Covert Affairs (Serial)

Season 1 - 5

A spy-thriller-drama that is quite fun. It has the same feel as Alias (in its first couple of seasons) or Burn Notice. Annie Walker is a young agent who works for the Domestic Protectorate Division of the CIA. Turns out that she is pretty good at clandestine work, mostly because she goes out on her own to solve problems instead of being bound by protocol. And of course is always on the verge of trouble for it. She has a sexy but troubled handler whose blindness prevents him from being in the field (most of the time) and a sexy, rock star boss who takes her under her wing as mentor/role model. Perhaps amazingly, the show never jumped the shark, maintaining its quality writing throughout all five seasons.

4 stars (out of 5)

Lion

The based-on-a-true-story story of a young Indian boy from the sticks who gets stuck on a train and transported for a couple days to Calcutta. He doesn't know the name of his town, or where he is and joins the orphan community in Calcutta. Eventually, he is adopted by an Australian couple, where he "lives the good life" growing up. Jump forward to his adult life, and he begins a quest to find his original home based on a few vague memories and Google Earth imagery. It really is an astounding story and portrayal of both the survivor instinct in humans as well as the long term emotional impacts that surviving can have on a person. Well done.

4 stars (out of 5) 

Hidden Figures

This film is awesome. I hate to build up expectations for films because the viewing can never match the anticipation (see any Star Wars movie ever released after 1980). But in this case, expectations exceeded. This is the story of three African-American women in the 1960's who work in the West Computing Group at NASA's Langley Lab. The computing groups were groups of women who functioned as computers, calculating trajectories and friction coefficients and anything else that needed calculating in the process of running a space program. The west computers were the temporarily employed black women. The east computers were the permanently employed white women. This story follows three of the women (one mathematician, one engineer, one supervisor/programmer) who are friends and working to contribute to the US space program. The story telling here is fabulous, alternating between hilarious, subtle, heartbreaking, and ordinary. The supposedly covert racism that, from the perspective of today seems so overt, definitely draws seemingly 21st century responses in the form of eye-rolls and sassy rebuttals, subtly breaking the 3rd wall in a wink-wink with the audience. I loved the portrayal of these women as strong, and enduring, and the smartest in the room. Well done.

5 stars (out of 5)

The Magicians (Serial)

Season 1

This SyFy series is based on the book by the same name by Lev Grossman, which I loved. Grossman was involved in the making of this, so it is clearly in line with his vision, and very true to the storyline and feel of the books. The storyline follows Quentin, who attends Brakebills school of magic. He finds himself, along with his friends, needing to protect the world from The Beast. To do this, they need to travel to the fictional world of Fillory. Think of this as a cross between Narnia and Harry Potter. This is not high drama, or dark comedy. More teen-drama, which is also true to the book. I am not sure if I liked it because it was good, or because it was familiar. Probably a bit of both. The overall feel was a bit CW or MTV, which is lightweight for those who are looking for Orphan Black/Black Mirror dark sci-fi. So knowing what it is, I enjoyed it.

3 stars (out of 5)

Captain America: Civil War

The Avengers are now the global police, independent hunters of criminals. To start out, they are chasing a bad guy, and bad things happen, and a few innocent bystanders are killed. The governments of the world step in to put some bureaucratic controls and checks/balances on the Avengers. However, only some of the Avengers are willing to submit to this. So we get Iron Man going legitimate and Captain America going rogue. When the Winter Soldier (Bucky) is reactivated by a bad guy, the two sides disagree about how to handle the situation. And it breaks the Avengers unity forever. A fun introduction of Black Panther and Spiderman, and of course, epic battle scenes make this well worth the time I spent watching it.
3 stars (out of 5)