Devs (2020)

In his blog, Scott Aaronson has nailed Devs as a "cultural appropriation," which, all things considered, is a compliment. Aaronson was referring to the culture of quantum computing in particular, but much more is appropriated and is aptly summarised---again, by Aaronson---as existential musings of Aaronson's eleven-year-old self.

Alex Garland (writer, director, and, according to credits, "creator") comes across as a team player, but, on this project, he has denied himself a team. This handicap notwithstanding, the series endures, in large part thanks to its visuals and Sonoya Mizuno's physique. The words she's been programmed to utter fall flat, but her body knows how to be present. Thankfully, the director knows that it knows.

Two facts redeem the series. First, the eleven-year-old Aaronson used to ask good questions; one can look for answers elsewhere. Second, the shortcomings of the story line and the dialogue, flat and stereotypical characters, and factual errors can all be written off as a noisy simulation of a simulation of... Noisy, but still worth living or, at least, examining.

Anne with an E

The series is a cliched soap opera saved by the great Canadian acting. Every character, no matter how minor, is played by an actor worthy of being a lead. Indeed, the lengthy format that is the series enables the creators to dispose of the traditional notion of a lead character. Almost.

As the tenets of a soap opera demand, there ought to be no end in sight. There is plenty of room for season 4.

Columbus (2017)

Some cities are so small that they loom large—over its populace, who sleep at 9pm, over the streets, dark, deserved, over the indoors, belonging to someone else, over the air, indifferent and transmitting the sounds that would only be heard in a place where sounds visit but rarely stay. There are cities so small that they loom large by virtue of embodying the dreams of a man (or a handful) who cared and who faced few obstacles in a place not sedated by tradition.

There are people so large that they need to come to a place that is small in order to rewrite themselves uninhibited and with purpose, instead of being haphazardly overwritten by a metropolis. There are people so large that they need to escape a city that is small in order to write not one but several stories each of which would comprise a life.