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Reviews
Star Trek: Discovery: Jinaal (2024)
Thank the maker for Wilson Cruz
Wilson Cruz carried this episode, brilliantly portraying "Jinaal", the essence of a Trill host from a millennia before. Great comedic chops by Cruz to pull off a smart plot line that underscored the mission that Booker, Burnham and Culper need to accomplish.
Mary Weisman seems lost as Tilly this season; I have no idea why she is on the ship for this mission, but okay.
And that brings me to the big DOWN with this franchise. The actors of Blu del Bario and Ian Alexander have ZERO chemistry or acting ability. They bring nothing. Their characters... have nothing believable between them other than an ability to sit next to each other and look forlorn. The ONLY... ONLY saving grace is that this is the final season and I will hopefully never have to see that story arc again. So... so... many other talented actors on the planet and the producers went with them.
Argylle (2024)
Best scenes were in the preview.
My husband and I fell asleep on Argyle... twice. Even understanding that the first part of the movie was a visualization of the "book".
We were expecting the movie to be a comedy-action flick along the lines of "Man from U. N. C. L. E." or "Bullet Train", but we were just having a hard time getting into it. For the most part the CGI cat looked like a CGI cat that was badly rendered, as was most of the CGI action sequences. Just really, badly rendered.
The ONE saving grace in the beginning of the movie was Catherine O'Hara playing the mother. She was fabulous!
I just wish it was an interesting movie. It was not.
3 Body Problem (2024)
The problem with 5 Body Problem...
...is that TWO of the 5 Bodies can't stay awake through "3 Body Problem".
The show has some potential, but it keeps getting way too bogged down in the personal dramas surrounding the younger characters; spending entire episodes crying on a beach or in a bar.
Three saving graces are. Liam Cunningham ("Davos" from Game of Thrones"), Rosalind Chao ("Keiko O'Brien" from "Star Trek!") and. Benedict Wong ("Wong" from the MCU). They are able to ground this series and seem to be the three characters who keep the pace moving forward. Nothing is wasted when they are on screen. Sadly, there was a 4th actor, John Bradley (another GoT alum, "Samwell Tarly"), but they killed off his character early on.
Now that, two episodes out from the season finale, the pace has slowed to a glaciers pace, we're just rolling our eyes hoping to just get through it.
Damsel (2024)
Entertaining romp... with DRAGONS!!!
"Cinderella meets Game of Thrones"
Millie Bobby Brown holds her own in this interesting twist on a mid-evil tale. You think, as it starts, that you can see the plot telegraphed, but NOOO! Great twists and turns. Robin Wright is deliciously evil and can certainly give Cerce Lannaster a run for the money! Great supporting cast with Angela Basset and Ray Winstone. Just a fun movie with some actually good production values!
The final plot turn in the movie; our heroine making a friend out of a mortal foe (the dragon), was well done, and of course that leads to the climax that would make Game of Thrones blush.
Palm Royale (2024)
I wanted, SO BAD, to like this. Really.
Oh, what a God Awful production. There are a few saving graces; Allison Janney seems in her element. WONDERFUL to see Julia Duffy (Newhart) on the screen. Ricky Martin holds his own, but the rest of the cast really seems... rote. Even Laura Dern feels... forced. And it is truly a shame that the spectacular. Carol Burnett, other than in a few flashbacks, is reduced to playing a comatose body for most of the first three episodes (as far as they have been released to date). This show needs her; just the snippets of her have.raised this train wreck to incredible heights.
I was trying to place Leslie Bibb then realized she was the star of "GCB in the early 2000's, which has a lot of the same vibe that Palm Royale has.
The other saving grace for PR is that they nailed the atmosphere perfectly.
I don't know if I care to watch the rest of the series. I REALLY wanted to like Palm Royale, but after three episodes, am finding the dialog and plot to be just annoyingly bad. Not entirely a Kristen Wiig fan. When she goes out of swimlane (comedy), she really falls out of her element (WW84), and she is woefully out of her element here.
I am giving it 4 stars for Ricky in a bathing suit, Allison, Julia and Carol, but... that's about it.
Elsbeth (2024)
CBS brought back the 1970's anthology series.
It's raining. I am in my jammies. Decided to give the new CBS series "Elsbeth" a view. Quirky? Check. But the show reminded me of the 1970's anthology series like "Columbo", "Banacek", "The Snoop Sisters", etc. Where our star has 37 minutes to solve the crime the guest star committed in the opening sequence. You KNOW they will, just a matter of how. The plot telegraphed the final scene from the beginning. I had a problem with two aspects of the plot; one - the NYC police were just too nice. Two - if Elsbeth is a installed by the DoJ, why would it be the Chicago office that sends her there? Would that not be out of the lower district court of Manhattan? That made no sense.
It was an amusing show to watch; don't know if I will become addicted to it much like Tony Shalhoub as "Monk". .I don't expect Elsbeth to be around too long.
The Marvels (2023)
What a mess.
This is right up there with last two Thor movies and Guardians of the Galaxy III as one of the worst MCU movies to come out... ever. Yes, we sat through the whole train wreck of a plot. Every time a character spouted "What is going on here?!?!" we asked the same question back at the screen.
What a shame that this is the sequel to an otherwise interesting entry in the franchise. The first "Captain Marvel" was an intriguing plot that had us rooting for Danvers throughout, plus it had the credit montage to honor the passing of the late Stan Lee. Where the first entry in this franchise had a good, strong feminist bent to it, this sequel had none of that; just over the top, cringe-worthy bludgeoning squeaks of "Girl Power!". I guess that Disney was going after the 12-15yo female demographic?
The story made no sense. The plot was just... all over the map.
The Flash (2023)
Keaton and Irons.
When Michael Keaton and Jeremy Irons were on the screen, the movie felt like something. We loved seeing Keaton in the Bat suit again!
Ezra Miller was actually quite adept at portraying both himself and the younger, different universe version of himself, although the ongoing bewilderment of Barry-younger became quite annoying after several scenes, who ever came up with the concept of his laughter needs to be drummed out of Hollywood. The humor was also very juvenile - it reminded me of everything out of the Spiderman plot lines.
The CGI was just WAY too heavy - headache inducing and very hard to follow.
Heart of Stone (2023)
Entertaining movie from end to end.
This movie was produced by the same folks who brought us "Old Guard"; a slick action flick with a female empowered lead. "Heart of Stone" follows the same formula, and in this case, Gal Gadot superbly rises to the challenge as the lead. Slick CGI, great plot, incredible energy throughout. It was "Wonder Woman" with blood and bruises (along with a nod to WW in the tail light applique of the motorcycle she is speeding over Iceland on). Charlie Hunan is good as the heavy.
Unlike many action flicks that just use the action to move the plot along, "Heart of Stone" actually ties the characters together; there were no gaps, no "How did they get to that point?".
An enjoyable romp; certainly set up for a sequel.
The Creator (2023)
All the action none of the empathy.
We watched the movie from end to end and really did not find ourselves feeling anything for the characters. GREAT ensemble of actors, but they just could not rise above the very busy plot that was more or less a riff off "Mandolorian" and every Star Wars plot point. Good bad guy finds he needs to protect the kid while the rebel forces work to destroy the Death Star. (sigh).
Too many issues with continuity, too. The lead character has prosthetics that look mechanical in once scene, then no prosthetics, then human arms and legs, then prosthetics again. Then someone gets blown up, but they are still alive. Then shot. Then alive again. Then blown up... then... And the female protagonist from the beginning is having a baby, but wait, she's a robot, but wait her head is solid, yet the robots have these servo-holes in their skulls, then she has one, but wait, nope, it's not in the next scene. I gave up on trying to keep up with those plot points.
We were both confuse and bored out of our minds, though Ken Watanabe and Allison Janney are always great.
We were glad to see the movie end, but just never felt like we were cheering for anyone. Just glad to be able to turn the mess off.
Leave the World Behind (2023)
Depressing and depressed for watching it.
For a society already living with full-on anxiety of a Conservative destruction of our democracy comes this little nugget of depression about how America fails hard in the coming years. Yeah. Unlike "Don't Look Up", there was no underlying message here, no empathy, no humor, only a downward spiral into the realization that America was over. Again, yeah. Happy thoughts... Produced by Barack and Michelle Obama, I was expecting more; something with a stronger ray of optimism other than watching the "Friends" series finale in the comfort of a nuclear bomb shelter. Hell, even the series "Falling Skies" offered more hope.
There is just too much... turmoil... on our planet, in our politics, in our society. Do we really need to watch another view on anarchy?
Maestro (2023)
Came for the music, left for the disappointment.
Bradley Cooper does a marvelous job of capturing the look of Maestro Leonard Bernstein, however, if you are coming to "Maestro" looking for the music, that is far and few between. We see very little of his process; of Bernstein creating music, of his genesis for the great works he composed throughout his lifetime. What we got was a story of how epically bisexual he was, how much he openly dallied with men while married to a women and raising children. How he discovered cocaine and we are led to believe, from the awful editing of the movie, that his dalliance in cocaine gave him that frantic and much loved persona at the podium. And the ever present cigarette. In every scene. Continuous.
This movie does, in no way, diminish my love and appreciation of Bernstein. Although it came with the imprimatur of his children, the story just does not feel whole nor complete. So much feels missing.
Pleased to learn that Aaron Copeland was his contemporary. I did not know that! A lot of exceptional music had come out of his generation.
Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire (2023)
Worthy of MST2K.
Wow... what a giant piece of ***t. Zack Snyder managed to rip off every genre and every trope from every Sci-Fi movie in the past 20 years. About the only thing missing was someone yelling "KAAAAAHHHHNNNN!!!" Absolutely nothing original about this movie - even the slow-motion action sequences were ripped right from every McG movie and series right down the "Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith" climax. Thankfully, the unintentional humor saved this train wreck. I was expecting two pithy robots to pop up next to the couch and chime in. Bad acting, bad dialog, incredibly telegraphed action sequences. Really bad CGI and matte shots that would have made "Star Trek - TOS" look cutting edge.
Wonka (2023)
This will be as much a treasure 30 years from now as the Wilder original is today!
When the previews for "Wonka" first arrived, I knew instantly that I needed to see it. "Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory" was a childhood favorite of mine. This movie did not disappoint!
Paul King and Simon Farnby did an exceptional job crafting the genesis story of Willie Wonka with wonderful homage to the Gene Wilder orginal. Timothee Chalamet is superb as the young Willy, and he actually can sing and dance! Bringing me to the music! The numbers were great; superb lyrics and execution. Bonus: MR. CARSON (Jim Carter) SINGS!!! (Downton Abby). Loved the story, loved the characters. Calah Lane as "Noodle" is incredible! Great casting all the way around!
And I have to admit that when Wonka sings "Pure Imagination", it brought a tear to my eye.
Loved it. With all of my 62 year old heart, I loved it.
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters: Parallels and Interiors (2023)
Please, Godzilla, eat them first.
I am over this faux "teen-age angst" plot line. Done with it. Pointless.
And I get it - this is a series about "titans" - Godzialla-sized monsters that are hidden on Earth. I get it. Let got of any sense of reality. But come on... three angst-riddled psudo-teenagers roaming the Alaskan ice pack, in a snow storm, dressed like they just buzzed through the GAP at the local mall for winter apparel with nary a concern for hats, gloves, goggles, etc. Then to dump them out in a blizzard. I'm sorry, none of that scales for me.
The dialog is horrible, the only saving grace seems to be in the "Monster of the Week". I just hope whatever wakes up, wakes up hungry. Eat the kids first.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)
Lacking the Spielberg touch and vision.
"Dial of Destiny" has all of the charisma of the post George Lucas Star Wars installments. Lots of flash, lots of action but very, very little atmosphere or depth. When Stephen Spielberg did the first series of Indiana Jones movies, he carefully blocked the scenes using camera angles akin to the film noir that he was paying homage to. Low angles, shadows, zooming, not to mention SWEAT. His hero always has a bead of sweat when he was in the throes of the action. All of that was missing from this (last?) installment. The action and cameras were flat and incredibly redundant, the pacing was horrible and it has none of the charisma that pulled us into the beginning of the series. And Indiana Jones, other than looking the 80 years old that Harrison Ford is, never broke a sweat in any of the action. That must be some powerful antiperspirant he got on...
It was a shame that the John Williams music also seemed...uninspiring. Flat. Like something that has been played to death on the local Classical Radio station.
What we were left with is just a somewhat nice coda to an erstwhile adventure series. In honesty, it was nice to see Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, John Rys-Davies, all permitted to age. Would have been nice to see MORE of the later two other than the limited scenes.
Supernatural: Back and to the Future (2019)
The season that should not have been
Wow... did this series go off the rails in this "final" season. We're about 4 episodes in and have just become so annoyed with the series. I feel like I am watching "Groundhog Day" where Sam and Dean have been stuck in the same loop with the same plot with the same action, over and over and over again. The writers well certainly ran dry on original idea.
This final season could have been SO much better; in the last two episodes of the prior season, we see Mary allow Jack to use his powers to overcome Lucifer, then he gets all "You should not have done that!" on him, and he flares out and kills her. That was just BS. And absolute stupid plot twist that then justifies the pent up anger in Dean (another stupid BS plot vehicle).
How is SHOULD have gone down was that Jack took out Lucifer alone, Mary lives. Just as everyone is happy, Chuck shows up and opens up the apocalypse. This last season should have been about Jack battling with Chuck, with help from the Winchesters, to take over heaven. But no. We're stuck in this absolute, stupid, archaically written plot of them refighting all the deamons they battled in the series.
Oh please.
Loki (2021)
Season 2 is just off the rails.
This series is very hard to follow this season. Not sure what we are looking at, and honestly, it is not holding our interest at all. It's pretty. Has that retro-50's Art Decco vibe to it. But plot is just not cohesive. Season one was incredible. Very mature, very smart. Not so much in this next iteration.
I am also rather surprised that Jonathan Majors is still attached to the Marvel franchise? After his credible sexual abuse allegations, I would have thought the studio would have dropped him. But alas, nope. His character is lost in this season, though. Some lesser "variant" of the "He Who Remains" character from season one.
The Fall of the House of Usher (2023)
In the words of Curly Fine, "Nnnnyaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!"
It's nice to watch a horror show that doesn't bludgeon you over the the head with blood and gore, blood and gore, blood and gore, but subtly builds to that moment of terror.
I read several blogs about the show and was intrigued. I love Bruce Greenwood ("Pike" from the JJ Abrams "Star Trek" franchise) and Mark Hamil ("Luke Skywalker"), both well seasoned for the roles of the family patriarch and family attorney.
The first episode was, indeed, intriguing. Appropriate flashbacks to establish plot points that did not seem disconnected. The death of the mother, the murder of her lecherous boss, her corpse wandering around the family home. THAT was spellbinding and finely interwoven into the story. When her essence moves in the background, I jumped!
Looking forward to watching the rest of the series!
Frasier (2023)
Plummeting fast - thanks to the canned laughter.
The first two episodes of this new version of "Frasier" were wonderful; well written, funny, poignant, even touching.
Oh well. Enter episode 3. Whose bright idea was it to bring in canned laughter? LOUD canned laughter. Potted up (sound mixer terminology) after EVERY SINGLE LINE OF DIALOG and SIDE GLANCE. The canned laugh track is so intrusive, it just destroys the experience of watching the show.
Paramount+ has the original "Frasier" show. Just pick any show from those 11 seasons and watch it. The laughter is organic; where it needs to be, quiet or muted otherwise, an occasional chortle or cough. Intrusive, loud repetitive canned laugh tracks are why I never liked "Seinfeld" or "The Big Bang Theory". I hope some producer from "Frasier" reads this and tells who ever is working the sound board to TURN IT DOWN. Let your LIVE STUDIO AUDIENCE provide the necessary ambience for the show.
How I know? Listen to the wave lengths of the laughter. It goes up as the same pitch, it goes down at the same pitch. No chortles, no coughs, just the same recorded laughter growing louder then subsiding, over and over again.
Chances are it's the same laugh track that they recorded off "I Love Lucy", which was the industry standard recording back in the 90's.
Frasier: The Good Father (2023)
Very familiar yet strikingly new. Superb!
I know that by the 11 season of the previous Frasier series, it had grown quite stale, and it was about time for it to conclude.
This new series feels like it has a lot of the same underpinnings, yet it is refreshing. Kelsey Grammer has finely aged the character and there is no pretense that this picks up exactly where the old left off. Excellent mix of characters and a mix of crisp dialog and some rather remarkable slapstick. It took a few clicks for the first episode to find a footing, but once it did, it just took off.
.Anders Keith feels quite adept with the physical comedy as Niles and Daphne's son, David, tagging along with Uncle Frasier.
Very touching tributes in the pilot to both Martin Crane and John Mahoney.
I wish the series well!
The Witcher (2019)
Whispering moutful of marbles.
Season 3 is wretched. Period. We have no idea what the plot is, what the characters are mumbling about, even with.the sound bar and closed captioning turned on. It's absolutely a pointless season full of horrible dialog and really, really bad contact lenses. We managed to stomach our way through all by the last two episodes. We'll probably get through this series and totally remove it from our Netflix lists.
We LOVED the first season. Liked the second season. But wow... what a train wreck this third season is! Characters from previous seasons are back; but nothing worth mentioning other than they add nothing to a very disjointed and indiscernible plot.
Ahsoka (2023)
How is this canon?
I have always liked "Star Wars" - saw "A New Hope" when it came out in the 1970's. Though the world that George Lukas created was intriguing. In all honesty, though, I've always been a Trekie, though.
That said, I still enjoyed the Star Wars movie franchise, and several of the episodic shows, now on Disney+. But on watching Ahsoka... my husband and I looked at each other and said, "This is just not right!"
How does Ahoska ever have Aniken Skywalker as a Jedi master? He was never a Jedi master; he was, at best, an apprentice to Obi Wan, then he went nuts and slaughtered the Jedi younglings at the temple before succumbing to the Dark Side and becoming Darth Vader. He was NEVER a Jedi Master, let alone an adult without mechanical implants.
That break from anything we knew of this canon just totally threw off the story for us.
Foundation (2021)
Improves with age.
I am glad that I did not listen to the naysayers who cry foul that this is NOT Asimov. So what? It's a really complex and compelling story about the dismantling and downfall of an all-controlling empire at the hands of... math! The story is long, the plot drums forward in compelling and complex sections, all smartly intertwined. Time jumps, characters develop. Superb science fiction based on the Asimov works.
Yes, there were times that it resounded like much of the underlying Michael Burnham plots of "Star Trek: Discovery" ("Only I can save the universe!"), but without the silliness or secondary story arcs that never went anywhere. Every part of Foundation; every thread - pulls together.
I just wrapped up watching season two, and HOLY COW!!! Roxanne Dawson ("Torres" from "Star Trek: Voyager") directed four of the most INCREDIBLE episodes! Much like Jonathan Frakes (TNG's "Riker"), she just has this keen eye for action! Awesome!
The ONLY reason this is not a 10 out of 10 is the damn MUMBLING DIALOG!!! After three episodes, I had to continue watching it with Closed Captioning turned on. This is ASIMOV, so damn much detail is in the dialog, it deserves to be HEARD (or seen!). Stop talking like you got a mouth full of pie!
Well worth the effort to watch, well worth binging on. Looking very much forward to watching it again!
The Swarm (2023)
"Zoo" in the ocean.
It's an interesting premise; nature run amok, but I was trying to think about where did I see this before.... oh yes! The series "Zoo" was the same premise, but alas, this is updated to involve more topical circumstances such as climate change and pollution.
That aside, I have made it through the first two episodes. The special effects are good (for the CW), but the plot keeps going down the rabbit holes of side-bar personal relationships that only seem to detract from the overall story. Gone from this series is the old CW habit of making everything over-the-top diverse - they ejected all of that in this last reorg. But much like "Star Trek: Discovery", when you removed all the unnecessary relationship nonsense, you can pare the season down to a substantial 2 hour movie that gets to the point in plot and action. That seems to be what "The Swarm" needs. I found myself fast forwarding through much of each episode.
It is interesting enough to keep watching. I know I will never look at a lobster the same way again.