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Reviews
Gordon Ramsay's 24 Hours to Hell and Back (2018)
The LaCroix version of Kitchen Nightmares
Gordon Ramsay lies to a restaurant, a la Intervention and installs cameras telling them it's for a renovation show. GR wears a silly disguise and eats in the restaurant with a group of locals.
The camera dramatically zooms in on the dishes presented to Ramsay and Co, until GR has had enough and strips off his disguise. Staff and customers immediately recognise him, exclaiming "omg! Chef!". GR demands everyone stops what they're doing, and for some reason, as if he has actual authority, they do.
From here on in, it's essentially a lesser Kitchen Nightmares, but with the silly added gimmick of a 24 hour time limit.
Whatever. It's Gordon Ramsay. There's grotty kitchens, foul language and yucky food until Gordon saves the day. It's not as entertaining as Kitchen Nightmares and it tries too hard to pull emotional storylines.
My Guardian Angel (2016)
Ghoulish overkill
The hatred the parents display for their children is just unbelievable. It's not that I don't think that child abuse is real, it's just very poorly acted. The parents may as well be Batman villains from the 60s.
Oddly, the only moments of good acting came from the child actor.
I have limited knowledge of witchcraft, but would an owner of a new age shop really give advice to a preteen girl about voodoo for "a school project"? It seems a bit dark for a 12 year old girl to be practising voodoo.
On an unrelated note, I think I recognise the mother as the drunken divorcee at the dinner party in The IT Crowd. Just included that to help with the character count of this review.
The ending was also just dumb. But I still enjoyed watching it, it wasn't boring.
How I Caught My Killer (2023)
True Crime if it was a mediocre YA novel
Plenty has already been said about the music and narration. The music is out of place, terribly produced with grating vocals (I have a feeling the narrator is the vocalist?). The narrator tries to drum up suspense and emotion, but it's forced and feels downright disrespectful.
The pacing is slow. I enjoy a slow burn true crime doco, but this was like watching grass grow. At one point, the narrator paused for dramatic effect and I wanted to yell at her through the screen to hurry up.
Who is the target audience? It seems to be aimed at teens due to its "YA Novel tone". Would teens actually be interested in this? I'm not sure. This show almost feels condescending to its audience, not to mention disrespectful to the victims and their loved ones, for over dramatising real tragedy for no good reason.
There are much better true crime documentaries on youtube.
The House (2022)
Delightfully Creepy
Lovely animation that perfectly suits the tone of the three stories. I was especially unsettled while watching the first story. Darkly funny, enjoyably uncomfortable, and I like that not every little question is answered (for example: who exactly is the builder of the house?). If you liked Love Death & Robots, give this a go.
Await Further Instructions (2018)
It's stupid, but not worth the harsh reviews
This film almost got there. The brutal reviews don't make sense to me, because it's honesty not that bad. Average. Started off strong then fizzled out. This film had premise but didn't know what to do with it. Still an enjoyable watch.
100 Humans (2020)
Feel good non scientific experiments
The hosts tend to misrepresent historic psychological experiments and words of invited experts in favour of a "left leaning" bias. Don't go into this expecting actual evidence based social psychology.
With the gun range experiment, I felt it would have been more accurate if both the white and black men were wearing the same colour shirts. Instead, the black man wore a brighter shirt than the white man, which may have skewed results. Hosts pushed a lot of their own bias onto many "experiments" and let stereotypes cloud their critical thinking.
Hosts were cringe in general.
I did find myself smiling a lot through this, once I got past the pushed agenda.
Daybreak (2019)
Boring, and badly acted
Not even enjoyable intentionally as cringe fuel. Very annoying to sit through.