"Orphan Black" Year Two

Spoilers for everything that's aired so far.

Sophomore outings are hard, especially when they're following up to premiere seasons as strong as the one that "Orphan Black" had. That great momentum, fueled by putting its heroine into one hot situation after another, and introducing memorable characters in quick succession, was unsustainable in the long run. Too many players, too many loose ends, and way too many conflicting plot details make Year Two of "Orphan Black" an ungainly thing. We now have four major protagonists with their own separate stories, and it often feels like we're watching four different shows. You can tell that the writers are actively reaching to keep characters like Paul, Vic, and Art in the mix, ignoring past events and past motivations when it suits them. "Orphan Black" has always been a messy, flying-by-the-seat-of-its-pants genre program, where some suspension of disbelief is always necessary. When the thrills are chills are executed well, continuity hiccups aren't a big deal. However, the show definitely stumbles in some major ways this year and makes some mistakes that are too egregious to ignore.

The Dyad Corp, headed by the Pro-Clone Rachel and Dr. Leakey, emerged as the new Big Bad at the end of the last season. This year was mostly a tug-of-war between them and the clone club over control of Sarah and Kira, with a deteriorating Cosima stuck in the middle, desperately searching for a cure to her illness. But first, there are all manner of tangents and diversions. Sarah has to go find her daughter, track down the original scientists who worked on the cloning project, and finally goes ahead with her plan to skip town. Cosima, meanwhile, remains in bed figuratively with Dyad to study the clones and literally with Delphine (Evelyn Brochu), her handler and colleague, despite the ambiguous motives of both. Allison and Helena barely intersect with them this year. Allison remains nominally connected to the Dyad storyline through her husband Donnie (Kristian Bruun), but the bulk of her screen time is spent dealing with booze, rehab, and musical theater. Then there's Helena, whose return from the dead I cheered. She gets stuck with a new crop of Proletheans, lead by the supremely creepy Henrik Johnson (Peter Outerbridge), who intends to exploit her biology in a far more more direct fashion than Dyad.

As a result, the show has not only separated out and isolated some of its major characters, but some of the basic elements of its narrative. All the horror seems to be concentrated in Helena's story. The bulk of the comedy goes to Allison, which is a problem when it comes to Felix, the show's best comic relief, because he's still largely interacting with Sarah. Cosima gets the romance and the hard science-fiction. Sarah gets the action. All of these stories more or less work on their own, though Sarah's narrative is wildly haphazard. All deliver moments of fun and excitement. However, the joy of "Orphan Black" was watching the clones interact with each other, and seeing how the various genre tropes could be mixed and matched. There were simply too many episodes this year where everyone was off in their own little corner. Many of the highlights came when the clones crossed paths - Sarah and Helena's road trip, the clones passing themselves off as each other, and of course the dance party.

The new additions to the cast were mostly strong ones, and I especially enjoyed Andrew Gillies as Professor Ethan Duncan and Zoe De Grand'Maison as Henrik's daughter Gracie. Michael Huisman's Cal, Michelle Forbes' Marion, and Ari Millen's Mark seem to be getting set up for meatier stuff next year, so I don't have a problem with their relatively brief screen time this year. However, it felt pointless to bring back some of the existing characters like Art and Paul, who had severely reduced roles. Michael Mando was downgraded to a guest star, but ironically Vic was much better used this year thanks to Allison's rehab stint. I also love what they're doing with Donnie, who has become a great foil for Allison. Tatiana Maslany, however, is still the main event. It's still difficult to get my head around the fact that she's juggling so many such vastly different, distinct performances every week. Rachel is a great addition to her repertoire, a twisted ice queen with some of the year's best scenes to play with.

But then there's Tony, who was only around for one episode, but who I have to bring up because we can't ignore him or what he represents. Tony the transgender clone was one of several ideas that surely looked good on paper, but that "Orphan Black" completely bungled with poor execution. Tony was such a failure of a character on every level, and such a weird digression from the rest of this season, you have to wonder how he made it to the screen. Tony comes across as oddity for oddity's sake, a poorly thought out new twist that was deployed too quickly, and then bundled up and sent away into potential obscurity just as quickly. I'm torn between wanting him to come back at some point, to justify the show spending a whole episode setting him up, or hoping that the creators cut their losses and let him be forgotten as soon as possible.

There were a lot of other Tonys and potential Tonys this season, storylines and characters that fell apart or stopped making sense. What's particularly infuriating is that many of these issues could have been corrected or greatly improved with a little more care and attention. The second season of "Orphan Black" remained very entertaining throughout, and there were a lot of things that did work beautifully, but it was hard to ignore the multiple times it fell flat on its face. In general I like the show's daring and its uniquely female-centric, female-positive genre narrative. However, it's got a lot of work to do to get back to the level of the first season, which I now realize I cut too much slack to begin with. "Orphan Black" is starting to look more and more like a guilty pleasure, which is a shame. I hope that the creators figure out how to reverse course for Year Three.

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"Game of Thrones" Year Four

Spoilers for everything that has aired so far.

Another year of "Game of Thrones," and another round of dodging spoilers for ten weeks. This year I failed to avoid the two biggest ones - the Purple Wedding and the outcome of the duel between the Red Viper and the Mountain - but remained blissfully oblivious about the rest. It was harder to spoil things this season, a year which can be characterized by a shrinking list of characters to root for and root against.

Let's start with the less successful storylines. Theon and Stannis had transitional years. Though we checked in on them, nothing major really happened that was worthy of much discussion. I found that Daenerys in Essos was mostly treading water too. She had some good episodes, grappling with the difficulties of rulership while trying to maintain the freedom of her newly liberated cities, but the whole year just felt like an extended pit stop on her way to conquering Westeros. Brandon Stark's little band is still trudging along with poorly defined stakes and giving me little reason to be particularly invested in what they're doing. It's nice that they've finally gotten somewhere, but too much of Bran's journey has been inconsequential filler.

The rest of the surviving Stark children were more satisfying to watch. Though the status quo never remains undisturbed for long in "Game of Thrones," this was the year that some of our major protagonists showed the most change and growth. Arya continues to become more disilliusioned and cynical. The latest in her long line of male mentors was The Hound. It's a fun pairing, with the two constantly at odds and Arya not bothering to disguise her hatred of him. After three seasons of being solely a pawn and victim, Sansa has taken her first steps toward becoming a real player in the game. Her escape from King's Landing and installation as Lady of the Vale gave her some of her best material in ages. It was also good to see Littlefinger back in the thick of things after limited appearances in the last two seasons. Finally, Jon Snow has been allowed to develop into a more viable hero figure, gaining some texture from heartbreak and warfare, and well on his way to becoming a good leader.

But let's be honest. The main event of Year Four was the Lannister family's dominance falling apart at King's Landing. The Purple Wedding, Tyrion being pitted directly against Cersei and Tywin over Joffrey's death, and the subsequent fallout from the persecution were thrilling. This storyline also gave us Oberyn Martell, one of the most enjoyable supporting characters to have appeared in the show so far. The bulk of the season's best scenes involved these characters, and we got some big payoffs to storylines that had been developing for a while, like Tyrion's relationship with Shae, Joffrey and Margaery's union, and Tywin's manipulations of his children. Sure, there were missteps like the infamous Jamie and Cersei rape scene, but all in all the Lannister conflicts were more compelling than everything else put together. Well, except Brienne, who got to set off on her own storyline this year. I love her to bits, and putting her with Pod is inspired.

The season's big showpiece episode was the attack of the wildlings on the Wall, which was reportedly more expensive and complicated to pull off than the Battle of Blackwater, but I found it far less successful. Jon Snow's adventures in the far north were always among the weaker parts of "Game of Thrones," so while the big episode was impressive, it also didn't have nearly the dramatic weight that it could have because the Castle Black characters were so much less interesting than the ones at King's Landing. The duel that took place at the end of the previous episode was far more gripping. Heck, it hardly even matched up to Brienne's bout with the Hound. It's only now that Stannis has gotten involved that I care about what's going on with the Night's Watch.

And I do care. With few exceptions, Year Four of "Game of Thrones" was tremendously successful. The story hasn't lost any momentum from last season, and the quality level has remained high. I think it also helped that there were relatively few new additions to the cast this year, and those few were well-used and memorable. The balance among all the different stories and characters was very good. There wasn't anyone I particularly wanted to see more or less of this year - maybe more of the Tyrells would have been nice, though what we did get of them was excellent. Often shows in their fourth seasons begin to stagnate, having spent too much capital on previous seasons, and start repeating themselves. However, there's so much going on in "Game of Thrones," that even if Danaerys is having a duller year, Jon Snow and Sansa and Brienne can more than make up for it.

And this is why I'm not particularly worried about losing Joffrey, who will surely go down as one of the most memorable television villains from the amount of rancor I've seen lobbed at the kid, or any of the others who didn't make it through this season. We have plenty of heroes and villains and indifferent types left in the story to be invested in. And if the show ever runs out, it's proven that it's perfectly capable of giving us new ones, if Oberyn Martell is any indication. As the series closes in on the end of its source material, I am a little concerned that the creators may be tempted to start dragging some events out in order to give Geoge R.R. Martin the time he needs to finish the books. However, there have already been several instances where they have diverged from the books or moved on ahead of them. And the show has been better for it.

Highlights? It was possibly Peter Dinklage's best year as Tyrion, but he was inevitably overshadowed by Pedro Pascal's Oberyn. The Stark girls are maturing before our eyes into a terrifying pair for different reasons, and we got some great moments from Gwendolyn Christie, John Bradley-West, Jack Gleeson, and Lena Heady. And I'm very sad to see Rose Leslie, Charles Dance, and Rory McCann leaving the cast. For all my impatience with Danaerys's adventures, they certainly looked more impressive than ever, with some of the most gorgeous set design and costuming I've seen yet. Similarly with "The Watchers on the Wall," even I'm not immune to the sight of a giant riding a woolly mammoth or that ridiculously cool business with the massive arrows.

Can Benioff and Weiss keep this up next year, as the story reportedly starts slowing down? I don't know, but I can't wait to see them try.
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Checking In to "The Grand Budapest Hotel"

It's been a long time since a Wes Anderson film has gotten me completely on its side. I admired "Moonrise Kingdom," and its lighthearted youth romance almost won me over, but I didn't quite connect with it the way that many other fans were able to. It was the same with "Fantastic Mr. Fox," "Darjeeling Limited," and "The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou." However, I'm happy to report that "Grand Budapest Hotel" hit all the right buttons.

Nested in a narrative structure that incorporates multiple time periods and several different layers of storytelling devices, we are presented with the tale of a young man named Zero (Tony Revolori), who becomes a Lobby Boy at the once famed Grand Budapest Hotel in the fictional European country of Zubrowka, in the brief time between the World Wars. In this position he becomes the loyal protege of the hotel's legendary concierge, Monsieur Gustave H (Ralph Fiennes). Zero and Gustave become caught up in a series of adventures after Gustave inherits a valuable piece of art from one of his elderly female admirers, Madame D (Tilda Swinton), and is framed for her murder. The pair have encounters with many colorful characters as they struggle to uncover the truth, including a young pastry chef named Agatha (Saoirse Ronan), who Zero falls in love with.

I think the reason why "Grand Budapest Hotel" worked for me while "Moonrise Kingdom" and many of the other Anderson films didn't, has to do with the way it's executed. The artifice of the "Grand Budapest Hotel" universe is no less obvious than it was in any of the other films, but this time we're given a bridge of sorts from reality to Anderson's meticulous dollhouse dreamscape. Zero's adventures in the 1930s are relayed by the older Zero (F. Murray Abraham) to a novelist (Jude Law) in the 1960s, who writes a book about them in the 1980s, which is being read by an unknown girl in the present day. Thus the events have obviously been colored by being relayed second-hand, by the nostalgia of two different storytellers, and by being adapted into different mediums. This is nicely emphasized by Anderson using different film aspect ratios for the brief scenes in other time periods. Thus, it's easier to accept the characters being larger than life, the madcap plot developments, and the occasional jaunts into the absurd and the fantastic.

The change of scenery is also helpful. I find the continental aesthetics of "Grand Budapest Hotel" tremendously more appealing than Anderson's usual evocations of the vintage Americana of his youth. Here the amalgam of different period European designs, nods to various 30s and 40s cinema classics, and a fantastic color scheme full of bright pinks and purples and turquoises reveal the director's style is far more malleable than I've given him credit for. His composition skills and eye for detail are as impressive as always. What really sells it, though, are the performances. Ralph Fiennes playing the romanticized caricature of the ultimate concierge is a delight, and makes you wish that he did more comedy. He's a wonderful addition to Anderson's regular troupe of actors, many of whom also make appearances here. Adrien Brody and Willem Dafoe are the villains, Edward Norton is a train inspector, Harvey Keitel is a convict, and Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, and Jason Schwartzman pop by for minor roles.

Another major change is the humor. This is the closest Anderson has come to making a pure genre film, in this case an old-fashioned screwball comedy. While there's still a good deal of the deadpan absurdity and ironic dialogue of the "Rushmore" and "The Royal Tennenbaums" variety, there's also lots of straightforward slapstick and gags in the mix, which are much easier to appreciate. Since "Fantastic Mr. Fox," Anderson has been incorporating the wilder imagery and visual language of animation into his films, and he's particularly successful at it here - more successful than his efforts when he was making an actual animated film, in fact. There's an escape sequence that delivers so much rapid-fire physical humor, it's like watching a Bugs Bunny cartoon starring Ralph Fiennes. Then there's a brief chase sequence rendered with stop-motion animation, which shouldn't work as well as it does.

And yet, the story retains a strong emotional core and Anderson's usual explorations of parent-child relationships are firmly front and center. This is one of his more sentimental films, a tribute to filmmakers and filmmaking of eras long past. And I'm always a sucker for these kinds of movies, which is probably the biggest reason why I liked "Grand Budapest Hotel" so much. I don't think its his best, but it's the first Wes Anderson picture in ages that I've enjoyed wholeheartedly. And best of all, it's proof of Anderson growing and changing as a director, perhaps for the better.
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An Argument For "Transcendence"

"Transcendence" was one of my most anticipated films of 2014. It's the directing debut of Christopher Nolan's longtime cinematographer Wally Pfister, stars Johnny Depp and Paul Bettany, and features an original science-fiction script that made it onto a recent edition of the Black List. And while it's clearly a very flawed piece of work, "Transcendence" didn't disappoint me in the slightest. I think that the overwhelmingly negative reactions I've seen can be chalked up to a couple of things, the most obvious being a major case of mismatched expectations. From the names involved and the intriguing premise, everyone went in expecting a cerebral action film, or possibly some sort of loftier hard science-fiction drama. Instead, "Transcendence" is better characterized as a modern-day retelling of "Dracula," one part monster movie and one part romantic melodrama.

Johnny Depp's Dr. Will Caster may be on all the posters as a dying man who uploads and merges himself with an artificial intelligence, but the film's protagonist is clearly Evelyn Caster (Rebecca Hall), Will's loving wife. She is the one who must grapple most directly with the question of whether the new AI really is her husband, or if the entity is simply using his data to mimic him for its own sinister purposes. We first meet the Casters as they are working to achieve the technological singularity or "transcendence," which attracts the attention of an extreme anti-technology activist group RIFT, led by the grim-faced Bree (Kate Mara). When Will falls victim to one of their attacks, Evelyn and their friend Max (Paul Bettany) help create the AI Will Caster. Max is our other POV character, who realizes the destructive potential of the new AI creation, and that though RIFT's tactics are heinous, their fears are not unfounded.

"Transcendence" certainly looks the part of a big-budget action movie, with its copious use of CGI effects, impressive action set-pieces, and a narrative that builds up to a big clash between two well-armed opposing forces. However, action fans are likely to become bored with the slower stretches dealing with Will and Evelyn's relationship, and all the talk about the ethics of AI. It's also apparent immediately that the science in this science-fiction story is mostly technobabble. We see the AI Will Caster accomplish some completely ludicrous feats, supposedly thanks to his control of advanced nanomachines. It's really more akin to him having supernatural powers, and "Transcendence" works better if you think of the AI as an analogue of a demon or a ghost, slowly gaining influence and amassing power as it finds a foothold in the physical world. The trouble is that "Transcendence" isn't interested in being a horror film, which probably would have served the premise better. Instead, it's far more preoccupied with visual spectacle, constantly showing off beautifully designed environments and neat little graphic concepts.

And the spectacle is certainly impressive. If you're a fan of Pfister's work on the Nolan films, he's certainly working up to his usual standard here. The integration of the effects is particularly impressive. The AI Will Caster eventually builds himself a laboratory that functions like a giant iPad, allowing him to project his image on any surface. His interactions with Evelyn are fascinating, as the AI tries to approximate the human Will but keeps being thwarted by its unnerving, casual omnipresence. I think the film would have worked better if the scope of the story were smaller and more intimate, perhaps cutting out the heavy-handed apocalypse storyline completely and simply exploring the changed relationship. The apocalypse is where the bulk of the film's problems lie, where there are the most noticeable storytelling problems and logic leaps. The core of more personal, philosophical film about AI is established pretty well here, but the typical action movie folderol isn't set up well, so it comes across half-hearted, and just feels like a distraction.

With the basic construction of "Transcendence" in such a bad state, there's not much that any of the actors could do to mitigate the damage. They all try their best, including Johnny Depp, who has been accused of phoning in his performance, but I found he did a very good job of getting across the eerie ambiguity of the AI, which always speaks in a low, soothing tone, and uses images of Will to represent itself that tend to look a little too glossy and perfect. Rebecca Hall hasn't gotten nearly enough credit for her work as the conflicted Evelyn, who sells her character's unusual state of mind and personal dilemma. All the other characters, sadly, are too underdeveloped to say much about, including a federal agent played by Cillian Murphy and a colleague of Will's played by Morgan Freeman. I was especially disappointed that Kate Mara's domestic terrorist got so little to do beyond monologuing about the dangers of giving the machines too much power over humanity. The section of the film featuring her and Paul Bettany clearly didn't get as much attention as the rest, and it shows.

Still, "Transcendence" has a lot of strong elements and I admire Wally Pfister's ambition and commitment. I think he shows a lot of promise as a filmmaker and his first directorial effort is certainly worth seeing. The film is a mess, but it's a beautiful mess, and more importantly an interesting mess. And those are always more worthwhile than the merely competent mediocrities.
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"Mad Men," Year Seven

Spoilers for everything that has aired so far.

Thanks to AMC's decision to split the final season, we only got seven episodes of "Mad Men" this year, in what's being called the first half of the seventh season. However, as brief as the run was, this felt like a full season, giving many of the familiar characters complete and interesting arcs, and delivering a couple of major developments worth devoting a full post to by themselves. So as far as I'm concerned, this was the seventh season of "Mad Men," and will be analyzed as such.

The end of the sixth season saw Don Draper hit a low point, disintegrating during the Hershey pitch and being forced to take a leave of absence from Sterling Cooper & Partners. Would he stage a comeback like he had so may times before? Would he wash his hands of the agency and of his failing second marriage and start over again? We got the answer fairly early that a Don unable to work was a Don disastrously disconnected and adrift, out of sync. However, getting him out of bicoastal limbo and back to work took up most of the season. In essence, to get any semblance of the old Don Draper back, he had to grow up and become someone else.

And to do that he had to keep failing and failing miserably for a while. He had to be torn down and brought low, made to realize that Megan didn't need him in California and that the firm was doing just fine without him in New York. Betty and the kids? So busy with their own lives that his absence barely registers. Moreover, being awful to Peggy and Joan last year had big consequences, and his bold move to bring in Jim Cutler and Ted Chaough backfired, with Cutler and the supremely hateable new creative director Lou Avery becoming the season's major villains. Don's most enthusiastic supporter this year was fellow exile Pete Campbell, of all people! And it made Don the kind of fascinating, relatable protagonist that I'd been missing for too many seasons.

Of course, Don wasn't the only one in crisis this year. In the show it's now 1969, with the world about to plunge into the '70s and nobody quite ready for it. Peggy, like Don, didn't deal well with personal or professional situations that weren't going her way. She was downright unlikeable for an episode or two before finally getting past her blocks, which was a development that was honestly a little overdue. Peggy has been so sympathetic for so long, it was good to see the status quo shaken up. Nobody else had nearly as much screen time or emphasis among the regulars, but just about everybody got some of the spotlight in at least one episode to remind us why we love and/or hate them.

More than ever, "Mad Men" felt like a collection of character snapshots - Betty and Roger screwing up parenting, Joan ascending to accounts, Shirley's awful Valentine's Day, Megan meeting Don's niece, Sally in New York, Pete in California, and the disintegration of Michael Ginsberg. Some vignettes were executed better than others, and some episodes were certainly better about connecting all the disparate stories than others, but everything felt consequential and nobody felt shortchanged this year. Thematically, it all fit the end-of-an-era, time of reckoning feel to the season where the unknown future was bearing down quickly on everyone.

Nowhere was this more apparent than the finale, one of the best episodes of "Mad Men" to date, where all the major storylines pay off, and characters take big steps forward. Roger leads, Peggy pitches, and Don helps along both of their victories while securing his own position. On the other hand, Don and the firm are right back where they started and surely only delaying the inevitable. The firm's big new clients are names we know become obsolete. Sterling Cooper was actively trying to avoid the buyout last season. And the signs of generational change are all around, Cooper's farewell the most obvious one.

Despite the more heavy-handed symbols of impending doom being toned way, way down this year, "Mad Men" is as full of ominous portents as ever. I loved the multiple references to "2001: A Space Odyssey" accompanying the threatened technological takeover that doomed poor Ginsberg. I loved Bert Cooper going out on a soft-shoe (soft-sock?) number that all but rebuked Don for his successes. And even as Sally chose the nerd over the Neanderthal, she struck a cigarette-smoking pose so positively Betty, it sent chills up the spine.

As "Mad Men" draws to a close, it feels like Matt Weiner and company are well along in the process of saying goodbye to these characters and this universe. I doubt we're going to see Megan or Ginsberg again. I doubt we'll get much more time with Ken or Stan or Bob Benson. There are several episodes in Year Seven that had scenes that could have closed out the series for good. The fact that we have seven episodes left feels indulgent, honestly.

I don't expect that "Mad Men" will go out with a bang - it's not and never has been that kind of show - but the lead-up to the end has been so strong that I'm certain the finale will be worth the wait. Here's to Year Eight.
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"Hannibal" Year Two

Moderate spoilers ahead for everything that has aired so far.

Like many others, I remain incredulous that the "Hannibal" television series is airing on a national network. It's not just because of the violence and gore, which appears in copious amounts, but because the series so caters to a specific niche audience. "Hannibal" fans need to appreciate elliptical dialogue, artsy atmospherics, ambiguous plotting, and regular jolts of extreme horror movie imagery. It's so driven by aesthetics at times, you could mistake it for an European art film - except when it's also a sublimely macabre gorefest.

I wasn't all that enamored with the first season, though I appreciated what Bryan Fuller and his collaborators were trying to do with the property. I found the plotting too muddled for my tastes, and many of the characters weren't quite where I wanted them to be. Still, I saw a lot of potential so I came back for the second season, and promptly fell in love. Year Two of "Hannibal" is split up into two parts, the first with Will Graham in a mental institution, trying to clear his name after Dr. Lecter frames him for murder, and the second where Will and Jack Crawford are trying to bait Hannibal into revealing himself. The first half is where Will Graham grows a backbone, taps into the darker part of his psyche, and goes toe to toe with Hannibal in playing mind games. It is also much more tightly and explicitly plotted, with a couple of great twists.

And suddenly "Hannibal" was giving me everything I wanted from the show - lots of visceral thrills and chills without compromising the intellectual bent, and it started developing the major characters in the right directions too. Laurence Fishburne's Jack gets more interesting as he has to weigh Will and Hannibal's claims against each other. As Will becomes more self-aware and bolder in his maneuverings, Hannibal is put on the defensive. Their predator-victim relationship gets much richer and more complex with the two of them on equal psychological footing. Last year I watched the show largely for Mads Mikkelsen's take on Dr. Lecter, but now Hugh Dancy's performance is getting very close to the same level. I especially enjoy the recurring instances of role reversal, where Hannibal gets to play investigator or Will discovers his inner puppetmaster. The arc also makes great use of minor characters like Beverly Katz, Abel Gideon, and especially Dr. Frederick Chilton. Raul Esparza is a joy to watch.

Alas, Will Graham had to be let out of the straitjacket eventually, and the show had to move on to the second half of the season where we meet the Vergers, Margot and Mason, played by Katherine Isabelle and Michael Pitt respectively. There's too much story stuffed into this arc, and not enough time to adequately present it. I really got a kick out of the Vergers, but didn't feel we got nearly enough time with them to get the full impact of their twisted family feud. Will's attempts to entrap Hannibal also felt underserved, with too many pieces of key exposition missing. The final run of episodes wasn't bad in any sense, but it couldn't hope to match up to the intensity of the first half of the year, even with a wonderful finale. I'm hoping that next season fills in some of the gaps, and thank goodness there will be a next season.

"Hannibal" has distinguished itself by happily striking out on its own, borrowing characters, concepts, plot points, and imagery from the Lecter books and films, but being beholden to none of them. Characters have swapped genders, been killed off early, and positioned in different roles. Though the series is following the rough timeline of the books, specific events are ordered differently. Some of the dramatic license gets to be a bit much - there have been at least three fake-out deaths this year, possibly four - but the "Hannibal" creators have clearly become very comfortable with the material and are in a good position to start tackling some of the more famous stories coming up.

As always, I have a few reservations. Catherine Dhavernas still doesn't get nearly enough to do as Alana Bloom, and the most interesting female characters like Freddie Lounds, Dr. Du Maurier, and Bella Crawford have had fleeting appearances at best. Abigail Hobbs and Miriam Lass are really little more than plot devices, and Margot Verger's already gone. I'm hoping Clarice Starling is introduced sooner rather than later to help unskew things here. And while I'm all for letting the viewer figure things out on their own, there have been too many times where the writers simply aren't playing fair - nothing on the aftermath of the Chilton situation?

Then again, I'm getting worked up because "Hannibal" has really gotten its claws into me. I continue to adore the mad visuals, not just the death tableaux but the febrile sex scenes and the disturbing dream imagery. Directors like David Slade, Michael Rhymer, and newcomer Vincenzo Natali have been delivering excellent work week after week. The score and sound design have gotten weirder and and more evocative. The set design just keeps getting better. And the cast - even the one-off killers of the week have been landing actors like Amanda Plummer. It's fantastic.

"Hannibal" has survived despite the odds, and I hope it's around for a long time to come. I still find parts of it a little slapdash and problematic, but it's one of the most unique shows airing anywhere right now, and so well executed that it deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as any other prestige series you could find on cable or premium cable.
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It's About Time For "Future Past"

The "X-Men" movie franchise, now up to its seventh film if you count the two "Wolverine" solo adventures, has had a lot of ups and downs over the past fourteen years. Nobody likes "The Last Stand" or "Origins." The continuity has become a snarled mess. The newest installment, "X-men: Days of Future Past," is best enjoyed if the viewer is familiar with the rest of the series, and yet it blithely ignores major developments from those films. Last summer's "The Wolverine," included a mid-credits teaser sequence that set up "Days of Future Past," for instance, but it doesn't actually connect to anything that goes on in this movie.

And yet, "Days of Future Past" makes all that history and all that interconnectivity work for it in ways that the competing Marvel Cinematic Universe films have never managed. I enjoyed "Days of Future Past" more than any superhero sequel in ages, and I think a large part of it has to do with the fact that it's been quite a few years since we've last properly seen many of the characters as they were originally depicted - "Last Stand" in 2006 was the last to feature most of the cast of the original "X-men" films - and in both of the eras that are depicted in "Days of Future Past," a lot of time has passed and a lot has happened to our heroes.

In 2023, we have a dystopian future where nightmarish automatons called Sentinels have nearly exterminated mutants and a good chunk of humanity. Among the survivors are Magneto (Ian McKellan), Professor X (Patrick Stewart), Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), Storm (Halle Berry), and Shadowcat (Ellen Page). In a last ditch attempt to beat the Sentinels, Shadowcat sends Wolverine's consciousness back in time fifty years to his body in 1973, to stop the Sentinels from ever being created. To do this, he needs the help of the younger Xavier (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender), who we met in "First Class," to stop the assassination and martyrdom of the Sentinels' creator, Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage), by the conflicted shapeshifter Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence).

Despite hardly any of these characters looking like they've aged, the "First Class" gang is now a decade older and more cynical, grappling with the tail-end of the Vietnam War era and the fallout of a lot of historical and personal tragedies. The original trilogy's present-day characters have been flung even farther into the future, eking out their survival in a hellish nightmare world. It doesn't matter if the little details between all the different films don't match up because the "Terminator" -esque story is strong enough, and all the important characters and their circumstances are well established enough that "Days of Future Past" largely works on its own apart from everything that came before.

It's good to have director Bryan Singer back, who is a deft hand with both the action sequences and the melodrama. While "Days of Future Past" does have the large-scale set piece we see at the end of all big-budget superhero films these days, the outcome actually hinges on some very intimate character interactions. James McAvoy and Hugh Jackman in particular shoulder a lot of the weight. I was also happy to see Jennifer Lawrence's Mystique getting a big boost in screen time and narrative importance. The movie is a little lacking in female characters, but Lawrence steals every scene she's in, and at this point she's the definitive Mystique.

The vastly overpowered cast, full of Oscar winners and RSC vets, keep the movie humming along a very human scale, and from becoming too much of a slug-fest. Not that the slugging isn't a lot of fun. There are a couple of stand-out effects sequences, including a jailbreak lead by a speedster mutant named Quicksilver (Evan Peters), and some brawling between the Sentinels and a group of future X-men that shows off multiple kinds of powers being used together. However, it's really the storytelling that makes the film, and I got much more out of the smaller moments of humor and the period touches when Wolverine finds himself back in the '70s.

I've always liked the way that the "X-men" franchise has such a strong sense of history to it, and "Days of Future Past" is perhaps the ultimate expression of this. Unlike other superhero serials that tend to drag their feet when it comes to showing any character progression or disrupting the status quo, these last few "X-men" films have embraced the passage of time. Actions have consequences that echo through the decades. People grow and change and die. The superheroes are not infallible and villains are not always wrong. This version of "Days of Future Past" depends on it.

I've seen some describe this latest "X-men" film as a reboot to some extent, because it negates some of the events that happened in earlier films, but I think that's a mistake. "Days of Future Past" is watchable if you haven't seen any of the past movies, but those who know the series and love these characters already are the ones who will get the most out of it. And they're the ones who will be the most appreciative of the complicated, but compelling time travel fable that Singer and Kinberg and Vaughn and Goldman and the rest are telling here.
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