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Reviews
The Walking Dead (2010)
A brilliant but frustrating show which failed to follow a natural trajectory
I just want to start off by saying that this show is not typical. It doesn't follow the pattern and design choices that saturate many modern TV shows, there are surprisingly little references to modern politics, it never lectures the audience on modern issues and stays mostly clear of clichés and isn't afraid to show and do things which don't fit with normal life which is all very unique for a TV show. So thank you to the producers for making a Zombie apocalypse TV show as raw and as natural as they could.
The show is in the most part consistent and paces well to begin with, which is why it was so popular and I believe its decline in quality is mostly to do with the decline in the consistancy of the characters and the abandoning of the natural evolution of the story.
Whilst in the earlier seasons the character's would semi regularly do something stupid the overall actions of the characters were real enough and you could relate to the overall direction they took as a group. The amount of noise they made, the stupid arguments or their priorities in a moment were a little infuriating at times but it's a small gripe.
As the show progresses the inconsistencies grow and the characters begin to make worse decisions and the character development starts to feel like leaps instead of slow progressions. Carol inexplicably goes from a nervous wreck to one of the strongest characters through a couple of offscreen personality shifts, Beth does the same, Maggie is quite consistant for a long time but then shifts dramatically during season 6 (also offscreen), Karl goes back and forth between nice Karl and Psycho Karl as the situation calls for it with no real consistency or consequences, the newer characters either get serious random upgrades in personalities or just die, and the main guy Rick goes from Mr Nice Police guy, to Crazy, to strong angry Rick, to Crazy, to Crazy war veteran, to psychopath, to Crazy; each time his jump in character development is sudden and greatly upsets the feel and progression of the show. If you were to watch the show afresh with no prior knowledge and then predict the next few seasons after the end of each season your predictions would change dramatically as the seasons went on just because of how random and severe the jumps in Rick's personal development are.
The way in which the show is structured is really important to understand why it inevitably failed. Whilst the early seasons had a slow yet methodical and realistic pacing, from about season 4 onwards the show starts to make serious time jumps between episodes, follows different stories and characters almost erratically, the plot stagnates for a few episodes at a time followed by a dramatic thing which changes everything and then repeats that pattern. We find that we are no longer following the slow survival of a group of people but instead juggling multiple story threads and waiting for the current issue to be resolved.
In an ideal world the show should have spent longer at the prison, settled the plot down, concentrated on getting the characters stable and building on them, and the story should have slowly branched out from the prison, perhaps introducing Neagan earlier but with Rick being more of the mind to trade to keep the peace. It could have then slowly descended into conflict over a few seasons, with some side plot lines keeping the story interesting. The cartoonist villan of the prison days and Rick's bizarre warlord personality change was I believe the point at which the show killed its long term potential , and I wish we could go back and change it.
I think the natural story would have originally pointed towards Rick and the survivors building a town or developing the prison into a community, and continuing to slowly carve out peace in the surrounding areas, but the show drives them all more and more unnaturally into the increasingly outlandish situations, and Rick's personality is the catalyst the writers use to make it happen...and I believe it was wrong for them to do so as it just led to the downfall of the show.
Napoleon (2023)
Beyond the historically inaccuracies, this film is irritating and ultimately unsatisfying.
I'll keep this simple to avoid covering the same ground as a thousand other reviews.
This movie is about 2/3rds about Napoleon awkwardly interacting with people and acting braindead, 1/6th of the movie is his victories in which we don't get to see his genius in action...we just see him make some hand gestures to demonstrate him acting out his master plans...so whilst his tactical genius in inferred we never really see it on screen we just see special Napoleon acting the fool, and the final 1/6th of the movie is his failures which are sort of skipped over to make way for the awkward conversations which make up the 2/3rds of the movie.
Napoleon and his wife in this movie are portrayed like two people who have never had a conversation with anybody else before and several whole (long) scenes are spent watching these two awkwardly interact, make noises, laugh and stare at each other much like severely handicapped people would. Its as confusing as it is irritating. Why would they choose to fill a good 2 thirds of the movie with awkward incoherent dialogue and other interactions??
Napoleon doesn't appear make a single coherent decision in the movie, he acts or says nothing like the actual Napoleon, and yet despite 90% of the movie showing him on the same level as Reek from Game of Thrones, he's still somehow reveered as a god by his people.
I cant work out if this movie is meant to be for or against Napoleon but either way it shows him as a simpleton so it's intended effect is neither here nor there.
The historical inaccuracies are painful and unnecessary. Napoleon's life is a rich treasure trove of barely explored stories. This movie could have chosen any of them and struck gold. Instead they decided to create probably the worst story they possibly good.
All the Light We Cannot See (2023)
Not usually a fan of WW2 fiction, and despite this TV show being worth a watch... it confirms my prejudice
My reasons for disliking WW2 fiction are pretty reasonable : there are enough real stories in world war 2 to make books and films for centuries, and non fiction War stories cannot help but dive headlong into stereotypes and well worn story tropes.
All the light we cannot see absolutely uses tropes at every corner, I haven't read the book so I don't know if this theme follows there but in the Netflix adaptation we bounce from cliché to cliché unapologetically every step of the way. The characters are woven straight from the extremes of every ww2 stereotype: the innocent yet brave (insert some key aspect to their character which gains sympathy from the audience) girl, the protective father that inevitably perishes, the savior of the poor character who is the embodiment of christ and an inspiration to everyone, every German except the unlikely hero and his family are Hitlers wet dreams, every single german seems to have been drafted straight from Auschwitz and spends most of this TV show spewing out typical Nazi things... its a well worn path and in times by would have been acceptable and expected but we live in an age where we ve moved past the stereotypes, we understand the German perspective more than ever before, we ve read the letters sent home and we know that most of the Werhmacht stationed in France in 1944 were sick or wounded, we ve stopped seeing them as simple evil terminators and as (mostly) victims of the same regime they fight for, and yet this show is happy to take another blind stab at them (for anyone interested please read some literature on the D day landings from the German perspective, it's harrowing and absolutely required if you want to appreciate exactly how awful the war was)
The audacity of this show to have a magic gem which no one shuts up about is just ridiculous and sits perfectly alongside the incredible levels of plot armour everyone has (reference the scene where the German hero is literally found at the scene of the crime dead to rights and instead of being executed is instead just mologued at for half an hour before he's saved in another plot armour development)(also ref the grenade and blind girl scene where she's given a detailed and drawn out explanation of the workings of a grenade... and then enough time to bake a cake let alone save herself)
Just a tragic stereotyping mess. But worth a watch... if you like simple ww2 fiction with Germans and French with British and American accents.
Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)
Potent subject, with a story needing to be told. But 200 minutes is ridiculous
I love a good story and this one is a brilliant one. I also feel its important to shed light on this horrendous event because I believe that not many people would know about it otherwise.
Unfortunately for this story I believe fewer people than it deserves are going to get to.understand it due to this movies run length and pacing.
On what planet did this need to run for nearly 4 hours? And why if the movie is so long why was there so many pauses, silent moments and filler??? 1 hour could have been cut without losing a scene and another hour could have been cut without losing any of the story and would have done it a lot of favours.
Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins: Grit (2023)
Completely bizarre episode.
3 recruits, 2 of which put in the most effort, get medically withdrawn due to Heat stroke.
Ignoring the fact that those guys desrrved to remain, This episode completely ignores the fact that a lot of the weaker members of the group didn't suffer because they put in minimum effort. And also fails to acknowledge that the only reason they went down was because they were holding up the team.
The staff instead do the usual routine of looking at a recruit and the 'interrogation' quickly becomes a sob story.... again.
Just feel if this really was a test to see who's the best then there were many people they could have focused on this episode. And many terrible people who needed highlighting.
This show is almost entirely driven by drama and not actual performance.
Black Mirror: Beyond the Sea (2023)
A bad story with excellent delivery.
This black mirror season has mostly stepped away from sci fi and instead tells the story of stuff happening in the black mirror universe before the 20th century. This story follows two astronauts in the 60s who are able to defy the speed of light by controlling replicas from millions of miles away from earth in real time and continue to live out a life with their families.
Unfortunately the storyline for this episode was drawn out and some of the elements felt forced. One such example is If you have Aaron Paul come across as an absolute gem of a husband for most of the episode don't expect the audience to buy it when they are asked to accept that he neglects his wife.
The ending is probably what will turn audiences off the most..no spoiler alert.. the whole season every episode has a sudden cliffhanger ending which ends the story early to let the audience's mull over whatever message the writers are gushing over. This episode is no exception and it's as infuriating and unsatisfying as the rest but this episodes cliffhanger felt almost like a copout, the fruit was picked at its ripest and was rotten by the time it was at the shop.
I'm not sure what's going on with this season but this episode was a swing and miss.
House of the Dragon (2022)
Safe, plain and wrapped up in modern day politics
I forgave the first episode for hammering the equal rights drum because it seemed like a decent start albeit a bit safe, but the second episode has continued to hammer that same equal rights drum and the scenes are all based around the same small cast in the same locations... There's no broad scope or grand scale feel to the show, it's very narrow.
I'm really hoping they are just building up to something before broadening the show. Because there is no way this show will succeed with one plotline, 10 characters and probably around 6 different proper sets.l, especially when you consider that in GOT each episode probably covered 4 plotlines had a dozen or so big sets and included a cast of 20 or so main / secondary characters.
Bullet Train (2022)
All the right ingredients, handled a little carelessly
This movie was in so many ways brilliant, each scene in the first 2/3rds of Bullet Train was beautifully orchestrated and in a lot of cases knitted really well with the overall narrative to create a great atmosphere and kept us all really entertained.
There were a few random odd choices here and there which jarred a little such as the almost too cheesy and try hard plot surrounding the 'innocent but vicious' assassin girl, which was absolutely overplayed. Compare her character to the nasty piece of work from Kill Bill (spikey chain ball girl) and you see how a manga inspired villain girl persona can be handled without being overplayed.
By the ending scenes of this movie I was completely in love with this movie, it's funny, violent and suspenseful scenes culminating in a final showdown, which while ultimately fell a little flat due to just how long and ridiculous it was, was a good enough ending to not ruin the film.
Is it perfect? No. Can its problems be fixed with a nice director's cut to trim off some baggage? Yes.
Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022)
Impressive budget but poorly paced and written
I have the constant feeling that I'm watching some form of recap or fan edit when watching Kenobi, the pacing is ridiculously off. Scenes that probably needed a half hour to naturally conclude are over in under a 2 minutes and each scene has to include some reference, fun fan pandering or new character..it's far too dense to keep up and build a solid narrative with.
Formula 1: Drive to Survive: Hard Racing (2022)
Netflix are driving this series into the ground
These guys have complete access to stock camera footage, as well as their own footage, radio chatter, interviews etc etc. The opportunities to take what was already an incredible season and sex it up a bit with some nice editting were almost like taking candy from a baby, and sure, add some drama in there for some extra credit.
When you know what they have to work with, you realize how garbage this season of drive to survive was.
Starstruck (2022)
Great concept but the positivity is cringe
You could literally come out onto the stage and fart into the mic and the judges would swoon.
At least Adam tries to tell the truth 😂😂
This show needs to be less trophy for everyone and more harsh competition in order to survive.
American Horror Story: Fearful Pranks Ensue (2013)
This season doesn't have the same magic as the previous two.
Really struggling with this one. They've decided that race politics sells more views than good storytelling . I'd rather have a decent story to be fair.
And Just Like That... (2021)
And just like that...their careers were over.
At first I hated this show only because it was soul suckingly political and barely like sex and the city. But it's occured to me that this entire show only exists as a cash grab, and now I hate it because of that.
Product placement CONSTANTLY for extra cash of course.
Every modern political angle covered to ensure every demographic satisfied to maximise viewership,
Unbelievable plot twists, deaths and reveals every episode to ensure people keep watching.
It's desperate and obvious. Die gracefully ladies.
Eternals (2021)
The potential for greatness but held back by Marvel.
This film had all the right ingredients for an absolutely groundbreaking and cinema changing experience, and yet it never quite put those ingredients together.
I found myself with a constant feeling that something amazing was about to happen and yet towards the end of the movie I realised it would never come. The film would fall back into marval clichés after some original and incredible scenes, seemingly being moderated by Disney corporate commitiees.
The ending is a perfect example of cookie cutter Disney and really highlighted how even the most original and ambitious Disney project likes to play things safe. It made me realise how almost every scene in this movie was a little muted and never really pushed too hard against the grain.
This needs a re-edit and a Zach Snyder cut !
Clarkson's Farm (2021)
Great fun
Absolutely brilliant. Gave the whole family a laugh.
Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn (2020)
What did I just watch.
Poor action, poor dialogue, poor story. What a dumpster fire.
Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: Chapter Fourteen: Lupercalia (2019)
Back on course?
The first few episodes of this season felt very at odds with season 1. This episode is still different but at least entertaining
Better Call Saul: Something Unforgivable (2020)
Unbelievable!
I think the reason some people are giving this an 8/10 is because this whole season has been groundbreaking and incredible. It set the bar so high.
I've been watching through Breaking Bad again and most of the season finales are fairly indistinguishable from the normal episodes, to the point where when binge watching it I don't usually notice that I've started the next season until I check which episode I'm on. Better call Saul has usually kept its best episodes for the season finales but this season has been different in that every episode is on par with the biggest moments from season 1-4 of Better call Saul and the entire Breaking Bad series.
We re so lucky to have this show and I'm so glad it's viewership has finally caught up with how good it is. I think the fanbase of Better call Saul has the potential to reach that of Breaking Bad, it just needs enough people to tell other people to 'stick with it' through the first 2 seasons.
Life in Pieces: Sixteen Spanish Car Leak (2018)
This season is definitely a step down
Has anyone else noticed that EVERY conversation in this show now follows the formula of ending every sentence with an awkward reveal or confession?
"Hey shall we go to that restaurant tonight?"
"Oh sorry, we can't! Greg is had a bad experience there with the manager"
"Yeah how was I meant to know that eating 6 plates of the free bread would do that to someone!"
"Honey you vomitted over a baby"
"You know you'd think I'd have taken my IBS more seriously!"
See I can write for this show too.
Life in Pieces (2015)
Great first 2 seasons, quality drops of from season 3
I binged season 1 and 2 over a couple of weeks and was completely sold on the series. Season 1 was simple yet grounded, with season 2 opting to become a little bit more silly in return for higher production value.
I'm most of the way through season 3 now and completely struggling! The humour is as slapstick and ungrounded as Modern Family, the characters are making constant personal reveals (mostly sexual) which are just outright bizarre, the intimacy and warmth of the character development has been cast aside to make way for one weird scenario after another making the characters into 2D versions of their previous selves. It's really noticeable if you go back and watch an episode from season 1 again how simple the shows gotten.
I mean the biggest two character changes I've seen is in the Grandmother who's gone from an incredibly crafty and intelligent woman to someone who's only purpose in the show is to reveal inappropriate things about her children and the Grandfather who has gone from a simple yet loveable traditional man who's at odds with his soft children to simply an elderly goofball with nothing but childish things to say.
The shows writers/producers seem to have had a sit around the table chat about what they should do going forward with the show, and one too many bad choices were made.
Sex Education (2019)
Cinematography I've been waiting for
Yes it's an American TV show based in England but I absolutely love the cinematography and I wish every TV show followed the flow this show's shots have.
Game of Thrones: The Bells (2019)
The snaking storylines all headed for kings landing
What horrors awaited us under kings landing? What has bad things has Cersei been up to? How far will she go to keep her throne? How will the Bank of Bravo's betray her? The golden company was founded by Tygarians... That HAS to lead somewhere! BRANS been awfully quiet...what's he plotting? Jon Snow MUST be biding his time... The night king can't just die like that... Where's Dawn?
Well, we can forget about all that now because Dany snapped and blew apart not just Kings Landing, but any possibility of anybody else in the Game Of Thrones having a master plan or having predicted this. This means that anything that now happens is purely reactive and not planned or destined to happen...
I have a feeling the Dragons death scene is going to play out like the dragon scene in the Hobbit, and Danys going to have a drawn out death scene just like in every Hollywood movie ever, Jon Snow will do a speech and declare the war over, there will be some surprise (not surprising) deaths and then the 200 remaining population of Westeros will walk away cheering.
Alita: Battle Angel (2019)
Highly recommended despite Hollywood adding their clichés and tropes.
Great actors, legendary backing producers, decent source material and the budget most movies can only dream of.
Does Alita fullfil it's potential? No. The actors arnt given a script deserving of their talents, it's a very stereotypical script. The source material is used well but could have had less of the Hollywood pacing and design, the special effects was probably the best I've ever seen ... Yet Alita had a weird mouth which was slightly out of sync with the rest of her face and the racing scenes were unanimously a waste of money - you could have cut them out of the movie and my rating of the movie wouldnt have changed.
All the flaws of this film are so obviously Hollywood's fault that it's hard to reduce my rating of it, at the end of the day no other movie has pulled off a live action adaptation of an Anime before. And if you consider that then a rating of 8/10 is very reasonable.
If Hollywood could allow themselves to stop with the awful forced romances, surprise bad guys who are not that surprising , doubting the hero's intentions for a bit, doubting the hero's friends intentions for a bit, moral objection scene, hero losing everything scene, hero winning everything scene, hero surprising everyone by kicking ass scene, hero giving a badass speech in a situation that wouldn't ever happen scene etc etc then we might actually have a 10/10 movie.
Narcos: México (2018)
High quality, but the writers bypassed dozens of decent events to bring us endless nothing.
I really loved the first 3 seasons and while it was a little boring in places, I never felt like a was wasting my time.
Narcos Mexico is all upside down, the narrator is mostly gone which leaves the viewer in the dark as to context. The main narco boss is a side character in his own story, I just didn't feel anything towards him like with Pablo and Cali brothers. Rafa dominates this series in a bad way, he's such an annoying pointless character. Half the scenes felt like they were filler . It was just boring.
I kept waiting for something to happen, but it never did, which is surprising because a quick Google search will bring up loads of events this show decided to ignore in favour of conversations about the weather.
Kingdom (2019)
8/10 despite some nagging questions which let this series down.
I just want to emphasize that this series is through and through decent. I didn't want to have any issues or questions with it due to the engaging story, cutting edge cinematography, incredible actors and genuine horror.
So we are led to accept that the two at the medical compound spent around 3-5 days securing the compound, adding spikes around the parameter and inside, fed and watered themselves... And didn't once think to stab the zombies while they slept? Considering one of them is an elite warrior who has no issue in slaughtering the zombies in the hundreds later on, I would have thought his first reaction would be to just off them.
While on the subject of the Hunter warrior fellow, why did he feed the people a corpse which was at least a week old? Why not actually go out do what he said and go hunt a deer? If they don't answer that question in season 2 then it devalues the entire show because if it turns out that he's all for the disease to avenge his family then suddenly it all fits and I'll forgive my last two points. But if they leave it unanswered then we will have to just ignore such a stringent point.
The bad guys are 2D and do nothing but add filler to an otherwise brilliant series. The long drawn out sequences where the baddies prattle on about how evil they are and how ingenious their plans are just make the eyes roll.
My biggest question is what was with the ending? My theory is that they ran out of money. If you think about it the tension of the series was building towards this ending, the story at the pace it was heading needed at least 10 episodes not 6, and the zombies up until that point had religiously gone to sleep at sunrise and woken up as soon as the sun set which doesn't allow enough time for the temperature to change, the zombies also don't react to warmer environments such as a room with a fireplace , being wet ( they'd stay colder for longer) and cold misty days as shown in episode 4.
So the fact that they dropped in this long drawn out, filler filled last episode which contained nothing but building montages which seemed to be made partially of shop floor footage, conversations which I feel would normally have been cut or spread out over a few episodes and a plot twist so unusual it doesn't make much sense- leads me to believe that they simply ran out of money, time or ideas. Netflix could have turned the money tap off and told them to get it wrapped up pronto for the start of 2019. If we go with this theory then the ending does kind of make sense.
Despite all this I would highly recommend this series to everyone. And I just hope Netflix does allow them to finish season 2 without it too being cut short