jrralls Reviews

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022– )

It's Boring - I gave it 3 Episodes, The Same Length of Running Time as Fellowship, and It was Still Boring

[2/10 · 11 September 2022]

I like slow burn TV shows! I don't have to have everything exciting and interesting happen all at once in episode one. But this one just doesn't engage me. The characters are not interesting. I don't have to like characters but I do have to want to hear what they have to say and at no point in this series was the dialogue ever truly engaging in such a manner that made me think these were anything but actors saying their lines. Everything felt wooden.

Like there was a moment where an Elf had not seen his Dwarf friend in 20 years. Now for an Elf 20 years isn't much but for a Dwarf it's a huge amount of time. And they tackle that conflict in such a childish manner. Like I could imagine the scene be played out exactly the same in a children's cartoon made for 10 years old's as it was portrayed here.

Now this is NOT "The Worst Thing Ever." It doesn't "Ruin The Movies" or anything like that. It's just a boring piece of media (to me). It's a "C" piece of media. Not even a C- but also not a C+. And my screentime is so limited that I just don't have time for C media.

If you like it fine, people can like things I don't like and vice versa. But if you had told me in 2002 that there was going to be a BILLION dollar LoTR series in 2022 and that I would feel nothing as I watched it, well I would have been pretty disappointed (then I would quickly move on and ask you, the time traveler, for stock tips).

The Rock-afire Explosion (2008)

Looking Back and Not Being Able to Look Away

[10/10 · 28 March 2018]

It's a fascinating look at the Anamatroic pizza-place fan community, but on a deeper leaver it's about a whole bunch of people who can't stop looking back. The fans are really invested in their childhood memories of these robots, and I can't throw rocks because I'm sure I'm on the right side of the bell curve when it comes to romanticizing the pop culture of my own childhood, but the owner of company? As far as I can tell from the documentary, he can't let go either. At his height he once employed 300 people, his business crashed and he had to fire all of them over the course of a decade until he was the only one left, and it seem like in his mind he is a bit haunted by that. Really fascinating documentary.

The Gamers: Hands of Fate (2013)

Took it in a new direction and it worked

[10/10 · 27 February 2014]

I loved Gamers 1 & 2 and was really curious how they would keep the story fresh. I loved all their D&D jokes on the last two but wasn't sure what they would do to keep the momentum going; the answer was to change and take a risk.

That can often be a tricky thing to do in a trilogy, but they pulled it off. At heart, this is actually a sports movie, just the game is a card game rather than a physical game. This, combined with a much higher budget, allowed them to do all sorts of fun bits that they couldn't have done if they just would have stayed with the same tried and true formula.

I'm glad they mixed things up while still keeping it a very entertaining ride. Can't wait to listen to the commentary tracks to see how they did so much with so little.