Derivative, brainless, and soulless. The only redeeming quality of the movie is that it won't kill your dog
The title is bait and the trailers are misleading, but this is still a pretty good movie about journalism and the personal realities of war in a setting close enough to touch.
While a lot about this show is fantastic, its sprawling scope begins to undermine the themes at the heart of the show.
The writing is great but a several shades from perfect, narrative arcs are meaningful and move quickly, and the characters are reasonable and pragmatic. The animation is utterly mediocre, but isn't bad enough to be called distracting.
There are a lot of elements to like and the final package is substantial, but for a show obsessed with exploring big philosophical questions, it spends increasingly little time exploring the emotional consequences of it's answers. I don't know whether the second season was condensed due to the shows impending cancellation - it certainly feels like they could have had several more episodes if they'd slowed things down - but while it serves as a narrative conclusion to the story, I dont think it works as an emotional conclusion to it.
That makes the overall experience feel like spending hours to solve a math problem and come up with the wrong answer. The work is good and logical and consistent, but when you do the final calculations the output just isn't right.
Until uploads become closer to reality, I'd only recommend this to dedicated fans of science fiction. For everyone else, there are more fun problems and better answers elsewhere.
The essence of this movie is the prototypical bildungsroman - a young woman's coming of age story in a fantastic, absurdist, surreal setting. Despite it's uniqueness, the film doesn't transcend never transcends basic tropes of the genre, which holds it back from s higher score.
7.5/10
An accurate portrait of a very narrow sliver of the African-American experience. It's incredible how many little pieces of the movie ring true, but the overall execution is held back by its unwillingness to suggest an answer or provide a conclusion.
The early episodes are beautiful and mysterious explorations of an alien world. Unfortunately, as the story progresses that early sense of wonder gives way to a series of banal conflicts that detract from the fantastic setting.
Even less forgivable is that the characters are all idiots. Most of them act like second graders on a field trip, and that behavior is totally dissonant with a setting where we're supposed to believe nearly everything is trying to kill them.
The concept and creative team did an outstanding job with the environment and visuals, but a lot of the character's choices are so wildly irrational that it completely breaks immersion in the story.
This is the type of show I should love: moody, self-reflective, and metaphorical. But something about the series never landed for me; repeating the arcs added little flavor or texture, and the conclusion verges on saccharine. I can clearly see what they wanted to do with the show, but for me it just didn't work.
Despite reading the original trilogy, I've never been a particularly big fan of the Hunger Games. Because of that, I came into this with low expectations, and was reasonably impressed at how well this movie and story fit into the future world we're all more familiar with. The world building is legitimately excellent, and it's rewarding to see how much attention was paid to even small details: the still-nascent eccentricity of Pan Am apparel and the technological devolution of the high-speed rail are relatively small things the movie didn't need to get right and executes perfectly.
Unfortunately, that's the highest praise I have to offer. Being able to witness the jankiness and inefficiency of the early Games is conceptually amusing, but (as in the film itself) is not exciting to watch. The musical elements are at best overwrought and at worst utterly ridiculous. Lucy's introduction in particular feels wildly out place and the entire scene looks like it was adapted from a Broadway musical.
Speaking of characters, Snow is well-acted and sees meaningful development over the course of the movie. Despite her prominence in the plot, we never really get to know Lucy. It's implied that she's in the middle of her own story of which we see relatively little, but because so much of her feelings, thoughts, and history are a mystery, the finale of the movie is presented as a baffling series of decisions for which we get no explanation.
It's curious to see a movie so proficient in the minutiae and clumsy in overarching vision, but even for fans of the franchise this experience is largely unnecessary.
As someone not knowledgeable about Napleonic history, this movie still somehow feels like it gets almost everything about Napoleon wrong. The swings between his personal life and major battles are incongruous, the political machinations surrounding his rise and fall are never given proper context, and most of his personality seems to be invented.
Contrasted with Oppenheimer, about whom I also know little, this portrayal of Napoleon feels markedly inauthentic. The battle scenes are generally engaging and well-constructed, but don't make up for the sense that as a docudrama this is replete with gross inaccuracies.
A promising setup that is ultimately let down by a clunky execution.
For the most part, the narrative is grounded in the realities of being a criminal and felon, and does a good job portraying the complexity of a nuanced issue. Characters are complex, relationships are complicated, and people make dumb choices for dumb reasons because sometimes that's just who they are. Collin and Miles are a great pairing, and serve as outstanding portraits of different parts of their community.
While the movie almost succeeds in walking the narrow line of being social commentary without becoming preachy, the (unnecessary) fourth act abandons any groundedness to deliver a melodramatic invective against police violence. It's a message I support, but its timing and method contrast heavily with the narrative elements that lead to it. Instead of feeling like a dramatic capstone to the events of the film, it comes across as a radical stylistic departure from everything we've seen until then.
Individual components of this movie are excellent, but in my opinion this somewhat misses the mark as a cohesive story. Given the subject matter and how much the movie does uniquely right. I wish I could give it a stronger recommendation; but the pieces don't fit together nearly enough for this to be a must-watch.
Pretty thoroughly mediocre. There's a few cute moments and one or two decent running gags (not the mushroom jokes), but suffers from inconsistent pacing, flattish characters, and a one-dimensional world. The vignettes of the early episodes transition into a multi-episode arc somewhere around episode 4, and I honestly thought those storylets were a better framing and a lot more fun.
There's nothing special enough about the show to merit a recommendation, but sometimes you just need mindless feel-good entertainment.
Solid movie. although more of a thriller than a horror. There's a few twists along the way. although not many surprises.
7.5/10
As a non-dnd player, this was an entertaining ride that seemed truthful to both the spirit and content of the tabletop.
The characters were both the best and weakest part of the film, and ultimately feel more like living portrayals of DnD character sheets than actual people. Still, I was surprised at how fun and funny this managed to be.
