Presence, Accounted For

My favorite movie so far in 2025 had been Black Bag, director Steven Soderbergh slick spy thriller in a tight 90-minute package. When I wrote about it, I mentioned that it was the second of two brisk films Soderbergh released just weeks apart. (And both written by David Koepp.) I've now been able to catch up with the other one, Presence.

This is story of the Payne family -- Rebekah and Chris, and their teenage children Tyler and Chloe. Rebekah seems to be caught up in some sort of white collar crime. Chloe is mourning the recent death of a close friend. Tyler is acting out in mean-spirited ways, as Chris struggles to get him back on track. But all these struggles seem smaller than the ghostly presence living in the house they've just moved into. As its existence becomes undeniable, Chloe becomes convinced it's her dead friend Nadia, and means them well. But that may not extend to Chloe's new boyfriend Ryan.

While that synopsis captures the bullet points of the narrative, it leaves out the most distinct element of Presence: the way the ghostly entity of the story is portrayed. The ghost is the camera. Everything unfolds exclusively from the POV of the spirit. Yes, this means that I was "taken in" and watched another "gimmick movie," after noting that the last several movies I watched that similarly revolved around a stylistic conceit were all underwhelming. Needless to say, I was willing to take a chance on Soderbergh (and Koepp) -- and I was glad I did.

For the most part, the movie doesn't want to be caught showing the audience how hard all this was to pull off. It has a conventional scene structure, cutting to black for moments to indicate the passage of time. There aren't really any overly hokey moments where action is weirdly staged for the camera's benefit. And the gimmick serves a point -- the audience can derive a lot about the thoughts and feelings of the "presence" simply by the things it chooses to look at.

But make no mistake, this would have been quite a challenge to film. Everything unfolds in the space of a real house, with Soderbergh handling the camera himself since there was no way to hide a large film crew. Each scene is an unbroken single take (a "one-er"). Sometimes this is straight-forward enough, but several major sequences of the movie last five minutes or longer, crossing between rooms, going up and down stairs, or positioning things in just the right way to support a visual effect.

This all demands a high degree of very technical acting from the cast, all while they still work to give emotionally grounded performances. And reportedly, they did it all in a mere 11-day shooting schedule. So hats off to Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan, Callina Liang, Eddy Maday -- the core family -- and West Mulholland, Julia Fox, Natalie Woolams-Torres, and Lucas Papaelias, rounding out almost everyone else you see in the movie. No one is really given a moment to submit for Oscar consideration (not that the Academy gives much consideration to horror movies anyway)... but nearly all of them have a theater-like moment where they have to convey a powerful emotion on the spot, regardless of the artifice of the real-world situation. This cast pulled me into the story.

And it's a truly interesting story, in that it's a classic horror "slow burn." To me, it's kind of wild that a movie under 90 minutes could be a slow burn -- there's no time to take it slow. But you go through all the expected phases trying to understand the situation and its ramifications. There are character subplots and arcs, and an appropriately satisfying conclusion. If I were to be down on one aspect of the story, it's that they kind of hide information from you to preserve an upcoming "twist ending." I felt that as soon as one vital piece of knowledge was dropped about halfway through the movie, the conclusion of the story felt obvious. But I don't necessarily mean that as a bad thing. The story proceeds to its correct and inevitable conclusion, given what has unfolded so far -- and by that point I was more than invested enough to enjoy the rest of the journey.

I give Presence an A-. The pairing of Steven Soderbergh and David Koepp really served up a one-two punch to start 2025, and are basically the mark to beat for me for good movies in the months left to go.

Platonic -- Ideal?

Those familiar with Apple TV+ shows have been talking about Seth Rogen's recent satire, The Studio. But in my pile of countless shows (that I'll never claw my way to the top of), I've only recently finished the Apple TV+ show he made before that, Platonic.

Sylvia and Will were life-long friends who drifted apart after Will's marriage. But years later, Will is getting divorced, and the two find themselves back in each others' lives. That may prove a challenge to everyone around them, as each finds themselves at a major crossroads in life: Sylvia is considering a return to the office after years as a stay-at-home mother, and Will is clashing more and more with his business partners at his craft brewery. Plus... the two aren't an entirely good influence on each other.

Platonic is a reunion of sorts for the team that made the comedy movie Neighbors. My review of that movie was mixed, though I did note the comedic prowess of Rose Byrne. Here she is again, cutting it up with scene partner Seth Rogen -- and the two make for a solid comedy duo. Nicholas Stoller, director of Neighbors, clearly recognizes this. He's co-creator of Platonic (with Francesca Delbanco), and I would imagine made it with them in mind.

The very premise of the show helps get around a question I raised about another recent rom-com TV show, Nobody Wants This. Funny as that show is, I noted that it's constantly "the middle act" of a romantic comedy -- a series of misunderstandings that threaten the lead couple's ongoing relationship. Platonic tells you right in the title what the relationship of this lead couple is. Others around Sylvia and Will may question it at times, but they don't, and neither should the audience. There's no "will they, won't they." This is two "bros" that happen to be of the opposite sex, having each others' backs in one moment and putting the other up to terrible things the next.

Unsurprisingly, with the show all about those two, you're not going to like it at all if you don't like the banter between Rogen and Byrne. For me, it works. Each meets the other halfway from (what I perceive to be) their usual points on the comedy-drama continuum. There are other good performances on the show; they're just very much not the focus of the storytelling. A few that I particularly enjoyed: Luke Macfarlane as Sylvia's husband Charlie, who gets perhaps two or three episodes of the 10 to really be silly himself; Carla Gallo as Sylvia's friend Katie, who almost drunkenly lobs one-liners with razor precision; and Vinny Thomas as Omar, an employee at Will's brewery, who absolutely shines in what's really the smallest of parts.

Platonic tells a satisfyingly complete story in 10 episodes, and since Seth Rogen did go on to make another television show after it, you'd think that would be that. Think again! Later this year, the show is set to air a second season. I for one think that could be interesting without "stretching the taffy" -- it's easy enough to imagine that life-long friends will just keep getting into new hijinks. I give season one of Platonic a B+.

Enterprise Flashback: First Flight

One of the foundational stories about the real world space program was Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff. Enterprise took on a fictional version of that history with "First Flight."

Enterprise receives word from Earth that test pilot A.G. Robinson has died -- news that hits Archer and Trip especially hard, as they worked with him on the Warp 5 engine project years ago. When Archer and T'Pol leave in a shuttlepod to prove the existence of a massive dark matter nebula, Archer passes the time by recounting his time with Robinson in the early days of that test program.

This episode is trying very hard to be The Right Stuff, positioning the Warp 5 program as an analog for the real world Mercury space program. We get dangerous tests, the competition to be first, down time at the local astronaut bar... all the hallmarks.

In the way this gives us some backstory on Archer and Trip, it works very well. I've never been particularly impressed by Archer's captaining, but these flashbacks show us an even greener version to drive home his progress. He has to wrestle with his feelings about his own father, designer of the engine. He must learn to be a more rounded person. We watch his rival Robinson become a friend. And we see why Archer is so bonded to Trip in the present, as all three men go rogue to prove the engine works.

What doesn't quite work for me is this arbitrary competition about being first to travel Warp 2. In the episode, they reference Buzz Aldrin being the second man on the moon, and how people only remember the first thing Neil Armstrong said there. The implication is that breaking Warp 2 will be a milestone to be remembered forever. But that's plainly ridiculous, as the goal of the program is to quickly proceed to Warp 3, 4, and ultimately 5. They're all working as though they're going to be Chuck Yeager, breaking the sound barrier. In reality, they're all jockeying to be the first person to travel Mach 2. (Anybody? I had to Google. A. Scott Crossfield.) If the writers weren't caught up trying to emulate The Right Stuff, they might have realized they had a more appropriate competition already baked right into the story. The flashbacks end with Archer being tapped to command Starfleet's first high warp exploration vessel. That's the path to lasting fame.

Another problem with mimicking The Right Stuff this directly is that some of the antiquated 1960s values come along for the ride. The whole idea that some bartender is going to marry the first guy who can guess the future baby name she has picked out feels sexist and icky. The bar fight that breaks out feels ridiculously over the top -- way more testosterone-fueled than even these prequel-Trek characters ever act.

But there are bright spots in the writing too. The "wrapper" story of T'Pol and Archer's exploration doesn't have to actually do much, yet it cleverly maps a struggle to prove something in the present to a struggle to prove something in the past. It gives T'Pol a chance to demonstrate the empathy she's developed, as she encourages Archer to tell the tale. And it all rather cheekily revolves around a plan to bomb stuff for science.

Guest star Keith Carradine is kind of a "big get" for this episode, and does have some of the swagger you want to see in a trope-tastic test pilot character. He does seem maybe a little old for the role, though. (Though I suppose, alongside a "supposed to be a decade younger" Scott Bakula, it works.)

Other observations:

• This episode gives us another mention of "Mount McKinley." The last time that happened, I noted that the mountain was now called Denali. Since then, some would have us believe it's McKinley again.

• Once again, Star Trek falls flat portraying a bar on screen. This astronaut bar plays the worst tunes, sounding like elevator music in one scene and "on hold" music in the next.

• They solve their warp engine problems by changing their intermix ratio. Trek nerd alert, but the franchise has already established that there's only one workable matter-antimatter ratio -- 1:1. (Though I suppose if they hadn't learned that yet, no wonder they were blowing themselves up.)

• But speaking of franchise history... they've said that Mayweather grew up on a cargo freighter, and that it traveled at warp 2. This episode would have us believe that only around 10 years ago, warp 2 was broken for the first time. Then a whole fleet of cargo ships was rolled out... and then quickly outdated. And that that tiny sliver of time is what Mayweather is talking about when he thinks of "growing up."

• Great production design on the Warp 2 test ship. It looks plausibly like the "fighter jet" evolution of the ship Cochrane flew in First Contact.

I do ultimately appreciate how much this episode puts the focus on characters, and I like how it puts a sci-fi twist on a real world story. But I feel the metaphor is clunky, and that there isn't really a good handle on the future history being laid down. I give "First Flight" a B.

Friendly Advice

In my recent talk about season two of Andor, I complained about the way it was released on Disney+: multiple episodes dropping every week, forcing you to binge to stay ahead of spoilers. But earlier in the year, Disney+ released another series in exactly the same manner... and I was very glad not to have played their bingeing game.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is an animated series about... well, it's right there in the title. With the "Spider-verse" movies and the MCU's current multiverse efforts setting ample precedent for alternate universes in general and alternate Spider-mans (Spider-men?) in particular, this series was free to uncouple from all the backstory baggage and tell a simpler story.

It tells that story using a fun animation style. (The Spider-verse set the precedent for changing that up too.) It's made to look like a comic book in motion, with characters drawn in the style of the earliest appearances of the character in the 1960s. Bringing that style into 3D is a tightrope act that could go wrong at any moment, but it really looks great here.

The 10 episodes of season one do a great job covering young Peter Parker's efforts at learning how to be a hero without getting bogged down too long in "yet another origin story" that no one really needs to see. But even more impressive to me is the writing of the characters around Peter. In particular, there's an entire subplot about high school football captain Lonnie Lincoln that really shouldn't work for how long it takes to connect to the larger narrative. It's an unexpectedly earnest look at peer pressure, gang violence, privilege, and more -- and kind of turns out to be one of the best aspects of the season.

The show has a great cast. If you're a fan of another Marvel animated show, What If...?, they've brought over Hudson Thames to continue voicing Spider-man here. Then they surround him with cartoon voice-over royalty (Kari Wahlgren as Aunt May), outstanding actors with distinct voices (Colman Domingo as Norman Osborn), actors who would normally be on camera adopting unrecognizable mannerisms (Hugh Dancy as Otto Octavius), and more. There are some fun guest stars too.

Because I didn't feel compelled to watch Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man as fast as they were releasing it, I enjoyed the fast-paced half-hour episodes much more. Overall, I'd give the first season a B+. Word is that season two is on the way next year, and a season three is in development, and I'll certainly be looking forward to it.

Enterprise Flashback: Regeneration

Star Trek: The Next Generation invented the Borg, and knew enough to use their menacing creation sparingly to keep them dangerous and special. Star Trek: Voyager resisted showing the Borg for a few seasons... before beginning to feature them so often that they no longer felt like such a threat. But at least with the Star Trek franchise moving on from Voyager to a prequel, that would be the last we'd see of the Borg, right?

Wrong! Behold, "Regeneration."

Researchers on Earth have discovered wreckage from an alien ship frozen in the Arctic on Earth, including its frozen, cybernetically-enhanced occupants. When Starfleet loses contact with the researchers and an alien ship departs for deep space, Enterprise is called to intercept. Soon, they come into conflict with an enemy that not only threatens the ship, but -- through a strange co-opting of biology -- the crew itself.

The original introduction of the Borg was a tantalizing moment in a mixed bag season of The Next Generation because, as Q summed up nicely: "you're out of your league." That was a feeling largely preserved in that Enterprise's subsequent encounters with the zombie-analog nemesis. But the more often you stop a supposedly "unstoppable" foe, the less it feels like an actual accomplishment -- which is exactly what happened throughout the run of Star Trek: Voyager.

Still, Enterprise tries with this episode to get back to the heart of what makes the Borg scary. It's not a prequel to the rest of Star Trek so much as a sequel to the movie First Contact. And while there are a lot of winks and nods to an audience who knows a lot more than the characters do about what they face, the episode manages not to feel like pure fan service.

If anything, I'd say it feels like a horror movie -- more so perhaps than any other Borg episode. Some of that is the "The Thing"-like vibes immediately invoked by the Arctic-bound (and Enterprise-less) first act. But we also get it in the many horror tropes lovingly deployed through the episode: characters with "the smart idea" ignored by the rest of their group, the "ghost story" energy of Archer recounting Zefram Cochrane's tales of aliens like this, the frightening whispers that Phlox hears when he is partially assimilated(!), and his insistence that his friends should kill him before letting him turn into a monster.

The episode is also good about portraying this as a real first contact with the Borg. When Archer is forced to kill a few Borg, there's a moment where he's understandably distraught at having taken lives; he hasn't yet learned that he's living in a zombie movie. It's only later, when he encounters an assimilated Arctic researcher aboard the Borg vessel, that he truly realizes the nature of what he's up against.

This is another triumph for Enterprise's production departments. Voyager already paved the way for achieving the movie budget Borg of First Contact on a television budget and schedule. Enterprise does that and more, adding the extended opening sequences in the Arctic. The snow storm was obviously done on a sound stage, but it still looks remarkably credible. (Perhaps the least realistic part is that the actors don't seem nearly cold enough in their physicality.) Phlox gets a wonderful compound makeup of his usual Denobulan features, gradually being necrotized by Borg implants. There are good FX shots of Enterprise control panels being Borgified, a fairly well done moment of ejecting some Borg into space, and a satisfying ship explosion in the final showdown.

But even if this episode does make the Borg feel scarier than Voyager usually managed, let's be clear: they're still very much "de-fanged" in this episode. They have to be for the Enterprise to ever defeat them. The trademark Borg personal shielding seems to take longer to kick in than usual. It seems easier to get up close for hand-to-hand combat (and hose pulling) than it has before. And of course, Phlox manages too easily to find a cure for assimilation (albeit a painful one).

Other observations:

• The fan service isn't just about Borg. Phlox mentions Bynars as another alien race that engages in cybernetic implantation.

• In dozens of appearances, the Borg have always "introduced" themselves with "we are the Borg." Surprise, surprise -- here they skip straight to "you will be assimilated," to avoid giving their name to the future history books.

• The Borg seem to move a lot more deliberately than usual in this episode. If the Borg are zombies, these are almost "fast zombies."

I feel like Enterprise did a better job with the Borg than Star Trek: Voyager usually did. Still, there's not as much drama in watching a struggle against a defanged opponent. I give "Regeneration" a B.

Enterprise Flashback: Cogenitor

Through its first few series, the Star Trek franchise didn't have the best track record with stories about gender equality or transgender issues. But it hit a home run talking about slavery. So you couldn't be quite sure what you were going to get when Enterprise took on a cocktail of all these issues with "Cogenitor."

While researching a dying hypergiant star, Enterprise encounters the Vissians, a three-gendered race who amiably wants to explore with them. While Archer and the alien captain take off in a small craft (and Reed flirts with the Vissian tactical officer), Trip spends time with a member of the Vissians' third gender, an unnamed cogenitor. When he learns that it has as much mental capacity as Vissian males and females, yet is treated like chattel passed around by would-be parents, he takes it upon himself to educate the cogenitor and bolster its self worth and ambition. A culture clash inevitably results.

Let me start briefly with some things I don't hold against this episode: the way it fumbles around in ignorance of gender identification, pronoun usage, and the like. This story isn't trying to say that this cogenitor character is trans, and the way Trip fumbles around with "it" versus "she" doesn't feel to me like it's ill-intentioned by the writers in any way. This is years and years before "they" became the pronoun of choice for most non-binary people... and even if that had been in common use at the time of this episode, I think the writers might still have opted for "it" because of the real point the episode was trying to make.

That point is a good old-fashioned Prime Directive conflict (albeit, this being a prequel, before Starfleet had a Prime Directive). Gender oppression bordering on slavery is on the one hand, and a principle of respecting other cultures on the other. Is oppression an aspect of culture that should be "respected?" Trip emphatically comes down on the side of "no" -- though his reaction is less outrage about the society writ large than it is recognizing the plight of one individual. (Though I think making the struggle individual rather than collective helps the storytelling.)

Weirdly, Archer comes down on the side of "yes," and hops on a high horse to yell at Trip about what he's done. But I think it doesn't work well in this episode to have Archer arguing for a non-interference ideal that doesn't formally exist yet, especially when he hasn't been modelling one in any way. (Though at least he acknowledges that he hasn't.)

But I think there are other reasons the episode falters a bit. One is that the conflict is quite muted. These Vissians are just too friendly, presenting no kind of threat despite their advanced technology. The captain is as charming as can be. (And it's rather ironic that he's played by Andreas Katsulas, an actor normally known for playing villains -- or at least, more "gray area" characters.) The couple whose family plans are disrupted by Trip's interventions seem only minimally upset, making their objections without any hint that they'll do anything extreme to get their way. To make the story work, Archer basically has to side with the Vissians (and against his own character as previously depicted), otherwise there isn't any consequence at all.

Another issue I have with the episode is how much time it wastes on things that aren't enhancing the central issue. It's wild how much time is spent with Archer and the Vissian captain tooling around in their "shuttle ball" doing science, when the only relevant story point to come from the entire subplot is that Vissians learn quickly (a necessary contrivance to speed along the cogenitor's education). It's also wild how much time is spent on the Reed subplot -- though far less surprising for a show like Enterprise. The writers are always trying to be sexy if they can, so naturally when thinking about a three-gender society, they're going to focus on how that means sex can come without any risk of unwanted pregnancy. Lest you think that Reed is going to get any kind of meaningful "cultural exchange" out of his experiences, the subplot is immediately abandoned once it's clear he and the Vissian tactical officer are going to sleep together; the episode never checks in on him again.

All this unsatisfying time spend with Archer and Reed is time that might have been used to further elevate the story with Trip and the cogenitor. T'Pol and Phlox get scenes to argue in favor of not judging an alien society. But how much more texture might we have gotten from more scenes, perhaps with Hoshi Sato to come at it from a linguist's perspective, or with Travis Mayweather -- who has probably encountered more aliens than anyone else on this ship from his time on a freighter? Or how about giving us a scene with cogenitor after it has learned that Archer won't grant it asylum, articulating the cruelty of being forced back into a life that now feels too small?

Other observations:

• There's some extreme and effective lighting used for this dying star shining in through the ship's windows.

• We actually get to see a tiny bit of "The Day the Earth Stood Still" in this episode. So that must be part of Paramount's catalog.

"Cogenitor" does still do a reasonable job of making its points about gender equality. And the tragic ending, with Trip's remorse about what he's done, lands well. Still, the time-consuming and fruitless subplots with Archer and Reed steal time that could have been used to heighten the morality play. And Archer's sudden conversion to a belief in non-interference is... rich. I give the episode a B.

A Mighty Roar

What if I told you that there's a currently running television show that stars not one, not two, but three Academy Award winning actors -- and you've likely never heard of it? That show is Lioness, streaming on Paramount+.

Lioness is an action-thriller about Joe McNamara, a senior CIA case officer. She manages an elite strike team running operations against terrorists, through the use of highly-skilled undercover agents known as "lionesses." Joe's work is demanding and constantly takes her away from her family, who face struggles of their own in her absence. Indeed, the show as a whole has a lot to say about women in roles that most people expect men to occupy.

This show is the brainchild of Taylor Sheridan, writer of gritty movies like Sicario and Hell or High Water, and co-creator of Yellowstone. Lioness presents like Sheridan's passion project, a synthesis of themes from all his other work, for which he writes every single episode. In many ways, the show hits like 24 did back in the early 2000s, but with an effort to portray things more dramatically -- honoring the personal sacrifices of its characters, portraying violence more realistically, and being somewhat more clear-eyed about abuses of power.

It does a much better job of mixing "home life" stories in with the action than 24 ever did. (No wandering child comes face to face with a wild cougar on Lioness.) The stories that follow Joe's husband Neal and their two daughters back at home are often as hard-hitting as anything happening through the sight of a gun -- particularly in the first of the show's two eight-episode seasons to date.

As I hinted at the top, a major draw here is the cast. Zoe Saldaña stars as Joe McNamara. The role demands everything of her, and she has it to give and more. She's a motivating leader, believable badass, and vulnerable mother each in turn. Joe's supervisor in the CIA is played by Nicole Kidman, who shades her stern character with fun nuance. When the U.S. Secretary of State becomes a recurring presence partway through the first season? He's played by Morgan Freeman, who channels his expected gravitas into a gruff, curse-laden, no-nonsense performance.

Those are just the Oscar winners. The show also features a number of other actors who have all starred on at least one previous hit show, like Dave Annable, Thad Luckinbill, LaMonica Garrett, Kirk Acevedo, and Michael Kelly. It has also discovered many actors without a huge resume who all fit perfectly into this world, including Laysla De Oliveira and Jill Wagner. Really, the show just has a great cast, top-to-bottom.

This is ultimately a very pro-military show, and sometimes gets a little too "boo-rah" for my tastes. Still, it doesn't feel varnished to the point of being propaganda. And there are enough other aspects at play in it to keep my attention. I found season 1 to be a bit stronger than season 2, but I'd say the show overall hits at least a B+. Word is at least one more season is yet to come, and I expect to be there for it when it arrives.

Final Grade

This weekend, the purportedly final movie in the Mission: Impossible franchise (and direct sequel to Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One) arrived in theaters. I sat through all nearly-three-hours of it, and it left me feeling decidedly mixed. If this is the best Mission: Impossible can muster these days, then it probably is best if this is the last one.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is about the efforts of Ethan Hunt and his team to stop a powerful AI from taking control of the world's nuclear arsenal and bringing about the end of the world. It's also made as a deliberate, knowing swan song to the film franchise, full of callbacks to earlier films. (But don't worry if your memory of those is shaky; footage from the other films is awkwardly cut into this one to tell you anything you need to know.)

Memorial Day weekend traditionally marks the beginning of summer blockbuster season... and some would say that plot doesn't really matter that much in a summer blockbuster. It's just "grout" between the "tiles" of the big action sequences. If you (like me) don't subscribe to that way of thinking, there's definitely going to be a low ceiling on how much you can like The Final Reckoning. The plot of this film is pretty bad on more than one level.

First is how shockingly complex it is for how minimal a role it's supposed to play in the movie. Although the movie is nearly three hours long, there are essentially only two major, elaborate action sequences in it (and depending on how you'd count it -- that is, whether a simple shoot-out or fist fight pegs the needle for you -- one to four minor ones). That leaves a lot of time for talk, which is crammed-to-bursting with exposition about "the Entity," its plan to take over the world, and the way it can be stopped. For as much time as they spend talking about all this, you'd expect the Evil Plan to make more sense. Instead, a lot of that time goes to having characters awkwardly explain why the Entity isn't doing the more obvious thing that would be a whole lot simpler (and probably reduce the overall movie runtime to two hours).

More unforgivable is the way this part two completely abandons the thing that was most compelling about part one. The Mission: Impossible films have always had an undercurrent of distrust: never believe what you see, because at any moment, someone could tear off a realistic head mask and reveal themselves to be someone completely different. Dead Reckoning Part One upped the ante on that idea by presenting an enemy that could masquerade anywhere in cyberspace. Against the Entity, you could trust nothing connected to a digital source. The Final Reckoning makes passing mention of this threat on a couple of occasions, but never actually uses it in any meaningful way. Here, the most distinct "villain" in the history of the franchise abandons all subterfuge for a boring, brute force scheme.

But say you are one of the "who cares about the plot?" crowd. Are the action sequences you're really here for worthwhile? Sort of. There's no denying that the final, climactic stunt -- an extended aerial chase between biplanes -- is thrilling. If this is truly the last big stunt in the last Mission: Impossible movie franchise, then it's everything you want. And it effectively one-ups the last time Tom Cruise hung off an airplane for these movies. (The movie knows this, which is why it isn't afraid to show you an early flashback clip reminding you of that stunt.)

The big stunt in the middle of the movie is an extended underwater sequence inside a downed submarine. And unfortunately, it's far less satisfying in a number of ways. This seems more a triumph of clever set design and camera work -- important components of a good action sequence, to be sure, but not the "watch Tom Cruise do insane things" promise at the heart of this franchise's best stunts. Although the scope is massive, the impact is less impressive than the previous underwater stunt in the franchise -- also in Rogue Nation. (And again, the movie seems to know this; unless I missed it, it doesn't show you a clip from that sequence in this movie.) Most disappointing is the way Ethan Hunt escapes his situation at the end of the sequence, by doing something we're expressly told can't be done when the whole premise is set up. Despite "impossible" being in the name of these things, it feels like the missions are usually merely "implausible."

The resolution of a cliffhanger is rarely better than the cliffhanger itself. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is not an exception to that rule. And since I gave Part One a B-, it feels about right to me to give this movie a C+.

Enterprise Flashback: The Breach

On paper, Phlox was one of Enterprise's goofier characters. Yet the series often found a way to put him at the heart of a real moral dilemma. It did so again with "The Breach."

When the new government of the planet Xantoras orders all off-worlders expelled, the Enterprise has a limited time to locate three Denobulan scientists and evacuate them. But they're deep inside an underground cave system, so Mayweather, Reed, and Trip must go caving themselves to locate them. Meanwhile, Enterprise comes to the aid of a transport ship, bringing an Antaran to Phlox's Sickbay. The Antarans have a dark history with Denobulans, and so this one refuses life-saving treatment from a sworn enemy.

Star Trek has been shooting scenes in fake caves since the very beginning -- and usually, not very convincingly. Here, the show takes on a task of next-level difficulty to present extended climbing sequences complete with rock slides and other dangers. And it's asking too much, really. CG of the time isn't up to what it's being asked to show here: the shots of a giant rock fall, and of a Denobulan "Spider-manning" up a cliff wall, look super goofy. The props and costumes are ridiculous; there's no reason you'd go caving not with a headlamp, but rather a lamp on a big stick above your shoulder. (And the "sample containers" are clearly just Tupperware from the local store.)

However, under the direction of Robert Duncan McNeill, the cave sequences actually come off far more credibly than you'd expect. He's smart enough to get lots of footage -- and the right kind of footage -- to be able to do a lot in the editing suite. Particularly effective is the moment where Travis breaks his leg; the right editing (and a horrible sound effect) really sell the moment.

But the real meat of the episode is the parable on racism, using the Denobulans and Antarans. The Next Generation did a memorable version of this type of story, in which Worf refuses to donate blood to help a Romulan. Still, this episode stands well apart from that one, thanks to the intriguing way it uses Phlox.

Things are interesting early on, when we learn that the Denobulan version of the Hippocratic oath is to foremost respect the will of the patient. But then we go deeper when we learn that among Phlox's many children, one has embraced all the racist propaganda about Antarans -- despite Phlox's own efforts to model better behavior. The two haven't even spoken in a decade. So this situation has very personal stakes for Phlox, who essentially needs to save this patient because he cannot save his own son. And the writing is smart enough not to articulate this so directly.

The writing is even smarter to not tie everything up in an easy bow by the end of the episode. The Antaran allows himself to be treated, and has evolved by the end of the episode. But it's not by leaps and bounds. He's willing to be on the same ship as Denobulans... and that's a realistic win, a gradual relaxing of generational racist dogma. The final letter we hear Phlox record for his son is the perfect way to end the story, reaching out to try again to get through to his wayward son.

And as a bonus... this entire episode is facilitated by events that feel very topical watching the episode today: it's all because a new, virulently xenophobic government has decided to expel foreigners from its borders. Sit with that a minute.

Other observations:

• The teaser for this episode is pretty bad, a real slide whistle of a scene about Phlox feeding his tribble, so he can in turn feed it to some other critter. Not only does it condition the audience to expect a lighter, comedic episode rather than the one we get, it depicts Phlox as being quite cavalier about life and death, in a way that actively undermines the story to come.

• We've established before that Mayweather has rock climbing experience, and it's nice to see the show remember that and make use of it here. And yet... how the hell did he gain rock climbing experience growing up on a cargo freighter making delivery runs between distant stars?

• Even I know rappelling down a cliff is a lot faster and easier than climbing up. So the idea that they're going to split their three-day time limit exactly in half before turning around to come back? It seems completely bonkers. (No wonder they return late.)

The Phlox story here is really quite good. And Robert Duncan McNeill clearly demonstrates that he knew how to go about directing this episode's demanding caving sequences. But with the extremely limited time and budget he was working with, there's only so much he could accomplish -- and those limitations did take me out of the episode at times. Overall, I give "The Breach" a B+.

A Familiar Ring

Over the years, I've blogged about the film concert series at the Colorado Symphony Orchestra -- performances where a movie plays as the orchestra performs its score in live synchronization. (If you live in a city with its own symphony orchestra, they surely do this too.) I haven't attended as many of these recently, as the last few seasons have featured mainly movies they've done before. But a few months back, when a special show was added to the current season, I knew I had to go -- they were playing Howard Shore's score for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.

Every time I go to one of these concerts, the initial impact is always admiration for the musical talent on display. The orchestra generally rehearses for just a few days before these concerts, but that's all they need to all be playing not only in perfect coordination with each other, but in perfect sync with the film. Being a movie score fan, I know all the technical tools that exist to achieve this -- but it doesn't diminish the accomplishment to me in any way.

That initial response always gives way to admiration for the music on a new level, and this occasion was no exception. I would say The Fellowship of the Ring was a score I knew fairly well -- I could have hummed a few bars of each of the major themes that Howard Shore developed for the story. But I certainly didn't remember all the details. Watching the players take the stage one by one before the concert began was a fun build-up of anticipation. There's a dulcimer in this score? Yeah, I guess that makes sense. An accordion? Hmm... when was that? I guess we'll find out. The french horn players are sitting pretty far back this time -- what's that about? Oh, it's to accommodate the "twice as many as usual" number of oboe, bassoon, and clarinet players. (And those bassoon players in particular wound up working harder than I think I've ever seen at one of these film concerts.)

Another huge feature of this score, of course, is the 100-person chorus. Generally, when a score requires human voices in only a few moments, they'll make some substitution. (In fact, they did here for two moments -- about 10 collective seconds of music -- calling for a boys choir.) But for this film, we got the full chorus, which covered moments throughout the film from the ethereal warmth of the Elves to the terrifying threat of the Nazgûl. And two soloists were employed sparingly, but potently -- a woman and a young boy -- for specific moments that fans of the movie will likely remember well. Impressively, they just each had to sit quietly on stage for over an hour, and then -- without warmup -- just stand up and nail their moment in one shot. They deserved the enthusiastic applause they received from the audience when they did so.

Throughout the 3-hour concert, different moments gave me chills, or nearly moved me to tears -- even though I barely ever had my eyes on the screen or my mind on the story. (There were perhaps a collective 6 minutes of the entire film where the orchestra wasn't playing... and even those moments felt almost "musical" in the powerful choice for rare silence.) It all left me with a much greater appreciation for this score than I'd had before. It made me feel that as much credit as John Williams rightly gets for making the original Star Wars trilogy what it was, Howard Shore should be equally celebrated for contributing to the success of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Hobbiton wouldn't seem half as idyllic without the moving melody on the recorder that accompanies it. The One Ring would not be the powerful presence it is without the mournful strings signifying its influence. The wraiths would not be half as terrifying without the galloping runs of the woodwinds beneath the wailing choir. The Uruk-hai would not seem as disruptive to the natural order without the clever 5/4 melody of their theme. The deeds of the fellowship would not seem nearly as heroic without the powerful horn anthem. Whatever your favorite moment of the movie is, odds are it has a distinct musical accompaniment elevating the emotions you felt about it.

Maybe The Fellowship of the Ring in particular might not be the movie you'd choose for a concert experience like this. But I'd encourage you to look for whatever movie would be ideal for you, and seek out a performance like this. For music or movie lovers, it's an experience that can't be beat.

Cinematic Sins

For weeks now, I'd been hearing people sing the praises of the new movie Sinners. Director Ryan Coogler left the MCU behind (but brought his longtime collaborator Michael B. Jordan with him) to deliver a horror movie that wowed the critics and beat box office expectations.

Set in 1932, Sinners is the story of twin brothers Smoke and Stack, who return to Mississippi from mob work in Chicago. There they hope to set up a successful juke joint of their own. They reunite with the locals and recruit people to help, including their young cousin -- an unnaturally gifted guitarist they want to play at their club. But the brothers also have to contend with local racists looking to shut them down. And vampires.

I debated just putting that last part out there like that, because when you watch the movie, it's a slow reveal. The total run time is nearly two hours and 20 minutes, and fully an hour has elapsed before there's even a whiff of anything supernatural at play. Yet the "twist" has been widely circulated, that this is really a From Dusk Till Dawn style bait-and-switch movie where an entire story is set up only to be annihilated by the arrival of vampires.

It's too much of a slow burn, if you ask me. The movie, of course, knows where it's going. And so it never completely engages with the ideas raised in that opening hour. When a landowner (who might be a Klansman) figures prominently in the opening minutes, you assume he's going to be an antagonist throughout the story. And while the story does eventually circle back, Sinners doesn't seem to want to engage with racism as directly as, say, Get Out or Blink Twice.

But the movie does have a more interesting take on its vampires. That's where the metaphor resides in Sinners, contrasting the community of the segregated South with an unexpected version of a vampire community. (I think I'll skip any more detail and leave that twist unspoiled.) And once Sinners really becomes the horror movie it was meant to be all along, it's an over-the-top, violent bloodbath -- a slasher that hides no grisly details from its audience. It's perhaps one of the reasons that horror fans have embraced it. Another might be the unique (so far as I know) take on how you get vampires in the first place.

Still another is probably the cast, which is uniformly strong. Michael B. Jordan gets the spotlight, of course, in his twin roles -- in which he gives two very different performances. But there's also great work here from Miles Caton, Jack O'Connell, Wunmi Mosaku, Delroy Lindo, Hailee Steinfeld, and more. The characters are more interesting than just their utility as meat for a slaughter.

Once you get to the heart of the movie (because it's almost literally been ripped out to display beating in front of you), Sinners is a well-made slasher. But there's a reason slasher movies don't usually run longer than two hours. I was short on the patience this one demanded. I give Sinners a B-. If you're a horror fan wondering if this movie is worth the hype, you might want to check it out. If you're not a horror fan, wondering if the hype is worth you stepping out of your comfort zone? I'd skip it.

Enterprise Flashback: Horizon

On multiple occasions over the course of nearly two seasons of Enterprise reviews, I've complained about the series' disinterest in its half of its main characters. Usually, the problem is that storylines which could have been given to Mayweather, Reed, Sato, or Phlox are instead given to Archer, Trip, or T'Pol. With "Horizon," the problem is that they actually do devote an episode to one of the "lesser" characters -- and it's terrible.

When word arrives that Travis Mayweather's father has died, he takes leave to go visit his mother and brother on their cargo freighter Horizon. There he engages in sibling rivalry as his brother struggles in his new role as captain, and generally begins to question if you truly "can't go home again." But soon, all differences must be set aside as Horizon comes up against a group of pirates. Meanwhile, aboard Enterprise, T'Pol is encouraged to take part in movie night and fraternize with the crew.

Another complaint I've registered about Enterprise is that it can be too plot oriented, failing to develop its characters by tailoring aspects of its stories to them. "Horizon" is a wild swing of the pendulum, a story that's almost all character, where nothing happens that feels like a Star Trek plot until near the very end of the episode. (And even the confrontation with the pirates feels stiff.) Because the show just doesn't have many reps in for this sort of exercise, it staggers through with no idea how to tell this slice of life story well.

A whole lot of time is spend "telling, not showing." Travis reminisces with people all over the cargo freighter, each one telling us a story that hints at some adventure that would have made for a more compelling episode. We do get more "show" than "tell" in the B plot centered on T'Pol -- yet even this feels dull and inert. It's a long, slow burn about Trip trying to convince T'Pol in the value of horror movies.

Of course, his argument is limited by movies that can be taken from the old Paramount film archives. Ask a hundred horror movie aficionados to each name three great horror movies, and I'll wager not one is going to say the 1931 version of Frankenstein. It's always been humorous that in the Star Trek future, all music after classical composers, all literature after Arthur Conan Doyle -- all entertainment not in the public domain -- has seemingly ceased to exist. But there's something next level about visualizing that in the form of a movie that Enterprise can steal without paying a huge licensing fee.

The writing is even bad in the details, full of small imperfections that should have been smoothed out in a rewrite. The teaser gives nothing to actually "tease" you into watching the episode; you simply see Travis in his favorite upside-down spot when he's asked to report to the bridge. That's it. No hint of what's to come, just the nebulous idea that this will be a "Travis episode." After the credits, he learns that his father is sick, and makes plans to see him. But just a scene or two later, Dad has died off-screen -- with nothing gained narratively by the odd little fake-out. And later, even though it's really, really important for you to understand that the captain of the Horizon in Travis' brother, that fact is barely mentioned in one early scene, making the whole relationship feel strange until you realize later that you've probably missed something key.

Weirdly, Enterprise isn't even doing a good job here at the things it normally does well. I assume because they blew out the budget making "Judgment," there's no money left to spend here -- so the inside of the supposedly old cargo freighter Horizon is literally just the Enterprise with a few different decorations on the wall.

If you really try, you can find a couple of good moments in the episode. Travis learning that his father complimented him -- not to his face, but to Archer -- feels like a too-familiar restraint from tenderness between too many fathers and sons. The lesson Travis ultimately teaches his old shipmates, about not rolling over to a bully, is kind of basic -- though it feels apropos today. Phlox's take on the scientific plausibility of Frankenstein is fun. So is the Vulcan-like way T'Pol ultimately gets into watching it (including the way she "shushes" Phlox for talking during the movie).

Other observations:

• Archer has a weird moment of "making it all about him" when he tells Travis he almost served on a cargo ship. He at least has the good sense to realize now is not the time for that story.

• Travis and Malcolm have a laugh about an element of Star Trek: The Next Generation, that space travel would be better with families aboard the ship... but that this would require having a psychologist aboard.

• According to the internet, there's the deepest of deep cut Trek references in this episode. In the background of one shot aboard the Horizon, a book about Chicago gangs is visible on a shelf. This is supposed to reference the original series episode "A Piece of the Action," in which a ship named the Horizon was responsible for cultural contamination of an alien planet by leaving behind a book on Chicago mobs of the 1920s.

I give "Horizon" a D+, a mark I've bestowed so far on only one other Enterprise episode. Comparing the two poses a bit of a dilemma: is it worse to try something big and execute it badly ("Precious Cargo"), or just be boring ("Horizon")? It's a photo finish this time, to be sure. I certainly don't want to watch either episode ever again.

Teaming With Fun

As much as my husband and I enjoy playing board games, it's not generally something we turn to when it's just the two of us. So I don't generally pay much attention to whether a game is said to play well with two players. And I very rarely check out games meant for only two players. But every now and then, a two-player game is so celebrated in the gaming community that I feel almost obligated to check it out. Which is how I came to try Sky Team.

Two players take on the roles of pilot and co-pilot for a jumbo jet. An "instrumental panel" board between them shows various slots for dice, where specific numbers must be placed to control pitch and air speed, radio the tower to clear other planes, deploy flaps and brakes, and so forth. Your shared job is to land the plane safely within a limited number of rounds. Your method for doing this is to each roll four dice on every round, then alternate placing them in specific slots on the panel to get the plane ready in time.

Sky Team is a cooperative game, which will immediately make some wary gamers ask if it deals well with the "quarterbacking" problem of cooperative games -- does the system prevent one assertive player from stepping in to dictate decisions for the others? Sky Team already has a leg up on this because there is only one other player. Then it cleverly uses "hidden information" to solve the rest. Each player rolls their dice behind a screen, and only brings a die out when they place it on the instrument panel. Players are not allowed to discuss their rolls, not even by implication. And while this can make the game unfold in relative silence, it actually makes you work exactly in the way the title promises: as a team.

Certain slots on the instrument panel can be filled by one one player, the pilot or the co-pilot. Other slots are shared by both. Still other slots are paired: the pilot and co-pilot each must place one die every round, and the relationship of the two numbers together dictates what happens. When playing, you very quickly learn that success comes from leaving your partner more options. If you put a 6 in one of those "paired slots," where you need your total to be, say, 9 or better? You've given your partner a lot of information to work with. They don't have to worry about whether they should put the only 6 they rolled on that slot, and can use a 3 instead. If one of you needs to play a 1 to clear a plane from the landing zone before you move forward, and you don't play that 1 on your turn? It's a likely message to your partner that you don't have one, can they help?

If you master the game's system of implied communication too easily, don't worry, you have plenty more challenges in store. Each playthrough simulates a landing at a particular airport, each airport a mini-expansion of sorts that adds more mechanics to the game. Soon enough, you'll learn to deal with precise turns during your approach, additional planes that come into the landing zone, fuel management, and more. Then you can repeat landings on higher difficulty levels that leave less margin for error.

I've enjoyed Sky Team more than just about any other two-player-only game I can think of. Indeed, I've enjoyed it more than most cooperative board games I've played in recent memory. Sitting down to solve a problem with one partner (which, for many gamers like me, will be their partner) is just delightfully satisfying -- especially when the system almost entirely eliminates moments of coercion or recrimination that other cooperative games can have. Plus, it takes just 20 minutes or less to play a scenario, land or crash. It's easy to play several in a row, or squeeze in one in a narrow window of time, whichever is more suited to you.

I give Sky Team at least a B+. It might even be an A-, though I think I haven't played it enough yet to be sure. (Like I said... I don't often play two-player games; not even a good one like this.)

Enterprise Flashback: Judgment

The final Star Trek film featuring the entire original series cast, The Undiscovered Country, is widely beloved by fans of the franchise. In the episode "Judgment," depending on your perspective, Enterprise either offered up a loving homage to that film, or tried to bask in its reflected greatness by copying many of its visuals and plot elements.

Archer has been captured by the Klingons, and is put on trial for crimes against the Empire. Though it's clearly a show trial, Archer is gradually able to convince his lawyer Kolos to mount a defense against the charges -- and indeed, a defense of honorable values in the Klingon legal system. Yet it may not be enough to keep Archer from being sentenced to the penal colony Rura Penthe.

I said in my intro that one might charitably regard this episode as an homage, or critically look at it as a ripoff. To me, the truth is more nuanced; the episode is both at the same time. The script feels terribly lazy to me. It seems to care almost exclusively about the franchise shout-outs: getting us into that courtroom (with a judge wielding a sparky ball gavel), name-dropping some ancestor of Duras, getting Archer to Rura Penthe, and so forth. The episode doesn't even bother to explain how the Klingons possibly got Archer on his own to arrest him (because there could be no plausible explanation), nor does it show how Reed escapes Rura Penthe with him at the end. It doesn't even bother to have the trial itself be about something novel or interesting: it's just another Rashomon-inspired take on multiple perspectives, as many have done before (and Star Trek itself has even done in the context of a trial).

But if the point is just fan service, it sure is done with love and attention to detail. Film and television production is always getting smarter, better, and more cost-effective, and this episode of Enterprise came a decade after Star Trek VI. Still, it can't have been easy to recreate the Klingon courtroom and the mines of Rura Penthe (sets from a modesty-budgeted feature film) on the time and budget of a single episode of television. (And both complete with loads of extras in alien makeup.) The production doesn't stop there; we get a great exterior view of the planet where the trial is set, and a wonderfully dungeon-like cell in which Archer is held. We get a cool Klingon ship design, and an elaborate action sequence in which it chases Enterprise through a planet's ring system.

Still more money is put toward stacking the cast. Amid actors who have mostly been on Star Trek before (and some who have played Klingons in particular), we get J.G. Hertzler -- Martok himself from Deep Space Nine -- to return as the Klingon lawyer Kolos. He looks different, but you'd know that voice from anywhere. And he gives a wonderful performance that reminds you how a one-off character from Deep Space Nine developed into a major recurring presence on the series (even after they killed him off once). He gives no less than four big speeches and crushes them all: a grandstanding trial summation, a quiet moment where he opines about political power sublimating the power of the courts (hmmm), an outraged screed at the unjust verdict, and a noble farewell in which he pledges to keep fighting the system.

Although this is really a two-hander for Hertzler and Scott Bakula as Archer, there actually are a few nice moments for other characters. You can always count on John Billingsley as Phlox to find one, as he does here when bluffing the Klingon guards to get time alone with his captain. Later, T'Pol anticipates the empathy Archer will have for the refugees they've encountered, and is already enacting a plan, a nice little unremarked-upon demonstration of her growing emotional awareness.

Other observations:

• We see different flashbacks illustrating each person who gives testimony. Do we imagine that Archer's version is as exaggerated from truth as we know Duras' is?

• Regardless of whose version you believe, Duras is clearly outwitted and defeated in battle by a superior warrior. So... what exactly is the Klingons' problem here?

• We see that moment where Duras' ship is disabled in both versions. It's an expensive visual effect that turned out great, so you're damn right they're gonna show it twice.

OK, this episode doesn't end up just being Star Trek VI fan service -- the examination of political and judicial corruption is worthwhile, and casting J.G. Hertzler to make those points help them land with force. Still, this episode does feel like it's "standing on the shoulders of giants" to a great extent. I give "Judgment" a B.

I Only Wish I Could Have Savored It...

Season two of Star Wars: Andor has come and gone. (Too fast, but I'll come back to that.) This is the show I've been looking forward to more than anything else in 2025... all the while worrying that perhaps the excellent season one had set my expectations too sky-high to be met.

The narrative accelerated in season two, using multiple time jumps to fill in the gap between season one and Rogue One. In a way, that's a shame, because I would happily have spent multiple seasons with this collection of deep and well-written characters. On the other hand, this is the way that creator Tony Gilroy wanted to tell the story... and in the modern TV landscape of quick cancellations, I'm happy he got to tell the story on his own terms.

There are many things I could highlight about season two, but I'll contain my enthusiasm and pick just a few. I appreciated how much this season took the real-world subtext of resisting authoritarian regime and made it "text." The story highlighted one historical analog in particular, the French resistance of World War II, with the Ghorman storyline. All the key characters had French accents, their invented alien language was crafted to sound very much like French, and the core of their struggle mirrored that of real-world history: we're suffering while the world sits by and lets it happen. It all culminated in the excellent eighth episode of the season, "Who Are You?", that depicted an all-out assault as a true nightmare, not the escapist fun that Star Wars as a franchise usually presents.

I love the awareness of Tony Gilroy and his writers about tropes -- leaning into them when it's useful and steering clear of them when it isn't. In particular, it seemed with one particular character that they'd written themselves into a corner where "fridging" the character (killing them off as motivation for the hero's story arc) was the inevitable end. Instead, they pulled out of that particular nosedive in a satisfying way.

Despite only having 24 episodes total to work with, and a definite end point to get to, I love that the writers were willing to stray from the marked path at times -- taking advantage of unplanned things that were surely found along the way. I'm thinking of Elizabeth Dulau in the role of Kleya Marki. I can't imagine that when they cast Dulau back in season one, they were thinking to themselves "and then next season, we're going to actually make one episode of Andor that doesn't even have Andor in it, and she's going to be the star instead." But they recognized how amazing she was in the role, seized upon the talent they'd found, and did just that.

I'm also mostly satisfied with how Andor ultimately decided to treat "canon," that heavy weight hanging over any long-running franchise with rabid fans. That is, they mostly treated it like bumpers on a bowling lane more than a set of handcuffs. One key example came in episode nine, where Mon Mothma delivers an epic speech basically encapsulating the entire message of the show in the most powerful way. They didn't let themselves be deterred by the fact that "Mothma's farewell speech" had already been depicted on Star Wars Rebels; they knew they could write a better speech (and have Genevieve O'Reilly absolutely crush the performance of it), so they did their own version, and then a bit of hand-waving to bring things into continuity.

My only real complaint about Andor season two is how they chose to release it: three episodes every week for four weeks. I re-watched season one in the run-up to the new season. Re-experiencing that again made me realize what an episode meal at a three-star Michelin restaurant that was, and how there was really no need for me to take the "minus" on my "A-" review of it two-and-a-half years ago. I savored ever dish season one brought before me, and left more satisfied than the first time.

Season two was like being invited back to that restaurant... except that this time, I was being timed as I ate each course. If I didn't finish it in time, the dish would be taken from me. The annoying way in which the entire internet presumed everyone would watch three hours of television in one night was maximally annoying. Tiptoeing around spoilers was impossible, as everyone treated everything from the third episode in a crop of three as old news the morning after it had dropped. And even on the rare occasions where I did dodge spoilers, I was still being forced to gorge myself to be ready for next week when we'd do it all over again. Some day, I'll need to go back and enjoy the entire series again, slowly, luxuriously. Properly.

I think I'll be happy to do just that, because I give season two of Star Wars: Andor an A.

We Built These Cities

Titles are hard. I make board games for a living. I blog here almost every weekday. I am keenly aware that finding the right title to represent your creative work is a massive challenge. What's the perfect name that reflects what you've done, might break through the noise, intrigue the skeptical, ensure the faithful, make people crack a smile? There are countless considerations that go into a few words. And I know that plenty of times, you never quite land on the perfect ones. Still, I think there's no excusing the professional malpractice that went into naming the 2024 board game Cities.

Cities is a team-up of designers Steve Finn and Phil Walker-Harding. Together, they've created a clever little drafting game that lately is one of the most enduring and beloved types of games in my group: one that plays lightning fast (about 30 minutes, in this case) while packing more meaningful decisions than you'd expect in that amount of time.

The game is played over 8 rounds. In every round, players go around the table drafting one item at a time. By the time the round is over, they must have drafted exactly four different things, in the order of your choice:

1) A land card representing 4 squares in a cityscape. The cards place alongside one starting card you're given, forming a 3x3 arrangement of cards by the end of the game. How you place those cards as you draft them is up to you, though your later choices will soon be constrained by that 3x3 limit and the directions of your earliest choices.

2) A group of two or three building pieces. The pieces come in four colors, and must be stacked on a square of matching color on one of your land cards. You can stack pieces up to four high, creating skyscrapers in blue, red, yellow, and green.

3) Tiles that fill other squares on your cards. They might be decorations for parks, or activities in the water. For either of these, a diversity of features scores better at the end of the game. They might also convert a color-locked building site to "wild," allowing you to later construct a building of any color there.

4) A card with an endgame scoring condition. It might give you points for every square in your largest single park area, points for every yellow skyscraper exactly 3 pieces tall, points for every complete set of the four colors of buildings... or a variety of other things.

Each of these four things relates closely to the others. Once you have a particular endgame scoring card, you might be driven to want buildings of a particular color. The land cards you've chosen might leave you flush with empty park spaces, making you seek tiles with features to fill them. The game is not so complex (for the savvy gamer, at least) that these connections are unmanageable. But even if you know exactly what you want, that's where the drafting mechanism kicks in to make you think harder.

You must take exactly one of each of the four things every round. Maybe there are two endgame cards that both suit your developing city perfectly? You must choose. What if none of the city cards seems critical to your plans this round? Can you find one that might give you better options in the future?

More challenging still is when there's something you know you want in more than one of the categories. If you take that group of building pieces (that are all the perfect color) now, will that endgame scoring card (that's also perfect) still be there when the draft comes back around to you? Say you glance over at your opponents' cities, and see that two of them already have that park decoration you desperately want. Is it worth risking that your last opponent won't draft it this time around, so that you can instead grab the perfect land card now?

In a handful of plays of Cities, I have found every time that the game presents me with a steady stream of choices. Perhaps none offer the tremendous depth of a more advanced, hour-plus game... but neither do they cause the paralyzing indecision those games sometimes invite. And there's nice replayability to Cities as well; the game comes with what essentially are "scenarios" representing different major cities of the world. Each one lays out three different conditions where players race to be the first, second, or third to reach them to score bonus points (each condition evocative of a real-world feature of the city).

That name, though. Cities. It's hard to think of a less memorable, less internet-searchable, less compelling title. I've played the game perhaps half a dozen times now, yet still, when I suggest "want to play Cities?", I get blank stares and have to show people the picture of the pieces on the back of the box before they go "oh, that game!" Any time I've talked with a fellow gamer about what I've been playing lately, if I mention Cities, they answer "I've never heard of it." I'm not necessarily holding Cities up as a top game of all time, but it's a game that deserves a better title, for sure.

If you're looking for a speedy game to kick off a game night -- or perhaps a good "one more game" when you're tired but not yet ready to completely turn off your brain? Cities might fill that niche. That is, ssuming you can remember the name of it after you've finished reading this. I give it a B+.

Enterprise Flashback: The Crossing

Star Trek has a long history of "possessed by an alien" stories. Enterprise served up its own take in "The Crossing."

Enterprise encounters a race of non-corporeal "wisps" that seek to inhabit the bodies of Enterprise crewmembers and experience physical reality. But when it appears these aliens might be looking for more than a temporary exchange, the crew finds themselves fighting an invasion.

I find this to be a bit of an awkward episode for Star Trek. Our crew is exploring space to seek out new life and new civilizations... yet when the encounter a truly different one here, Archer immediately doesn't trust it and doesn't want to explore. And while his caution and skepticism is arguably more realistic than most Star Trek, the fact he turns out to be right -- and that these aliens turn out to be hostile -- kind of undermines the core values of a best Star Trek stories.

The logic governing these aliens feels very conveniently particular. They once had corporeal bodies, which is meant to explain why they have a physical spaceship. But they've been "wisps" for so long that they've forgotten most of what physical existence feels like. So how is it that their spaceship is only now critically breaking down? It seems to take no effort for them to displace a human consciousness (only Phlox is immune)... and yet they don't simply take what they want; no reason is ever given for their initial ruse. Or for them only ever taking control of part of the crew. Or for them not possessing Archer when he poses the biggest threat to their plans.

In particular, one "rule" we're given about the alien possessions is hard to overlook when its broken later. Travis learns by accident that the wisps can't go into the engine nacelle (allowing the production to reuse that expensive catwalk set). Except then Trip becomes possessed without ever leaving the catwalk, and remains possessed while inside it.

Whenever a human is possessed by one of the aliens, they act wildly out of character. On the good side, that allows most of the cast a chance to give a distinctly different performance. On the bad side, it makes you wonder why our heroes ever bother building an "alien possession detector" when it's immediately obvious who isn't acting normal. And on the worse side, a plot element involving a possessed Reed threatening sexual violence against T'Pol is utterly unnecessary. (The alien's big "pickup" line, that he wonders what it's like to be female, is patently stupid; it could just go possess a woman.)

There are moments that play better -- most of them (as usual) involving John Billingsley as Phlox. He's the first to realize that the aliens might commander a host against their will, and is clever enough not to be fooled by a possessed Hoshi. He even gets an action sequence in the end, where he has to don a spacesuit, be talked through an engineering modification, and physically wrestle with an alien to save Enterprise. The horror movie vibes of the episode generally work too, from the distant and haunted cadence the aliens use when speaking of their non-corporeal realm to the "body snatcher" vibes of Possessed Trip stalking Phlox.

Other observations:

• Non-corporeal entities in scifi stories always want to eat food. This episode honors this tradition by putting a veritable buffet in front of Trip.

• When Travis Mayweather is running from a wisp, he darts up a classic, vertical Jefferies tube just as the original series presented.

• Possessed humans have to die for the aliens to be driven from them, which forms the basis of the plan to free them all. But Phlox sure doesn't seem to be in a hurry to get around the ship and revive everyone.

Not every Star Trek episode has to have a moral. But if you're going to just do a "cool scifi ghost story" like this, I think you have to respect the "rules" you set out for your story. The rules of "The Crossing" are rickety to begin with, and then not respected at all. With only fun performances to balance that out, I give the episode a C+.

A Familiar Ring

On several occasions, I've written about (or mentioned) The Crew -- a pair of cooperative trick-taking games. Those two games (especially Mission Deep Sea) have probably given my play group more hours of fun than any other new games of the past several years. Which is why we're open to other games in a similar space, and how we came to try out the ponderously titled The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game.

The game follows the plot of the first volume of J.R.R. Tolkien's famous fantasy trilogy. Each chapter of the book becomes a scenario in a cooperative trick-taking game. Each player chooses by draft to take on the role of particular character, each one with a specific goal to fulfill during one deal of the cards. Characters change depending on the chapter, and so certain goals persist from hand to hand, while others swing in for just a chapter or two before going away again. That, along with a number of other setup changes to accentuate story, results in a series of 20-ish scenarios for you and your friends to work through.

Any cooperative game based on taking tricks is going to have to contend with the existence of The Crew. But one of the more intriguing aspects of The Fellowship of the Ring is how it demonstrates that even small tweaks to a game system can have a major impact on the strategy of playing it. Designer Bryan Bornmueller has chosen just the right tweaks for maximum effect.

The deck of The Fellowship of the Ring is quite similar to that of The Crew: there are five suits in all -- though one has fewer cards in it than the other four. (That one being Rings, compared to Hills, Mountains, Forests, and Shadow.) But unlike The Crew, where that short suit is also the "trump suit" that beats all others, The Fellowship of the Rings has no trump suit -- just a single card, the One Ring (literally, the 1 of Rings) that can optionally win any trick into which it's played. Enthusiasts of Bridge, who have played their share of "No Trump" hands over the years, will understand the implications of this. But if you've been brought up on Hearts, Spades, Euchre, and their like, you'll quickly find that the absence of a trump suit radically changes the strategic landscape of the game.

The persistence of characters and their goals from one "chapter" to the next also makes for an interesting change from The Crew. Even when characters recur, this "up to four player" game can have more than four characters to choose from. Newly appearing characters are always required to be taken in the draft. That in turn causes repeating characters to take on new strategic ramifications. (For example: Legolas' goal to win a Forest card of a particular rank plays differently when more Elves with other Forest interactions appear on the scene.)

This game also foregoes the big innovation that made The Crew's premise of cooperative trick-taking really work in the first place: the concept of "communication." In The Crew, players had a method to signal to everyone else key information about a single card in their hand. To take the place of that concept in The Fellowship of the Ring -- thus greasing the gears for cooperation -- players are allowed to "exchange" cards before each hand. Loosely, this is bringing in the concept of passing cards (from Hearts), that was never part of The Crew. But in practice, it's a story-motivated way of helping players tailor their hands for the challenges they've drafted. Gimli always gets to exchange one card with Legolas before each hand (and vice versa). Boromir can exchange a card with any player other than Frodo. And so on.

Together, these changes -- along with some inspired ways of capturing narrative elements from Tolkien's book -- make for an experience that felt quite new and distinct to my group, which has played hundreds (if not thousands) of hands of The Crew. But is it a "Crew killer," as the gamers would say -- a game that makes you never want to play The Crew again? I'd say no. We dutifully worked our way through a chapter or two of The Fellowship of the Ring at the end of every single game night we gathered for over the course of a few months, until we finished. But now that we have? I feel we're not super likely -- at least right away -- to go back and play through the whole game again. (Whereas we've played both The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine and Mission Deep Sea each multiple times through all scenarios.)

But... would we be there immediately for the seemingly telegraphed release of a The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers: Trick-Taking Game? (And later, The Return of the King?) You'd better believe it. Not many games give you as much bang for your buck as this one, and I'd certainly recommend it to fans of card games or cooperative games. (Or both.) I think it's a solid B+.

Enterprise Flashback: Canamar

By halfway through the second season of Enterprise, it was clear that the series regarded Archer, T'Pol, and Trip as their core trio -- their Kirk, Spock, and McCoy -- and that they weren't terribly interested in doing much with the other characters. Some episodes feel especially lacking because of this focus. One of these is "Canamar."

When Archer and Trip are mistakenly loaded onto an alien prison transfer ship, the question is whether anyone can set things right -- and set them free -- before the vessel reaches its destination. But the situation becomes more harrowing when other prisoners aboard the transfer ship stage a breakout, and Archer and Trip must play along.

Not long ago, I was commenting that the writers of Enterprise seem to enjoy putting Trip in danger more than any other character. And if someone else is going to be with him sharing the jeopardy? Odds seem to be that'll be Archer. So right out the gate, "Canamar" is saddled with a lot of "been there, done that" weight. A lot of the episode turns on Archer playing up his piloting skills to string the fugitives along... a story that could just as easily have been given to Mayweather. Trip's role in the story is mostly to navigate delicate situations with other prisoners... a story that might have played just as well with Reed, or even Hoshi Sato (if the writers had consider the option of a co-ed prison ship).

But no, we see two of the series' most familiar characters in what feel like too-familiar situations -- chained to benches as though being put to work on oars, suffering torture at the hands of indifferent guards, playing hero in a hostage situation, lying about their identities, and more. It's not exactly that Star Trek has done this stuff to death. It's that there's no particular Star Trek spin being put on this parade of tropes. The script brushes against being Star Trek at the very end, as Archer moralizes against this alien justice system, noting that there might be many more innocent people being wrongly incarcerated. But the episode barely engaged with that notion before this climax, with just one guest character noting that they were once innocent, before actually turning to a life of crime.

We don't get much satisfaction in the B plot either, which follows Enterprise on its search for the prison transport. The characters involved never really have to do anything. There's no need to convince an alien judge of Archer and Trip's innocence, since an alien leader immediately concedes the fact. They never really have to do anything clever to stay on the trail of the prison ship; they basically just follow it without diversion from point A to point B.

What's left to enjoy are a few fun action beats, delivered with the usual panache Enterprise brings to such sequences. (Even if it does seem hokey that a blow from a pair of rigid handcuffs could knock someone out.) The episode also does well with an unlikable weasel of a character, an archetype who always appears in a prison break story. Here that comes in the form of the alien Zoumas, played by guest star Sean Whalen to distasteful, annoying perfection.

Other observations:

• In the opening scene, set inside an empty shuttlepod, CG of the time isn't quite up to believably rendering the objects floating around in zero gravity.

• After seeing the electro-shock handcuffs throughout the episode, it's satisfying to see Archer use that feature as a weapon in his final confrontation.

"Canamar" isn't so much bad as utterly forgettable. I'll give it a middle-of-the-road C.