Just like a great heist, a great heist movie requires perfect timing, giving out character reveals at just the right moment, knowing when the story needs a new complication, and throwing shocking twists in at exactly the right moment for maximum audience impact. But for those narratives to work, they need clockwork precision. Non-linear storytelling is a hallmark of the heist genre, particularly for the slightly more modern version of it, like the Oceans movies or Reservoir Dogs. There’s no improv, just carefully crafted precision, and problems only experts can solve. Kaleidoscope’s basic assumption was wrong the whole time. While this format is almost interesting at first blush, its problems become clear with a little more thought: There’s nothing fundamentally interesting about learning things in a random order. One somewhat interesting note about the randomization, though, is that there do seem to be a few limits on which episodes can appear where, and everyone ends with the same two, the heist and its aftermath. Rather than any kind of actual personality for the characters or anything else that might make you care about them, we get first-day-of-class fun facts like one character liking the play the drums or another wanting to retire to the beach. Even when the show is layering on extraneous details in these episodes, they really only amount to relationship drama between two or more members of the crew. You could get a preliminary heist as your midpoint, or you could get several episodes worth of flashbacks about Leo and his former partner, or the stunningly incompetent FBI agent who’s chasing him and his crew. You might start with an introduction to the crew, or just to Leo. Image: Netflixīut again, the order you learn about any of this is mostly up in the air. To pull off the job, Leo gets together a crew that includes Ava Mercer (Paz Vega), Judy Goodwin (Rosaline Elbay), Stan Loomis (Peter Mark Kendall), RJ Acosta (Jordan Mendoza), and Bob Goodwin (Jai Courtney) - I’d describe the characters more, but the show doesn’t bother, so why should I. Kaleidoscope, created by Eric Garcia ( Repo Men), follows Leo Pap (Giancarlo Esposito, who seems to pick a new voice at random at the start of each episode), a former thief looking to return to the life for one last job.ĭepending on the order of your episodes, when we meet Leo he’s either about to break out of prison, or he’s dead set on revenge via the biggest job he can think of: hitting his former partner who now runs a security company with a high-tech underground vault. Unfortunately, the show never really makes a song worth listening to, and mostly feels like a din of out-of-tune instruments, no matter what order they’re in. At least, that’s the hope behind Netflix’s new heist series Kaleidoscope, which gives each viewer a randomized episode order. Happy listening.Ĭontributors: Anna Rahmanan, Eddy Frankel, Andy Kryza, Phil de Semlyen, Alex Plim, Dave Calhoun, Andrzej Lukowski, Alexandra Sims, Matthew Singer, Joe Mackertich, Huw Oliver, Ella Doyle, Rose Johnstone, Jess Phillips, Charlie Liddington.It’s tempting to believe a great heist story, whether it’s in a movie or a series, is like great jazz: A collection of seemingly disparate parts, each excellent but incomplete on their own, get combined together to create something transcendent. And if you’re looking to dig deeper into one genre, try our specialist lists on for size (you’ll find them below). In our list of the best podcasts right now, we've got political podcasts that look behind the news, comedy podcasts with your favourite funny people, and plenty of those all-important investigative whodunnits to keep you up at night. But perhaps the most hyped podcast right now is ‘Filthy Ritual’ (April 2023), and for good reason – it's now our number three. The BBC's ‘Love, Janessa’ (January 2023) had us hooked (and made it to our top ten), and ‘Pod Save the UK’ (May 2023) has taken the podcast world by storm. This year has blessed us with plenty of great podcasts, and they're not showing any sign of slowing down.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |