temporaldisturbance's Reviews

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018–2020)

3/10

28 October 2018

I learned to tolerate politics injected in massive quantities into modern TV, as long as the writing is good. Having watched 1.5 episodes of this show, it's become blatantly obvious that the writing is really bad.

Nevermind the differences in source material, just the plain quality of this show makes its cheesy old "Sabrina" predecessor look like a masterpiece.

Everything is flat. The main actress is cast well, but she's given bad lines and her character is flat and uninteresting. Other actors don't even fare that well. They have bad lines and they're overacting, again, like subpar cartoon villains, firing off blatant expository dialogue.

They're not believable in the slightest. None of them are. I don't believe that character X lived in isolation for decades, or that character Y is wise enough to warrant their standing in that world.

They're all just actors in make-up. That is when you know - the show failed.

113 out of 177 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

The Haunting of Hill House (2018)

2/10

Suffered thru 6 episodes of this terrible show.

18 October 2018

How is this getting high ratings? Are they all paid reviewers? To think, Netflix pushed 3rd season of "Stranger Things" to 2019... for this?! Where do I even start... how about enumerating all the major problems with this show.

1. Reliance on acting skills of bad child actors. One of them in particular, the boy in glasses, ruins every scene he's in, as he visibly struggles to repeat the lines. His fakeness removes immersion and converts everything into a mundane filming set.

2. Constant jumps between time periods. They remove suspense from earlier scenes because you've already seen the people involved 30 years down the line, and know who will survive the "childhood scares". They also create confusion as this show tries to imitate "Westworld" with its "delayed revelations". This storytelling method is annoying, pretentious, and boring.

3. Lethargic pacing. This show is the showcase for Netflix's methodology of taking one episode's worth of content and stretching it into 4. When it comes to pacing, this show makes season 2 of "Walking Dead" look like an excitement-packed adventure. Seriously, between the scarce CGI scares, it's hard to stay awake. Which brings us to

4. Flat characters/bad dialogue. The characters are not believable. They don't speak or react like real people. They're flat cut-outs, droning boring expository dialogue, stalling for time. It's almost as if whoever did "Iron Fist" and "The Defenders" was in charge of this project, too.

5. Drab color palette. Another Netflix trademark. While some of their shows manage to have a decent color palette (OITNB for example), this one falls victim to the usual Netflixing, where they suck the life out of the picture and darken it to obscure their low budget and/or cheap filming equipment.

In all of 6 episodes I've forced myself to stay awake through, only one actually seemed to have a story. It reminded me a bit of "LOST". But really, is that the kind of ratio we're shooting for? Watch 5 episodes of throwaway garbage just to get to the good episode which could be told without the other 5?

This show is pretty much the worst of Netflix. Even if it redeems itself somehow in episodes that follow... I simply ran out of will to push myself further. After work, I want to be entertained... not tortured. Simple as that.

53 out of 109 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Containment (2016)

4/10

A dull, boring show about a quarantine

10 May 2016

I am writing this review while episode 4 of this show is playing in background. It just drags on and on like some kind of reanimated corpse. So I had to distract myself by doing a public service announcement: avoid this mess.

All of the actors are miscast. None of the characters have a hint of developing into anything resembling a real person. They're all just pretty people cast to play random roles.

A guy in a cop costume we're supposed to believe is a cop, a woman in a lab coat who's supposed to be a doctor...

None successfully passing for their assigned roles.

This show could've been saved if it all could hang on credibility of the lead actor, but he is one of the more jarring and unbelievable characters.

And finally, worst of all, there's too much padding, and the plot moves along at snail's pace. It is a joyless, un-fun, dull, passion-less, formulaic affair.

Avoid.

6 out of 13 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

The Expanse (2015–2022)

1/10

This space opera sucks harder than a black hole

29 November 2015

"SyFy" channel's space opera "The Expanse" is a fascinating study on how to do everything wrong. Never before have I seen a show consisting ONLY of background extras who are placed in front of the camera and allowed to speak - their dialogue just throwaway collection of words meant to be background noise, and yet inexplicably fed to the viewer.

There are no lead character(s) to connect with in any sort of meaningful way.

The episode is a sequence of disjointed scenes which do not start, end, or lead into each other properly. It's like watching men with ugly facial hair speak Simolean. There's no sense of continuity in the physical space, either, as the CGI sets do not gracefully connect to physical ones.

Several recognizable actors who show up here, must've been lured by the writers' accolades. When they see what has been done to them, they will be trying to get their characters killed off in order to save their careers. Poor Thomas Jane, "Mike From Breaking Bad", and that actress who played a radical Muslim in "24".

117 out of 357 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Into the Badlands (2015–2019)

5/10

Into The Bad

17 November 2015

This is a pilot episode review.

For a supposed future wasteland, the show is filled with high-contrast, popping colors.

Thoroughly dull and slow, it fails to create a single person to care about or be interested in.

The acting is not good. Sometimes you can have hammy acting like in "Turbo Kid (2015)", for purposes of atmosphere and charm, but this show fails to have any of that, so the acting just comes off as bad.

The fight choreographer is the one who put in the most work. Fights are clearly inspired by a mix of Chinese and Japanese martial arts films. They're executed and filmed well.

The fighting is the reason I give this 5 stars instead of 3.

On other fronts, the protagonist(s) are dull, every character is dull, the plot is dull, character development is not believable in the slightest.

The show could've been something, if it was Mad Max with swords, if it was a post-apocalyptic Hell On Wheels, if it had a strong sense of identity, an engaging plot, took itself seriously, made us care about something or someone, but it does none of that.

AMC should go back to the drawing board.

27 out of 75 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Flesh and Bone (2015)

10/10

Like nothing I've seen before.

12 November 2015

I rated this show based on how the first season of it made me feel.

There are people complaining that the show about ballet doesn't have enough ballet in it. How short-sighted of them.

This show is not about ballet. It is about its protagonist - Claire. Or Clementine, as she's passionately nicknamed by an eccentric supporting character.

This is a show about inner darkness, and Claire striving to find a way out of hers.

With its spectacular cinematography with a carefully muted color palette, with the rich, dramatic, beautiful soundtrack, the whole thing has this surreal, almost David Lynch-like feel to it, it is filled with pathos, emotion, drama.

We are shown scenery and people, but we are made to see feelings.

There's nudity in the show, but it is not just thrown in "because they could". It is clearly part of the vision. People's emotions get stripped raw, and sometimes, so do their bodies.

I don't like pretense. I snub my nose at "Sundance Festival winner" type films. I don't like long pointless stares, long shots of swaying grass, camera angles that linger too long for no discernible reason - that sort of thing.

This show can be on the surface mistaken for a pretentious one. It could've gone that way very easily. For example, a long ramble of aforementioned supporting character could've been seen as a pretentious scene-filler - but, the actor is exceptional, and, like in David Lynch's surrealism, it all makes a certain kind of emotional sense.

The soundtrack doesn't just clank in background to match the tone of a scene. Like the camera, the music here is an actor with a voice of its own.

It feels like a part of a deliberately painted picture. It's not what the characters say or do, but why they're driven to it.

All of the cast are picked perfectly, and they feel real. Claire does not seem like an actress playing a role. She's simply Claire. It's hard to believe that the actress wasn't already Claire before the filming even started.

This show transports you into another world. It is an emotional journey, a rich atmospheric drama. It makes you feel what the protagonist feels, if you let yourself open to it.

Compared to this work, "Black Swan" is a pretentious flash in the pan. There's something grand here at play.

Let it play.

90 out of 109 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Ash vs Evil Dead (2015–2018)

6/10

It's a trick. Get an axe.

1 November 2015

Evil Dead 1,2 and Army of Darkness were a unique horror comedy trilogy possessed by what can only be described as "giggly evils".

This series has them aplenty. The pilot episode is full of fan service. Practically every single type of horror/comedy scene or facial expression of the beloved Ash character that you wanted to see, is present here.

The effects hold up, the homages are all over the place, and the episode moves along nicely.

Unfortunately, it also falls on its face in several areas.

1) In Evil Dead 1,2, and Army of Darkness, Ash was a sympathetic character. In here, he is more "pathetic" than "sympathetic". In Army of Darkness Ash was an everyman. In this series, it's immediately established that Ash is a burned-out loser.

2) Someone in the design meeting decided that Bruce Campbell is too old, and needs co-stars to spice up the action and help "the kids" relate to them. As result, a number of single-man scenes which were so effective in previous films, now have multiple people in them, which defangs those scenes completely. Those scenes should've belonged to Bruce Campbell, the Ash himself!

3) The show has no identity of its own. It feels like a loving collection of homages, professionally reconstructed scenes from old films. This is a classic mistake. If you want to be as interesting as the old films were IN THEIR TIME, then you have to be as inventive as they were IN THEIR TIME. You have to actually have NEW punchlines, NEW cool moments, NEW developments in Ash's life.

Sadly, the show chose what it deems to be a safe road of seen-before scenes, styles, and gags. You will find no memorable new punchlines here, just old ones stuffed in to please you, and they don't really work, just as the arrested-development-Ash-loser-character doesn't work.

All in all, the episode was entertaining. In the same way as Terminator: Genisys was entertaining. A nostalgic collection of scenes we all remember fondly from the better, older films.

There was an ongoing gag in Army of Darkness, where Ash accidentally invoked powers of evil by misquoting a spell, and then explained that no, maybe he didn't say every last little syllable, but basically he said it, yeah.

I can't help wishing that the Army of Darkness magic was cast correctly when it comes to this show. Alas, they didn't quite catch every little syllable, but basically they did it, yeah.

Kinda. Sorta.

Maybe.

20 out of 85 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Wicked City (2015)

9/10

Underrated.

29 October 2015

There's an odd critic backlash against "Wicked City" because of "violence against women". Uhh... it's a show about a detective pursuing a serial killer similar to Hillside Strangler, who targeted women. It is fiction, centered around certain subject matter which alludes to, unfortunately, some real history. And when it comes to actual graphic scenes, they're tame compared to a show like "CSI" or "Bones", never even mind "Dexter". Or "Zodiac". Or "SE7EN".

So what's next, are we gonna hear that "12 Years A Slave" is racist because it shows abuse of African-Americans? Clearly, they've been singled out by that movie! Is that how low the bar has fallen, that we now want to keep storytelling on a politically-correct leash, to strip it of any edge or rawness, dare it not offend anyone? I hope not, because that will be the end.

Compared to your generic procedurals like CSI: CITY or NCIS: CITY, or Hawaii Five-O, this show's pilot was refreshing, it moved along at a brisk pace, and made me actually interested in what happens next.

Compared to throwaway skin-show-for-kids like "Quantico" this show should be a breakaway hit. At least, in a world where critics have taste.

78 out of 85 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Blood & Oil (2015)

10/10

"Hell On Wheels" in 21st century (pilot ep. review)

30 September 2015

Interesting setting - check. Great chemistry between lead actors - check. Solid supporting cast - check. Story moving along briskly - check. Great cinematography - check.

This promises to be just the right kind of slickly done action-soap-opera, a world with modern-day-Wild-West intrigue. This show reminds me of Hell On Wheels, despite the obvious anachronism of being set in modern times.

It is filmed well, the couple who are the main protagonists have genuine chemistry. They don't seem like "actors", "acting to be a couple" - at all.

The characters have believable motivations, and the show has heart.

Heart is something that's been present in many shows of the 90s and earlier, regardless of their objective quality, but in the cynical age of today it has been lost. "Breaking Bad", for example, a great show otherwise, didn't have heart. Many shows of today find it safer to stick to cynicism and negative humor.

"Blood & Oil" is refreshingly earnest - it doesn't twist itself into a pretzel to manipulate the viewer. As result, its emotion is simple and therefore relatable. When you feel for someone in this show, you feel it with them.

Whoever's in charge of this show, has a clarity of vision. Let them never lose it.

10 out of 14 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Jurassic World (2015)

4/10

A giant step back in everything.

19 September 2015

"Jurassic World" was another man vs. polygons videogamey film with bad CGI objects and backdrops, and a plot written by a velociraptor.

Never even mind the Disney-cartoon-wobbly dinosaurs, the first time they showed the "helicopter" "flying", that was a giant facepalm... so were many shots of characters in front of green screens...

All I could see is actors pointing at empty space, walking next to empty space, and acting afraid of empty space.

This film is exactly what Tarantino talked about when he said "if I'd wanted all that computer game bull&*$#, I'd have gone home and stuck my $*(# in my Nintendo." Jurassic Park used CGI as a tool to help immersion, and it used it sparingly and carefully, in combination with real props and puppetry, to give it a sense of presence, and make it harder to distinguish what is real and what is not.

Jurassic World is made for dumb-dums. Every character is a dumb-dumb who says and does dumb-dumb things. The so-called villain in this film is an idiot whose idiotic plans would never work in modern world.

In the original, the bad guy was in it for profit. He was bought. It was realistic. In this one... he's just a complete imbecile.

Same goes for everyone except Chris Pratt, who somehow manages to hold his character together despite the plot, dialogue and effects falling apart around him.

This is why I gave this film 4 stars instead of 2.

5 out of 13 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Infini (2015)

4/10

Don't Do Drugs

9 July 2015

This film is a collection of disjointed scenes where people yell a lot - in a sci-fi setting.

It feels like seeing things through the eyes of a meth addict. I am not sure who exactly was the meth addict here - scriptwriter, sound man, or director.

The film certainly supports the hypothesis, that, in fact, ALL of them were on meth. Including the actors.

This film is the biggest waste of decent sci-fi environments and costumes that I've ever seen. Do yourself a favor and go watch "Last Days On Mars" (2013). It's like this movie, except it has a beginning, middle, and end, and you always know what's going on.

12 out of 29 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Dark Matter (2015–2017)

5/10

A throwback to "SyFy channel" productions from late 90s.

13 June 2015

Remember the late 20th century/early 21st? When then-Sci-Fi channel produced one schlocky film after another, all filmed in blue hue, starring no-name actors who struggled through a plot written on a napkin? It's all here.

Spaceship interior that is actually a warehouse with colored lights. Generic "pretty face" actors. Flat acting and awkward dialogue. Jarring computer readouts. Cheesy CGI.

So, if you're in a nostalgic mood, by all means, you may get a kick out of this show.

However, if you want a show which feels like it takes place on a spaceship, you're better off re-watching Stargate: Continuum, which, although mediocre, had actual, you know, spaceship sets.

27 out of 70 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Mr. Robot (2015–2019)

3/10

Filled with clichés, patronizing, hypocritical, flat.

30 May 2015

Warning: Spoilers

The pilot centers around Elliot, 20-something guy who probably has a form of high-functioning autism, which isolates him from society, makes him withdraw into the world of computers, and he naturally becomes a genius hacker.

There have been a number of shows and films about people who are not NT(neurotypical), like "Monk" and "Numbers" and "Beautiful Mind", and even the martial arts film "Chocolate" - however, they managed to portray their heroes as sympathetic. After all, if you don't sympathize with the hero, what's supposed to hold your interest? In this show, nothing does.

This dude reads private Emails of people he "protects" (without their consent, of course). He has no life, at all, and therefore lives through controlling THEIRS, in textbook example of severe, long-neglected, codependence syndrome.

He believes work is slavery and corporations are the slave owners.

He wants "redistribution of wealth". The idea of erasing people's credit card debts makes him feel funny in the pants. Because it's not your responsibility to decide to borrow or manage your finances, no - it's the "corporation's fault".

This show would've been welcomed with open arms in my former homeland - USSR - just as any show that bashed capitalism or showed the West in a bad light. We lived without toilet paper, but at least we were free of corporations who produce it!

:|

But I digress...

The show portrays Elliot as some sort of righteous warrior, but really he's an overgrown child.

We're supposed to sympathize with him not because of his personality - he has none - but because of his mental condition. The show does the autism spectrum no favors here by showing the hero as socially crippled, with minimal life skills, and drowning in angst.

Instead of portraying autistics as "different", it shows him as "broken", with no real outstanding character qualities or insights to compensate for his flaws. Yes, he can hack. At society's expense.

Not only is this show's "hero" a creepy simpleton, the overeager simplicity infects the entire show.

His friend, who works with him at a CYBERSECURITY COMPANY, doesn't know what a ROOTKIT is. He has to explain it to her, because, apparently, she's stupid because... she's a woman? Really?

The "enemy" in this show is the ambiguous, all-controlling "E CORP", which is constantly referenced verbally as "EvilCorp". Yes, really.

The evil CTO of "EvilCorp" is MOST DEFINITELY evil because he talks rudely to the hero's friend.

The hero goes to psychiatrist, who genuinely tries to help him. Instead, he, despite being chock-full of psychological issues, zones out during her visits and thinks about the photos he saw after hacking into her Facebook.

So the hero hacks his psychiatrists' new date. The date is a BAD GUY, because he has a wife, history of cheating, and he pulled up his dog by the leash when the dog misbehaved.

The dog trait was given to him to make him, you know, EVIL.

The hero has to protect his psychiatrist from this "self-destructive dating pattern", while being completely oblivious just how messed up, creepy and delusional HE is.

The show starts with by preaching about the "1% of the 1%"... i.e. "down with the bourgeoisie!", and it never really stops. It is aimed at the easily impressionable, the idealistic, the college students who don't understand work, or financial responsibility, and believe world history started when they were born.

Down with the system! Down with the corporations!

Of course, the show itself was made by a corporation and is aired thanks to a corporation, and it was made to make money from the same naive audience who applauds abolishing corporations.

I give it 3 stars instead of 1, because it's filmed well, and it's trying to have a plot.

Except that plot revolves around a codependent, isolated, angsty Peeping Tom with no understanding of history, politics or math.

47 out of 123 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

The Messengers (2015)

4/10

The Leftovers of The Event

18 April 2015

It's one of those shows.

You know, the ones where extraterrestrial or supernatural or other-dimensional stuff happens, and then we watch flat and uninteresting characters navigate contrived plot twists for the rest of the season while some sort of "conspiracy" unfolds.

It didn't forget to include teenagers in the mix, because, you know, the committee which designed this show wanted to appeal to all possible demographics.

At the end of the season there will be a stupid cliffhanger which the writers won't know how to resolve, and then the show will be mercifully canceled and free up the air slot for something far more entertaining, such as a show about optimal ways to fold laundry.

Who greenlit this derivative, soulless schlock in 2014 and thought it was a good idea?

109 out of 163 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Allegiance (2015)

3/10

Ex-Soviet's perspective: badly written, badly acted attempt to clone The Americans.

6 February 2015

I can't even write a coherent review, just a series of observations.

1) The only good actor in the show is the leader of the Chinese gang from "Sons Of Anarchy", who plays a CIA agent here and has actual presence in the scenes.

2) It's painful to watch actors struggle with bad writing, I.E. when someone casually recites their autobiography to another character in unusual detail while it's actually aimed at you, "the dumb viewer".

3) The actors don't behave like worn-out, savvy spies, but rather like the over-emotional, neurotic types from "Grey's Anatomy". Their continuous survival is not believable in the slightest. So the "good guys" are the hand-wringing emotional types. The "villainous" ones act like villain caricatures from a comic book, with the evil smirking and worn-out clichés. There's no subtlety here, and as result, no tension.

4) I grew up in Soviet Union. In "The Americans" show, nearly all "Russians who need to speak Russian" were native speakers, who used natural turn of phrase - and it mattered. Their presence was more natural, even if you do not understand Russian, simply because the actors were being, more or less, themselves. Chances are, most of these actors remember living in USSR.

Wisely, "The Americans" kept its leading actors, who are not speakers, from ever speaking in Russian, and it fit with the plot.

"Allegiance", on the other hand, is mostly filled with actors who are just reading phonetic Russian from cue cards. This is standard fare for American TV and film, but in a show CENTERED around Russian speakers, you really gotta up your game, no?

5) "The Americans" is tense because it takes place at the height of the Cold War. "Allegiance" tries to generate the same tension in modern times, and that doesn't work.

Yes, Russia is not a good place to live. It's got problems with freedom of speech, mafia, corruption, treatment of minorities, and even a degree of tyranny.

HOWEVER - it is not a closed-off system like the USSR. Their Internet isn't self-enclosed and heavily filtered like in North Korea. You can actually travel IN and OUT. The information, more or less, flows freely. There's no more need for tuning into "illegal" Western radio stations to get the truth.

We are NOT in a Cold War - far from it - despite the American administration's continuous bungling of relations with Russia and petulant and hostile behavior toward Putin, all the while they turn around and get cozy with Cuba(!), designated by the U.S. Department Of State as a state sponsor of terrorism - one among 4.

Russia is not among those 4 countries - Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria.

These are different times. The setting doesn't fit reality. This show could've as well been anti-Russian propaganda, sponsored by the Obama administration. State-sponsored television is, after all, a very familiar sight to those of us who grew up in USSR.

6) The ripping-off of "The Americans" isn't a theory, it is fact. The show is based on a premise taken from key plot development from "The Americans" season 2 finale.

It even uses a similar-colored, similar-sized and placed font for Russian translations, so that a person tuning in during the middle of the show, could perchance mistake it for "The Americans" and keep watching.

Ugh.

61 out of 112 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Gotham (2014–2019)

1/10

Batman: The Phantom Menace

4 October 2014

In the world of Gotham, Batman is a useless child with angst problems.

He's a tertiary character stuck in a dull, dreary, low-budget police procedural.

The two leads, recently seen in Southland and Sons Of Anarchy, play it completely deadpan, and their talents are completely wasted. The bad acting isn't limited to them, however.

It is a disease that originates from the childish lines, which could be taken directly from a George Lucas film, and it infected every single character in the show.

As for the visuals, they look like a generic gray city. Most of the sets are a person in an apartment, sewer, garage, etc.

So, if you like seeing recognizable actors read terrible exposition off teleprompter while standing against a gray wall, you're gonna love this show.

45 out of 107 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

You're the Worst (2014–2019)

10/10

The most British comedy made in America?

18 July 2014

The writing and acting in this pilot episode is an order of magnitude better than any American comedy pilot I've ever seen.

If someone tried to reboot "Mad About You" in the 21st century with manic-depressive but snarky and brilliant undertones of the British show "Black Books", this show would be the result.

It is perfectly cast, and its characters feel like real people. They're not Hollywood dolls ("Friends"), nor are they court jesters dancing around in silly costumes for our amusement("Two And A Half Men"). They are authentic, they could be people we know, or ourselves, at that certain point in our lives.

After the 25-minute pilot I found myself caring about them a great deal, and I can't wait until the next episode.

154 out of 174 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

The Strain (2014–2017)

6/10

Dissecting a dead Zerg in a lab is one thing; unleashing them on men is another.

14 July 2014

This pilot episode feels more like a movie. The good part is that it's competently executed and has good music. The bad part is that it's merely competently executed, and has a number of loose movie clichés.

The director is trying to "midichlorian" the vampire myth by trying to make the biology seem plausible. This takes a lot of screen time, and in the end it becomes about as relevant as those scenes in "CSI" when they linger on disgusting decomposed bodies in a bathtub a little too long.

Nobody cares how a vampire or a zombie or Godzilla looks during an autopsy. That's not what makes monsters cool to watch - their actions and motivations do.

When it comes to actions, everyone's actions are predictable. Predictability alone doesn't make a show bad, but it does feel "by the numbers" here and not very inspired.

Despite its shortcomings, it's definitely a better show than jarring SyFy schlock like "Helix".

The show did manage to keep my attention via its "horror" moments, and maybe it will become apocalyptic in the following episodes, so we'll have to see.

14 out of 61 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Extant (2014–2015)

8/10

A promise (pilot episode review)

11 July 2014

"Extant" can go in either the nonsensical direction of shows like "Lost" and "Under The Dome", or it can deliver. It is too early to say which.

The show takes place in a future similar to that from "Almost Human".

It also appears to be influenced by Stanislav Lem's "Solaris".

The episode sparked my interest in just the right ways. It was competently written, acted, filmed, scored. It didn't go for bombast or cheap scares, but rather for a subdued sense of unease.

It really could go either way from here, and it is impossible to tell just yet, because shows built on an overarching mystery often de-evolve into ramblings of a lunatic as the writers thrash inside the web of inconsistencies they spun from one episode to the next.

But the pilot gives me hope. This review will be updated when more episodes come out.

44 out of 82 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

The Leftovers (2014–2017)

2/10

The stale leftovers.

6 July 2014

This show's pilot is full of pointless scenes that drag on for too long and add nothing. There is no depth, no atmosphere - just someone slowly getting into a car, walking down the street, opening a door, as you watch them... do things.

Pseudo-classical music plays in those empty moments, which fail to evoke the emotion or contemplation the writers are so eagerly going for.

The show feels like an alien experiment at writing a human TV show.

It goes through the motions of engaging the viewer emotionally, without understanding how emotion works. Its characters have the depth of those from a children's book.

This show reminds me of the movie "Magnolia", exposure to which must violate Geneva conventions.

It's always tough to say this about a body of work of many writers, actors, cameramen... but these leftovers belong in the trash.

And the blame lies really on the writers and writers alone.

126 out of 244 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Taxi Brooklyn (2014)

1/10

Biohazard.

26 June 2014

This show is horrific on every level. I've never seen anything as comprehensively, thoroughly traumatizing. It's almost as if it has been deliberately engineered as a weapon of psychological warfare, escaped the lab, and has been unleashed on the average American citizen.

Without a doubt, calls are pouring into 911 centers about people stricken with sudden nausea, vomiting and a deep, paralyzing sense of despair.

No, seriously, it's the worst thing I've ever seen on TV. It's the "Transformers 2" of the small screen. Here's why:

1) The camera shaking doesn't stop. During action sequences it's amplified by ultra-rapidly changing cuts at jumpy angles which cannot be reconstructed by human brain into a continuous "happening". Very "Transformers 2". During normal sequences, it doesn't merely pan in different directions to indicate aliveness, but it shifts with erratic unease. Even when you're supposed to read text messages.

2) The dialogue is filled with forced exposition and awkward lines similar to the famous "I don't like sand" Anakin Skywalker monologue from "Attack Of The Clones". ALL of it is like this.

3) The actress is completely miscast, and, like everyone else, seems to realize her career is taking a blow with this. Everyone in this show has this "I don't want to be here" vibe. The hot detective they dumped from "Blue Bloods" a few seasons ago is here, too, and she's soldiering on better than the lead. Others don't fare as well, as you can see them struggle to contort their mouths into produce the terrible lines as they contemplate the downfall of their careers.

4) The "humor" alone will make your head hurt. I will not go into "spoilers", but every single "humorous", "hey guys there's humor here" moment in this show is... oh dear god.

CONCLUSION: this is baby's first TV show. It's worse than many student film projects. It's worse than the "Phantom Menace" and "Ultraviolet". It's about as bad as "Transformers 2". Minus the CGI. So there's nothing left to even look at.

41 out of 92 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

In the Blood (I) (2014)

3/10

Sadly, bad.

21 May 2014

This film has the distinct low-budget look. Maybe it's how they don't blur the backgrounds when people are in foreground, I don't know, but it looks cheaper than a TV show.

The star, a real-life MMA fighter, is not given decent choreography to show off her athleticism. That is perhaps the movie's biggest sin.

Her voice-over is not convincing in the slightest, like she's reading it off a napkin. That is unfortunate, as it destroys the movie from its very first minutes.

Those first minutes are shortly followed by some very awkward expository dialogue at a wedding. Everything is awkward.

Avoid.

19 out of 37 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Believe (2014)

3/10

Fake reviews aplenty.

23 March 2014

Cringingly, I watched to about half the pilot episode, counting the missed opportunities, idiotic plot points, stifled dialogue, poorly filmed action, and improbable coincidences brought together by a sloppy script.

Somehow I caught myself not really caring for either the miscast prisoner or the little girl. Well, I did care for the mystery of the girl, but it was quickly made obvious that the focus of the show is on her fixing the menial problems of people they encounter along the way, Quantum Leap-style.

But... I did like Quantum Leap, so I kept watching...

...until, in the middle, a peripheral character I completely didn't care about turned to the camera and started telling the viewer (pardon me, he was talking to himself, yes) about his problems that inevitably the little girl was going to solve by the end of the episode.

The monologue was so very awkward, and I couldn't bear the actor's suffering as he struggled with stilted, poorly written lines.

If you like crap, sorry, I mean, "Touch", then you will love this show.

If you saw "Touch" for what it was - a lazily written show with "the numbers did it" deus ex machina in every episode, then, "Believe" me, you're going to hate this one.

18 out of 41 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Helix (2014–2015)

Typical "SyFy" channel schlock.

11 January 2014

I was hoping for something like "Burning Zone" - intense show about a team of brave scientists containing deadly diseases. A show with tense and creepy atmosphere and genuinely frightening moments.

Instead, I got this.

The yellow-blue filter only accentuates the show's low-budget look. Characters spout out generic lines, and every scene unfolds right on cue of a predictable beat. There are no surprises, no scares, no suspense, no sense of involvement with the cardboard characters.

SyFy channel has succeeded at accomplishing the most difficult task of taking a show about infectious diseases and people in Hazmat suits and making it into a banal snore-fest.

Of course, if anyone could do it, it's SyFy.

101 out of 208 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

The Heat (I) (2013)

2/10

Whatever happened to Sookie from Gilmore Girls? This did :(

15 December 2013

First she poops in the sink in "Bridesmaids". Then she becomes completely unwatchable in "Identity Thief". Now this... a movie I had to stop watching halfway through because it was making me feel nauseous and depressed.

What's "Mike & Molly"? Oh yeah... a show about Melissa McCarthy being fat. Look at her, she's fat, guys! (canned laugh track)

While her "Sookie" character in "Gilmore Girls" was a sweet and charming woman, ever since the show ended, Melissa McCarthy's distinguishing feature as an actress became her physical size.

She has become the go-to female actor for fat jokes, grossness and attempts at humor so pathetic, it's almost as if her films are made by SNL.

I feel bad for her. I hope she gets a role where she gets once again to shine as a character - whether good or evil, doesn't matter. Just give her a _character_ to play again, will ya, Hollywood?

4 out of 12 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

temporaldisturbance

Reviews

Tell Your Friends

Recently Viewed