I swear, this is the most bats--t insane comicbook thing the MCU has ever produced, and I LOVE it.
Alison Brie was good as Planetina, but nothing about this episode felt surprising or new. Just a run-of-the-mill R&M episode, I guess... I can't think of a single element that I find memorable. Hmm, maybe the fight scene.
I didn't expect to like this one as much as I did. In structure, it's a paint-by-numbers rom-com, but the humor is genuinely funny, and the characters behave in ways that are true to their character instead of chasing script beats. It's still a stretch that Theron's character would fall for Rogen's, but it's a minor gripe because they have actual chemistry on screen. It also shows that Rogen has something to actually say about politics, and so his character's arc feels genuine instead of just required for the movie to reach its conclusion. I'm not saying it's a deep thinker of a movie, but it has more authenticity than I've seen in similar movies before.
Oh, and Theron is mesmerizingly beautiful AND hilarious in this.
This movie features the most ludicrous and absurd scientific concepts and the most pointless and annoying human characters in recent memory. That makes it the Godzilla movie that's the most faithful to the spirit of the Japanese originals, and I say that as a huge kaiju nerd.
Lots of satisfying fights makes this one an easy recommendation for Godzilla fans, though I have to admit I still highly prefer the rubber suit and the original Godzilla attack music. Something about the over-expressive Godzilla face and the small, beady eyes makes this one kind of disappointing to watch, though I love the way he moves.
So the first Wonder Woman movie was a fluke and DC is back to making mediocre movies. Good to know.
That was... fine? Not amazing. Sure, the core message is cute and meaningful, but something about the execution leaves much to be desired. This is nowhere near the brilliance and depth of Coco, nor does it have anywhere near the emotional catharsis of Inside Out. Still better than most animation movies out there, clearly, but not one of Pixar's best.
Well, that was pretty terrible. Emma Thompson's character is an awful human being without any redeeming value, and Mindy Kaling plays a bubbling woman whose defined by exactly two traits: 1) she's a woman of color, and 2) she loves the boring, unfunny show the story is about.
What's particularly egregious about this movie is how dumb it is with its politics. It REALLY wants to make a point about diversity and the domination of white men, and it does so with the subtlety of a Buzzfeed top ten list. It's just awful.
My favorite episode so far. There was something so poignant and touching about Sam and the girls getting a break from the drama back home, just chilling out with a sweet couple. The ghost story was unexpected but was done nicely.
Fun little show that doesn't overstay its welcome. It started REALLY strong, but it meandered more as the seasons went on.
My major negative comment on this show is how Sharon and Rob experience conflict... I didn't expect the show to be all love and butterflies, but Sharon and Rob have a way to fight that's just mean and cringe-inducing. I think it's because, often, the conflict stems from them getting irrationally angry at each other and saying overly mean things. The result is that the two mean characters act shitty to each other for a while, severely diminishing the fun of the series. Also, as the show progresses, Sharon gets more and more self-centered and cringey, which I did not enjoy.
Other than that, though, it's a hilarious good time. Carrie Fisher in particular is just great whenever she's on screen.
This episode is starting to lose some of the good will the first two episodes built. 99% of the conflict in this episode was completely contrived, from United Earth not ever talking to Wen, to Burnham AGAIN doing something without telling Saru.
I also wish future-future Earth didn't feel so much like Federation Earth. The crew of the Discovery should be the equivalent of a 12th-century Viking ship landing in modern-day New York Harbor. Instead all we get is a big tree.
This was more of the same compared to season one, which is to say, it was fantastic. I was briefly puzzled that we were going back to Tatooine, but honestly, they use this setting in such a compelling manner than I don't mind at all. It jives perfectly with the Spaghetti Western vibe they're going for.
Big kudos for the giant monster fun in this one. It's an aspect of the original Star Wars trilogy that modern SW content often overlooks, and it was done really well here.
Excited for the rest of the season!
I rewatched the miniseries in 2020 and HOLY HELL does it hold up. Blows nearly anything else from the last 17 years out of the water. Now, granted, the show did... falter later on, especially in later seasons, but the miniseries is an incredible achievement and hasn't aged at all in nearly two decades.
I rewatched this in 2020 as I gear up for a BSG rewatch, and I gotta say, it held up nicely. It's not groundbreaking in any sense, and I wouldn't call it essential viewing for BSG fans... But it's a nice SF action adventure with some cool moments. Not as good as BSG itself, but it doesn't diminish anything about BSG, contrary to Caprica...
Season one (the heist in the Spanish Royal Mint) is superb television. Tense, full of action and character drama, and exciting plot twists at every turn. Sure, it's sometimes over the top or unbelievable, but it never stops being fun, and all the characters are fantastic and flawed and crazy.
Season two is utter crap and shouldn't have been made.
Note on episodes: the episodes listed here on Trakt.tv are for the original play order from Spanish TV. Netflix recut the episodes from season one and broke them down into two seasons or parts. The 15 episodes listed on Trakt.tv constitute the first two parts available on Netflix, made up of 13+9 episodes. These two parts are sometimes called "seasons," too, just to add to the confusion.
In other words:
Season 1 (15 episodes) on Trakt.tv = Seasons 1 (13 episodes) + 2 (9 episodes) on Netflix (aka parts 1+2)
Season 2 (16 episodes) on Trakt.tv = Seasons 3 (8 episodes) + 4 (8 episodes) on Netflix (aka parts 3+4)
Season 2 of Casa de papel is a textbook example of what happens when a show gets too popular for its own good. Gone is the careful balancing act of season 1, where we empathized with both the robbers and the hostages; instead, the robbers are now international superstars who are taking the fight to The Man.
The writing has taken a nosedive, and the show now feels like poor fanfiction. Just watch season 1 and leave it at that. You'll be better for it.
I've rewatched this series 10 years after it aired, and boy did it not age well.
It's just a bunch of nothing happening to uninteresting characters and it goes on and on and on... Nothing happens for entire episodes, only for movement to take place in the last 10 seconds to set up the next episode. There's also a LOT of plot happening with religious factions fighting each other and I... don't... care...
I like some of the characters: Zoe is great, and I like Joseph Adama and Daniel Gladstone. The rest of the characters tend to be mired by boring plots that really don't move the story towards any kind of satisfying resolution.
Someone should re-edit the whole thing into a 2-hour movie and it would probably be fine. As it is, it's 100% skippable even if you're invested in the BSG universe.
This was... great?!? I thought it would be a cheap nostalgia grab, but I couldn't have been more wrong. A fun, often hilarious movie that shows a hell of a lot of heart and does justice to the movies before it. Great feel-good movie, and just what the world needs in 2020.
Very cool concept, halfway between Matrix and Inception. Cool visuals. Unfortunately, the movie doesn't know what to do with its setting and ends up in a very disappointing place.
Started with good momentum right out of the station, but by episode 4 it just started to go off the rails. The initial episodes were okay, with some intriguing potential, but flat, predictable writing means that promise was never realized.
If you've seen the movie, there's really no reason to watch this show.
Amazing show. I'm not a fan of rotoscope animation, but the writing and an amazing main character more than make up for it. Smart, meaningful, funny, poignant... A fantastical portrait of a mind unraveling. Highly recommended.
Not great, not terrible.
The premise isn't bad, but comparisons to The Good Place are hard to avoid and not to the advantage of this show. The technology often makes no sense, which detracts from the drama, and the story gets bogged down by a pointless murder mystery. That being said, Andy Allo in the role of Nora oozes charm; she definitely carries the show on her shoulders, because her co-star is pretty forgettable.
Worth a quick binge, but I'm not sure I'm gonna stick around for a second season.
This is very much the most boring and predictable story you can tell about the Singularity. Big meh.
The idea is cute: a boy of mixed Jewish/Muslim heritage reconciles the two sides of his family with food. Unfortunately, the story is very much paint-by-numbers, and the beats are ultra-predictable. The cultural conflict is also presented in a pretty patronizing way. Additionally, the entire movie rests on Abe's parents being extremely tone-deaf to the interests of their kid, and said kid unabashedly lying to them about going to work for an adult on the other side of town.
Noah Schnapp was pretty good, though, aside from the forced teenager lingo. #FellowKids
I do NOT get why this movie gets so much love.
I get that it's not meant to be a historical movie. It's a revenge exploitation flick set in WWII, and the bad guys being the target of revenge here are the Nazis. I get that. At the same time, there's something so utterly morally corrupt about creating an unrealistic fantasy where badass Jews torture Nazis. It's the kind of thinking that has led to America using torture on captives: ultimate evil requires an equal response. It's so much against the ethos of the survivors of the Holocaust that it's embarrassing to watch. It's misguided revenge porn.
Ah, but if only the story that was being told was better. As it is, it's not so much a story as much as a sequence of masturbatory dialogues where Tarantino gets to feel clever about himself. People talk and talk and talk, and although there is an overlying sense of tension, it's so predictable every time it becomes tedious. There's just so many times we can watch a Nazi being passive aggressive with an undercover Jew before the shtick becomes boring, and each of these last so damn long... You get twenty whole minutes of a Nazi talking racist shit until the inevitable violence happens and Tarantino gets his money shot. We're talking porn-levels of sophistication, here, except it's about murdering evil Nazis.
It's well-directed for sure, and Christoph Waltz and Mélanie Laurent do an amazing job, but man, that script is a big pile of self-indulgent crap. And I say this as someone who loves early Tarantino.
A naturalistic French film about an astronaut who must deal with the anxiety of being separated from her daughter as she's about to go to the ISS for one year. This movie is NOT an action movie, and not sci-fi in any way. What it is is a wonderful character study on the demands of parenthood in the context of a high-pressure career. The acting is understated yet powerful, the astronaut stuff feels super-realistic, and Eva Green is amazing in every scene she's in.
I love Jon Stewart and I'm definitely a Liberal, but this movie was just awful. It's Democrat America lost in the wilderness of the Trump years, looking for where they've gone wrong and unable to figure it out. Preachy, tone-deaf, and condescending.
A decent film, but it doesn't rival Tarkovsky's 1972 adaptation.
This version benefits from a much cleaner emotional arc. The characters make more sense, and the relationship between Kelvin and Rheya is much easier to grasp. Emotionally, the story makes more sense and is more rewarding. Still a haunting meditation on memory, grief, and loss.
What it lacks from the 1972 version, though, is this sense of utter alienness and dread. The planet Solaris feels a much smaller concern here, and the world itself is distant, not really a looming presence in the story. That was the one thing that made Tarkovsky's version so powerful, and it was truer to Stanislaw Lem's novel because of it.
I saw this film as a kid when it came out, and again recently. Objectively it's not a good movie with a bad script and abysmal science, but there's just something so compelling about it to me.
Could be the strange mix of Disney-like robots and oppressive darkness of the story made a strong impression on me; all I know is that, for me, The Black Hole has this unique quality to SF that you can find, say, in Tarkovsky's Solaris: a mix of dread and awe at the unknown, a sense that the universe is more dangerous and vast and wondrous that you can possibly imagine.
That, plus Maximilian the robot is such a fantastic villain.
What a weird, incoherent movie that was. Starts off great with great characters and a sense of mystery, devolves into a pseudo-Lynchian laboratory affair, and ends with a poor man's X-Men ripoff. Pacing is all over the place, story makes no sense, the twists (Area 51 and NOMAD/Damon) were dumb as hell.
Ending was kind of cool but felt out of a different movie altogether.
A return to form after a few lackluster episodes. Some truly hilarious moments, as well as heaping scoop of twisted pathos as you can expect from a Harmon story.
