Reviews

She is just a teenager, when Elvis entered her life - as young as she was, she must have had hopes, fears and dreams. We learn nothing of those or what else is going on inside of her. She remains the empty piece of paper, the unwritten human being, the entire world assumed she must have been... Unforgivable from a woman's perspective.

As other mentioned: the height-difference is off-putting since it's pushing the narrative towards an even bigger difference of power as it might have been in reality, almost scratching the topic of abuse.

I'm sure the real Priscilla had dreams and ambitions and was not the flat and willingless object as she's portraited here.

I love the writing and the actors like everybody else.

But there is no season arc.

Every episode is like the one before: funny, great, wonderful.

And without change or development.

I think 23 years after the start of WEST WING we want more than we wanted back then. We loved FRIENDS for being always the same. Today a show like FRIENDS wouldn't work. WEST WING has the same "problem" if you want to call it a problem - it's its reliability.

Storytelling has changed since then. We want our characters to be able to develop or at least we want to peel them as an onion and discover new sides inside of them. We want to dive deeper.

WEST WING is brilliant and enjoyable on so many levels, but it doesn't let us look deeper into its protagonists. Who won't get challenged, not to their cores, and who won't change at all as a result.

For me this is not satisfiying enough in 2022. At least not in a bingeable way.

I love food and cooking. I love Lip.

But where is the story?

"The bear" can't seem to find its path or its rhythm or its voice.

Kitchenwise this would be a desaster.

So is this show.

It excites you with its energy - yes, chef!, thank you, chef! - but does not deliver in depth and umami. It just burns instead of igniting and moving ahead.

If you take the NOMA-reference for real you'll wait for constant surprise and contrasts and the expecting of the unexpected - which never comes...

In all fairness: I stopped after ep 6. Maybe something happened after that. I doubt it.

So all my 5 stars go to the actors only.

The actors do not convince, the script does not dare to touch new territory, the narrative does not reach beyond common ground. - All in all: wasted opportunity.

The title sequence knocks my socks off every time: so much joie de vivre, self-confidence and sexiness.... Unfortunately, the series itself doesn't find its tone at all.

As a German viewer, I am free of prejudice and - sorry! - free of prior knowledge. I dutifully learn what "Pachinko" teaches me: that the cartoonishly evil Japanese brutally oppressed the Korean people in the early 20th century. Indeed, a bad gap in knowledge in my little universe on the other side of the world.

I hope I'm not stepping on anyone's toes if this is still nothing more than a narrative premise for me. A starting situation that I, as a viewer, hope will develop. At least for the acting characters. But unfortunately, it doesn't. Instead, I'm told the same thing in every episode: cartoonishly evil Japanese subjugate our Korean main characters. Okay, I got it, why doesn't it continue?

It's frustrating, but I know this stuckness in a "narrative intent" from my cultural background: when Nazi characters aren't allowed to awaken to flesh-and-blood human beings, as we would actually need them in order to understand our history, but must remain caricatures of evil - so we don't have to realize how similar some of them are and how human fellow travelers really are. An impertinent insinuation, some of you may think - for many Germans it is now a fact: there is evil in every one of us..... I'm only sending this ahead to explain why the Korean victimhood in "Pachinko" makes me suspicious.

So the series doesn't win me over on that front. Unfortunately, it doesn't win on any other front either: narratively, acting-wise, this series can't keep up at all with all the great narratives that "Pachinko" is lined up with just by rating here on imdb. Narratively really thin, individual actors* are nevertheless outstanding: starting with the 6-year-old Sunja (unfortunately abercounted too early), to her mother, to the pastor Sunja marries.... Great performances. Which nevertheless get lost in bad storytelling.

I would like to shout to the makers of the series that they should not underestimate us as an audience. We understand, even from the other side of the world. Even though we don't know the details of your story, we have experienced similar things. Please don't lecture us - tell us stories of people who fascinate us. Being victimized is not automatically fascinating.

I adore the story itself. But how much better could this story have been if a more experienced and nuanced writer than David Fincher's father would have told it? This movie tries to honor the screenwriters' role in filmmaking and does not include a real screenwriter? ... Well, the shortcomings of "Mank" are proof of its own theme: there is no good movie without a good script. And "Mank" is based on on a very week script in my eyes: unfocused, clumsy, unoriginal. How could a director, obviously attracted by the forces behind the legendary Orson Welles, make the same mistake as the subject of his inquiry? To not include the best sreenwriters (and other behind-the-camera-talents?) To instead just just rely on their own names and their own talents?... In my eyes David Ficher - a legend himself - deconstructed himself by this movie.

... would have loved to see that. But from the start police work is lacking. Instead of solving the riddle of a man who is in 2 places at the same time, police is somehow working around it. Nobody addresses the elefant in the room, asks the right questions... Quitting at ep 03

JETT started out as elegant, funny, intelligent. From episode 5 or 6 it just became cruel, dull and violent. I have no idea what made the shift happen but it caused me to stop watching. I'm still mourning the loss of one of my sweetest guilty pleasures.

Important topic, poorly done. Not a single character (or actor) turns into a real human - everybody remains surface and cliché. Apart from Omar not a single ethopian ever gets a story or even to speak. And apart from Dr. Sammy nobody is to stand in Captain America's way - his own crew is practicly nonexistant storywise. Poor Haley Bennett's purpose is solely to look good in neoprene. And don't get me started on Sir Ben Kingsley... What a waste of talent.

The information delivered through this film was of value to me - very instructive on so many levels. But a newspaper story would have done the same. There is zero advantage of getting it dressed as a movie: no drama, no characters, no story behind behind THE story, no conflicts, no emotions - nothing. And even great actors can't generate anything that isn't there... severe case of: well meant is not well done.

Very generic adaptaion of the bestseller ONE DAY by David Nicholls - cute but shallow. The chinese interpretation doesn't add anything substantial. Alltough local/chinese themes are touched, the essential feel is just wrong: it remains a westerner's love story.