tentonpenguin Reviews

Y: The Last Man (2021)

A whinge from a fan of the comics

[6/10 · 8 October 2021]

Read the whole series in anticipation of this adaptation and was genuinely excited about it.

From the pilot, it seems like a mixed bag. I like the expansion of Hero's backstory as it provides her with a bit more motivation for what happens later. The casting is very good and the dialogue is fairly snappy.

However there are a lot of red flags already starting to show: A prominent scene at the end of the pilot between Yorrick and Beth totally ruins Yorrick's motivation and arc for the entire series. I don't know what on earth they were thinking when this scene was added.

It seems this adaptation will not be on the same scale as the comics. Instead of our characters starting in all corners of the world, they are instead all to be found on the east coast of America. With that decision we lose a lot of the really interesting earlier adventures of the characters and they are replaced with not much of any interest. (Although the new 355 introduction is quite memorable.) What is really concerning me is the reviews claiming the show becomes glacially paced. If there is one word you would not associate with Brian K Vaughn comics, it's glacial.

I will continue to watch the series, they definitely haven't knocked it out of the park, but they haven't completely dropped the ball either.

Good Tidings (2016)

You'll know what you're in for.

[6/10 · 1 December 2016]

I saw Good Tidings at the Grindhouse Planet Film Festival.

It was pretty standard horror fare. A group gets locked in a court house during the Christmas season and gets tormented by three killer men in Santa suits. A couple of pretty effective grizzly moments aren't enough to balance out the over-long, boring sequences of the Santas staring and cackling as their hostages say things like 'please don't do this' etc.

You could cut out half an hour easily and although that wouldn't leave you with much of a film, that is kind of the problem. There is simply not enough plot and not enough imagination to justify this being feature length. In a year which has seen so many brilliant (admittedly higher budget) single-location horrors come out, (Green Room, Don't Breath, The Invitation) Good Tidings simply can't complete.