Change Your Image
refuserefuse
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
Rebel Moon - Part Two: The Scargiver (2024)
Star Wars Episode 2 meets Battlefield Earth.
The continual trend of everything Synder is known for. More spectacle, less sense and substance with every film.
There is no part of this that isn't a brazen ripoff of something right down to the title. "Rebel Moon." Come on.
Yet despite such heavy borrowing it still can't piece together anything the makes sense.
For sure the plot makes no sense.
The exposition also makes no sense and then will repeat itself mid exposition. The do everything short of literally saying "now let's do some exposition." And then not only does it make no sense to say to the other character, it also doesn't make sense for the viewer.
The dialogue is painful. Like a child's writing project. And exponentially more so on any of the character building relationship parts.
And despite a generally high production value there it's also really uneven in some practical areas like set design and make up.
Very frequently you get all this together. Like character is portrayed as the patsy for an assassination but then in the flashback is actually actually one of the assassins. And though you should know this assassin was the target's body guard from the first movie they tell you things like the fact the target wouldn't have normally been at the event where assassination was going to take place. As though though that would be remotely relevant for anyone in the field or anyone watching.
And the scene plays like the hundred conspirators present all agreed that when they reveal their betrayal they are all going act shocked and horrified as though the significant terrible thing was her doing the assassination they were all in on. But then do it in a completely hackneyed flat manner of dialogue. With really beards.
Even the sound effects don't make sense. Fire from a gun then 2 seconds later the mushy sound of its effect on flesh.
As the positive reviews summarize, if you can surrender, get past clumsiness, cliches, saccharine moments, the flashbacks and montages (which are like 80% of the runtime) then it's an ok movie.
So if you are one of those people who doesn't mind the dish consisting mostly of spoiled ingredients as long as some of it is somewhere is good and haven't gotten your Star Wars fix from all the derivative properties Disney+ is turning out then this just might be for you.
Death and Other Details (2024)
Not perfect but way better than people are indicating
Lots of complaints that this is slow. I think the only reason is that this Poirot sort of murder mystery is typically done as a movie and that it circles around one murder. There is nothing about it plot-wise that is slow in comparison to any other typical mystery series as a benchmark.
Beane and Patinkin are great and the period mash up of it is captivating. The rest of the characters and the story are also fairly well-drawn. I don't think anyone who likes murder mysteries will find this slow or identify with complaints that there is too much dialogue and not enough action. What did they think they were watching?
However they subjectively may or may not find find it shifting uniqueness to be a detriment or benefit. It takes off like said Poirot style mystery but there is actually no way that a viewer could solve the murder even in retrospect. It avoids a lot of clichés but it does this by taking turns that similarly take surprising shifts from the type of series it seemed to be.
The result is that by the end it is a very different type of series than when it started. That sort of shift is very common in modern streaming series making them so unrecognizable that all the elements that drew you to the show are gone.
For me though this one holds together in that the characters and the larger conspiracy stay coherent (again refreshing in the modern landscape) so I found it well worth a watch even though the resolution felt a little off-brand. (despite being heavily foreshadowed)
It's a fun watch and I would be very glad to see a season 2.
Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2024)
Obviously it's not the A-lister B-movie. That's not the problem.
Series shouldn't have taken it's name from the Brangelina movie but that's entirely beside the point.
I love Donald glover. I liked the couple/spy premise. But boy is this hard to watch.
There is a veneer of spy thriller here. A very thin one. And the comedy element is so much thinner I was literally surprised to see in the synopsis, after watching the first two episodes, the word "comedy."
Ninety plus percent of this movie is just palpably weird melodrama between the two a la their cover as a couple. I can't tell if it supposed to be funny or darkly funny or just sink or swim acclimation. The strangers having to pretend to be a couple and warming to each other has been done to death and frequently done well. But it isn't here.
John just can't seem to wrap his head around the idea that the marriage is a pretense between strangers. He is weirdly and continually trying to make it real. He's like the pitiful theater kid that gets to play Romeo opposite a high school idol and Absolutely. Can. Not. Get over it. And just be cool and professional. And that's a generous comparison vs the coworker or boss who behaves the same with less reason for pretense.
Given the premise, virtually everything he does is invasive, presumptive, wildly inappropriate and overtly unreciprocated but he just keeps going. Simply cannot make an appropriate, normal, socialized-human comment.
His obsessiveness isn't supposed to taken as creepy according to the writing. He is a deep guy who loves his mother. They try to make his bizarreness seem normal by hitting the bell over and over that Jane is afraid of connection/commitment and whatever. But GD who wouldn't recoil from this guy's clueless attentions. I haven't felt so viscerally creeped out by someone that is supposed to be the good guy protagonist since Passengers.
Jane is also weird. But given the writing it's really hard to read her weirdness as anything other than self-preservation in light of being stuck with an unstable stalker.
And from this context 90+ percent of the dialogue and situations are generated. They just keep insisting harder and harder there is chemistry between them (quite apart from insisting they are semi-competent agents) while making it harder and harder to buy apart from Stockholm syndrome or similar explanations.
The Suicide Squad (2021)
Wait! This one is actually..GOOD!!??
In 2016 there was an almost entirely forgettable movie called "Suicide Squad."
Then "The Suicide Squad" came out in 2021 demanding that it be viewed as a reboot rather than a sequel yet weirdly with 2 of the same actors playing the same characters. On top of this weirdness the trailer (at least for someone not intimately familiar with the periphery of DC comics) made it look like they were unimaginatively replacing a Will Smith sharp shooter character with an Idris Elba sharpshooter character and a cannibalistic humanoid crocodile with a cannibalistic humanoid shark which even further seemed to telegraph a film more feckless than the first.
And then (whether because of the perceptions these marketing decision induced or covid or both or whatever) it was a box office bomb which further convinced me that it would be even more forgettable than its predecessor.
So I only finally watched in 2023 and to my delight found out it was a comic book superhero gem of a movie!
If "Guardians of the Galaxy" and "Deadpool" are 10/10s for there respective sub-sub-genres then the first 2/3s of this movie is the "Deadpool" of "Guardians of the Galaxy" with the majority of every scene, frame and line being hilarious or carnage or both while having a good dose heart that doesn't only adds without getting in the way or weighing the movie down.
The last 1/3 retains a lot of its humor while getting predictably more serious but also more dark and tragic with a fair rendition "Captain America: The Winter Soldier"'s play of what patriotism truly means.
My only critique would be that the dark and tragic go a little bit too far and therefore required a transition that would hard to make smooth enough to keep the movie from feeling a little disjointed.
But this also makes the movie unexpectedly impactful and work better as a one-off and if you ignore the throw away post-credit scene it is a perfect stand-alone movie.
So pretend box office smash "Suicide Squad" never existed and watch "The Suicide Squad" the next time you need an R rated super hero comedy that holds together. It's on Netflix Now!
Bad Therapy (2020)
Based on a book?
With the title "Bad Therapy" as premise you could throw a stick and hit a writer that could make a passible story and with this cast of actors throw another stick and hit a director and make at least a coherent film with some good moments.
But this film supposedly has an entire true story book behind it for structure. Maybe the complete mess that this film is explains why the only evidence of this book anywhere on the internet is the film's claim to be based on it.
The more interesting story here would be the meta of how this film came to be. How do decent actors get involved in a film based on a book that was never allowed to see the light of day? Did they read a script that made sense? Did the script, direction etc. Keep changing throughout the film?
Where the actors sometimes give good performances it's as if they read scripts but got entirely different directing notes and only had one take to get the scene right. One comes in playing the comedy straight man to the other's unhinged Lifetime character, so the scene doesn't function for any type of genre.
So if you want a film that is like 6 different bad films with the same actor spliced together like a really unfunny, undramatic mad lib then this is for you.
Blue Eye Samurai (2023)
Nothing in 2023 and beyond deserves a season 2 more than this, the rare gem that keeps me subscribed to to Netflix.
Always good, more often great and frequently masterful Blue Eye Samurai sets itself apart from Netflix fare, anime in general and even at times from itself as it uniquely executes each episode.
Everything about this is just so evidently well done that it either shines unhindered or so exemplary that it makes my reevaluate what I think I like.
The dialogue, my lord. Today's productions are so cliche and wrote that one begins to anticipate at least the shape of most every sentence that is about to be said. It is so ubiquitous that I have lost awareness that I am even doing it. That is until something like this comes along and I realize I have zero idea of what is about to be said, or think I do and then am completely wrong. All the while being so original and artful that it is a cognitive and auditory delight.
Of course the voice acting, much vaunted just as it should be, enhances the dialogue even more. Nearly every character is a stand out on their own, from Masi Oka to Goerge Takai to Kenneth Branagh and including characters that I didn't ever think I could see take seriously such as Brenda Song and Randall Park, the former being entitled yet eminently grounded and sympathetic and the latter being the most perfect sycophant.
In the first of my two prejudices, the voice pitch and drawn features of the main protagonist Mizu, by Maya Erskine, initially struck me as severe and unpleasant. But it quickly becomes obvious that it is appropriate and essential that they be so, making it all the more gripping and meaningful when they deviate.
The voice acting and dialogue are so well tuned that relationships and interaction between characters feel authentic and natural in a way most shows miss. New companions go degree by degree from formality and awkwardness when strangers to genuine warmth and devotion over time, mirroring my own experience and orientation toward the characters. Interactions between rivals are duals of intellect, as though there are real individuals trying to divine each other rather than just actors saying lines.
The fight sequences are equally clever. They feel fresh with sophisticated action choreography and cinematography that outshines most big screen martial action entrees. Sometimes quite gory as one might expect but often measured and never repetitive or generic.
In my second prejudice, I don't know what you would call this animation style, but I know, or at least thought a I knew, that I don't like it. But where I have eschewed other anime just for having this art style, subtle differences here that I couldn't even point to, beautifully captivate and pull me along, like realizing water color can actually be amazing the first time you see a master's work.
I don't think Netflix has had something this original and well-produced in years. For my personal taste, which might not match all, the last time I was so happily surprised by the thorough quality of a Netflix property was the first season of The Witcher. If this doesn't get a second season I will be starting the petition of no one beats me to it.
Invasion (2021)
Season 2: 8 down to 6. Turning in to Walking Dead if that is your thing.
You know. How zombies don't really matter and just show up ad hoc whenever the intrahuman melodrama and conflict needs interrupted to extend the melodrama and conflict eternally.
The first season was pretty good and one of the things that encouraged me to stick with ATV+. Unoriginal but well produced and the different character points of view gave a lot of dynamics without sacrificing the plot and enhancing it when they intersect well.
But they didn't even make it through the first season without the human's setting on each other for contrived reasons. BTW armed military convoys are taken out effortlessly by impromptu redneck mad maxers and gun happy hippy activists.
So I guess it's no surprise that season 2 doubles down on both of these.
"Trevante struggles with returning to day-to-day life." Sorry, what now? Tevante, the first contact soldier? Day-to-day life? In the middle of an alien invasion that is desperate and planet-wide?
I liked the character building in season 1 for which so many said it was slow. But now it just all adds up to tepid human melodrama and weak contrived human conflict.
Apart from this there were also several just pointlessly stupid moments even in season 1. Like used google to just find the most inaccurate way to represent something to best draw the ire of professionals watching the show. Radial bifurcation for child nose bleed anyone?
And now in season 2, the new characters introduced are immediately tedious. One has all the gravitas of Bruce Campbell. The others are 2 dimensional caricatures.
Also, who convinced the streamers it was a good idea to go back to dolling out episodes weekly after we had barely moved past that?
Better to have a coherent, well planned middling show than one reduced to pure garbage from creators rashly pulling out all the stops as they fail to divine what viewers want based on their weekly data.
So let's see if they can get me to drop my opinion more by whatever desperate thing they do next week based on this week's reception.
Foundation (2021)
A year later: Maybe 6 as standard generic SciFi. 3 for being the amazing thing everyone is hyping it up to be. <0 as an adaptation.
TLDR This show has a lot going for. Acting, world building, production value. Ironically, for a series based on successful books and created by people who can presumably grasp meaning from written words, what is not only weak but a complete detriment to the show, is/are the plot(s).
Getting this out of the way. Who cares about gender/race changes (especially for a robot. Good grief!) If they hadn't made changes it would have been effectively an entirely male main cast. If that seems less objectionable to you than making making 3 characters female...
On the flip side all those who are snowed over by Lee Pace and CGI and pretending all the criticism comes from the bigot camp (or even the biblio-faithful) are equally off-base.
I get it. It is exciting to have new epic sci-fi. But just being novel doesn't make it good. This is NOT the next The Expanse or Raised by Wolves just because it isn't Star Trek or Star Wars.
Before reading the books
If I hadn't seen trailers, heard rave reviews and ran across this on the SciFi channel I would have thought it was a solid 6 then become gradually disenchanted and frustrated. But I did see trailers and it had a ton of hype so I didn't go in with low expectations that would have let the show's Awe Factor overwhelm me for a few episodes. But I hadn't read the books and think I went in with pretty neutral expectations. So I think un-agenda-ed un-bombed un-inflated range is 4 +/- 2.
But 4 episodes in i felt I had to stop and read the books because nothing made sense.
In the first episode for example the uber genius Hari Seldon explains in detail with examples what psychohistory is: a calculated prediction of the future history of society and populations, NOT individuals, that may be mitigated or augmented but is inexorable. Apparently the whole series will revolve around this. And then in the very same episode and all future episodes the plot runs directly counter to every stated aspect of this theory. It is applied to individuals. It is anything but inexorable and needs constant meddling, remarkable feats - again from individuals - and the purest luck.
Uber genius Hari Seldon also believes "violence is the last refuge of the incompetent" scoffing at it but then he and all of his ilk seem not only to be helpless without violence but to go out of their way to favor it as a course of action. Sure this could be character failing that is examined, but it isn't because it is just a thing the writers say and then forget and it means nothing afterwards because there is no continuity.
It's like starting a show talking about how gravity works and then in all future episodes having people floating around with no explanation or acknowledgement.
Hmm. Is Apple+ applying the goldfish memory from Ted Lasso to its writers team?
If this kind of internal incoherence doesn't bother you, do be aware that it gets more egregious and ubiquitous. This is just pointing out it is ignoring its stated concepts from go.
Compounding this continual inconsistency was boatload of stuff that felt like weak, obligatory (but definitely not necessary) character background forced in or for economy of actors reasons.
E. G. Gaal has disavowed the religion on her backwater planet. They were going to kill her because she could "done read good" after all. But then when she gets to a secular world where she is safe and valued for her intellect the ONE thing she desperately wants to do is go see a priest of this religion.
And she visits him to...I mean she isn't regretful or conflicted or seeking. She ask a question that any follower, present or former, should have known the answer for long before they had occasion to ask it. Apparently she just makes the journey there for him to yell at her.
And this priest. Initially portrayed as the irrelevant priest of the single church of the religion in this planet-wide city a couple episodes later is a person of great power and following, whom even the secular emperor tolerates and consults.
After reading the books.
After watching the first season and reading the books I find the books have some of their own problems with plot and characters. But what has made them loved is the grand sweeping concepts and time line. The Seldon Plan is the guiding plot device and every era and crisis hinges on it.
First of all it clearly should have been an anthology. The book is. Anthologies are doing fairly well now. Apple+ doesn't have one (as far as I know). But for economy of actors or lack of faith in the source material or audience or maybe wanting to inflate 3 compact books into 8 seasons, they didn't.
Secondly, this story has no Seldon, no Seldon plan and no Foundation, no Salvor etc. If you like the show and are wound up over the nerds trashing on it so much, the show couldn't have been more perfectly designed to raise the ire of those who liked the books.
The show's Seldon isn't a doomed visionary of the past but ever present, vain, cowardly demigod. This would make The Plan completely irrelevant but The Plan as the show has it was never relevant to begin with. And the Foundation's members are effectively bumpkins instead of the last vestige of the competent physical scientists gathered from across the galaxy. Salvor isn't a careful thinker and observer who solves problems with subtle cleverness but a discount thug. (but not one without her own tedious angst)
This also shed's light in why everything about Gaal felt so forced. She is an invented character. For that matter so is the show's Hari Seldon and Cleon but for them it just manifests as unstable erraticism that I initially took for intentional plot elements rather than poor writing.
No reason invented characters could not have been good and rational. Just that these aren't and part of the explanation as to why is that they are unrelated to the book depending on writers who clearly never even understood the book as a starting point, so the odds that they can write a good character when they can't read or comprehend well...
Apart from having no themes from the book and the themes that it does have running directly counter to the spirit of the book the show also just makes self-defeating choices with the plot elements.
In one case, a reveal/plot arc that comes late in the story is shoved into the beginning like a square peg through a round hole, deleting a great element of the future story. It could have been modified to another invented but interesting parallel plot but they just turn it into a slog that introduces the necessity of utterly inane time-killing filler for many episodes. I think this is significantly related to why many who haven't read the book comment on the show's slowness.
In yet another bizarre choice they rip off elements from Arthur C. Clarke's stories like they are confused even about whose material the are adapting.
I am not sure who this is for. For anyone who likes well-done stories this one is so gutted without any suitable replacement that it has very little substance and less that is coherent. This goes more so for people who like epic science fiction and more so yet again for people who like Asimov's Foundation series.
Maybe those who are real thirsty for novelty and Lee Pace?
Slow Horses (2022)
Slow being the operative word. As in the main character. (spoilers are only for the first episode but emblematic of the rest))
Picked this up for Gary Oldman who still delivers. I think that was the intent with the promotion because you couldn't make the main character interesting even with a highly edited trailer. Seriously, go look up the one where it's all the actors talking about the show. As the clearly the main character who gets by far the most screen time, he is the fourth talk and tied for least time in the promo with the third tier characters which is entirely praising Gary Oldman and saying nothing about show. It's like they all know he is untenable but keep pushing through anyway. Just bizarre.
The main protagonist, though you wouldn't know it from the promos, is an incompetent, pissy child with delusions of grandeur who, were he a real life person, would be universally loathed by all who interacted with him instead of anemically hated by one or two as he is in the show. Entirely impossible to get behind. This would be bad enough but then the writers distort the reality of the show to justify his delusions and try to make him believable as a mistreated, under-appreciated yet secretly talented MI5 agent only to further compound their ridiculousness in trying to do so.
What's more is in the reality warping they assume audience members are similarly stupid as the characters they write and won't be able to remember what they saw five minutes ago or what we all know from life in general. Examples to follow.
In the first seen he is running through an airport after an unaware target. If he had ran silently through the ample spaces around everyone he observably would have caught up the target but instead he pushes and runs into everyone he can like he is a 2d video game character who can't access the 3rd dimension while screaming "Move! Move! Move!" This alerts the target who then also begins to run so that the protagonist does not catch up with target as he certainly should have.
This like a spy does, right?
Super loud and obvious.
Yet after showing you this profound idiocy they play it off like he was the victim of another agent's scheming which at best was a necessary but insufficient for the protagonist to fail.
A little while later he shorts an electrical safe box by wrapping a wet cloth around his hand and prying at it. Let's pretend for the moment water could short the lock as shown and further pretend that shorting the lock would open it, but why in God's name would he need to use the water to conduct the current directly into his hand for an electrical burn?
This is like spy tech is built right?
Easily circumvented for the cost of a shock to the hand (provided you are real ignorant and don't know who to accomplish the exact same effect without pointlessly injuring yourself).
But again the show acts like this is a standard practice for getting into such boxes as everyone instantly recognizes precisely how he hurt his hand. This is made even more inane by the creatives because there is nothing visible on his hand so that they are either miming what should be a visible burn like an improv group pretending they see something or similarly pretending there is something in the way he uses his hand that overtly betrays an injury.
Then a right wing group kidnaps someone. The protagonist starts with, "Hey, this guy that we were monitoring was part of a different right wing group. Bet they are connected." Which is like learning the Twins going the World Series and assuming explicitly because of that that the Astros are also going because they are also a baseball team.
This is like spies do right?
Free association and wild conjecture.
But yet again the show warps its universe so that he is crack on.
I would say this is the worst and most absurd British suspense series that I have ever seen, but I did see the Bodyguard on Netflix which is deliberately incoherent whereas Slow Horses is just stupid and lazy.
If you watch it as an absurdist dark comedy it is serviceable, hence 4 stars. But it was billed and reviewed as a Spy Drama as which it completely fails.
Mrs. Davis (2023)
Another show with a great lead and terrible support.
This is really starting to seem like it is Peacock's thing. Pick an underrated but top tier actress, give them the lead, and then pick writers and supporting actors from the bottom of the barrel.
My first time watching anything staring Betty Gilpin I find that she is one of the most dynamic expressive actors I have ever seen. I'll also give some credit to the directing as well for making sure to elicit and capture this.
The world is campy and comedic, nonsensical, over the top, surreal and creepy genera mashup and manages to keep a fair bit of a genuinely intriguing mystery about it.
So the show should have a fair bit going for it.
But the supporting cast. It is such a blatant and consistent upside down mishmash that it seems more like nepotism than incompetence. Good actors playing better written characters receive the smallest amount of time over just a few episodes. Tepid characters show up regularly. And the most intolerable character permeates every episode.
As much of a bright, comedic character as Simone is, Wiley is the exact opposite and sucks the energy out of every scene he is in. I will blame the writers here as well, who are trying to write Wiley as some repugnant neanderthal character for comedy sake but also make him sympathetic among other contradictions, untenable even in a surrealist comedy.
Unlike other parts of the show his over-the-top is rarely funny and almost always massively dated but not in a fun retro way. So you just end up with a ******* ******** who you want to die from go and not even in a satisfying way but offscreen so you can pretend he was never in the show.
So if the casting apart from Simone isn't driving you insane by episode 2 you can pretty much count on the show to get no better or worse as it continues.
Sijipeuseu: The Myth (2021)
Stupid, Stupid. Too Stupid to keep watching. Spoilers are just two early examples of stupidity that don't really spoil the plot.
I normally reserve reviewing a series till I have completed it and reject negative criticism that might be recast by unseen future episodes.
But in this show there is just so much completely unnecessary and truly pointless stupidity in the first episode that the show is destined to be unredeemable.
Firstly, a woman travels by a novel mechanism. She arrives clothed and with a 30 kg suitcase but, for reasons, no shoes!?
Luckily for her the dozens of people hunting her are to an individual so stupid that they can't look under or on top of things and to an individual so slow that, even with detectors and drone support, they can't easily catch a person hobbling over treacherous ground, on already cut feet, and lugging a 30 kg suitcase that she will neither sacrifice or stash.
So maybe in future episodes we have a plausible plot reason why she insists on holding onto the suitcase but there is no way possible to explain the sub-primate level stupidity and sub sloth-level of physical competence of her pursuers.
But *IF* they go to the trouble of providing an explanation of how her point of origin and method of travel allow for 30 kg industrial strength suitcases and personal effects to go inside but no shoes it will necessarily be an incredibly stupid one.
In the second scene, a supposed genius needs to save the plane he is on that is hit by shrapnel. As the plane decompresses supposed genius bats hanging oxygen masks out of the way to get to his suitcase. As a result supposed genius is knocked momentarily unconscious but then because plot armor wakes up to go fix all the problems in the cockpit still without oxygen.
Good thing, because now now the copilot (who we previously saw conscious after pilot was knocked out) has also passed out from also being too stupid to use his oxygen mask. Good thing supposed genius shows up to save the copilot by doing the thing he was too stupid to do for himself but didn't need because he doesn't need oxygen like everyone else.
Then ensues an absurdly contrived scene of fixing the the plane skipping over so much stupidity.
I will skip to the dialogue explicitly stating - contrary to the way we all know phones and airplanes to work - that phones will automatically go out of airplane mode when a plane is crashing
And why do we get this bizarrely selected piece of reality-denying plot you might ask?
It is all just so supposed genius can absurdly receive a phone call from his board members and have a conversation which would be inane and unnecessary even if he was in a properly operating taxi instead of actively trying to fix a plummeting plane.
If, just in the opening act, there is this level of wholly unnecessary, unhumorous stupidity about trivial everyday things which we all understand just to set up more unnecessary, unhumorous stupidity, then this show has no chance of handling any of the rest of the show with even a below average level of competence.
Poker Face (2023)
At four episodes in a fun gimmick and fantastic lead making really great "television" with episode 5 showing signs for concern.
Edit: 3 stars down. Well at the season finally, you can either just forgive the show for its nonsense or you can't. There has been something just cosmically stupid in every episode since 5.
In episode 10 there is a bridal party genital ring whose behavior could only be explained by literal magic in this non-supernatural show, and she idiotically seeks out and trusts the man who murdered her friend. And she knows he is aware of this, thus completely eliminating any pretense for her, or a person with an IQ above 80, to ever believe he would ever help her. Da doi.
Ah well. Most shows demonstrate the stupid incompetency, puerile obliviousness and stunted creative imaginations of their writers at some point. Just this one started out with better promise.
Content to watch out season one but at this point so annoyed and exasperated with how the writers make Charlie's character inhumanly stupid periodically that I am also content to never see her again. No season 2 for me.
Original:
A gleeful return to the classic gifted protagonist on the run encountering just way too many murders for non-law enforcement, plus a couple of beneficial tweaks.
Firstly, just Natasha Lyonne. I think she may be getting type-cast to a shtick but man is it a good shtick. She easily carries the lead, a more empathetic and adrift version of Russian Doll Lyonne, as Charlie who is in turns smart, naive, blunt, subtle, sarcastic, sincere, apathetic or invested but it always works and she is always believably Charlie.
Secondly, novel, asynchronous pacing that ups the story telling cachet for this type of murder mystery. This takes a couple of forms with differing POVs but consistently places the murder relatively early on yet allows the viewer to spend most of the episode getting to know the victim. This also flips the script from most murder mysteries in that we know all the particulars of the murders from go and the ride is seeing how the protagonist figures them out.
Secondly, the dénouement varies in form. Law enforcement is never there eating out of her hand and sometimes she has to move on in a frantic rush but follows up somehow so that there is always resolution save the pilot that kicks everything off.
Thirdly, lots of great guest stars from A-listers to actors who have shown their chops in other series and are always nice to see. Again, with the asynchronous format they always get their due even if they are just in one episode.
My real concern is episode 5, the most recent one at the time of this writing. Good general outline but with some uncharacteristically preposterous details:
- an octogenarian paraplegic, not noted to be otherwise physically remarkable, essentially doing a score of pull ups in a rope stunt that would look bad on a stage play,
- a deathtrap that the show indicates to be meant for Charlie but could only have targeted her specifically via happenstance or crystal ball, and
- Charlie being offered a way out of her ongoing predicament on a silver platter but thoughtlessly shrugging it off for no discernible reason.
If they focus on whatever is common writers, directer etc. In the first 4 and veer away from the which-of-these-is-not-like-the-others elements of episode 5 it should continue to be a great show.
The Witcher: Blood Origin (2022)
Unfortunate given all its potential, but not as bad as I was led to believe.
What really kills this (apart from fandom outrage over season 2 and the general direction of the show being so bad that it lost Cavill as its anchor) is that the story was just a dog's lunch. In fact, it really had just about everything else going for it except the story.
It has the same high production value and action choreography as the Witcher seasons. The actors performances were surprisingly exemplar, even for the neglected characters, elevating many lines and scenes that shouldn't have worked and making so many passible ones really good. This alone leaves me forever sad that I will never see more of their characters, especially Brown's and Mills's. The directing and dialogue don't suck. Its other flaws would have been in the acceptable range for a good show.
But despite all it has going or it, it still feels a lot like a CW show. This is somewhat explained by learning it has the same people behind it as the actual CW show, "The Originals", and the somehow even more infamous Netflix, "Iron Fist". These were the people someone gave the creative writing class assignment of "Write a prequel for the Witcher in four episodes" when the direction of the beloved series was already under heavy criticism.
So we get just a lot of really campy story telling elements that in no way belong in epic fantasies that we are meant to take seriously. This begins by using Jaskier to set up the flashback intro, clearly relying on this link and another intended ear worm to help carry the story. Just omitting this flashback, its other bookend and the punctuated narration throughout, which keeps reminding you that it happened, would have made the story a lot more palatable.
This setup is made all the more cringy by Jaskier, with the audience's self-awareness, pointing out how trite the setup is, only to be won over by learning it will include the origin of the first Witcher and the Conjunction of the Spheres. Both of these key selling points, however, will turn out to be both boring and nonsensical. Like if you asked how Egyptians learned to make the Pyramids and the answer was that they always knew how to make the Pyramids from stone and earth and how to make stone and earth from wood.
Mixed in throughout are just really amateur decisions on basic story telling choices. The apropros-of-nothing disembodied big bad, sounds like a kind second grade teacher and also a lot like the benevolent narrator. A ruler sends like a round 3/4 of a dozen soldiers to conquer new lands making it seem like awkward stage play. Also, just lots of bizarre misses and omissions for already established elements as though the writers hadn't watched the previous installments, let alone read the books.
It's not as though creatives can't come up with a good original story. It happens kinda regularly. But this one is clearly part of the epidemic passing through Netflix, Disney+ Prime etc. Wherein their nominal creatives confuse the success brought to them by source material or previous creatives, with their own genius and then thinking they can to better. Just killing one promising intellectual property after another.
Legion (2017)
First season flies along smoothly. The second and third season are the airplane crashing and then blowing up in HD slow motion.
First season is good to great, about to misfits, David and Syd, who super-powerdly, contend with and overcome internal and external struggles that are very well and interestingly drawn and, while sometimes bizarre, are always rooted in the in-world reality of the show.
After season on though it becomes increasingly becomes two shows each of which degenerates. One advances plot, and is what one might generally recognize as "a show." The second one showcases the kookiness of the performers and is only weakly tethered to or completely unmoored from the former and what one might recognize as a "variety show."
This could have been tolerable but the former is increasingly infected with the kookiness of the latter and makes it a mainstay of the real world plot for no greater benefit than to just be weird.
Take for example a character Admiral Fukiyama introduced in season 2.
- A cyborgized human created so that his computer brain can't be read by telepathic mutants. Sure, OK.
- Wears a basket on his head. OK. Maybe this houses the parts of him that are computer so that instead of wearing a basket on his head the basket is in fact his head.
- Needs to speak through the voice boxes of his android assistants. Um...not sure why he couldn't just have his own voice box to speak through.
- The androids are gendered to appear female. OK.
- And given mustaches. What now?
- And speak with the speaking voice traveling from one to another. Come on.
- And then speak, when at their places in chamber with Fukiyama, with their heads behind some hanging magnifying lenses for no reason whatsoever than to make their heads look weird. Please get over self-pleased pseudo-avant-garde-ness.
Nothing so absurd and so pointless existed in the first season but this we get in the first episode of the second season.
The characters suffer similarly. In the fist season David is at war within himself. This explains all the self-defeating inconsistent things he does. It explains why even though he is all powerful why he is so continually ineffectual. It is even foreshadowed well before it is explained so that you are never just asked to accept pure bizarreness as typical normality with not explanation because nothing is weird. This war within David is resolved at the end of the first season.
Unfortunately, it was apparently also the glue that the lazy writers needed to hold the show together with any kind of cohesion. In the subsequent seasons David is self-defeating and inconsistent and stymied by any and darn near everything for what now is no reason at all. Sure, he is still troubled, and we are sometimes meant to take this for explanation, but none of these troubles actually go any distance to explain his inconsistencies and continual feckless helplessness.
What's worse, this continues spread like a fungus to all the other characters even though they are not contenting with anything that accounts for their behavior even as weakly as David's troubles do for him.
Syd has something David is doing shown to her. "See that's a reason to turn on David." It's not. It wouldn't be for an average person. It certainly wouldn't be for Syd who loves him, and certainly not when she has already seen him do comparable things without them changing the way she feels. But she is just like, "Sure, OK." and turns on David.
And as a consequence of this David does absolutely unforgivable and unredeemable, but, for however much the show likes to pretend otherwise, is still very much meant to be the protagonist.
The big bad, who was totally happy to stamp out humanity earlier, without any transformative change, now persuades an alternate version of himself, to change course...to avoid destroying humanity.
On and on like this for all the characters
And the plot is just ad hoc, out of nowhere explanations for everything the it tries to do. Need something to thwart your protagonists attempts to change the past? Time Demons! Need the Time Demons to suddenly be irrelevant so your protagonists can change the past? Turns out one of your party could control the time demons all along.
Only reasons to keep watching are to hate watch it AND because your are OCD about finishing shows AND because you deeply appreciate Aubrey Plaza AND Jemaine Clement's zaniness. Any of these things by themselves is not enough.
A lot of people are saying the show was disappointing because it got cut short and didn't get the ending it wanted/should have had. However, there are just some things, and for this show it turns out many things, you can't undo once done even if you try, and this show definitely did not try. From the first episode of season 2 there was no coming back and it just put more nails in its coffin in every episode from there on out.
There is a possibility that this is all very meta. The show talks a lot about delusional thinking spreading and taking over. So maybe the writers are just simulating an unraveling show. But then they took a pretty good show and just made it *#@% so why bother?
Persona 5: The Animation (2018)
Worth the ride, if you can avoid being turned off by the setup and actually access the full story.
This is a solid series despite setting itself up to fail in a couple of ways.
The first is the flash-back intro. It begins with a character who, without context, appears as a cocky punk you couldn't care less about who gets caught doing crimes. Then, as he is questioned, you get obnoxiously vague exposition that finally leads to the flashback where the actual story is.
I personally benched the show for months because of this intro. I only finally finished the first episode because it is my personal rule to give any show one full episode to prove itself. This being my introduction to the game, which I later played, it also made for a very slow, weak un-engaging start to the game. Clearly, the developers were banking on the built up good will from previous iterations.
Flashbacks/forwards are only ever a cheap, detrimental story device or essential enhancing element with no middle ground. It's obvious which category this falls into and very unfortunate that it continues to punctuate the series.
The second way the anime shoots itself in the foot is content packaging/episode release. The packaged 26 episode anime doesn't actually finish the story. Without the final episodes, which you must know about and then hunt down separately, the putative ending from the first 26 is just a pointless slap in the face.
I never quite know who anime adaptations of games are for.
For those who played the game they are usually judged against game negatively as an update of the olde timey complaint wherein the book was better than the movie instead of judging each according to the genre of which it is actually a part.
If one is taking this apples/oranges approach wouldn't the anime, unsurprisingly and necessarily, be lesser since you are passively watching a truncated version of the game with no new story elements?
Yet, conversely, for anyone who hasn't played the game such adaptations are usually unwatchable exactly because they 1. Are set up such that they depend on you already being familiar with the game and 2. Are too much like a game, making for awkward and clumsy anime.
This adaptation also occasionally trips up from being too much like a game, e.g. Distracting bits of dead-end plot that only exist because they are translations of game elements, the main protagonist being unnaturally mute and un-reactive because that is the de facto for first-person RPGs, etc. But these are comparatively minor and might go unnoticed by many viewers.
So I am marking this pretty high because it actually stands up pretty well on its own with serious and relevant plot elements, flushed out characters, good world building and intriguing neo-noir type mystery.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (2022)
Good concept, well paced, supernaturally stupid characters decisions
If I had reviewed this earlier on it would have been more stars.
Trope of stupid writers to make their characters implausibly stupid as a braindead way to get the plot to go where they want to under the flimsy pretense that they are being so stupid for emotional reasons.
The more complete version of the adrenal response is flight fight or freeze. David, the super speed cyber punk is predominately freeze. At first he is just it is because he is a stupidly naive kid in over his head.
Then as he becomes experience it is because it is because he is operating at a dogmatic 8 bit level, putatively because of grief and guilt. This results continually in deaths and near misses and him hurting his friends but non of this snaps in out of his single-mindedness to take seriously how he is making himself an every increasing hazard.
The flip side of this is that it is implausible that he would be part of a crew let alone a crew leader who people trust. But that's what the show insists you believe
At the same time his girlfriend Lucy is not available because she is chasing down threats to herself while telling him nothing about them for no reason whatsoever.
The result is most of the plot, especially after episode 9 or 10 is primarily them being victims of their subhuman stupidity and inability to communicate at that level of an 8-year old.
Good premise, world building and even plot all victim to inane character "development" from single note writers making this show increasingly unwatchable.
Ingress: The Animation (2018)
Not bad if you like to watch someone else walk through a game tutorial
The first episode was so slick compared to most anime with the exception of a borderline awful english dub for the first character to speak. I don't binge much especially on initial episodes but this made me play the next episode, despite some just plain lazy writing. Batman vs Superman level of of just say any words that any human capable of language would say in your situation completely resolving it instead of something inhumanly stupid or literal nonsense to keep it from resolving.
But holy cow it tanked. It went from slick chase (though unfortunately stemming from lazy writing) one minute to literal video game tutorial the next. Disembodied lady talks to him on the phone, tells him to pick a side in some eternal struggle (it doesn't matter which side) by pressing one of two buttons on his regular smartphone and then using to shoot invisible portals that power the man pursuing them. Swipe, swipe, swipe on the phone, pew pew pew go the portals. More of this.
The summaries act like the identity of this lady is an intriguing mystery but she is clearly just the standard video game tutorial lady.
Obviously this probably stems from it's mobile game origin but
A. This is in anime, duh.
B. If this is supposed to showcase the game it appears to be an AR equivalent of pong.
C. The tutorial of an AR equivalent of pong being interjected out of nowhere into the anime I was enjoying has about the brick wall effect on the plot of changing channels and pretending that whatever was on the other channel was part of the same show.
But this it was slick so I held out for the third episode but this was more video game nonsense and lazy writing nonsense.
Lazy writing profiled below if you need examples for reference
A la The Matrix, Idiot gets a messages from his computer and phone to go save Girl which literally ends with "Only you can help her."
Despite this when he reaches the girl, and encounters Agent who is also trying to rescue the girl and asks him, "who told you to come here?" Idiot responds with "She did" referring to the unconscious girl in bed. Clearly computer entity just said "only can save her" one minute of screen time ago. I mean it's so bizarre I have to assume Idiot is trying to hide how he actually found Girl and lying to Agent. But no, Idiot really just is that stupid. Later when he is with the Girl and gets more messages he has to realize finally that they aren't coming from Girl. Apparently really fixated on his first natural assumption that computer entity is the unconscious girl in the bed speaking about herself in the third person.
More of this each time Idiot and Girl encounter Agent.
Agent: Why did you abduct this woman? Are you an agent?
Girl: (says nothing about not being kidnapped)
Idiot: Agent?
Long pause
Conveniently attacked by gunman
You would think that there is enough information to realize if Agent asking Idiot why he kidnapped Girl that Agent is probably not trying to kidnap Girl. And then they get shot at by people probably indicating that they at least are facing the same enemy as they watch Agent take out all the baddies creating all the space for them all to clarify in two sentences what should be obvious already. Idiot and Girl instead run from Agent.
To be clear Idiot is not actually written to be an abnormally stupid character. The writers just can't find a better way than temporarily lobotomizing their characters to keep up the dubious tension of Idiot and Agent continually failing to realize that they have the same objective.
This kind of inept writing being overlooked to the point it is pervasive in American shows and movies. Sad to see in Japanese shows even given that they are Netflix projects based on a mobile game.