Persephone's (Gothic) Insights

Hi, everyone. Because of the holidays, I've gotten behind; there won't be a post this week. I have some stuff planned for next Friday, however. A belated merry Christmas to everyone, and a happy new year! :)

The Boys (2019) is an excellent show in a lot of respects. In this review of season one, I'll be going into great detail as to why it's so good. Spoiler alert! I don't like superheros. They're just... lame. This being said, The Boys bucks a lot of the trends that irritate me about the genre—a lack of wholesome, raunchy sex and good ol'-fashioned ultraviolence. But simply injecting these elements can have a bloating effect, doing little to address my pet peeves. As much as I enjoyed Brightburn , for example, it largely felt formulaic, stock. In other words, the violence didn't make up the heart of the experience; it was merely a coat of paint. In The Boys  nothing could be further from the truth. The show is undeniably extreme in this regard, but the violence-in-question drives the actions of the cast. Within the first ten minutes of the show, local city bumpkin Hughie meets with his girlfriend... only to have her blown to pieces. And you might say to you...

I'll just say this up front:  Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)   isn't comparable to Cameron's movies. That's okay, though; most aren't. This being said,   I don't want to hate on this film. I certainly wasn't going into it with that intention; I love the Terminator series and tend not to dismiss its entries outright. Like other latter-day entries,  Dark Fate was a mixture of good and bad, and I'll cover both in this review. Spoilers! "I came across time for you, Sarah; I love you, always have." "I now know why you cry, but it is something I can never do." Lines like these stick with you—for what they meant at the time they were said. By comparison the dialogue in  Dark Fate  is largely exposition. To be fair, the first two movies had exposition too, but it's the manner to which they spell it out that makes it effective. In The Terminator (1984), Reese barely has time to explain anything; he's on the run from the cops an...

Watching AMC's The Terror  (2018) season one, I found myself thinking of movies like  The Edge (1997). In that movie, a billionaire and his film crew are stranded in the Alaskan wilderness while also being pursued by a giant bear (eat your heart out, Shakespeare). The beast is certainly a problem for them, but the bigger issue is the land itself. The Edge   was set in Alaska; The Terror   occurs in Antarctica, a cold, desolate place that makes the former look tropical. There's also a monster involved that's anything but a bear. I enjoyed The Terror   very much, and for reasons I didn't foresee going in. I'll explain those in a moment. Fair warning: I'll be spoiling the hell out of this show. If you haven't see in it yet, watch it blind first. You'll thank me later. The year is 1845. Two ships—curiously named Erebus (the Greek god of darkness) and Terror—sail for the Frozen North, bent on discovering a passage to America. For them, it's ...