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Monster (2022)
From a 9 to a 5
My initial rating based on episode 1 was a 9; but now that I've seen them all my opinion has changed significantly.
If I had to rate the show itself, at least my by IMDb show standards, it would be somewhere between a 7 and 8. The only good reason to watch this is to see Richard Jenkins' performance as Dahmer's father, because it's some incredible acting.
The show itself is so... confused. It doesn't seem to know what it wants to do. On one hand it's trying to appeal to true crime fans that want to watch and hear about the most lurid and disgusting stuff imaginable. It wants to be a show about the philosophical implications of a person like Dahmer even existing. It wants to talk about the psychological conditions that bring about people like him. And it wants to do some social commentary about the police, racial issues.
As you can imagine, it does none of this, because it doesn't have a focus. So what you've got is the first half that just feels like a personal story of Dahmer's, and the second which is like some boring, cliched drama about the families and the fallout of what's happened.
As other reviews were asking, what is the purpose of this story? Was it to cover Dahmer? That's been done before, and it's not like it appeals to such a huge audience. Was it to explore philosophical questions of good and evil or maybe talk about policing issues in some places? Probably way better cases you could work with if that's your intent.
The reason I'm giving it a 5 rather than a 7 is because the moral messages this show conveys aren't just twisted, they're also hypocritical. It celebrates Dahmer's death at the hand of some lunatic as if that's some great deed. It tries to say that it's a bad thing that some stupid comic featuring Dahmer wasn't banned, even as this show VERY GRATUITOUSLY depicts the killing of his real victims. Like, what?... It's pretending to be this respectful quasi-documentary that's imparting valuable lessons when it's anything but. It's damning what a hubristic view these creators have of themselves.
Should you watch this? Not really. Any scenes worth your time will probably be on Youtube, and the whole package is not worth the 10h investment. There's nothing to learn here and nothing to gain.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022)
You can't even hate this.
This show feels nothing like LotR, neither the book trilogy, nor Jackson's adaptation. If anything, this show more closely resembles all those epic fantasy copycats that started coming out in the 80s which were LotR fanfic in all but name with only a few elements changed around and renamed. Had you told me that what I was watching was Amazon's Wheel of Time rather than Lord of the Rings, I wouldn't have been surprised - the tone of this show is much closer to that and other poor, uninteresting boomer series like it.
Anyway, this isn't very good, however, the blame is not evenly distributed. The writing is, BY FAR, the worst part about it. Not only is the script weak in how little it accomplishes given the runtime and how long it takes to set stuff up, but the scene-to-scene dialogue is excruciating. The lines meaningless drivel most of the time - they're stupid, borderline incoherent. Not to mention that this sounds like it was written by a person that has no idea what the kind of old-sounding English language should be like, so it comes across as unnatural, similar to when you watch a movie about the military written by someone that has no idea how soldiers talk to one another either in private or formal settings.
Many of the things the characters said made me have to pause and go back to make sure I hadn't misheard. There's also some incredibly awkward use of language, like an en elvish king at one point saying: "... washing away the last remnants of our enemy like a spring rain over the.bones of a spoiled carcass." I don't know what it is about this line that crystallizes to me just how little these writers understand either elves or just writing in general. In what formal setting would a leader start talking about carcasses? And this is not just any king, but an elven king of old, a race that's known for their songs, their poetry, their love of beauty - do you seriously he'd use such a crude example filled with grim imagery to illustrate his point? That would be a fine line for a dwarf, maybe, but not for an elf. But the writers lack the sensibility to see how this would be a problem. This isn't even about being a fan of LotR, it's about having a certain level of artistry and common sense. If you can't imagine a president or a minister saying something, there's a very strong chance a king would never say that either, especially not an elf.
I will concede that the show looks beautiful at times, but in a fake, plastic sort of way. You can tell it's the product of CGI artists and not a talented photographer finding the right place for a breathtaking shot, and in that sense it feels incredibly soulless. Another problem is that a lot of these beautiful shots feel unearned. If a character braves a dank mine and emerges on the other end to glimpse a heavenly valley, that makes for a satisfying scene. But here the grandiose scenery seems to be used without any rhyme or reason and isn't meant to further the storytelling, I think the point is to wow the viewer. But ultimately all you're being offered is a glorified desktop background with a couple of actors in greenscreen talking in front of it. Hardly the type of stuff to get your heart pumping.
Most disappointing of all might be the score, for which I have no explanation. Bear McReary is a very talented artist. Whether it's Battlestar Galactica, God of War, Black Sails, or even smaller series like Da Vinci's Demons, he always delivers. Here, the music is just... so bad. If you told me it came out of some early 2000s RPG and was made by a teenager without real musical training I would've believed you. I cannot fathom what happened between him and the showrunners. Granted, I wouldn't have thought of Bear McReary's style as a great fit for LotR, but still... How can it be this generic and off? Just how much time did Amazon give the man to work on it? Because given their history, if I have to lay blame on either party, there's no way I'm going to assume it's Bear that screwed up rather than Amazon. Disastrous outcome.
Ultimately, this show is a huge wasted opportunity. I think everyone that loved the movies and books was dreaming of the day the Silmarillion would get an adaptation. And nobody could've even hoped it would come from the most powerful company and wealthiest man in the world. And what did we end up with? Some subpar show that barely even feels related to the source material, based on the appendices, written by a group of people that quite frankly shouldn't even qualify as professionals in their field. I'd be amazed if these guys can write good YA novels, let alone fantasy epics. Given the results, it feels like a lot of the people that worked on this were: a) totally unqualified b) a very bad fit for this IP, or C) soured on the project long before it aired. You can't be handed over what's almost infinite money and come up with something this insultingly mediocre and inauthentic. It just shouldn't be possible. Some of the outfits these characters wear look more like they were ordered off of Amazon for a cosplay. That they don't fit Jackson's LotR is acceptable; but that they feel like they're made of plastic and wouldn't be worn by any normal human being in real life is not. These showrunners seem to think that grittiness doesn't in any way connect to authenticity, and that the way you make some gripping and realistic is by slapping lairs of makeup made to look like grime and dirt on actors' faces. That's simply not the case, and any look at the behind the scenes of LotR or any quality, longlasting movie would've taught you this simple lesson.
Do I recommend this? No, I don't. It's just not worth your time, and if it ever does become good, social media will let you know. I think it might appeal to younger teenagers that have no vested interest in the LotR movies, but that's about it. No adult would find these characters believable or engaging, and there's nowhere near enough action where you can just watch this for the spectacle and turn your brain off. So far, it doesn't even feel like the show has a plot, it's just a series of barely connected vignettes.
A billion dollars on this. Wow.
House of the Dragon (2022)
Well, it's not getting better.
I first reviewed this when episode one came out and, well, wasn't too impressed by it. I thought that perhaps the second episode would do a better job, but it only further emphasized the huge problems this show has.
The first one is that these characters aren't particularly interesting at the storytelling is advancing at a breakneck pace. To put it into perspective, we could more or less say a year of storytelling took place in a single season of GoT, whereas here the expectation seems to be that the period from episode to episode can vary everywhere from months to years. This brings a severe disconnect to the viewer, and I think it's going to have big issues when the characters people love now (God, I don't know what for) will be killed off and replaced.
A big problem for me personally are the look and feel of the show, as well as the worldbuilding. GoT is not set in some vague place, it's been established. When D&D originally set out to make that show based on GRRM's writing, everybody involved knew it was not-England. To be sure GoT spiced it up sometimes with eastern-inspired armors and other similar things, but it always tried to stay at least quasi-historical. HotD has completely thrown this out the window. What we see here are vast, totally surreal and unrealistic landscapes, combined with fantasy interiors that not only make no sense, but which in no way resemble GoT. Again, we have seen these places before, so why couldn't there have been some effort put into consistency? HotD goes for the rule-of-cool in a show where it doesn't fit and where it's completely at odds with the soap-ish tone they're going for.
Lastly, the writing is excruciating. I'm not even talking a failure in the narrative or huge plot holes, but scene-to-scene character dialogue.
Better Call Saul (2015)
Pathetic in the end.
I think everyone was reluctant going into BCS from the start. How exactly do you make not only a prequel, but one that's supposed to tie in with another story which has, let's be honest, been told fully? There may have been some stuff left unknown by the BrBa finale, but it's LotR appendix tier stuff. We got the whole story.
But then I think everyone was surprised by how good BCS turned out to be. Sure, a lot of the BrBa viewers didn't like it, but some did, and many of those that did ended up liking it more. It had a a different, slower pacing, less cartoony villains, and there was a surprising amount of depth to Saul Goodman that nobody really expected. Probably because the character they ultimately came up with (James McGill) has almost nothing in common with Saul and he's what won over the audience.
For as long as the show did its own thing it was amazing, no doubt one of the best things on TV. All the newly-introduced characters from Kim, to Nacho, Chuck, Howard were excellent.
But then came the sad reality that this is just a prequel spin-off rather than its own thing, and that they couldn't just let things progress in the same way. So rather than the lawyer dramedy that it was for years, we get a super dark show that's half about the Cartel, all filled with characters we either know or can very easily predict the fates of.
I think Gus, Mike, and all these guys were fine for what they were in BrBa. The tale of Walter White is a shounen for manchildren, and that's fine, not every show needs to be Sopranos or Mad Men. You can do away with the high drama and just have an empowering male fantasy in which a high school teacher defeats the cartel. That was the magic of BrBa. However, you can't just take those characters and drop them into BCS, lol. Not only did Gus and the others not fit the show AT ALL, but we knew exactly where they ended up in the end, and all they did was take up an insane amount of runtime even though the audience that may have been interested in a story like that probably quit the show already when it first came out. I seriously doubt the cartel enthusiasts that watched BrBa for the murders and explosions sat through three seasons of BCS - in fact, we know we didn't going by the crazy drop-off in viewership and the type of reviews you can find from this show's early days.
This final season of BCS was as contrived as it was pathetic. They wrote themselves into a box with nowhere to go and had no idea how to wrap it all up in a satisfying way. Can you blame the writers? Well, I don't know. Admittedly it's probably difficult to find a satisfying way to railroad a character in a certain direction so it doesn't destroy continuity with another related show. But on the other hand, it was Vince himself that came up with BCS, they're his characters, and they always knew where it was going from EP1, so the lack of careful plotting on their part is ridiculous.
Ultimately, I still like the first three seasons of this show a lot. Prior to this, I actually rewatched them two or three times. I doubt I'll do it again after this finale, though, since they've successfully made me dislike the characters in a way that I don't think I can shrug off. But the conclusion is so terrible that I just... I can't in good faith recommend it to anyone. You just know you're being set up for disappointment, no differently than Dexter or Game of Thrones.
I'm sad that things turned out like this, I really am. I loved early BCS. I loved Bob in the role of both Saul and Jimmy. But it is what it is.
Prey (2022)
Less than what I was expecting, but still good.
I was pleasantly surprised by the fast-pace of the movie and the sheer amount of action. Really feels like I haven't seen a nice action movie like this that doesn't attempt cheesy drama for 70% of its runtime in awhile.
On the other hand, it fell below my expectations. What I look forward to in a predator movie are the traps the severely underpowered heroes are going to use to face up against them. The way victory is achieved here is a bit much for my taste. In general, the predator acts a bit too stupid. Of course, there's nothing to say individual predators can't be stupid, and in a way I'm glad there's some individualization to each predator and that they're not all the same, but I think a basic level of intelligence should be desirable. If the main character figures out how the predator works, then the predator should also figure out her tricks if she uses them more than once.
Overall, though, I'm still happy with it. When you take into account that this is a made-for-streaming Hulu movie it far surpasses expectations in that regard, and apart from the cheap CGI it's beautifully shot and very pretty to look at.
Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022)
What is wrong with Disney?
Everybody in the world knows exactly who Obi-Wan and Darth Vader are and the dynamic between them. So what do they do for the premiere of this show? They spend the length of an entire movie trying to explain things that, again, anyone that's even remotely interested in this show are well aware of.
Then instead of focusing on Obi-Wan and Anakin they add in all these other characters. Leia is a smug little kid that's annoying every second that she's on screen. The inquisitor chasing after Obi-Wan seems to be motivated to rise in rank, but we barely get any of her backstory in the two episodes despite her being the one that actually needs character building for this show to work.
In terms of technical production, it's the same sort of crap you can expect from Disney shows. Boring shots with lazy lighting, cheap sets and special effects, awful jokes peppered throughout the script, and some of the MOST BORING sound effects and scoring you've ever seen that in no way sounds like Star Wars. Just generic intense action music that you might as well hear in a Fast and Furious movie or something.
It's actually amazing that even now, even after all these screw-ups, after almost running this franchise into the ground, they can't rise to the occasion with this final big thing they have that absolutely needs to be a winner. You spend years wooing McGregor and Christensen to get them back, and for what? To give the reins to some unaccomplished hacks that haven't made anything worthwhile two or three decades into their careers? Just look at the director and the writers of this show. This is really the BEST you've got? This is the creme de la creme? HBO was beyond this even 30 years ago, but all Disney can muster is to make plastic-looking shows that feel like they're part of a fan project.
I don't know how the people making this don't feel embarrassed. I feel bad for all the actors, especially for McGregor, because he has such a great career and this is so beneath him.
The Matrix Resurrections (2021)
Hilarious.
There are moments in this movie where the acting is so bad that it.has a quality strangely reminiscent of The Room. This is mostly on Keanu Reeves who, well, can't act at all and.has an extremely limited.range that.was pushed in this movie past the point that it can handle.
The best parts of this movie are comedic, intended or otherwise. Not nearly enough to make it a so-bad-its-good as the.filmmaking is competent, just really uninteresting. The action is extremely dated by today's standards (just look at a show like Gangs of London if you want action that blows you away) and the visuals aren't unique or even reminiscent of the first movie, you might as well be watching some MARVEL movie or any mainstream blockbuster.
But I guess the worst part is that this movie feels somewhere between totally unnecessary and uninteresting and like an inside joke on the part of Wachowski.
But do I think it ruined the Matrix or something? Not really. It's hard to watch this movie and really think of it as being connected to the original trilogy.
Succession: Chiantishire (2021)
The writing is simultaneously great and awful
Great, because most scenes either manage to carry enough emotional resonance to pull off what they want or because they're hilarious.
But big picture, the show has absolutely fallen apart. When it comes to some characters like Shiv and Logan, I feel I'm dealing with caricatures rather than the people I knew from S1.
Logan honestly barely feels like a character at all, probably because he's on the screen way less and the few times he is on screen it's to be intimidating or incredibly mean. That's not to say he wasn't both of those things before, but he played those moments differently and there seemed to be some empathy there (just small scenes like Marcia handing him his cane before Kendall tried to take the whole company were humanizing in ways that the whole health arc this season is just not.)
As for Shiv, oh god, what is even this character now? In S1 we had Shiv trying to choose between her political leanings and her family. The bad side won out. But in S2 when she ultimately had to choose between the family and Tom, she sided with Tom and it seemed like his pain got through to her. The character we have now has nothing going for her. There's really BARELY a character to speak of, she's just a snarky rich girl that always tries to get on top and fails. That's it. The scene with the mother this episode was nice, sure, but that scene would have been just as good even in a vacuum. Sarah Snook is an excellent actress and she is by no means the problem here, it's 100% the script.
All in all, while this season has some cool moments like the ones we got this episode, it's overall disappointing.
It's not like I'm going to stop watching, but I definitely won't ever have the excitement for S4 that I had going into S3.
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: 2020: A Year In Review (2021)
We really are reaching the finish line here.
It's been pretty bad these last few seasons too with only the occasional gem thrown in there. Everyone is just so old and it feels like after 14 seasons we deserve to get one last, big, completely insane season. I think most of them know there isn't a future outside of this show, and I get that, but at the same time they're dragging it on now. I don't want this to become another South Park situation where it feels like both creators and viewers feel obligated to continue out of tradition.
This episode felt really boring. I kept waiting for the punchline and it seemed really obvious but it wasn't very funny. I'm not a fan of these flashback-type episodes in general, they always feel forced and unfunny, it doesn't suit the sitcom format.
Succession: What It Takes (2021)
Seriously?
The highlight of this episode is Shiv selling her soul? As if she hadn't already done this, you know, at the end of S1?
I'm legitimately baffled by what I'm watching here. It's like I've got special secret access to S1 and S2 while the writers are going into this completely blind. WE HAVE BEEN THROUGH ALL OF THIS BEFORE. For what purpose do we need yet another repeat of Shiv discarding her values to get closer to the top? Where is her growth as a character through all of this?
Right now, Tom is the only one that still retains anything resembling an arc, and perhaps Roman and to a lesser extent Connor.
And the scenes taken individually are still good. They might not be the best the show has ever put out, but I'm always entertained. However, those scenes add up into an episode and ultimately fall into a season. I suppose there is a chance they'll blow us all away with the finale, but right now I'm not seeing it.
The Wheel of Time (2021)
Soulless, stupidly conceived and poorly acted, with even worse writing, but above all pure cringe.
I will say in their defense that they've certainly put a lot of money into this, though it's hard to see where that money went considering an episode is nearly double the cost of a Game of Thrones episode from the first season, yet the difference in quality is so stark that you feel you're watching some low-budget show or, maybe more appropriately, a high budget LARP.
There's no positives to speak of, except maybe the scenery: it's incredibly dull, generic, and ultra-serious. The whole mood from the start is closer to what you'd expect in a movie about Nazis than a fantasy story. I'm not saying it doesn't have a right to take itself seriously at some point, but when you're starting what's going to be an entire series with that tone I have to question what you're thinking. Everyone here just looks pained and uncomfortable to even be alive, so why would I care about them fighting some big evil? At least the first episode could have taken its time to set up an emotional attachment to one character, but no, we just rush headlong.
As for the characters, ZzzzZzzzZzzz...
I can't tell if it's exclusively the bad writing that makes everything I'm watching unbearable or if it also has to do with the atrocious acting. Because when Rosamund Pike is on screen, I begin to relax and feel like I'm watching an actual performance by an actor... sorta, at least. SHE'S TRYING, OK? When any of the other actors are talking and interacting, it's worse than NPCs in a bad RPG.
Worldbuilding doesn't appear to be among their priorities either. We're told at the start that some guy destroyed the world and now he might be reborn and that's it. There's no sense of location at all - I can't tell if the characters are on a big content, a small island, or how far they are from civilization. Is this small town in the middle of nowhere we're in at the start, or an important place that's tucked away from the rest of the world? The nature shots are welcome and all, but that can't replace grounding the viewer in a tangible way. I'd rather get forced exposition than not know. You can't just flash (admittedly gorgeous) scenery and expect me to be invested. If the expectation here is that most viewers have read the books, then that's just wrong.
The kind of fantasy that Wheel of Time wants to sell people on is so dated even by fantasy standards (like having an evil just called "The Dark") that to pull this off you need to be extremely crafty. You'll need a high degree of empathy that allows you to put yourself in the position of the audience and think about how they'll react to cringe-inducing material being said with a straight face and what circumstances would make it passable at the very least. Because you're either going to abandon saying things like those out loud to spare us, or you'll start with a light enough tone where it's just shrugged off. But instead of going for Xena here, Wheel of Time is going straight for Schindler's List from the first scene. The cringe is off the charts, like truly painful stuff that made me feel secondhand embarrassment
Then we come to the sets, outfits, and historical accuracy. Everything looks like a set, we can start with that. There's no feeling that this is a world that's been lived-in or come together organically. As for the outfits, I don't even know what to say. It's hard to distinguish what the differences in social class exist between these characters because like in most bad shows of this type, nobody seems to put much thought into how they dress. Is this a peasant? A rich merchant's daughter? I don't know, and there's nothing to indicate what might be the case. Rosamund Pike from the very introduction puts on a garment that has hard leather around the neck and shoulders. Like... is anyone even putting any thought into this? Has anyone tried wearing that for a long period of time or considered how it would feel? No - it has leather and studs and it looks cool and that's what matters. Then there's smaller stuff that deals with the faux-historical setting: at one point a character goes back to his home and two family members are there with faces blackened by dirt and soot. Why? Because they're supposed to be poor. And, clearly, poor people are ugly and dirty. They live near a river with water available to them but they would never wash their faces because they're poor, and everybody knows the poor are stupid and unclean. Only smart, rich people know to use water to wash their faces, duh. This is the level of writing and production we're at. You just know what kind of people are behind this show.
The only good time I had was laughing hysterically when Rosamund Pike was waving around her arms trying to do "magic" with a baffled look on her face like she had just woken up and had no idea where she was. I feel bad for her, and that's the only emotion this show stirred in me. She's a serious actress and did not deserve this. It's not her fault, maybe it's not even the fault of the other actors for giving such bad performances. This might just be a case where everyone involved with the production are such talented hacks that it's impossible for the best actor to do well. Every other element that was up to production would certainly indicate that.
Lastly, this has zero charm. There are a lot of "bad" shows out of there, but they have a certain something that makes them entertaining. Even if they aren't engaging as stories, at the very least the actors seem to be having a good time and the story isn't taking itself so seriously where every bad line feels like a needle pushed deep into my brain.
The Rolling Stones' review for the show opens with a fitting line that sums it all up: "When you play the game to be the next Game of Thrones, you win, or you waste a whole lot of money."
The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020)
Zzzzzzzzz...
This has to be one of the most boring shows I've attempted to go through. The characters are incredibly annoying and uninteresting, the story is dry and predictable, the plotting is dreadfully slow, and the two child actors and their accents are simply infuriating. Not to mention that so much of it is built on flashbacks that seem to last forever. It's not scary, it's not mysterious, it's not cute, and it's not an engaging drama. It'd be average even as a 2h movie, but as an entire series it's horrendous and you should never watch it.
Midnight Mass (2021)
How?
How is it possible to spend five episodes crafting an engaging and heartfelt story with some good horror elements to destroy it all senselessly at the end?
All logic gets thrown out the window because instead of following the story to its natural conclusion, it's squeezed down a path that can only be arrived at by dispensing with believability and all the things that made the show so engrossing.
Just as an example: we literally see in the numerous episodes that John can be awake during the day and is completely fine with being in a sunlit room so long as he's not standing in direct sunlight. But do they try to save the burning buildings? Do they attempt to improvise a temporary shelter where the shadows might let them live until the next day? Not everyone can make it, but surely a few of them can. At the very least we should've seen them turning one another in an attempt to save themselves. But does that happen? No, they just give up, lol. It's quite literally the "guess I'll die" meme.
It's just unsatisfactory. And it's not that way only because the plot is contrived, because I guess that happens sometimes even in movies that have satisfying conclusions. But the ending doesn't feel warranted. You're supposed to take from this that what Father John had done was wrong and that the world is "saved," but that just feels wrong and unjustified. If the point of the story was to undermine religious zealotry, then we should've seen reason and compassion triumph over it. Instead, we just get a bunch of idiots chimping out. That doesn't mean anything. The only message this sends is that, ultimately, you should be selfish and never try to share anything with anyone because people are too stupid to be trusted. The moment Father John wasn't there to guide them, they destroyed everything he built and wiped what was perhaps the chance of salvation for thousands if not millions of people. If you put aside the over-emphasized religious elements and aesthetic, the core message of this show is anti-democratic, anti-humanistic and anti-Enlightenment. It's actually shocking how reactionary it is.
Somebody said that this wanted so much to be a Stephen King story that it needed a bad ending to fit the mold. I guess that's a funny way to look at it. But still, I'm pretty sure King wrote his novels in a haze of drugs during the course of a few days, whereas Flanagan has apparently been dreaming of making this for years. The first five episodes definitely seem like the work of a person that's thoroughly thought through everything that happens. But the last two episodes? Nah. I don't know if episode 5 was just as far as he had things planned and just improvised on the last two, or if he actually had a perfect ending in mind and the people at Netflix insisted they needed more action and bigger stuff happening to greenlight the project. Because the way it goes from thoughtful and engaging (master class storytelling, really) to disgusting schlock is beyond me.
I'd also like to add that Kate Seigel can't act and needs to take a step back. A big step back. Every scene she's in, she makes worse. In the scenes with Zach Gilford he's so vastly beyond her in terms of talent that I just can't take it. It's a SHOCKINGLY atrocious performance in a show that otherwise has some of the best acting I've ever seen on display. Samantha Sloyan, Zach Gilford, Annarah Cymone, and, of course, Hamish Linklater give it their all, and it shows. But Kate Seigel just isn't up to the task. I don't want to see her again.
Even though this show has a godforsaken abysmal ending, I still think the first five episodes are so amazing that they're basically must-see for anyone.
The Wheel of Time (2021)
Soulless, stupidly conceived and poorly acted, with even worse writing, but above all pure cringe.
I will say in their defense that they've certainly put a lot of money into this, though it's hard to see where that money went considering an episode is nearly double the cost of a Game of Thrones episode from the first season, yet the difference in quality is so stark that you feel you're watching some low-budget show or, maybe more appropriately, a high budget LARP.
There's no positives to speak of, except maybe the scenery: it's incredibly dull, generic, and ultra-serious. The whole mood from the start is closer to what you'd expect in a movie about Nazis than a fantasy story. I'm not saying it doesn't have a right to take itself seriously at some point, but when you're starting what's going to be an entire series with that tone I have to question what you're thinking. Everyone here just looks pained and uncomfortable to even be alive, so why would I care about them fighting some big evil? At least the first episode could have taken its time to set up an emotional attachment to one character, but no, we just rush headlong.
As for the characters, ZzzzZzzzZzzz...
I can't tell if it's exclusively the bad writing that makes everything I'm watching unbearable or if it also has to do with the atrocious acting. Because when Rosamund Pike is on screen, I begin to relax and feel like I'm watching an actual performance by an actor... sorta, at least. SHE'S TRYING, OK? When any of the other actors are talking and interacting, it's worse than NPCs in a bad RPG.
Worldbuilding doesn't appear to be among their priorities either. We're told at the start that some guy destroyed the world and now he might be reborn and that's it. There's no sense of location at all - I can't tell if the characters are on a big content, a small island, or how far they are from civilization. Is this small town in the middle of nowhere we're in at the start, or an important place that's tucked away from the rest of the world? The nature shots are welcome and all, but that can't replace grounding the viewer in a tangible way. I'd rather get forced exposition than not know. You can't just flash (admittedly gorgeous) scenery and expect me to be invested. If the expectation here is that most viewers have read the books, then that's just wrong.
The kind of fantasy that Wheel of Time wants to sell people on is so dated even by fantasy standards (like having an evil just called "The Dark") that to pull this off you need to be extremely crafty. You'll need a high degree of empathy that allows you to put yourself in the position of the audience and think about how they'll react to cringe-inducing material being said with a straight face and what circumstances would make it passable at the very least. Because you're either going to abandon saying things like those out loud to spare us, or you'll start with a light enough tone where it's just shrugged off. But instead of going for Xena here, Wheel of Time is going straight for Schindler's List from the first scene. The cringe is off the charts, like truly painful stuff that made me feel secondhand embarrassment
Then we come to the sets, outfits, and historical accuracy. Everything looks like a set, we can start with that. There's no feeling that this is a world that's been lived-in or come together organically. As for the outfits, I don't even know what to say. It's hard to distinguish what the differences in social class exist between these characters because like in most bad shows of this type, nobody seems to put much thought into how they dress. Is this a peasant? A rich merchant's daughter? I don't know, and there's nothing to indicate what might be the case. Rosamund Pike from the very introduction puts on a garment that has hard leather around the neck and shoulders. Like... is anyone even putting any thought into this? Has anyone tried wearing that for a long period of time or considered how it would feel? No - it has leather and studs and it looks cool and that's what matters. Then there's smaller stuff that deals with the faux-historical setting: at one point a character goes back to his home and two family members are there with faces blackened by dirt and soot. Why? Because they're supposed to be poor. And, clearly, poor people are ugly and dirty. They live near a river with water available to them but they would never wash their faces because they're poor, and everybody knows the poor are stupid and unclean. Only smart, rich people know to use water to wash their faces, duh. This is the level of writing and production we're at. You just know what kind of people are behind this show.
The only good time I had was laughing hysterically when Rosamund Pike was waving around her arms trying to do "magic" with a baffled look on her face like she had just woken up and had no idea where she was. I feel bad for her, and that's the only emotion this show stirred in me. She's a serious actress and did not deserve this. It's not her fault, maybe it's not even the fault of the other actors for giving such bad performances. This might just be a case where everyone involved with the production are such talented hacks that it's impossible for the best actor to do well. Every other element that was up to production would certainly indicate that.
Lastly, this has zero charm. There are a lot of "bad" shows out of there, but they have a certain something that makes them entertaining. Even if they aren't engaging as stories, at the very least the actors seem to be having a good time and the story isn't taking itself so seriously where every bad line feels like a needle pushed deep into my brain.
The Rolling Stones' review for the show opens with a fitting line that sums it all up: "When you play the game to be the next Game of Thrones, you win, or you waste a whole lot of money."
Succession: Retired Janitors of Idaho (2021)
I don't have any faith that they know where they're going anymore.
This was an improvement over the fourth episode, but just barely. Yet again, we get a story that's more or less filler that can be skipped over apart from maybe 2-3 minutes of total screentime, and hollow characters are behaving as if S2 never happened.
Like... Kendall learned a lesson last season, surely? Why is he acting like a fool all over again? Why did we revert back to pilot Kendall that's a mess with no ideas, no vision, and no backbone? Why is Shiv, who directly went against Logan's back for Tom's sake in the S2 finale after she realized she loved him, now acting like the old Shiv?
The writing in the first few episodes was better and I think I was also so excited to be getting the show back that I probably wrote off possible problems.
But now I just have to wonder, what's going on? What are these scripts? Where are we going? Where is the character development? Beyond Connor who now wants stuff for himself, it's like S2 never happened for these characters, despite that being the peak of the show by far. Did no one map this out? We even skipped a year due to the pandemic!
And the comedy is lacking, too, so they're not making up for the poor characterization and plotting in any way. I'll have a chuckle here and there, but that's about it, far worse than the peak of both comedy and drama we got in S2. Kendall coming in all screwed up in S1 after the family shrink session has to be one of the best scenes of all time - nothing like that here.
I'm just sad and disappointed. I hope I'm wrong and this is a case where the showrunners wrote some fantastic final episodes and just had others try to fill in the missing spaces with some subpar ones.
But right now, my confidence is at an all-time low. I'm starting to question whether my investment in Waystar-Royco is still profitable or whether this ship is sinking without a captain at the helm.
Succession: Lion in the Meadow (2021)
Pretty bad when contrasted to the rest.
The first three episodes of this season spoiled us so much that this seems rotten by comparison.
The humor is mostly lacking, the Tom & Greg Nero conversation was harem anime tier fan service, the situation that leads to the climax of the episode is insanely contrived, people behave out of character, and some of it feels like filler.
Unexpected and disappointing step down in terms of the writing quality that came before.
The North Water (2021)
Well worth watching.
The show starts off slowly and the generic premise set up does not reflect the direction or ultimate destination. The performances are great, with Colin Farrell starring in what has to be one of his finest roles in a long time and a memorable one at that. The landscapes are hauntingly beautiful and go along perfectly with Tim Hecker's compositions.
While The Terror starts out incredibly and then fizzles out into a bore with only a few redeeming moments of brilliance here and there, The North Water starts out rather uninspired and slow but really pulls itself together by the end and delivers.
Dune (2021)
It was alright.
It felt small in scope and despite the runtime and the thin plot not much is done with the worldbuilding. Most of the cast performs well but I don't think they're a right fit for the characters. Stellan Skarsgard and Javier Bardem, however, weren't even performing well. The visual feast that was promised is absent too - not that it looks bad per se, but it's by no means uniquely stimulating or so beautiful that you'd want a frame of every shot. The score is one of the worst I've heard in recent memory and whenever the drowsy ambient isn't playing you get these laughably bad tribal chants that take one back to the abomination that was Justice League. It's actually incredible that they left them in there.
All in all, pretty meh. It feels consumerist and has no heart compared to other Villeneuve movies like Enemy and Bladerunner.
Foundation: Upon Awakening (2021)
What is happening?
As my initial review for this series shows, I went in enthusiastically and thoroughly enjoyed the first two episodes.
I don't know what's going on. These last three episodes have been straight-up trash, but this was the worst of the bunch. We literally went back to irrelevant events that preceded what was established in the first episode... for what? Just total filler.
Then we have the conflict in the "present" and it's just abysmal. All the characters are so stupid. When I heard that enemy leader say, "You should've listened to your warden," I think I threw up a little in my mouth. If you want to make a character be smart and competent, then you have to write them that way. You can't make them somewhat stupid and then make everyone else hilariously dumb.
I'm disappointed and I get the feeling it's just going to get worse.
Mad Men: Nixon vs. Kennedy (2007)
Poor Mr. Campbell
It is incredible what they've managed to do with Campbell in this first season. There's just enough there for you to empathize with him and understand the struggle he's going through without ever rooting for the blackmailing rat.
What's interesting to me about the conflict of this episode is the nature of Pete and the facade he puts up despite threatening to unmask Don. Just like Donald Draper, the Peter Campbell he exhibits to the world is a complete phony. We have enough moments with Pete to know that even with the damage his parents have done, he can be sensitive, heartfelt, and deep down he longs for a simple life full of love and understanding. And above all, to be taken seriously as a human being. Unfortunately, he sacrifices everything to try and get ahead, but instead of prioritizing his own wants, he burns up his dignity for the sake of his mask instead to please Trudy and his parents. Near the end as Don approaches Cooper's office you can tell that he's close to crying and begging to just get the damn job. This is such an easy transaction in his mind that he can't understand why Don is choosing to blow himself up, because Pete wouldn't pull the trigger unless absolutely forced to. For the first time he understands that Don isn't just messing with him but has a lot of antipathy. We can't tell from how things went down whether Pete would have gone to Cooper if simply denied and left alone, but my instincts tell me that it's unlikely. Don emasculates him to such a degree that by the time he's standing in front of Cooper there's not much else to do but go ahead and reveal the information. But I don't think he would have killed Don out of spite.
What's interesting is that pulling the trigger takes Don by surprise. What did he think Pete was going to do when he pushed him so hard? What makes Don's character so compelling is that almost all of his understanding of humanity comes from within. He's able to channel his feelings to come up with ads that get to other people, but he's incapable of reading the feelings of others. All it would've taken to win Pete over is a bit of sentimentality and paternal energy, but Don won't budge. Despite the fact that he's left his life behind and remade himself, he has zero empathy, and absolutely no desire to understand that Pete might also be a kid that's trying to remake himself without giving up his name entirely. We see time and time again that Pete is hardworking as well as creative, but Don is too set in his ways, too convinced to his core that this is just some rich boy that's wasting everybody's time to see the real person underneath and give him a helping hand.
The biggest victim in all of this is Rachel. In this episode she finally understands just how little Don cares about her and how little he's able to care for anybody. From the point of view of the audience, it's shocking that the would go to a woman that quite explicitly loves her father and expect that she would abandon not only him, but also be okay with Don abandoning his own daughter, son, and wife. What could he possibly imagine Rachel would think about him in that moment? He's so used to his vain persona and smooth-talking women that he thinks the mere proposition of going away with him would sweep her off her feet, even though we just saw this fail when he offered Midge the trip to Paris. And where would this departure leave Rachel's family and his own?
Donald Draper is a bad person and this is the first episode where his unpleasantness is shoved right in your face. He's a coward, he's spiteful, resentful, and such an egomaniac that he's incapable of thinking past himself and his needs. His first thought when the real Draper dies is to take his nametag. This is who he is.
What all this has to do with the title is up for interpretation. Are we to think that Don is Kennedy in this situation? I'm not sure that works, because in this case Don is the self-made man like Nixon, not Pete, something he voices appreciation for in episodes past. But JFK was underestimated and seen as a rich boy the same way that Pete Campbell was. Everyone thought he would lose (as this episode emphasis over and over) and yet he won. Pete lost, though one would wonder if JFK would've won over Nixon if the final judge were an old Japanophile libertarian that doesn't want to destabilize his firm by cutting one of his best earners. That Pete couldn't predict Cooper keeping Don along anyway given how much money he brought in really speaks to his childlike innocence. Maybe the message is that Pete, too, could have been a winner if he were just given a chance. But that never happens.
There is honestly so much to talk and think about when it comes to this episode. It's one of the greats.
The Shape of Water (2017)
Good LORD
Not only is the plot and characterization abysmal, but they even fail at their one job of making the monster likable. Every character is an insulting stereotype and the movie concludes pretty much the way you'd expect if you just read the summary. It would've been more tolerable at half the length, but when this abomination clocks at two hours and finally ends it's a mercy.
I'm not saying every movie needs to be a poignant drama, but this isn't even suitable for kids. It's that stupid.
Ford v Ferrari (2019)
Pitiful script.
I'll admit, Bale and Damon are total miscasts for their roles, but the overall production was excellent enough to carry the movie. Unfortunately, the script is unforgivably bad. It's not so much a movie about characters as it is about stereotypes: about Italians, about southerners from the US, people that work in business - what have you. Christian Bale doesn't seem to have gotten into his character at all and Matt Damon doesn't even really look like he's acting, just putting on an accent. This is one of those movies that will lose a lot of its luster over time once audiences view it away from the hype and any familiarity with its main stars.
The Many Saints of Newark (2021)
Ironically, the opposite problem of what we thought.
Everyone worried that if there were ever a prequel it would be all about Tony and it would come off as cheap with nonstop nods to the series. And yet Tony and his relationship to his family is by far the best thing in this movie, and it's sorely missed whenever we switch to anything else.
Nivola is good and likable as Dickie but I just couldn't get myself to care, probably because there just isn't enough time to build up his character and add any depth. Every scene feels disconnected from the last like we're going from this happened, then this happened, and then this happened.
You have the tale of Dickie Moltisanti. You have Tony and his family and relationships. And then you have the riots and racial tensions and the conflicts they led to. Any one of these could have been a mini series or its own show, but they try to squeeze it all into a two hour movie. What results is something that barely feels like a movie.
The White Lotus (2021)
In the end, just annoying.
Unlike some of the reviewers here I'm fortunately detached enough that I experienced no visceral reaction of disgust in my viewing, only an intense desire to have the thing end after the first few episodes.
The writing was weak and unfunny, its social commentary vapid and tired. Then there's the obnoxious eye-sore of a yellow filter that's slathered over every shot - stuff I've come to expect from trashy Netflix productions, but certainly not HBO.
The only positives to list are the frenetic score, the performance of the cast, and the concept itself, which was interesting enough that I'm willing to give the second season of this anthology another shot when it arrives in the hopes that it aims a little higher and doesn't miss the mark by a mile.
Foundation (2021)
Wow this went from promising to super bad incredibly fast...
My original review for this after the first two episodes (which I've left below, just if anyone is curious to see how optimistically I went into it) was extremely positive.
As the episodes have gone on, I've had a change of heart. Quite frankly, this is condescendingly stupid. I really couldn't care less about it as an adaptation, nor that they genderswapped or raceswapped any particular character.
No, my problem is the acting and the writing. While Lee Pace is a phenomenal actor, he can't carry this alone, he just can't. All these new faces brought in to fill in main roles just don't have what it takes. They'd be fine for some CW teen show, but not for what's supposed to be Apple's answer to Game of Thrones and other big-hitters.
As for the writing... I have no words. The first episode of this show wasn't nearly as as intellectual as some might want it to be, but it wasn't spoonfed to you either - whether that was intentional or simply a result of the fast-paced nature of the script, it stands either way. It was jus entertainment for normal human beings. But what follows the first two episodes is like going from a good movie to its pitiful and only vaguely related TV adaptation. In EP5 there's a whole segment dedicated to what happened to a character before the events of EP1, unimportant filler that we were either told about directly or assumed because of circumstances. Either way, stuff that's entirely pointless. And when it's not infuriating filler it's the most mindnumbing type of drivel you've seen in every other forgettable trashy show: a host of characters so bafflingly stupid and uninteresting that they can't be real, and exist only to prove how smart the people were supposed to like are, except that the latter are also bafflingly stupid and uninteresting. What you're left with is downright insulting to anyone's intelligence, I don't care what their age and interests are.
There isn't an audience stupid enough for the show they're trying to make here. And it's a real shame, because the first two episodes did show some promise, even if it was in a Hollywood-y kinda way, but now it's just garbo like any other cheap sci-fi series.
And while the idea of having Lee Pace play clones of of the same person, having different actors for the "young" and "old" versions doesn't work for me. It's just too jarring. It would've been better if Pace just played all of them and just styled himself differently each time. He's a talented enough actor to pull it off; unfortunately, he might be the only talented person in the whole production.
I won't be watching more.
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Former 8/10 review
The only thing I'd liken the attachment of the name "David S. Goyer" to is that picture of blackened lungs that's printed as a health warning on cigarette packs. To say I went into this with severe reservations would be an understatement. But I've been a fan of Lee Pace for over a decade, so seeing him among the cast gave me some hope, as did the additional presence of Jared Harris and Bear McCreary's score.
I'm happy I gave it a chance, because it turned out to be an incredibly fun ride. As expected, Mr. Pace gives a dazzling and enthralling performance which would be more than enough to warrant a positive review on its own, but it helps that the show is able to stand on its merits.
The acting is solid, the directing has kinetic gravitas, and the CGI has to be some of the best I've seen even counting theatrical releases. In keeping with the Goyer legacy it's the writing that's a bit iffy at times, but thankfully it's negligible in the big picture and doesn't drag down the show.