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

Jack Reacher Never Go Back -- a Review

I was first introduced to Jack Reacher through the Tom Cruise movie of the same name that was released back in 2012. I liked the movie well enough, despite a few nitpicks here and there--but I really enjoyed reading the novels by Lee Child. Jack Reacher was a former US Army officer who retires and becomes a drifter, roaming from state to state in the country that he fought so hard to protect. And Reacher is still protecting us, taking on a variety of villains, from backwoods mobsters to big-city terrorists from book to book. The stories in the books are well-told, with great attention paid to the smallest of details. I think of them as 1980s action films, only without being insulting to your intelligence. What a perfect series to adapt to movies, right? Well, Tom Cruise looks nothing like how Jack Reacher is described in the books. And while I thought the first Jack Reacher film was good, the second, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back , is very badly flawed. Based on the JR novel of the sa...

3 Body Problem

3 Body Problem , Netflix’s latest TV series, is loosely based on the first novel in the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy, by Chinese author Liu Cixin (who also wrote the book The Wandering Earth ). Simply put, it’s an alien invasion story, but one that’s a lot more sophisticated than your average ‘pew-pew-pew’ cliché-fest. For one thing, this series begins in the 1960s, in the middle of the Cultural Revolution, which was the nationwide purge instigated within China by then-Chairman Mao to keep himself in power. A young woman named Ye Wenjie arises from the chaos to become a central figure in the overall story. The 3 Body Problem of this series’ name refers to a far-flung solar system that has three suns. Any planet within this tri-sun system would have a hard time of it, taking turns orbiting one belligerent sun after another, and it just so happens that the aliens who set their eyes on invading Earth--known as the San-Ti--come from this embattled world. ...

The Holdovers -- a review

It’s always a joy to watch someone who’s a master at their work, whether it’s a musician, an artist, or an actor. Most great actors make it look easy--which is not to say that I think acting is an easy job. I know from personal experience that acting is very hard. It’s a skill that the talented make look very easy, and one of the most talented actors working today is Paul Giamatti. If you’ve watched some movies over the past few years, chances are very good that you’ve already seen Paul Giamatti. He was the jittery earthquake expert in San Andreas , the sympathetic police chief in The Illusionist , and as the titular John Adams (a part that got him the Emmy and a Golden Globe) in the 2008 HBO series of the same name. Recently, I saw Paul Giamatti in the superb The Holdovers , a movie that I wasn’t planning on writing up, but I kept thinking about it--and all of its characters--long after I saw it. In The Holdovers , Giamatti plays Paul H...

The View From The Mountain

Search This Blog