vid8 Reviews

A Suitable Boy (2020)

Each episode is an improvement on the last

[9/10 · 16 August 2020]

A Suitable Boy is one of the best novels of all time, and deserves a good TV adaptation. This BBC production - helmed by Mira Nair and Andrew Davies - does not disappoint. While it starts off slowly, like the novel itself, by the third episode it matures into a wonderful, moving series, one which does justice to the novel itself, and the fourth episode was incredible.

Mrs Rupa Mehra, Lata's mother, is captured perfectly, as are the loquacious, prone-to-rhyming Chatterjis. Tanya Maniktala puts in a fabulous performance as Lata herself, while Ishaan Khatter and Tabu shine as Maan Kapoor and Saeeda Bai.

My only recommendation, for those who haven't read the novel, is to consult a family tree.

Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret (2014)

Excellent documentary

[10/10 · 16 September 2015]

An excellent documentary highlighting the incredible secrecy of the animal agriculture industry, as well as the devastating impacts that the meat and dairy industries have on the environment.

It's particularly relevant seeing as Hampton Creek, a company making a vegan egg substitute that was featured in the documentary, was recently targeted by government officials lobbied by the egg industry.

It also makes an effort to engage with the arguments of people who support more sustainable meat, such as Michael Pollan, but demonstrates that everyone would still need to drastically reduce meat consumption even if so-called sustainable meat were available. As it happens, the documentary demonstrates that it's highly questionable that grass-fed or backyard meat is the answer.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993–1999)

Best of Star Trek and TV in general

[10/10 · 13 February 2015]

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is easily my favourite television show of all time - in any genre. The series contains well thought-out story arcs and excellent character development in particular, owing to its team of adventurous writers, particularly Ronald D. Moore, who went on to create the great Battlestar Galactica reboot, and the series' show-runner for the majority of the time - Ira Steven Behr.

Although it was clear that Deep Space Nine was going to be far more serialised than any previous Star Trek incarnation, the arc didn't really get going fully until Season 3. Having said that, Seasons 1 and 2 still contained great, if not exceptional (see "Duet", for instance), episodes.

Some may believe that Deep Space Nine was held back by its setting, the Star Trek universe, seeing as the Federation is a Utopian communist society with no class system, currency or nation state on Earth. On the contrary, it was great to see Deep Space Nine making the Star Trek universe a lot darker, for example in the Season 4 episodes "Homefront" and "Paradise Lost" and Season 6's "In the Pale Moonlight" and "Inquisition", while still keeping in line with the fundamental principles of Star Trek, namely the emphasis on equality, diversity and humanitarianism.

In fact, I would say that its main advantage over other, similar shows such as Bayblon 5 and Battlestar Galactica is the fact that it is set in the Star Trek universe, which, for most who have watched the other Star Trek series, is a universe people care about and want to succeed in the face of threats such as the Dominion. Aside from that, the acting in Deep Space Nine is easily superior to that on Babylon 5, with Andrew J. Robinson skilfully portraying the cryptic Garak and Marc Alaimo doing a great job as one of the most complex, well-written villains in history, Gul Dukat. In addition, I can find very little fault in the main cast, with Nana Visitor, Colm Meaney and Rene Auberjonois doing an exquisite job in their respective character-based episodes, particularly Visitor in "Duet" and Meaney in "Hard Time".

DS9 went even further than simply including a giant story arc when it made it much, much tighter at the end of Season 5 and the start of Season 6, with what was, essentially, a 7-part episode. To get even 3 parts was unheard of in Trek before then. The frustrating thing, as others have noted, was that after this, it became overly episodic, meaning that we had to wait for quite a long time in Season 6 before we got to two more episodes furthering the storyline in some way. To be fair, though, they included one of the best, if not the best, episode, in the history of science fiction - "In the Pale Moonlight", and the other introduces the mysterious Section 31.

Season 7, though, went even further and included a 10-part episode arc which was a joy to watch - like the Season 6 arc, it included incredible space battles which are hard to rival, even today. In the Season 7 episode-arc, the series was also wrapped up very nicely.

All in all, Deep Space Nine is a very intelligent television series, darker than previous incarnations of Trek, addressing and even prophesying developments in the 21st Century, and dealing with issues such as war, terrorism, occupation, religion, authoritarianism and the nature of good and evil. As an atheist, the religion aspect did get a tad annoying at times, but certainly not as annoying as in Battlestar Galactica. Aside from the more philosophical aspects of the show, it was equally unafraid of comedy and humour, and I enjoyed most of the Ferengi comedy episodes.

Deep Space Nine is a series which I can regularly re-watch when it's on TV - it is not too serialised, but not too episodic, for the most part, either.

Star Trek: Enterprise: Carpenter Street (2003) Season 3, Episode 11

Entertaining episode

[10/10 · 22 January 2015]

In this episode, Archer and T'Pol time-travel back to 2004 to attempt to stop the Xindi from destroying humanity.

The plot wasn't bad, but what I enjoyed most about this episode was T'Pol's commentary on humanity in the 21st Century. Star Trek has criticised our current society on countless occasions, and I suppose it could be construed as being 'preachy', but the criticisms are fair. Jolene Blalock portrayed T'Pol's disgust at meat-eating, fossil fuel consumption, greed, violence and moral corruption extremely well.

All in all, a fun episode. Very convenient, however, that the Xindi happened to travel back in time to 2004.

Star Trek: Enterprise: Similitude (2003) Season 3, Episode 10

Strong episode with some holes

[8/10 · 20 January 2015]

Manny Coto certainly wrote a thought-provoking episode in 'Similtude', but there were a couple of holes, or at least potential problems, that I identified.

Trip, after an accident with the engine, enters a coma, and the only way to save him is to essentially grow a clone of Trip using one of Phlox's biological specimens. This clone will only live for about 15 days, so his growth will be accelerated.

Archer agrees to this procedure being conducted, as, according to him, Trip is important to Enterprise and Enterprise is important to Earth. Some may question why any crew member - even the Chief Engineer - is this important to Enterprise: surely Enterprise would still function without him/her? Yes, Enterprise probably could continue to function, but the probability that it will function to a better degree is high, and therefore the probability that Enterprise will be able to save Earth is higher, even if not by that much.

A twist comes in when Phlox reveals that the operation will actually kill Trip's clone and that there is a potential enzyme that would allow Trip's clone to live out a full life, but there's very little evidence that this would work. To some viewers, this may complicate the moral dilemma: after all, Trip's clone is able to help Enterprise just as much as Trip himself, as demonstrated by the fact that he got them out of a cloud of particles that was engulfing the ship. Once again, however, probabilities are the key: the probability that taking the part of the brain from the clone required to save Trip will actually achieve the goal of saving Trip is higher than the probability that the aforementioned enzyme will save Trip's clone. So, once again, Archer makes the right decision.

My problem with Archer in this episode, though, is his mood swings: one minute, he's telling Sim (Trip's clone) how he has rights and how valuable he is; in another scene, he's angry with Sim for even considering that he's Trip or as important as Trip (even though he has exactly the same memories.)

Overall, though, a good episode doing what Star Trek often does best - explore ethical dilemmas, especially those similar to those we face in society today.

The Big Bang Theory: The Junior Professor Solution (2014) Season 8, Episode 2

A good, solid episode

[9/10 · 30 October 2014]

This episode was much, much better than the opening episode of Season 8, and a lot of the dialogue included science, something which has been relatively rare from Season 5 onwards, although Season 6 did improve upon Season 5, and Season 7 improved upon Season 6 likewise. Hopefully, Season 8 will be as good as Seasons 1-4; I doubt this will be the case, but if it includes more episodes like this one, then it'll be a great season. Sheldon's storyline concerning his research area is interesting, and the dialogue between Howard and Sheldon was very good in this episode. Sheldon also referenced Fig Newtons not being named after Isaac Newton, which is the second time this fact has come up in the series, the first being in a Season 3 episode. Whether it was done intentionally or not, I don't know, but it signified a return to the 'science-y' dialogue, at least for this episode. As for Sheldon's teaching career, he has, of course, had to teach students before in the series, and he didn't do very well at it then, but hopefully he'll stick with it. It's also interesting that Dennis Kim, in Season 1, stated that Sheldon's string theory research was a dead end - it turned out to be prophetical: perhaps he really can see the Matrix!

Star Trek: The Galileo Seven (1967) Season 1, Episode 16

Entertaining but slightly misleading

[8/10 · 27 August 2014]

In this episode, Spock, along with six other crew-members, crash lands onto a seemingly barren and desolate planet in a shuttle, while the Enterprise cannot find them due to interference from a quasar.

There were many enjoyable aspects of this episode: it was good to see Spock have a larger role, and the episode allows the audience to study how he reacts under pressure, and how his crew-members respond to his decisions. While Spock's half-human side did show on one occasion when he seemed to display signs of anger, he maintained a coolly rational perspective for most of the episode, a consistency which makes Spock one of the greatest TV characters of all time.

Of course, most of the crew-members (including Bones, as always), got angry with Spock due to his logical - and indeed correct - utilitarian view that, if necessary, three people should be left behind on the planet so that the shuttle can achieve escape velocity from the planet. They were also angry that Spock believed, again correctly, that there was no time to hold burials for the two crew-members who ultimately perished. While the writers may have been trying to portray the humans as being correct, I still enjoyed these parts of the episode - the dialogue between McCoy and Spock is always humorous.

My problems with the episode came when the writers used the 'Straw Vulcan' trope. Indeed, they presented Spock's logic as dictating that the hostile aliens on the planet should not have been fired upon, even though this is probably not the logical decision to make. Furthermore, when they managed to get off the planet's surface and into orbit, they presented Spock's decision to jettison the fuel to produce a distress signal as an 'emotional' decision, even though it was clearly a logical decision: they only had 45 minutes to live anyway before orbit failed.

As a result, at the end, the crew-members on the Enterprise were taunting Spock for having made an emotional decision, even though it was a logical one, which does highlight Hollywood's bias against 'logic' and 'rationality' in favour of more human decisions, even though the human decisions, in reality, are often wrong, as psychology has shown us.

Star Trek: Insurrection (1998)

A fairly strong Star Trek film

[7/10 · 4 June 2014]

Many have derided this film for a number of reasons, but, in my opinion, it's not actually a bad movie at all. Relative to the other Star Trek movies, it is probably the 4th worst (out of 12), however it's far better than a lot of people say it is.

As usual, Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner give tremendous performances as Picard and Data respectively. The other TNG actors and actresses are all superb too, although we don't see too much of them.

F. Murray Abraham gives a good performance as the antagonist, while Donna Murphy is brilliant as Picard's main companion.

The soundtrack for this movie, is, in my submission, one of the best out of all of the Trek movies, as well.

Despite this, there are some specific plot ambiguities - whether they were put there intentionally, I do not know, however they do get the audience thinking about moral and ethical issues - at points, I was questioning whether Picard was in the right.

All in all, I would agree with the conclusion that Insurrection is akin to an extended Next Generation episode. Nevertheless, that does not bother me in the slightest.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)

A solid, entertaining film.

[8/10 · 16 April 2014]

So soon after Tobey Maguire's Spiderman Trilogy, the decision to reboot the franchise may have been seen as bizarre to some. However, the first in this new series, Amazing Spider-Man, was thoroughly entertaining, and this second instalment has similarly impressed. In the film, Spider-Man has to deal with new enemies including Electro and the Green Goblin, as well as Rhino. The action scenes were refreshingly good and, although there were too many romantic scenes for my liking, which in turn made the movie slightly too long, they were humorous at times - throughout the movie, there were scenes which triggered a few laughs from the audience which lightened up the production. Having said that, I don't think that it was as dark as the first instalment. All in all, a film worth seeing.

Star Trek (2009)

A reasonable effort

[8/10 · 6 June 2012]

I'll be honest, before watching this movie I was very sceptical that they'd actually pull it off. To my surprise, I did actually enjoy the movie, it was action-packed right till the end.

Chris Pine did exceptionally well as Kirk, showing the arrogance and ego that William Shatner once did, and rebelling against protocol as always. Quinto performed reasonably well as Spock, but was overshadowed by the sheer greatness of Leonard Nimoy, who played Spock Prime. Nimoy just ghosted back into the role, and had not forgotten a single thing, he played Spock very well, just like he has always done. I also liked the casting of Zoe Saldana as Uhura, who became involved in a very surprising relationship with another main character.

The music from the original series was not added till the very end, which was a good decision, as we would've thought it'd be like the original series if they'd put it at the beginning, which it certainly wasn't: the uniforms were different and the ships were far more high-tech than the ones seen in the past TV series'. I'd like to see more of this, and the film can be enjoyable for old fans, new fans, and non-fans alike; the old fans can still get into it because it is set in an alternate reality, the new fans are new fans because of it, and non-fans would enjoy the action that the film shows.

The Godfather (1972)

A perfect movie in every aspect.

[10/10 · 4 June 2012]

What can I say, an outstanding movie, certainly the best that I have ever seen.

The Godfather depicts organised crime in a way that no other film ever has, or ever will. Although there is violence, it is put in very discretely- instead choosing to focus on the Italian family values that the Godfather and his heir, Michael, have adopted. It is a beautiful portrait of a seemingly happy family, with dark secrets. Eventually, the family suffers because of their underworld status, and Michael Corleone eventually takes over the family, with all of his father's wisdom, but with the ruthlessness of his late brother. The direction and the acting of the Michael character is exceptional. Al Pacino portrays him perfectly, and Francis Ford Coppola masterfully directed his transition from family rebel and sweet Westernised man to aggressive and ruthless kingpin of the family business.

The music is another pivotal part of the movie. Nino Rota's famous main theme of the Godfather will stick in anybody's head for the remainder of their life. The lighting is also very well done, with the dark orange colour which adds to the overall effect of the movie.

All in all, a brilliant masterpiece, with no flaws whatsoever, 10 out of 10.

Desi Boyz (2011)

A lively movie with fairly good structure

[7/10 · 4 June 2012]

Desi Boyz is set in the time when the world had gone into recession (2007-8). It was a well chosen setting seeing as it sets the tone for the whole movie. Most of it is revolved around the two main characters struggling financially and having to resort to being male escorts. The storyline is pretty clear and simple, and the music is very, very good. It appeals to all audiences due to the fact that the film is set in England, and shows some of the English landmarks. All in all, the movie is well structured, however there are a few niggles that I have, such as the problem that many of the English people have voice overs which make them sound American. For me, the voice overs do spoil the movie somewhat, as they're either too stereotypically British or they make British people sound American.