stray mention of Stranger Things on Friday to a steady stream on Saturday as more and more people began to sample the eight-episode thriller.

I didn’t want to be a late adopter this time around (or: be spoiled!), so I jumped onto the bandwagon on Saturday night – and wound up finishing the entire show within 48hrs!

That’s not just because I love to binge on TV. In many ways, Stranger Things is Neflix’s most cohesive and successful original work yet. While the performances might not be of the raw caliber of acting as those in House of Cards or Orange Is The New Black, they all work perfecting in the unflinching service of this period 1980s thriller.

Stranger Things, Season 1 4.5 stars 

There are very light, “this is the concept, these are the characters, this happens in the beginning of Ep1” spoilers in the first section; a more spoiler-filled take for those who’ve already seen the show follows, below.

CK Says: Watch it!

Stranger Things is a Netflix original that’s obsessed with the 80s work of Steven Spielberg, Stephen King, and Amblin Entertainment. It’s about a hidden horror, a terrifying secret, and how a group of kids bear the burden of both on the behalf of an entire sleepy town.

While Stranger Things is reverent of those influences, the show rarely feels derivative as it unfurls a sci-fi plot that is as human as it is creepy. The focus is always on the characters and rarely on the fantasy, even though the fantastical element are a seamlessly-executed success.

The opening frames introduce us to Hawkins, Indiana in November of 1983. We briefly glimpse a terrified scientist fleeing through the abandoned, flickering halls of a research facility on the outskirts of town before he is captured by an unseen creature.

The rest of Hawkins seems none the wiser to these events – it could not be more average. The geeky kids play Dungeons & Dragons and are obsessed with Star Wars. The teens are shot-gunning beers and talking about sex without consequence. The parents are stringing together jobs and cooking dinner without worrying too much about where their kids are hanging out and with whom. A surly sheriff hasn’t had to deal with any major crime – the last notable one was in the 20s!

Anything past idle teenage vandalism would be notable in this tiny ville. Yet, it’s also idyllic enough that a missing child can be chalked up to a wrong turn on a hike or deciding to take a Greyhound for an adventure to the city. That disappearance is accompanied by the appearance of a seemingly-mute young girl with a shaved head. She’s desperate to escape an anonymous group of men and women in black who want to haul her back to that same mysterious lab. When she encounters a trio of nerdy kids searching for their missing friend, it acts as a flashpoint that begins to unveil the horror that’s been unleashed on the small town. [Read more…] about Review: Netflix’s Stranger Things, Season One

Filed Under: reviews, teevee Tagged With: Amblin Entertainment, Netflix, Stephen King, Steven Spielberg, Stranger Things, Winona Ryder

Marvel’s Most-Wanted Omnibuses of 2016 – #15, 14, and 13

June 13, 2016 by krisis

Omnibus on ShelfWelcome to week two of my journey through the Top 50 Most-Wanted Omnibuses from Marvel, per an annual secret ballot conducted by major fan TigerEyes. I covered #20-16 in the last installment.

The books ranked from 15 to 1 are some of the most-consistently demanded Marvel material, although two thirds of it is already readily available in color. Particularly, this group of books shows how important cinematic depictions of the Marvel Universe have become even to long-time fans – every book corresponds to a specific screen property.

If you have any extra intelligence to add about the probable runs or opinions about the comics therein, please leave a comment! Even when it comes to X-Men, I’m far from a prohibitive expert on these books. I’d love to hear your perspective.

Want to learn more about the Marvel Omnibus editions that already exist and the issues they cover? My Marvel Omnibus & Oversized Hardcover Guide is the most comprehensive tool on the web for tracking Marvel’s hugest releases – it features every book, plus release dates, contents, and even breakdowns of $/page and what movies the books were released to support. [Read more…] about Marvel’s Most-Wanted Omnibuses of 2016 – #15, 14, and 13

Filed Under: comic books Tagged With: Adam Warlock, Apocalypse, Aunt May, Bob Layton, Brian Bendis, Collected Editions, Dazzler, Fall of the Mutants, Garth Ennis, Infinity Gauntlet, Infinity War, Jackson Guice, Jean Grey, Louise Simonson, Mark Bagley, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel Comics, MAX, Netflix, Omnibus, Punisher, Secret Wars, Spider-Man, Thanos, Ultimate Comics, Walter Simonson, X-Factor

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