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Reviews
Power (2014)
Perfect Over the Top Glorious Cheese
There is drama, and there is melodrama, and there is gonzo over the top melodrama where everything goes. This is it! For what it is, it is tightly written, fast paced, well acted ENTERTAINMENT! You get sucked into the world of drug dealers. While you know up front that it is going to end in epic tragedy and that few will survive, you still care about these characters, even when they are vile and violent. The last season was over padded as they tied things up, but wow! There is drama, and there is melodrama, and there is gonzo over the top melodrama where everything goes. This is it! For what it is, it is tightly written, fast paced, well acted ENTERTAINMENT! You get sucked into the world of drug dealers. While you know up front that it is going to end in epic tragedy and that few will survive, you still care about these characters, even when they are vile and violent. The last season was over padded as they tied things up, but wow! There is drama, and there is melodrama, and there is gonzo over the top melodrama where everything goes. This is it! For what it is, it is tightly written, fast paced, well acted ENTERTAINMENT! You get sucked into the world of drug dealers. While you know up front that it is going to end in epic tragedy and that few will survive, you still care about these characters, even when they are vile and violent. The last season was over padded as they tied things up, but wow!
Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
Suppose
Suppose you hired two very talented middle-aged women to star in a high concept mashup of the Marvel multiverse with a road runner cartoon, This is Us, and added a ton of musings about existential angst and life choices. Some might find it deeply meaningful and entertaining. Others will call it out as drivel. I'm in the 2nd group.
Bosch: Legacy (2022)
Imitation Bosch
Done on the cheap. Poorly paced. The daughter's arc is pure melodramatic junk. Not worth the time. Done on the cheap. Poorly paced. The daughter's arc is pure melodramatic junk. Not worth the time. Done on the cheap. Poorly paced. The daughter's arc is pure melodramatic junk. Not worth the time. Done on the cheap. Poorly paced. The daughter's arc is pure melodramatic junk. Not worth the time.
Night Sky (2022)
this show has everything
This show has everything and needs 70% less to be worth your time. Again, a cable provider has taken a story that would have made a great movie and stretched it out to a series that will bore you into a stupor. This show has everything and needs 70% less to be worth your time. Again, a cable provider has taken a story that would have made a great movie and stretched it out to a series that will bore you into a stupor. This show has everything and needs 70% less to be worth your time. Again, a cable provider has taken a story that would have made a great movie and stretched it out to a series that will bore you into a stupor.
The Northman (2022)
Saga of Amleth preceded Shakespeare's Hamlet, look it up
Do your homework before you expose yourself. OK, the movie suffers from excess display of testosterone, overacting, boring rituals, stilted dialogue, bad lighting, questionable pacing, and, basically, just not being Hamlet.
Halo (2022)
Morons complaining about "woke"
I never realized how many people are racist idiots. Diverse casting is an integral component of global marketing. If you don"t get that you are genuinely stupid. If you don't like it, STFU. As for the show, it is a watchable start. It seems to be rushing into politics at the expense of characterization; a strange choice for a new series. The "rubble" sets could be better. The cgi is OK. I like Bokeem Woodbine as an actor, but his role as Rubble leader feels stolen from Star Wars. I wish his character was new and unique. Finally, I could give a rat's tuckus about the show being like the game.
Moonfall (2022)
Totally bonkers fantasy pretending to be sci fi
The movie is a stew of really awful non-science, bad soap opera, terrible dialogue, flat acting, etc. Yet, since I was raised on 50's and 60's science fiction that made no sense either, I loved it. If you can get that. You will have a good ride. Roland Emmerich has pulled out every stop that ever existed and created a silly, bizarre, completely over-the-top epic. Imagine if Prometheus hadn't have been pompous crap. If you didn't hate Interstellar, you have no business hating on this movie.
Dog (2022)
Bad handling techniques
I was ready for this movie: a man and a dog healing each other. However, the way Tatum interacted with this dog was just ignorant. How did he work along side the dog and it's handler for so long and not have learned anything? I got irritated and bailed halfway through.
Severance (2022)
Tangled hairball of loose threads
Neither entertaining nor enlightening. Again, ApplePlus demonstrates that Ted Lasso's first season was an aberration. This is devoid of any reason to watch unless you are satisfied by weirdness for its own sake. Severance doesn't even have the shiny things of Foundation or the chaotic noise of Invasion to keep you occupied.
From (2022)
The New Usual
The new usual for content providers: stretch every story, no matter the potential, into taking at least twice as much time as really necessary to tell the story properly. This show is going to die quickly because very few viewers are going to have the patience to watch it before they succumb to ennui. Interesting premise: suppose there was a small town like the one in the movie, The Village" where people can't leave and there are mysterious deadly forces that come out at night. This time around the setting is contemporary and the mysterious forces are real. Could be fun, but not with this plodding pacing.
Suspicion (2022)
Can't take it any more
Bogged down and so boring. Obviously twice as many episodes were produced than needed . After 5 episodes, I just don't care to waste anymore of my time. Apple TV can't do anything right.
In from the Cold (2022)
Hilarious Spoof
At first, I didn't get it and gave this a 3. Then, another reviewer said it was a deadpan satire, like The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window (released about the same time from Netflix). I finished watching, and now I have to agree. The writers took a genre and dragged every cliche and trope kicking and screaming into the outer limits of reductio ad absurdum. They twisted virtually every scene's balls until they were far far beyond suspension of disbelief. We were supposed to laugh not carp about details. I'll never be able to watch a spy thriller again without thinking of this movie.
Reacher (2022)
Should be better
Needs tighter pacing. Plot needs to follow books EXACTLY! Needs a more existential feel. Reacher is weary and cynical after the huge number of fights he his has been in as a career MP and the 150+ cases he has worked. He is skeptical of everyone until he has had a chance to evaluate them. Yet the lead plays him like some kind of savant.
Pam & Tommy (2022)
Pam doesn't deserve this drek
What is the point of dredging up this fictionalised phoney crap. Sleazy and yet incredibly slow moving and boring. 3 episodes could have covered the story. Portrayal of Pam is obviously bogus to anybody who ever even paid attention to her interviews. She was no rocket scientist, but she was not a bimbo either.
Cyrano (2021)
For the musical theater crowd
Cyrano dumbed down for the high school set. Definitely not the classic play.
Peter Dinkage is an charismatic acting genius. However, he is never remotely convincing as the renowned elite swordsman.
Singing, songs and dance numbers range from terrible to barely passable with the exception of the female lead's voice.
Acting, other than Dinkage, is mediocre.
Final note for the anti-woke crowd: diverse casting is an integral part of global marketing. If you don't get it you are an idiot. If you don't like it, tough luck.
211 (2018)
Astoundly Bad
Cage was the only person in this drek that could be called an "actor". Terribly stupid and over the top action scene direction and choreography. Torpidly boring otherwise.
Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000)
Hit or miss cringe humor
Larry David's character is a filterless carmagon too un-self aware to realize that he is every bit as obnoxious and clueless as everyone who annoys him. Somehow he manages to make himself the butt of every tasteless observation and comment he utters and he makes a lot of them. Most of his acquaintances are almost as bad as he is and just as clueless. You never laugh with Larry and friends, but at them. He spares no one left or right, rich or poor, regardless of ethnic ID. However, I notice a lot of negative comments here from MAGA snowflakes. Poor babies.
Station Eleven (2021)
Only A-holes knock other peoples opinions!
Drivel! With stilted dialog.
1. Multiple cable shows are using the shifting timelines stunt. It's overdone and boring.
2. With 99% of the population gone, the ADEPT survivors could last for years off of scavenging, hunting, foraging. There wouldn't even be a shortage of gas for farm equipment. Generators, or motorcycles for the first year or so. No shortage of tools, clothing, shelter, guns and ammo for hunting. Medical care would revert 50 years, not disappear.
3. SUV's weigh tons. What moron would exhaust horses to tow them? Not enough trailers around?
Did the producers bother to actually consult expert preppers and survivalists?
Don't Look Up (2021)
Good, Not Great
First rate production values and acting. Throwbacks to Armageddon, Network, Wag the Dog, Dr. Strangelove. I was engaged, entertained, but only occasionally amused. As a critically thinking registered independent, I can see that a viewer's political proclivity would bare on their perceptions. However, I felt that the approaching comet scenero was not as successful an analogy to climate change as some insist. The big weakness was the overblown, overlong, script that lacked subtlety.
Being the Ricardos (2021)
Liked it, Didn't love it
Aaron Sorkin's distinctive writing and direction style was the weak link for this film. It is so signature to his work that it is beginning to feel like a cliche; made the film feel artificial, like a documentary reenactment. Everything else: acting, creation of a period in the costumes and sets, camera work was superior. How much you will like it depends on how much you remember Lucy and Dezi and how interested you are in that time.
The Harder They Fall (2021)
Grind House Western
Despite excellent production values, I did not enjoy this neo-grind-house , blaxplotation, Terintino wannabe western. The majority of the characters were icy smug unemotional psychopaths. These portrayals were trite and beneath the talents and abilities of the cast. In fact, every character was a cardboard cutout. The movie was too long for its linear twistless plot and the violence quickly became repetitive and boring. There was no character to identify with beyond DelRoy Lindo's marshall.
Invasion (2021)
Soap Opera SciFi
This is Us meets The Happening and Signs. Tons of really boring filler that does not enlighten or entertain. The majority of the scenes add nothing to the narrative, characterization, or mood and go on way too long. The Japanese engineer and the American soldier are really obnoxious dislikable characters with annoying stories. The actor portraying the wife fleeing with her family is the only decent actor in the show. So bad, it feels like Apple is laundering money to avoid taxes.
Don't get me started on the terrible cinematography.. Murky is one thing, impenetrable is quite another and never acceptable for long scenes where the viewer never finds out what happened.
Ted Lasso (2020)
Season 2--What the hell is wrong with the writers?
First season was a 10. Second season was a 7. The most human and humane arc in season two was Ted's deeping trust and friendship with the team therapist. So, of course they end it. The dumbest arc was the team owner's love affair with the man-child player; neither realistic or engaging. So, of course they make it a big thing. And what the hell was the deal with Coach Beard's nighttime journey? We get the literary allusions, but it just wasn't good.
Update: with the collapse of Foundation, Invasion, and the Morning Show, it appears that the last 2/3 of the first season of Ted Lasso was an aberration and Apple is firmly holding on to its reputation as don't need TV.
The Morning Show (2019)
Classic nosedive
First season was a solid fast-paced involving melodrama. Second season is a major snoozefest. Lots of headless chicken action amounting to nothing much.
The Shrink Next Door (2021)
Fantastic production values
Across the board: perfectly captures the time period in New York. Great cast gives great performances. But so what? Shrink exploits patient for eight episodes? Too slowly paced out and it gets repetitive very quickly. Could have made a terrific 90-120 minute movie. Cable TV providers ruin more decent movie ideas by stretching them into mini-series.