Uneasy Dreams

I'll never make fun of Jemma Redgrave again, not after seeing 1988's Dream Demon. She and Kathleen Wilhoite play a couple of unlikely friends trying to navigate a series of nightmares suddenly encroaching on waking life. There's some genuinely creepy stuff in this movie but the main appeal is in these two characters.

Redgrave plays Diana, a conservative young schoolteacher in London who's preparing for her marriage to a decorated military officer, an '80s tanned, blonde douche called Oliver.

We don't have reason to suspect he's a douche, though, except from Diana's dreams. In her dreams, he suddenly becomes a snarling prick when Diana finds herself in a slutty wedding dress or feeling compelled to say "No" during the wedding ceremony.

Wilhoite plays Jenny, a goth from LA who's in town investigating her lost childhood memories. She and Diana meet when Jenny rescues her from a couple obnoxious reporters, one of whom is played by Timothy Spall, who can sell "obnoxious" very efficiently.

The film has some good ideas for the hallucinations the two women have, including a looking glass version of Diana's flat. I have to agree somewhat with a review quote from The Guardian on Wikipedia that the film should have, "stuck to what it is really about, which is people haunting themselves." The third act makes the threat entirely external whereas, at first, it seemed more intimately related to the protagonists' own psychological issues, particularly Diana's. The film does such a good job of establishing her falling apart, it's a big letdown when her story kind of evaporates.

But both Redgrave and Wilhoite are great, with good rapport, making it kind of a "buddy haunting" film, like a buddy cop movie. Diana's situation is so nicely established as bewildering and stressful, it's a genuine relief that someone as cool and level-headed as Jenny suddenly shows up in her life.

I still don't think Jemma Redrave strikes the right tone as the leader of UNIT on Doctor Who but I definitely have more respect for her talent now.

Dream Demon is available on The Criterion Channel.

The Load Bearing Paper

Just how much does your country depend on money? Netflix's Paper House series posits that all of it does. Actually, the title for English language countries is Money Heist, another intensely stupid re-naming of a Korean movie/series that already have a perfectly fine, much better, English title in its native country. "Paper House" is much more to the point.

But actually, it was originally a Spanish series, and the South Korean series is a remake and a loose side-quel. The South Korean series seems to be more popular, as everything from South Korea seems to be nowadays, and it was recommended to me by a 15 year old student at the junior high school I'm currently working at here in Japan. This particular school has a delightful group of delinquent girls who don't like going to class, so they often just hang out in the halls. Japan may be famous for conformity, but the funny thing about that is there often seems to be no mechanisms in place for people who don't conform. So the increasingly rebellious junior high school age students have become a perplexing problem for many.

Anyway, one of these students is a kick boxer who shows up late because she's practicing kick boxing until 10pm every night. She told me she dressed as a character from Paper House for Halloween, so I watched the first episode.

South Korea's version is set three years in the future, when North and South Korea have been unified. Things are tense but there's now a massive new mint on the former border. A mysterious man called The Professor assembles a team of thieves from North and South to storm the place, take it over, and hold for hostage the employees and a group of high school students, who there for a tour. Each of the crooks assumes the name of a different foreign city.

The first part of the story is told from the perspective of the one called Tokyo, a young woman who was once a soldier in the North Korean army. She complains about capitalism when she finds a real estate agency has lied to her about her new apartment. There's an implication that things were bad in North Korea but the show spends a lot more time complaining about capitalism without a harsh word for communism.

I'm not sure if the writers have a clear philosophical motivation or if they're just having the characters complain about capitalism because it's the hip new thing to do. I've noticed Fight Club is really popular in Japan recently and The Professor's plan on Korean Paper House reminded me a little of Project Mayhem, in that it's intended to cripple the economic system while avoiding physical harm to innocent bystanders. The difference is that Fight Club seems to have some awareness that this is a dangerous pipe dream.

But Paper House has some clear charm and style. It's available on Netflix.

Real City, Real Error

If you're ever falsely imprisoned for a crime, you'd do well to have Jimmy Stewart be your advocate. In 1948's Call Northside 777, based on a true story, Stewart plays a reporter digging into the events that sent two men to prison with 99 year sentences. It's an interesting film with lots of amazing location footage of Chicago. But there's not much more to it than procedural.

Well, James Stewart is always worth your time. It'd been a while since I'd watched one of his movies and it was just nice to see him again. And he's great, first scoffing at the ridiculous idea that Frank Wiecek (Richard Conte) could be innocent.

Then we can see the evolution of feeling on his face as he listens to the man's devoted mother (Kasia Orzazewski), who's raising money, to offer a reward for the real killer, by scrubbing floors. Even Stewart's own sweet and beautiful wife (Helen Walker) gets on his case about it.

The film was directed by Henry Hathaway and there are a few atmospheric moments, most strikingly when Stewart finally tracks down a key witness in a miserable old apartment building.

Some of the politics in the movie feels oddly contemporary, as when the newspaper man assumes there's political and police corruption at play and the police he talks to are uncooperative because they're offended by a widespread perception of all cops being corrupt.

Call Northside 777 is available on The Criterion Channel in their November Noir collection. It's not a film noir by any means but it's a decent movie.

Twibytter Sonnet #1641

Conflicting dishes wrought a clatter sink.
Removing barrels brought the monkey down.
The looking glass revenge reversed the ink.
As ev'ry eye discerns across the town.
Confusion cut the coat a pocket less.
A printed face unites a town for cash.
Refreshing springs decided whom to bless.
The cookies threw that million dollar bash.
A counter crushed the napkin box to death.
Formica vision spurs the dream to kill.
Electric trams were choked with fire breath.
Reception checked the falling ice's will.
Redoubled print absolves the wanted soul.
Researching meant evolving ev'ry goal.

Kevin Conroy

The voice of Batman for the past thirty years, Kevin Conroy, has passed away at the age of 66. In fact, it was exactly thirty years this September Fifth since Batman: The Animated Series debuted on television. Conroy's take on the role was so distinct and beloved that he could subsequently be heard in most animated films, television series, and video games featuring the character.

And, reportedly, he was an exceptionally nice guy. I remember watching an interview with him when he talked about working in a kitchen during the terrible days in New York following 9/11.

Other people voiced Batman in the past thirty years but it never felt "official" unless it was Kevin Conroy. It's amazing to think of the diversity of projects that he worked on as Batman. My favourites are probably the Batman: Gotham Knight anime collection that was commissioned as part of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight and the first two Arkham Asylum video games.

His Batman sounded dark and strong but also subtly vulnerable. He never overdid it, he was always solid. In DC's tumultuous history with its properties over the past few decades, Conroy was one of the few, if not only, stable presences. Batman on screen will never be the same without him.

Navigating the Improbable Shadows

A cold-blooded professional killer finds himself suddenly caught up in a lot more than he bargained for in 1942's This Gun for Hire. Alan Ladd stars as the killer, Raven, with Veronica Lake as a saucy magician called Ellen. Like Detour, it's a story filled with absurd coincidences, which, from one perspective, could be taken as weak screenwriting. But the genuine feelings behind it turn the absurdity into nightmare logic.

The film starts off playing with our sympathies right away. Raven, cute and stone faced young man, sets up for his next hit. He pauses to give a saucer of milk to a kitten. A charwoman comes in to tidy up the place and tries to toss the cat out the window. Raven smacks her and tears her dress.

Already, he's attractive and repulsive at the same time. The movie continues this deliberate back and forth. He goes to his job, kills a gangster and his girl, but then stops on a staircase outside to help a girl with broken legs retrieve her ball.

Unbeknownst to him, he's getting paid in counterfeit bills by Laird Cregar. Cregar plays L.A. nightclub owner Willard Gates. Gates hires Ellen (Lake) as an act for his nightclub. Ellen just so happens to get a seat by Raven on the train. Gates just happens to be on the same train and sees the two together. And if that's not enough for you, Ellen also happens to be engaged to the detective investigating Raven's killings (Robert Preston, who gets top billing). And she's been secretly tasked by a senator to uncover Gates' business relationship with the Axis powers. Whew.

It all works because Raven is a solid presence as a conflicted, lost wanderer in this dark world of murder and avarice. It's not among the best films noir, but it's certainly fascinating and Raven is a magnetic character.

This Gun for Hire is available on The Criterion Channel.

Bouncing Birdy Spies

For a spy, is getting turned into a pigeon a hindrance or an asset? 2019's Spies in Disguise seeks to answer this question in a movie filled with friendly cgi faces, nice performances, and a wobbly screenplay.

We meet young Walter as a junior high school student, developing pacifist gadgets to help his mother, a policewoman, in her job, like a watch that sprays glitter under the theory that glitter makes people happy. His mother tells him that, whatever happens, she'll always be there to support him, and says and does just about everything to broadcast to the audience that she will be dead soon. Well, unless that audience is under four years old, which I think is the target for this film.

Walter grows up to be voiced by that famously flustered, mild mannered boy star, Tom Holland, and he goes to work with for the U.S. government. He's paired with an obnoxious superstar spy, Lance Sterling, played by Will Smith.

Smith's famous natural charisma is taxed with a character who's angry for most of the film, threatening to smack Walter half the time for not giving him grenades. This leads to a story about the choice between violent and diplomatic methods, a theme that never really fits in a film that includes a car chase where a pigeon, driving a superspy car, evades dozens of pursuing agents with fortuitous slapstick. But to a viewer young enough to disregard such tonal clashes, or to be unfamiliar with the films this one is sleepily aping, there should be no impediment to enjoying a film filled with bright colours, cute animals, and smiling faces.

Spies in Disguise is available on Disney+.

Twitter Sonnet #1640

The yielding walls were blamed for crashing cars.
A hidden, stony sky was dark as night.
The lost assigned to rocks the role of stars.
But something 'bout a diamond's never right.
Authentic thoughts were dropped in vibrant slime.
Alive, the angel peeks beneath the drain.
Another rain and horses tramp in time.
Reversion checked a list of lately sane.
Returning voices hammer doors to pulp.
Affections pass betwixt the science ghosts.
To chug the slime we need to quickly gulp.
And now we meet a score of phantom hosts.
And yet the humans feed on bread for birds.
And bouncing bubbles matter more than words.

Across a Little Sea

Performances were king in last night's new Andor. Particularly when it came to Andy Serkis, Geneveive O'Reilly, and Stellan Skarsgard.

Serkis really sells Kino when the camera lingers on his face as he tries to spur himself into action. He's already made his decision intellectually but his heart can't quite catch up. Cassian has to goad him when he's on the PA. That last moment when he says he can't swim was truly haunting as the rush of the crowd forces Cassian to leave him. It kind of reminded me of Nine Inch Nails' "We're in This Together Now" video.

In terms of writing, I actually wish the prison break had been much more difficult. I feel like more prisoners would have been gunned down and, once they were outside the prison, I would have thought some aircraft would have scrambled and picked off some of the prisoners swimming for shore. But maybe that would all have been too grim for a Star Wars show, even Andor.

Mon Mothma's meeting with the gangster, Davos, was a quieter kind of horror show. She isn't quite at the point of sacrifice that Luthen is. I love how the dialogue takes her to revelation by degrees. She understands what it means when Davos says he doesn't want money but she can't anticipate the favour he'll ultimately ask. Genevieve O'Reilly does a great job as we watch her face. You can see her torn between trying to maintain poise and actually making the calculations on what it would mean to have Davos' fourteen year old son meet her daughter. I suspect she'll eventually consent to it and, consider her daughter's personality so far, it wouldn't surprise me if she'd be quite happy to marry into a gangster family. And then Mon will torture herself about it for the rest of her life.

And this is a good way to lead up to Luthen's big Oscar-clip speech at the end (I guess it would be an Emmy-clip speech). It's an opportunity for Skarsgard to showboat a little bit but he's certainly someone who could make that kind of "sacrifice everything" speech brilliant. He's clearly had to do far worse things than introduce his daughter to a boy.

Andor is available on Disney+.

On the Way to the Mines

Allan Quatermain calls himself timid and even a coward but that's somewhat contradicted by the fact that he leads the expedition of 1885's King Solomon's Mines across impassible deserts, through a lost civilisation, and finally into those dark and ancient mines of the title. It's a terrific and obviously influential adventure.

I'd heard it influenced Tolkien and it's very easy to see. Quatermain and his companions hire a man in Africa who turns out to secretly be the rightful king in exile of the secret Kukuana people, hidden across the desert. Allan and his companions receive indestructible chain mail shirts similar to the one of mithril Bilbo and Frodo wear. Of course, this all makes it sound a lot like Black Panther, too.

Like She, a big part of what makes King Solomon's Mines work is the narrator, in this case Allan Quatermain. He's natural and flawed, an unreliable narrator, at least in estimating himself. Author H. Rider Haggard never overplays it, though, allowing Allan to say something nice about himself now and then, as when he describes being able to go toe to toe with an enemy combatant in war before being knocked out like Bilbo in the battle at the end of The Hobbit.

Haggard does a masterful job building suspense around the politics of Kukuana and its sinister, imposter King Twala. When civil war erupts, Haggard's poetic language, and choice to make the Kukuana language translate as old-fashioned, courtly English, really gives it all a sense of epic proportions.

“Ah, these are men, indeed; they will conquer again,” called out Ignosi, who was grinding his teeth with excitement at my side. “See, it is done!”

Suddenly, like puffs of smoke from the mouth of a cannon, the attacking regiment broke away in flying groups, their white head-dresses streaming behind them in the wind, and left their opponents victors, indeed, but, alas! no more a regiment. Of the gallant triple line, which forty minutes before had gone into action three thousand strong, there remained at most some six hundred blood-spattered men; the rest were under foot. And yet they cheered and waved their spears in triumph, and then, instead of falling back upon us as we expected, they ran forward, for a hundred yards or so, after the flying groups of foemen, took possession of a rising knoll of ground, and, resuming their triple formation, formed a threefold ring around its base. And there, thanks be to Heaven, standing on the top of the mound for a minute, I saw Sir Henry, apparently unharmed, and with him our old friend Infadoos. Then Twala’s regiments rolled down upon the doomed band, and once more the battle closed in.

The Unplanned Inevitable

An attractive young man and woman share glances at the workplace. Then, meeting on the bus, they somehow agree to a date and soon they're experiencing A Kind of Loving. This 1962 kitchen sink film presents a remarkably credible progression from awkward courtship to disillusioned romance between a couple of inexperienced young people.

Vic (Alan Bates) is an average fellow, maybe a little quiet. Ingrid (June Ritchie) is about the same, though a bit more passive. Both are already somehow quite sure their date is going to happen so the two of them stumbling through an idea to see a movie together seems such a formality, neither one actually asks a straight variation of "Will you go out with me?"

A little idle chatter and lingering stares and it seems they're a couple. Life's pretty simple, isn't it? But then Ingrid's submissive nature compels her to bring a chatty friend along for a date. Vic quickly loses patience and storms off. Is that the end?

He still watches Ingrid at social gatherings. He confesses to a friend that sometimes he still wishes they were together, sometimes he really doesn't. Then he gets her pregnant and that's all she wrote. Well, not quite. The film becomes a drama about Ingrid's domineering mother and Vic having to deal with his wife's inability to assert herself.

The performances by Ritchie and Bates are terrific and the writing captures such an authentic sense of young romance, it's fascinating to watch.

A Kind of Loving is available on The Criterion Channel.

Highway Found

Twenty-five years later, and I finally have an excellent copy of Lost Highway. Yes, my copy of the new Criterion edition arrived in the mail and it's gorgeous.

The release comes with a 4k edition and a regular blu-ray, both approved by director David Lynch. After years of having only a muddy DVD release, I'm overjoyed to have one of the best films by my favourite living filmmaker in my hands. And it lived up to my expectations.

David Lynch directs the best sex scenes in the history of cinema. No other director I can think of quite manages the balance between maintaining a perspective and refraining from becoming dispassionate. They're beautiful scenes and integral to them is the physical beauty of Patricia Arquette and Natasha Gregson Wagner but the point of them never for a moment feels like pure titillation. You're enamoured with Alice and Sheila because Pete/Fred is. Renee is the distant puzzle right in front of you because that's how she is to Fred.

Alice is the Madeleine and Renee is the Judy, to compare Lost Highway to Vertigo. It's another great film that asks how much one's affection for another has to do with one's private conceptions of the other. Hear the horror in Fred's line, "It wasn't you. It looked like you. But it wasn't." It's something I've been thinking about a lot lately, and seems a relevant topic in Japan, where I gather many couples marry without getting to know each other very well, something that led to the epidemic of "Corona divorces" after married couples were finally forced to spent time alone together. It's a central theme in Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Pete's love scene with Alice in the desert, covered by the harsh headlights of a car, is so beautiful. Maybe the impossible beauty of a dream. Pete may never truly have Alice, but we all may now have a decent copy of Lost Highway.

Twitter Sonnet #1639

The final fight would prove the stalwart three.
About the men there grew a clamour great.
A horde of limbs escaped the devil tree.
Of shaded air the monster rashly ate.
Discreetly burned, the number changed the air.
The soldiers sat and shared a sugar cake.
Possessed of grim resolve the tellers share.
The knife was never hid for kindness' sake.
Our Twitter's come a waiting room for heads.
The checks were blue before the money came.
The checkered shirt defined the blues and reds.
The rugby grids were cold and all the same.
The desert light creates a promised land.
But then the promise fell as scattered sand.

A Tea Day

This is Minako, a very nice tea ceremony instructress I met yesterday. She has been teaching tea ceremony to one of my co-workers so I attended the final exam ceremony at my co-worker's home in Nara City.

The guests included myself, a monk, and my co-worker's husband. The character on the wall scroll is 夢, yume, or "dream". I was told this reflected part of the message my co-worker wished to convey with the ceremony.

First she served a few small, beautiful sweets. These prepared our palettes for the thick green tea served in special, beautiful bowls. Each bowl bore a decoration chosen by my co-worker for the particular guest. My bowl had a beautiful image of trees and Mount Fuji.

After this, we retired to another room for a more casual tea party. The monk had brought his amazing collection of antique tea bowls, and we watched as Minako opened each container to reveal one antique bowl after another. They were all very beautiful and very old, one of them being about a hundred and fifty years old.

Later, the monk brought out a collection of wood chips and a special device for burning slivers of them which he whittled off with a little razor. This was for kodo (香道), the Japanese art of incense burning. We passed around the device, the monk changing the contents after each round. Each aroma was pleasant, some being sweet, like powdered sugar, some being more like licorice. One smelled slightly like jalapeno, or so I thought.

The monk had also brought some very strong green tea which he served to us in only a drop at a time in tiny cups. It was sort of like drinking a drop of habanero sauce, in terms of strength, but hit the sinuses more like wasabi. It was good.

It was a nice day.

Non-Alcoholic Star Wars

Last night I finally finished working my way through Dave Filoni's remarkably anaemic Tales of the Jedi. I guess I should be used to it by now. I realised that Dave Filoni's work without George Lucas' supervision feels sort of like watching a sleepy child playing with action figures. This extends to the animation and pacing.

So many shots begin with characters kind of drifting into frame, everyone from Count Dooku to Ahsoka Tano having exactly the same wooden, stiff-legged stride.

Mind you, most of these episodes were directed by Saul Ruiz, but I've been noticing this in every cgi production Filoni's been involved with since Disney bought Star Wars. Dave Filoni's role on Tales of the Jedi was mainly as a writer, a role he rarely performed when he worked on Clone Wars under George Lucas. With good reason.

Tales of the Jedi features various stories centred on Count Dooku and Ahsoka Tano. Dooku's stories are by far the stronger, one episode featuring both Liam Neeson and Ian McDiarmid in brief guest roles. It's a shame Christopher Lee isn't still alive to share some master and padawan scenes with Neeson. But at least they've dropped the Easter Island statue head design used for Dooku on The Clone Wars.

Unfortunately, Filoni seems reluctant to shake the boat very much. We learn little of Dooku's activities prior to Attack of the Clones that couldn't be inferred. The episodes take a slow, contemplative, Blade Runner-ish tone similar to Anakin's contemplation scene in Revenge of the Sith, but here it seems mainly to cover for the fact that Filoni doesn't have much to say. So even a twelve minute episode feels like it has a lot of padding.

The biggest revelation is the death of Yaddle, voiced here by Bryce Dallas Howard. She somehow tracks Dooku to his secret meeting with Darth Sideous, necessitating a sabre duel between the two. It ends with Dooku crushing her beneath a massive metal door. But then she manages to crawl out from under it without being bloody or mangled or visibly injured in any way. And then she collapses and dies. Like being crushed by a big metal door is a sort of poison. I can understand if maybe they can't show blood and gore. But then why have her crawl out from under the door?

Hey, that rhymes. If you can't have the gore, don't use the door.

As for the Ahsoka episodes, Filoni continues to remake Ahsoka into an aloof spectator in her own life who makes few decisions. Even the episode that takes us back to when she was a new padawan for Anakin is entirely about Anakin's decision on how to train her. Those hoping for the Return of the Tube Top will be disappointed because Filoni seems to be retconning young Ahsoka into old Ahsoka.

She kind of reminds me of some old paintings of children in which the artist didn't know how to draw children so he or she just made them look like serene miniature adults.

I suppose there may be many people who took issue with the fact that Star Wars was often exciting. If that's you, you may enjoy this show.

Tales of the Jedi is available on Disney+.

Saffy

Yesterday I learned my sister's cat, Saffy, had passed away. This is a picture of me reading War and Peace to Saffy in 2009.

Here she is in 2012:

And in February 2020:

That's a month before I left the U.S.

Saffy was named after a character on Absolutely Fabulous and was a feisty kitten. Here she is when she was a new kitten, thirteen years ago:

Here she is a little more subdued, a year later:

She always had that fire in her eyes, though. Saffy was an intense, lovely little beast. I'll miss her.

Twitter Sonnet #1638

A giddy zombie swipes intruders' rings.
A special prize was lost beneath the ham.
Again, the gang of pretty slayers sings.
A flood of hearts repressed behind a dam.
A hail of rocks deters the av'rage rake.
Committed dogs remain athwart the bird.
Approaching rats're only partly baked.
A sterile place awaits the signal word.
The fog resembles hands above the bay.
A crowded boat delivers skin to fish.
Another hood disrupts the sailor's way.
A crumpled five convinced a dreamy dish.
A friendly shadow watched for sev'ral years.
But now the cat departs as morning nears.

The Hazards of Various Prisons

If I had to pick a worst episode of Andor, I guess it would have to be last night's. Yet it was some of the most excellent television I've seen in years. For a show I normally consider flawless, last night's had a couple of things I wish they'd done differently. But it also had some things I thought were outright magnificent.

Both of the problems I had with the episode relate to Mon Mothma's story. We get a reminder that she and her husband have profoundly different worldviews, and he makes disparaging remarks about the tedium of politics. At this point, I'm feeling like, "Okay, okay, we get it." It is interesting that Mon's secret war is being carried out right in her own home but at this point I think it would be more interesting to show what connects her to her husband. Does she have genuinely happy memories with him? Are there any points on which they still agree? These things would make the division between the two more painful and therefore more dramatically interesting.

The other thing I didn't like was Vel turning out to be Mon Mothma's cousin. It makes the universe feel just a little smaller. I liked the idea of the fledgling Rebellion having all these moving parts that didn't necessarily know a lot about each other. I can understand why Vel was made to be Mon's cousin--with so many characters the writers want to keep on from week to week, new reasons have to be invented to keep them onscreen. But I wish they'd done something else.

I loved everything else about the episode. There were some moments I really admired. I really liked Mon's meeting with the banker, Tay Kolma. Ben Miles gives such a great performance as he goes over the details of all the banking manoeuvring that needs to be done. He really seems to be thinking about the importance of certain institutional ties and channels in this made-up world. And the idea of Mon now having to deal with a gangster--a gangster a lot of other people apparently deal with--has a lot of promise. You really sense her vulnerability now.

Meero was also pretty terrific in the episode. I loved the overt nod to Princess Leia's torture scene in A New Hope--once again, I felt that Andor is exploring thematic territory that's been untapped since the original trilogy. But even better was the meeting between Meero and Karn on that bridge.

The energy in their dialogue is really strange and fascinating. Is this turning into some kind of perverted love story? Oh, please, let it be so. I love how the writers create conflicts between the villains. Without anyone having a moral high ground, we find ourselves invested entirely on the strengths of how they're playing the game. I heard someone say Andor is kind of Star Wars' own Game of Thrones and, as far as the Empire is concerned, I think that's true. It actually reminds me of playing the PC game TIE Fighter back in the '90s, a great Star Wars flight simulator that put the player on the Empire's side. Perhaps one day we could have a series entirely focused on Imperial officers. If it's like Andor, I'd definitely be up for it.

The prison scenes were terrific all down the line. I guess you could say it's a flaw that the bathroom panel Cassian removes looks clearly to be painted plywood. I didn't mind it, though. It kind of made me feel like I was watching classic Doctor Who, as does the fact that many exteriors were shot in old quarries in England.

Andy Serkis' character, Kino Loy, was another bright spot in the episode. His transition from a man doggedly towing the line to being horrified into disillusionment was captivating. The story of the old man played by Christopher Fairbank was horrifying and heartbreaking. Rarely has the Empire seemed so monstrous.

I love how the window reflections are used here, layered over the view of other suspended corridors containing similar groups of guys in prison garb, creating a dehumanising kaleidoscope.

The dramatic build-up around what happened to the prisoners on level 2 was perfectly executed, no pun intended. The tension around not knowing exactly what happened, the faulty communications between the prisoners with information trickling among them only very slowly, the sense of decisions needing to be made in almost complete absence of information--it was all a terrific nightmare. I'm so happy this show is in my life.

Andor is available on Disney+.