#3: The King - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

"A king has no friends. Only followers and foe."

Taking cues from the historical epics of Ridley Scott, The King forgoes historical accuracy in favor of dramatic tension, and while it performs its duties admirably, it's hard to find anything truly novel among the familiar.

#2: The Tragedy of Macbeth ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

"I have no words, my voice is in my sword."

Embracing the surreal dreamscapes of the stage & screen combined and boasting a murderers row of epic talent who inject new gravitas & swagger to this well trodden material.

This isn't your grandpa's Shakespeare.

#1: Macbeth ⭐️⭐️⭐️

"Full, full of scorpions, is my mind."

This competently directed, solidly performed take on Macbeth boasts decadently composed shot after shot, leaning into the dream like haze of the titular lead's descent into madness, but it never quite finds new texture to this well worn tale.

Week One: Swords and Shields

For the first week, I will be focusing on films set largely before the time of firearms when the emphasis in battle was hand to hand combat.

(If you know me irl you can check the discord for times and more info)

HM-#23: In A Violent Nature
Directed & Written by: Chris Nash
Cinematography: Pierce Derks
Starring: Ryan Barrett and Andrea Pavlovic
Released: May 31st
Streaming: Shudder - AMC+

What I love about Invincible is that being a hero doesn't inherently mean you're right and being right doesn't inherently mean you're a hero, but Cecil isn't right, he's effective, those are two different things.

Cecil doesn't want criminals rehabilitate, he wants them indebted to him, he wants to hold their strings, he wants no oversight on his operations and he wants to control the flow of information. He wants zero checks or balances.

And this is without even getting into the inherent ethical mindfield of the Reanimen themselves, sure they're donated corpses, they are also murderous kill machines that have no conscience and can't object to government orders...thats not the type of soldiers an ethical leader requires.

Sinclair wasn't "rehabilitated" he served no punishment for his heinous crimes, we the audience know this explicitly as we saw he spent less than one day in jail before Cecil had him working on Reanimen to fight Nolan. He has acted with impunity.

Mark is acting rash and out of a sense of selth loathing for killing Angstrom (how can he forgive Darkwing when he can't forgive himself?) He believes he wasn't punished enough for his mistake and is thus over compensating but, Cecil is fully taking advantage of this.

*takes deep breath* Cecil doesn't actually care about the concept of redemption, he is a deeply pragmatic strategist, every move he makes is in an effort to maintain control with his hand on the wheel, he is deeply sincere but he knows how to wield sincerity like a knife.

Oh damn, I have the RG in my to-build pile but I'm intimidated by anything past HG 😅

Is this the HG or RG?

And if you're still doing a rewatch of the first two seasons, I've made ones for each of them!

However, beyond a strong & suitably spooky start, Night Country doesn't quite maintain that consuming sense of dread, & ontop of that a slew of hamfisted Easter eggs referencing the first seasons stronger & more terrifying iconography prevent this season from standing on its own somewhat thin ice.

As a lapsed fan of the show who holds season 1 in extremely high regard but missed subsequent outings, Night Country was a dip back into icy waters, & with a stellar line up of veteran actors & a showrunner whose breakout film, Tigers Are Not Afraid, I thoroughly enjoyed, my interest was piqued.