What do you get when you combine stunning VFX with tracing paper–thin writing and a Kawai Kenji soundtrack? Garm Wars.
Acting: 2
Cinematography: 9
Editing: 7
Music: 10
Visual Effects: 8
Writing: 3
The opening sequence hints at a vast depth of lore that the film will explore over the next 80 minutes or so. It shows us gigantic fighting machines, a barren post-apocalyptic landscape, and a civilization so heavily networked and information-dependent that every member seems to be absolutely covered in wires and tubes.
It's great for getting your hopes up. But they'll be dragged down over the course of the film by:
1) Some shoddy VFX among the mostly well-crafted animations—especially one notably bad fire that's on screen for about ten times as long as the amount of effort put into it deserved.
2) Bad edits—worst of all, several jarringly bad continuity errors where a character's head ends up facing the precise opposite direction of the previous shot, or a hand instantly changes places.
3) The aforementioned bad writing. None of the characters seem to have believable motivations. It's basically impossible to care about anyone except maybe—just maybe—Khara-23 (and it's a stretch to even care about her).
If you want to be dazzled by some great-looking VFX set to an amazing (as usual) score by Kawai Kenji, go ahead and watch this.
If you want a story with depth, pass. The most you'll get out of this is some not-too-subtle Christ imagery (this is why I have to mark this as a spoiler).
What I said about Tombstone's matchup in the previous episode (https://trakt.tv/comments/92722) was borne out in this one. At least three of the four summarized matches would have been more interesting to watch than Tombstone's utterly predictable victory against the lowest seeded bot.
Come on, ABC. You shouldn't even need a director to fix something this obvious.
It's also a bit annoying that they started cutting out the teams' entrances into the arena. A huge amount of showmanship goes into those, and I'd much rather they spent time continuing to show those and cut out the overly long "Red Team, ready?", "Blue Team, ready?" sequence. We learn a lot more about each team by seeing how they enter than we do from watching them push a button. (Hell, even Faruq's intros have been kind of lame lately.)
ABC's editorial judgment aside, I was pretty disappointed to see Mega Tento beat Stinger. Even though I think Lisa Winter is great at the craft, the bot's strategy just wasn't interesting in the qualifiers—and is arguably even less so now that the bot's design has been tweaked. Stinger is more interesting to watch, and I think Matt Maxham brought a better approach to robot combat into the Battle Box.
Impressive recovery by Chomp after getting caught in a killsaw. I thought it lost the match right there, but it came back fighting.
Team Yeti left a roll of electrical tape inside their bot?! WOW lol. Super impressive driving on their part so far, but that's hilarious.
Wrecks was totally still able to move when they counted him out in the rumble. WTF, producers?
I've had such a mixed bag of feelings about Ray Billings and Tombstone since getting (back) into BattleBots last summer. On the one hand, he created a brilliantly simple, superlatively effective, design. And Ray is very clearly razor sharp when thinking through his strategy, using the simplicity (and flipping immunity) of his bot to methodically chew up opponents' machines. But the man is just so goddamned arrogant on camera that I can't find it in me to really respect him. Frankly, he's kind of a dick about how good his bot is. I've seen people say he's actually a nice guy in the pits, but on screen he's mostly just obnoxiously overconfident.
That said, we got to see, in this episode (and a bit of the last), a more vulnerable side of Ray. I was going to make some joke about hoping that winning the Nut won't go to his head, but I think that would be undeserved. When all was said and done he finally showed the camera his other side—the side of him that's more concerned with sharing the experience with his son than anything else. This final episode might have really changed my opinion of the man.
Too bad the semifinals, and even the rumble, were more interesting/less predictable than the final match. But that can't be avoided; the matches go how they go, you know?
Wow. I don't think I realized just how affecting this would be.
When I first came across the film almost two years ago, I somewhat dismissed it as religious propaganda given the title. But it really is the precise opposite. If I'd thought about the title for a moment and read the metaphor there, the ending would have been evident.
The best part of this film is probably the camera work—or rather, the near-complete lack thereof. Every scene is done as a long take, and (with two exceptions) with a static camera. Because it occurs so infrequently, any camera movement at all is imbued with dramatic importance. The static shots compel the viewer to choose where to direct their attention, rather than having the director do so with cuts, pans, etc., which also forces the viewer to really pay attention to what is happening everywhere in a given shot. Sometimes that means missing a detail in one place as a result of watching elsewhere, but I don't think that's a flaw in the film—I think it's a strength. After all, in real life, no one tells us where to look, and we miss things. What matters is being able to fill in what we've missed, if needed, from context, and there's plenty of it on screen.
I have no doubt that this movie will remain on my short list of most thought-provoking films for many years.
What smartphone just up and turns off with no warning when it runs out of battery? It would display "Shutting down", at least.
It started as just a nitpicky observation, but I guess that detail is a good illustration of how the whole film is put together. The shape of the plot is all there, but the follow-through is half-baked. There are elements of character development, but it ultimately falls short.
Having come to the film with no expectations, I was pleasantly surprised by the parkour (which Chrome stubbornly refuses to acknowledge as a real word) sequences. As far as production value, the parkour scenes are pretty well done. It's too bad that the scenario is only half there.
I did enjoy seeing Marie Avgeropoulos in a role other than The 100's Octavia. It's hard to say which role had more depth, though. Octavia doesn't get a lot of time to grow independently from Clarke et al in The 100. But Nikki seems to have more depth than Cam in Tracers.
In the end, this film is an enjoyable watch, if a little mindless. If you turn your brain off and just enjoy the parkour, it's fun. Just don't try to make sense of the hokey, contrived scenario. The plot holes (like when did Cam quit his job as a bike courier, or make a deal to get his car back from the Chinese?) will make you crazy if you actually think.
Final rating decision: 6.1
I heartily believe in the message of this documentary, but the tone is awfully childish. It's a combination of the reliance on animation, the fake doctor-character asking questions, and the general simplification of the subject matter. Maybe that's a good thing—the younger someone is, the more likely they can change the way they eat and completely avoid the consequences of poor diet. But if the film could cater to all ages, in the style of Pixar films, it would be an easier watch.
At just 74 minutes, Carb-Loaded is shorter than many children's films. But it's harder to sit through, even for an adult (young though I may be) interested in the subject. Getting a kid to sit through this would be difficult, even though kids appear to be the target audience (PG rating aside—incidentally, I didn't see any reason for this to get higher than a G). An updated version in the near future could probably be much improved, both by newer statistics and by tweaking the style to hold attention better. This is really important food for thought (pun slightly intended), and it would be great to make it as easy for kids to watch as possible.
Obviously, Lathe and Eric have a passion for this topic. I applaud them for putting this out, even as I point out ways in which it could have been done better.
Final rating: 5.9
This was such a mixed bag. Tom Hardy's performance was fine, and I enjoyed the overall atmosphere of the film. It certainly did evoke Soviet Russia.
But the pacing is just so off. The movie is slow where it should be moving along to get to the point, and rushes through the good parts. Combine that with underdeveloped characters whose motivations are more or less completely opaque, and you have a recipe for boredom in the midst of what should be an interesting story.
Some elements, like the homosexuality bit that other reviewers mentioned, were simply unnecessary. As a whole, the script could have been much tighter and leaner. And I'm unclear on what happened in several places due to the shaky, "realistic" camera work during action scenes.
I don't understand Raisa. She openly admits that she married Leo out of fear, but when given the chance to leave him and be with someone she does love, she doubles down and stays with Leo? For this character-related reason (and many others), I might have to seek out alternative versions of the story (the book, or the other film Citizen X) to understand it.
5.4 for me. Not quite boring enough to be "Meh", but too poorly paced to be truly "Fair".
I don't even know how I ended up watching this, because it showed up as The Flyboys (2008) until I realized halfway through that the plot so far didn't match up at all and I must have been watching a different movie. In fact, I was. Some filename confusion happened along the way somewhere…
Anyway, this isn't anything to write home about. The average rating already tells you that much, but since there are no other reviews here on Trakt I feel it's my duty to post one, since I've watched the movie anyway. (By the time I realized it wasn't The Flyboys, I'd seen almost half of it and didn't feel like switching films. I spent about 8 minutes more than Trakt thinks, too; the version I had was 1h50m, vs. the 1h42m displayed by Trakt, but I broke from my movie-watching traditions and skipped 4 minutes of end credits.)
Owen Wilson is amusing enough as Drillbit, whose character arc runs in a predictable, boring straight line. I enjoyed Alex Frost's work, too. Filkins might have been the most believable character in the film. Everyone else was super flat (and monogram, too… just kidding), boring, straight archetypal stuff. Actually, everyone was flat; it's just that someone remembered to paint some textures on Drillbit and Filkins.
Honestly I don't even know what else can be said. It's a mediocre comedy, a terrible love story, and a not quite passable coming-of-age tale. Meh/10. (I won't even bother fixing the filename; I'll just delete it.)
Non-stop action! Boobs! Explosions! So, it's a typical action flick.
Or perhaps not.
I've seen good action films… This isn't one. Don't get me wrong—the action is pretty well choreographed, and the fights are decent. There's just no glue holding the pieces together. What we have here is a film based solely on various iterations of "Wouldn't it be cool if ____?" Half the stuff that happens in the fight scenes has no strategic value. Characters make stupid choices every five seconds, in the service of making Cool-Looking Stuff happen.
Do we know why Reed suddenly started killing cops even though he is one? Nope.
Were we shown how Nick survived the helicopter explosion? Of course not.
Hell, the only explanation I could come up with for how Reed even beats Nick to Cambodia is… teleportation/magic/deus ex machina, because apparently he somehow finds out where Nick is going far enough in advance to warn the Thai police dudes that he's coming, show up, meet them, and head back to the airport to intercept Nick 20 minutes after landing. The whole thing is a giant plot hole.
Ugh… Action is great, but it's just meaningless eye candy if you don't tie it together with a somewhat reasonable story. This film didn't do that. This film didn't even tie all the action shots together without breaking continuity.
4.4/10
I can't shake the feeling that I watched this before a few years ago (before I joined Trakt) but forgot. Lots of déjà vu throughout.
But if I did watch it once before, it's not really surprising to me that I'd forget. Like most of the (admittedly few) French films I've seen, this one isn't particularly uplifting. It's actually becoming more and more depressing, the more I think about it.
The soundtrack is quite nice—probably my favorite part of the film, though a couple of places where the music switched mid-scene from non-diegetic to obviously diegetic (like at the club, when Marie and Floriane moved to the dance floor) broke the flow. I would award the cinematography a close second to the soundtrack, if not a tie for first place. There are some beautifully framed shots in this movie, balanced out by the scenes in drab back hallways of the swim center.
Oh, and I must give a shout-out to the metaphorical title. It just ties together so many of the film's elements.
If the film's point is that teenagers are assholes, it was made. I can't honestly say that any of the characters were likable. The two protagonists (Marie and Anne, for clarity) aren't actually assholes, but everyone around them is. From this stems the dispiriting tone of the film. Though I have to admit, how would one go about writing an uplifting film about teenage angst?
I didn't notice the first time around, but this time I noticed in the opening that the "GO GO GO" and "DREAM DREAM" bits are in reverse order on screen as compared with the song lyrics. Along with the heavily pixelated/aliased logo (which I did notice in Amazon's HD version but neglected to mention for episode 1), the treatment of the opening/ending in this show is strange.
And it's time to embarrass myself a little: I spent the whole first episode thinking Suji was actually Suah. Somehow I got it in my head that she'd gotten the doctors to lie to Kang about her death so she could escape the world of idols. Only one shot (Suah motionless on the hospital bed with a heart monitor flatlining in the background) tested that theory, but I dismissed it as metaphor or something. Apparently my imagination is a bit overactive, since the real story here is much less convoluted: Suah's twin sister, Suji, hides out because she gets mistaken for Suah (twin problems) whenever she shows her face in public. Oops?
OK, I still think the pacing is kinda slow. It's taken a full 90 minutes to get to a point where the series can really start, with all the cast members assembled. Personally I think a lot of the historical exposition that was shoved into the first two episodes could have been handled less confusingly later, once the viewers are more familiar with the characters. (On that subject: Am I the only one having trouble keeping the present and the past straight? The flashbacks are hard to follow.)
I'm starting to understand why I like this series so much better than the iDOLM@STER anime, and it isn't because this show is live-action, nor because this show is in Korean (again: this is my first ever K-drama). It's the way this show's characters are developing believably, displaying plausible interpersonal dynamics, each differentiating herself with realistic emotional affects. My biggest issue with the iM@S anime was that all the girls in 765PRO felt like mostly interchangeable moeblobs—something that, if we're going to compare idol anime, I think Love Live! more or less avoided in the µ's anime*—but The [email protected] manages to have cute characters who are also believable. They have a sense of depth that was absent from the anime characters. (Also, I just love having a producer who's a real character too. Sung Hoon's portrayal of Kang Shinhyuk is one of the best things about this show, honestly.)
Believable, deep characters aren't absent from anime, but they're no more universal there than in any other genre of television. Writing quality is independent of series type—and before you argue with that observation, remember that correlation does not equal causation.
Speaking of writing quality, the narrative structure of each episode deserves a shout-out for consistently making me want to watch the next one as soon as possible. I can think of one possible exception to this so far, but generally speaking each installment of this series has ended with a tease about some character that really sets up anticipation for the next week's revelations.
* — I don't think Bushiroad & Sunrise did as well with Aqours in season 1 of Sunshine!!, but I haven't started S2.
Memory jog! Taewoo is the guy who came to meet Taeri (not Jane, as I mis-remembered while watching episode 10) in that flashback several episodes ago. Her brother dropping in like that makes sense.
No shit that the Debut Team lost. Kang insisted that their choreography was fine, but I say… what choreography? It looked like they spent the whole song sitting in chairs. I was surprised that the difference in vote counts wasn't larger. A difference of only 70 votes or so seems really small when there were over 2,000 votes cast.
Interesting technical trick during the webcast playback: Just in case the difference in on-stage performances wasn't enough for the viewers to believe the vote results, I noticed that the audio mix also used a pretty raw copy of the Debut Team's version of the song, versus the well-mixed track they used for the Rookie Team's performance. A little over the top for my taste, but still neat to point out.
Every time they do the webcast thing, the subtitles put less and less effort into even acknowledging the existence of the comments on screen. More than ever now, I wish they were fansub-level typeset. We still got the gist of what the stream comments said, but I feel left out not being able to read 95% of them all the same.
There's a lot of shit going down now. I was frustrated at not having time to watch this episode yesterday, because the previous episode was such a good cliffhanger, but it's even worse after this one. Guess I'll just have to wait, again.
This episode actually blurred out the name of a shop. I'm guessing the business wouldn't grant permission to use its name on screen? First time I noticed that happening in this show.
Maybe I only noticed because my guard was already up from seeing the blur on that shop's sign, but they also obscured the brand of pop filters in the recording studio with tape. (Not well enough, though. I have a couple RØDE mics of my own, so I recognized the logotype anyway.) Either this episode had to start avoiding putting brand names on screen for some production-related reason, or I just missed it before.
20 minutes later: NOPE SCRATCH THAT they've definitely pulled the brakes hard on having any logos or brand names on screen. Yukika and Mint both have tape over the Adidas branding on their shirts at the gym. Something is even up with Yeseul's shirt, though it's not as obvious as a big old stripe of tape across the whole front. Even the small Umbro logotype on Kang's jacket breast is partially covered, along with (in a later shot) the Umbro logo on his shoulder. This was definitely a mid-season change, and a drastic one at that… They weren't blatantly obscuring things like this before. I wonder if there's any background to be dug up on it.
Once again, we find an Enterprise crew member alone aboard an alien ship without any Universal Translator, but still able to perfectly understand every alien language spoken on board. Funny how language is only a barrier when the plot requires it to be.
I found the T'Pol/Phlox plot even more uncomfortable than "Tuvix", which I watched yesterday. To be quite honest, I have no idea what point it was meant to serve. At least the main plot with Archer being captured by a bounty hunter working to service the Klingons' price on his head had some relevance to continuity and a cliché moral point to make (good men can be driven to awful deeds under the right circumstances). T'Pol throwing herself at the doctor (and, once, Malcolm) seemed to be pure fanservice.
Anyone who's read my reviews or chatted with me about fanservice in anime knows the disdain I have for the practice. It applies equally to live-action and Western media, worry not. Briefly, I think sexualizing a character just for the hell of it (as this seemed to be) cheapens the entire series. Enterprise isn't alone in this. The same was done in Voyager, first with Kes, then with Seven when Kes failed to hold the target male viewership demographic. The Next Generation did it with Deanna Troi and her absurd non-uniform. I can still call it out when I see it, especially because other Trek series did the same thing. It's a pattern.
I'm just going to pretend this episode didn't happen, if that's all right with everyone following my reviews.
This story includes an absurd amount of outright nonsense, I had to force myself to watch the rest after Charlie gets killed by ants in a matter of minutes. The entire premise, and the reactions of all the humans faced with the insect menace, are patently ridiculous.
As a healthy human, getting killed by army ants is a little farfetched. It’s not entirely outside the realm of possibility, but you’re probably more likely to be killed by a honeybee.
That's from https://askentomologists.com/2015/07/01/is-there-any-truth-to-the-rumor-that-ants-eat-cows-people-and-crops/, which also points out that a human walking at normal speed could simply outrun the ants.
Yes, I know this episode was based on a reasonably well-known short story originally published in German in 1937, and Ask an Entomologist addresses—debunks, really—the English translation of the story published in the United States a year later quite well. In short, most of the ant-related elements of the story are grossly exaggerated, just like they are in this episode of MacGyver.
So, again, this episode of MacGyver didn't exist for me. It's completely implausible on account of the bullshit, exaggeratedly dangerous ants, and the mish-mash of footage reused from The Naked Jungle (1954) just doesn't fit. "Weak Sauce :(" indeed.
This review is primarily a tool for collecting my own thoughts, though it would be a nice bonus effect if the text and resulting rating turned out to be helpful for anyone else.
The trailer for Eighth Grade preceded the showing of Won't You Be My Neighbor? I saw last month. I have a nephew who's entering eighth grade this year, and I thought we just had to see this movie together. Bo Burnham's name had also been floating around, mostly in reference to his work as a comedian, and I suppose that name recognition factored into my interest in the film too.
I hope Burnham's comedy is as entertaining as Eighth Grade's trailer—isn't it odd that I would recognize the name without having seen his work?—and the film's ratings soundly beat every other film my nephew was interested in going to see tonight. (I was surprised to see its scores exceed even those of The Incredibles 2, though I can understand the mediocre ratings of Rampage and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.) It seemed like an easy choice, based on audience reactions, and the large turnout at the cinema reinforced that feeling.
However, I'm not entirely satisfied with the experience.
From an artistic standpoint, I appreciated many elements of this film. The way its segments are punctuated by Kayla's videos is a neat narrative device—though sometimes it was frustrating how the audio track of her would play over muted footage of some other event, blocking out any other dialogue.¹ Throughout, the cinematography was well done. Shots were well composed, and it certainly never felt like we were looking at something unimportant (or missing something important). For technical reasons, though, I wish that Kayla hadn't broken her phone's screen so early on. Given how many times it's shown in place of spoken dialogue, it would have been nice to be able to read it more easily.
Content-wise, though, the film is… tame. Uncomfortable at times, but very tame. Quite predictable, too. For a comedy, there weren't actually that many jokes—and a film with this many awkward, uncomfortable scenes definitely needs jokes to lighten the mood. Burnham's use of slightly-dated slang and memes to make adults seem "out of touch" likely won't age very well. Same for the specific references to social media services like Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram. The demographics on those sites will change faster than any of us think they will, and leave this movie feeling much older than it really is in just a few years.²
Other reviewers here (so far, @jb4times4 and @nmahoney416) have called out the film as being extremely relatable. I suppose it is, in the way that any stand-up comedian's material is "relatable", but I wouldn't call the writing "amazing". There's a certain feeling of superficiality to the whole thing, and not just because it's a comedy. The movie felt almost like an impressionist painting of the Teenage Girl Experience, or even a caricature. As a twenty-something guy myself, I can't claim any more experience at "being a teenage girl" than Bo Burnham can, but I'm definitely interested in reactions from people who once were teenage girls. Preferably from my generation or younger, just because I think the gap in technology between my parents' generation and mine or my nephew's deeply affects the experience of growing up. Hopefully some of my friends have seen (or will see) Eighth Grade and I can ask for their opinions.³
Ultimately, I can't really put my finger on any single reason why Eighth Grade fell short of my expectations. But the trailer definitely wrote a check that the full film couldn't cash. I'd say 5.4/10, roughly, mostly because I don't want to round up to 6.
Instead of this, I wish we could have had a second season of Everything Sucks!…
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7014006/reviewsI've seen good footage reuses, but this wasn't one of them.
In the unaired pilot of Lost In Space, the Robinsons have been stranded for about six months. It makes sense for them to have an established garden, then, and for Judy and Don to be flirting.
However… Right before the long segment of reused footage begins in this episode, the Robinsons' move is foreshadowed by their newly planted crops dying overnight. They haven't been stranded more than a week or so—at a guess—and they can't possibly have the well established garden the girls are shown picking from while Maureen packs the Chariot. Relationships between Don and the Robinsons are still strictly professional until suddenly Judy flirts with him in the reused footage.
Honestly, I'm not a fan. The next episode is titled "The Hungry Sea", which tells me that the worst (in my opinion) part of the pilot—the nonsense whirlpool disaster—is yet to come. I'll have to make sure I have something to fiddle with during the next episode, because I'm not about to give that more attention. It was awful enough the first time.
The IMDB "Goofs" listings for this episode are cute, like the robot failing to say that an invalid chess move "does not compute", but I'm surprised at how much isn't mentioned there. Some of these plot holes are positively gaping.
This episode gets a lower score than the pilot because A) it's really boring rewatching the exact same footage, B) it wasn't even good the first time around, and C) they definitely could have reused the footage later in the series and avoided creating so many plot holes.
If I had to summarize how I felt after watching this film using only one word, that word would be "underwhelmed".
Maybe I went in with inflated expectations, but this live-action addition to the "Winnie-the-Pooh" film franchise carried over little of the cartoons' charm. It honestly failed to convince me that the stakes were really that important.
Pooh and his friends were not… quite… real. Yes, I know they're really stuffed animals (or most of them are), but I'm referring to the production's technical side. I haven't been able to decide whether they fell into the infamous "uncanny valley" by being too realistic, or just weren't designed well as character models. Pooh in particular never seems to look like he's properly talking, which is a problem when he has the most lines of all the Hundred Acre Wood residents. Actually, I found most of their lip-sync distracting because it was "off".
How the animals looked and moved definitely pulled my attention away from the good parts. There are a number of genuinely funny lines in this movie.¹ Eeyore gets most of them, which meshes with what I remember of the animated installments. (He's got to have something to make up for that dark cloud he lives under, right?) Christopher's heffalump fight and pretty much everything involving Pooh in London did have me grinning, despite the aforementioned animation issues.
As for structure, I thought the use of chapters (complete with "In Which…" titles) in the beginning was great. It was frustrating that most of the film seemed to be one chapter, after burning through something like eight of them in the first few minutes (showing how Christopher Robin goes from childhood to working father). More of those line-drawn animation inserts would have been really nice. Perhaps they could have helped connect the story a bit better; as it was, the plot felt a bit disjointed at times.
I have my own theories on why this is, starting with the fact that there are two "Story by" credits and three "Screenplay by" credits, all separated by "and". That indicates a possible dilution of vision, since so many people touched the script.² It's the opposite of "Written and Directed by", which is akin to publishing a book without an editor's help. A second set of eyes can really help tighten a story, but too many pairs of eyes can melt it into a puddle of conflicting creative visions. It doesn't usually result in an awful script (though it can). Rather, having too many writers involved more often limits how great a script can become.³
I'd actually love to ask the writers if they considered devoting a little more time to explaining how Pooh ends up in London. The Hundred Acre Wood's connection to the real world is kind of just… there, but I think it would have been interesting to explore how the tree tunnel works a bit more. (Fantasy elements are much more fun when we question them and push their limits!)
Christopher Robin was definitely not as great as it could have been. It was enjoyable enough, but it didn't earn a spot in my "Rewatch Over and Over" collection next to The Many Adventures of Winnie-the-Pooh (1977).
Those auto-destruct countdown clocks look awfully low-tech compared to everything else on the ship… I guess there wasn't a practical way of running on-set video displays this early in the show's run? That's the best theory I can think of.
Picard and Riker walk up to a turbolift on deck 36 and the computer panel immediately displays and reads out verbally, "Bridge Access Denied". The computer couldn't yet know where they wanted to go. OK then.
When the Enterprise magnetic containment field regenerates, why does no one simply use the transporter to beam over? Hop in a shuttlecraft and intercept it before it fully exits the starbase? There are numerous ways its departure could have been stopped once the risk of antimatter explosion abated—or at least, Picard and Riker wouldn't have been on their own. Tasha could have taken that security team she asked Worf to put together.
The story for this episode is pretty great in theory. We have a species dependent on technology,¹ who know how dependent they are and face disaster if their planetary computer network is disabled by the "electrical-magnetic pulse" (Minuet's slightly-incorrect words) of a nearby supernova. These Bynars decide to steal the Enterprise and use its computer to restart theirs, because the Federation might have said "No" if they asked for help. On the surface, it's a cute study of how alien thought processes might differ from ours, and also a glimpse at what too much technological dependence could do to our society.
Unfortunately the execution falls short of the story's potential. The above-mentioned plot hole concerning chasing the Enterprise as it leaves Starbase 74 is just one pitfall along the way. I also find it hard to believe that the computer would fail to interrupt a running holodeck program to notify its occupants of a ship-wide evacuation order. That Starbase 74 could not send even a single ship chasing the Enterprise without at least "18 hours" of rushed repairs is similarly unbelievable. Surely not all three docked ships were without engines and basic life support system function? (Starfleet's closest ship being 66 hours away is also… Hmm. The fleet is larger than that, isn't it?)
Mostly I object to the several contrived plot points that push Picard and Riker into facing this threat alone—a threat that turns out not to be a threat at all. I'd be more interested in what happens to the four Bynars who perpetrated the theft of the Federation flagship.
Honestly, a lot of romantic comedies leave me feeling empty. There are so many out there that come off as little more than cliché-dumps. Substantive dialogue, character development—your average romcom won't have these.
Crazy Rich Asians doesn't have a whole lot of substantive dialogue, and I wonder how many of the characters actually developed over the movie's two-hour runtime (maybe two or three?)—but it certainly tried. Beyond that, it's a beautifully shot film with a (mostly) great cast, and spectacular sights to go with the cinematography.
I wouldn't necessarily give the film any story awards. It follows one of the basic romcom plots we've all seen a hundred times: Dude brings girl to meet family for the first time, family doesn't like her, but love wins anyway. It's not even a spoiler to say that Nick gets the girl—right from the first scene, that's the only possible outcome.
But I would award the film a gold medal (that's not a thing, but I'll make it a thing) for bringing the audience fully along for the ride. Going in, I knew this was a two-hour film. But, aside from maybe one or two scenes that dragged on a bit, it went very quickly. That's a solid testament to this movie's enjoyment factor.
While I didn't mind how predictable the story became as it went on, I can see that putting off some viewers. Rachel's character was also kind of underwhelming. Put up against all the other big, in-your-face characters, she kind of blended in. If Constance Wu was directed to play the part that way, that's fine, even if I don't think it was the best choice. I read at least one review (from @nancy-l-draper, https://trakt.tv/comments/187607) expressing the opinion that she was miscast. From where I sit it came across as more of a script and/or directorial issue, but I certainly wouldn't have objected to Gemma Chan playing that role. (Which reminds me… I need to get caught up on Humans…)
Bottom line:
If you can stomach the extremely predictable romantic moments in the latter half, this is a really fun ride. Now I need to read the book…
This season brought some small, but significant, changes in format. They're much appreciated. Ditching the majority of "Red Team, Ready?" / "Blue Team, Ready?" bits with the teams pushing their buttons was a great choice for pacing and really kept the action from dragging. I don't know if they'll bring back the pre-analysis from before (where Kenny Florian, a guy who doesn't know that much about robots, got introduced by a woman whose only function was to be attractive)—maybe when the 16-bot postseason starts. But I didn't miss it. All it did was waste air time.
I can't get over the pacing; it's just great. Someone (or a team of someones, more likely) really did some hard thinking during the filming and editing process to keep the audience from getting bored during repetitive boilerplate segments… by cutting them.
As for the fights themselves, this was a rousing start. Blacksmith vs. Bite Force, SubZero vs. Huge, and even Tombstone vs. Minotaur brought some of the best BattleBots action ever broadcast, in my opinion.¹ The three-way rumble between Mecha Rampage, Duck!, and Free Shipping was an absolute riot.
The only truly disappointing fight was because Bombshell had no self-righting capability, and Lock-Jaw got off a really early hit that basically ended the fight before it even started by flipping its opponent upside down. (Minotaur getting counted out because it got stuck on a damaged section of arena floor was also a bit of a letdown.)
Ray Billings is, of course, the same arrogant prick he's always been. I can't stand how he talks to the other teams, but I do have to respect his robot's record. No matter how rudely or unsportsmanly its creator might behave, Tombstone really is a fine piece of engineering.
Maze Runner is one of those young-adult book series I never bothered reading. I was probably slightly too old to care when the first book dropped (a year after The Hunger Games, I might add), and the series never appeared on my radar until the movies happened.
The first film in the series, I saw almost three years ago, followed soon by the second. Neither left much of a lasting impression. By now, certainly, I forgot who everyone was, what they were fighting for, and you know… everything relevant to the story. This film did an OK job of refreshing my memory along the way… (Well, not really. But I'm not going to rewatch the other 4 hours of this film series.)
So, from my perspective as a "Hey, I remember this series; wonder how it ends…" viewer? This was decent. I have a few bones to pick with the script (don't I always?) but the execution was reasonably good. Despite stretching to well over two hours, The Death Cure didn't drag until near the end. Most of the way, the pacing was kept up nicely. I wasn't bored. I remember being bored during The Scorch Trials.
Yes, I predicted a ton of the "twists". (If they're easily predicted, do they even count as "twists"?) Yes, I rolled my eyes at some plot points. (Did Teresa really need to fuck around for so long on that rooftop waiting for the building to collapse instead of JUST JUMPING? Why the hell did Lawrence goad that huge mob into invading and destroying the city, thus making it impossibly hard for Thomas's crew to get out?) But the CGI and VFX work were generally fine, and the action kept my attention from drifting.
Definitely a Decent/10. Not necessarily rewatchable, but good enough if you don't want to watch anything with a ton of substance.
I do like me some trucks. Some goofs here, though.
The first trailer heist is shown to happen without the trailer's landing gear lowered all the way. The bandit cranks it a few times from the far side of the trailer, but the legs don't actually move. Then his partner pulls the tractor out and the legs have been magically lowered in between cuts. Whoops. (But at least it's not the usual KITT-related sunroof continuity error… of which there were a few as well.)
It's not a goof, just an oddity (to me): I can't remember the last time I saw a cab-over tractor in the USA. It's probably because I'm too young to remember the trucks on the road when this show aired (I wasn't even born yet), but it's still weird to see.
Also, Michael asks Devon if he'd "like to visit sunny New Mexico"… several scenes after he met Devon and Bonnie in the mobile office locally. In that previous scene, Devon apologized for not bringing the Chicago pizza Michael had asked for… Then Bonnie installed the long-range tracking scope, which seems to magically triangulate CB radio signals using only a single receiver somehow. (I suppose it's theoretically possible, because KITT is a mobile receiver, but it's certainly not a simple device.)
I really want to like this show. It's another one of those '80s super-vehicle series, and Knight Rider has set a decently high bar for that genre. Airwolf also comes from Donald P. Bellisario, the creator of Quantum Leap (which I like) & co-creator of Magnum, P.I. (which I have not yet started, but I want to). Because I've liked his work in the past, I think Airwolf should have potential.
Problem is, I don't like any of the characters. Dr. Moffet just starts shooting up the people who paid him to design and test this new helicopter, for no apparent reason. I'm hoping that part at least will be clear by the end of the second half. (Of course, I can speculate, or look up why he seemed to have it in for the senator in particular, but a good show will show me the reason without that.) Stringfellow has given me no reasons to like him as a character; he's an ass to everyone, so far.
So, no, I didn't particularly like this first episode. I kept checking the remaining time, on probably half a dozen occasions. I was bored. Sure, I will probably try to get through the whole first season, but watching the remaining three (including the fourth season with a rebooted cast) will be contingent on the show actually winning me over at some point.
Having now seen both halves of the series premiere—far be it from Hulu to offer the original feature-length episode, of course—I think the balance of events was off. The first half dragged on, bogging down in overly long shots of nothing in particular, as if there was extra screen time that needed filling. The second half, by comparison, felt rushed at times.
Breaking the story at the point where Archangel comes to tell Hawke he must leave for France immediately, instead of when the missile hit the American destroyer, would have made the two halves much more balanced. Superfluous material from the first half could have been cut, and additional material added to the second half showing more of how Hawke and Santini actually pulled off the theft of Airwolf. As edited, the whole sequence of events in Libya felt extraordinarily rushed.
Perhaps the pacing is better in the original feature-length edit. Maybe not. I can only assume that no scenes were cut from the episode when it was divided into two parts for re-airings, but TV studios have done more heinous things than that in edits for syndication.
I don't dislike Stringfellow quite as much as I did in the first half, but I still think his character provides more illusion of depth than actual depth. At this point, it is still very early days, though, and I won't pass judgement just yet on whether he's a good character.
But, since it seems Dr. Moffet has been written out already, I can safely say that he was an utterly flat character. We learn nothing substantial about his motives for massacring the observation team and defecting to Libya. I don't buy that line about going where he can treat women the way he wants to. This smells of lazy writing, and it's inconsistent with what I recall of Bellisario's writing on Quantum Leap, so I really don't know what to make of it.
And my final nitpick: Stringfellow needs to stop playing the cello on screen. It bothers me because I've spent the last 20+ years on the violin and I'm therefore intimately familiar with how stringed instruments are played for real. But the fake playing was so bad in this show so far that I think even non-musicians would be able to notice. It really breaks the immersion. Though I suppose, instead of not showing him play, they could have had a real cellist improvise a piece that actually matched the bowings & fingerings Jan-Michael Vincent used on camera…
Based on the flood of "____ception" memes that hit the 'net after this film came out, I expected… more.
As the cardinal rule of filmmaking says: "Show, don't tell." Inception does an awful lot of telling. It (or its characters) never shuts up.
I will grant this: The visuals are incredible. From Ariadne's first ventures into the role of architect (the street-bending is aces) all the way down to Limbo. It's really too bad the writing wasn't equally nuanced.
Admittedly, Inception doesn't have the worst info-dumps ever. I just watched an episode of The X-Files, "The Erlenmeyer Flask", that had a scientist piling basic DNA science onto Agent Scully (a medical doctor) for the benefit of viewers who hadn't gotten to the DNA chapter of biology class yet. Now that was bad. Inception isn't quite that blatant about its info-dumps, but they do exist.
Putting off writing this review by a few hours really let me get tired, so I'm not inclined to write as much. But, it's also taught me that the plot isn't particularly memorable. The basic idea is simple, and things play out pretty much exactly as expected (broadly speaking). The details aren't that interesting, and the only plot point that surprised me (Dom actually being "responsible" for Mal's suicide) wasn't worth the overly long build-up.
Oh, did I mention this movie is two and a half hours long? It's too much. (About 7 minutes of the 148 are devoted to credits, and can be skipped if you wish, but that's still a long film.) I checked the clock several times wondering just how much longer this ordeal would last. Fortunately the falling van gave me a decent point of reference, so I didn't have to check as often.
Mostly, I'm disappointed at the lack of substance. I expected some real profound shit, based on the hype. I didn't get it. Some people say you need to watch this film several times to get everything that's going on, but I don't think so. This is a one-and-done movie with some pretty action scenes and inconsistent treatment of its own mechanics. (Seriously, why do the gravitational effects from the van swerving around only penetrate one dream level?)
This was OK, I guess. It was better than I expected. That said, my rating is still rounded up to 6, not down.
On the plus side, I only caught one continuity error: The Amazing Reappearing License Plate. (Stretch removes the limo's rear license plate in one scene, but it is back in a later shot of the vehicle being towed. A short shot, but not so short you'll miss it by blinking.)
What impresses me most about Stretch is the filming budget. With $5 million, Joe Carnahan pulled off a half-decent thriller with respectable production values. Nothing about the movie felt especially low budget—and while I realize that $5M is not pocket change, it's not uncommon for this kind of film to cost many times that amount. The quality of the visual and practical effects was pretty damn good for such a relatively low-budget movie with several big-name actors in main and cameo roles.
I was less impressed by the humor, but reading the IMDB trivia gave me the most probable reason: The film's original writer (Jerry Corley) used to write for The Tonight Show, which I never found particularly funny. Just not my brand of humor. That's not to say I never laughed during Stretch; just that a lot of the jokes did fall flat for me. The ones that landed were good enough.
Ed Helms' character ("Karl with a K") was my favorite, and he didn't get nearly enough screen time. Fortunately I watched Tag (2018) not too long ago, which featured Helms in the primary lead role, and was pretty good. The bloopers run during the credits for Stretch gave me a bit more of him, too. (They could have almost sent out the blooper reel instead of the film; it was that good.)
For some reason, only this episode is unavailable through Hulu.
Watching it through NBC's free streaming option instead was absolute hell. Five ads per break, three breaks in a 20-minute show. Long ads, with no progress indicator (who knows how long you'll have to wait). The video quality of the ads is higher than the show itself—any scenes with moderate amounts of motion devolved into blocky, bitstarved soup.
I wound up watching three extra ads (the episode also starts with an ad) before I figured out how to dismiss the "Up next" overlay—which doesn't appear in fullscreen mode. It was trying to skip the credits, but the credits of this episode appear over a dance number.
Never again will I use NBC.com to stream a show. Ever. (I should have learned from that time I tried to view Knight Rider on a 5:4 display. NBC's video for that series includes black bars on the sides, so if your display isn't widescreen it gets double-letterboxed.)
Also, NBC has a caption feature, but it's not enabled for this episode (or show… I refuse to check any other episodes because of how bad their player is). Not a big deal in this episode, but sometimes I have to turn on the captions for a bit to catch a hard-to-hear line.
Oh, but the episode itself was pretty good. It was just hard to tell through the godawful viewing experience.
It struck me in this episode, most of the people we see in The Good Place (or at least this neighborhood of it) are pretty young. One could describe mortality statistics by age as something like a bathtub curve—a shallow spike through the first three years of life (ages 0-2) that drops off after "infant mortality" stops having an effect; the bathtub floor up through age 50 or so; and a somewhat sharper slope approaching ages 70-90 where the peak occurs, before dropping off again toward the upper limits of the human lifespan.
I'm referencing 2007 statistics from the CDC because they're the most recent I was able to find quickly (and I still spent much more time researching that than this show deserves), but I'm reasonably confident that the pattern won't change dramatically from year to year—or between countries. Humans are humans, after all. If anything, the uptick between the middle and upper ages will be steeper in other countries with healthier diets than America. And yes, I'm using what I learned in statistics class in college to make assumptions and avoid spending more time on this issue than I have to.
So, the question is then: Why does The Good Place's population consist of so many relatively young people? Could it be that the network was afraid a more geriatric cast wouldn't sell, so they forced the casting of unrealistically young actors?
