"Little boy. Believe the impossible"
I was captivated by the acting, as well as the cinematography and special effects contained on this great production. I'm glad to see that the filmmakers and actors are bringing this kind of messages to the world through art reminding us that love is the force that brings us all together and that's the path to follow as humanity. I loved Eduardo Verástegui's performance by showing Little Boy the importance of faith. It made me think about how we must have the strength to defend the truth even when some people don't see it. It also made me remember that if we have the courage to go the right way and follow our goals or dreams, based on good intentions, God will give us what we need to get trough difficulties. Not only is it a very entertaining movie with a deep emotional content, but it is also an example of kindness and compassion, great job on bringing all together. The film made me cry, laugh and feel identified at some point with the characters. It takes you on an exciting emotional roller coaster with a beautiful message at the end that will take your breath away.
This is a very weird movie, but not by its content. Hard to tell whether it was worth watching.
Visually it's nice, extremely clean and ordered. But 90% of what happens has absolutely no interest. Family picnic. Wife showing the garden to her mother. Some random conversations. Dictation of work letters. Administrative work. It is very boring, soporific even.
The only interest comes from knowing who those people are and the whole context, and the contrast with the banality of their lives, with the clinical simplicity of administrative decisions.
The whole camp is hidden behind a wall. There is just a background noise, far away, muffled, some cries, some gunshots. And the chimneys smoke.
Among what is banal but extremely shocking by the context:
- The mother complaining she could not get her neighbour's curtains.
- The commander getting a new post, but her wife complaining about losing her garden
- The sales pitch of the new generation crematorium
- Being so happy that the plan is named after him that he calls his wife in the middle of the night
- Ashes used as fertilizer in the garden
The only small moments that acknowledge the violence are:
- the wife, upset, threatening the maid that she could have her incinerated just like that
- the commander having a young girl sent to his office
- in the commanders meeting, the word "extermination" is said once, but all the rest is just logistics and quotas
At the end, a cutscene shows people cleaning the camp, and it takes a while to realize they are cleaning the current day Auschwitz museum, I guess showing the continuity of mundane tasks in all circumstances.
So in the end, this is definitely a work of art that succeeds in what it's trying to achieve. However the boringness is what makes it special, and you can't avoid the fact that it is mostly boring. Not to watch when sleepy or tired.
Feels like a combination of Silence and There Will Be Blood. It's one of those movies that's really good at immersion; the cinematography, sound effects and score are all so accomplished that you're immediately transported into its world. For as pretentious as this may sound: you will feel the Icelandic cold of this movie. There are so many vistas that have already burned themselves onto my memory. However, it's probably a good thing that the film managed to hold my attention through just the technical aspects, because the writing can be lackluster. Sometimes it's slow to a fault, for example the first hour really should've been cut down to the more essential bits as there's way too much indulgence here. It feels like it only gets going in the second half, because that's when the conflict and themes get introduced. You need some of the set-up from the first hour, but it feels too drawn out. The arc of the main character is also utterly predictable, effectively hitting the emotions it's trying to sell, but not in a particularly surprising way. Still, I liked what it was doing overall and it's the kind of film that deserves respect. It's undeniably a piece of quality filmmaking with subtlety, substance, style and good performances, but definitely not for everyone.
6.5/10
In short: they decided to get as woke as possible in season three, killed what was a cute show.
Like many others I started watching this for Nathan Fillion, he always plays likable characters and the first couple seasons of this were just that.
Now, though, they have (and nobody should be surprised) made this into a platform for political correctness and virtue signaling.
The first two seasons were actually pretty fun to watch, come season 3 and every episode has huge political statements to make, even making a professor who believes cops are bad and corrupt and racist a main cast member. Black inequality righted? Check. Gay inequality righted? Check. Cops are bad and racist? Check. Cops should be defunded? Check. Who needs a good story when we can just do that instead?
Season 3 has been all about being PC about everything, being a social justice warrior about everything and, overall isn't the interesting story line we got in the first two seasons about a middle aged man who becomes a cop and the challenges he has to overcome.
So what happens in season 4 when "The Rookie" is no longer a rookie? Will there be a new batch of Rookies that our main character gets to impart his wisdom upon? Probably, and we'll get more political correctness and virtue signaling shoved down our throats since it will be made in 2021.
In 1966, just under half of US men had been (or were) in the military. In 2018 that was one in eight. (Figures for women are harder to come by and compare. Nine of ten veterans were men in 2018, and the total was about 7% of the population) It might be the case that the average American is more familiar with the command structure and norms of Starfleet than that of an actual military operation.
When Spock hijacks the Enterprise in TOS S1E11, viewers understand the stakes are incredibly high. They have a sense of the consequences of violating orders.
When Spock hijacks the Enterprise in 2023, after having done it four? five? times in television and movies "before" (to us, "after" to him), after decades of us watching Starfleet officers ignore protocol whenever they think it's the right thing to do and be rewarded with the highest ranks in the service for it, when most of the audience has no real-life sense that insubordination is serious, there are no stakes. Even within this episode, we're cued that there are no stakes - none of the rest of the crew seems shocked, none of them even consider not going along with Spock's plan.
The whole episode is like this. We spend a bunch of screen time on the Spock/Chapel relationship with no sense of what makes it interesting, with no stakes for it. We're introduced to a new chief engineer who gets to be somewhat charming and mysterious but doesn't actually do anything - whose only effect on the episode is to further reduce the stakes.
This episode contains maybe the most boring CGI space dogfight of this century and a bunch of completely nonsensical camera tricks. It has no sense of pacing or emotional arc.
"I would like the ship to go. Now" is a good line, though the comic timing is wrong, with too much anticipation.
Onitra Johnson's dialogue is solid and true to character. But the Swiss-cheese plot outline and the long-burn relationship beats are a total mess - given the mechanics of writer's rooms that's probably not Johnson's fault (although really great execution in the writing might have been able to paper over more of the problems). Director Chris Fisher also delivered probably the worst direction in SNW S1, in that season's final episode, along with a couple episodes of Inhumans that are the worst television I sat through in my adult life (sacrifices must be made when working on a Marvel game). There's lots of talent evident from the rest of the cast and crew in this episode, but it can't make up for the directing and showrunning choices.
Worse than any of the Season 1 episodes, comparable to a mediocre Voyager ep.
Well here we go again... Probably be better titled
Star Trek: Strange.
First, I was happy they made the doc more understandable, reduced his accent a little and slowed his conversation. But, that was the only thing I could praise.
I didn't last 20min before sitting this garbage down.
(There must bots giving this crap a good review score, 43 @ 80% ... you're kidding right!?).
So the very first episode of season 2 we have Pike leaving Enterprise and the crew (may as well call it an all woman crew because Spock just lost his balls somewhere around Enterprise.
So they take Enterprise while it's in space dock getting fixed and maintained, it supposed to be there for another 3 days, yet they decide to run away with it and take their time about it.
Spock no longer seems worried that he is continually being started as a human, he's anxious and his emotions are like they would be confirming his balls have been excised, making it an all girl crew.
And to rub salt into that wound Spock decides his 'thing' will be nothing Vulcan-esk but
'I would like the ship to go... Now'
That was it for me - enjoy wasting time with this trashpile. 'Punch it'
An entertaining if slightly odd beginning to season 2. It was nice to see a shift in focus to other crew members, even if that choice felt kind of jarring as a reintroduction to the show. Side-lining Captain Pike was quite bold and honestly I missed his presence, but giving a chance for Spock, Chapel and M'Benga to have centre stage was also rewarding.
Still, I found this whole episode to feel like it was throwing us into something that was already progressing and it was a little difficult to stay fully engaged with it. There was a whole backstory to the situation and characters on Cajitar IV that was reduced to fleeting dialogue, instead trusting us to just go with it and not worry about the details. I felt that could have been handled better. Obviously this episode drew from the Klingon War that happened on Discovery, and featuring its repercussions so heavily here required a shift. The deep trauma that M'Benga and Chapel seem to have experienced came out of nowhere and fundamentally altered their characters. It was great material for the actors to work with, but flew in the face of what they've established previously.
It also led to the scene which was the weakest part of the episode for me; an extended action sequence in which Chapel and M'Benga expertly fight their way through hordes of Klingons with the assistance of a drug. Exciting, yes, but tonally bizarre and again not fitting the characters. This was WAY over the top, leading to M'Benga torturing a Klingon.. Again, wrong tone.
Thankfully there was a lot of great stuff outside this. La'an has really come into her own and felt like a well balanced character here. And Spock got all the of the episode's best moments. It's great to see him playing the lute and being in charge. We're going down an interesting narrative path here with his losing his grip on his emotional stability, and honestly I'm quite up for it thanks to Ethan Peck's wonderful take on Spock. Yes, we're edging on breaking canon in several areas here, but I'm really not that worried if I'm enjoying what I'm seeing.
Overall, this episode felt kind of unsettled and over-enthusiastic in it's return, but I'm in.
There are a lot of promises made with that first episode that we do not get any satisfactory explanation for by the last episode. This is not a good way to make me excited for any future seasons, it only makes me feel obligated to watch it again. I really believe it could have been written to give a much better cliffhanger at the end.
This show is what you get from people who have been listening to too much "true crime" podcasts and think they are creative enough to reverse-engineer several 'thriller' threads into a retconned mess.
There's really not enough written for a proper TV show, giving it a surreal "high school life play" instead of a developed franchise. For example, the material comfort of the plane crash survivors is never really shown to degrade. They say they've been out there for weeks, but they are never really uncomfortable; for crying out loud, they are still wearing clean clothes by the last episode!! None of them lost their suitcases, so they all had their own pillows, blankets, and even managed to keep their formal clothes clean after several months of being out there. I really don't think it is too much to ask for Showtime to hire some of consultants to advise on some of the base-level deprivation they would have faced. I suppose I could be biased because I've watched every season of Alone and am amazed at how skinny those people get after only a few weeks in the woods.
