baede-39749 Reviews

The Crowded Room (2023)

Excellent seriens with one weird failing

[8/10 · 2 September 2023]

This was surprisingly good series. Great levels of drama and mystery and the pacing is perfect. Each piece of new information is provided at the perfect time to keep the viewer engaged and build up more mystery and drama. And the pieces fit like a perfect puzzle. The character's trauma is exposed step by step and it makes the viewer sympathize with a criminal, despite the crime.

But one of the strange failings of the series, one which jumped at me because other Apple series approach the same way, is a strange "sin of the past washing". They put a lot of African-American (or women, or minorities in general) characters in positions of power (judges, prosecutors) which was certainly not the case at the time (late 1970s). The show that caught my eye with the same was For All Mankind and I can't unsee it now. Washing the past makes in various series, present one included, makes it look like some people were far more accepted at the time than they really were, and it makes newer generations believe that.

Tehran (2020– )

Good series but relies on too many clasic cliches

[6/10 · 20 May 2023]

The series is good overall, not a bad plot or pace. Having different enemies facing off in such a movie is refreshing. And the setting and languages (for someone who doesn't speak them at least) definitely make the series stand out. The acting is decent and the characters don't feel like "yet another good or bad guy". Both sides are given a dimension here, both are presented with humane and less humane sides, both have good drivers behind them, both show the sides of the same coin.

But it's still heavily relying on the same old cliches and TV tropes from any other "action" show. Supporting the otherwise good plot is an endless string of the same unrealistic situations I've seen 1000 times, like complicated hacking scenes resolved in minutes, chases on the roof, through a dozen people's apartments, and jumps on conveniently placed empty cardboard boxes, random people or cars that fortuitously show up in an otherwise completely empty scene at precisely the right place and time to save the protagonist in a chase or from a bullet, chases where after minutes of running through obscure side streets of a city of 10 millions the protagonists meet again fortuitously at exactly the right time to save each other despite not coordinating at all, characters that have superhuman reflexes and aim often meet characters that can't hit the broadside of a barn, or chases where one time they're meters apart, another they're 30s behind.

They could have done a lot better, take examples from the Mr. Robot series for the hacking parts, make the "spy" parts feel less like one giant luck after another and more calculated, etc.

East New York (2022–2023)

Very sanitized version of the police

[4/10 · 10 November 2022]

Every case, every action, every step is aimed at showing all stand up police, no abuses, no rule breaking. Pillars of community. All good police guys playing by the rules against bad guys. Even something showing police abuse turns out to be just a twisted (lying) version of reality that for some reason random people on the street wanted to tell. Because none of those characters would commit any such abuse, none of them would do more than maaaybe bend the rules slightly to get someone who is guilty beyond the shadow of doubt and it's the only way to go. Interrogations are light, decent, 2 people talking, they'll even apologize for appearing aggressive. And more and more along these lines.

The acting is fine, and the stories are not necessarily bad but getting only such a _heavily_ sanitized version of the police makes it "yet another law and order". It's one more in a series of titles aimed at washing reputations that reality has tarnished beyond repair.

Snowpiercer (2020–2024)

Ok if you ignore that nothing makes sense

[4/10 · 9 February 2022]

When watching a series I can accept the "rules" of the universe. I can somehow accept the premise that in that world, traveling in a train to avoid freezing (not in a bunker, not in some deep mines, etc.) could make sense just to trigger the plot. But what's harder to accept is the never ending stream of plot twists and "but wait"s that don't come out of the smooth flowing plot but are rather forced in regardless of things established in the past. It's not even a good exploration of human psyche as history has shown time and again that humans react differently in many of the situations that you'd find in Snowpiercer.

This isn't the story's universe not making sense, it' not scientific laws not being obeyed (although it wouldn't hurt). It's the writers making everything up *only* as they go along, every plot, every plan, every move, all in a void, looking later on down the road for a forced connection to the actions of the past and the main story line. The series doesn't seem to have cohesive long-term plots, and actions are inconsistent as time goes by.

Good Sam (2022)

House M.D. makes a comeback in a less captivating setting

[5/10 · 8 January 2022]

Brilliant yet obnoxious doctor who has problem with authority? Check. Relegated to consulting and diagnosing after a traumatic accident? Check. Sequence of wrong diagnoses while the patient gets progressively worse until the final completely uncommon and unexpected diagnoses, found through a stroke of luck during a random discussion? Check. Lupus? Check!

I'm not seeing anything that stands out in a particularly good way. The acting is just ok, the story is rehashing House with sprinkles of every single other medical show ever made.

There's room to grow so I may revisit my rating but it's not a great start.

Fist Fight (2017)

Exaggerated, frustrating, in one of the worst ways

[1/10 · 21 August 2017]

This might just be the worst movie I've ever seen. And I've seen my share... It feels like this whole thing started as an absurd cartoon idea and someone thought making it into a movie with real people will somehow make it better. Jokes are exaggerated and absurd, all characters are the worst kind of jokers and buffoons, best to avoid it. Watching it was a frustrating experience.