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American Gods (2017)
Excellent first season
The book is one of my top favourites.
I was wary of watching the series, because of those IMDb reviews, which cried that the series is full of cheap political correctness and of extra characters who add nothing good.
While I can in some places see where people may get a tad annoyed, my take is that the series are excellent. And close enough to the book to be fully recognizable, even if some accents are shifted and plot is a bit reorganized/modified.
One of the best adaptations of a book I have seen and a great series in their own right. And I say it as somebody who thought Jackson's LotR and Hobbit weren't good enough to the books.
My initial concern was about Ian McShane playing Mr. Wednesday, as Mr. Wednesday was somebody whom I from the books imagined somewhat differently, both in appearance and character. My thought would be somebody like Michael Douglas with a bit of Christopher Walken instead.
However, as I watched it, Mr. McShane become to me nearly perfect even though I see him different from the book Wednesday -- more a sort of like twinkle con-man style rather than the mostly grim one I imagined from reading.
London Has Fallen (2016)
Hail the U.S!
I will not be talking about the clichés and stupidity of the movie scenes.
Others have done this in the vast majority of the reviews.
I will just mention that "London Has Fallen" is an utterly evil propaganda movie. It does injustice to Americans, portraying them as heartless, cynical and arrogant bastards who think that only they count.
As most propaganda movies, it shows the truth, which it then tries to clumsily ignore or subvert.
The truth is that the current type of world terrorism, while it is in large part a business project of the ousted Saddam-Iraqi security forces, still relies heavily on the anger and despair of those civilians, whose friends and beloved ones are "collateral", which means being murdered in the process of war on the terror.
It is incredibly easy to recruit somebody whose father, wife or children -- sometimes all of them -- have been slaughtered as bystanders in the process of "eliminating a terrorist cell".
Yes, the film portrays the main evil guy as an unscrupulous arms dealer, who sells to about anybody.
However, the fact that during a failed attempt to kill him, his daughter as well as numerous others are casually killed during her wedding instead, -- not to speak of his relatives, but also the serving personnel: cooks, butlers, waiters, plus as far as I noticed, some children, -- that fact is downplayed as something trivial, and indeed is mentioned just once as "collateral", as if it made it any better.
To add insult to injury, the new way of killing: by people employing a drone, while themselves sitting comfortably thousands of miles away is not either of any risk to the killers, nor it allows for precise assassination, such as a bullet from a sniper rifle.
We can see this message reinforced at the end of movie, when the vice-president is gleefully informing the main evil guy that he is going to die, and another drone blows the building up... along with the evil guy's guards as well as innocent passers-by who happened to be on that part of the street at that moment.
Witness the truth -- the collateral of this drone strike in reality would have probably created a dozen new terrorists out of the relatives of those blown-up, especially vulnerable being the innocent, as they can easily see the injustice of what happened, and can feel nothing but rage against those who slay so indiscriminately.
Too bad this truth was not used in the movie, instead creating yet another smash-them-all shoot-for-the-win idiocy.
Unless the makers were smarter and this is to be viewed as a parody. A tempting thought.
For that, as for showing the truth -- 2/10 instead of 1.
Mortdecai (2015)
Pirates of the Caribbean all over again
The title says it all.
The character Depp is playing, and around this character all the film is centered, basically, is the same kind of cowardly, treasure seeking, playful bonvivant as Jack Sparrow. Only less so.
The playfulness feels semi-forced, just the same as the supposed aristocratism. There were a couple moments in the movie where you could chuckle, and the basic premise sounds like something that COULD be quite fun. Only, it isn't, not in this movie.
Mortdekai is neither bad enough, nor good enough, nor forceful enough, nor in fact he DOES anything much in the movie apart from rolling away from danger and shooting his butler every now and then.
Rather a disappointment.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
The essence of spying
The movie will disappoint, if you expect Bond/Bourne. It is much more like "The Usual Suspects".
In general, you could say it is a sort of spy-as-a-profession piece, much closer to what it actually means to work in the intelligence than any of the spy-action movies: lots of talking, office work, reading, thinking... and as a result people die, and sometimes wars get started.
As the one who has read the book, I could follow the plot. I suspect that if one hasn't seen it, it could be hard sometimes. A lot of background detail from the book is omitted or only sketched, leading to some of the things appearing to have no reason.
I appreciated the slow burn of the movie and subdued violence hanging in the background.
What I did dislike was that the climax and last part of the movie seemed to be too rushed, lacking the necessary exposure/preparation. I got the feeling that the movie should have been about 15-20 minutes longer to explain/show more of the actual preparation for the finale and fill in background.
The biggest disappointment for me was that the trailer music never appeared in the movie. The film's music is good, but since it is as low key as the movie itself, it subtracts from the suspense, while the trailer music would have added to it and sort of helped to tie the plot together.
Despite all that, yes, 9/10 for me.
Wild Target (2010)
A great mix that just doesn't work
Take great actors and put them into a horribly-made movie and watch nothing happen.
Unfortunately, in this particular case neither Bill Nighy, my personal idol since Love Actually, nor Emily Blunt, nor Martin Freeman, nor Rupert Grint -- none of them can salvage the worn-out clichés strung together by an old worn-out predictable plot.
There is not really much else to say about the movie. There is even no need for spoilers -- if you have seen but a single film of this type, you'll know exactly how this one will go.
I improved the rating by 1 because of the actors and of the interest of watching Grint in something else beside Harry Potter. But that's about it.
Sherlock: A Study in Pink (2010)
First episode
It is and it isn't the Holmes of the book and this frustrated me a couple of times. First of all, the characters are depicted young. The 21th century Holmes looks like almost a teenager, in his early twenties. Watson is around 27-35, judging by appearance. Combined with the Holmes depicted, this brings series a bit closer to "The Big Bang Theory" than I'd care for, with Sherlock as a more worldly Sheldon.
The Sherlock of the episode is initially shown as utterly cold, rational and energetic. While this may be closer to the book, as I started watching the episode, I preferred the Sherlock of the Russian TV series of 1979-198x (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079902/): a mature, intelligent man, rather than the totally driven "sociopath" (as he calls himself) Cumberbatch. However, if we consider that this is a rework for 21th century, then the present-day Holmes would make more sense for a contemporary figure.
The episode is based, as one can judge by the name, on the "Study in Scarlet". I would agree with those reviewers who say that the plot of the original story is followed reasonably closely, but with some nice quirks for those who know the book. Those are lost on the ones, who don't, though, making the experience a little bland.
As I watched the episode, I did cover my head a couple of times when it seemed to me that the Holmes I was watching, was too cartoonish and flat or the filming just sub par. On remembering the episode AFTER watching it, though, the experience seems worthwhile and one that opened a new perspective on the great story, so I will definitely watch the next one, just to check out how Holmes is developing.