Change Your Image
gully-foyle-70750
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
The Wheel of Time (2021)
FUNNIEST THING I'VE WATCHED IN A WHILE
Perhaps I'm jaded, but as a sci-fi/fantasy fan I got through the books over 25 years (I did not find them particularly memorable, but fun). I'm not a purist to insist any film/video rendition should be in lock-step with the book(s), but I am bothered when 400 characters are invented, 7 or 8 genders are re-categorized, long digressions are used to 'explain' why we are where we are, and style quickly overcomes logic.
'The Wheel of Time' doesn't do that much, but it inadvertently made me laugh at least 20 time per episode (I gave up two episodes into Season 2).
Ultimately I couldn't decide what was more amusing, the dialogue (beyond cringeworthy), or the fashions. I am unable to do justice to how hilarious the fashions were.
That's it.
Boring with a capital R, but funny as hell.
Vikings: Moments of Vision (2018)
What a Collasol Disappointment
"Let's get all arty, okay?"
Forgetting the bible they'd established, they had to get all artsy/arty and destroy the pace of the series so far.
Things we learned:
1. Since all the principals are such incredible fighters, if Ragnar had only had a few more sons they could have taken over the world by Tuesday after lunch.
I felt bad for the rank and file, they could barely hold their weapons compared to the 'leads.'
2. One 'moment of vision' is fine. Two is pushing it. Three proves all there was to this episode was a battle where the leads killed (a lot) and were finally put down.
When they continue in the ludicrous 'visioning,' I fell asleep. Well, I didn't, but I wanted to.
This is just a passably good TV show that turns history on its head instead of leaving out the anomalies the plot creates. IT IS NOT GREAT THEATRE. Don't pretend it is.
Don't even try it. The writers and directors just aren't good enough.
Emily in Paris (2020)
The Fashions Are Funny
Cringeworthy is too slow a word for this. Cliché upon cliché upon cliché ad nauseum. Story (?) lines aren't much better. It's like they're plucked from 'The Flintstones' after they got subscriptions to Elle and Vogue.
If it wasn't for the clothes, there would be NO laughs. The fashions make up for it complete lack of humour, and they're hilarious. Not sublimely so, just . . . I can't find a word for them in English, and I don't know much invective in other languages. None that would fit, at least.
Really, Ms. Collins does a creditable job that doesn't offer her many weapons. The plots telegraphic elements would embarrass Morse.
Hard pass.
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999)
From Passable to Boring
As time goes on, the quality of this show has turned from crisp, tight story-lines, to pointless moralising, That leaves a lot of leeway for the writers, limited as they seem to be. It's repetitious, hackneyed, and incredible (in the true meaning of the word).
At the best of times Mariska Hargitay could barely act her way out of a paper bag, but after so long she can't act her way into one.
At my house, the show has been relegated to 'electronic wallpaper,' something that's on in the background while I do something interesting like read or paint the walls.
Really, it's so bad now it's ludicrous.
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017)
It's Good, but Season Four Was a Disappointment
Perhaps it was the COVID pause giving the writers too much time, but Season 4 was appallingly bad. The shticks were over the top, the scenes went on and on and on until they were almost painful. The performances were fine, and although the scripts were adequate, the focus kept shifting from Midge trying to be funny (or learn what being funny is) to being Jewish while Susie became a caricature of the original caricature, just more cartoon-like.
The 'attention' to the period had lapses big enough to drive a truckful of plots or grammar through it.
The cartoon characters suddenly shifted from being likeable 'characters' to merely being cartoons. That's okay, but at least get outside the lines now and then.
They finally managed to use the chemistry between Midge and Lenny, but even that could become a problem of shifting focus even more. Too many drops for the bucket.
Season 1 was clever.
Season 2 was brilliant.
Season 3 had a predictable dropoff, but was still close to brilliant.
Season 4 was lamentable. Painful. Bad.
If it wasn't for Seasons 1 & 2 I wouldn't bother coming back for the next one.
Songbird (2020)
Cliche-ridden Trips
Expected more from the trailer, but . . .
The moment THE cliche came on-screen (the Dept of Sanitation bad guy), I knew it was in trouble.
Not enough to hang a story on, and it's so telegraphic Morse should sue.
Complete waste of time.
Gone Girl (2014)
Did I miss something?
Didn't see this when it first came out, but read the book recently and so I decided to watch it (DVD).
The acting was fair to good, the production values excellent. The script seemed to take so many short cuts that I thought Ms. Flynn hated her own novel.
I LIKED the novel.
The film, not so much.
Holes in plot to drive trucks through. Inconsistent characters proceeding on a whim. Ultimately, cringingly boring.
I see Fincher hasn't directed a film in six years. Good career choise.
A zori zdes tikhie... (2015)
Very Well Done
I'm assuming that since reviewers are talking about a film, this was re-edited, because the version I saw was a four part mini-series.
The acting was top-notch despite leaning a little to the stereotypical, and the flow of the piece was quite outstanding.
Recommend it highly.
Too Old to Die Young (2019)
Lynch meets Hitchcock trying to do Bergman
A solid miss, but excellent on so many levels.
Makes "Twin Peaks" look like a Saturday morning cartoon.
Not so much surreal as 'irreal.'
Mise en scene and cinematography are brilliant.
Yes, slow in spots, but worth the ride.
Another Life (2019)
Incredible, in The True Sense of the Word
Take a bunch of photogenic under thirties with an average IQ of a winter's temperature, give them a billion dollar Meccano set space ship, fling them upwards at FTL, taking lots of make-up and no script.
If they didn't have bad acting they wouldn't have any at all.
Dreary is far too fast word for this--effort.
Great visuals (I've always admired how some space ships have more room than most houses I've lived in) The clichés start about ten minutes in and run the gamut. Bad crew people, simpering, argumentative coeds, and incomprehensible dialogue. Well, no, not incomprehensible. It would have been better that way; it merely sounds like rejected (plot) lines from your average bad commercial.
To paraphrase Sid Ziff, this is not work to be taken lightly. It should be ignored aggressively.
Designated Survivor (2016)
Dreary
Starts well, slows down, fades into its own dust by the end of Episode 2. Everyone is SO earnest!
In a sentence: It's '24' with less blood and better suits.
Hohum.
The Society (2019)
Blander Then A Sleeping Pill, Sillier Than A Soap Opera
In the first episode I was struck by the 'selected' survivors of whatever happened. If a certain age was culled, it was very specific. Perhaps we'll learn renegade Nazi scientists are to blame. But the fact is that NO children seem to around, and no adults, so why aren't they worried about the age limit? Perhaps everyone gets disappeared at 17, 18, or 19. Whatever.
All the girls seem to be cut from the same mold: pretty. The guys are more diverse, having jocks, geeks and the invisibles. Not one freak at all, unfortunately. No fatties, no uglies.
The premise was done to death in "Under The Dome," which committed the usual mistake that when you create a universe where anything can happen, the writers get caught up in their momentum and go right ahead and make anything happen. The justifications are usually an arcane reference or weird discovery. So there!
The acting isn't bad, it's wretched. Part of the fault is the result of the scripts, where all the sparkling dialogue belongs to quotations, and there are far too few of those. The angst is so thick you'd need bulldozer to pack it into an auditorium. And even then it would leak, turning it into a 'Blob' film, which could only be an improvement.
Other reviewers have considered the plot holes through you could sail a battleship with room for several trucks, preferably full of talented actors, directors and writers, so I won't go there.
Even a few boobs wouldn't save this.
Bland is too quick a word for this. Talking heads after talking heads and a minimum of action usually adds up to boredom. Well, not necessarily boredom, more a numbing sensation in the brain. Unless you're twelve, then you can giggle at how silly the older kids are.
The direction is static, the pace is non-existent and the result is embarrassing.
Netflix is a wonderful medium, the only problem being that with so much available it's almost guaranteed 50-70% of it will be tripe. This is in the upper limit of that category.
Not even a good try.
What/If (2019)
In short: A Waste of Time
Fomula:
1. Pretty faces.
2. Ability to read script without any sent of nuance that isn't there.
3. Some acting ability. Some.
4. Mix 'commentary' with confusion and call it, uhm, dynamic.
5. Toss in some acceptable swearing to show how 'hip' script is.
6. Dress everybody in Zegna or whatever.
7. Drag in a talented, award-winning actress and ask her to phone it in.
Result: What/If?
Boring with a capital R.
Game of Thrones: The Iron Throne (2019)
Finales shouls be unsatisfying for all, but really. . .!
The principal difficulty in my mind is that when they ran out of GRR Martn's writing/plotting, Benioff and Weiss just weren't up to it. While they were within the realm of the books they had all the 'pointers' necessary to do a good job. Eliminating characters and plot points is normal, and while under the umbrella of the books' plotting, they did an admirable job, but once they got through the fence it just became, not bad, but pedestrian.
Even the directing suffered. It went from close to brilliant to 'good' TV fare, which was far below the standards set in the first 5-6 seasons.
B & W are good TV writers, but left to their own devices, they became so banal that almost anything they did in the series would pale from when they were 'in the sunlight' of the master.
Their talking about just made it worse. It's as if they are trying (desperately) to justify their take on the series, knowing in advance they'd failed. They should have taken the high road and just shut up, cash the cheques, and go on the next thing. Art is art and needs no justification. The moment they spoke prior to the broadcast, the more desperate they appeared.
The flaws are manifest. It's extremely difficult to 'wrap things up' correctly in the fans' eyes, and the harder they tried, the more they failed. Part of character development is that protagonists change and grow. Good become bad, bad becomes good, but even the characters internally 'learn' something. A good director lets us share in that development rather than write a series of exit lines. It was if they anticipated commercial breaks to make us forget what the last scene was about. One the better finales was MASH, and there were allowed a glimpse of how the 'saga' had changed the remaining characters. Yes, change they did, but still remained the characters we had loved. In GoT we just don't know. Everybody became a Marvel Universe depiction of their persona.
I gave it 4 stars because it was very 'workmanlike.'
It wasn't that it was fundamentally unsatisfying, it was that it was BORING.
And to get this far and be bored is beyond dreadful.
Game of Thrones: The Long Night (2019)
A Tactical and Visual Disaster . . . And Sam Peckinpah Would Have Done it Better
I've loved this show, and like many, waited for this confrontation, but there's a bad aftertaste. I accept that a night-time battle would be confusing, illogical (with so many primary and secondary protagonists involved), and obviously difficult to see, but this was ridiculous.
"A lot of the problem is that a lot of people don't know how to tune their TVs properly," Fabian Wagner told Wired[...], but I don't understand. Should one have to reset their viewing parameters for individual programs? Doesn't make sense. I assume the producers have televisions.
But I did go back and rewatch with the Brightness up as high as I could stand. It wasn't much better (visually), although I could see the players better. Nice to know who's dying now and then.
Tactically, the battle was a joke.
Jaime Lannister was a proven commander. Tyrion had decent battle experience. The Dothraki, better than anyone, knew what their strengths were. And still, the Dothraki were treated like Red Shirts. Tossed into the dark with only a bit of trebuchet support. Definitely going out '...not with a bang, but a whimper.' Using the dragons BEFORE to soften the enemy might have helped.
I thought the dead couldn't cross water. I guess it was too cold for moats, but really! Fire? Couldn't anyone figure they'd just pile on, put the fire out and cross?
And hiding in the crypt? Hell, everyone knew that if the Night King showed up the Stark dead might pop out and join the bad guys.
Very badly thought out.
And Arya imitating a deus ex machina to save EVERYONE still standing? Cute, but really! Love the chick, but seeing her trying to get there might have helped.
Overall, I blame George RR Martin. Had the writers been following (with adaptations) HIS plotting, I doubt the battle would have gone as it did. It seems that once the production outran the books the plotting and complexity (and overall FUN) of the story lagged badly in comparison to Martin's writing/plotting.
As for the battle, I hate to say it, but Sam Peckinpah would have done a much better job.