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andy-goris
Reviews
Extraordinary (2023)
Great premise, good acting, soundtrack ruins it
Great premise that the writers and actors use for great humor. Each episode is rich with people with new superpowers and they use them in hillarious ways. I give the writers A+ for creativity. The actors execute well, with just a little over-acting. The pace is a tad fast. It would do to be about 10% slower so you can take it all in.
They use the superpower thing to create humor, sadness, curiosity, fear, obnoxiousness, camaraderie, naiveté, surprise, and dozens of other emotions. Again, a great premise well written.
Unfortunately the soundtrack is the worst I've ever experienced. The volume of the sound track is 10dB over the voice track, the music selection is terrible, and the music cuts in at the worst times. If there was a way to completely delete the music and just watch with the rest of the audio, I'd stay with the series, but after a few episodes I just couldn't take it.
I wish my superpower was to ignore the music track :-).
I'd give it an 8 without the music. 5 with.
La legge di Lidia Poët (2023)
Many similarities to Detective Anna
This series has many similarities to the excellent Russian series Detective Anna. If you like one, you will surely like the other. Similarities include the richness of characters, the time period, the story arc as well as the individual stories, the sets, and the amazing costumes. Wow. Even a large yellow house. That said, Lidia Poët is unique in it's own ways and very well done. It may have been inspired by Detective Anna, but stands on its own as a tale of a young, intelligent, gorgeous, persistent woman in the late 1800's unapologetically forging her path through the challenges of society, family, career, and romantic relationships. And solving a few murders along the way.
Lidia does not have Anna's supernatural powers, but she does have superpowers of keen observation and deduction.
My only two nits: (1) (the big nit) is the music. What's with the hard rock music? I love that genre of music, and enjoy those specific rock clips outside of a series like this, but in the context of a period piece it's just weird. (2) (small nit) Lidia's makeup, while beautiful, seems overly modern, not period.
The acting is excellent. The occasional sexual tension is excellent, yet not overdone. The suspense is real.
Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity (2011)
Excellent content, excellent story, terrible narrator
I'd give this 10/10 for the story, the details, the ease of understanding the different concepts, the thoroughness, the demos, the cinematography, and the way they present history as a compelling story. All of these are engaging for anyone with any level of education or any age. So why only 6? The narrator is terrible. This narrator must have watched too much Sponge Bob Square Pants, or Rug Rats, or some cartoons with loud, loud, loud characters over-annunciating every word in every line, because that is how he talks. My wife and I considered turning the audio off and just reading the captioning to not have to listen to him. Think of someone as opposite Sir David Attenborough as you can think of, and that's how this show is narrated.
Fast Color (2018)
WOW - an amazing way to do a sci fi movie
The writing and directing in Fast Color nothing like any recent superpower movie you've seen. Rather than trying to stimulate the audience's amygdalas with fast scene cuts, flashing lights, over-the-top special effects, chase scenes, and explosions, this movie takes an intellectual approach. The character development is excellent and well acted. The story has you on the edge of your seat because you care so much about the characters. There is so much that could go wrong, and it all unfolds at a pace where you can take in every bit, but are never bored. There's not a scene in the movie that is predictable. I hope Amazon is successful at turning this into a series, and that they keep the original writers, actors, director, and style to preserve everything that is so unique about this story and how the story is told.
The Sounds (2020)
Great story, great characters, unpredictable, and one thick, thick plot
My wife and I are hooked on this show, which is story-telling at its finest. The characters are deep, varied, and believable. The unique plot just keeps getting thicker and thicker and thicker and thicker (4 "thickers" for the 4 episodes we've watched so far). The suspense is gripping, and I am constantly squirming in my seat; you won't know what's going to happen next. Most of the acting is excellent - especially the Maori. The directing and cinematography are great and never distracting. Many characters you will care about, and all kinds of interesting things happen to them. Lastly, this series gets double-extra credit for what it doesn't have: no political agendas, no car chases, no explosions, no sirens, no torture, no shakey-camera, no over-cutting-of-scenes, no all-star cast, no formula characters nor formula plot. And yet, your heart will be pounding more than any movie that has all these tropes.
The Unruly Mystic: John Muir (2018)
More about being outside than John Muir
There is some nice scenery in this film and I did learn a few new things about John Muir, but too much of the film is talking heads. To Conti's credit, each of the talking heads has a unique perspective on John Muir and on nature, but I wanted more detail on John Muir and less talking heads. The film moves between two themes, one being John Muir and his passion for the outdoors and all the things he did to discover, experience, and protect these special places. The other theme is simply the outdoors - nature - wilderness - wild places, and the human experience (emotional, spiritual, etc.) of being there. There is one interviewee that was worth the price of admission - a ranger that appears several times in the film, Shelton Johnson, talking about everything from John Muir to neutrinos. Mr. Johnson's enthusiasm is contagious, and he has some of the more unique and interesting things to say.
There was a nice cinematic effect used where they took old black and white photographs and manipulated them to look 3 dimensional as the camera panned. This was very well done and made these old pictures feel new and engaging - like you were there.
Lost in Space (2018)
Snarky characters and miscast/miswritten Will ruin some really clever plot changes from the Original and the Movie
First the good news: the plot simultaneously retains elements and characters of the original show, while changing enough things to make the story fresh. I give the changes 10 out of 10 for creativity, suspense, story depth, and being done in a way that hard core fans of the original TV show, like me, don't feel like we had the rug yanked out from under us. The new robot is wicked cool. He has the powerful, protective elements of Gort (The day the earth stood still) and mystery, terseness, and is-he-good-or-evil of Kosh (Babylon 5).
Flashbacks are effectively used to give background on the characters and story line.
However.......
The snarky, emotionally dysfunctional characters are painful to watch as they bicker, insult each other, disobey, and lack any of the chemistry, teamwork, and friendship of crews on Star Trek, Lost in Space (original), Firefly/Serenity, Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica (new version), or Galaxy Quest.
Just about every character except Will exhibits passive-aggressive behaviour.
The Will Robinson character demonstrates glimpses of genius that feel incompatible with his insecure, deer-in-the-headlights persona. I see none of Billy Mumy's Will Robinson here.
Captain Phillips (2013)
Great story, great acting, but camera too shaky throughout
What a great story with plenty of character development and action. There was some nice detail on various aspects of the different ships involved in the movie which made it feel like you were really there. As other reviewers have noted, the director used the over-done Blair Witch camera shake throughout, which is why I gave it a 3 instead of 9 stars. Every single one of the actors playing the Somali pirates did an exceptional job. Great job of casting, too. Tom Hanks gave an excellent performance, except for his accent which drifted around throughout the movie. His performance in the final 10 minutes of the movie is just incredible.
As the writer J. Michael Straczynksi once said, the two keys to a good story are to create characters your audience cares about and have interesting things happen to them. This movie has plenty of both.
The Hurt Locker (2008)
Good story, bad editing
The story is engaging and provides what is probably a much-closer-to-reality view of what war in Iraq was like than typical action movies. Even the gunfire and explosions are different (and presumably real) enough from traditional movies that they somehow feel real - and like many aspects of the movie quickly deliver that "oh....so that's what it must really be like....wow" moment.
Unfortunately, the director over-used the Blair-Witch / Bourne "Let's shake the camera a lot through the whole movie" technique to where I was constantly distracted and pulled away from the more intense emotional drama of what really can go on in war. I almost shut the movie off half-way through because it was so bad. If they released a non-shaky version of the movie I'd give it 7 or 8 stars, but as edited, I wouldn't recommend it and would barely give it 3 stars.
300 (2006)
Mostly blood and guts with a little dialog thrown in
It's rare for me to see a movie who's IMDb.com voting average is over 7.0, and not love it. With reviews averaging 8.0, and both my teenage girls loving it (they saw 300 before me), I thought it would be great - maybe a some interesting history, maybe some great characters, or plot. But nope - just 2 hours of gratuitous blood and guts. And I do mean blood and guts.
Gerard Butler did a good job of acting at King Leonidis, but the way the story is put together and presented, when he shouts that they are fighting for freedom, it could have been anything - fighting for gold, or fighting for glory. It didn't seem to matter.
Some of the special effects are well done - the enormity of the armies and the scenery. If you like blood and guts, this too was well done.
Technically, I didn't care for the color rendering. It looked like the whole film was adjusted in photoshop to be half-way between true color and sepia, maybe to give it an old-time feel.