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Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023)
Fell short and fell hard.
There are some things to like about this movie, lots to dislike, and nothing to love.
The opening was heavy, clunky, too long, for too little. I was prepared to suspend all critical thinking and go along for a ride, but instead, I was doing homework as they tried to do too much at the start.
Plot was too complicated and demanding. This was sold as a frolic, and it needed editing. Not only was it way too long, but it was a very slow sit. It dragged a bit in the first third and then dragged harder and harder over time.
Characters were nice, but underdeveloped. I didn't want Shakespeare, but I was hoping for rich cartoon characters rather than clunky ones.
Heavy emotional themes and an enormous plot hold were more millstones around the neck of this movie. Way too heavy for what should have been a romp.
Good things:
A few funny D&D references, most of the better visuals being in the trailer.
Great casting and playing overall; sorry the script didn't come through for them.
Hugh Grant is coming into a great age for comedy and I'm delighted; he used to be wasted as the love interest, and now he gets to do fun character stuff. With one exception, all the secondary characters were gems; we should have spent more time with them and their stories (or pare down the bloated main thread to balance).
Chris Pine was a total turnoff. Broke my heart. I've loved him in other things, but he had no chemistry for this role. Instead of being a lovable smooth-talking rogue, he seemed bored and cynical, not as a character, but as an actor.
I am a pushover when it comes to fantasy. I will cheerfully re-watch almost anything with a sword, a dragon, a quest, or a lute. I don't care if it's highly produced or low budget, famous folks or nobodies, earnest fantasy or light comedy. But I will never watch this tiresome parody again.
Succession (2018)
What others haven't said.
It hurts to watch this show.
I don't enjoy being injured by a show, usually, outside of a once-per-season whopper; let the rest of the time be ebb and flow, character and world-building, groundwork-laying, and plot.
Succession is not like that. It's the death of a thousand cuts. I don't choose to rewatch it. But if I walk in while my husband is watching it, I cannot tear myself away.
There are no dead spots in this show, no wasted moments. Much has been made of the writing and acting and casting, but the editors! We are not hearing enough praise for the editors. I think they are the true alchemists of this show.
Imagine the brilliant takes they omitted, choosing the one that best served the golden thread to the finale, not knowing totally what might come from the actors, who were willing to take risks for magic.
I remember looking forward to this show, happily anticipating something like "Billions Meets Hamlet", a nighttime soap. I didn't know I'd be getting something more like "The Godfather", which demands that I watch it, derails my trajectory if I pass through a room where it's playing.
And it doesn't suck me in with candy, or a hero, or even a trainwreck. It shows me terrible and mighty people, hurt children become bewildered and powerful adults, and it delivers those two states at once. As a viewer, you experience the dual reaction of caring for a cruel and dangerous person, being disgusted by a clearly injured child.
But this is not a muddy mixed feeling, generating indifference after a brief emotional struggle. This show gives clear, sharp feelings, deep pangs, motion and emotion, like waves crashing on a beach.
Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018)
It's a game, not a story.
And a boring game at that.
Selecting one of two possible options, when neither has a material affect on the outcome, does not create tension or feel enjoyable to exercise.
When choices *are* significant, the outcome is not. Instead of riding your major path-choice to a meaningful conclusion, you will sometimes be told "wrong choice" and it's Game Restart. That is not choosing your own adventure; that is playing a video game.
Having no character development or meaningful groundwork means zero investment in outcome -- not ideal for a "choose your own adventure".
Forcing the audience to make choices as soon as possible is a practical strategy, to get viewers used to clicking along, but the frequency of choices and their frequent lack of impact on gameplay only slows the already dull, slow storyline.
My two stars are for the effort and care that went into this well-crafted spoon of glue, but the telling blow here is that all I talked about was structure, and that gives away so much I'm going to have to say "yes" when asked if it contains spoilers. There's no story to give away.
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018)
First in franchise to have zero repeat watchability.
Skipping my history with the series, assuming anyone who reads this has one as well, cutting to the bullet-point tango:
Rushed storytelling and brief references make you strain to piece together an over-complicated plot with no real substance at the bottom. No tension was built, no excitement was cultivated.
Because of that constant strain to figure out what was going on and why we should care, comic relief and other grace notes fell flat or got overlooked.
There was no character building or transformation to make us care about the players. It was hard to tell what the problem was. Johnny Depp did not have a role to inhabit, so he played his standby fantasy hierophant. Animated beasts were the most enjoyable characters in the show.
Edited to maximize sound volume with little in the way of environment-building sound texture or nuance.
There were so many missed opportunities to enrich the visual environment, not only through slick production, but through more thoughtful connection to the specific time and place.
Camera jogging even in serene moments was a constant distraction.
The previous movie was basically a buddy comedy with a frisson of romance. This movie was a series of poses in a solemn interpretive dance that you tried hard to follow and later learned was about the plight of the egret.
To end on a positive note: Jude Law did quite well, I thought.
Outlaw King (2018)
Everyone did a great job...except the writers.
Again and again, while watching, I asked myself why I wasn't enjoying the show. I will watch any period piece and medieval is my favorite. I had heard this movie was significantly closer to historical accuracy than Braveheart, and I was looking forward to that. What was the problem?
No story. History, but no story.
Tools that would have helped:
1. Setting the stage and providing context in a way that makes the watcher eager to find out what's going to happen next. This is especially important in histories where we know exactly what's going to happen but we're dying to see it play out. (NB: this does NOT mean, "telling the tale faster"; that's just getting it over with quickly. Instead, tell the tale so richly that time flies.)
2. Making us care about the players rather than simply saying, "Here is another unremarkable guy with a generic outfit, whose speech has no character, and whose behavior has no emotional impact on his friends or foes." I am not suggesting that you insert lovable buffoons or extraneous scenes, but you can give people personalities, details, quirks that add dimension, make them memorable, make us care.
3. Don't be afraid to trim details and characters who are extraneous to the action. Interchangeable Lords Six Through Fourteen are just people we notice, then look for, then wonder if they are ever going to matter, then ignore as we realize that no, we never needed to know them at all, and more of our admittedly meager emotional investment trickles away.
And if you are following #2, you see what I mean. Have more pungent characters and fewer of them. Streamline the tale. You don't have to throw out history. But if you are making a movie rather than a documentary, consider the differences between the two.
When I saw that five people were credited with writing, it made sense. A story can't be told by a chorus. Committees are for writing textbooks. And that's exactly what this feels like.
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Failure as sequel, failure as stand-alone.
** Warning! Here May Be Spoilers, for this movie and others. **
The original Blade Runner evoked a strong feeling: I might be manufactured by others, but it doesn't invalidate my identify. My experiences are singular and I feel them deeply. However I got here, I am real.
Blade Runner 2049 starts with an alienated second-class citizen craving that validated authenticity. His story is derailed by side issues -- his owner/operator's problems, corporate drama, a sort of love interest, profit motive, the Resistance, (pseudo-)scientific posturing, and other irrelevancies. By the end, when the story has gone in a different direction entirely, our hero just lies down and gives up, and us with him.
Specifics:
Pacing / Story / Characters: BR2049 is too long and way too slow. There is no point or purpose, no golden narrative thread. Overall it watches like the boring parts of Matrix movies, eliminated from the supercut and reworked for a different color palette. Ryan Gosling is Neo, Jared Leto plays The Architect, Carla Juri is the Oracle, Edward James Olmos is The Keymaker...the parallels don't stop there. Yawn.
Dialogue: the pretentious, vaguely ominous, Messianic BS that put you to sleep in the Matrix sequels has been refurbished for our sad, hunky Pinocchio in his futuristic pimp coat.
Deckard: his part begins with a Disneyfied sequence a la "Cowboys & Aliens" including cheesy wisecracks and a rough-and-tumble meet-cute, which ends unceremoniously with an "I'm too old for this" surrender. The sequence takes place in a post-apocalyptic Las Vegas that has occasional funny parts (which I hope were unintentionally funny rather than failed attempts at comic relief for non-existent tension.)
After investing so much time in Ryan Gosling and his story, the focus shifts to Deckard, who isn't himself away from LA, and whose tacked-on storyline hijacks the movie. (Regret: The lost years of Deckard and Rachael with the Replicant Resistance underground should have been a separate movie.) Here, Deckard starts as comic relief and ends as a plot device to move the story to some kind of conclusion. There is some emotional button-pushing for fans of the original (oh, Rachael!) and a tired attempt at emotional manipulation (getting to know the child we had no idea you'd ever wanted but for that one line a few minutes ago.)
Costumes: there are no costumes, styles, or fashion. Only clothes.
A/V: there are lovely, lingering shots of what appear to be abandoned Brutalist / Eastern Bloc / doomsday cult headquarters blanketed in untouched snow. There is gorgeous, impersonal CGI. There are building-high images of beautiful naked women, blandly presented and titillation-free. The music includes watery variations on the original score, interspersed with sinus-clearing brown noise.
(I will probably buy this movie for those location shots, quiet stills, and long, honking chords. I even want the music. But it's sad that the kernel notes of Vangelis, so precise and delicate, shine out purely even as their impact is bled away by the insubstantial context of the movie and the score.)
In contrast, I saw the sequel as a double feature with the remastered original, which took on new richness in the cinema setting. The original is a quick sit, modeled after rogue cop film noir: vibrant characters, clear narrative purpose, a stunning moll, gritty romance, and a getaway ending with a crystallized message. The sequel is pointless, diluted, internally inconsistent, and slow.
In Blade Runner 2049, people cry All.The.Time. -- and now you know why.
Forged in Fire (2015)
Not just for blade enthusiasts.
This is NOT one of those craft competition shows that wastes time on manufactured drama and tiresome sob stories. They make the craft itself the focus, and the competitors' skills and choices keep it interesting.
There is a different challenge each episode, with, four contestants and three elimination rounds. The first round: forge raw metal into a blade meeting specific size requirements. The second round: add a handle and finish the blade. The results are tested head-to-head. In the final leg, the two remaining contestants are presented with a specific type of blade and asked to make their best version of it over three days at their home forges.
Seeing the different forges and processes is interesting, but they don't waste time on back stories, family tragedies, false alliances, or snarky comments. The judges show respect for the good decisions, acknowledge costly choices, and don't get too personal. They focus entirely on the blademaking. Making the craft the focus is a refreshing change, and other shows should follow their format. Anyone who enjoys skilled crafting might enjoy this show.
Galavant (2015)
Week (Weak) One
Full disclosure: I gave up about halfway through. This from a person who loves cheesy comedies and will watch medieval anything, fairytale anything, and historic anything. But not garbage anything.
This is easy to compare to Mel Brooks and Monty Python, since it steals so much from them, particularly in dance numbers. But not just farces. The main character's name is sung as a constant refrain, sounding very much like the "Ed Sullivan" number in "Bye Bye Birdie" -- which is hilarious as a two-minute song but not an hour-long show.
ABC has done good, well-thought-out work with its show "Once Upon a Time", and I think they might have tried to work the same crowd with "Galavant". And the actors get credit for doing solid work; they are game and earning their paychecks. But the songs and the writing are terrible, just terrible.
Some of the most jarring problems: boring exposition. Terrible jokes, terrible timing, terrible placement. Sexual references that are smutty and leering rather than cheesily naughty. Songs that are not musically interesting and include terms like "butt-clenching", which do not make me want to sing along. Costumes so far from the historic that Butterick Halloween patterns would have served the atmosphere better.
Spoiler alerts are usually redundant for musical comedy -- villain is vanquished, justice is done, and hero beds heroine -- but in "Galavant", the villain is charming and the hero beds the heroine in the first scene. Repeatedly. Unless the show magically changed in nearly every way after the break, this is the most skip-able dud I've seen in ages.
True Blood: Thank You (2014)
Want a payoff? Have some speeches instead.
If there is no intended finale in the minds of the writers at the beginning of the series, how can the payoff be rich? I get it. But even if your script can't feature a lush, Shakespearean payoff, at least tell some kind of story! This season started weak and set us up to fail. The town picnic massacre and aftermath took too much time. New ideas such as Merlotte's becoming Bellefleur's, Sam becoming mayor, every human home needing a vamp friend...all these were diversions of emotional energy that went nowhere. Episodic tie-offs were abrupt, but instead of being shocking (or exciting, given the changes they spawned), it was all rushed and insubstantial.
Sookie and Alcide? Okay. Alcide's dead suddenly? Okay. Town went cold sober witchhunt? Uh-oh! But I guess not, since we ignored them once they weren't interesting. A whole episode tied to Tara's childhood? WHERE WERE YOU A FEW SEASONS AGO AND WHY DO THIS NOW? And Bill's serial, never-ending flashbacks -- god, what torture! Write quick, people -- a short flashback, at the right time, has impact. Starting a second drama (and having it be disjointed, with a clanking sermon on Bill Compton, Friend To The Slaves) is yet another time-wasting, energy-draining diversion.
Then there are the glib-but-witless tie-offs for Lafayette, Andy, Holly, Arlene, and side characters such as Sookie's grandpa, Holly and Andy's kids, Pastor Newlin, Eric's Fangtasia minion, and whatsername, the town drunk. These episodes would have been perfect bonus materials for a disc set. Fun, sure -- but they detract from the season's story flow. Or they would detract, if the season had any real purpose.
The best thing about this season, and all that passed for acting, was the maturing of Jason Stackhouse. But even that was a bit empty, since JS's previous girlfriend had also imposed the "we're not sleeping together tonight" rule. Jason is now an old hand at crashing with a girl and not having sex with her, so Bridget's edict and his compliance was not exactly a refreshing step forward.
Much of this season seemed tied to the final books in the series, with the cluviel d'or, Sookie's Choice (even though she wasn't going to lose her fey in the book). But given that we are stuck with a mystery man in the flash-forward scene, did anyone consider NOT killing Alcide? He could have been put on ice or taken out of the picture early on. And then we would have had some connection to Sookie's future.
But the one thing that makes this episode the biggest stinker of all is the dialogue, especially between Sookie and Bill. Rambling thoughts, unconnected to action, and drained of emotion. Unsupported. Circular. Old territory. It's like watching people chew food. And Sookie's speeches are the worst of the worst. The demanding speech that gets no response. Too long. Old message. Rambling thought. Pointless. A thudding sermon on "I gotta be me" and "God doesn't make mistakes" and "Love is love" and other points we've covered eighty bajillion times on this show.
And wasting Eric and Pam on comic relief, and their wasting Sarah Newlin on cheesy TV huckstering and bar-basement small change, was more clunkery. And that truly nasty ending for Sarah Newlin herself was ugly.
I was relieved when it was over -- scene, episode, and series.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)
Only mildly spoilery, but a major mess regardless.
While I admit to preferring the book versions of most works, I am not a literalist. Movies such as L.A. Confidential used major surgery to transform brilliant but impossibly stream-of-consciousness writing into a singular, excellent, same-but-different movie. It's not impossible and it's not anathema to make major changes.
The Hobbit makes a lot of changes from the text, but very few improvements. A scene is added at the beginning to show some history in an effective, concise way, and I understand the addition of major players at Rivendell to provide a little more exposition even if I found it boringly rendered. (If Galadriel spoke any more slowly, she would be impossible to understand. Every word sounds as if she's emerging from a coma and doesn't know what she's saying.) Really poor changes include the addition of two silly drug references; obnoxiously sugary, cutesy-poo scenes with Radagast the Brown; at least four endless, pointless CGI sequences designed to tie into theme park rides; and an excessive emphasis on childish humor, of the boogers-and-belching variety.
Continued lameness from the movie trilogy includes sword killing that doesn't cause bloodshed, smarmy hugging by characters known for being hard-cased curmudgeons, and the omission of what might be considered negative personality traits in people who used to be complex characters but now must be unconditionally adorable in order not to confuse the simpleminded.
This used to be a tale of adventure, showing a spoiled, untried person having his metal refined through hardship and finding inner strength. There was darkness in this story, and truly harrowing moments, and depth for all the lightness. Now it's just a wacky romp designed for maximum marketing.
They could have made a really good movie and STILL made a lot of money, but they chose to make an overlong, horribly cartoonish, Keystone Kops ordeal.
If you see this movie, and it is eminently skippable, pause during the fight of the stone giants to get a glimpse of the "real movie" direction they could have taken while keeping the fantasy intact. It's not the shifting mountains with the theme-park-ride sliding, not the New Zealand Tourism Board panoramas, but the beautifully rendered, mountain-tall giants themselves, hurling boulders at each other in mindless elemental rage. The single "wow!" scene in the movie.
Imagine the entire work endowed with meaningful situations and purposeful action.
Imagine how much better this movie could have been.
Juno (2007)
You can tell it was written in a chainstore coffee shop.
SPOILER ALERT! Caveat lector! For the benefit of anyone who has been living in a cave on Mars, and hasn't heard how this movie turns out, this is some rather spoilery stuff.
Look: I don't care for dramas that tug on the heartstrings. I don't care for clever, coy, cutesy-poo teenagers -- particularly those who talk the way 30-year-olds imagine the young people are jiving these days. I don't like situations that are so far from reality that words and titles have lost all meaning. There is a lot for me not to like in this film.
But PLEASE. A bold, intelligent, perfectly rational girl who is utterly devoid of embarrassment (she has loud conversations with the jerky store clerk about the pregnancy tests she is buying and peeing on right there in the store)...who planned for a year to have sex with her friend...did not, somehow, manage to consider birth control? REALLY? Not even the free condoms available at the women's clinic? The women's clinic, where she walked right up to the protester and had a casual conversation before heading inside and, for no reason, decided not to have an abortion when that had been her plan so far? So: a serious situation trivialized in a melodramatic and unfunny way, with a brainless character glorified for horrible, half-baked likes such as "Honest to blog"? No love.
Her working class parents have a "Well, Shucks" reaction that makes one wonder if Xanax was involved. When Samuel L. Jackson mocks Geena Davis in "The Long Kiss Goodnight" by saying, "Phooey, I burned the darned muffins," he was emoting far beyond these mellow folks. Same with her school. Folks, don't mistake Minnesota Nice for Minnesota Non-judgmental. It doesn't exist.
So basically, there is no pregnancy policy in her school, no social stigma, no complication to her health or pregnancy, no obstacle to treatment, no bills for medical services (tra-la!) -- and we are supposed to have anything invested in this charmless idiot? If you aren't going to give us a real girl, or a real situation, or even a real laugh, I'm not going to give a real damn. The only real character in the story is the honest swine who walks out on his marriage in order to be true to himself. Ugh.
I could go on all day about the idiocy, but let me sum it up with the fact that the character's name is Juno, after the goddess of motherhood.
She drives a Previa -- a real vehicle, but everyone should know "placenta previa" is a dangerous complication of pregnancy.
And her last name is MacGuff -- as in "MacGuffin", the term for a plot device that leads everyone around without having any weight or value. Just like the pregnancy in this movie.
I feel like the author was pretty openly stating that she doesn't care about the character, either. So why should we?
Young Adult (2011)
This is not a comedy.
Without spoilers, let me say: the movie has good points. The acting is solid, for what is demanded of it -- not always much, but the actors make the most of it. Patton Oswalt does a really fine job, and let's not forget he started in standup. He impressed me. Charlize Theron also made a respectable effort for a low-demand role, and my hat's off to her.
But this movie was sold as a comedy, and that it is not. The trailer portrayed it as a sort of darkly funny girl-version of "Grosse Point Blank", and what it served up was "Leaving Las Vegas" with a veneer of the ridiculous. Wisecracking does not make a sad story funny; it makes it desperate.
Movies such as "Knocked Up" and, to an extent, "Bridesmaids," have the same grimness beneath the yuks, and that's not comedy; that's drama that is crying, but trying to whistle. It doesn't make it a bad movie, but it's not a comedy, and it's not my cup of tea.
Prometheus (2012)
Pretty. Vacant.
This movie is like Megan Fox: so stunningly good-looking that you want to fall to your knees in gratitude that you lived to see such a wonder. Then it opens its mouth, and the crushing disappointment sets in. At first you shrug it off -- no one is perfect (physical evidence to the contrary) -- but the dialogue only goes downhill.
Ridley Scott still makes a movie so gorgeous that it's emotionally moving. A lush soundtrack only heightens the emotions. But the script! Dan O'Bannon, you are sorely missed. The tight plot, authentic characterization, and closed-room mystery effects of the original "Alien" are all missing from this beautiful train wreck of a film.
In the beginning, characters are established. Some of them are intricate, subtle, and fascinating. None retains any consistency with the set-up. Plot likewise: bad science (not just implausible, but blatantly incorrect to anyone with a grammar school-level grasp of language) leads to stupid decisions which lead to illogical outcomes; it's an avalanche of nonsense, with no plot import or emotional impact. (It doesn't have to be accurate science, or even comprehensible; all it has to do is sound right, and this was easily disproved. So sad.) More questions were asked than answered. More plot threads were opened than tied off. Some really brilliant moves at the beginning of the movie were contradicted for unexplainable reasons, or simply and sadly abandoned. Great characters were built and left undeveloped, unchallenged, untransformed; later they were betrayed by dialogue at odds with their backstory. Unnecessary characters and subplots were added to the mix, muddying the plot and distracting from the (ever thinning, ever dwindling) story line.
And when, when did Ridley Scott start with the hamfisted moralizations? Scientists have a couple of lines in this film which are ludicrously inappropriate. Not impossible, but far from believable. Worse, they are carrying on an argument that is awkwardly nailed onto the story...and then, as is the pattern here, abandoned without resolution. This is not the place nor the time for characters to become radios for their makers' opinions, nor to go off on tangents unrelated to the thread.
The only reason I rated this as high as seven is that there is a solid skeleton underneath it all, and a beautiful facade on top. But the meat, the real substance of the movie -- plot, story, characters -- putrefy after the set up, with their delicious potential deliquescing before your very eyes.
(And if this sounds vague to the point of meaninglessness, full of symbols without referents, it's for the dual purpose of avoiding spoilers, and not going into exhaustive detail. This movie broke my heart in so many ways it would kill me to list even half of them.) That said...yeah, I'll still buy it on DVD, hope for an alternate cut to prop up the cruddy script, and cross my fingers that there will be a sequel. The same hopes I had for this movie.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 (2011)
One long movie would have been much better.
Part of the problem this movie faced was sustaining tension. It didn't. Nor did it attempt to rebuild tension drained by each scene. Splitting a single book in two was a bad idea to begin with, but this movie not only failed to stand alone, it also failed to live up to the promise of Part I. There should have been a single final movie that matched the book. Part I built tension, and left us all on the edge of our seats, but that tension dissipated, never to be rebuilt.
Part II wasted time on dull one-liners to provide comic relief for tension that wasn't there. Also missing were a sense of doom, fear, a burdensome awareness of menace, fatigue, and the need to fight all-out for an uncertain outcome. As there was no sense of fear or doubt or determination, there was nothing to inspire our encouragement or protectiveness -- and certainly no need for relief from tension, since there is none. There is more groundwork laid for the lame one-liners than there is for the story. Since Part I wasted time on similarly extraneous scenes, why not just combine the two and make one long, excellent movie?
Other problems: rearranging sequences so results are known ahead of time, which deprives us of surprises; abbreviating scenes to minimize tension, which deprives us of payoff; overstating certain emotional phrases, weakening their impact; writing out-of-character lines for players who don't have enough dialogue to restore their integrity; omitting scenes that add gravity; adding lighthearted mugging at bad times, which is confusing. Is this a do-or-die moment? If so, why are you tittering and shrugging? If not, why is there blood everywhere?
There were technical problems (some bad green screen moments, especially) and some weak framing and editing; all this speaks of a rush job. But the weak storytelling and dialogue were what killed this movie.
Black Swan (2010)
A single, overwhelming problem.
CAVEAT: HERE THERE BE SPOILERS. Mild ones. The functional failure here was the pattern of giving facts and taking them away, then ending by giving us a fact that isn't taken away. As a device to show a character is losing her mind, this technique has one large pitfall: seeing the finale through her eyes rather than those of a trusted observer. We don't know if we can trust what we've seen. The movie creates a pattern of physical wounds, personality conflicts, violence and death occurring, then being nullified -- not being healed or overcome, but going away ab initio, every single time. When the last act ends with another death, who's to say the victim won't pop up and be fine? After all, that's what happened every other time during the movie. Why shouldn't this death be reversed as well?
The actors did a great job, and the tech was excellent except for sound quality (but they may have had location problems; no big deal.) My complaint is strictly with the writer, or whoever owns that ending.
Buckaroo Banzai Declassified (2002)
A thrill ride for renaissance geeks.
This is a quintessential 80s film, but for unusual reasons. One is the nostalgia. The dramatic nostalgia of Blade Runner is taken to melodramatic extremes here. Some cues: the band's manager's zoot suit; the Renaissance diversity of the Irregulars; the emphasis on Science (as in, "She Blinded Me With -- ". These are the boy geniuses who fought the Kaiser and the Boy Allies who thwarted the Nazis. So the concept is charmingly nostalgic. But the quality of acting is undeniable, not only because there are so many non-diva working actors, but because you can tell each one is making an earnest effort. Sometimes, when you watch a crummy movie, you can tell the actors knew from Week One that this little dog would be best left off the resume. Not with this movie! Everyone made an earnest effort that was not too over-the-top. The purely 80s aspects -- skinny neckties, proto-geekiness, fascination with Japanese culture, retro-modernity -- are delicious to some of us who lived through it, but possibly baffling to others. But if you speak the language, it's pure poetry.
Boardwalk Empire (2010)
A slow start.
Based only on the first episode, I gave it 5/10 stars. The characters were not gripping, though I see potential for future involvement. There was a bit too much attention paid to soundtrack and environmental elements, which were gorgeous, but which seemed unconnected to the story. In a strong piece they would be intrusive, but here they are just distracting. Economy of exposition is different for a series, but that doesn't mean the characters should be weaker, or the plot looser. There were unintentionally comic moments, particularly on the part of Steve Buscemi (whom I love, but who comes across as the ghost of John Waters at some points) and there were bloodless scenes that should have been very dramatic. There are too many cutaway shots, and not enough single-shot interactions between the characters. They all act as if they just met a couple of days ago. I blame the writer(s) for the weak dialogue, but was there no time to rehearse? Even the lighting looks last minute, I'm sorry to say. My fingers are crossed for future episodes, but this did not join the pantheon of HBO pilots (Rome, Deadwood, Band of Brothers, and the Sopranos.)
Legion (2010)
Wasted talent.
Great names, good effort, and decent special effects didn't save this poorly written hodge-podge of other stories. Supernatural thrillers need solid world-building, and this was flimsy. Too much time was spent establishing too little character motivation. Poor choice of voice-over led to unintentionally comic moments. There was no build-up of suspense, no shocking visuals, and no payoff of any kind. Editing errors created non sequitur shots without reference points. (Unfortunately, the unreferenced shots were the only intriguing moments in the film.) This movie couldn't decide if it wanted to be a drama, a horror movie, or a religious allegory, but the script was too weak to support any choice very well. There was great potential with this solid cast in a closed environment, but it turned into Maximum Overdrive with a zombie religious element.