Triseult

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Sofia, Bulgaria
50

What We Do in the Shadows: 3x04 The Casino

Season 3 has been great so far, but this episode was off the charts. There's so much going on here, so many little quotable moments and hilariously unforeseen turns of events, and every character gets their moment to shine.

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Pig

Marketing really dropped the ball on this one by letting everyone assume it was "Nicolas Cage as John Wick but with a pig." It's a smart, forlorn, reflective character piece about a broken man who deeply cares for something authentic in an empty world. I'd say this is Nicolas Cage's best performance since Adaptation, but honestly, this understated and quiet film blows everything he's done out of the water.

Do NOT go into this one expecting an action flick. This is a slow indie film with a relentless focus on its main character. The most unclassifiable movie I've seen in a long while, and one that stays with you long after the credits roll.

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Wonder Woman 1984

So the first Wonder Woman movie was a fluke and DC is back to making mediocre movies. Good to know.

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Rick and Morty: 4x07 Promortyus

I think this is the first episode where the high concept just didn't feel original or interesting. There have been boring episodes before (season 4 has been pretty weak so far), but this one just feels so skippable. Some nice jokes, but otherwise pretty flat.

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Loki: 2x03 1893

As with Quantumania,Kang's appearance here does nothing to make the character more compelling. Majors is a great actor, but his performance here was just so weird and off-putting.

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Loki: 1x05 Journey Into Mystery

I swear, this is the most bats--t insane comicbook thing the MCU has ever produced, and I LOVE it.

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Irresistible

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.

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Shazam!

Well, damn.The reviews for this were good, but even by keeping my expectations in check I still ended up disappointed.

It's really a kids' movie, and not a very good one at that. It's not, say, The Incredibles where you can indulge in the fantasy as an adult and stll enjoy it... It's the kind of kids' movie that condescends to its audience. The Wizard and the bad guys are just terrible, barely on the level of a Scooby-Doo villain, and the entire conflict at the heart of the movie makes no sense.

There's a bit of humor in having a teenager in an adult superhero body, but most of those jokes were shown in the trailer or don't amount to much more than predictable humor. Worst, there's no attempt at all by Levi to act as if he's Billy Batson in Shazam's body... The two characters may as well be completely different people. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle this ain't.

A hard pass as far as I'm concerned.

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Free Guy

A killer concept with a very bland execution. Featuring Ryan Reynolds in the daring role of Ryan Reynolds.

What really hurts this movie is the way the real-world game concepts take second seat whenever the plot needs something to happen, and no amount of stupid Twitch streamer reaction shots can save the verisimilitude. There's also a really bland romance subplot shoehorned in that brings nothing to the story and is so blindingly obvious its resolution feels more like relief than payoff.

Also, those Disney "Easter eggs" were dinosaur-sized. Disney really, REALLY didn't want you to miss them.

That being said, Taika Waititi makes a really excellent Disney villain, even when his material kind of sucks.

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What If...?: 1x07 What If… Thor Were an Only Child?

"What if Thor had reality-bending dumbness powers?"

A failed attempt at humor and a complete waste of time. Special shout-out to this episode's Darcy for being the most painfully unfunny character in the history of the MCU.

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Devs: 1x03 Episode 3

Not as great as the first two episodes.

There just wasn't a lot of forward movement with characters and plot, and having Lily fake schizophrenia without the audience being clued in was a weird choice. I do like how they figured out that the flames were fake. It was obviously done in a rush, and it was not meant to be viewed repeatedly with the ability to pause, so I buy it.

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Troy

The best and worst of Hollywood, all in one package: bombastic, over-the-top action scenes, famous actors chewing scenery like it's going out of style, but very little heart and truth in the characters and dialogues. None of the characters are especially sympathetic, except perhaps Hector and Odysseus (played by an underused Sean Bean).

The movie claims to be "inspired by" the Ilad, but it should be noted that it plays fast and loose with the events of the Trojan War as chronicled by the Greek Epics, of which the Iliad is but a small part. It's loosely based on the Epics at best (for instance, the Trojan War was said to have lasted ten years, but here it goes by in the space of a week or two), and it makes no real effort to convey Bronze Age warfare with any accuracy.

This was also peak Brad Pitt, so we get to see his naked ass a few times for good measure.

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Tammy and the T-Rex

This may very well be the quintessential "so bad it's good" movie. It's over the top, cheesy, and filled with moments that will make you gape in disbelief. Plus, it's got a smoking-hot Denise Richards showing just how much she wanted a Hollywood career by giving the best performance she possibly could under the circumstances, and a young Paul Walker who quickly gets replaced by a robot dinosaur once a lion mauls him. It's also got stuff like a T-rex doing charades, so yeah.

Honestly, it's absolutely a B movie, but its plot moves at 100 mph and is never boring. I've watched recent Hollywood blockbusters that held my attention far less.

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Y: The Last Man: 1x01 The Day Before

It's a pretty good start, with decent dramatic writing and solid performances. The inciting event is dramatic and well-done enough. That being said, I don't think the unique setting had a chance to shine in this first episode yet. Still, this looks like they're gonna handle the source material with appropriate heft, so I'm quietly optimistic for it. Slow burn, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

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Abe

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

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Solaris

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.

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Doctor Who: 12x04 Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror

I give up. Everyone here is raving about this episode, but that's more a statement on how terrible the previous episode was. Honestly, though, this episode had all the flaws that made the previous one so bad.

I could go on and on about why this is terrible, but it all boils down to the fact that the creators seem to care less about this show than the fans. Take, for instance, the moment when the Doctor and Tesla bond over being inventors. It was the most generic, uninspired tripe you could imagine, and fifteen minutes of googling about the psychology of inventors by the scripwriter would have have made this moment pop. But no such luck because the writer obviously didn't care.

It's even worse when you compare this episode with Vincent and the Doctor, with which it shares a lot of themes, albeit in science rather than art. All they had to do was follow the blueprint, but no. This episode could have been extraordinary; instead it's just extraordinarily bad.

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Marvel's Jessica Jones: 3x02 AKA You're Welcome

A lot of people here seem to hate Trish... I don't, but I still hate this episode. The problem isn't that it's Trish-centric... It's that it's so goddamn boring and pointless. Pretty much everything we see here can be inferred from the first episode, or when it can't, it doesn't add anything at all to the story. There's no dramatic tension to it. NONE.

A 100% skippable episode. Incidentally, this is Krysten Ritter's directorial debut... Big oops there. Better luck next time!

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Reservation Dogs: 2x08 This Is Where the Plot Thickens

Weakest of a great season. The drug scenes went on too long, and when it transitioned into that whole catfish society nonsense, it just felt weird in a bad way. The emotional core is good, but the episode was a crap way to explore it that broke the usual tone of the series.

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Psych: 4x09 Shawn Takes a Shot in the Dark

Wow, this has to be my favorite Psych episode to date. It has high stakes from the moment the episode starts, and it puts Shawn in genuine danger, which rarely ever happens on the show. All that, plus we get Lassiter and Henry teaming up, and Henry even gets to flex some of that detective muscle.

Yeah, this is a great one!

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Star Trek: Discovery: 3x03 People of Earth
5

Shout by Triseult
BlockedParentSpoilers2020-11-01T18:29:58Z

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.

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Doctor Who: 12x01 Spyfall (1)

Well, that was fun! I liked season 11 well enough, but this was still a clear improvement. Had a great sense of fun, what with the spy nonsense, plus the alien mystery was interesting and unpredictable. A strong start to the new season.

I particularly liked the Doctor in a tux ("Name's Doctor. The Doctor.") and the unexpected appearance of the Master, although I wish the mysterious aliens were not simply one of his plots. Yeah, if the season keeps up this sense of fun, we're in for a cool ride.

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Black Mirror: 4x06 Black Museum

I know Black Mirror is all about grim futurism, but goddamn, that episode went hard at it. Too hard, in my opinion: instead of making us think about the perils and moral implications of technology, this episode was a weird horror vengeance porn with some really dark behavior that would never for one second be considered a good idea in the real world.

I mean, episodes like "White Christmas" had their existential horror, absolutely; but this just felt mean-spirited.

"USS Callister" was amazing and "Hang the DJ" was cute, but the rest of this season has been very disappointing.

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Black Mirror: 4x04 Hang the DJ

Lovely episode. I wasn't sure about it throughout, but the ending redeemed it all.

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Black Mirror: 4x02 Arkangel

Familiar story that didn't need scifi to be told. The ending was dumb, unsatisfying and over the top.

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Leave the World Behind

A solid premise marred by an overlong runtime and illogical events and characters. I like that the characters are flawed and messed up, but this took it just a bit too far, and their decisions were often frustratingly illogical even with the goal of self-preservation in mind. Performances were pretty solid, though.

Commenters here calling this movie "woke" are making me scratch my head. Apparently, "woke" now means any movie featuring Black people even in a supporting role where skin color plays any role at all. In the end it was a human story about people overcoming differences and showing each other compassion.

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Better Things: 5x10 We Are Not Alone

I'm glad this is how they decided to end the show. No big dramatic turn, no death or anything silly like that... Just a feel-good slice of life as we say goodbye to beloved characters. We know there'll be other trials in their lives, but we also know that, somehow, they're gonna be okay.

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Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend: 1x04 Battle Medieval

Stone and Crenn were robbed. They clearly had the superior dishes (that forest floor one was out of this world), but the point of this episode was to give a boost to Samuelsson because he got his butt handed to him over the course of his episode.

Seriously... Every one of Samuelsson's takes on medieval food was so out of left field. "Medieval food was all about being soft"?!

(Yes, I take Iron Chef way too seriously.)

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What If...?: 1x09 What If… The Watcher Broke His Oath?

After a very hit-and-miss season, this finale was nearly flawless and redeems even the poorer episodes. (Okay, maybe not that Dumb Thor one.) An unexpected coming-together of previous episodes gives us action on a cosmic scale never seen before in the MCU, including action moments that put your most over-the-top anime face-offs to shame. Really neat stuff.

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Save Yourselves!

This is very much a one-joke indie SF film that doesn't really end. I thought the girl's performance was great, and some of the writing around two clueless Millennials trying to disconnect was fun, but overall the movie was a big waste of time. One thing that stands out to me, though, is how genuine the relationship between the leads felt. It really felt like they loved each other despite their mutual limitations.

Can't say I recommend it, though.

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