Triseult

5 followers

Sofia, Bulgaria
50

Tales from the Loop

Rarely have I ever watched a show that has provoked such a lack of reaction on my part. It's the fat-free vanilla yogurt of SF TV. It's not poorly done, and the acting is okay, but there's nothing interesting to connect with.

Plus, the VFX is too clean, so it lacks the kind of pastoral, grounded yet whimsical quality that Stålenhag's amazing art evokes.

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Criminal: United Kingdom: 1x01 Edgar

I was intrigued by the concept of this show, but while the first episode wasn't atrocious, I'm gonna pass on the rest. The idea of the entire story being told in an interrogation room ends up limiting the dramatic possibilities way too much for my tastes. Think about it: there's no chance the person being interrogated is innocent, because then you have no episode. So we're left with guilty people, and the only tension we get is whether they'll confess or not, which we know will happen because otherwise the bad guys win.

And honestly, if this first episode is any illustration of the overall quality of the rest, I'm not interested. The episode is built as if they're racing against the clock and brilliantly lure Edgar into revealing a significant detail, but... the key detail is the patterns of the trunk mat on the victim's cast. A detail which they had from the get-go and for which they didn't need Edgar's admission to implicate him!

So yeah, no. Pass for me. Nice try, but the concept doesn't carry the show at all.

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The Ministry of Time: 3x13 Between Two Times

For those wondering, YES, El Ministerio del Tiempo will return for a fourth season!

This was a great episode. Reminded me of some of Supernatural's most meta episodes. At the same time, I'm happy this isn't the series finale. Hope Amelia, Julian, Alonso and Pacino all make a comeback.

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Humans: 3x08 Episode 8

Loved most of the season, hated the damn "You cannot abort that child because it is the future of both our races" clichéd ending.

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Inside No. 9: 1x03 Tom & Gerri

A disappointment after two strong episodes.

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Counterpart: 1x07 The Sincerest Form of Flattery

I love the entire series, but this episode was just spectacular. I love this show.

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Black Mirror: 4x03 Crocodile

Second season-four dud in a row for me. The story was clichéd and could have been told without the SF tech.

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Dream Scenario

Most exciting part for me is that I fell asleep watching this movie and dreamed of Nicolas Cage.

Cool premise, but nowhere to really take it. A missed opportunity.

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Bullet Train

It's got nice performances and a few funny moments peppered here and there, but most of it is a messy pile of noise that's not half as clever as it thinks it is. The over-reliance on coincidences kills any semblance of a story.

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Scavengers Reign: 1x01 The Signal

Wow?! Reminds me of my all-time favorite animation,Fantastic Planet, but with a nice touch of ecohorror added. First episode was a truly compelling watch, and I hope the rest of the season can maintain this high bar. The plot itself is more on the slow side, but this gives the show a contemplative quality. Just lie back, relax, and breathe in this truly alien world.

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American Born Chinese: 1x04 Make a Splash

Oh, my gooooood, that episode nearly killed my interest for this show. A long, tedious flashback that's completely against the tone of the rest of the series, concerning characters I care nothing about, wrapped in cheap sets, poor writing, and an attempt at '80s sitcom aesthetic that falls flat on its face. The only thing that got me through was practicing my Mandarin listening skills, and seeing the Monkey King himself in action.

I've just gone through the synopses for the rest of the season to make sure that was the last flashback. Whew.

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What We Do in the Shadows: 3x07 The Siren

This show is one of the most consistently funny on TV right now, but that cold open with the boat was one of the most hilarious things this show has put out.

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What If...?: 1x08 What If… Ultron Won?

MAN, this show is so uneven. After last week's awful attempt at comedy, we're now getting a no-holds-barred, intriguing cosmic episode with fantastic stakes and awesome action. Not only was the multiversal fight visually cool and exciting, but it's also the very best we've seen of Hawkeye in the entire MCU. (At least to date! Fingers crossed for the Disney+ show.)

Let's hope the next episode delivers on this fantastic setup.

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Nobody

The comparisons to John Wick are inevitable, and they're not in this movie's favor. John Wick is just a tighter, more stylish, more visceral version of this story. That being said, Bob Odenkirk is fantastic, and arguably better than Keanu Reeves. Not a bad way to spend a hour and a half.

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Long Shot

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.

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Late Night

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.

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Catastrophe

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.

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The Mandalorian: 2x01 Chapter 9: The Marshal

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!

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Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome

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...

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Money Heist: Season 2

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.

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Caprica

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.

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Snowpiercer

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.

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Upload

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.

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The Black Hole

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.

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The Beyond

A movie that falls absymally short of its lofty ambitions. The script SERIOUSLY needed a polish pass to tighten everything and even correct typos and misused words. I think it's the first movie I've ever seen where that happens, and it did at least four times. Not sure why the actors couldn't tell the director his script was wrong, but I digress.

The film is wordy, and it features a lot of people talking at the camera as an exaggerated shaky cam films them at an odd angle. It feels like an episode of The Office without the jokes. Some of the acting is just godawful and on the nose, and the film's structure is a mess. What little tension there is at the beginning gets lost in the movie's own fascination with "Humans Two-Point-Zero" (come ON, people would say "Two-Point-Oh," for God's sake), then it devolves into a weird Cosmos pastiche without any proper payoff.

Too bad this script didn't get some more major polish time, because there were a few cool ideas and visuals in there.

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Color Out of Space

Two hours of mind-numbing badness redeemed by 20 seconds of Nicolas Cage completely losing his sh*t at his car.

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The Mandalorian: 1x07 Chapter 7: The Reckoning

A return to form after two lackluster episodes. This was easily on the level of the first three episodes of the season.

Not much I can say, except I'm now incredibly excited for the finale.

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Star Trek: Short Treks: 2x02 The Trouble with Edward

That's what a "Short Trek" should be: fun, fast-paced, and memorable. Enjoyed it a lot.

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Furie

The story doesn't win points for originality, but wow, this turned out pretty great. The use of Vovinam (Vietnam's martial art) makes the action sequences fluid and dynamic, and Veronica Ngo kills it as Hai Phuong, bringing a guilt-ridden desperation to her performance. (And yes, she was totally wasted on The Last Jedi.) Not a groundbreaking action movie, but it's fresh and interesting.

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Polar

Oh, wow, that movie was truly terrible. Like John Wick's stupid, mean, and lecherous younger brother. Tries so hard to be cool yet just comes off as corny as hell.

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