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ChazCone
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Franklin (2024)
Excellent mini-series but...
The mini-series has great production values and the story of Franklin's ultimately successful negotiations with the French which saved the American Revolution is gripping.
The switching on and off of subtitles to account for the French-speakers was very distracting, taking one's eyes from the screen. The solution might have been to switch all the dialog to English after a few scenes.
But my biggest problem with the production is Michael Douglas, an actor whose work I greatly admire. That they did next to nothing to alter his appearance to resemble Franklin is distracting. I suppose he refused to have his hairline moved back another six inches and to not to have a nose prosthetic may have been vanity. But all I see is Michael Douglas, not Benjamin Franklin. Contrast this with other bio-based productions and, at least, the main character has been made to look like the subject.
This is not to say that Douglas doesn't deliver an excellent performance, but his appearance as Douglas rather than Franklin is as distracting as the subtitles.
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: Tunnel Blind (2024)
Poor start for S25
I'm a huge fan of SVU all the way back to S01E01. Whoever wrote this episode asks 'way too much of the viewer. Benson and her son are driving into Manhattan and she's briefly blinded by a bright light as she exits the tunnel. And then she sees a truck with a young blonde girl in the passenger seat. Somehow she thinks the girl is in danger though the girl shows no signs of alarm. Millions of New Yorkers and she sees a random girl in a random vehicle and becomes suspicious. Later it turns out that the girl is a kidnap victim. Really? Oh, and the girl resembles an imported sex doll right down to an identical bead bracelet - WITH THE SAME NAME spelled out in beads? Really? This is a two-parter so maybe S25E02 will make more sense. We'll see..
For All Mankind: Glasnost (2023)
Welcome the saga's return!
I feel like we've waited forever for Season Four. S3E10 took my breath away. I really enjoyed the montage of real and not-real events over the intervening eight years. Somehow I missed Margaret's survival of the bomb in S3E10. I have no idea how she survived and wound up in Russia; maybe a subsequent episode will clear that up for me.
Those eight years have been tough on Ed Baldwin. Looks like he aged 20 years in that time.
The photography and special effects and overall production values are the best of all the modern SF series out there IMHO.
I'm hooked for the long term. As soon as the alternate history concept dropped in 2019, I found the writing to be thought-provoking and entertaining. I'm sad to lose several of the main characters but the storyline has to move along, I suppose. I'll be watching every Friday for sure.
Clickbait (2021)
A must-see thriller, start to finish in eight episodes!
I'm one of those people who figures out mysteries in movies and TV quickly. It really irritates my wife when I tell her whodunit :)
This one beat me up for the entire run! Great watch, highly recommended. I do have a couple of things I question that have nothing to do with the plot.
Apparently, a screenwriter has to include a minimum of three Woke/Progressive elements before a story can be green-lit.
For example (and I'm talking about story elements that have nothing to do with advancing the plot):
1) There's no reason the family has to be mixed-race.
2) There's no reason the detective has to be Muslim.
3) There's no reason the reporter has to be gay.
If they had included a Lesbian/wheelchaired/Native American they'd have hit all the buttons.
Reminiscence (2021)
Inexplicable to me how this project got greenlit
I won't rehash the plot(?) - others will/have done that. But I'd like to list the items that made no sense whatever:
1) What does the flooded East coast have to do with anything?
2) What did the "war" have to do with anything?
3) Presuming this is set in a dystopian future, why are all the automobiles from the 70s and 80s?
4) How did the lady in the white clapboard house get groceries?
5) What did the gunfights have to do with anything?
6) How did Thandiwe age 40 years to a grandmother without the daughter she went to find -- and now a granddaughter?
7) Could they not have found an actress anywhere who could play Hugh Jackman's lover with more than zero chemistry?
Thankfully I was able to watch it on HBO Max so I didn't have to invest a penny. But that's still two hours I'll never get back.
The Tomorrow War (2021)
I'm writing this review for only one reason..
Casting was fine, special effects very good, cinematography excellent. Plot? Well, it could have been made more believable with good writing. That's my major gripe. Dialog poor, character development not so much.
Here are my problems with it.
1) 30 years in the future, weaponry hasn't changed nearly at all. Rifles are tricked out cosmetically but are essentially M16s with the usual "infinite capacity" magazines we see everywhere. Helicopters are from the 60s...
2) Drafting ordinary citizens to head 30 years into the future to help kill aliens with zero training/conditioning, etc. Is just stupid. Cannon fodder and that's all.
3) The volcano theory is expanded by talking to a .... 12yr old volcano fan ... rather than the scores of real volcano experts??? Really?
4) Others have commented on the ridiculous final act where eight people go, on their own, to eliminate a threat -- that won't even exist for nearly 30 years.
And, finally the reason I wrote this review:
When Muri and Dan are working on the killer toxin at 01:22:08 and say goodnight, he says" Good night, Chickpea." Writer dropped the ball. Her next line should have been, "That's Colonel Chickpea, to you!" Missed a tension reducing smile...
The saving grace for this film? As nearly always, J. K Simmons.
The Sinner: Part VIII (2020)
Well, I suffered through this whole debacle...
...and experienced the most wasted eight hours of my viewing life. Harry Ambrose could be the most annoying "hero" ever written. Nothing he does, nothing makes sense to a rational human being. I like Bill Pullman and I like Matt Bomer. How they were encouraged to sign on to this mess is beyond me.
No one at any time behaves like a real person.
Good news? At least it's over.
Peppermint (2018)
Third act insulted my intelligence, but...
I've loved Jennifer Garner since Alias. I always knew she'd be a star. I think I've seen everything she's done and enjoyed them all. I even enjoyed this one, but..
This film is essentially Charles Bronson's Death Wish with boobs. That's OK. I can get into a bad-ass female lead (which is where Hollywood is taking us now, over and over). But the writer took a mental vacation in the third act.
Spoilers next:
So the bad guys blow up the drug lab and she makes her escape just fine. She's dazed on the street, still carrying her M16 when a passerby stops to see if this filthy woman with a machine gun is "OK". She steals his car. No problem. And then she goes in pursuit of two bad guys in a black SUV. A car and occupants that she's never seen before and who have a nice lead while she's carjacking the innocent bystander. Not OK. How did she know to follow them and overcome the three-five minute lead? No way.
She catches them on Mulholland drive, passes them, blocks the road and kills them. OK. She takes the SUV and continues on Muholland. How does she know where to go? How does she know when she gets there? Nope.
And then she rigs the car somehow (off camera) to slow roll along the circular driveway. Tiny brick on the accelerator? She follows along on foot executing bad guys by the numbers until the SUV mysteriously speeds up to 40MPH or so and crashes into the house. Everything after that was semi-plausible as shoot-em-ups go, but come on! Give me a thread of logic and reason to hold onto, please? Oh, I still love Jen!