This Is Us really surprised me in so many ways.
Before watching the Pilot, I was honestly expecting 'just another family comedy show', kind of. But ever since the first episode aired, I'm positively and repeatedly surprised and touched by just how beautiful and real this show is- on so many levels.
Yes, This Is Us is a dramedy focusing on three families that appear to really have nothing in common, but episode by episode one really learns and loves to learn to look deeper.
In a time like this, where TV seems to have reached some sort of quality peak, it doesn't happen too often do find a show that really stands out, especially in a genre like comedy. But This Is Us does pretty much everything right. The storytelling is superb, there's always new bits and pieces one picks up when watching the show, constant new revealings, a perfectly picked cast (really, they all work damned great together) and, as I said earlier, there's this honest and humble approach to it all that, for me, makes it stand out so severely.
This Is Us doesn't (need to) rely on heavy special effects, over-dramatization or flat jokes, nor does it try to deliver some sort of big and important political message. It's strapped of all this and by doing so, one can really enjoy the work, thoughts and incredible skills that have been put into all aspects of this show.
I find it really rare these days to find a pure gem like this and even more so to get so heavily attached to a show after just a couple of episodes. But, well. Here I am, already wanting This Is Us to never end, ever.
Damn, son. This shit was intense.
Yeah, it's an American movie about an American operation with American clichés. But without the unnecessary over-patriotism and glorification of the importance of whatever damn operation they got going on before shit hit the fan.
I'm having a pretty hard time actually finding things I disliked about these 2 1/2 hours of superb entertainment.
The story was based on real events, most certainly a little bit dramatized, but that's okay. For a war movie, this was a damn good story.
The cinematography was amazing. Seriously. Impressive camera work with a smart use of drones, a perfectly set atmosphere (with a couple of hick-ups in terms of lightning, but I think that's just me being overly critical) and some of the best special effects that I've seen in years.
The soundtrack and general sound mixing didn't leave any room for criticism, too. It all just flowed perfectly and the orchestral music even gave me some goosebumps here and there.
And guess what, even the acting wasn't bad. It's a war movie. With actors who are actually good. I'm positively amazed.
Michael Bae(sic!) and the rest of the folks involved in this movie simply did a great job on all ends.
And now I finally have a new war movie I can recommend.
No. Just no.
I was really excited when I read the plot, because there's so damn much potential there. And unfortunately, story-wise, they probably did everything wrong that one could possibly do wrong.
About 20 minutes in, I jokingly said 'Hey. You know what the worst way this could play out be? If, as hinted at the beginning, they'd all be oh-so in love with their AI that they'd do something utterly stupid that causes it to escape, kill everyone and face that risk management gal in a final showdown, just to reveal that said gal was an AI itself.'
Being through with the movie, I conclude that actually watching the rest was just a waste of time.
I mean, in terms of cinematography they'd created something really great! If it'd come down to both that and the plot, Morgan really would deserve 8/10.
But seriously, the utter lack of creativity, desperate attempt at creating suspense and straightforward pseudo plot twist, paired with less than mediocre acting created a movie that brought back long-dead memories of House of Wax; only without it embracing the fact that it's trash.
So, then again, not even from this standpoint it's fun to watch.
I'll finish my rant by strongly advising to skip this movie and enjoy these 80 minutes of quality time by doing something that's actually satisfactory.
I'm really glad about the fact that Ana was featured on Chef's Table.
Of course, one may always criticize that what she's doing there isn't a lot different from what so many other restaurants are trying to do, in terms of local ingredients and respect towards the environment.
But I see her from a little different perspective.
Not only was this episode much more pleasing than a lot of the others from a viewer's perspective, but it was her character that made it even more so.
In this episode, I see two really different aspects that work so great together.
For one, there's the fact that she was more or less forced to take over the kitchen and learn virtually everything on her own, in a more or less unknown conservative country scarred by communism, with a quasi non-existent culinary history.
And then there's this spark of her, this unexpected entrepreneurial sense and her craving for freedom and the expression of creativity.
And somehow, God knows how, over a long course with a lot of rough patches, she managed to combine all that and lift both herself and her restaurant up to a level that's really hard to beat.
With a little outside help, she managed to place herself onto the international map of gastronomic highlights and give Slovenia some sense of gastronomic identity.
Doing all this while preserving her being down to earth and continuing this journey really deserves all of the respect there is. And I'm really looking forward to seeing how she and her husband develop themselves even further over the next years.
This was probably the kind of ending I least expected, due to it being just so obvious and somewhat uncreative.
I haven't read the book, therefore I can't say a think about the storyline or the ending, for that matter.
But there were so many chances where one could've built in a couple of awesome plot twists that would've made the entire thing not only a whole lot more enjoyable, but much more fitting to the whole complex thing that the concept of time travel is.
For example: Since they set the focus so heavily on the fact that time doesn't want itself to be changed, they could've easily changed the storyline in a way that doesn't really change the past in such a hard way.
What if Lee Harvey Oswald wasn't the one responsible for the assassination of JFK, but Mr. Amberson himself? What if Lee Harvey Oswald was nothing more than a patsy and the FBI or whoever else was actually the one responsible for the shooting? What if, that, after changing the past in a rather impactful way, there was no way of going back through the rabbit hole, since said change dismissed the fact that the rabbit hole existed in the first place?
These are just a couple of 'what ifs' that I've asked myself at the beginning and throughout the series, 'what ifs', that I figured the writers and producers of this show also must've asked themselves when being presented with a plot that's so diverse and changeable in such numerous ways.
And, sadly, these 'what ifs' are nothing more than, well, 'what ifs', since it seems like this huge amount of possibilities was just too huge an amount for the people creating this show to actually explore them, at all.
So the actual ending itself appeared to me as nothing more than way too straight-forward, obvious and rather uncreative, running adrift to being a slightly cheesy love story ending.
