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pkrossier
Reviews
Grimm (2011)
They're trying, but failing miserably
My gf loves this show because she grew up with itnand met a few of the actors. Unfortunately that means I have to sit through 6 seasons of it.
My God the writing is terrible. The first few seasons go nowhere. There starts to be a plot in season 3 but it's so full of manufactured problems made by stupid decisions the characters make or obvious lack of communication that leaves you shouting at the screen. So many things don't make any sense and are clearly there just to delay resolution.
The acting is terrible too. And wow, that CGI is rough. I don't know if I can keep going. It's either I find a way out of watching this or a way out of the relationship.
House of the Dragon (2022)
Forced without any nuance
I really wanted to like this show. But instead of succeeding on its own merit, it is as frustrating as the last season of GoT.
Where GoT excelled was having clever twists that, although unexpected, made sense because the background existed to support those changes - the genius was allowing those changes to evolve while keeping the viewer focused on another point of the story until they happened. Season 9 failed because it lacked the nuance but tried to keep the twists, making them unbelievable and forced.
HotD suffers from the same lack of nuance right from the beginning. I have not read the books so I can only hope this is a bad screenplay adaptation, but the result is a contrived shadow of what GoT achieved so well.
The first episode is just gore for gore's sake. Clearly they frontloaded the carnage that GoT paced so well. The second spends the whole episode building up to an obvious decision, just for the King (who relies on his advisors) to make a completely out-of-character choice to compromise both the entire realm and his relationship with his daughter, never to even attempt to rationalize the move. The third was so thirsty for a battle scene that it forced an outlandish display which yielded an ambush that apparently not one of the enemy saw coming. A dragon materializes overhead at the last second as the prince forgets about the 3 arrows in him and sprints toward a confrontation with the Crabfeeder - which they didn't even bother to show.
So far, this is sloppy, desperate writing that will only serve to remind others of the smoldering ruins of what used to be a great series.
Yôjinbô (1961)
Did we watch the same Movie?
I really struggled to get through this. My roommate described this as "one of the best Samurai movies of all time." This site, which aligns more with my opinion than any other review site, also rates it extremely high. For the life of me, I can't figure out why. My best guess is that because it is iconic and has been copied so much, everyone reviewing it wants to feel in the loop.
There is very little action in this movie. I think Yojimbo does less than 30 seconds of fighting the whole movie. Also hard to view him as the protagonist when he clearly exploits everyone for his own gain the whole time. I didn't feel that him letting a few people go at the end justified the havoc he wrought on the whole town.
The pace is SO slow that I kept "waiting for it to start." The acting is so over the top from everyone except the main character. You know when you're watching a great movie but then some side character pulls you back to reality with some horrible delivery? That was most of this movie. The dialogue was some of the worst I've seen too.
I'm going to have to watch this again because I'm convinced I've missed some genius here but...it was such a struggle the first time, I don't know if I could make it through again.
It did have some unique shots, decent music, and an unusual storyline which I know is what put it on the map in the first place. It's just that the actual content was so subpar, I couldn't invest myself in the film. Maybe when this movie was made, it was groundbreaking. But since then we've substantially raised the bar on movie quality and this one doesn't stand the test of time.
I'll revisit this review after a second watch. Gonna need some Xanax to make it though.