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RoOT (2024)
Fun to watch
It is quite fun to watch.
A Detective show about a young female PI and her intern being dragged into one bigger and more dangerous case they have imagined.
Everything feels improvised - but in a fun and good way.
It's like the actors had been given just some rudimentary information about the next scene and then had to improvise everything.
Maybe I am just imagining things but it sure looks like it.
Anyway it is fun to watch the relationship between the stoic female PI and her quirky intern.
They encounter a lot of Japanese-style-crazy characters and situations trying to solve a case which is way over their heads.
The soundtrack is fun to listen to as well.
Every episode is only about 22 minutes or so, like an anime episode, which is a bit short if you have to wait for one week to catch the next one.
There is also no recap at the beginning of each episode, so I found myself often wondering, what the main detective case was all about after one week.
But it did not matter because I enjoyed watching that show anyway.
House of the Owl (2024)
An opening act in ten boring episodes
A shadowy figure (now in his seventies) has been moving the fate of Japan for decades.
And now...?
Yes, now what exactly?
Every good show begins with an opening act which is usually used for exposition, to establish the main characters, their relationships, and the world they live in.
Then there comes an inciting incident which upsets the character's status quo and gets the story going.
But this inciting incident does not happen until the end of the last episode!
This show is one long and boring opening act stretched out over 10 long and boring episodes.
And the more the show goes on it does not only get more boring but also more ridiculous.
This "shadowy" fixer is doing his work supposedly in secret but an awful lot of people actually know who he is and what he does.
Even the prime minister of Japan attends his big birthday party with hundreds of guests at the beginning.
Apart from "fixing" Japan you never know how he actually makes his money, or what he pretends to be doing otherwise.
"Fixing" Japan for him also requires not a big criminal organization or the newest computer tech to obtain and store all the dirty information he supposedly has on everyone.
No, we only see him and one trusted employee doing this....somehow.
There is also no explaination of how he got to this position of power with only one employee and why nobody has killed him already.
Instead of an interesting story we also get treated with the boring lives of his children and their little day to day problems.
There is another "shadowy" figure conspiring against our "fixer"....but they show from the beginning who he is and what his schemes are.
The whole show is like watching all three Godfather movies but only at the end of the third one, there is an attack on Vito Corleone's life.
If you watch the first half of the first episode and the last half of the last episode: that is all you need!
You miss absolutely nothing inbetween.
The owl show is a huge disappointment and a huge waste of time.
Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san (2024)
Wonderful and funny story
"Takagi loves playing good-natured pranks on her classmate Nishikata. But try as he might, he can never prank her back - she's just too clever."
It's about two high school kids living on a japanese island who constantly prank each other - but the girl, Takagi, always outsmarts the boy, Nishikata.
Both are secretly in love with each other but neither wants to admit it, so playing (lighthearted) pranks on each other is their way of staying close.
And although Nishikata always loses to Takagi, he never gets angry at her because as he says during one of the last episodes, "It is better to being pranked by Takagi-san than not being with her at all"
It is an enchanting story with two very talented lead actors taking pleace on a beautiful island.
Highly recommended.
Hide (2024)
Stopped watching after Ep 4
A great lead actress and a plot that showed some real promise - well at least until it went all downhill.
Lee Bo-young plays a lawyer whose husband (also a lawyer) suddenly disappears and then is found dead.
There is a some unbearable schmaltz at the beginning but the show takes up speed when she deicides to investigate the disappearence and death of her husband.
Of course, she finds out that her husband had a lot (and I mean really a lot) to hide from her but she wants to get to the bottom of it no matter what.
But unfortunately after a few episodes, the show also really hits rock bottom.
Everything starts to get confusing, highly unplausible and laughable. It turns into a cheap soap opera with many very stupid side plots and people doing one unbelievable thing after the other just to keep the show going and to probably to get to the usual 16 episodes, most Korean TV shows are made of.
While other shows pull it off and manage to tell an interesting and engaging story in 16 episodes, when the content is only good for 8 to 10 episodes, "Hide" fails miserably at it.
Unfortunately a waste of time, talent and very good actors, who do their best to save the show but can't stop it from turning into a very weird and strange soap opera.
True Detective (2014)
Just fillers with no real main plot
I stopped watching halfway through the fourth episode of season four.
I really wanted to like the show.
It has a great cast and an even greater premise.
Something evil is going on in the arctic.
There are some scientists found dead and naked in the snow, ghosts are wandering around, evil is lurking everywhere!
Could have been a great show - it has the vibes of "The Thing" and "30 Days of Night" - but the showrunners were unable to make something interesting out of the premise.
Seems they ran out of ideas after 30 minutes into the first episode.
They had to stretch everything to 8 or 10 episodes, but didn't have any good ideas or notion of good story telling.
So the whole show is one big filler.
A few minutes of every episodes are interesting, but the rest are just fillers.
They are not even subplots.
Almost everything that happens during any episode is absolutely uninteresting and has nothing to do whatsoever with the main plot (if there even is one).
You really notice that what "happens" on screen is only there to fill the hour HBO ordered.
Halfway through the fourth episode I even forgot what the main plot even was, or what they were doing all there in the first place.
Even watching snow fall is more interesting than this failure of a show.
Griselda (2024)
Unbearable soap opera about a brutal drug lord
Netflix turned the life of a brutal and psychotic drug lord into a cheap soap opera.
If you google "Griselda Blanco" you first notice that she does not look like Sofia Vegara at all - nor was her life anything like the glitzy one you see in that cheap Netflix telenovela.
Her life was brutal, ugly and despicable and she had as much people killed as any other drug lord.
If you'd like to watch how the day to day crime life of a female drug kingpin (or queenpin) goes, I'd advise you to watch "El Chapo" or even better "Gomorrah".
Both have female crime bosses in them and the difference between "Griselda" and these other, really great TV shows is like watching an episode of "NCIS" and then "The Wire".
You could have turned Griselda Blanco's life into a good yet gritty and tough TV show as well - but this is just another example of a streaming service like Netflix being really bad at hiring the right people for the job - or producing anything good on their own.
Don't waste your time with "Griselda".
Who Is Erin Carter? (2023)
This is the show you are looking for - if you want a reason to cancel Netflix.
Could have been a really good show - but it has way too many plot holes and absurd improbabilites - which pile on and on, the longer the it lasts.
I managed to watch until the last episode - but when it got tooo stupid I felt cheated and angrily turned the TV off not caring any longer how it would all end.
Even braindead zombies would not ruin a show like this.
Okay, where to begin.
SPOILERS AHEAD:
Erin (she has many names but I'll use this) is just a normal police officer in training but gets kicked off the force because a male trainee assaulted her (in front of many other police trainees - but who cares?) and she defended herself.
I guess MeToo does not exist in Netflix shows.
Some guy from some obscure special crime task force somehow immediately heard of that and thought he should hire her (why?)
Erin is no James (or Jane) Bond, she isn't athletic at all, she looks very fragile and skinny, she is no master spy, she has no college education, or any special skills or advanced martial arts abilities, but only after a few weeks training in that "special task force" she becomes all that.
However, we only see her doing some boxing training with her boss, but who cares?
He also teaches her to become a kick-ass driver so she can infiltrate a criminal gang who is about to rob some gold (and he somehow knows they need a driver - why and how? - with no previous mole there)
She of course manages to infiltrate them and calls her boss before the heist starts so he can stop it - which he could have done all along - but, who cares?
No, the clever boss says, let these heavily and crazy robbers do the heist so we can catch them and get to the big chief behind them.
But not in the act of course, where they could possibly shoot the guards and many other innocent people, because, who cares?
And then , of course, special idiot police task force does not catch them with a clever plan during the heist (to prevent the criminals from shooting innocents) nooooo.... they decide to arrest them afterwards when the criminals are back in their fortified hideout.
And their idea of "arresting them to get to the big boss behind all this" is to just storm the place and shoot them all dead.
Really stupid, right, but, who cares?
Erin has befriended the daughter of one of the female crimininals who thought it a good idea to bring her 5 year old daughter to the hideout so she can be around other criminals, see how to plan a heist and witness how they brutally kill one of their own.
Well, the police shoot everyone dead, but Erin manages to escape by JUST DRIVING OUT OF THE GARAGE THROUGH ANOTHER DOOR NOBODY THOUGHT TO GUARD
I should have stopped watching right there and then, but unfortunately I did not.
Erin thinks the mother (Lena) of Harper (the 5 year old kid) got shot dead and then decides (for no good reason whatsoever) to leave her police job behind and go with Harper on the run.
Because, well apparently being on the run is way better for a 5 year old child than adopting her legally.
She ends up in Spain somewhere near Barcelona and manages (with no college degree) to get a job as a teacher (because in her two weeks special forces course she learned how to forge a new identity) and marries a Spanish (male) nurse.
She only a salary as a substitute teacher but he and her nurse hubby manage to afford a huge house near the beach in one of the most expensive areas there.
This strange area is full of rich British expats so they all speak English there - which is good because although Erin has now lived for five years there, she does NOT SPEAK ANY SPANISH OR CATALAN although she pretends to be a school teacher at a very big expat school.
We also never learn what she is teaching without a college degree without drawing attention and without any former experience as teacher at all.
But, who cares?
In this strange area for rich Brits everyone speaks English, or course, but all the Spanish people there speak English perfectly too.
But not only there. Everywhere Erin goes all the Spanish people immediately talk back to her in English, because who can expect from a school teacher to learn an new language IN THE COUNTRY SHE LIVES IN in just five years.
The Spanish are loveable people but their English is horrible everywhere in reality.
Although Erin must be really stupid she manages not only to pull off that teacher con but also to convince her Spanish hubby to only speak English with her and her daughter Harper at home.
Of course, because at Spanish nurse training they apparently teach you perfect English because then (apparently) you can afford the huge expensive house I mentioned earler and marry a British wife who is too dumb to learn your native language ALTHOUGH SHE PRETENDS TO BE A TEACHER.
I should have really stopped watching then - but it got sooo stupid it was almost funny (almost), like watching an Ed Wood movie.
Well, to cut it short now, the bad guys are on to Erin, she does some illegal work for the best friend of her hubby (a police officer).
Why? Don't ask! (The reason is really stupid.)
Although she has not trained for five years at all (except for some light morning running) she easily kicks the asses of ex-special forces soldiers twice her size, shoots way better than them, outsmarts her foes at every turn (although she is too stupid to learn a new language), jumps from buildings without hurting, manages to kick the ass of a hard ass kung-fu expert (who just bet up her big police friend) and so on and on and on....
Did I mention she also befriends a bad crime boss (who of course is British) who she witnessed having killed her police buddy? And, well, when she has the chance, she does not kill him, because he tells her some really sad sob story.
She also gets shot in the stomach with a huge caliber revolver in the middle of nowhere during a very hot Spanish day, with nobody and nothing around for miles - except for bushes and desert.
Our superhero Erin not only survives that, she also manages to get up and reach a forest (where did that suddenly come from?) and luckily there is an abandoned camp site there, where she conveniently finds some first aid kit, patches herself up and then....
Then I could not take it any more.
The show had finally gotten from "so stupid it's laughable" to "SO STUPID YOU WANT TO THROW YOUR TV OUT OF THE WINDOW"
Perhaps they shoot a second season where it turns out that Erin is an alien from Kryptonia with superpowers who had been "awoken by the force" and now she is going after Lex Luthor and Darth Vader.
Sounds stupid?
Yes, but who cares?
Certainly not Netflix (which I finally cancelled)
The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023)
Sooo stupid....
Ridley Scott's "Alien" took its inspiration from the Demeter's ill fated voyage in Bram Stoker's novel Dracula.
This could have been "Alien" on a real ship with Dracula on board.
But it is not.
For once all the characters are sooo stupid it is hard to care for any them.
You just wish for ol' Dracula to just finish them off already.
Unlike the "Nostromo" in "Alien", the "Demeter" isn't a very huge ship.
They could have just searched for their enemy.
But then the movie would have been over in 5 minutes.
They even learn that Dracula really doesn't stand sunlight.
So maybe search the ship during the daytime?
Or rip off the ceiling of the cargo bay, let some light in and roast the guy?
Or if all else fails, maybe abandon ship during the daytime and set it on fire - to, well roast the guy?
Or just abandon ship during the daytime and just drill a hole in it to sink it?
Or throw the cargo overboard during daytime?
Or, or, or...
The possibilities are endless.
But instead this crew of dumbos decides to stand guard at night to get picked off ol' Dracula one by one.
They also think it is a good idea to wander around the ship alone at night.
But to top it all off in the end (SPOILER ALERT) they decide to lay a trap for Dracula DURING THE NIGHT and fight him DURING THE NIGHT.
But not any night, no!
It's a night where it is especially dark and also misty so you can see absolutely nothing - except if you are an old vampire.
Well, everyone knows how this story ends...
So why bother with a stupid movie like this in the first place?
I always hoped it would get better, or at least a little bit spooky, creepy or entertaining.
But to no avail.
Apart from being stupid the movie gets more boring by the minute - really nothing exciting happens.
They all just sit around and talk a lot and come up with more really stupid plans to hunt down Dracula.
And all this so in the end the audience could enjoy seeing an actor in a cheap and laughable rubber suit.
My advice: read the great novel by Bram Stoker and watch Ridley Scott's Alien, if you really want to be scared - and see how an intelligent and exciting horror story has to be told.