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Reviews
Afflicted (2018)
Interesting
I'm fascinated that so many people feel the show was unfair to these patients. In my view the show was extremely kind and uncritical to them, if anything showing them in the best possible light. The fact that, despite that, they all come across as either fakers or Munchausens sufferers pretty much tells you how hard it is to believe they have the multiple mysterious illnesses they're quite sure (despite contradictory diagnoses) they have. Can't say for sure, of course - science discovers new things about medicine all the time - but these folks come across as in it for the attention and pity, despite the gentle, forgiving slant of the program creators.
The Devil's Hour (2022)
Slow and contrived
This isn't badly done, overall. But the contrivances - especially the hysterical lead actress, constantly one breath from a nervous breakdown, but never actually asking for the help she needs - and she's in CPS! It's a perfect example of poor writing, where character is pretzeled in order to accommodate contrived delays in the plot.
The actors do a good job, the kid especially. But there are a lot of cliches, and lot of contrived plot points, and it's REALLY slow paced. If you're prepared for that, enjoy. I find myself fast forwarding a LOT through really tedious slow shots, muttering "Will you get to the point?"
3022 (2019)
Who in the what now
Tedious. None of the characters says to the other characters what needs to be said. It's like all of them feel this incomprehensible need to be secretive. And of course, the main female character is written so that she is stupid and illogical because she's thinking with her emotions. Why is this never the male character? Also why the heck do these movies have to be so dang dark? Has it occurred to anybody that it's completely unrealistic to show a working ship of any sort that is cast into shadows and pitch darkness all the time? There would be lights because people have to work. Just lazy cheap filmmaking.
Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)
Over the top but well worth watching
Younger viewers would perhaps find the black and white, as well as the slower pace, difficult. However, this movie is well worth viewing for the excellent performances from several of the actors, particularly Dietrich and Tracy. For my part I found Schell's performance too over the top to be anything but melodramatic, nor did I find his arguments logically compelling (maybe the whole world is guilty, but only these four people were at trial, and a real judge would have shut him down), but I guess the Oscars found it otherwise. This movie finds a good middle ground between demonizing al Germans and letting them all off the hook.
Return to the Wild: The Chris McCandless Story (2014)
Revealing
It was clear beforehand that the guy was mentally ill. To hear his upbringing confirms it, and to see his mother - the one who is as responsible as his father for the abuse the kid lived through - SMILE as she observed that he died in the sleeping bag she'd bought for him - to hear the total denial of her guilt, to see the parents' faces and see their TOTAL denial of the abuse they put their kids through - it's no wonder he was mentally ill with parents like that. His father was a monster and his mother a monstrous enabler. This wasn't an adventure. He was fleeing the misery inside his own head, and that is nothing to admire or emulate.
Don't Pick Up the Phone (2022)
Hard to watch
Hard to watch if you are an intelligent, educated person, because you can't believe anyone could be so stupid as to believe they have the authority to strip search a fast food employee EVER under ANY circumstances unless they are cops. But these - uneducated, credulous, fearful - are precisely the "right" people to target if you want to scare them into heinous acts. Show is VERY slow paced, as these shows always are, stretching a one hour show into three hours. You have to give the culprit credit for his cunning, although you also have to realize what a pathetic worm he is that THIS is the way he has to get his kicks. Moral? We need to - NEED TO - educate our populace better. We need to value education in this country.
Them (2021)
Don't waste your time
In trying to be artsy and cryptic the unqualified filmmakers end up with a bland, boring, blank of a movie where you understand nothing of why anyone is doing anything. You understand no one's heart, fears, interests, motivations, goals. The characters speak in bland monosyllabic utterances intended to be clever, but they're just vapid and precious, embarrassingly so. You don't give a darn about any of them. They aren't invisible - they're absent. Pretentious filmmaking by those unqualified to be pretentious. Circular film ends up where it started, emphasizing the time you've wasted watching it.
Black Summer (2019)
Meh
The problem with zombie movies is they have no choice but to follow the same formula: discover zombies, run from zombies,fight zombies, run from zombies, find a safe house, rest and exchange painfully tedious personal stories sprinkled with witless internecine quarreling, run from zombies, fight zombies, run from zombies. There's always a theoretical or mythical safe house. When they reach it, if it exists, they sit and stare in numb exhaustion, and find out that a cure is being worked on. Then the zombies either overrun the place (downer ending) or they don't (happy ending). All zombie stories are exactly the same. This one provides no standouts except in the area of constant incredibly lengthy shots of people breathing hard. If that gets you off, you'll love it.
Colony (2016)
Not too bad
Although it's difficult to accept that aliens with seriously advanced technology can't detect and wipe out these ridiculously amateurish "rebels," the show is fun and it's delightfully clever of them to keep the aliens hidden. Frankly, that's what I watching for. The characters are OK (though the pathetic little teen romances the son gropes for are boring, but those are always boring), the writing is average, the premise seriously flawed (see my first sentence), but it's still some fun to watch.
Misha and the Wolves (2021)
Not bad, has holes
The story isn't uninteresting, but I would have loved to have been there to press the publisher. She was convicted of offshoring profits rather than paying them out. She NEVER even comes within a light-year of actually addressing this conviction (and she lost the appeal) but is whining about her life has been destroyed by this little old lady, so she sets out to ruin HER in revenge. What I wanted to know was "So, publisher, you DID in fact rip this woman off for millions in profits, right? So why would I trust ANYTHING you do or say?" Also, a birth certificate and school certificate indicate SOMEONE went to school there and was named a certain thing. It is NOT proof that Misha is this same person. There is no way at this remove to prove or disprove that based on a birth cert and school records. As for the different names in different editions of the books ... did Misha do the translating? No, the publishing companies do that. So why is the criminal publisher claiming this was something Misha did? Did Misha rewrite her book in different languages? Who does that? No one does - the publisher does. So ... they may both be liars, but the narrative is FULL of infuriating holes and huge leaps to conclusions not supported by the evidence.
Mister Frost (1990)
Could have been good
This is a movie with a good concept until you get into the particulars. The devil has decided to convince the most hardened skeptic that he exists. So he picks, as the most hardened skeptic... Wait for it... an unbalanced, emotionally fragile, mentally disturbed shrink. I want to see this devil convince a mentally balanced, stable, confident physicist. She was already prepared to see and believe anything, she was so messed up. That was no challenge. Had this movie presented the devil with an actual challenge, it would have been good. Jeff Goldblum is always great to watch. It's a shame this movie wasted him.
The Walking Dead (2010)
Hohum
Well, I'm in season two. I'm not seeing what the hullabaloo is about. The acting is adequate, the SPFX good. Realism takes a huge hit when you see that women who've been without any modern convenience for months still have perfect mani-pedis, perfectly colored hair, perfect teeth and face makeup, and shaved armpits. In a world of zombie apocalypse and almost total privation, funny how Hollywood grooming standards did NOT fall by the wayside.
Hero is likable. Wife who ***************SPOILER******************evidently didn't even wait til his alleged corpse was cold to begin banging his best friend? Not so likable. ***************SPOILER*****************
Other characters are reasonably interesting, but nothing standout to make me go "Wow, that was REALLY good" and honestly nothing to make me care if they live or die. It's a zombie series. There are zombies.
It's unlikely I'll keep watching. It's not terrible by any means; it's just nothing you haven't seen before - absolutely nothing - if you've ever seen a zombie or apocalypse movie.
The Haunting of Hill House (2018)
Far too long
Apparently the makers think their concept is so difficult to understand they have to keep hitting the viewers over the head with it. We GET it. They're dysfunctional. Dad kept secrets. Mom was nuts and the kids are all screwed up. WE GET IT. It was about 40 percent longer than it ought to have been. I fast forwarded through the CONSTANT whinging and shrieking at each other (you can see that at trailer park, and it contributed nothing but noise). Too slow, too heavy-handed. That said, it's beautifully shot and well acted. It just needed to spend a LOT more time in the cutting room.
Aftermath (2021)
Medium good
Has some good spooky moments; pretty well staged and acted, but you get frustrated with the stupidity of the characters (this is sloppy writing). The wife knows the seller's brother wants the place back - he outright threatens her - and she DOESN'T TELL ANYONE. Hello? Then again there'd be no horror movies if people actually thought, and communicated, would there?
NOTE: This movie has already been made, in the 80s: Through the Eyes of a Killer. If you've seen that one, you see the "twist" in this one coming from the get-go.
Manifest (2018)
Started out interesting
Started with an interesting idea that could have gone in many different, good directions. Instead it's a weird mishmash of religious nonsense with "Ben's" definition of what's going on changing every few episodes to some other nonsensical idea that suddenly everyone buys into, and "Eureka" doing some conveniently undetailed and unexplained (and ridiculous) "scientific" experiments to prove ... well, what exactly? There is nothing of substance to this show. It devolves into religious nonsense and teen romance-style angst, which is always boring. If they wanted it to be a religious angle, they should've run with that. If they wanted a scientific angle, they should've run with that. The problem is the writers don't know what they want, and I'm bored with waiting to find out.
Salvation (2017)
Started out well
As most shows do, with interesting premise and tolerable characters, but gradually decayed into cliches and by-the-numbers writing, nothing but "big plan-disaster-big plan-disaster-big plan-disaster" until you're exhausted. Also, the characters, particularly the women, get rather short shrift. The lead female character, moments after shooting another person to save the world, completely forgets that they're trying to save the world to interrupt her love interest for the equivalent of a verbal hug. Really? The entire world is at stake and you want to talk about your widdoe feewwings? REALLY? And the young male lead, tasked with saving the world, is too busy chasing his little girlfriend and angsting over her "Is she talking to another boy? Is he cuter than me? Did he sign her yearbook" to actually pay attention to his work. No one, literally, seems to keep their eye on the ball for more than a second. All disasters are forecast, even the big "it's not an asteroid" finale was obvious. It's a shame. This could have been fun if they hadn't devolved to a paint-by-numbers boy-meets-girl soap opera.
Unearthed (2016)
Amateurish and melodramatic
The narration refuses to use past tense, as if to imply that these ancient structures were being built even as we watch. There are multiple factual errors, and worst is the overall implication that these structures are all TOTAL mysteries and the people on the show are discovering all this interesting stuff about them (for instance, I'm watching "The Tower of London" and the narrator pretends no one knows who built the tower, when it's been an established fact of history since the day it was built. The archaeologists play along, as if they are discovering things that have been known for decades, if not centuries.
The show seems aimed at kids, but they'd be better served to watch a program that uses facts and not falsehoods.
The visuals are fun, and sometimes you learn something you didn't know - but you can't trust the source, so ...
Beauty and the Beast (2012)
No
I've tried twice to watch this, but it's so focused on flash instead of substance - everyone's young and super hot (clue to Hollywood: one scar does not make a handsome man ugly), everyone's clever with their little one-liners, and there's not an ounce of depth or gravitas in ANYONE'S performance. It's like they all know it's a music video and not a serious drama. Impossible to like people who aren't even trying to create interesting characters. All posturing and dim lighting. Makes me miss the original series, which had its flaws, but had likable characters who weren't all supermodels.
The 100 (2014)
So far so lame
Love how people from earth - presumably either important or capable people - are hastily shot into space as the apocalypse looms, and yet SOMEHOW, every single person is hot. The 100? All super hot. No fat people, no ugly people (I guess in space they eat those or shove 'em out the airlock). This has all the makings of a teen romance series with the apocalypse as a backdrop. I've just started. I'm going to guess how long before these hormone addled supermodels all start slobbering all over each other and fighting for sexual dominance, apocalypse bedamned. Zzzzzzzzz....
The 100 (2014)
So far so lame
Love how people from earth - presumably either important or capable people - are hastily shot into space as the apocalypse looms, and yet SOMEHOW, every single person is hot. The 100? All super hot. No fat people, no ugly people (I guess in space they eat those or shove 'em out the airlock). This has all the makings of a teen romance series with the apocalypse as a backdrop. I've just started. I'm going to guess how long before these hormone addled supermodels all start slobbering all over each other and fighting for sexual dominance, apocalypse bedamned. Zzzzzzzzz....
Lost in Space (2018)
Wow
I can well believe Mrs Robinson cheated to get her entire family into this situation. I've only seen episode 1 and I'm aghast at a family who would watch someone get frozen into ice and STAND THERE while the ice thickened and hardened, chatting and ticking around and then finally getting something sharp and going "Oh. Wow. This ice is really thick. Gee. How did that happen?"
These people are IDIOTS. Wow.
Visuals are very nice.