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danshabash
Reviews
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022)
Its not a bad fantasy flick, has very little to do with Tolkien though
Let's just focus on the "main" character as an example: Galadriel's main motivation is supposed to be avenging the death of her brother Finrod at the hands of Sauron. But... Finrod is alive and has been for a very long time. He's been resurrected in Valinor very shortly after his death, and there's no way Galadriel doesn't know this since Finrod helped train the "armageddon" army that arrived in Middle-Earth to defeat Morgoth ages ago.
Not to mention Galadriel also has been married for ages at this point, yet her husband isn't even mentioned *as she's about to leave Middle-Earth for good*.
And the whole travel to Valinor thing... it's not up to Gil-Galad to decide who gets to go there, this is between Galadriel and the Valar. That's like Edward Longshanks awarding some general by sending them to heaven. Not to mention the whole character of Galadriel doesn't match canon and she's supposed to be like 6.5 feet tall (or whatever "tallest elven woman" height is). Etc. Etc.
So, it's not a bad flick, they should've just set in a proprietary universe tho, or said it's a parody/fanfiction.
The Newsroom (2012)
Starts great, finishes off mediocre
The reason I starting watching Newsroom is seeing Will's rant from Episode 1 on Youtube. It's quite good, and points out a lot of America's problems.
Unfortunately, the rest of the show consists of him blaming the Tea Party for these problems. Do I have a problem with Will smacking the Tea Party? No, in my opinion they deserve it ten times over.
What I do have a problem with is the show being JUST Will smacking the Tea Party? Yes. I thought this was supposed to be about the real news, or unbiased political commentary, or at the very least work in the newsroom.
Instead, the show might as well be called "Aaron Sorkin bitching about the Tea Party (with some teenage drama on the side and a very romantic re-imagining of newsroom work)".
I love the idea of the show, and I loved the first couple episodes; however, towards the end it became nearly as one-sided and repetitive as the Tea Party rhetoric it seems to hate. No wonder the show got such a high rating - people who agree with the huge bias love it, and the people who disagree don't watch it.
Taken (2008)
Great action movie, fairly realistic
The movie has some bad points - somewhat cartoonish characters and plot, speaking English when one should've been speaking French, etc.
However, it's still awesome. It's an action movie, and I usually look for two things there: good action, and a believable explanation as to why it's happening. Both Bourne and Bond movies fail in those respects, whereas Taken is successful.
I didn't see anything superhuman about the protagonist, yeah he's good at shooting, hand-to-hand and driving but that's it. He took a lot of risks (notably when his car gets shot up with an automatic .308, that could've penetrated enough to kill him), but there's nothing impossible about what he's doing.
A lot of people mention racial stereotypes - come on. The movie is set in France, which nationality do you want the corrupt cops to be? Brazilian? And yeah it's horrible how movie portraits the Albanian mafia, I mean they've only been dominating drug&slave trade in Paris for the last ten years or so and people already start showing it in movies.
So yes Taken could've been less cliché as far as the story goes, but that story is superbly presented