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drew-seman
Reviews
Masters of the Air (2024)
Narrative free cgi cinematography
Band of Brothers was a show about a group of people coming together and doing a job few could imagine, and telling complex stories of those interpersonal relationships while also telling a clear of the incredible work of all of these people coming together as they moved through their journey from country to country. Many of the men were still alive then, so perhaps the ability to see them as complex humans was different.
Masters of the Air is more like a cgi pantomime. Every episode is the same. There is a five minute intro, someone gets up and tells them the mission, everyone grumbles, you see the beaten up planes, there is 30 minutes of cgi fighting where you can't tell who is who because of the oxygen masks, and then some people don't come back and someone is sad. Battles are completely indistinguishable because it's just a plane in the clouds and there's no narrative around it.
If the goal is to tell story of how pointless and repetitive and miserable the lives of these pilots was, they have done an exceptional job.
But any nuance of characters, broader understanding of the war, etc., is missing. The only conversations are about sadness around death or the mission at hand. Anything that makes them human is just gone. Any narrative iabout the people's stories or relationships to each other is at best one note. Any understanding of the broader war is nonexistent.
Also, it's really hard to understand people and way too darkly lit.
Wish (2023)
Failure of Storytelling & Editing
The message and premise of the movie are solid - people need to follow their dreams always works for Disney, and the idea of someone hoarding those dreams while pretending to care is genuinely a wonderful idea.
Where it really falls apart is the storytelling arc. They do a storybook intro setting up this very positive world led by a caring king, but then after one basic question by a 17 year old in the first act (30 seconds after they finish a duet about dreams), the king totally turns and reveals himself (how has he kept a kingdom together for decades if one question did this?).
It was just way too quick of a turn for the first few minutes of world building to make sense instead of making you say "huh?" - either from minute one they need to let you in one the idea something was wrong OR they needed to build him up as at first being "careful" for the first hour (and give her the assistant job) and then have it slowly fall apart when he won't grant some really important wish. But instead they did neither.
Ultimately It seems like they didn't know what the story should be (probably because they were so focused on Disney references) so it ended up being hacked together in not great ways. A lot of the people involved in frozen were involved in this one. It suffered from similar problems with Hans giving aww shucks smiles in act one before becoming a bad guy. (This is because, as a lot of people know, Elsa was originally written as closer to the Villian and they already had material I guess... so were stuck with a nonsequitur heal turn in the fjnal act).
Frozen was able to make up for those flaws with incredible songs sung by broadways stars and an initial five minutes of world/story building that make you care deeply for all the leads. But this movie didn't have those things, again because they seemed more interested in making Disney references (storybook opening, multiplane camera look) than doing that initial world building in an emotionally impactful way.
Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2018)
First Unwatchable Ninja Turtles
This is the first mutation of the TMNY that my 4 yr old doesn't like. And she's right.
The animation is incredibly distracting to watch, but the writing/acting is the really problem. Every line and every character is trying to be the funny one. Mike, Don, Leo, and splinter are all trying to be the dumb funny one. So there is no one for them to play off of. The result is dialogue that sounds like an endless series of one liners rather than characters that actually talk to each other. The character variety that creates interpersonal dynamics is what makes the show in all previous iterations... or as my 4 yr old put it "why is everyone always talking so loud?"
The Americans: START (2018)
Thank you for this finale
This is my favorite finale of any series I've ever watched.
Going into this finale, I was thinking about what they're going to do in the way of so many other shows season and series finales: it will be filled with final twists and culminate with finding out who dies at the end.
The Americans didn't go the easy route of other shows. Instead, it showed incredible respect for the characters and the complex relationships they had spent years developing with a slow, thoughtful finale. To its final moment, it wasn't a show about Cold War spying, it was about the toll of Cold War spying on families. The finale embraced this as well or better than any episode in the series.
I usually leave finales feeling either satisfied or annoyed. I left this one thinking about what it would be like to be Elizabeth or Philip or Paige or Henry or Stan. It's a much powerful feeling.