The Man in the High Castle -- a review

When The Man in the High Castle first premiered on the Amazon streaming service, it was a hard show to watch. Don’t get me wrong, TMITHC was superbly done, with great scripts and marvelous acting that created the dire, dread-filled feeling of living in a world where the Axis powers won the Second World War. It was hard seeing an America that had been crushed and demoralized and was now occupied by the Nazi Reich on the east coast, and the Japanese Empire on the west coast. The Neutral Zone offered some freedom, but being lawless, the NZ didn’t really have much in the way of hope.

Yet despite this down-beat scenario, I kept watching the show because it was just very well-done overall. And I was also a major fan of series star Alexa Davalos, who plays Juliana Crain. But there was something else that intrigued me, a scene at the very end of the first season which changed the tone of the series completely--much in the same way how the first season of Game of Thrones had no magic, save for a moment in the last episode of their first season--that final moment, which included the Japanese Trade Minister Tagomi (the always great Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), held the promise of hope, as well as opening up the story to vastly more possibilities.

While the second season explored these new possibilities with great success, the third season, which dropped on October fifth, truly takes flight to the point where it soared. Where there were just hints of elements of science fiction in the first two seasons, The Man in the High Castle really embraces the far-out concept of multiple worlds in the third, giving us a climax on a set that would have made legendary TV producer Irwin Allen proud (I wouldn’t be surprised if the TMITHC production team was inspired by one of Allen’s fanciful TV productions from the 1960s).

The third season is so good it should be illegal as it gives Juliana an even bigger role in the overall story, and Davalos does a great job carrying the weight of the narrative. While there may be more hope these days, it’s not all sunshine and daisies, because the Nazi Reich has never been more powerful, despite the backstabbing within its upper ranks. I liked how TMITHC never gave in to the romance of being in a Resistance movement, instead showing it to be a very dangerous and frightening existence. I’m pleased to hear that a fourth season is already in the works, because The Man in the High Castle has proven itself to be even better every time it comes back. --SF

Comments

Explorer From Another World

It’s Friday night during the summer in Beutter county, an idyllic farming community in Indiana, and the good folks are settling in for what should be another humdinger of an evening. Until their plans are shattered by the arrival of an Explorer From Another World! This turns out to be an alien (Gemma Sterling) who starts savagely killing people from the moment it disembarks from its flying saucer. Local kids Eddie (Colin McCorquodale), Marybeth (Sage Marchand) and Culpepper (Nolan Gay) are planning on seeing a movie, but it looks like they’ll be battling for the very survival of the human race instead! Explorer From Another World is a wonderfully done throwback to the B-movies of the 1950s and 1960s. Ably directed by Woody Edwards (who gives himself a small cameo as Hank in the sheriff’s jail cell), the film is forty five minutes long, but manages to tell its torrid but funny story very effectively in the time allotted. And the short running time tracks when you...

Logan's Run -- a review

I first saw Logan’s Run in a New Jersey movie theater fifty years ago, when I was a boy. The theater, somewhere in the suburban wilds of the Garden State, was packed to the gills with people. I wasn’t sure what to expect with the movie back then—all I cared about that it was a brand new science fiction film, in an age when big budget SF properties on both TV and the big screen was very rare (of course, Star Wars , which would be released the very next year, would change all of that). Based on the 1967 novel of the same name by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson, Logan’s Run is a futuristic tale about a man named Logan 5 (Michael York) who has a special job in a place filled with hedonistic leisure. Logan lives within the splendor of a Utopian society whose population dwells within large domes. The interior is presented as a vast, upscale shopping mall where its citizens want for nothing. Every need, every whim, and every fantasy is met. Of course, there’s a catc...

The Conjuring: Last Rites

Whether you believe in the “true” exploits of demonologists Ed & Lorraine Warren or not (I don’t), The Conjuring series of films, based on their “true” stories, have all been very entertaining, with everything now supposedly coming to an end with The Conjuring: Last Rites . After a prologue in 1964, where we witness the traumatic birth of the Warren’s daughter, Judy, the rest of the movie advances to 1986, with the Warrens now somewhat retired. They’re still speaking at colleges, before giggly students who crack Ghostbusters jokes at them, but the Warrens have ceased personally investigating creepy cases on their own. That is, until their good friend Father Gordon (Steve Coulter) winds up hanging from a noose, thanks to a demonic attack. Father Gordon had been trying to get the Warrens to investigate the case of the Smurls--a family in Pennsylvania who are suffering through a severe haunting in their house, and when the Warrens finally do get involved, the demons come...

The View From The Mountain

Search This Blog