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AntonTh
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Travelers (2016)
The cleverest time travel execution so far
I just stopped watching 12 Monkeys because after six episodes I found it quite boring, flat, repetitive and full of plotholes. It might have been watchable for me if I hadn't seen Travelers first.
'Travelers' adds limitations, new aspects and hurdles to the time travel concept that manage to keep it fresh. After all, when time travel is just a matter of flipping a switch, who cares what happens anyway.
At the end of the second season, the plot gets messy and it's time to wrap up but season 3 renewal seems to be confirmed. I hold my breath!
Pablo Escobar: El Patrón del Mal (2012)
Informative but not thrilling - and too long
Narcos made me curious about the 'real' Escobar story. So I sat through all 74 episodes of El Patrón del Mal. From a Colombian perspective, the production might be acceptable and the story-line fascinating. Now I'm just a movie watcher so without disrespect to the victims I review this series as such.
1. It's far too long. Too much time is spent on victims and their funerals, on journalists, on mourning family members. (My mam recently died so the impact of a death is still fresh in my memory. How unbearable it may be, filming crying people doesn't make for a good TV-show. No disrespect intended.)
2. Did the journalists help writing the script? They emphasize their own role in a way that's hard to believe. Their meetings are lengthy, boring and hold up the progression of the story-line. Even their home situations and discussions at the dinner table are shown... Admittedly at some point I started skipping the journalists conversations and I never missed a bit of information because of it.
3. Many, many dialogues are simply illustrations of what we already know. People worrying, politicians worrying, journalists worrying, possible victims worrying, before a murder, after a murder, yes, at a certain point we got that the situation was bad. Some of these sidelines, like zooming in on murdered politicians and their families, consume up entire episodes.
4. The music is badly chosen and sounds like some free stock sound-samples used over and over again. CGI (explosions) aren't state-of-the-art either, to put it friendly, but somehow I find that easy to forgive.
5. Location indicators: before seeing a scene, we're informed where it takes place by a panorama picture of the city. The same picture of Medellin (or Bogota) with the same clouds in the air, over and over again. OK, sometimes the night shot is used.
6. What really puzzled me was the casting of Escobar. Looking at this series, Escobar was a fatso, walking around like a Teletubby, so insecure that he never looks anybody in the eye when speaking. His voice has a robotic, mechanic intonation, like he's summing up his lines. It's amazing that such a loser could ever become the worlds biggest drug-lord.
Escobar's character doesn't fit the impression that I got from real footage and pictures: a charismatic guy, gesturing, leading the pack, looking straight in the camera.
But then, everyone says this series is quite authentic so I'll have to accept this disturbing fact as being close to the truth. It spoiled my watching experience to some extent. If they only could have given Escobar some charisma.
I don't regret watching all episodes though. The series was not only informative about Escobar but also gives a peek into a world where lives don't count.
The Following (2013)
Not literature but entertaining anyway
Acting is great, action is okay and looking at cruel twisted freaks keeps my curiosity alive. The writing is not stellar. But even if it lacks the plot quality, dialog and character/relation development of other series, I find it fun to watch even if doesn't get to the level of Prison Break, Dexter, The Killing - let alone series like Deadwood or Treme, my favorite shows even though they're totally on the other end of the spectrum (mainly dialog and character development). For a simple police/action series about a disturbed cop hunting a charismatic serial killing cult leader, The Following is quite good.
I post a review because I find many reviews being either too negative or too positive, and I suspect the 'Great Writing' reviews because it's clear that's not one of the strong points of the series. But then, every viewer has his own expectations. Not everyone likes to watch 'Generation Kill' or 'Treme'.
Highly improbable plot twists, yes, like followers infiltration in supposedly highly trained elite teams, exposing themselves only when it's plot twist time. Boring? That's subjective. Some people like movies full of car chases. For me these are time wasters. This series does have a repetitive pattern of catch/escape. If you like that, this series is superb.
Starting with first season's episode 7 now, I'll continue watching.
The Master (2012)
Interesting concept, boring subject
It's great when the content of a work is reflected in its form. In this case it results in a film that is as clueless as its main character. I was left clueless as well, especially about the question why the movie had to take a long 144 minutes when there was nothing to tell in the first place. Intriguing afterward but at times a bit boring to sit through.
Although this was all I had to say, I'm forced to extend this review with some extra lines to make it ready for publishing. In fact that answers my previous question: if content doesn't have a certain length, some people cannot believe it is worthwhile. Maybe that justifies that even a message without content needs 144 minutes to come across.