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Warning: contains spoilers for Doctor Who: The Robot Revolution Following greatly exaggerated reports of its death, Doctor Who is back – and feeling pretty confident. The season premiere successfully establishes new companion Belinda Chandra (the excellent Varada Sethu) and her compellingly spiky dynamic with the Doctor, though the surrounding story – in which a seemingly […]

The post Doctor Who Series 15 Episode 1 Review: The Robot Revolution appeared first on Den of Geek.

It’s always good to hear welcome news, even when it arrives 97 years late. So it was Thursday when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Board of Governors announced that beginning in 2027 they will annually award an Oscar for Achievement in Stunt Design. Or: there will finally be an Oscar for Best Stunts beginning at the 100th annual Academy Awards.

This is genuinely happy tidings considering stunts and derring-do have been the hallmarks of why folks have gone to the cinema since the glory days of the silent era when Harold Lloyd hung precariously from a clocktower in Safety Last! (1923) or Douglas Fairbanks shimmied up literal draw bridge chains in Hollywood’s first Robin Hood movie circa 1922. Nonetheless, the Academy has strangely ignored the daredevils that make their biggest tentpoles to this day box office draws. It’s wonderful to see that changing, but we would like to honor a baker’s dozen or so achievements that have stood the test of time and deserved Oscars in their day.

Charlie Chaplin Ends Up a Cog in the Machine of Modern Times (1936)

When Charlie Chaplin decided to retire his Little Tramp persona with one glorious swan song in Modern Times, his kind of physical comedy and breathtaking stunt work were already things of the past. In the 1930s, sound brought talkies and an emphasis on comedy of the screwball and musical variety. Yet for all intents and purposes, Modern Times is a silent movie, and one of Chaplin’s best as he got to do everything that made him a star 20 years earlier—now with an overt political bent.

Take one of the most visually impressive gags ever conceived as a critique of capitalism and industrialization. Midway through Modern Times, Chaplin’s Little Tramp ends up swallowed by the literal machine of a factory that grinds him through its gears where he is expected to perform menial repairs. It is far from the most death-defying trick on this list, but it is an example of physical stunt work reaching a comedic and artistic grace that makes cinema richer. The stunt created an indelible image that nearly a 100 years later packs allegorical punch.

Yakima Canutt Jumps Between Horses in Stagecoach (1939)

So much of our idealized image of the Old West, both as a historical setting and as a movie genre, is derived from the iconography of John Ford. Mythic compositions of men on horses, and perhaps thornier depictions of Native Americans in pursuit, define many of Ford’s best films. And 1939’s Stagecoach is high among them. This was the first film in which Ford worked with his onscreen muse John Wayne in Monument Valley, and it set the tropes that many Westerns still follow. What is Firefly if not Joss Whedon’s Stagecoach in space?

Stagecoach also has perhaps the definitive “cowboys and Indians” chase sequence where Apache raiders descend on the titular stagecoach as it makes a frantic dash across Indigenous territory. The chase features two iconic stunts executed by the movie’s stunt coordinator Yakima Canutt. The first of which sees Canutt play an Apache warrior who jumps from his horse to the stagecoach’s team of steeds—only to fall beneath the animals and the wheels of the coach. It’s such a spectacular image that Steven Spielberg remade it 40 years later in Raiders of the Lost Ark, minus the horses. Yet the even more impressive stunt is when Canutt, now made up to resemble Wayne, leaps between each pair of horses pulling the stagecoach in order to take the reins of the out-of-control leader and guide man and beast to safety. It’s still breathtaking almost a century later.

Chariot Race in Ben-Hur (1959)

Ben-Hur became the first film to ever win 11 Academy Awards. To this day, no film has bested that number (though several have tied it). Well, it would have been 12 if there was an Oscar for stunt work. Even 65 years later, there are few sequences as astonishing as the Roman chariot race that proves to be the centerpiece of this monumental Biblical epic.Running at 11 minutes in length, the race was not actually directed by Ben-Hur helmer William Wyler, but rather second unit directors Andrew Marton and Yakima Canutt (yes, him again). Filmed with luscious 65mm cameras and 72 horses beneath a vibrant Italian sun, the sequence is gorgeous eye candy to just stare at. But the stunt work is itself so marvelous that to this day urban legends persist that either a stuntman or horse died while making it.

There is no historical evidence of either occurring, however there was a close call that you can watch in the film: the shot of Judah Ben-Hur getting flipped over his own chariot after it strikes a barrier along a wall of the arena? That wasn’t scripted, and the stuntman who performed it nearly died: Joe Canutt, Yakima’s son. He didn’t though, and it changed the scripting of the scene with the filmmakers adding a beat of Charlton Heston being forced to pull himself back in.

Rick Sylvester Skis Off a Glacier in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

Really if there had been Oscars for stunts in the last 100 years, the James Bond franchise would have probably collected close to a dozen by now. There are so many to choose from: Bill Suitor operating a real-life jetpack in Thunderball (1965); Wayne Michaels performing the highest bungee jump ever captured on film in Goldeneye (1995); everything Sebastien Foucan did in the Madagascar parkour sequence of Casino Royale (2006).

Yet if we are only going to pick one for this list, it has to be when Rick Sylvester skied right off a glacier atop a Canadian mountain for a sum of $30,000. It’s still the defining 007 stunt which opens one of the series’ best movies where Bond, in a ridiculous yellow “undercover” ski uniform, escapes Soviet assassins by launching himself into an abyss where he does nothing but fall for a breathless 20 seconds. He then pulls the chord on an absurd and terrific Union Jack parachute. Way to keep a low-profile, James. It’s all captured in one unbelievable long shot that cuts just before one of Sylvester’s skis nearly punctures his parachute, which would have sent him plummeting.

Outrunning a Boulder in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

This was one of the trickier ones to include. There are so many great stunts in the Indiana Jones pictures, so how do you pick just one? For pure adrenaline spectacle, we suspect Vic Armstrong in a fedora and torn shirt dangling from a rope bridge in Temple of Doom (1984) might be the winner. And Spielberg’s homage to Stagecoach where Terry Leonard again is dragged beneath and behind the wheels of a jeep in Raiders is probably the most complex set piece performed in the first Indy flick.

Still, great stunts aren’t only about real-life danger. It can also be about aesthetics, originality, and indelible iconography. Hence why the first thing that pops in your mind when you read the words “Indiana Jones” is still probably the sight of the ragged archaeologist outrunning a boulder by the skin of his teeth—a trick done without a stuntman. That is clearly Harrison Ford outrunning the boulder! Of course it’s not really a boulder, but a still gruesome 300-pound prop made of fiberglass. It is also on a track, hence why Ford was able to do the stunt. Nonetheless, it remains one of the all time great movie moments that gets the hair to stand on end as a visible movie star appears to be within inches of becoming a pancake as he stumbles his way into an enormous spider’s web. 

Jackie Chan’s Explosive Slide in Police Story (1985)

A performer who should have a whole collection of stunt Oscars, Jackie Chan made a career out of pushing his body to the limits one insane stunt (and many more broken bones) at a time. We could pick a trick he did, or sequence he choreographed, in almost any of his Hong Kong films. But his character’s bizarre choice to chase bad guys at a shopping mall in the first Police Story remains a personal favorite.

In the sequence, his prey is escaping down at the lower levels of massive mall, so instead of following in close pursuit down a crowded escalator, Jackie decides the most efficient way to catch them is to lunge at a not-so-near pole and slide about four stories down—for real and with no wires—while shattering every string of Christmas lights in his path before crashing through a real partition of glass and wood at the bottom. Reminiscing years later about the stunt, Chan said, “I made my jump, grabbed the pole, and watched the twinkling lights crack and pop all the way down, in an explosion of shattering glass and electrical sparks. Then I hit the glass. And then I hit the floor. Somehow I managed to survive with a collection of ugly bruises… and second-degree burns on the skin of my fingers and palms.”

Michelle Yeoh Catches a Train in Police Story 3 (1992)

I was conflicted about including this one since we are trying to keep this list to one entry per franchise, however given that this was Michelle Yeoh’s own jaw-dropping moment in Police Story 3, it seems safe to include the moment where she literally jumped a dirt bike onto a moving train.

The moment comes at the end of the movie when Yeoh’s young Interpol agent is attempting to catch up and help Jackie save the day. Not only did Yeoh successfully land the bike onto the train but she rode it the near length of the train cars’ rooftops before jumping off after her character loses control. However, even that last bit is somewhat for real since Yeoh, who had never before ridden a dirt bike before making this movie, was unable to cleanly escape the vehicle. So that’s really her kicking it away and off the train while its wheels are still spinning!

Tree Fight in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)

Another case of the stunt work achieving a gracefulness and artistry that supersedes just pure adrenaline, this duel among the trees between Chow Yun-fat and Zhang Ziyi in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon remains one of the most surreal and achingly beautiful “fight scenes” in cinema.

Admittedly, calling it a fight scene is almost a misnomer. This is really a chance for two protagonists in direct conflict to properly introduce themselves to each other. As such, there is a serene peacefulness to the ostensible violence occurring between two martial arts masters gliding between treetops. The sequence came to director Ang Lee in a dream and was realized by stunt choreographer Yuen Woo-ping, whose stunt team is probably best known in the West for popularizing wire-fu in movies like The Matrix. Yet the wirework in Crouching Tiger is better, and it really is Zhang and Chow up in that wilderness, dancing in the green.

Rotating Hallway Fight in Inception (2010)

A case can be made that the sequence where Joseph Gordon-Levitt and several members of stunt coordinator Tom Struthers’ team fought in a rotating hotel was just doing a more elaborate version of that time Fred Astaire wowed ‘em by dancing on the walls and ceilings of his own hotel room in Royal Wedding (1951). Which is true, but it’s no less impressive given how dizzyingly complex director Christopher Nolan made his action version of the showstopper.

Choreographed on a rotating set in an air hangar outside London, this sequence was the culmination of months of training by Gordon-Levitt and Nolan’s teams to create the sense that gravity was a fluid, sputtering resource in a dream world where the only limits was your knowledge of kung fu. It’s hypnotic.

Tom Cruise Scales World’s Tallest Building in Mission: Impossible 4 (2011)

Once again, we come to a stunt legend where it is difficult to choose which sequence to include. Tom Cruise has had a late career renaissance as a modern day Douglas Fairbanks. His appearance in a movie over the last 15 or so years is a near-guarantee you’ll see some death-defying hijinks. So should it be the time he hung from a real plane as it took off in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation? Or how about when he performed hundreds of HALO jumps from 25,000 feet in 2018’s Mission: Impossible – Fallout? The last movie in the series was pretty much marketed around him trying to one-up Rick Sylvester’s TSWLM stunt by riding a motorcycle off a mountain with a parachute as his only salvation.

We ultimately decided to go with the stunt which really signaled this transition in Cruise’s career. It was in December 2011’s Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol that Cruise revitalized his career by playing a real-life Spider-Man along the sun-kissed glass of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. It’s more or less the same trick Harold Lloyd did 90 years earlier, only higher and in Cruise’s case, he has safety harnesses holding him in place. Yet they don’t even digitally remove that element. They astutely make it part of the story, with the idea being both the harness and his character’s glue gloves only have a fixed amount of time to keep him safe. Afterward he’s street pizza. It’s a marriage of movie star charisma, superb visual storytelling, and old-fashioned derring-do captured in massive IMAX cinematography.

Bane Hijacks a Plane in Midair in The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Another Christopher Nolan sequence, this one is also the favorite of the director’s stunt sequences in his Batman trilogy. A bit of a riff on a similar scene in the James Bond movie Licence to Kill, Nolan improves on his influence by recording in eye-popping IMAX photography how a team of aerial stuntmen, coordinated by Tom Struthers again, literally jump from one massive plane to smaller charter flight, and commandeer it with little more than wires, explosives, and guts. The wings coming off is a digital effect. Almost everything else is not.

Pole Cat Craziness in Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

We were tempted to just include all of George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road as a single entry. This mad fantasia of gas-guzzling grandeur is one set piece marvel after another, strung together in a feature-length chase sequence that ascends to a level of cinematic Valhalla where all is shiny and chrome. But if we must narrow it to one scene that the Academy can point to and go, “Witnessed!” it would probably be the pole cat spectacle.

With Miller’s gang of Australian lunatics… er, stuntmen trained by the acrobats of Cirque du Soleil, these blokes really swayed in the breeze (purely because it looked cooler) on poles above cars going anywhere between 30 and 60 MPH in the Namibian desert. They then swung on said poles over movie stars, including Zoë Kravitz who is really whisked by a pole-catter from one speeding vehicle to another, with nothing but hard desert earth beneath their feet. God Bless George Miller. No, really, that must’ve been the case because the fact no one died makes this something of a miracle.

The Last 40 Minutes of John Wick 4 (2023), All of It

Much like the James Bond and Mission: Impossible franchises, the John Wick flicks are an embarrassment of riches for stunt work and spectacle. Begun by former stuntmen-turned-directors Chad Staheleski and David Leitch, and with every film in the mainline series so far still directed by Staheleski, the John Wick movies are a chance for those who know the intricacies of stunts to translate that into pure cinema.

Which might make it a bit of a shame the series is not ending after what was clearly intended to be the grand finale in John Wick: Chapter 4. Everything about this entry acted like it was embracing the kitchen sink mentality, including an epic climax of stunt work that begins with one of the most impressive oner action sequences ever conceived—this one taking an overhead, godseye view to the carnage as Keanu Reeves shoots his way through enemy territory—and culminates in an even more impressive, seeming series of oners where Reeves and Donnie Yen fight their way repeatedly up a long, outdoor Parisian staircase in Montmartre filled with assassins who want old Johnny boy dead. It’s a visual crucible of Mr. Wick’s trials and travails distilled into a masterpiece of carnage.

The post 13 Movie Stunts That Deserved Oscars appeared first on Den of Geek.

It’s always good to hear welcome news, even when it arrives 97 years late. So it was Thursday when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Board of Governors announced that beginning in 2027 they will annually award an Oscar for Achievement in Stunt Design. Or: there will finally be an Oscar for Best […]

The post 13 Movie Stunts That Deserved Oscars appeared first on Den of Geek.

It’s always good to hear welcome news, even when it arrives 97 years late. So it was Thursday when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Board of Governors announced that beginning in 2027 they will annually award an Oscar for Achievement in Stunt Design. Or: there will finally be an Oscar for Best Stunts beginning at the 100th annual Academy Awards.

This is genuinely happy tidings considering stunts and derring-do have been the hallmarks of why folks have gone to the cinema since the glory days of the silent era when Harold Lloyd hung precariously from a clocktower in Safety Last! (1923) or Douglas Fairbanks shimmied up literal draw bridge chains in Hollywood’s first Robin Hood movie circa 1922. Nonetheless, the Academy has strangely ignored the daredevils that make their biggest tentpoles to this day box office draws. It’s wonderful to see that changing, but we would like to honor a baker’s dozen or so achievements that have stood the test of time and deserved Oscars in their day.

Charlie Chaplin Ends Up a Cog in the Machine of Modern Times (1936)

When Charlie Chaplin decided to retire his Little Tramp persona with one glorious swan song in Modern Times, his kind of physical comedy and breathtaking stunt work were already things of the past. In the 1930s, sound brought talkies and an emphasis on comedy of the screwball and musical variety. Yet for all intents and purposes, Modern Times is a silent movie, and one of Chaplin’s best as he got to do everything that made him a star 20 years earlier—now with an overt political bent.

Take one of the most visually impressive gags ever conceived as a critique of capitalism and industrialization. Midway through Modern Times, Chaplin’s Little Tramp ends up swallowed by the literal machine of a factory that grinds him through its gears where he is expected to perform menial repairs. It is far from the most death-defying trick on this list, but it is an example of physical stunt work reaching a comedic and artistic grace that makes cinema richer. The stunt created an indelible image that nearly a 100 years later packs allegorical punch.

Yakima Canutt Jumps Between Horses in Stagecoach (1939)

So much of our idealized image of the Old West, both as a historical setting and as a movie genre, is derived from the iconography of John Ford. Mythic compositions of men on horses, and perhaps thornier depictions of Native Americans in pursuit, define many of Ford’s best films. And 1939’s Stagecoach is high among them. This was the first film in which Ford worked with his onscreen muse John Wayne in Monument Valley, and it set the tropes that many Westerns still follow. What is Firefly if not Joss Whedon’s Stagecoach in space?

Stagecoach also has perhaps the definitive “cowboys and Indians” chase sequence where Apache raiders descend on the titular stagecoach as it makes a frantic dash across Indigenous territory. The chase features two iconic stunts executed by the movie’s stunt coordinator Yakima Canutt. The first of which sees Canutt play an Apache warrior who jumps from his horse to the stagecoach’s team of steeds—only to fall beneath the animals and the wheels of the coach. It’s such a spectacular image that Steven Spielberg remade it 40 years later in Raiders of the Lost Ark, minus the horses. Yet the even more impressive stunt is when Canutt, now made up to resemble Wayne, leaps between each pair of horses pulling the stagecoach in order to take the reins of the out-of-control leader and guide man and beast to safety. It’s still breathtaking almost a century later.

Chariot Race in Ben-Hur (1959)

Ben-Hur became the first film to ever win 11 Academy Awards. To this day, no film has bested that number (though several have tied it). Well, it would have been 12 if there was an Oscar for stunt work. Even 65 years later, there are few sequences as astonishing as the Roman chariot race that proves to be the centerpiece of this monumental Biblical epic.Running at 11 minutes in length, the race was not actually directed by Ben-Hur helmer William Wyler, but rather second unit directors Andrew Marton and Yakima Canutt (yes, him again). Filmed with luscious 65mm cameras and 72 horses beneath a vibrant Italian sun, the sequence is gorgeous eye candy to just stare at. But the stunt work is itself so marvelous that to this day urban legends persist that either a stuntman or horse died while making it.

There is no historical evidence of either occurring, however there was a close call that you can watch in the film: the shot of Judah Ben-Hur getting flipped over his own chariot after it strikes a barrier along a wall of the arena? That wasn’t scripted, and the stuntman who performed it nearly died: Joe Canutt, Yakima’s son. He didn’t though, and it changed the scripting of the scene with the filmmakers adding a beat of Charlton Heston being forced to pull himself back in.

Rick Sylvester Skis Off a Glacier in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

Really if there had been Oscars for stunts in the last 100 years, the James Bond franchise would have probably collected close to a dozen by now. There are so many to choose from: Bill Suitor operating a real-life jetpack in Thunderball (1965); Wayne Michaels performing the highest bungee jump ever captured on film in Goldeneye (1995); everything Sebastien Foucan did in the Madagascar parkour sequence of Casino Royale (2006).

Yet if we are only going to pick one for this list, it has to be when Rick Sylvester skied right off a glacier atop a Canadian mountain for a sum of $30,000. It’s still the defining 007 stunt which opens one of the series’ best movies where Bond, in a ridiculous yellow “undercover” ski uniform, escapes Soviet assassins by launching himself into an abyss where he does nothing but fall for a breathless 20 seconds. He then pulls the chord on an absurd and terrific Union Jack parachute. Way to keep a low-profile, James. It’s all captured in one unbelievable long shot that cuts just before one of Sylvester’s skis nearly punctures his parachute, which would have sent him plummeting.

Outrunning a Boulder in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

This was one of the trickier ones to include. There are so many great stunts in the Indiana Jones pictures, so how do you pick just one? For pure adrenaline spectacle, we suspect Vic Armstrong in a fedora and torn shirt dangling from a rope bridge in Temple of Doom (1984) might be the winner. And Spielberg’s homage to Stagecoach where Terry Leonard again is dragged beneath and behind the wheels of a jeep in Raiders is probably the most complex set piece performed in the first Indy flick.

Still, great stunts aren’t only about real-life danger. It can also be about aesthetics, originality, and indelible iconography. Hence why the first thing that pops in your mind when you read the words “Indiana Jones” is still probably the sight of the ragged archaeologist outrunning a boulder by the skin of his teeth—a trick done without a stuntman. That is clearly Harrison Ford outrunning the boulder! Of course it’s not really a boulder, but a still gruesome 300-pound prop made of fiberglass. It is also on a track, hence why Ford was able to do the stunt. Nonetheless, it remains one of the all time great movie moments that gets the hair to stand on end as a visible movie star appears to be within inches of becoming a pancake as he stumbles his way into an enormous spider’s web. 

Jackie Chan’s Explosive Slide in Police Story (1985)

A performer who should have a whole collection of stunt Oscars, Jackie Chan made a career out of pushing his body to the limits one insane stunt (and many more broken bones) at a time. We could pick a trick he did, or sequence he choreographed, in almost any of his Hong Kong films. But his character’s bizarre choice to chase bad guys at a shopping mall in the first Police Story remains a personal favorite.

In the sequence, his prey is escaping down at the lower levels of massive mall, so instead of following in close pursuit down a crowded escalator, Jackie decides the most efficient way to catch them is to lunge at a not-so-near pole and slide about four stories down—for real and with no wires—while shattering every string of Christmas lights in his path before crashing through a real partition of glass and wood at the bottom. Reminiscing years later about the stunt, Chan said, “I made my jump, grabbed the pole, and watched the twinkling lights crack and pop all the way down, in an explosion of shattering glass and electrical sparks. Then I hit the glass. And then I hit the floor. Somehow I managed to survive with a collection of ugly bruises… and second-degree burns on the skin of my fingers and palms.”

Michelle Yeoh Catches a Train in Police Story 3 (1992)

I was conflicted about including this one since we are trying to keep this list to one entry per franchise, however given that this was Michelle Yeoh’s own jaw-dropping moment in Police Story 3, it seems safe to include the moment where she literally jumped a dirt bike onto a moving train.

The moment comes at the end of the movie when Yeoh’s young Interpol agent is attempting to catch up and help Jackie save the day. Not only did Yeoh successfully land the bike onto the train but she rode it the near length of the train cars’ rooftops before jumping off after her character loses control. However, even that last bit is somewhat for real since Yeoh, who had never before ridden a dirt bike before making this movie, was unable to cleanly escape the vehicle. So that’s really her kicking it away and off the train while its wheels are still spinning!

Tree Fight in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)

Another case of the stunt work achieving a gracefulness and artistry that supersedes just pure adrenaline, this duel among the trees between Chow Yun-fat and Zhang Ziyi in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon remains one of the most surreal and achingly beautiful “fight scenes” in cinema.

Admittedly, calling it a fight scene is almost a misnomer. This is really a chance for two protagonists in direct conflict to properly introduce themselves to each other. As such, there is a serene peacefulness to the ostensible violence occurring between two martial arts masters gliding between treetops. The sequence came to director Ang Lee in a dream and was realized by stunt choreographer Yuen Woo-ping, whose stunt team is probably best known in the West for popularizing wire-fu in movies like The Matrix. Yet the wirework in Crouching Tiger is better, and it really is Zhang and Chow up in that wilderness, dancing in the green.

Rotating Hallway Fight in Inception (2010)

A case can be made that the sequence where Joseph Gordon-Levitt and several members of stunt coordinator Tom Struthers’ team fought in a rotating hotel was just doing a more elaborate version of that time Fred Astaire wowed ‘em by dancing on the walls and ceilings of his own hotel room in Royal Wedding (1951). Which is true, but it’s no less impressive given how dizzyingly complex director Christopher Nolan made his action version of the showstopper.

Choreographed on a rotating set in an air hangar outside London, this sequence was the culmination of months of training by Gordon-Levitt and Nolan’s teams to create the sense that gravity was a fluid, sputtering resource in a dream world where the only limits was your knowledge of kung fu. It’s hypnotic.

Tom Cruise Scales World’s Tallest Building in Mission: Impossible 4 (2011)

Once again, we come to a stunt legend where it is difficult to choose which sequence to include. Tom Cruise has had a late career renaissance as a modern day Douglas Fairbanks. His appearance in a movie over the last 15 or so years is a near-guarantee you’ll see some death-defying hijinks. So should it be the time he hung from a real plane as it took off in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation? Or how about when he performed hundreds of HALO jumps from 25,000 feet in 2018’s Mission: Impossible – Fallout? The last movie in the series was pretty much marketed around him trying to one-up Rick Sylvester’s TSWLM stunt by riding a motorcycle off a mountain with a parachute as his only salvation.

We ultimately decided to go with the stunt which really signaled this transition in Cruise’s career. It was in December 2011’s Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol that Cruise revitalized his career by playing a real-life Spider-Man along the sun-kissed glass of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. It’s more or less the same trick Harold Lloyd did 90 years earlier, only higher and in Cruise’s case, he has safety harnesses holding him in place. Yet they don’t even digitally remove that element. They astutely make it part of the story, with the idea being both the harness and his character’s glue gloves only have a fixed amount of time to keep him safe. Afterward he’s street pizza. It’s a marriage of movie star charisma, superb visual storytelling, and old-fashioned derring-do captured in massive IMAX cinematography.

Bane Hijacks a Plane in Midair in The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Another Christopher Nolan sequence, this one is also the favorite of the director’s stunt sequences in his Batman trilogy. A bit of a riff on a similar scene in the James Bond movie Licence to Kill, Nolan improves on his influence by recording in eye-popping IMAX photography how a team of aerial stuntmen, coordinated by Tom Struthers again, literally jump from one massive plane to smaller charter flight, and commandeer it with little more than wires, explosives, and guts. The wings coming off is a digital effect. Almost everything else is not.

Pole Cat Craziness in Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

We were tempted to just include all of George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road as a single entry. This mad fantasia of gas-guzzling grandeur is one set piece marvel after another, strung together in a feature-length chase sequence that ascends to a level of cinematic Valhalla where all is shiny and chrome. But if we must narrow it to one scene that the Academy can point to and go, “Witnessed!” it would probably be the pole cat spectacle.

With Miller’s gang of Australian lunatics… er, stuntmen trained by the acrobats of Cirque du Soleil, these blokes really swayed in the breeze (purely because it looked cooler) on poles above cars going anywhere between 30 and 60 MPH in the Namibian desert. They then swung on said poles over movie stars, including Zoë Kravitz who is really whisked by a pole-catter from one speeding vehicle to another, with nothing but hard desert earth beneath their feet. God Bless George Miller. No, really, that must’ve been the case because the fact no one died makes this something of a miracle.

The Last 40 Minutes of John Wick 4 (2023), All of It

Much like the James Bond and Mission: Impossible franchises, the John Wick flicks are an embarrassment of riches for stunt work and spectacle. Begun by former stuntmen-turned-directors Chad Staheleski and David Leitch, and with every film in the mainline series so far still directed by Staheleski, the John Wick movies are a chance for those who know the intricacies of stunts to translate that into pure cinema.

Which might make it a bit of a shame the series is not ending after what was clearly intended to be the grand finale in John Wick: Chapter 4. Everything about this entry acted like it was embracing the kitchen sink mentality, including an epic climax of stunt work that begins with one of the most impressive oner action sequences ever conceived—this one taking an overhead, godseye view to the carnage as Keanu Reeves shoots his way through enemy territory—and culminates in an even more impressive, seeming series of oners where Reeves and Donnie Yen fight their way repeatedly up a long, outdoor Parisian staircase in Montmartre filled with assassins who want old Johnny boy dead. It’s a visual crucible of Mr. Wick’s trials and travails distilled into a masterpiece of carnage.

The post 13 Movie Stunts That Deserved Oscars appeared first on Den of Geek.

This article contains spoilers for Hacks season 4 episode 1 and 2. The first two episodes of Hacks season 4 can be neatly summarized through one brilliant scene at the end of episode 2 “Cover Girls.” Standing outside of a comedy club after Deborah (Jean Smart) and Ava (Hannah Einbinder) walk out of a standup […]

The post Hacks Season 4: How Much Longer Can Deborah and Ava Keep This Up? appeared first on Den of Geek.

This article contains spoilers for Hacks season 4 episode 1 and 2.

The first two episodes of Hacks season 4 can be neatly summarized through one brilliant scene at the end of episode 2 “Cover Girls.” Standing outside of a comedy club after Deborah (Jean Smart) and Ava (Hannah Einbinder) walk out of a standup routine that doubles as a tryout for a writer position on their new late night program, the fiery duo spar over Ava’s job on the set. We’re treated to the actresses’ typical electric chemistry and a fair amount of barbs and retorts, but most of all we get to see the authenticity that kindles bright underneath the surface of their relationship. 

Deborah grapples with admitting how she would never have gotten to her dream job as a late night host without Ava’s brilliant joke writing, but her paranoia over the demographic that will be watching her now forces her to turn her back on her young protege. “Late night is for housewives and mechanics.” Once again, Deborah is shrouding her pride with envy. Ava forces her to see comedy in a way she didn’t before. Ava propels her to grow into a better version of herself both on and off stage. Through this process she usually buries her genuine appreciation for Ava and uses practical jokes and other gags to undermine her pseudo daughter. Even though both women know they need each other, the journey they take to get there is riddled with fighting and jealousy. 

The complex, fine line separating love and hate between Deborah and Ava is featured as strongly as it ever has in the premiere episodes of the fourth season. The nightclub scene is the encapsulation of the evolving, yet still stagnant dynamic between the two. You’d think after three previous seasons of conquering various obstacles in the comedy minefield of Las Vegas that these ladies would choose adoration instead of vitriol, but what kind of show would that present for the audience? 

Deborah and Ava have to keep fighting not just for the audience’s sake, but because bickering is what brings out the best in both of them. Both women are feisty, determined, and intractable. Ava decides the only way to defeat Deborah’s ego is to play her own game when she blackmails Deborah over an affair with the network executive. That season 3 cliffhanger results in some of the most intense tug-of-wars of the series so far at the dawn of the fourth season. 

Deborah’s childish forms of payback aim low and always deliver shock and laughs. One prank even sees Deborah sending Ava’s underwear to a network colleague’s desk in hopes it will get Ava in trouble with human resources. The irony of Deborah framing Ava for an HR blunder when she’s currently being held hostage by her own sexual misdoings with higher ups is a great example of the writing that keeps Hacks atop the sitcom game as one of the series that understands its characters on a deeper level while also poking fun at the inner workings of the Hollywood machine they’re apart of. 

Deborah and Ava’s situation may be the main one that keeps this show humming at a high level, but the increased screen time for both Jimmy (Paul W. Downs) and Kayla (Megan Stalter) is a welcomed sight. Any time the high intensity of the Deborah and Ava feud starts to become a little too overwhelming, Jimmy and Kayla serve as the calmer frenemy alternative. Jimmy and Kayla are trying to get their management business off the ground that they decided to start together at the end of the third season. The growing pains between the two are a lot more respectful than between Deborah and Ava. In many ways, this duo symbolizes where Deborah and Ava could and should eventually arrive at by the end of the show. Two mismatched personalities that bicker, but they still love each other. 

The last scene of the second episode exquisitely sets up the more heartfelt half of the Deborah and Ava dynamic that we root for. They call a truce after they’re warned that the show is in danger of failing before even getting off the ground. Rooted in their common goal of conquering comedy again, Deborah shows up at Ava’s doorstep ready to work in good faith and promising that no more sabotage will occur. This is where it feels like the season is really about to begin. 

These episodes are akin to first biting into a Sour Patch Kid on a nice spring afternoon after school. The bitterness of Deborah and Ava hit the taste buds with shocking intensity. Now the sweetness of the pairing will round out the drama and remind us why Hacks’ two equally compelling tones make it one of the best dramedies of the decade so far.

The first two episodes of Hacks season 4 are available to stream on Max now.

The post Hacks Season 4: How Much Longer Can Deborah and Ava Keep This Up? appeared first on Den of Geek.

This article contains spoilers for the season 3 finale of Yellowjackets. Death, burials, and ceremonies abound in the season 3 finale of Yellowjackets. In the present, Van (Lauren Ambrose) is laid to rest and we finally learn who killed Lottie (Simone Kessell). In the past, the Wilderness calls for another sacrifice as winter gets closer. […]

The post Yellowjackets Season 3 Ending Explained: The Identity of Pit Girl and Lottie’s Killer Revealed appeared first on Den of Geek.

This article contains spoilers for Hacks season 4 episode 1 and 2.

The first two episodes of Hacks season 4 can be neatly summarized through one brilliant scene at the end of episode 2 “Cover Girls.” Standing outside of a comedy club after Deborah (Jean Smart) and Ava (Hannah Einbinder) walk out of a standup routine that doubles as a tryout for a writer position on their new late night program, the fiery duo spar over Ava’s job on the set. We’re treated to the actresses’ typical electric chemistry and a fair amount of barbs and retorts, but most of all we get to see the authenticity that kindles bright underneath the surface of their relationship. 

Deborah grapples with admitting how she would never have gotten to her dream job as a late night host without Ava’s brilliant joke writing, but her paranoia over the demographic that will be watching her now forces her to turn her back on her young protege. “Late night is for housewives and mechanics.” Once again, Deborah is shrouding her pride with envy. Ava forces her to see comedy in a way she didn’t before. Ava propels her to grow into a better version of herself both on and off stage. Through this process she usually buries her genuine appreciation for Ava and uses practical jokes and other gags to undermine her pseudo daughter. Even though both women know they need each other, the journey they take to get there is riddled with fighting and jealousy. 

The complex, fine line separating love and hate between Deborah and Ava is featured as strongly as it ever has in the premiere episodes of the fourth season. The nightclub scene is the encapsulation of the evolving, yet still stagnant dynamic between the two. You’d think after three previous seasons of conquering various obstacles in the comedy minefield of Las Vegas that these ladies would choose adoration instead of vitriol, but what kind of show would that present for the audience? 

Deborah and Ava have to keep fighting not just for the audience’s sake, but because bickering is what brings out the best in both of them. Both women are feisty, determined, and intractable. Ava decides the only way to defeat Deborah’s ego is to play her own game when she blackmails Deborah over an affair with the network executive. That season 3 cliffhanger results in some of the most intense tug-of-wars of the series so far at the dawn of the fourth season. 

Deborah’s childish forms of payback aim low and always deliver shock and laughs. One prank even sees Deborah sending Ava’s underwear to a network colleague’s desk in hopes it will get Ava in trouble with human resources. The irony of Deborah framing Ava for an HR blunder when she’s currently being held hostage by her own sexual misdoings with higher ups is a great example of the writing that keeps Hacks atop the sitcom game as one of the series that understands its characters on a deeper level while also poking fun at the inner workings of the Hollywood machine they’re apart of. 

Deborah and Ava’s situation may be the main one that keeps this show humming at a high level, but the increased screen time for both Jimmy (Paul W. Downs) and Kayla (Megan Stalter) is a welcomed sight. Any time the high intensity of the Deborah and Ava feud starts to become a little too overwhelming, Jimmy and Kayla serve as the calmer frenemy alternative. Jimmy and Kayla are trying to get their management business off the ground that they decided to start together at the end of the third season. The growing pains between the two are a lot more respectful than between Deborah and Ava. In many ways, this duo symbolizes where Deborah and Ava could and should eventually arrive at by the end of the show. Two mismatched personalities that bicker, but they still love each other. 

The last scene of the second episode exquisitely sets up the more heartfelt half of the Deborah and Ava dynamic that we root for. They call a truce after they’re warned that the show is in danger of failing before even getting off the ground. Rooted in their common goal of conquering comedy again, Deborah shows up at Ava’s doorstep ready to work in good faith and promising that no more sabotage will occur. This is where it feels like the season is really about to begin. 

These episodes are akin to first biting into a Sour Patch Kid on a nice spring afternoon after school. The bitterness of Deborah and Ava hit the taste buds with shocking intensity. Now the sweetness of the pairing will round out the drama and remind us why Hacks’ two equally compelling tones make it one of the best dramedies of the decade so far.

The first two episodes of Hacks season 4 are available to stream on Max now.

The post Hacks Season 4: How Much Longer Can Deborah and Ava Keep This Up? appeared first on Den of Geek.

It is an image that rocked the internet, from online scientific publications to pop culture websites like our own. An animal that Colossal Biosciences (and for that matter the cover of Time magazine) declared to be a dire wolf is now a snow-white puppy with huge feet and olive eyes—and it’s howling. According to Ben […]

The post What Counts as a Real Dire Wolf? Unpacking the Big Debate appeared first on Den of Geek.

This article contains spoilers for Hacks season 4 episode 1 and 2.

The first two episodes of Hacks season 4 can be neatly summarized through one brilliant scene at the end of episode 2 “Cover Girls.” Standing outside of a comedy club after Deborah (Jean Smart) and Ava (Hannah Einbinder) walk out of a standup routine that doubles as a tryout for a writer position on their new late night program, the fiery duo spar over Ava’s job on the set. We’re treated to the actresses’ typical electric chemistry and a fair amount of barbs and retorts, but most of all we get to see the authenticity that kindles bright underneath the surface of their relationship. 

Deborah grapples with admitting how she would never have gotten to her dream job as a late night host without Ava’s brilliant joke writing, but her paranoia over the demographic that will be watching her now forces her to turn her back on her young protege. “Late night is for housewives and mechanics.” Once again, Deborah is shrouding her pride with envy. Ava forces her to see comedy in a way she didn’t before. Ava propels her to grow into a better version of herself both on and off stage. Through this process she usually buries her genuine appreciation for Ava and uses practical jokes and other gags to undermine her pseudo daughter. Even though both women know they need each other, the journey they take to get there is riddled with fighting and jealousy. 

The complex, fine line separating love and hate between Deborah and Ava is featured as strongly as it ever has in the premiere episodes of the fourth season. The nightclub scene is the encapsulation of the evolving, yet still stagnant dynamic between the two. You’d think after three previous seasons of conquering various obstacles in the comedy minefield of Las Vegas that these ladies would choose adoration instead of vitriol, but what kind of show would that present for the audience? 

Deborah and Ava have to keep fighting not just for the audience’s sake, but because bickering is what brings out the best in both of them. Both women are feisty, determined, and intractable. Ava decides the only way to defeat Deborah’s ego is to play her own game when she blackmails Deborah over an affair with the network executive. That season 3 cliffhanger results in some of the most intense tug-of-wars of the series so far at the dawn of the fourth season. 

Deborah’s childish forms of payback aim low and always deliver shock and laughs. One prank even sees Deborah sending Ava’s underwear to a network colleague’s desk in hopes it will get Ava in trouble with human resources. The irony of Deborah framing Ava for an HR blunder when she’s currently being held hostage by her own sexual misdoings with higher ups is a great example of the writing that keeps Hacks atop the sitcom game as one of the series that understands its characters on a deeper level while also poking fun at the inner workings of the Hollywood machine they’re apart of. 

Deborah and Ava’s situation may be the main one that keeps this show humming at a high level, but the increased screen time for both Jimmy (Paul W. Downs) and Kayla (Megan Stalter) is a welcomed sight. Any time the high intensity of the Deborah and Ava feud starts to become a little too overwhelming, Jimmy and Kayla serve as the calmer frenemy alternative. Jimmy and Kayla are trying to get their management business off the ground that they decided to start together at the end of the third season. The growing pains between the two are a lot more respectful than between Deborah and Ava. In many ways, this duo symbolizes where Deborah and Ava could and should eventually arrive at by the end of the show. Two mismatched personalities that bicker, but they still love each other. 

The last scene of the second episode exquisitely sets up the more heartfelt half of the Deborah and Ava dynamic that we root for. They call a truce after they’re warned that the show is in danger of failing before even getting off the ground. Rooted in their common goal of conquering comedy again, Deborah shows up at Ava’s doorstep ready to work in good faith and promising that no more sabotage will occur. This is where it feels like the season is really about to begin. 

These episodes are akin to first biting into a Sour Patch Kid on a nice spring afternoon after school. The bitterness of Deborah and Ava hit the taste buds with shocking intensity. Now the sweetness of the pairing will round out the drama and remind us why Hacks’ two equally compelling tones make it one of the best dramedies of the decade so far.

The first two episodes of Hacks season 4 are available to stream on Max now.

The post Hacks Season 4: How Much Longer Can Deborah and Ava Keep This Up? appeared first on Den of Geek.

The sky is on fire. A streak of silver cuts through the clouds. A towering alien arrives to silently watch. Galactic is coming. Even today, those moments that Jack Kirby and Stan Lee created for 1966’s Fantastic Four #48 – 50 still amaze readers, still set the standard for all superhero epics. So with Fantastic […]

The post Fantastic Four: First Steps Fixes the Biggest Mistake of Previous Movies appeared first on Den of Geek.

This article contains spoilers for Hacks season 4 episode 1 and 2.

The first two episodes of Hacks season 4 can be neatly summarized through one brilliant scene at the end of episode 2 “Cover Girls.” Standing outside of a comedy club after Deborah (Jean Smart) and Ava (Hannah Einbinder) walk out of a standup routine that doubles as a tryout for a writer position on their new late night program, the fiery duo spar over Ava’s job on the set. We’re treated to the actresses’ typical electric chemistry and a fair amount of barbs and retorts, but most of all we get to see the authenticity that kindles bright underneath the surface of their relationship. 

Deborah grapples with admitting how she would never have gotten to her dream job as a late night host without Ava’s brilliant joke writing, but her paranoia over the demographic that will be watching her now forces her to turn her back on her young protege. “Late night is for housewives and mechanics.” Once again, Deborah is shrouding her pride with envy. Ava forces her to see comedy in a way she didn’t before. Ava propels her to grow into a better version of herself both on and off stage. Through this process she usually buries her genuine appreciation for Ava and uses practical jokes and other gags to undermine her pseudo daughter. Even though both women know they need each other, the journey they take to get there is riddled with fighting and jealousy. 

The complex, fine line separating love and hate between Deborah and Ava is featured as strongly as it ever has in the premiere episodes of the fourth season. The nightclub scene is the encapsulation of the evolving, yet still stagnant dynamic between the two. You’d think after three previous seasons of conquering various obstacles in the comedy minefield of Las Vegas that these ladies would choose adoration instead of vitriol, but what kind of show would that present for the audience? 

Deborah and Ava have to keep fighting not just for the audience’s sake, but because bickering is what brings out the best in both of them. Both women are feisty, determined, and intractable. Ava decides the only way to defeat Deborah’s ego is to play her own game when she blackmails Deborah over an affair with the network executive. That season 3 cliffhanger results in some of the most intense tug-of-wars of the series so far at the dawn of the fourth season. 

Deborah’s childish forms of payback aim low and always deliver shock and laughs. One prank even sees Deborah sending Ava’s underwear to a network colleague’s desk in hopes it will get Ava in trouble with human resources. The irony of Deborah framing Ava for an HR blunder when she’s currently being held hostage by her own sexual misdoings with higher ups is a great example of the writing that keeps Hacks atop the sitcom game as one of the series that understands its characters on a deeper level while also poking fun at the inner workings of the Hollywood machine they’re apart of. 

Deborah and Ava’s situation may be the main one that keeps this show humming at a high level, but the increased screen time for both Jimmy (Paul W. Downs) and Kayla (Megan Stalter) is a welcomed sight. Any time the high intensity of the Deborah and Ava feud starts to become a little too overwhelming, Jimmy and Kayla serve as the calmer frenemy alternative. Jimmy and Kayla are trying to get their management business off the ground that they decided to start together at the end of the third season. The growing pains between the two are a lot more respectful than between Deborah and Ava. In many ways, this duo symbolizes where Deborah and Ava could and should eventually arrive at by the end of the show. Two mismatched personalities that bicker, but they still love each other. 

The last scene of the second episode exquisitely sets up the more heartfelt half of the Deborah and Ava dynamic that we root for. They call a truce after they’re warned that the show is in danger of failing before even getting off the ground. Rooted in their common goal of conquering comedy again, Deborah shows up at Ava’s doorstep ready to work in good faith and promising that no more sabotage will occur. This is where it feels like the season is really about to begin. 

These episodes are akin to first biting into a Sour Patch Kid on a nice spring afternoon after school. The bitterness of Deborah and Ava hit the taste buds with shocking intensity. Now the sweetness of the pairing will round out the drama and remind us why Hacks’ two equally compelling tones make it one of the best dramedies of the decade so far.

The first two episodes of Hacks season 4 are available to stream on Max now.

The post Hacks Season 4: How Much Longer Can Deborah and Ava Keep This Up? appeared first on Den of Geek.

This article contains spoilers for the Black Mirror episode “Common People.” Season 7 opener “Common People” is one of the darkest episodes of Black Mirror…and that’s a high bar to clear. Previous installments of Charlie Brooker’s long-running sci-fi anthology have plumbed the depths of technodystopia – featuring temporal torture, infanticide, and several actual apocalypses. Still, […]

The post Black Mirror: Rashida Jones Imagines An Even Bleaker “Common People” Ending appeared first on Den of Geek.

This article contains spoilers for Hacks season 4 episode 1 and 2.

The first two episodes of Hacks season 4 can be neatly summarized through one brilliant scene at the end of episode 2 “Cover Girls.” Standing outside of a comedy club after Deborah (Jean Smart) and Ava (Hannah Einbinder) walk out of a standup routine that doubles as a tryout for a writer position on their new late night program, the fiery duo spar over Ava’s job on the set. We’re treated to the actresses’ typical electric chemistry and a fair amount of barbs and retorts, but most of all we get to see the authenticity that kindles bright underneath the surface of their relationship. 

Deborah grapples with admitting how she would never have gotten to her dream job as a late night host without Ava’s brilliant joke writing, but her paranoia over the demographic that will be watching her now forces her to turn her back on her young protege. “Late night is for housewives and mechanics.” Once again, Deborah is shrouding her pride with envy. Ava forces her to see comedy in a way she didn’t before. Ava propels her to grow into a better version of herself both on and off stage. Through this process she usually buries her genuine appreciation for Ava and uses practical jokes and other gags to undermine her pseudo daughter. Even though both women know they need each other, the journey they take to get there is riddled with fighting and jealousy. 

The complex, fine line separating love and hate between Deborah and Ava is featured as strongly as it ever has in the premiere episodes of the fourth season. The nightclub scene is the encapsulation of the evolving, yet still stagnant dynamic between the two. You’d think after three previous seasons of conquering various obstacles in the comedy minefield of Las Vegas that these ladies would choose adoration instead of vitriol, but what kind of show would that present for the audience? 

Deborah and Ava have to keep fighting not just for the audience’s sake, but because bickering is what brings out the best in both of them. Both women are feisty, determined, and intractable. Ava decides the only way to defeat Deborah’s ego is to play her own game when she blackmails Deborah over an affair with the network executive. That season 3 cliffhanger results in some of the most intense tug-of-wars of the series so far at the dawn of the fourth season. 

Deborah’s childish forms of payback aim low and always deliver shock and laughs. One prank even sees Deborah sending Ava’s underwear to a network colleague’s desk in hopes it will get Ava in trouble with human resources. The irony of Deborah framing Ava for an HR blunder when she’s currently being held hostage by her own sexual misdoings with higher ups is a great example of the writing that keeps Hacks atop the sitcom game as one of the series that understands its characters on a deeper level while also poking fun at the inner workings of the Hollywood machine they’re apart of. 

Deborah and Ava’s situation may be the main one that keeps this show humming at a high level, but the increased screen time for both Jimmy (Paul W. Downs) and Kayla (Megan Stalter) is a welcomed sight. Any time the high intensity of the Deborah and Ava feud starts to become a little too overwhelming, Jimmy and Kayla serve as the calmer frenemy alternative. Jimmy and Kayla are trying to get their management business off the ground that they decided to start together at the end of the third season. The growing pains between the two are a lot more respectful than between Deborah and Ava. In many ways, this duo symbolizes where Deborah and Ava could and should eventually arrive at by the end of the show. Two mismatched personalities that bicker, but they still love each other. 

The last scene of the second episode exquisitely sets up the more heartfelt half of the Deborah and Ava dynamic that we root for. They call a truce after they’re warned that the show is in danger of failing before even getting off the ground. Rooted in their common goal of conquering comedy again, Deborah shows up at Ava’s doorstep ready to work in good faith and promising that no more sabotage will occur. This is where it feels like the season is really about to begin. 

These episodes are akin to first biting into a Sour Patch Kid on a nice spring afternoon after school. The bitterness of Deborah and Ava hit the taste buds with shocking intensity. Now the sweetness of the pairing will round out the drama and remind us why Hacks’ two equally compelling tones make it one of the best dramedies of the decade so far.

The first two episodes of Hacks season 4 are available to stream on Max now.

The post Hacks Season 4: How Much Longer Can Deborah and Ava Keep This Up? appeared first on Den of Geek.

This article contains spoilers for The Pitt season 1. In the modern era of streaming giants, it’s refreshing when fans don’t have to beg or plead with the TV gods for more television. Fans of shows like Apple’s Severance or Paramount’s Yellowstone can relate, having to wait years in between seasons (or in Yellowstone’s case, […]

The post The Pitt: Taylor Dearden and Patrick Ball Are As Anxious About Season 2 As You Are appeared first on Den of Geek.

This article contains spoilers for Hacks season 4 episode 1 and 2.

The first two episodes of Hacks season 4 can be neatly summarized through one brilliant scene at the end of episode 2 “Cover Girls.” Standing outside of a comedy club after Deborah (Jean Smart) and Ava (Hannah Einbinder) walk out of a standup routine that doubles as a tryout for a writer position on their new late night program, the fiery duo spar over Ava’s job on the set. We’re treated to the actresses’ typical electric chemistry and a fair amount of barbs and retorts, but most of all we get to see the authenticity that kindles bright underneath the surface of their relationship. 

Deborah grapples with admitting how she would never have gotten to her dream job as a late night host without Ava’s brilliant joke writing, but her paranoia over the demographic that will be watching her now forces her to turn her back on her young protege. “Late night is for housewives and mechanics.” Once again, Deborah is shrouding her pride with envy. Ava forces her to see comedy in a way she didn’t before. Ava propels her to grow into a better version of herself both on and off stage. Through this process she usually buries her genuine appreciation for Ava and uses practical jokes and other gags to undermine her pseudo daughter. Even though both women know they need each other, the journey they take to get there is riddled with fighting and jealousy. 

The complex, fine line separating love and hate between Deborah and Ava is featured as strongly as it ever has in the premiere episodes of the fourth season. The nightclub scene is the encapsulation of the evolving, yet still stagnant dynamic between the two. You’d think after three previous seasons of conquering various obstacles in the comedy minefield of Las Vegas that these ladies would choose adoration instead of vitriol, but what kind of show would that present for the audience? 

Deborah and Ava have to keep fighting not just for the audience’s sake, but because bickering is what brings out the best in both of them. Both women are feisty, determined, and intractable. Ava decides the only way to defeat Deborah’s ego is to play her own game when she blackmails Deborah over an affair with the network executive. That season 3 cliffhanger results in some of the most intense tug-of-wars of the series so far at the dawn of the fourth season. 

Deborah’s childish forms of payback aim low and always deliver shock and laughs. One prank even sees Deborah sending Ava’s underwear to a network colleague’s desk in hopes it will get Ava in trouble with human resources. The irony of Deborah framing Ava for an HR blunder when she’s currently being held hostage by her own sexual misdoings with higher ups is a great example of the writing that keeps Hacks atop the sitcom game as one of the series that understands its characters on a deeper level while also poking fun at the inner workings of the Hollywood machine they’re apart of. 

Deborah and Ava’s situation may be the main one that keeps this show humming at a high level, but the increased screen time for both Jimmy (Paul W. Downs) and Kayla (Megan Stalter) is a welcomed sight. Any time the high intensity of the Deborah and Ava feud starts to become a little too overwhelming, Jimmy and Kayla serve as the calmer frenemy alternative. Jimmy and Kayla are trying to get their management business off the ground that they decided to start together at the end of the third season. The growing pains between the two are a lot more respectful than between Deborah and Ava. In many ways, this duo symbolizes where Deborah and Ava could and should eventually arrive at by the end of the show. Two mismatched personalities that bicker, but they still love each other. 

The last scene of the second episode exquisitely sets up the more heartfelt half of the Deborah and Ava dynamic that we root for. They call a truce after they’re warned that the show is in danger of failing before even getting off the ground. Rooted in their common goal of conquering comedy again, Deborah shows up at Ava’s doorstep ready to work in good faith and promising that no more sabotage will occur. This is where it feels like the season is really about to begin. 

These episodes are akin to first biting into a Sour Patch Kid on a nice spring afternoon after school. The bitterness of Deborah and Ava hit the taste buds with shocking intensity. Now the sweetness of the pairing will round out the drama and remind us why Hacks’ two equally compelling tones make it one of the best dramedies of the decade so far.

The first two episodes of Hacks season 4 are available to stream on Max now.

The post Hacks Season 4: How Much Longer Can Deborah and Ava Keep This Up? appeared first on Den of Geek.

Warning: contains spoilers for Black Mirror episode “Bête Noire”. It’s done it. Black Mirror has finally delivered its most horrific, depraved vision yet: a universe ruled by someone who thinks that miso is an appropriate addition to a chocolate bar. Honestly, what sick mind comes up with this stuff?  That’d be writer Charlie Brooker, who can now […]

The post Black Mirror Season 7 Episode 2 Review: Bête Noire appeared first on Den of Geek.

Early adopters of sci-fi anthology series Black Mirror were once able to rattle off their list of favorite episodes with ease. Back in the show’s Channel 4 days in the U.K., there were only six installments (“The National Anthem,” “15 Million Merits,” “The Entire History of You,” “Be Right Back,” “White Bear,” and “The Waldo Moment”) so it wasn’t too challenging to gather them all up in one’s brain and spit them out in a preferred order.

Since 2016, however, Netflix has stepped in to start mass producing new episodes of Black Mirror as fast as creator Charlie Brooker can write them. The episode number (now at 34 with season 7) has become a bit more unwieldy so making sense of where they all rank is a taller order. Thankfully, it’s a a challenge we’re happy to take on.

What follows is our official list of every Black Mirror episode from worst to best. You will disagree with it because how could you not? Just be sure to let us know how foolish we are in the comments.

34. Shut Up and Dance

Season 3 Episode 3

The third installment of season 3 does indeed present a worthwhile original concept, as most episodes of Black Mirror do. Hackers contact teenage boy Kenny (Alex Lawther) and instruct him to perform an increasingly complicated series of chores or they’ll release an incriminating video taken from his webcam. He teams up with Hector (Jerome Flynn, who has been sent on a similar mission from the same hackers).

Unfortunately, “Shut Up and Dance” is simply too ugly for its own good. While the episode is able to tap into modern anxieties about loss of privacy and autonomy well, it introduces a depressing third act twist that unwittingly argues we’re all terrible animals who don’t deserve our stupid privacy anyway.

33. The Entire History of You

Season 1 Episode 3

“The Entire History of You” was a popular choice for fan favorite following the show’s tiny three-episode first season. The concept of being able to literally watch one’s own memories Dumbledore’s Pensieve-style was definitely appealing. The episode struck such a chord that Robert Downey Jr. even optioned it to make a still as of yet unproduced movie. Problem is: “The Entire History of You” has aged incredibly poorly.

The initial concept remains appealing – so much so that the mind projection “nubbin” has recurred several times – but the story wrapped around it is just awful. Lead character Liam (Toby Kebbell) is such a monstrous prick that it negates any salient point the episode may try to make. It’s hard to be taken in by the episode’s fascinating technology when it’s presented within the most standard and boring infidelity plot imaginable. 

32. The Waldo Moment

Season 2 Episode 3

“The Waldo Moment” is a popular choice for worst Black Mirror episode ever and it’s not hard to see why. Central “character” Waldo is just absolutely unfunny and insufferable. The plot introduces tortured comedic genius Charlie Brooker…I mean Jamie Salter (Daniel Rigby), whose animated bear-like creation Waldo embarks upon a satirical run for office.

In a more modern context when we’ve seen creatures far worse than cartoon characters elected to office, “The Waldo Moment” isn’t quite as ridiculous. The notion of co-opting sarcastic revolutions from frustrated voters is pretty right on. Still, Waldo is just the fucking worst. He’s like how Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip was a show that wanted to depict a comedic variety show but was completely unable to write believable sketches.

31. Men Against Fire

Season 3 Episode 5

“Men Against Fire” is actually pretty solid. Its biggest issue, however, is that it’s nearly impossible not to guess its big twist very early on in the episode. Once the episode gets that inevitability out of the way, a lot falls into place and “Men Against Fire’s” central message is effective and disturbing.

Still the ease in which the narrative trickery is worked out holds it back – as does its clear lack of a necessary budget. It’s a story and a concept that just needed some more time and money to marinate.

30. Crocodile

Season 4 Episode 3

“Crocodile” is one of Black Mirror‘s best-looking episodes. Director John Hillcoat (The Road) makes the absolute best of the setting’s still, disquieting Icelandic landscapes. And that interesting concept of accessing memories comes up again – only this time in a more primitive form.

The technology being developed and primarily used by insurance investigators is entirely logical and intelligent on the show’s part. The plot that Brooker creates around it is again just too bleak. It’s not clear what the episode is trying to say other than that the truly monstrous walk among us – which is a lazy theme for a show this good.

29. Hated in the Nation

Season 3 Episode 6

At this point in the list, we enter into a series of episodes that are flawed but still mostly enjoyable. “Hated in the Nation” has two big factors working against it: it is both season 3’s longest and last episode, carrying an added level of import that it just doesn’t earn.

There’s too much going on here with the show combining a modern social media terrorism plot with….robot bees? It’s all a bit much and at times flat out silly. It’s still a fun episode that combines moments of sharp humor and real intensity. It’s also one of the few Black Mirror episodes to tackle social media and does so in a pretty smart way.

28. Mazey Day

Season 6 Episode 4

“Mazey Day” feels like it should be a more consequential Black Mirror episode than it ends up being. This season 6 installment about a troubled actress and the paparazzi who want to make their riches off of her goes in an ultimately unprecedented direction for the anthology.

While that direction is pretty clever, and the episode’s breezy running time is inoffensive, Mazey Day can’t really elevate itself beyond those two slight adjectives. You’ll have some fun here but for the most part this Zazie Beetz-starring installment isn’t Black Mirror at its best.

27. Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

Bandersnatch is a bit of an odd duck in the Black Mirror oeuvre. Released late in 2018 as a standalone, Bandersnatch is Netflix’s first ever “choose-your-own-adventure” showcase for adults. The story follows young programmer Stefan Butler (Fionn Whitehead) as he attempts to create a videogame based on the works of his favorite author. Sadly that author went crazy and killed his family, and as the choices for Stefan began to develop, it becomes clear that the viewer may be guiding him to a similar fate.

Bandersnatch works surprisingly well as a pure Black Mirror episode, devoid of the narrative tricks. Stefan and Colin Ritman (Will Poulter) are both strong characters and the episode’s warped version of 1984 comes across quite nicely. It’s those darn choices though that get in the way of the things. In a way that’s fitting, as Bandersnatch might be about how choice is an illusion anyway.

26. Arkangel

Season 4 Episode 2

Like its season 4 companion “Crocodile,” “Arkangel” is another episode that looks flat out beautiful. Jodie Foster is clearly in her element as a director, creating a richly realized portrait of a near-future small-town America. Not only that but she creates a touching portrayal of mothers and daughters.

So much of “Arkangel’s” runtime is staggeringly poignant, with a mother doing truly destructive things to her daughter all in the name of love. Rarely has an episode of Black Mirror fallen apart so precipitously in its third act, however.

25. Smithereens

Season 5 Episode 2

“Smithereens” follows Chris (Andrew Scott) a rideshare driver who spends most of his days outside of social networking app company Smithereen, waiting to pick an executive up. When Chris finally gets his wish (or thinks he does) he springs his hostage plan into action with one singular goal in mind: talk to the Smithereen CEO (Topher Grace) on his phone.

“Smithereens” is perfectly fine, but unremarkable. It joins other episodes like “Shut Up and Dance” and “The Entire History of You” that help establish dark sci-fi bona fides of the show in the public consciousness but aren’t the most compelling statements Black Mirror has to offer.

24. Black Museum

Season 4 Episode 6

Considering that Black Mirror itself is an anthology, maybe it’s no surprise that it’s able to handle anthologies within a single episode pretty well. “Black Museum” is the “finale” of season 4, and it’s an easter egg bonanza for Black Mirror fans wrapped around a pretty compelling story.

An unnamed woman (played by Black Panther‘s Letitia Wright) pulls into a desert U.S. rest stop where she enters a creepy museum curated by the bombastic Rolo Haynes (Douglas Hodge). Rolo takes his visitor on a tour of the museum, telling stories about how he came to acquire its many technological curiosities. “Black Museum” is in some respects just as dark as the brutal “Crocodile,” but it comes along with a winking Twilight Zone black humor that makes it all the more palatable and engaging.

23. Common People

Season 7 Episode 1

Season 7 opener “Common People” isn’t the best episode of Black Mirror, nor is it the worst, but it might just be the most Black Mirror episode of Black Mirror yet. Rashida Jones and Chris O’Dowd star as Mike and Amanda, a working class American couple just looking to get by. That goal becomes even more challenging when Amanda falls into a tumor-induced coma, only to be resurrected by the tech firm Rivermind.

There’s no catch here! The good folks at Rivermind bring Amanda’s brain back online for free. All it costs to keep it that way is $300 a month via the subscription model. Wait, did we say $300? It’s actually closer to $1300 now, you know with the upgrading of the cell towers and all. Also, can we interest you in Rivermind Luxe? It’s the only way to remove ads. Blessed with a creative concept and saddled with a typical ending, Common People is as close to a “replacement level” episode of Black Mirror as you’re likely to find.

22. Rachel, Jack, and Ashley Too

Season 5 Episode 3

Each successive season of Black Mirror feels like it works harder and harder to subvert viewers’ expectations in logical yet thrilling ways. The show has indulged in Star Trek-like adventure in “U.S.S. Callister,” post-apocalyptic horror in “Metalhead,” and basically straight up romance in “San Juinpero.” Season 5’s “Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too” might be the series’ most striking tonal departures yet. If not for the occasional F-bomb, this is basically a madcap childrens’ movie.

“Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too” follows sisters Rachel and Jack, who are struggling to fit in at school and come to terms with their mom’s death. Ashley O (played by Miley Cyrus naturally) is a pop star who finds herself under the thumb of her evil aunt. When Ashley O’s aunt makes a truly wild and destructive power play, Rachel, Jack, and a robot named Ashley Too seek to defeat her. Many a lesson is learned along the way. “Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too” doesn’t have the depth of many other Black Mirror episodes and takes far too long to get really rolling. Still, it’s hard not to fall for the charms of this strangely wholesome installment.

21. Playtest

Season 3 Episode 2

There’s quite a bit of time-padding in “Playtest.” Despite a reasonable running time of 57 minutes, the first act feels like it’s nine hours long. Once that hurdle is cleared, however, no episode of Black Mirror is able to more succinctly accomplish what it sets out to accomplish.

In “Playtest’s” case, that’s to be the first flat out techno horror movie episode of Black Mirror. It’s hard to imagine the episode succeeding in this goal more effectively. “Playtest” is far scarier than one could reasonably expect. The episode’s success is tempered yet again by having more endings than The Return of the King but the meaty middle portion is enough to place “Playtest” firmly in Black Mirror‘s middle class.

20. Loch Henry

Season 6 Episode 2

Black Mirror does true crime in “Loch Henry” and it does so quite well! The episode picks up with young filmmakers Davis (Samuel Blenkin) and Pia (Myha’la) returning to Davis’s native Scotland to film a Herzog-ian documentary about a guy who defends endangered bird eggs. When Pia stumbles upon the story of a grueling double murder that Davis’s cop father investigated, she rightfully decides that’s their angle instead.

Loch Henry works as both an engaging crime saga and a criticism of our own seedy fascination with pop culture murder. The twist is fairly easy to guess but the absolute human devastation it eventually reaps certainly makes up for that. In an increasingly bleak series, Loch Henry might just offer up one of Black Mirror‘s bleakest-ever endings.

19. Bête Noire

Season 7 Episode 2

Oftentimes it’s the simplest of human emotions that lead to the most incisive Black Mirrors. Case in point is “Bête Noire,” the second episode of the show’s seventh season. Things are going well enough for food researcher Maria (Siena Kelly) until an old face from her past stops by work. Soon enough Verity (Rosy McEwen) is brining the concept of gaslighting to new sci-fi heights.

At the center of it all is the bête noire, or black beast, herself: jealousy. Turns out you can travel a whole multiverse of possibilities and never get over your childhood pain.

18. Beyond the Sea

Season 6 Episode 3

It’s hard to find the right spot for “Beyond the Sea” on this list. Technically-speaking, it’s one of Black Mirror‘s most impressive episodes. Beautifully-shot by director John Crowley and capably acted by leads Josh Hartnett, Aaron Paul, and Kate Mara, this brings the show’s sci-fi concept back to the 1960s space age where it fits quite well. But then there’s that ending.

Is the hard turn that Beyond the Sea takes in the end coldly logical or the result of Charlie Brooker hitting the “we’re at 80 minutes and must self-destruct” button? Opinions vary at Den of Geek and we suspect they might vary out there as well.

17. Plaything

Season 7 Episode 4

While “USS Callister: Into Infinity” was touted as Black Mirror‘s first-ever direct sequel, it is actually sneakily beat to the punch two episodes previously with “Plaything.” Bandersnatch‘s Will Poulter returns as video game developer Colin Ritman in this short and sweet ode to mankind’s love for fuzzy little guys.

The fuzzy little guys in this equation are Thronglets, digital critters created by Ritman but not in any way under his control. All the Thronglets want is to be given the chance to create their own Throng and Cameron (Peter Capaldi) is going to help them out. Despite featuring one of Black Mirror‘s many trademark bleak endings, there’s something endearing about Plaything. Maybe it’s the Thronglets themselves or the open question of who’s really the “plaything” here but this installment is firmly enjoyable.

16. Metalhead

Season 4 Episode 5

“Metalhead” is beautiful in its simplicity. It’s among the shortest, most direct, and most exciting episodes of Black Mirror. Brooker presents us with a simple black and white story of survival. Black and white literally and black and white figuratively: man (in this case woman) vs. machine.

Maxine Peake is phenomenal as our protagonist in a Walking Dead-style future in which humanity is pursued by terrifying packs of robotic “dogs.” “Metalhead” never gives us straightforward answers (though those robots do seem to like to gather around Amazon-like fulfillment centers) but what it does give us is a careful, straightforward examination of the human spirit’s drive to survive.

15. Hang the DJ

Season 4 Episode 4

Frank (Joe Cole) and Amy (Georgina Campbell) meet through a dating service app that dictates the entire direction of your dating life. “The System” takes users from relationship to relationship, gathering information to find the user’s one true love. Problem is: Frank and Amy believe they’ve already found it and yet The System isn’t ready to let them quit just yet.

“Hang the DJ” is the rare episode of Black Mirror (or anything else for that matter) that features a twist that both elevates and reinforces the original premise. It’s a wonderful, clever, and emotional love story.

14. Hotel Reverie

Season 7 Episode 3

“Hotel Reverie” is what you get when you combine a timely tech topic with some resonant emotional storytelling. That is to say: a great Black Mirror episode. Issa Rae stars as famous actress Brandy Friday, who jumps at the opportunity to play the male lead in a remake of her favorite black and white film, Hotel Reverie. Of course, like many Black Mirror characters in season 7, she doesn’t quite read the instruction manual.

Even before things go inevitably, terribly wrong, Hotel Reverie’s premise of inserting modern day actors into classic films is queasy enough. In addition to capably exploring that topic (in a post-SGA strike landscape no less), this episode makes room for a compelling, offbeat love story that transcends time, space, and celluloid.

13. White Bear

Season 2 Episode 2

“White Bear” may rely a bit too much on its third-act twist but damn, what a twist it is. Folks who have never seen Black Mirror may be under the mistaken impression that the show thrives on “tricking” its audience. That’s obviously not always the case. But it is in “White Bear” and the results are incredible.

Black Mirror is able to manipulate us into believing it’s a much simpler, maybe even derivative show with the first two-thirds of “White Bear.” That last third, however, presents a fundamental truth about the all-consuming human desire for vengeance that’s as uncomfortable as anything the show has produced thus far.

12. The National Anthem

Season 1 Episode 1

Black Mirror‘s first episode is among its most polarizing. It’s incredible that this is what Brooker chose to lead off with. Granted, he couldn’t have known what the franchise would eventually become, but the story of an English Prime Minister blackmailed into copulating with a pig on national television remains as bold and darkly funny as ever.

The prime minster in question is the uninspiring Michael Callow (Rory Kinnear). After a domestic terrorist kidnaps a beloved princess, Callow has a chance to be the hero…by doing the unthinkable. Even all these years later, “The National Anthem” serves as a fitting, and bizarrely prescient, introduction to this TV institution.

11. Joan Is Awful

Season 6 Episode 1

The cultural conversation surrounding Black Mirror in its latter seasons always seems to comes down to the question: “do we even need this show anymore? Reality has basically become an episode of Black Mirror.” Brooker himself has copped to occasionally feeling hamstrung by the world’s increasingly dystopian tendencies. But then you get an episode like season 6 opener “Joan Is Awful” and realize why this project has plenty left in the tank.

Joan Is Awful uses the Black Mirrorification of our reality to its advantage. This disturbingly plausible hour finds the titular Joan (Annie Murphy) discovering that Netflix Streamberry has finally put all that data it collected on her to good use and just made a TV show about her life. It’s a perfectly Black Mirror concept that episode writer Brooker knows just what to do. And thanks to the star power of Murphy and Salma Hayek Pinault, it’s all marvelously entertaining with an unexpectedly empowering conclusion.

10. White Christmas

“White Christmas” is the first and superior of Black Mirror‘s two anthology episodes. Jon Hamm stars as Matt Trent, a proprietor of a home-helper technology, dating expert, and all-around creep. “White Christmas” follows Trent through three seemingly unrelated stories before they cross in fascinating and terrifying ways.

White Christmas is just terrifying, good science fiction and in many ways the technological concepts presented in it have resonated throughout future seasons of the show.

9. Striking Vipers

Season 5 Episode 1

Even before the “turn” in “Striking Vipers,” this is still a beautiful and bittersweet episode of television. Anthony Mackie, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, and Nicole Beharie brilliantly capture the anarchic sense of freedom and joy of youth and then just as capably capture the nostalgic sadness of adulthood. At first glance, this is an episode about growing old, growing apart, and not being able to reconcile your new self and your old self.

Then the twist hits. Suddenly “Striking Vipers” explodes into a whole host of philosophical, emotional, and sexual questions that the episode invites you to ponder. Through a silly little Mortal Kombat style videogame, Black Mirror makes the audience reconsider their own relationships and values. Just like all the truly great Black Mirror episodes this is a love story. But who loves who, how do they love them, what does that love mean, and where do we all go from here?

8. USS Callister: Into Infinity

Season 7 Episode 6

When it comes to Black Mirror episodes, fans and critics sometimes get hung up in trying to Figure Out What It All Means. What’s the technology here? What’s the message? What’s the parable? Sometimes, however, Charlie Brooker and company opt to craft an episode with the mission of “what if we just make something that rips?”

Enter: “USS Callister: Into Infinity,” the follow-up to season 4’s “USS Callister” and the Black Mirror franchise’s first-ever direct sequel. While this Cristin Milioti-led installment contains some timely commentary about the nature of digital identities and mankind’s heart of darkness, it’s seemingly just an excuse for the show to revisit a cast and concept that everyone had a ton of fun exploring the first time. Lo’ and behold, it’s a ton of fun the second time around too.

7. Nosedive

Season 3 Episode 1

Bryce Dallas Howard stars as Lacie Pound, a woman living in a near future that is even more obsessed with social media and status than we are. Lacie decides she wants to get into a hip new neighborhood but to do so she must maintain a 4.0 score on the dominant social media app. The effort to do so sends her into a … well, a nosedive.

A fun aspect of Black Mirror is being able to recognize certain plot points and themes in real life. Ok, so it’s not always fun. Usually it’s terrifying. For “Nosedive,” though it’s somehow both. Despite its too close for comfort premise, the episode is a lot of fun and it will forever change the way you view your Uber rating.

6. Demon 79

Season 6 Episode 5

“Demon 79” represents the Black Mirror‘s attempt to do something completely new. In fact, this was initially written by Brooker (alongside co-writer Bisha K. Ali) to be an installment of an entirely separate companion show called Red Mirror. As such, it is an unabashedly fantasy horror experience complete with a literal demon and a grim prophecy of the world’s end. And it all works!

Anjana Vasan and Paapa Essiedu both shine as the human-demon duo who are tasked with killing three people to avoid the apocalypse. Despite its non-Black Mirror origins, Demon 79 has every spiritual element of the original show in place: it’s violent, it’s political, it’s angry, it’s funny, and it’s clever. It’s a hell of a fun watch that operates as a much-needed reset and fresh beginning for the franchise overall.

5. Eulogy

Season 7 Episode 5

If you’re bringing one of planet Earth’s best actors aboard for an episode of your silly sci-fi anthology show, you’d better know what to do with him. Thankfully, Black Mirror not only knows what to do with Paul Giamatti, it gives him an incredibly meaty role in “Eulogy.”

The technology of Eulogy is simple and certainly not what you’d call dystopian. Giamatti’s Phillip is granted a nubbin and an AI assistant to guide him through some old photos and prompted to remember some material for his old flame’s eulogy. What the episode lacks in flash, however, it makes up for his heart. This is a touching, bittersweet installment that stands out as one of Black Mirror‘s best.

4. 15 Million Merits

Season 1 Episode 2

“15 Million Merits” is all over the place. It satirizes talent shows like The Voice and American Idol. It satirizes the app culture that’s invading our phones and computers. It satirizes the weight loss industry. It’s a lot, and it’s hard to fully categorize. Instead of all these elements detracting from the story at hand, they enhance it.

“15 Million Merits” is genius dystopian fiction. It’s Brooker’s sense of humor placed neatly over Orwell’s 1984. It’s only the second episode of the entire series and it’s as auspicious a beginning as possible.

3. USS Callister

Season 4 Episode 1

“Wait, this was supposed to be the fun Star Trek parody” a viewer might think to themselves as they watch Captain Robert Daly (Jesse Plemons) use God-like powers to remove the mouth of his crewmate Nanette Cole (Cristin Milioti) so she can neither breathe nor scream. Well, “USS Callister” is Black Mirror‘s “fun” Star Trek parody. It’s also a compelling examination of bad men and the damage they do.

“USS Callister” is one of the most complete and exciting stories the show has told yet. We know TV types get testy when episodes are compared to movies, but “USS Callister” really is just a fantastic movie. Brooker has a stronger sense of story and wonder here than ever before, and “USS Callister” marks an exciting new direction for the show altogether.

2. San Junipero

Season 3 Episode 4

The success of “San Junipero” seemed to catch Brooker and Netflix by surprise. Black Mirror was always a bleak, sometimes ugly little show that had fun doing its Twilight Zone schtick in the shadows. And then season 3 debuted on Netflix and nestled within it – in the unassuming position of the fourth episode – was a romantic masterpiece. A show that was sometimes about things that go viral suddenly had a “thing that went viral.”

San Junipero won the show its first Emmy and took up more server space of discussion on the internet than any other episode. It’s all more than well earned. San Junipero is near perfect. It’s the story of the love between two people, Kelly (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), and Yorkie (Mackenzie Davis), who are only able to meet because of technology. For once technology brings people together on Black Mirror instead of tearing them apart.

1. Be Right Back

Season 2 Episode 1

“Be Right Back” is Black Mirror‘s smallest episode – its quietest, its most intimate. Domhnall Gleeson and Hayley Atwell (before they were the Domhnall Gleeson and the Hayley Atwell) star as married couple Ash and Martha. They are happily, comfortably in love, even if Ash does have a bit of a problem pulling himself away from his phone.

One night, Ash heads out for a drive on a snowy road and the unthinkable happens. Martha is faced with a lifetime on her own until one of her friends puts an idea in her head. There does exist the technology now where a company can recreate the personality of a lost loved one through all of their social media posts and online presence. So Martha goes through with it and tries to fall in love again with a facsimile of Ash. As we all know, however, technology can get pretty close to human but can it get all the way there?

“Be Right Back” is beautiful and sad because it’s human. It’s imperfect. And it gets to a truth about all technology. Life is a race to experience love against the clock of death. So much of our technology and our innovation is about extending that clock, enhancing our capacity to love or in the rarest of instances: defeating death. Death, life, love, grief, technology, and time all come together for a bittersweet little parable in “Be Right Back.” It’s Black Mirror‘s best episode.

The post Black Mirror: Ranking Every Episode appeared first on Den of Geek.

Warning: contains spoilers for Black Mirror season 7 episode 2 “Hotel Reverie” When season three’s “San Junipero” came out in 2016, it made a splash. Acerbic, cynical Black Mirror – a series in which a man had sex with a pig, a child killer was tortured for public entertainment, and the Christmas special featured a five year old freezing […]

The post Black Mirror Season 7 Episode 3 Review: Hotel Reverie appeared first on Den of Geek.

Early adopters of sci-fi anthology series Black Mirror were once able to rattle off their list of favorite episodes with ease. Back in the show’s Channel 4 days in the U.K., there were only six installments (“The National Anthem,” “15 Million Merits,” “The Entire History of You,” “Be Right Back,” “White Bear,” and “The Waldo Moment”) so it wasn’t too challenging to gather them all up in one’s brain and spit them out in a preferred order.

Since 2016, however, Netflix has stepped in to start mass producing new episodes of Black Mirror as fast as creator Charlie Brooker can write them. The episode number (now at 34 with season 7) has become a bit more unwieldy so making sense of where they all rank is a taller order. Thankfully, it’s a a challenge we’re happy to take on.

What follows is our official list of every Black Mirror episode from worst to best. You will disagree with it because how could you not? Just be sure to let us know how foolish we are in the comments.

34. Shut Up and Dance

Season 3 Episode 3

The third installment of season 3 does indeed present a worthwhile original concept, as most episodes of Black Mirror do. Hackers contact teenage boy Kenny (Alex Lawther) and instruct him to perform an increasingly complicated series of chores or they’ll release an incriminating video taken from his webcam. He teams up with Hector (Jerome Flynn, who has been sent on a similar mission from the same hackers).

Unfortunately, “Shut Up and Dance” is simply too ugly for its own good. While the episode is able to tap into modern anxieties about loss of privacy and autonomy well, it introduces a depressing third act twist that unwittingly argues we’re all terrible animals who don’t deserve our stupid privacy anyway.

33. The Entire History of You

Season 1 Episode 3

“The Entire History of You” was a popular choice for fan favorite following the show’s tiny three-episode first season. The concept of being able to literally watch one’s own memories Dumbledore’s Pensieve-style was definitely appealing. The episode struck such a chord that Robert Downey Jr. even optioned it to make a still as of yet unproduced movie. Problem is: “The Entire History of You” has aged incredibly poorly.

The initial concept remains appealing – so much so that the mind projection “nubbin” has recurred several times – but the story wrapped around it is just awful. Lead character Liam (Toby Kebbell) is such a monstrous prick that it negates any salient point the episode may try to make. It’s hard to be taken in by the episode’s fascinating technology when it’s presented within the most standard and boring infidelity plot imaginable. 

32. The Waldo Moment

Season 2 Episode 3

“The Waldo Moment” is a popular choice for worst Black Mirror episode ever and it’s not hard to see why. Central “character” Waldo is just absolutely unfunny and insufferable. The plot introduces tortured comedic genius Charlie Brooker…I mean Jamie Salter (Daniel Rigby), whose animated bear-like creation Waldo embarks upon a satirical run for office.

In a more modern context when we’ve seen creatures far worse than cartoon characters elected to office, “The Waldo Moment” isn’t quite as ridiculous. The notion of co-opting sarcastic revolutions from frustrated voters is pretty right on. Still, Waldo is just the fucking worst. He’s like how Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip was a show that wanted to depict a comedic variety show but was completely unable to write believable sketches.

31. Men Against Fire

Season 3 Episode 5

“Men Against Fire” is actually pretty solid. Its biggest issue, however, is that it’s nearly impossible not to guess its big twist very early on in the episode. Once the episode gets that inevitability out of the way, a lot falls into place and “Men Against Fire’s” central message is effective and disturbing.

Still the ease in which the narrative trickery is worked out holds it back – as does its clear lack of a necessary budget. It’s a story and a concept that just needed some more time and money to marinate.

30. Crocodile

Season 4 Episode 3

“Crocodile” is one of Black Mirror‘s best-looking episodes. Director John Hillcoat (The Road) makes the absolute best of the setting’s still, disquieting Icelandic landscapes. And that interesting concept of accessing memories comes up again – only this time in a more primitive form.

The technology being developed and primarily used by insurance investigators is entirely logical and intelligent on the show’s part. The plot that Brooker creates around it is again just too bleak. It’s not clear what the episode is trying to say other than that the truly monstrous walk among us – which is a lazy theme for a show this good.

29. Hated in the Nation

Season 3 Episode 6

At this point in the list, we enter into a series of episodes that are flawed but still mostly enjoyable. “Hated in the Nation” has two big factors working against it: it is both season 3’s longest and last episode, carrying an added level of import that it just doesn’t earn.

There’s too much going on here with the show combining a modern social media terrorism plot with….robot bees? It’s all a bit much and at times flat out silly. It’s still a fun episode that combines moments of sharp humor and real intensity. It’s also one of the few Black Mirror episodes to tackle social media and does so in a pretty smart way.

28. Mazey Day

Season 6 Episode 4

“Mazey Day” feels like it should be a more consequential Black Mirror episode than it ends up being. This season 6 installment about a troubled actress and the paparazzi who want to make their riches off of her goes in an ultimately unprecedented direction for the anthology.

While that direction is pretty clever, and the episode’s breezy running time is inoffensive, Mazey Day can’t really elevate itself beyond those two slight adjectives. You’ll have some fun here but for the most part this Zazie Beetz-starring installment isn’t Black Mirror at its best.

27. Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

Bandersnatch is a bit of an odd duck in the Black Mirror oeuvre. Released late in 2018 as a standalone, Bandersnatch is Netflix’s first ever “choose-your-own-adventure” showcase for adults. The story follows young programmer Stefan Butler (Fionn Whitehead) as he attempts to create a videogame based on the works of his favorite author. Sadly that author went crazy and killed his family, and as the choices for Stefan began to develop, it becomes clear that the viewer may be guiding him to a similar fate.

Bandersnatch works surprisingly well as a pure Black Mirror episode, devoid of the narrative tricks. Stefan and Colin Ritman (Will Poulter) are both strong characters and the episode’s warped version of 1984 comes across quite nicely. It’s those darn choices though that get in the way of the things. In a way that’s fitting, as Bandersnatch might be about how choice is an illusion anyway.

26. Arkangel

Season 4 Episode 2

Like its season 4 companion “Crocodile,” “Arkangel” is another episode that looks flat out beautiful. Jodie Foster is clearly in her element as a director, creating a richly realized portrait of a near-future small-town America. Not only that but she creates a touching portrayal of mothers and daughters.

So much of “Arkangel’s” runtime is staggeringly poignant, with a mother doing truly destructive things to her daughter all in the name of love. Rarely has an episode of Black Mirror fallen apart so precipitously in its third act, however.

25. Smithereens

Season 5 Episode 2

“Smithereens” follows Chris (Andrew Scott) a rideshare driver who spends most of his days outside of social networking app company Smithereen, waiting to pick an executive up. When Chris finally gets his wish (or thinks he does) he springs his hostage plan into action with one singular goal in mind: talk to the Smithereen CEO (Topher Grace) on his phone.

“Smithereens” is perfectly fine, but unremarkable. It joins other episodes like “Shut Up and Dance” and “The Entire History of You” that help establish dark sci-fi bona fides of the show in the public consciousness but aren’t the most compelling statements Black Mirror has to offer.

24. Black Museum

Season 4 Episode 6

Considering that Black Mirror itself is an anthology, maybe it’s no surprise that it’s able to handle anthologies within a single episode pretty well. “Black Museum” is the “finale” of season 4, and it’s an easter egg bonanza for Black Mirror fans wrapped around a pretty compelling story.

An unnamed woman (played by Black Panther‘s Letitia Wright) pulls into a desert U.S. rest stop where she enters a creepy museum curated by the bombastic Rolo Haynes (Douglas Hodge). Rolo takes his visitor on a tour of the museum, telling stories about how he came to acquire its many technological curiosities. “Black Museum” is in some respects just as dark as the brutal “Crocodile,” but it comes along with a winking Twilight Zone black humor that makes it all the more palatable and engaging.

23. Common People

Season 7 Episode 1

Season 7 opener “Common People” isn’t the best episode of Black Mirror, nor is it the worst, but it might just be the most Black Mirror episode of Black Mirror yet. Rashida Jones and Chris O’Dowd star as Mike and Amanda, a working class American couple just looking to get by. That goal becomes even more challenging when Amanda falls into a tumor-induced coma, only to be resurrected by the tech firm Rivermind.

There’s no catch here! The good folks at Rivermind bring Amanda’s brain back online for free. All it costs to keep it that way is $300 a month via the subscription model. Wait, did we say $300? It’s actually closer to $1300 now, you know with the upgrading of the cell towers and all. Also, can we interest you in Rivermind Luxe? It’s the only way to remove ads. Blessed with a creative concept and saddled with a typical ending, Common People is as close to a “replacement level” episode of Black Mirror as you’re likely to find.

22. Rachel, Jack, and Ashley Too

Season 5 Episode 3

Each successive season of Black Mirror feels like it works harder and harder to subvert viewers’ expectations in logical yet thrilling ways. The show has indulged in Star Trek-like adventure in “U.S.S. Callister,” post-apocalyptic horror in “Metalhead,” and basically straight up romance in “San Juinpero.” Season 5’s “Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too” might be the series’ most striking tonal departures yet. If not for the occasional F-bomb, this is basically a madcap childrens’ movie.

“Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too” follows sisters Rachel and Jack, who are struggling to fit in at school and come to terms with their mom’s death. Ashley O (played by Miley Cyrus naturally) is a pop star who finds herself under the thumb of her evil aunt. When Ashley O’s aunt makes a truly wild and destructive power play, Rachel, Jack, and a robot named Ashley Too seek to defeat her. Many a lesson is learned along the way. “Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too” doesn’t have the depth of many other Black Mirror episodes and takes far too long to get really rolling. Still, it’s hard not to fall for the charms of this strangely wholesome installment.

21. Playtest

Season 3 Episode 2

There’s quite a bit of time-padding in “Playtest.” Despite a reasonable running time of 57 minutes, the first act feels like it’s nine hours long. Once that hurdle is cleared, however, no episode of Black Mirror is able to more succinctly accomplish what it sets out to accomplish.

In “Playtest’s” case, that’s to be the first flat out techno horror movie episode of Black Mirror. It’s hard to imagine the episode succeeding in this goal more effectively. “Playtest” is far scarier than one could reasonably expect. The episode’s success is tempered yet again by having more endings than The Return of the King but the meaty middle portion is enough to place “Playtest” firmly in Black Mirror‘s middle class.

20. Loch Henry

Season 6 Episode 2

Black Mirror does true crime in “Loch Henry” and it does so quite well! The episode picks up with young filmmakers Davis (Samuel Blenkin) and Pia (Myha’la) returning to Davis’s native Scotland to film a Herzog-ian documentary about a guy who defends endangered bird eggs. When Pia stumbles upon the story of a grueling double murder that Davis’s cop father investigated, she rightfully decides that’s their angle instead.

Loch Henry works as both an engaging crime saga and a criticism of our own seedy fascination with pop culture murder. The twist is fairly easy to guess but the absolute human devastation it eventually reaps certainly makes up for that. In an increasingly bleak series, Loch Henry might just offer up one of Black Mirror‘s bleakest-ever endings.

19. Bête Noire

Season 7 Episode 2

Oftentimes it’s the simplest of human emotions that lead to the most incisive Black Mirrors. Case in point is “Bête Noire,” the second episode of the show’s seventh season. Things are going well enough for food researcher Maria (Siena Kelly) until an old face from her past stops by work. Soon enough Verity (Rosy McEwen) is brining the concept of gaslighting to new sci-fi heights.

At the center of it all is the bête noire, or black beast, herself: jealousy. Turns out you can travel a whole multiverse of possibilities and never get over your childhood pain.

18. Beyond the Sea

Season 6 Episode 3

It’s hard to find the right spot for “Beyond the Sea” on this list. Technically-speaking, it’s one of Black Mirror‘s most impressive episodes. Beautifully-shot by director John Crowley and capably acted by leads Josh Hartnett, Aaron Paul, and Kate Mara, this brings the show’s sci-fi concept back to the 1960s space age where it fits quite well. But then there’s that ending.

Is the hard turn that Beyond the Sea takes in the end coldly logical or the result of Charlie Brooker hitting the “we’re at 80 minutes and must self-destruct” button? Opinions vary at Den of Geek and we suspect they might vary out there as well.

17. Plaything

Season 7 Episode 4

While “USS Callister: Into Infinity” was touted as Black Mirror‘s first-ever direct sequel, it is actually sneakily beat to the punch two episodes previously with “Plaything.” Bandersnatch‘s Will Poulter returns as video game developer Colin Ritman in this short and sweet ode to mankind’s love for fuzzy little guys.

The fuzzy little guys in this equation are Thronglets, digital critters created by Ritman but not in any way under his control. All the Thronglets want is to be given the chance to create their own Throng and Cameron (Peter Capaldi) is going to help them out. Despite featuring one of Black Mirror‘s many trademark bleak endings, there’s something endearing about Plaything. Maybe it’s the Thronglets themselves or the open question of who’s really the “plaything” here but this installment is firmly enjoyable.

16. Metalhead

Season 4 Episode 5

“Metalhead” is beautiful in its simplicity. It’s among the shortest, most direct, and most exciting episodes of Black Mirror. Brooker presents us with a simple black and white story of survival. Black and white literally and black and white figuratively: man (in this case woman) vs. machine.

Maxine Peake is phenomenal as our protagonist in a Walking Dead-style future in which humanity is pursued by terrifying packs of robotic “dogs.” “Metalhead” never gives us straightforward answers (though those robots do seem to like to gather around Amazon-like fulfillment centers) but what it does give us is a careful, straightforward examination of the human spirit’s drive to survive.

15. Hang the DJ

Season 4 Episode 4

Frank (Joe Cole) and Amy (Georgina Campbell) meet through a dating service app that dictates the entire direction of your dating life. “The System” takes users from relationship to relationship, gathering information to find the user’s one true love. Problem is: Frank and Amy believe they’ve already found it and yet The System isn’t ready to let them quit just yet.

“Hang the DJ” is the rare episode of Black Mirror (or anything else for that matter) that features a twist that both elevates and reinforces the original premise. It’s a wonderful, clever, and emotional love story.

14. Hotel Reverie

Season 7 Episode 3

“Hotel Reverie” is what you get when you combine a timely tech topic with some resonant emotional storytelling. That is to say: a great Black Mirror episode. Issa Rae stars as famous actress Brandy Friday, who jumps at the opportunity to play the male lead in a remake of her favorite black and white film, Hotel Reverie. Of course, like many Black Mirror characters in season 7, she doesn’t quite read the instruction manual.

Even before things go inevitably, terribly wrong, Hotel Reverie’s premise of inserting modern day actors into classic films is queasy enough. In addition to capably exploring that topic (in a post-SGA strike landscape no less), this episode makes room for a compelling, offbeat love story that transcends time, space, and celluloid.

13. White Bear

Season 2 Episode 2

“White Bear” may rely a bit too much on its third-act twist but damn, what a twist it is. Folks who have never seen Black Mirror may be under the mistaken impression that the show thrives on “tricking” its audience. That’s obviously not always the case. But it is in “White Bear” and the results are incredible.

Black Mirror is able to manipulate us into believing it’s a much simpler, maybe even derivative show with the first two-thirds of “White Bear.” That last third, however, presents a fundamental truth about the all-consuming human desire for vengeance that’s as uncomfortable as anything the show has produced thus far.

12. The National Anthem

Season 1 Episode 1

Black Mirror‘s first episode is among its most polarizing. It’s incredible that this is what Brooker chose to lead off with. Granted, he couldn’t have known what the franchise would eventually become, but the story of an English Prime Minister blackmailed into copulating with a pig on national television remains as bold and darkly funny as ever.

The prime minster in question is the uninspiring Michael Callow (Rory Kinnear). After a domestic terrorist kidnaps a beloved princess, Callow has a chance to be the hero…by doing the unthinkable. Even all these years later, “The National Anthem” serves as a fitting, and bizarrely prescient, introduction to this TV institution.

11. Joan Is Awful

Season 6 Episode 1

The cultural conversation surrounding Black Mirror in its latter seasons always seems to comes down to the question: “do we even need this show anymore? Reality has basically become an episode of Black Mirror.” Brooker himself has copped to occasionally feeling hamstrung by the world’s increasingly dystopian tendencies. But then you get an episode like season 6 opener “Joan Is Awful” and realize why this project has plenty left in the tank.

Joan Is Awful uses the Black Mirrorification of our reality to its advantage. This disturbingly plausible hour finds the titular Joan (Annie Murphy) discovering that Netflix Streamberry has finally put all that data it collected on her to good use and just made a TV show about her life. It’s a perfectly Black Mirror concept that episode writer Brooker knows just what to do. And thanks to the star power of Murphy and Salma Hayek Pinault, it’s all marvelously entertaining with an unexpectedly empowering conclusion.

10. White Christmas

“White Christmas” is the first and superior of Black Mirror‘s two anthology episodes. Jon Hamm stars as Matt Trent, a proprietor of a home-helper technology, dating expert, and all-around creep. “White Christmas” follows Trent through three seemingly unrelated stories before they cross in fascinating and terrifying ways.

White Christmas is just terrifying, good science fiction and in many ways the technological concepts presented in it have resonated throughout future seasons of the show.

9. Striking Vipers

Season 5 Episode 1

Even before the “turn” in “Striking Vipers,” this is still a beautiful and bittersweet episode of television. Anthony Mackie, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, and Nicole Beharie brilliantly capture the anarchic sense of freedom and joy of youth and then just as capably capture the nostalgic sadness of adulthood. At first glance, this is an episode about growing old, growing apart, and not being able to reconcile your new self and your old self.

Then the twist hits. Suddenly “Striking Vipers” explodes into a whole host of philosophical, emotional, and sexual questions that the episode invites you to ponder. Through a silly little Mortal Kombat style videogame, Black Mirror makes the audience reconsider their own relationships and values. Just like all the truly great Black Mirror episodes this is a love story. But who loves who, how do they love them, what does that love mean, and where do we all go from here?

8. USS Callister: Into Infinity

Season 7 Episode 6

When it comes to Black Mirror episodes, fans and critics sometimes get hung up in trying to Figure Out What It All Means. What’s the technology here? What’s the message? What’s the parable? Sometimes, however, Charlie Brooker and company opt to craft an episode with the mission of “what if we just make something that rips?”

Enter: “USS Callister: Into Infinity,” the follow-up to season 4’s “USS Callister” and the Black Mirror franchise’s first-ever direct sequel. While this Cristin Milioti-led installment contains some timely commentary about the nature of digital identities and mankind’s heart of darkness, it’s seemingly just an excuse for the show to revisit a cast and concept that everyone had a ton of fun exploring the first time. Lo’ and behold, it’s a ton of fun the second time around too.

7. Nosedive

Season 3 Episode 1

Bryce Dallas Howard stars as Lacie Pound, a woman living in a near future that is even more obsessed with social media and status than we are. Lacie decides she wants to get into a hip new neighborhood but to do so she must maintain a 4.0 score on the dominant social media app. The effort to do so sends her into a … well, a nosedive.

A fun aspect of Black Mirror is being able to recognize certain plot points and themes in real life. Ok, so it’s not always fun. Usually it’s terrifying. For “Nosedive,” though it’s somehow both. Despite its too close for comfort premise, the episode is a lot of fun and it will forever change the way you view your Uber rating.

6. Demon 79

Season 6 Episode 5

“Demon 79” represents the Black Mirror‘s attempt to do something completely new. In fact, this was initially written by Brooker (alongside co-writer Bisha K. Ali) to be an installment of an entirely separate companion show called Red Mirror. As such, it is an unabashedly fantasy horror experience complete with a literal demon and a grim prophecy of the world’s end. And it all works!

Anjana Vasan and Paapa Essiedu both shine as the human-demon duo who are tasked with killing three people to avoid the apocalypse. Despite its non-Black Mirror origins, Demon 79 has every spiritual element of the original show in place: it’s violent, it’s political, it’s angry, it’s funny, and it’s clever. It’s a hell of a fun watch that operates as a much-needed reset and fresh beginning for the franchise overall.

5. Eulogy

Season 7 Episode 5

If you’re bringing one of planet Earth’s best actors aboard for an episode of your silly sci-fi anthology show, you’d better know what to do with him. Thankfully, Black Mirror not only knows what to do with Paul Giamatti, it gives him an incredibly meaty role in “Eulogy.”

The technology of Eulogy is simple and certainly not what you’d call dystopian. Giamatti’s Phillip is granted a nubbin and an AI assistant to guide him through some old photos and prompted to remember some material for his old flame’s eulogy. What the episode lacks in flash, however, it makes up for his heart. This is a touching, bittersweet installment that stands out as one of Black Mirror‘s best.

4. 15 Million Merits

Season 1 Episode 2

“15 Million Merits” is all over the place. It satirizes talent shows like The Voice and American Idol. It satirizes the app culture that’s invading our phones and computers. It satirizes the weight loss industry. It’s a lot, and it’s hard to fully categorize. Instead of all these elements detracting from the story at hand, they enhance it.

“15 Million Merits” is genius dystopian fiction. It’s Brooker’s sense of humor placed neatly over Orwell’s 1984. It’s only the second episode of the entire series and it’s as auspicious a beginning as possible.

3. USS Callister

Season 4 Episode 1

“Wait, this was supposed to be the fun Star Trek parody” a viewer might think to themselves as they watch Captain Robert Daly (Jesse Plemons) use God-like powers to remove the mouth of his crewmate Nanette Cole (Cristin Milioti) so she can neither breathe nor scream. Well, “USS Callister” is Black Mirror‘s “fun” Star Trek parody. It’s also a compelling examination of bad men and the damage they do.

“USS Callister” is one of the most complete and exciting stories the show has told yet. We know TV types get testy when episodes are compared to movies, but “USS Callister” really is just a fantastic movie. Brooker has a stronger sense of story and wonder here than ever before, and “USS Callister” marks an exciting new direction for the show altogether.

2. San Junipero

Season 3 Episode 4

The success of “San Junipero” seemed to catch Brooker and Netflix by surprise. Black Mirror was always a bleak, sometimes ugly little show that had fun doing its Twilight Zone schtick in the shadows. And then season 3 debuted on Netflix and nestled within it – in the unassuming position of the fourth episode – was a romantic masterpiece. A show that was sometimes about things that go viral suddenly had a “thing that went viral.”

San Junipero won the show its first Emmy and took up more server space of discussion on the internet than any other episode. It’s all more than well earned. San Junipero is near perfect. It’s the story of the love between two people, Kelly (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), and Yorkie (Mackenzie Davis), who are only able to meet because of technology. For once technology brings people together on Black Mirror instead of tearing them apart.

1. Be Right Back

Season 2 Episode 1

“Be Right Back” is Black Mirror‘s smallest episode – its quietest, its most intimate. Domhnall Gleeson and Hayley Atwell (before they were the Domhnall Gleeson and the Hayley Atwell) star as married couple Ash and Martha. They are happily, comfortably in love, even if Ash does have a bit of a problem pulling himself away from his phone.

One night, Ash heads out for a drive on a snowy road and the unthinkable happens. Martha is faced with a lifetime on her own until one of her friends puts an idea in her head. There does exist the technology now where a company can recreate the personality of a lost loved one through all of their social media posts and online presence. So Martha goes through with it and tries to fall in love again with a facsimile of Ash. As we all know, however, technology can get pretty close to human but can it get all the way there?

“Be Right Back” is beautiful and sad because it’s human. It’s imperfect. And it gets to a truth about all technology. Life is a race to experience love against the clock of death. So much of our technology and our innovation is about extending that clock, enhancing our capacity to love or in the rarest of instances: defeating death. Death, life, love, grief, technology, and time all come together for a bittersweet little parable in “Be Right Back.” It’s Black Mirror‘s best episode.

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