Reviews

It's got to be a herculean effort to try and recreate the magic of a cartoon world in a live action format, and this really was a good effort with stunning visuals and true to the source physical motions when we see bending scenes. The firebenders in particular bring a shocking brutality to a world which has been at war for a hundred years. Not for kids in that respect.

If one is expecting a cartoon, watch the original which is truly a work of art. The whimsy and joy of it can't be recreated in a story that tries to show us a real world version.

I will say that even though so much was well done and involved, a lot felt rushed. This effort tried to take a 20-episode "book", and pack it into 8, and while I admit, that there were some areas in which this kind of editing won't show in the long run, it does feel like it's being pushed along too quickly.

As far as the cast goes, there are some brilliant spots, particularly in the adult performances, and the kids don't do too badly for the most part. That said, I think more care could have been taken with casting to better match the characters, not necessarily in looks but in individuality. There's not a whole lot of "x-factor" there. Aang and Sokka are bright spots, but the rest of the cast looks like they're interchangeable. Hopefully, they'll improve over time.

There was one other weird, noticeable thing to mention. The costumes are incredibly clever - but way too clean. Possibly some sort of deliberate homage to the cartoon? The hairstyles for Gran Gran and Yue are unbelievably unrealistic and Sokka's necklace makes him look like Pebbles Flintstone, so one wonders if these are cartoon affectations. The sets themselves bring us back to familiar territory, as do occasional bits of dialogue.

Overall, this was an enjoyable series. I hope it's continued.

Let me preface this by saying that I am, myself, a practicing vegan. That said, about 20 minutes into this thing, I was appalled at the overt finger-wagging toward meat-eaters. I tuned in for a study on dietary changes, not a documentary about climate change and how cows are destroying the planet. Now that I've seen the agenda, how am I supposed to trust the findings of the study? That is, supposing they actually get back to talking about the study. Halfway through the first episode and it doesn't look promising.

For now, I'm going to continue watching for awhile to see if it improves. I don't enjoy the patronizing tone though, so I have some doubt about how much more I can tolerate.

I like Jordan Gavaris from Orphan Black so I watched the first Season of The Lake and pretty much enjoyed it. Gay characters are fine as a part of a storyline, and in this series, being gay was a primary factor in the father/daughter relationship, and that relationship was a major plot point for the series. That said, I feel like gay love scenes which don't move the story along are just there to be in people's faces for shock value, so I walk away from that. I watched a few minutes of the opening scene and left, and I won't be back because I'm not looking for social commentary. I'm just looking for entertainment.

The genius of this piece is that it really does allow Matt Walsh's subjects to speak. I've read reviews with accusations of "selective editing" so I watched it twice, but the truth is that people were allowed to speak expansively about their beliefs, and that those expressions were very much represented in the documentary. While I think it's true that Matt Walsh had his own bias going into these interviews, it takes nothing away from the testimonies we were allowed to hear. He basically ask questions and then listens respectfully to whatever answers each subject is willing to provide. Some interviews illustrated a marked lack of honesty on the part of the subjects, but some were astonishingly open. The segments with Scott Newgent were particularly poignant.

This lacked any kind of depth. Maybe I was expecting too much from it after seeing Ricky Gervais's "After Life", which did a much better job exploring grief. The characters were simplistic, two-dimensional, and boring. It seemed like the story moved them rather than the other way around, like they were just there to make a statement and wouldn't exist at all if it weren't for the plot. I also hated the social justice tropes, like we all need to be preached to in some sad, shallow morality play. Tom Hanks was good. I think he did as much as humanly possible to make this character work. It just wasn't a good vehicle.

This couldn't have ended any better way. From start to finish, this show had it all, but most importantly, it was character-driven in such a way that we can nearly see the gears turning in every head on our television screens. Nothing is hidden. We see motivations, egos, flaws, and it all comes together seamlessly and in astonishingly fresh angles.

As good as Breaking Bad was, as groundbreaking and impactful, Better Call Saul somehow improves on it through the complexity and sheer messiness of Jimmy McGill's character. From Jimmy McGill to Slippin' Jimmy to Saul Goodman and back again, this character becomes real to us, human, dark and light.

Definitely a 10 start to finish.

ETA: There seems to be a lot of confusion in the reviews as to why it ended the way it did. All I can say is that it seemed to me that Jimmy understood his own nature by then. He'd already had his second chance and repeated the cycle of Jimmy McGill to Slippin' Jimmy to Saul Goodman. It wasn't going to ever change because he loved it and he was so good at it.

In the end, the only thing that mattered was that Kim could see the good in him again, so that she wouldn't be ashamed of him or of herself for having loved him.

I put off watching this show for a long time. I loved the ninth, tenth, and eleventh doctors so much and couldn't bear the thought of Peter Capaldi and his mushmouth diction. But this has me missing the good old days of Capaldi's skull-like visage delivering lines which were often very clearly written for Matt Smith's doctor and not for the grumpy and ridiculous rock-and-roll persona they were trying (and failing) to build. He might have been boring and cringey, but least I didn't feel like he was insulting my intelligence. But this? It just keeps getting dumber, like it was written by a bunch of high school sophomores who think they understand the world but are actually about a teaspoon deep. The stories are juvenile, trite, cartoonish, and cliched. They don't think. They just plop out onto the rug like the leavings of an untrained puppy. It's just a bunch of people solving a ridiculously contrived mystery which fails utterly to hook the viewer. The Tardis becomes the Scooby Doo Mystery Machine van without the benefit of steering. I want to be able to finish the series but I've got no reason to believe it will improve.

This movie has great reviews and has won big awards. I don't much care for musicals so I gave this a pass when it came out. Caught it streaming though and figured I'd give it a look. So boring. The music was actually irritating to me, and I should have just turned it off when it became apparent that jazz was going to be part of the story line. It's not my favorite and by the end it was like a splinter under a fingernail, just painful. The characters weren't terribly likable or appealing. And I never felt invested in their outcomes. All in all, it seems like something that was probably more fun to make than to watch.

I got about ninety percent through the first episode and gave up. The acting was okay, the costumes and sets looked great, CGI was good and really brought the dragons to life. I'd give it four stars on that alone. The problem was that it's pretty much all violence porn, and what isn't violence porn is just porn porn. It's like they dumped a bunch of writers into a room with the only instruction being to come up with the sickest, most vile content possible and then passed that on to their special effects people. It's graphic, gruesome, and not nearly enough story there. I feel bad for Matt Smith. His taste in projects post Dr. Who has made him a performer I no longer seek out, but this? I have to wonder if this role isn't career suicide.

I love Imelda Staunton in everything she does and this is no exception. In fact, most of the acting was terrific. Elizabeth Debicki does a fine job as Diana, Jonathan Price does an adequate, albeit irritating, Prince Phlip. When we get to Dominic West's Prince Charles though, I found myself almost constantly irritated. I find Charles to be a weak and insipid man in any event and the constant drumbeat of rationalization in both the script and West's delivery just became annoying. We get it already, he's a nasty little backstabbing man who thinks he's reinventing the wheel or something. If the story became boring and annoying it's because it spent too much time with the ever-petulant and irredeemable tampon king's endless whining.

This is well-trod subject material, but the show is quirky enough to make it seem original. The character development isn't spoon fed to the viewer. It gives us a view and asks us to dig deeper. The acting was terrific. I don't understand the criticism regarding James Corden. He gave an accurate portrayal of the spurned husband, and Colin Morgan is always an understated treat whose brilliant micro-expressions flawlessly develop interest and depth. Sally Hawkins' "Lue" was this bizarre, otherworldly character which was done to perfection, and Melia Kreiling was both charming and dastardly in turns as "Amandine". This is one of those stories which sticks with you for awhile and I actually watched the last episode twice just to take it in again.

There's not much original here, and that can be forgiven really if there's enough entertainment value. Missed it when it was new and maybe as a weekly it was better? Streaming it and about halfway through season one, it seems like a bargain basement Warehouse 13 with nothing quite as good as that show was. Noah Wylie appears to have straight up ripped off Matt Smith's take on Dr. Who and it's super cringey because he's not quite pulling it off. There are no standouts in the cast. Even Matt Frewer fails to charm, which is completely unexpected. Overall, it's not unwatchable, but it does make one wonder what else is on.

This could have been really good. The concept was interesting and because it's animated, there was plenty of room for fantasy. Bob Odenkirk was good and I enjoyed his performance. There were no other stand-outs.

The problem was the main character, Alma. She was such an unrelenting tool throughout this series that it was frankly hard to care what happened to her. She's rude. She's selfish. She's got no morals to speak of and can never be bothered to actually listen to anyone else. And sure, that's supposed to be the story, right? An egocentric character learning to care, blah, blah, blah, seen it. By the last episode of the second season, I still found her obnoxious and boring in the way that self-centered people always are.

This should have been a great series. I haven't read the books so I'm not in a position to negatively compare. It seems like a really fresh story, a whole new world to explore, and yet, it's been amazingly slow considering the lack of character development. And I am soooooo tired of the constant, nagging virtue signalling. Everyone's gay, racial diversity must be achieved, blah, blah, blah. It's BORING to be preached at all the time, particularly by people who peddle in horror and violence. I've watched the first seven episodes, but I'm not sure I'll finish.

I think the actors did what they could with what they had to work with, but it's just a dumb story with unlikable characters. You keep waiting for it to get better but it doesn't. It just keeps getting more absurd.

If there was a point to this season, I can't imagine what it was. The performances were good. The characters continue to be fleshed out. In terms of plot though, this show would be better if it had some.

Right about the point at which Tom Cavanaugh shows us his costume, I had to wonder if he's just sorry he ever got involved in this series. It's just so cringe. The costumes, the dialogue... I can't imagine any one of those actors can watch this show and not feel like they've wasted their lives. WHAT was Tony Curran thinking? That guy is better than this, but you wouldn't know it.

What a shame! I can only surmise that creating some bizarre caricature of the American political right has become the point of this series. That's too bad because I don't tune in for politics and divisiveness no matter what flavor it is. I just don't need that kind of enmity in my life or in my entertainment. The performances were mostly good, two stars for that. Otherwise, yuck! The writers set out to offend some people and they managed it. I'll give them that.

Simon Pegg was awesome. He's just fantastic at whatever he does and his comedic timing is impeccable. But THAT's where this film has a problem if you ask me because Kate Beckinsale lacks that particular quality and it shows, a lot. Worse, it's Robin Williams' last film and it's hard to say if it's because we know how ill and depressed he was at the time or if it's really just not a great performance that Dennis the Dog becomes a bit of a miss as well.

It's really too bad though. This film had the potential to be as good as Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz. I think it just suffered from some unexpectedly poor casting.

I hadn't seen this iteration of Spiderman before, but after watching this movie, I don't feel like I missed much. I just couldn't get past the casting. Andrew Garfield looks every bit of 30 in this role. I know we have to suspend logic to get into the fantasy, but come on, give us a little help, yeah? There really wasn't anything memorable or outstanding about this film. It's just something to do when you're really bored, I think.

Usually, I like a little bit of weirdness in my syfy, but this had too many plot holes and too many roads to nowhere. The actors were great, but the characters, by and large, were unapproachable. I think the writers got so caught up trying to make Josh Brolin's, Royal Abbot mysterious that they could have used a cardboard cut-out for Cecelia Abbot. Lili Taylor did as much as she could, but this character should have been the glue to bind them and to make us want to invest in what happens to the family and the ranch. By the end though, I just didn't care.

Then there's the bizarre antics of the Tillerson clan. They seemed to be weird, mean, and crazy for the sheer joy of being weird, mean, and crazy. (What was with all the singing???) If it was just fallout from the conflict we see in episode one, that would be one thing, but their crazy seems to be a preexisting condition. Again, brilliantly acted, but who cares because there just doesn't end up being anything/anyone to really get invested in.

Megamind is just genius from beginning to end. Can't think of a single thing I'd change. That said, I'm thinking IMDB might have the wrong spelling when they list Jonah Hill as "Hal/Tighten". I think the joke is supposed to be that Hal can't spell Titan even though he's burning it into the city streets with his laser eyes.

I love this series. It's just so human. That said, I could have done with 100% less of David Earl's "Brian Gittans" character. This character was too nasty, so gross and perverted that I couldn't find any humor in it at all. I just wanted to throw up every time I saw him. I dropped a star from my rating on Season One because of it. Everyone else though was brilliant.

I tried to like this, but it's just meh. Everyone is so nicey nice, which isn't terribly realistic and doesn't add up to good story or great character development. I got a few episodes into Season Two and couldn't be bothered to finish it.