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Reviews
Glass Onion (2022)
Fades when compared to the predecessor
It's difficult to see this as a story on its own.
The first movie was a brilliant black comedy.
This one .... I'd have called it an entertaining slapstick-ish comedy were it not for the first movie and the character that links both movies together.
The movie starts well enough and gets thoroughly entertaining throughout its middle part yet everything gets thrown away just at the end. The end just makes no sense - a throwaway irony given the main character's remark at the stupidity of the surrounding characters.
The story itself is smart enough but fails to come together in the end and instead blurts out a totally Deus Ex Machina, unforeseen and illogical ending for no apparent reason.
Treason (2022)
Cox and Chaplin aren't enough
If I had to summarise this miniseries, I'd call it a an entertainingly missed potential.
It becomes clearly from the onset that the premise is awesome and could easily use an expanded series to treat various details with the care they deserve. Otherwise, the story gets put on so much fast forward that the suspension of disbelief required to enjoy the more palatable plot points can easily be seen as insurmountable to many. For me it worked as a decided to write off weaker writing points to cliches required to bring this closer to today's audience (keeping to close to the likes of "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" would make it a bit tedious).
All in all it's watchable and the plot itself is even surprisingly smart given the lacking implementation. The acting is great (Hinds, Cox and Chaplin carry it with gumption).
What killed it for me in the end was the fast-fire Deux-ex-machina moments thrown in the end (the identity of some double agent thought to have put in motion the plot years before the timeline of the series is served on a platter with no details linked to the reveal - it's just spat out - the idea itself would have been brilliant had it been an expanded subplot of an extended series).
That's Netflix for you ....
Lou (2022)
Wasted potential
There's a lot to be said about movies that bring strong female characters to the front and sometimes rehashing storylines is just the spark that's needed to refresh something from a different perspective.
From this point of view, "Lou" had a decent premise. It's the stereotypical "sleeping dragon", a person with a checkered past that isn't who they seem to be steps up in a situation of crisis. It's a decent B-movie premise backed by decent acting by "The West Wing"'s Allison Janney.
It could have been a decent popcorn flick with a satisfying ending had it not suffered from an attempt to pack some cheap family drama that comes from nowhere and contributes nothing to the action.
Making things worse, the supporting cast isn't up to the task (with a couple of exceptions, among them a small town sheriff that deserved better lines) and the mandatory beating of some jerks who didn't know what they were getting into isn't satisfying mostly because the buildup to that lacks plausibility (basically they start fighting for no reason whatsoever).
In fact, this pretty much sums up - the writers were too eager to patch a plain action movie with some unneeded drama and in the process forgot how to write a simple story for which a degree of plausibility would have been easy to have.
The Terminal List (2022)
A difficult series to review
I found this TV series very difficult to review. A suspenseful TV series that doesn't handle its own discovery well (by either becoming too clichee or too "in your face") will sink into a race to keep viewer interest alive until it all becomes too obvious and then the only entertainment becomes the action.
If you're a fan of the book, there will be disappointment for you. It's not about packing a book in a movie (or short series in this case) but rather because while the source material allows the reader to unpack information, the TV series does not.
This is my main issue with the series. It simply doesn't allow the viewer to think for their own. Every episode is a "monster of the day" story, packed with flashbacks for every piece of evidence, just to slap you in the face in case you dared to forget.
And oh boy, does the series makes it easy for your to forget. Being only mildly entertaining (despite the cool action set pieces), it's never too clear how the writes want to keep your attention: by a meticulous plot or by sheer action?
This division means that the series is neither one nor the other in full. Due to presentation, things that make sense in the book seem over-the-top in the series, the plot is barely believable and its best feature (reality vs PTSD side-effects) is lost after the second episode.
We're left with a decently brooding Chris Pratt and a wide array of forgettable villains, way-too-obvious "twists" in a mix that's just entertaining enough.
The Hunt (2020)
Enjoyable dark comedy
There's little to critique this movie for. It's well cast, acted just good enough to render the characters within the universe they are in. It's funny, predictable, non-stop action and doesn't take itself seriously.
The little there is to critique:
- the message could have been made a little subtle. It starts by being deadpan funny and then it goes between somewhat annoying and still funny. I think it spent a little more on the "redneck conservative" side and not enough on the "woke liberal".
- I found the ending less that satisfying and the "boss fight" too drawn out. The movie is overall incredibly fun but also overtly predictable so there was no need for that fight to take as long as it did.
Don't Look Up (2021)
Funny, sad and difficult to score
I find it really hard to score this film.
There was a time in movie history when one could wrap up a message in a witty story and having it delivered without the fear the message might be missed. With a good story and good acting, the movie would be rewatchable enough so that the message would eventually permeate to the audience.
That time is long gone. Nowadays if you have a message you'd better hammer it hard into the audience otherwise nobody will give it a second thought after a first watch, no matter how good the story/acting/etc. Thank you, Netflix.
"Don't Look Up" makes damn sure to hammer its message. It's a crystal clear message, wrapper in decent humour (could be better, but I liked it for the most part). It's a wild and fun ride, hampered only by one obvious detail:
replace the coment by Covid and it's a straight up documentary of Trump's pandemic handling. Prioritise political gain? Check. Conspiracy theories? Check. A movement of denial? Check.
It does breathe some optimism throughout and the ending feels unnecessarily happy (points of view on this one may vary, I felt the ending like a happy one) but as far as taking a clear look at how the society as a whole deals with a complicated reality, it's spot on.
Silk Road (2021)
I'm not sure what to make of it
I would never watch a Hollywood product under the impression that "based on a true story" would result in any sort of insight into the underlying story. But where facts blend with fiction that run alongside real events, you can find some enjoyment as dramatisation fills in gaps and gets backed up by good acting.
However, "Silk Road" provides absolutely nothing of the sort. To anyone even remotely familiar with the matter of the Dark Web marketplace called "Silk Road", hidden behind the Tor network, the sheer amount of fabrication makes the entire experience cringy at best.
There's too much absurdity and too much departure from what's known about the real people and events depicted to make room for the smallest amount of enjoyment in acting - which is totally unfair to the actors involved because they don't do a bad job. Yet there's no room for their talent to even attempt to make up for the lack of writing and soulless screenplay.
We know Hollywood can't properly grasp anything even remotely related to internet or software, which is exactly why "The Social Networked" worked - it simply took some bullet points and glossed over details with some dramatisation, which made it real-like enough to suspend disbelief and get immersed into characters.
Sadly, "Silk Road" provides nothing of the sort.
X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019)
An unfitting end for the X-Men chapter
How did we come to this? To me the X-Men saga that began with Wolverine fighting his half-brother over Rogue was a groundbreaking moment in comic-inspired movies. It was the first move that employed great actors and that was written to give a reasonable amount of depth to characters.
Sure, Fox never bothered to plan ahead in the way Marvel did with other films but by and large the sequels were decent, even after Marvel swooped in to raise the expectations.
But then we got Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix, two movies oozing with bad writing, childishly predictable plots, bad acting and flat characters.
I wouldn't even call it a money grab, the only way I could make sense of Dark Phoenix is if a Fox manager had simply called for an experiment, to put anything out there and prove that fans will swallow just about anything.
"This is not Jean, Jean is still inside her!" is the amount of depth you can expect from cardboard dialogue that is there just to explain the unfolding action, half-dimensionally as if the audience was completely incapable of understanding the 'subtle complexity'.
I wish I could write off this as a result of being spoiled by the Marvel Universe, but in truth, this movie isn't fit to stand in the same list as the very first X-Men movie.