Reviews

So, Jennifer Lopez plays...

wait, that isn't right. Jennifer Lopez TRIES to imagine how to act (extremely poorly) a hysterical conservative woman with terrible hair and painfully bad attempts at showing any emotion. So the entire movie is a silly, cringy temper tantrum and screeching match against ChatGPT, and "Atlas" is stuck inside a giant robot that's hosting the AI. Yeah. I think I got it right this time.

Whole thing takes place on imaginary planet and the goal is to fight human-looking AI baddies.

So, it's supposedly a science fiction movie. But there's zero "science" in this fiction, whoever wrote that has no imagination, no idea how anything in the world works, from air to gravity to technology. So entire movie is just full of tired, uninspired, unrealistic "sci-fi" mumbo-jumbo, like "ion bombs" and "plasma blades", flying cars and planet-wide force fields, that's supposed to impress the viewer via heavy usage of CGI. (Which, by the way is pretty decent.)

But that's only decent thing about this 2-hour tour in lack of creativity and original thoughts. It's a movie written by a clear idiot and meant to impress idiots. But I somehow doubt it succeeded.

One star for not being a superhero movie, one for CGI. That's all I can offer.

3 Body Problem is definitely above the typical gruel streaming platforms feed us, but as it's often with great sci-fi ideas, it starts falling off as episodes start exposing the main mystery.

There's two parts to this show, the great mystery, and the interpersonal drama. Now, the mystery is pretty great to about halfway to the season. When it's finally exposed, you'll be "eh, that's it?" and while it's still fun to watch, it's not all that much of a promise. Also, half of the initial mysteries get dumped and forgotten at rapid pace, "Lost"-style.

Then there's characters. Oh boy. Chinese woman who is secretly loved by English dude is in relationship with a Pakistani, while hanging out with a Mexican girl, a Nigerian guy and Samwell Tarly.

So... uh... meet the Planeteers! Captain Planet himself is played by an actor with origins from Hong Kong or the one with Irish descent, take your pick, and chased by mysterious Australian woman, while the main villain, so far, is a supercomputer in the form of a Japanese girl... All of it happens mostly in UK, by the way.

Yeah, it looks as ridiculous as it sounds. People at Netflix and the production companies have sure lost any resemblance of sanity. Their drama doesn't work very much, anyway, but luckily, only half of the show is about that.

I would watch a second season, just to see what comes next, but only because there's nothing else to watch those days, anyway.

Oh boy. What did I just watch?

So, there's Indian tech scammers. Who aren't Indian, but some sort of super crazed and corrupt Silicon Valley youth, complete with turning tech scams into sort of a game show, drugs, fancy colors and everything else you could come up with if you'd hate them very much and did psychedelics before scriptwriting. All those scenes lacked was massive bumping trance track.

They scam a random old woman, and she commits suicide. That activates Jason Statham, who's a "beekeeper". Supposedly secret member of secret organization that uses technology from 1952 (complete with monochrome monitors from "War Games"), and who's supposedly above the law.

Except he's absolutely not above the law, because every form of harshest law enforcement, from FBI SWAT to Tier One operators to Secret Service will try to kill him - something that's polar opposite of "being above of law".

But wait, it's all a video game, because somebody cheated and enabled god mode. At least that how it looks like, when Jason Statham repeatedly walks *into* group of those top-tier, armed-to-the-teeth opponents (group of dozen at least), and proceeds to punch each and every one of them. The suspense is round zero for all movie due them not even trying to act as if there's no immortality cheat and plot armor.

Which makes it a total John Wick ripoff, except that it makes zero sense and there's no even resemblance of anyone trying to shoot anyone. Final boss - or the twist of this videogame - is presented in extremely cringy, drawn-out scene where everyone with half brain cell will guess the twist in first second, but there's also people who write script for movies for living, so painfully long extra minutes for them are added to help those poor people along and understand what they're watching.

Add dreamy, blurry filters, ridiculous tolerance checklist, some really bad-looking actors who look and act like they were chosen from queue to local soup kitchen and other random 2024 nonsense to complete the list.

This movie gets 1 for existing, 1 for Statham existing and 1 for about 10 seconds of cool, jasonbourney fisticuffs. Rest is trash.

Basically, the review title says it all.

This show is another comedic take on history, this time, the history of Poland. But it's nowhere as funny as Norsemen, even though some actors can deliver as funny looks and lines, and Bartlomiej Topa does extremely fine job playing a simple-minded, but cunning rural noble. Rest of the cast... just seems to lack... that something that made Norsemen so funny. They feel more like bored theatre actors just doing what the script says. And that's what makes "1670" weaker.

Slavic rural life is pretty exotic for a location, and most cultural references are either hit or miss - a lot of the old laws and traditions are made fun of, but many of them would be clear only to most hardcode history buffs. There's also attempt to portray modern ideas in the medieval setting, and that, usually -- comes off much funnier.

I do enjoy it very much, and I do think we could use more history on our screens, but a better version of same thing already exists. And if the better thing gets you to wet your pants here and there from laughter, this one - sadly - gets only few chuckles.

Take ten people, and a living room. And let those people just... talk. No explosions, no CGI, no scares, no violence, nothing of sort whatsoever. Pure, simple, talk.

Now, find me a modern director that could make *entire movie* out of this.

Richard Schenkman and Jerome Bixby did, and not just "entire movie", they made a highly gripping, twisty and edge-of-your-seat exciting movie. A thought experiment that fuses both history and sci-fi and keeps you wondering till the end.

If you ever need to name an excellent movie, The Man From Earth should be on your short list. Actually, it's more of less cheating, even, since nothing else of sort exists.

Huh. I always whine about lack of realism - especially anything computer-related in movies.

Mr. Robot does hacking really, really well. Of course, it's sped up and Hollywood-magic-added, but it's a staple how they should do it in movies, now and forever. We never see the characters actually write any of those million Python scripts, but that's probably for the better. Hacking really feels like hacking.

Which is a really good thing, if your show is about hacking. But Mr. Robot is not about hacking. Some would say that Mr. Robot is about mental disorder. Which it tries to portray itself as. But Mr. Robot is not about mental disorder, neither. Mr. Robot is a social experiment called "how long until fans will see through our bs and quit?".

Similar, and arguably better experiment of this sort already exists, and it's a TV-show called "Lost". A show that just adds and adds layer of coating the more you try to see what's actually inside.

Mr. Robot does the same thing, but it lacks the exotic locations, suspenseful moments, deep mysteries and strong cast of "Lost". Sure, Rami Malek plays well, and so does supporting cast and Portia Doubleday probably ruined sleep of nerds worldwide, but it's still not "Lost". And I hated "Lost". And if "Lost" had one f-you-it's-all-a-dream disappointment, Mr. Robot does it constantly, again and again, building it up over many episodes, before exploding it all over your face. I can almost hear the director giggling like a naughty teenager.

If you take all this crap layer away, underneath is a quite poor and poorly-thought-out hacker story of a guy why took on world finance and a megacorporation while not understanding jack about money or finance, and ruined lives of millions by that. Even the big "final, redeeming hack" probably crashed world markets again and caused insane inflation (luckily, the show just ends at that point, so this misery is not shown).

It's a power fantasy of a 12-year old computer (or an A/V) club geek, and even though characters are lovely and try hard, it's sadly still all it is, with all the limitations and disappointment that come with it.

Just that, okay. The writing is teenage level, with story being about insanely impractical holographic screens and a magical computer chip that looks outright ridiculous. In other words, super lazy, as expected.

But the action scenes are pretty okay, and I'm happy to see Gal Gadot starring in a film, rather than playing second (fifth) fiddle to some other tired stars. She does seems to try and is pretty pleasant to look at. If anything, she's sort of no-nonsense and more serious type in her acting, so she would work much better in a spy movie that's rooted more to reality, and less dumb ninja/computer magic with superhero-movie mentality. Think of weaker version of "Salt", both in acting, direction and plot.

Only thing that really annoyed the hell out of me was shaking camera. There isn't a scene where camera shake isn't added in post production. And I don't mean action scenes. ALL of them. Once you notice it, you can't unsee it, and it's really, really bad.

But I don't particularly regret the time I spent watching Heart of Stone, even despite it being utterly dumb. Overall, it was okay.

Okay...

An alien spaceman and a young girl crash on prehistoric Earth. They have to trek 15 kilometers (which is about 2 hours on flat land, but they're on swampy and mountainous terrain) through forest full of dinosaurs to reach the "escape vessel". Dinosaurs are hangry. Man has pew pew space gun and a bag of grenades. That's the plot.

Simplicity is fine. "Alien" is very simple and similar in premise. So is "Predator". Total classics. Big, hungry and angry exotic lizards can be thrilling. But they just... aren't. Not in this movie. There are couple of reasons for this.

First is that this movie very liberally steals ideas and concepts from other movies. Except that those other movies - including the ones I already named - are insanely better. The protagonist is neither Ellen Ripley nor whoeverhewas in Predator. Nor even cool Comanche chick from "Prey". He's sort of whiney and distant nobody and I couldn't care less if he gets eaten by T-rex.

Then they stole the whole "space dad-daughter" thing from Interstellar. Which is really raw and crass here and makes me cringe, rather than care.

Then they stole entire Last of Us thing, but made the girl speak gibberish, so it won't work out neither, and the less said about it, the better.

And the dinosaurs - they're pretty badly pictured in general. CGI is pretty weak, they're boring, I don't think the carnivore ones really liked forests or mountains where this movie puts them and since they have no intellect nor surprises, it's like watching a boring documentary about weekend hunting.

You can skip through entire movie in 3 minute chunks and it'll be always same thing, whole thing feels like 3 minutes of content on loop. The ending is especially stupid, feels like a skit by filmmaking students or ages old Godzilla movie.

Meh.

The first two movies of this series were utter disappointment. If anything, they got the (extremely cringy) preachiness of original Robert McCall right, and not anything else.

Odd enough, third installation of this series isn't half bad. It's slow and grounded, but this actually works really well for the title. McCall ends up in saving a small Italian coastal town from cartoonishly evil mafia, and save for some water-muddling with terrorism and CIA (that doesn't really matter nor work), contained plot and location turns out to be a really good idea. It's classic "good, unarmed citizens vs. Evil baddies", much like any 1980's show -- including some episodes of original "The Equalizer".

Running at pleasant length of under 2 hours, almost everything goes will with this title. Recommended.

Not sure what movie everyone was watching; I saw very poor Mission Impossible with just 3 poor and messy action sequences, plus an extremely slow and boring "car chase".

IMF in this one, has turned into three very old and very tired men who don't even speak to each other anymore, and just spurt out exposition in rapid fashion.

The "big bad" is now ChatGPT and whole thing is about two selling two brass pieces with LEDs (a key) that goes into sunk Russian submarine. That gives access to ChatGPT (or something). It's not as bad as it sounds; it's worse. Everyone wants the parts of the key, although nobody knows where the key goes, so nothing really makes sense. Least of all, key itself, because locksmithing is... a thing... and key is simply a piece of filed copper.

Main antagonists are known weapons smuggler, played by insanely beautiful Vanessa Kirby, but who shouldn't even register as real threat for someone as badass as IMF, and... government of the US, which IMF is fighting against... WHY exactly?? Weren't they the last straw sort of unit of US? It starts to feel like actual ChatGPT would have written a better script than whatever this acid trip of an idiocy was. Maybe some earlier version did.

So there's nothing really to watch. Final train scene is somewhat more exciting than rest, but very messy and needlessly slapstick. I mean, try to describe what really happened, save from Tom Cruise doing a clown act through a fight scene... And there's no way human vision is so different that I saw something else; all those reviews praising this drivel to heavens can't be anything else than either blind or paid off people.

Mission: Impossible, the series is a beautiful lie. First two movies were halfway decent and third was cinematographic masterpiece. But from there on, it became very disposable and effortless. And by this installment, whole thing is almost as dead as Tom Cruise's face in most of the scenes. Maybe it's time to stop, since series thing never really worked out for them.

Trash.

With every bad movie, you get something. A bad horror movie will still have a scary moment. Bad action flick will still have some explosions. A bad romance will still be romance.

What, exactly, is Assassin's Creed selling? It's not martial arts move; fighting is too JasonBourney weird an unhistorical dance, except, it sucks. It's not an action movie, because few fisticuffs is all that's there. It not sci-fi, because plot of this movie gets out less plot than 7 minutes of intro of original game. And it's not anything else.

Highly popular game franchise it's "based on" sold historical exploration in amazing, bustling cities of old, and lethal parkour. This movie has none of it; there's three cities shown in really poor CGI, very muddled into fog, smoke and terrible tinting filters so you wouldn't notice how terrible they are (you still do).

"History" part is poorer than cheap 90's TV-shows like Spartacus or Xena: The Warrior Princess. All clothing is bought from either sex or carpet store (there were definitely zero people with history knowledge nor ability to Google on the set), and we're led to believe that people of Seville wore skulls, twigs and face tattoos in 15th century. Maybe they meant 1426 BC? Hell knows. And there's not much to it, anyway. An auto-da-fé, some rooftop chases with jerky, blurry fight scenes and that's basically it.

There is just no redeeming quality to any of this. We need a law - to put people who simply burn millions of dollars like this - in a prison. Ubisoft must have been in serious financial trouble to not sue them to seven hells for this.

What a weird, terrible show. I'm been watching this by couple episodes over couple years now.

It's supposed to be romantic comedy/sitcom thing but I don't think it is, and even more questionable is where it's aimed at.

First couple seasons seem to have a theme. Couple of weird losers try to get laid in NYC. It's not funny, but it's stable.

By final season, all hands have been thrown up in the air, and every second of it is utter idiocy - the show is like a sad stand-up comic who bombed his set right away, and instead of trying to save the act, started yelling at the audience and increasing volume and rage.

It becomes idiotic enough to appeal only to like 10-year olds. Yet, whole show is about sleeping with as many people as possible, even by modern liberal standards, it comes off as quite weird and gross. Is that a message for those 10 year old kids? Am I supposed to like the protagonists to whom show clearly shows as totally immoral, sociopathic and selfish? Which in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing, shows "It's always sunny in Philadelphia" does it perfectly, but here, it wasn't the intention, and entire of nine seasons combined aren't even moderately as funny as 10 minutes of mentioned show.

Final season is about "big marriage", but by then, three of the five main characters have slept with pretty much entire New York City (show makes sure to make a point of it, repeatedly) and probably contracted every STD imaginable. Uhh.

There is no saving grace for this... wait for it! ...trash. Don't waste your time.

A show based on 1993 novel by John le Carré, which itself is pretty much reimagination of (highly superior) 1978 spy novel by little-known Bulgarian writer Bogomil Rainov (Dying is the Last Option), The Night Manager tells a tale of a hotelier going undercover a criminal world of arms smuggling.

It's pleasingly short (6 episodes) and keeps going. Olivia Colman is a British national treasure as always, and Tom Hiddleston makes a pretty cool spy thriller protagonist, both in way he walks and talks.

I'm no fan of Hugh Laurie and his "bad guy" comes off pretty comically bad. Speaking of comically bad, show starts off with list of smuggled, weapons where every imaginable is listed, down to mustard and nerve gas, and fighter planes. At some point, bad guys shoot about couple million dollars worth of weapons in Iraqi desert, including napalming a village and shooting stingers at most current US drones, just to nail an arms deal contract of 6 million (I believe). So the realism factor is about as lousy as you would get from "Blacklist" or some other common-housewife-level of show.

But, since it's pretty short, it moves too quick for you to get truly annoyed, so I don't regret watching this one. Definitely better than many other shows of this kind.

I love this movie. Jake Gyllenhaal plays really well, Michelle Monaghan is at maximum charisma, and the plot has just right amount of science fiction, some dark mystery, and endless suspense. The cinematography is excellent as well.

Also, I really like movies that put story forward and do a lot with very little - there were basically four scenes in whole movie - a train, a capsule, a military installation and a train station/parking lot. Yet, like other excellent movies with such limited locations - like "The Cube" or "Man from Earth", the story and people are working so well that you barely notice.

If anything, the ending feels a little bit cheesy, and the science has been explained poorly. "Quantum mechanics" and "parabolic calculus" is basically poor way of saying "don't worry your little head about it". There's also sort of a plot hole. To not spoil anything much, protagonists have ability to create (better) alternate realities, but since it requires something bad to happen in current one, and they'll still stay in current one, why do they bother, exactly?

I wish this issue could have been addressed more. That said, absolutely excellent movie.

I really like the premise. I was expecting Die-Hard or Air Force One sort of stuff.

Turns out that it's a show about pathetic plot by extremely pathetic terrorists hijacking a plane. While pathetic cops can't do anything, and while pathetic politicians refuse to.

Pathetic passengers and pathetic flight crew just let it all sort of happen, and only hope to deal with pathetic conspiracy is in the form of Idris Elba, who - despite being pretty well-chosen of such character - can't do much to save his pathetic character or script.

I'm not an acting expert, but he sure doesn't try too hard, neither, realizing what pathetic production he landed up in. On the last day of filming, he probably picked up his paycheck, and deleted the contacts of creators and directors from his phone before he even left the set grounds.

Only characters that actually delivered some of the correct vibe were "the cleaners", but sadly, all a director could think of them to do was make them watch TV in apartments they broke into.... Tells the tale.

In the end, you have a 7 episodes of an "airport thriller" that has less thrills than a single episode of "24". Pathetic.

The show X-Files had its better and worse episodes. In this movie, we're definitely seeing a stellar representation of why Chris Carter created a world so loved by many. The movie is nearly excellent. The story is quite approachable even if you never saw the show before, the actors give their best, and so do everyone else on the set.

The cold shivers of paranoia will crawl over your back like unmarked tanker trucks filled with unknown biological agents and loaded on suspicious train speeding along unknown shrublands in the night.

That's The X-Files alright, pure and genuine.

Definitely recommended.

Let me state first off - I've never played the game. I'm sure there are many game fans who grind teeth and stomp feet over inaccuracies. But in case of Uncharted... hey, it's a pretty casual third-person action-adventure game. They're not exactly known for super deep lore or critical details. It's not Hitman, Witcher or Last of Us. It's Tomb Raider with male protagonist. There's treasure, guns and baddies. What can go wrong? So I don't think I really need to know the game, having played hundreds of the like before.

So I watched this movie cold. And - Uncharted is pretty good time. Save for some highly questionable CGI (/physics), it keeps moving, it's packed with some action every now and then, and everything works as you would expect from such movie.

And then there's Mark Wahlberg, who just supercharges everything with star power and extreme levels of professionalism. I don't really care for Tom Holland, but they seem to work pretty well together with Mark. There's also Antonio Banderas, but... eh?

Given how poor such action adventure movies are lately (see: Red Notice), Uncharted feels quite alright. It doesn't take itself too seriously - thus isn't as cringy as similar movies (see: Da Vinci Code), and is well-filled with surprises to keep you watching till the end. Plus it's pretty decent on a video game movie™- scale as well.

I was surprised to see Mark Wahlberg ever do one after godawful Max Payne, but he took the challenge here again, and passed it with flying colors. Mark strong!

Yep, totally watchable.

"You come at the king, you best not miss", a line from HBO's "The Wire" was what's repeating in my head while I watched this.

As a TV show in itself, It's not exactly bad. It's probably quite a bit better than usual gruel we get from streaming platforms.

But it went after a bar that's way too high for it. It follows the story of the game pretty closely, even re-enacting memorable scenes down to camera angles, such as when protagonists first saw the overtaken city and such. It changes story here and there, but often it works quite well. I don't mind Sarah being... different. I don't mind re-imagining how things went here or there. I actually quite like little flashbacks/whatever scenes about stuff that builds the story or explains the lore, but wasn't in the game. It's all good.

As long as the core premise holds. But it doesn't. I do buy Pedro Pascal, he looks like Joel, pretty much walks and talks like Joel, and feels right. But Bella Ramsey can't deliver Ellie. And it's not even her fault. Sure, she looks quite... off... and doesn't really come off or feel like a 14-year old (because she's not), but main problem is the aggressive, clueless script she's given.

Story of "Last of Us", the game that won uncountable awards, was about a strong man coping with extreme loss, and a scared girl trying to get close to him, while slowly opening up and showing she's pretty capable on her own.

Story of "Last of US", the HBO show, I'm not sure. Ellie in this one isn't a scared, suspicious, lonely girl trying to survive. Her very first scenes are full of cursing and gritting of teeth, she's a total badass with zero explanation to this, and goes more aggressive by every episode. The main theme just never comes through. Rather than someone Joel grows to love and care for as his own child, I keep wondering when he's going to dump her in the wilderness.

Or to put it simply, they tried to add girl power where none was needed (because game had more than enough), and totally overdid it, killing the main premise.

Which makes this entire show waste of time, because highly superior medium, telling that story times better, already exists.

Play the game. Skip this show.

The Night Agent is kind of a strange one.

Two main stars do try hard, fuse well, and are very charming. Their acting works for most of the time, although there are blunders every now and then. The filming, the photography, the audio and the setting is all very well done. And for a thriller, it has quite solid pace and very little of boring fluff. It feels like a quality product in most aspects.

On the other hand, there's a big, gaping problem with this show. I don't know how else to put it... but that the writer of the show simply wasn't very intelligent person.

A spy thriller needs to be spot on with weapons and tactics, tradecraft and psychological portrayal of people who work for the FBI, Secret Service, The White House, and so forth. The writer of such show must have deep understanding the sort of people who do this.

And this doesn't really happen in The Night Agent. Most cutthroat, cynical, sane and rational branches of government, agencies, and people who work there are portrayed in some sort of dumbed-down, weird, semi-jingoistic and family-friendly manner. Sort of like show "24" if it was re-shot by Disney and rated PG-13. Everyone comes off as a clueless civilian, messy politician or a honor boy scout, while the villains are straightforwardly cartoonish and inept.

Same goes for "action" - the guns sound wrong, the explosions are your classic movie petrol fireballs, the "tracking devices" have huge blinking lights visible from low earth orbit, the "hacking" is mostly messing around in Windows Command Prompt and so forth. It's also kind of amusing to see a "hacker and cybersecurity expert" spending days without touching a computer.

And, while it feels like there's a lot of action, there really isn't, it's more of the "oh no!" moments like in "Ozark" or "Breaking Bad". Actual body count is extremely low and shooting-chasing is pretty poor, so it's still mostly a show about talking heads. That said, the "oh no" stuff is still pretty well done, so you get at least a good illusion of pace and urgency.

Also, the people chosen to be cast in this movie all look *really* weird. It's like the audition was called out to find and throw together most strange-looking humans on the planet. I wonder what was the general idea behind this, some sort of misled diversity attempt? It leaves quite strange and cartoony vibe.

While couple people who you'd actually expect to work in those government jobs - middle-aged white men and women - look so unmemorable that I couldn't tell them apart even after watching all 10 episodes, even though they were somewhat important heads of various services and such.

Thus, compared to any other movie or show who got this cold, dark and professional environment more or less right - like "Homeland", better seasons of "24" or the movie "Mile 22", "The Night Agent" falls incredibly flat. I feel like just watching this made me dumber.

First two episodes are kind of interesting, and then it starts rolling down the hill till the end.

So... while it's well-made and generally watchable, it's definitely not brilliant nor memorable. It's dumb, family-friendly and campy like "Blacklist" or "Designated Survivor", with some of extra needless quirks added. Make of it what you will. A tale of mediocrity, I guess.

While I could imagine why fans of the show are stomping their feet, I've never seen any other media on theme of "Luther" so I just came in cold, hoping to see a crime thriller.

And I did. Pretty decent one, really. While it's nothing groundbreaking, Idris Elba is a good actor, the setting is dark and suffocating, the villain is evil enough and the movie keeps going at decent pace.

Its atmosphere reminds me of "Silence of the Lambs" a lot. There aren't many problems, just the very prominent simplicity/not-telling that strongly reveals the roots of a tv-show.

In many scenes, people do something radical to make something happen, and it will, but never gets shown or explained how and why. Like protagonist causing a prison transfer via agitating and participating in a prison riot. Or getting hands on a cellphone. Or very precisely guessing the motives/next move of the villain. Or whatever. TV-show viewers are more tolerant about such plot holes, but a movie should be more coherent. And this one is clearly not. Similar skipping happens here and there and would have gotten really annoying unless... movie just sort of ended at one point.

And if you don't have sky high expectations (unlike fans of the franchise, probably), it's a basic 6.5/10 whodunit that's not the worst usage of couple hours.

While the flight MH370 case is curious and still needs solving, this documentary doesn't really add anything new nor go into any depth of actually talking about evidence, doesn't do any investigative work by itself and so forth.

You just get families grinding their teeth a bit, then one of couple chosen "major characters" spitball and reminiscence a bit, and a conspiracy theory presented. Repeat couple times over.

So, we know the beginning (a plane disappeared), the ending (it got never found), and that this documentary adds nothing in the middle.

Which makes it a massive waste of time, because recapping what little that we DO know, can easily fit into a 6-minute youtube video or two paragraph text in wikipedia... but this thing is 3 hours long!

Needlessly dragging stuff out is major problem with streaming services, and this "documentary" is a prime example.

"Crimson Tide" is about two characters, a washout captain who never got to nuke the commies, and really hopes to -- and a younger black officer whose only goal is to annoy everyone and comes off as everything else than a naval officer.

So, entire "movie" is about those two barking at each other. The "nuclear submarine" is nothing more than a set dressing - you could as easily watch a tired couple in a dirty kitchen arguing over who's turn is to do the dishes while trying to push kids to take a side -- and nothing would be different. Perhaps it'd make even more sense. At least, there would be no need for extremely embarrassed Navy sailors to stand next to this driver and wonder what kind of hell of a command they got themselves with this gig.

It's embarrassing and uncomfortable to watch. Especially since at some point, the ship comes under a very real attack by enemy submarine, but protagonists are too busy fighting each other to even notice, let alone fight back.

What a waste of time.

Brooklyn Nine-nine is a show so childish, so disconnected from reality, so heavily wanking it to the idea of itself, that one couldn't review it in serious manner. Nor hate it.

It's turn-off-your-brain get-a-weak-chuckle-or-two wonder-how-it-survived-8-seasons type of tasteless, featureless, unmemorable, but quite edible vanilla ice cream that feels like leftover food one would consume during a bad hangover; it's no cuisine, but it feeds somehow. It's more like an abstract, modern art, the character archetypes are insanely unlikeable (especially Terry Crews) and ill-written, the plot is a fantasy of a 9-year old dreaming of what police work might be, and so forth. Everything's so bad that one starts to wonder if it was all intentional.

And if so, it's also sort of brilliant, a consumer product polished so heavily that you can't trip over a corner even if you tried really hard.

I don't really know the truth, but this show seems to have no ambition, no message, no artistic vision, unless making "nothing at all" a hugely consumed and followed product was the general idea.

I can't hate it. I definitely don't love it. But I'll gladly let it consume my lifetime in 20-minute chunks every now and then.