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In the third season of “Slow Horses,” a romantic liaison in Istanbul threatens to expose a buried MI5 secret in London. When Jackson Lamb and his team of misfits are dragged into the fight, they find themselves caught in a conspiracy that jeopardizes not only Slough House but also MI5 itself. The season revolves around Standish’s kidnapping after an AA meeting and its ties to an MI5 cover-up involving their own agents.

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Foundation

Foundation is set roughly ten millennia in the future, where humanity has expanded into space and formed a vast galactic empire. Hari Seldon is an exotic mathematician who has developed a school of science for predicting future events with startling accuracy, and it just so happens that he predicts that the Empire will fall within 500 years, undermining the Emperor’s legacy. With help, Seldon is able to convince the Emperor to fund the creation of a Foundation on the edge of the galaxy, which will help speed the galaxy’s recovery from its predicted fall.

From the opening sequence to the end credits, the production values of this show are some of the highest out there – rivaling even large cinematic masterpieces like 2021’s Dune.  The sets and sequences are breathtaking in their scope and creativity. The scope and detail of Trantor and its artificial rings, for example, really sell the notion that this is a real place that exists in the distant future.  

All facets of the production design are extraordinary. Both inside and out, spaceships are unique, interesting, and realistic, and the exquisite costumes are immersive and otherworldly – Every group and faction dresses uniquely, and even the most garish and ornate of adornments have purpose.  

Whether you have full surround or basic television speakers, you are in for a sonic treat. The sound design is profoundly immersive, with music that blends with the on-screen images in a way that’s both supportive and transportive.  It clicks together so naturally that it’s easy to overlook.  

In that same vein, the sound effects are unique and convincing, and even the actors’ voices are perfectly balanced.  

The camera work and direction are also top-notch. You’re frequently treated to interesting and pseudo-experimental perspectives, which is no small feat considering the scale of some of the set pieces. 

With all that the production design and sound engineer teams got right, there is an unfortunate inconsistency with the acting quality. Performances range from masterful (Jared Harris) to downright cringeworthy (Isabella Laughland).  

Where Harris’ Hari Seldon is portrayed with conviction and an emotional range commensurate with the epic and dramatic scale of the plot, Laughland’s Brother Constant can only be described as juvenile, more fitting for an after-school sitcom than a large-budget Asimov adaptation.  Her snarky 2020 mannerisms and delivery are some of the most immersion-breaking aspects of the series.  

Leah Harvey’s over-the-top Salvor Hardin is between those extremes, which plays into the “Strong Female Character” trope with eye-rolling predictability. Also in the middle of the scale, you have Lou Llobell, who plays the now female and greatly expanded role of Gaal Dornick. She brings conviction and range to the stage despite an obvious lack of experience.

While the plot diverges from the source material fairly early on, it nevertheless effectively creates a compelling sense of some grand design that is likely coalescing into a larger conclusion., Though what that might be at this point is anyone’s guess.  

The pacing is fairly good, with action sequences interwoven with dramatic and interpersonal development. There are spots where things get bogged down in the slower interpersonal parts, but with one exception: it doesn’t usually last long enough to bore the audience.

There are elements of violence, sex, and sensuality throughout, which make this wholly inappropriate for younger viewers.  Yes, I’m making a definitive statement about that – deal with it.

To sum up, Foundation is a visually impressive and sonically beautiful piece of science fiction.  The sub-par performances by its underqualified actors, no-holds-barred diversity re-casting, and elevating the gay agenda above the central narrative are extremely distracting and mar what would otherwise be an exceptional series.  Fans of the novels should not expect an experience that respects the source material.

Woke Elements

• Diversity casting
  • Asimov’s original Foundation series didn’t focus on race or ethnicity for any but a couple of characters, so we genuinely don’t know, and it’s not relevant what the original characters’ races were, but the primary cast is very BIPOC heavy, and many of the weaker performances come from characters that have been gender-swapped and actors that make you wonder how they could have possibly passed their auditions based on merit. 
• Misandry
  • Multiple principal male characters have been gender-swapped for females; with one exception, the females are also BIPOC.
  • Gaal Dornick, originally a male role that was little more than a short-lived plot device, has been recast as a BIPOC female, and her role has been expanded to eclipse Hari Seldon’s in importance. Hari Seldon, who was originally the single most pivotal character in the story was not mentally unstable as he has been depicted here.
  • Every male character in a position of authority or influence that was not gender-swapped is now defined almost exclusively by his character flaws.  Many of these characters were also made beta for a double dose of keeping them in their place.
• Gay agenda
  • As of the second season, the single example thus far of a powerful male character having his gender and his competence left intact was made gay.  It was not sufficient to simply mention it; the show writers ground plot progress to a halt in order to devote over two-thirds of an entire episode to romanticizing his reunion with his captive husband.
  • Two of the female leads who have discovered they’re mother and daughter but are, by way of timey-wimey plot devices, relatively the same age, nevertheless frequently exchange ambiguous looks of longing with one another for several episodes before the writers contrived an absurd circumstance allowing them to share an on-screen kiss absent any overt romantic involvement.
• Anti-capitalism
  • The Empire and Emperor are often used as stand-ins for capitalism and Western society.  The Emperor clones himself to remain effectively immortal, but this maintains a closed system devoid of new and diverse thought leadership, which is blamed for the decline of the Empire itself.

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Tetris

It’s not just a movie about a video game. It’s a movie about a video game that consists entirely of rotating blocks that the player moves left and right, so how good can it be? The answer is really good. In fact, Tetris might be the best movie that I’ve seen in years.

On its surface, Tetris is a movie about Nintendo securing the worldwide game rights for Tetris from its Russian developer, the State-owned ELORG software company. As boring as that sounds, you have to remember that 1984 Russia was still a communist paradise, that is to say, a tyrannical surveillance state ruled by fear and poverty (you know…like the American Left likes it), and it is Communist Russia that is the movie’s standout star.

Much like The Lives of Others, Tetris perfectly captures the panic-inducing claustrophobia of a police state, and it’s made that much more visceral by its point of view character. Played by Taron Egerton, who is most well known for his role as Eggsy in The Kingsman, Henk Rogers is a struggling video game developer who literally bets his house and puts his life and freedom on the line in order to secure the game’s rights.

Rogers’ bullish determination to do right by his wife and children in the pursuit of financial success should resonate in the hearts of every red-blooded American man who’s still left in the U.S. It is Roger’s outsider naïveté and optimism along with his entrepreneurial drive in perfect contrast with the drab and weighty oppressiveness of 80s Russia that makes the movie pop, and Egerton’s charisma has you rooting for him from the first moment that his mustache enters view.

Mirrored by Rogers’ drive to succeed is Tetris’s creator, Alexey Pajitnov, played by Nikita Efremov. Alexey is a government drone (i.e. communist citizen) who works full-time as a computer programmer for the State. Unlike Rogers, Alexey’s life goal is merely to survive while keeping his wife and two sons fed and sheltered, and himself out of the Gulag. Exuding a lifetime of deference and subjugation like heat waves off of August asphalt, Efremov’s performance is pitch-perfect.

It’s not a perfect movie, but even its mildly clunky opening exposition dump is made charming by a combination of Egerton’s commitment to the role and a lot of fun music and graphics. Also, mostly used to good effect, there are a number of times that 2D 8-bit videogame-like cut screens are used as transitions or to aid in exposition. However, there is one unfortunate moment during the movie’s climax in which a cut screen is inserted and nearly completely kills the film’s momentum. Fortunately, it last for only a split second and the movie is able to get back onto its feet.

`Ultimately, Tetris does a first-rate job of building and holding tension, but most importantly (and this is why it is one of the best movies that I’ve seen in a couple of years) its pay-off is cathartic, which used to be why we went to the movies in the first place. I can’t recommend it highly enough and have happily placed it within our Worth it section.

WOKE ELEMENTS

• Set in a time and place when woke BS would have earned you a smack (if you were lucky) there was an attempt to boost the visibility and importance of one or two female characters that felt somewhat artificial. However, it’s so minor that I think that only nitpickers like myself will notice.
• Young people who think that AOC has more than a couple of brain cells to rub together should be made to watch this as a cautionary tale of the spirit-killing qualites of communism.

The post Tetris first appeared on Worth it or Woke.