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shrikar-v
Reviews
House of the Dragon: The Black Queen (2022)
Dragged out pointlessly
Honestly, with so much production value, there needs to be better directing to get the most out of the show. There are so many pointless, empty scenes and lines that add nothing to the drama and the story development. I feel like I watch 20 minutes worth of content for an hour.. and I don't get why.. are they lacking a screenplay? Or is the director failing to deliver the slow burn effect they're going for?
I think the last 3 episodes especially seem especially dragged out. There are all these scenes of Daemon brooding or saying strange things, I understand that they want to convey he is war mongering but I think we need better writing..
The Witcher: A Grain of Truth (2021)
Boredom is the monster Geralt tries to slay
What a dull affair, not to mention underacted and overproduced.
To begin a season expecting us to just automatically be invested in the future of these rather dull characters was.. confident to say the least. It was so melodramatic and hardly possessed the depth to warrant it. I found myself perpetually bored.
The Chair (2021)
Not a bad show except for Duplass
A pretty well produced show, not great writing but it's still quite funny. I really wish they cast someone else as Dobson, because Duplass puts in a pretty off-putting and poorly acted performance.
The show touches on all the current hot topics in American culture but it seldom digs deep enough to seem genuine. It portrays a lot of weak willed characters drifting through their charmed lives and other than Sandra Oh, none of them are particularly rootable. I felt absolutely no emotional investment in any of the characters' fates. The show was like.. vanilla milkshake, I could drink it but I'd never go out looking for it.
Young Wallander (2020)
Robotic execution of a good plot
Its not a bad watch, but it really could have been executed far better. The lead actor has a single facial expression at his disposal and delivers his dialogues with no real intonation. Much of the "drama" feels stilted as few of the actors don't really seem to be feeling the emotions they claim to be feeling.
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (2016)
Quirky, Twisted and Good - Except the actor playing Dirk Gently
This is a pretty well written show with an unpredictable story line and quirky characters. The actor who plays Dirk Gently however, was mostly hysterical or just generally off-putting in every scene and took a lot away from the larger appeal of the show.
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)
Steaming pile of CGI garbage
This movie was just so awful, never mind the whole this is not how Arthur should be, this is not how any movie should be. Its just a montage of random CGI scenes that borrow heavily from Game of Thrones and 300 interlaced with some mediocre writing with lines that are delivered like they are clever but really aren't. Most of the action sequences are just incoherent blurs of smoke, fire and loud sounds. The fight choreography is just awful, second only to the laconic performances led by the most unbelievably bad casting mishap - Jude Law, who looked like he may burst into tears any minute. Perhaps the worst part of the movie is how shamelessly Guy Ritchie has stolen from other shows and movies to try and add some flavor to this bland and boring movie, like the casting of little finger from game of thrones, the kung fu master from Marco Polo and Djimon Hounsou, undercover as the only black man in medieval England. Please spare yourself and don't watch this movie.
Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014)
Quintessential big budget tacky rubbish
This movie was, for lack of a better word, trash. I do not recommend it, unless you are 14 year old. The casting was mediocre, the performances were contrived and overacted, the characters were unappealing to anyone over 14 and the story line probably took 10 minutes to think up. There is precious little to praise in this movie save for the action, I enjoyed the brutal fights and gore but I spent most of the movie hoping someone would rip Samuel L Jackson's tongue out so I didn't have to endure yet another unbearable performance by him, this time complemented with a repulsive lisp. I'm not sure how Jackson is still being cast, he hasn't put in a true performance in over 20 years and his boorish personality is hardly appealing, especially after we've seen him be the same person in every single movie.. Back to the movie. The scripting and dialog was awful, the costumes were gaudy and the entire movie just came of as tacky and a hollow attempt at seeming polished.
Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014)
Painfully boring
Wow this movie was so boring. It was rather painful to try and sit through the entire thing, so I spared myself the last 30 minutes of what seemed like 14 hours. I suppose it was well shot, but there was entirely too much drama, all of which was contrived. There were too few plot building shots, for instance his marriage, and his 5 year old kid in the next scene, it was all a bit randomly paced. Bale's acting was good I suppose, until he tried to seem paternal which was a spectacular failure. It was funny that Moses resorted to what may be defined in modern day diction as terrorism after training the Jews how to fight as an army. I choose to stray away from the aspect of religion completely, I don't care whether the script followed the book in this case.. it would probably still be boring anyway. Bottom line, I'd recommend this movie if you were on a first date and trying to get some action, the girl would probably take any distraction to save her brain from being wasted away by boredom.
Covert Affairs (2010)
Wildly mediocre
I watched a random episode of this show, because.. all the other channels were in Dutch, it was not impressive. Its rather surprising that the show is so poor though since it seems to have quite good production and visual effects, but awful directing and a script that's exaggeratedly simplistic. The actors do a good enough job for a cable show that is more a drama than an action show but the direction is too obvious the show lacks subtlety and sufficient research that is usually a key to spy fiction. Honestly, it was about as well researched as one of the Hardy Boys books I read when I was 10. The show has potential but the execution is below par.
Yeolhansi (2013)
Dark, clever thriller
11 AM is a very well constructed movie, with an intriguing story line that draws you in very quickly and the cast and production crew were more than up to the task of executing this script to perfection. I watched this movie on the tiny screen of a KLM airline on my way to Amsterdam from Dubai, surrounded by crying and kicking kids and a large snoring man, but I was blind to my surrounding for an hour and a half.
The movie tells the tale of a research team in an underwater Russian nuclear fusion reactor trying to create a black hole with which to travel in time. After 3 years and one small success the project is set to be scrapped, but the lead researcher schedules one final test run to travel 24 hours in to the future. When he arrives in the future with his (rather cute) assistant, they see the lab is on fire and the crew is no where in sight. While they scurry to collect evidence of their time travel and return to the past someone tries to kill one of them and the assistant is left behind (or is she?). Back in the present the story follows a series of seeming mysteries such as why was the lab on fire? what happens in the next 24 hours? Why is the CCTV footage corrupted? The crew have 24 hours to figure out what happened and stop it.
If you're read or seen scifi on time travel you will guess what happens next. Despite having guessed the biggest "twist" in the tale, I enjoyed the movie because of its sharp acting, noir style atmosphere and enthralling story line. This movie follows well in the foot steps of Oldboy (ok maybe not THAT good), I saw the devil and Memories of murder and should have had more exposure in the west.