True to title, The Knick’s third episode is a harried one, and gets to be a little irritating at times. With a relatively compact ten-episode first season, the show has been bold to try dumping so many characters on us so quickly, but last week did a terrific job of letting us get to know a few of them better. “The Busy Flea” tries pretty much the same thing, but the characters and directions explored are way too familiar to the Cable Drama mould, so the whole thing winds up being a bit of a mess. Because this is an hour full of missing pieces and big risks playing out on screen, it’s more apparent this week where The Knick is currently lacking, and where it’s playing things too safe.
The unique hooks of When the Game Stands Tall do as much to muddle its message as they do to distinguish it from the usual cliches of high school sports dramas.
If comedies were 100-metre dashes, Let’s Be Cops would be a gold medalist. The title alone tells you everything you need to know about both the premise - wherein a pair of civilian losers don a badge and gun for the fun of it - and what was likely the amount of thought put into the film’s conception. It’s easy to imagine stars Damon Wayans Jr. and Jake Johnson, who have great chemistry on the sitcom New Girl, deciding to do a movie together, regardless of if they have a director, script, or even an idea for a feature, beyond the two just goofing around in silly costumes. Let’s Be Cops also sets a land speed record for time between opening shot and the “what happened to us, man?” speech (by my estimate: 15 seconds) needed to kick off a story of uncertain identity, a theme that hangs all too well around the neck of Let’s Be Cops, which has absolutely no idea what it wants to be.
Up until now, one could best describe Remedy’s Quantum Break as ambitious –what with the crazy freeze-framing trailers and an accompanying live action TV show- but could you call it a game? Thanks to a lengthy gameplay demo at Gamescom earlier today, the answer is now a definitive yes. And we can all now also say that Quantum Break is clearly a Remedy game, combining the cinematic fidelity of Alan Wake with the time-warping gunplay of Max Payne.
