irogov Reviews

Good Omens (2019– )

Never rises above the level of mildly amusing.

[3/10 · 13 May 2023]

One may think of this show as an illustration of what is wrong with modern TV and comedy. It tries to be daring and innovative, while staying completely inoffensive to anyone, except decrepit white pensioneers clinging to their Bibles - that's the single category of citizenry allowed to be insulted.

As a result, it is completely inane and unfunny.

The cast is as multicultural and diverse as it could be, with little thought spared for matching the actors to the characters, and so the whole series is a mish-mash of miscasts, celebrating their distinct appearances rather than playing the role in an ordinary sense.

Two leading actors are superb on their own, but their performance is all over the place as well. Michael Sheen is oddly subdued and underperforms, while David Tennant displays an array of impersonations while not hitting any particular groove. Their duo seems erratic and mentally unstable.

While watching the fourth episode I caught myself thinking that I am wasting my time and trying to suppress the overall disappointment.

Lolita (1997)

It is dreadfully serious

[5/10 · 19 April 2022]

While Nabokov's novel has few noticeable levels of meaning, this adaptation is flat and monotone story of sexual obsession. And as such, it lacks teeth. Visually, it is pleasing, every shot is constructed with polished professionalism, it pulls certain emotional strings in right order, but it is as far from the original as from being able to stand on its own.

While Kubrick' adaptation had playfulness and wit, somewhat reflecting Nabokov's prose style but not matching it, this movie is but a mediocre tragic love story with a few erotic elements controversial enough to upset American puritans, but utterly uninteresting in the age of ever present pornography.

The Spanish Prisoner (1997)

Somewhat clever, but ultimately unbelievable

[5/10 · 16 September 2021]

It is not a proper movie with character development following a story arc. It is not even a theatrical play with live actors showing believable emotions for the audience to wallow in. It is more like a puppet show with a single puppeteer pulling the strings. The actors are visibly wooden, the decorations are made of cardboard, but if you accept this, you may enjoy the skill of an invisible man behind the curtain and chuckle occasionally.

I am not sure who is the target audience though. A caricatured bunch conspiracy theorists?

Boss Level (2020)

Very entertaining.

[8/10 · 27 March 2021]

Boss Level - perhaps the best (standalone) flick in the past 3 years or so.

It is a very postmodernist, wink-wink, nudge-nudge kind of entertainment, with many unquoted references to other entertaining movies, ranging from Groundhog Day to Pulp Fiction and from John Wick to Kill Bill (these two I don't really like, but OK).

It is witty without being high-brow, irreverent to politically correct agendas while respecting the true virtues, inventive and emotionally engaging, with complex sci-fi ideas, like quantum paradoxes laid out in a simple comic way. It succeeded to keep me engaged for a couple of hours and not wanting to stop and do something else, like drink more wine or read some outrageous political news.

Good acting, - even from previously well-known mediocre actors.

I watched it in my bed, being irritated and tired on Friday night, and did not have to use any extra alcohol as a way to put my brains into a silly and relaxed mood.

Highly recommended.

Bandits (2001)

The real bandits are the cast and the crew

[4/10 · 9 January 2021]

The whole movie is an impeccably executed white collar crime. The Hollywood elite throws together few big names, some regurgitated script bits, add wackiness to fill the void of originality and voila - the audience is lured into the theatre on what may be seen as piece of faux art.

The result, although utterly unnecessary and is mildly amusing though thanks to the actors doing their job with professional rigor, so it does not bear the same rotten nihilistic tone as pseudo-comedies with/by Ben Stiller nor it has any really annoying wokeness which tend to be used by Hollywood recently instead of previously used wackiness as a gap filler.

Still, it is essentially a giant time waste, even if you practiced some banditry of your own and did not spend any money watching it.

Raised by Wolves: Umbilical (2020) Season 1, Episode 9

Nonsensical, creepy, boring

[3/10 · 27 September 2020]

The series had some promise, but it is falling apart under a load of supernatural nonsense. And I don't mean religion, I mean utterly unscientific nonsense, like flying superweapon android that is also saintly "mother of god" or mother of satan of a sort, conceiving from pure spirit in order to save the world from evil people.

Sure, one may try and create android, but keep within realm of possible.

Medic android albeit creepy was heaps more relatable, exactly because it is believable. But he was killed quickly by the supernatural Mother-of-saviour android, who is most boring because she is utterly unreal.

Acting is a mixed bag, ranging from solid to stilted and amateurish. Actor playing Marcus is still stuck in being viking Ragnar and looks out of place.

Showgirls (1995)

This movie is not what it seems

[8/10 · 9 March 2020]

Contrary to prevailing Hollywood paradigm of suspended disbelief culminating in a glorious moment of truth, this movie is is essentially a suspended deception. It leaves a viewer with an ultimate dissatisfaction and an itch to be scratched. It has to be re-thought and re-imagined as an afterthought to make a perfect sense.

Sure, it can be watched as an ultimate B-movie, a trash or exploitation, like Russ Meyer' Beyond the Valley of the Dolls or Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!.

Yet you may sense there is something "off".

Showgirls has strong and poorly hidden undercurrent of irony at the expense of glorious boobs and buttocks that leaves simplistic move watcher confused and dissatisfied, while annoying the philosophizing intellectuals as this is not a straightforward social satire either. It does not have a proper moral conclusion, which sorts out the bad from the good with a good hero having a moment of triumph. There are simply humans with their common faults and weaknesses using morally ambiguous plots, money and violence to obtain some temporary advantage over each other.

Ultimately it leaves up to a viewer to decide what this is all about, to sort this mess out in some way, or perhaps in not just one way. Is it about sex and violence? Sure! Is it parable on Las Vegas? Well, yes, but not entirely. Is it about human condition? Of course, like all other Paul Verhoeven movies. Is it about the nature of entertainment when it is made into conveyor-belt Fordian production? Well, as a consumer you are in charge to buy it. Or not to buy. That is the question.

Erik the Viking (1989)

It has potential, you can almost feel it

[5/10 · 20 January 2020]

I watched this movie twice - first about 15 years ago, second just yesterday. As much as I enjoyed most of Monty Python and post-Monty Python individual work by all members of the team, two major disappointments including this one. Second was Graham Chapman' Yellowbeard.

It is interesting, that Yellowbeard is disappointing in similar way - despite all the good actors and potentially good ideas behind the script, these movies never quite work. They almost do, they carry you from scene to scene with desire to see what happens next, but either nothing really interesting happens, or something wacky, undercooked and utterly unbelievable. So you vacillate, either to be bored to death or to get drunk or worse.

Unlike Graham Chapman movie, this one is not as chaotic and actors are working pretty much on the same level. Still, some scenes come across as childishly silly, while some others are unfunny as crude representations of rather sad reality. Each and every scene runs a little too long and overstays its welcome. I started with few giggles in the first half, and the last half was a bit of a torture to finish.

Much good stuff is getting wasted in rather shallow spoofing - fascinating historical material with Hy-Brasil, Norse mythology, customs and practices of the era, all of it does not quite reach the highs of Holy Grail. Wonderful idea about gods being children is presented in utterly underwhelming way too. It seems that most of the script and editing need just a little twist, slightly different angle to make it shine and perhaps editing needs to be a little more aggressive to cut out the overindulgent bits.

But alas.

As it is, It is neither good reconstruction of history, nor solid comedy - again, Monty Python' Holy Grail reaches unbelievable highs in both.

The Crimson Permanent Assurance (1983)

One little gem that still shines bright

[10/10 · 11 January 2020]

Touch of a genius. If full length Gilliam movies suffer from "suspension of disbelief" disappearing somewhere mid-stream his usually bizarre and twisted stories, this short one is just perfect in a way it grips the imagination and never lets go. It works on so many levels - as a political satire, still very relevant, as a biting critique on a vulture capitalism, as a slapstick comedy, as a spiritually rousing and heart warming tale about elderly having an adventure of a lifetime, as a visual feast with no dreadful computer animations. The song is one of the nicest in Monty Python collection, suitable for corporate dinners and such. The interplay between the main feature and this shorty is clever indeed. The acting is spot on, with subdued and precise performance by the aged crew holding the whole piece together. Endless re-watching value.

Westworld (2016–2022)

The beginning was intriguing, but it all slid into mediocrity

[6/10 · 10 November 2019]

The beginning was most promising and original sci-fi, with deep insights into human condition, while being entertaining as both a neo-western flick, somewhat resembling Unforgiven, with enough violence and nudity to balance the nerdy bits.

By the mid-season 2 it all descended into chaotic storytelling, pulling emotional strings with no subtlety whatsoever, and weird subplots of social justice, feminism and anti-racism, as if some infantile and unhinged liberal art students took over the reigns.

I guess it took some effort to trash the whole lot, but they did it.

El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (2019)

It's OK, yet not really "must watch".

[7/10 · 30 October 2019]

Personally, I never bothered to know what happened to Pinkman afterwards, but why the heck not if the movie is there? Well, I don't regret spending two hours watching; it is solid entertainment and has few well played and well thought through moments. Solid stuff. Well above our modern standards. Yet it has one less than believable scene of duel, which I found too cheesy and too much of a blatant fan service Another complaint is that couple of most important actors (you'll see who) got noticeably older and seriously fatter since Breaking Bad, which gave me giggles that were a bit out of place. Let me also praise Vince Gilligan for not submitting to PC hysteria of the modern era and not adding some utterly superfluous PC characters.

The Durrells (2016–2019)

Started with mild curiosity, grew to hate it

[3/10 · 21 October 2019]

After hating the series for some time of viewing-by-inertia, I also began to hate people who give it 10 star reviews.

I give it 3 stars - because there is enough of the original books material in there to stir some nostalgia for Gerald and Lawrence Durrell books amazing storytelling.

There are some nice landscapes and enough of the artifacts of the epoch to make plausible decorations.

Pretty much everything else is wrong. Actors are miscast (Theo is but one notable exception), comic timing is off, some dialogues women rights are so out of THAT time and so of this-age politcorrect, they could only work as a self-parody. Everything in these series is adjusted to please one truly mediocre viewer, the real essence of a modern audience. Mother made into a younger, sexier, more intelligent and less alcoholic version of herself. She cooks no Indian dishes (which would cultural appropriation nowadays) and instead brings up some low-class British recipes, thanks to an eternal wisdom of script writers. Gerald Durrell made into more of a modern spoiled brat. Lawrence shown more of a deluded wannabe with no willpower than a self-confident fledgling star of an English literature, friend of other stars of the time. Leslie is made into a bumbling male idiot, a butt of all jokes, like Homer Simpson, while Margo has undergone an opposite transformation, stripped of most of her malapropisms and taught to talk about women rights, as if she was one of the modern third-wave feminists.

Save your senses and your mind, avoid this pile of garbage.

Bad Times at the El Royale (2018)

Made well, but for whom?

[5/10 · 1 February 2019]

It is not a bad movie as such, as it is executed with style and pushes all sorts of your emotional buttons with agility. .

There is no believable story behind it, or rather mish-mash of criminal fiction, with cartoonish characters.

Yes, "Pulp Fiction" comes in mind right away - with all its over the top, absurd violence and social caricatures, yet Pulp Fiction revelled in dark, sadistic humour; setting it from a start as postmodernist theatrical showpiece. This movie takes itself too seriously, almost like the current crop of social justice warriors believing in their mythological studies more than in facts. Is this movie made for this sort of public? As for me there was no suspension of disbelief to start with and disappointment at the end. 10 for execution, 0 for story.

The Death of Stalin (2017)

Politically incorrect fun for the European liberal intellectual

[9/10 · 25 May 2018]

This movie is certainly not for everyone. Certainly, the current Putin's state and cultural officials would view this comic depiction of key figures from the idolised Soviet past as a dirty pig attacking on their own ideological roots, sort of a hack job ordered by anti-Russian establishment in the West.

Apart from these folks, to be affected by movie dark and irreverent humour one has to be familiar with Soviet Union history and have some curiosity for its particulars, yet you don't mind to be offended by rude language, sexist jokes and graphic violence and death. Which narrows down the viewing audience to the title above.

The current leftist crop of students in the First World, including US and Australia would be served well by watching this movie and then reading about the reality that it carefully and quite accurately caricatures. But I doubt they will.

In any case, actors are absolutely delightful to watch, their characters are painted with bold strokes and their comic timing is impeccable.

Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015)

Utterly boring

[3/10 · 20 January 2016]

What makes this move an ultimate bore? - extremely weak plot, scenes built entirely from recycled material, ludicrously shallow characters, unimaginative execution? Or perhaps an overall feeling that the people at the helm of this business venture were extremely eager to deliver the ENTERTAINMENT and VALUE FOR MONEY and QUALITY and of course to target the right audience with an uttermost precision.

What kind of audience this movie tries to hit right into the pleasure centers?

Seems like it is the generation of 14-16 year olds who were somehow stuck with their intellectual and emotional development at 8- year old level, yet they are very keen on gadgets and social justice.

More or less like the central DARK character (what's his name?), who is uncannily portrayed more retarded teenager than the powerful overlord.

And the whole top command of the evil First Order is as imposing as Cambridge cricket team of the second decade of the 21st century. Well, they are all white, middle class and undoubtedly British. So they are entirely evil. Sure.

Would this movie make these kind of audiences lift their heads from their smart phones for long enough? Perhaps so. Yet there is nothing to remember, nothing to treasure and to be fond of. I guess the next installment in the franchise will advertise newer robotic toys, that's all.

Even the music is entirely forgettable. Who wrote it? I would prefer to remain clueless.