jackiemirek's Reviews

The Last Thing He Told Me (2023– )

4/10

5 May 2023

Four episodes in and there's absolutely no reason, and I mean none at all zero, that this story needed to last 7 or 8 hours or however long it's going to be. It's exceedingly boring and slow.

The initial premise is somewhat compelling and suspenseful, but after the husband is gone and the notes/ money are found... wow dull as bricks. I'm supposed to believe in some high stakes here. But where are they demonstrated? An entire episode looking for then talking to a lady at a church who's meant to remember something about a wedding from 2011. Another episode running around a university campus then chatting with a grumpy proffesor who's conveniently remembering something from 25 years ago about a bad grade. Meanwhile the mysterious cop from the first episode... is on a mission to "save the girl". Why, what does he suspect? He can't even foreshadow? Give me a break. Who are the scary people? What's the threat against wife and daughter? There's no way the wife is smarter than them, right? If she is, she's getting lucky because she's clueless. Why don't the feds detain the wife and start pumping her? Why isn't she mistakenly assumed to be complicit? Why not some clues or at least misleads about the PRESENT DAY and what might be happening to the husband? After four whole hours I'm supposed to care about a might be/ might not be white collar criminal and the totally unconvincing consequences he's supposedly left behind. This quickly ground to a halt and is operating entirely on backstory with the tension of a busted rubber band.

If this is based on a book it's one I might be forced to read on a plane and just fall asleep instead.

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Monarch (2022)

4/10

Yeah, it's bad.

10 November 2022

Is this the worst show I've ever seen? No it's not. But I'm not willing to revisit those at are worse to make sure, so, you've been warned.

Some of the comparisons for this show are apt (Nashville: country music industry set soap), a little puzzling (Yellowstone? Rich family in a red state.. nah Yellowstone is an unfunny, uneven Succession). But none are as accurate as Empire. Yes, the stupidly musical one where a character Surprise! Survived a terminal disease, and someone briefly went to prison where a cannibal was his cellmate. And that one hookish murder at the start of the show came to.... wait, let's just hope no one was paying enough attention and forgot by now.

The same ridiculous four cheese blend is at work in Monarch, where flimsy cliches pump the gas and brake so hard that nothing feels important and only Anna Friel was (sort of) taking this seriously until she realized where she was and gave up. That one dude who played Galivant is proving just how well he fit that role and man he prob wishes he was still doing it (I sure do). Trace Adkins and Beth Ditto... please just sing. Like all the time, like Jesus Christ Superstar. I'll just go with it. The teens. Ok god bless the kids they are boring as painted bricks and you forget about them even before they leave the screen.

Plot lines are exhausting. Just choose a bad reason. Cliched. Lacking credibility. Funny but not intentionally. General Hospital did it better, or whatever the one with the demonic possession was. Now that was riveting soap cheese. No interesting relationships, no one has any real chemistry. (Have we really gotten to the point where a woman marrying her uncle is a legitimate source of romantic chemistry on TV? Yes I think we have. How low is that bar oh god). Not buying any of the dumb romance things esp when they start with asking me to believe that a suitor is writing someone else's hit song in real time as romantic display. The sisterly feud? Groan. In the words of that main dude from Empire: "Please stop fighting, I'm going to be dead soon!"

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61st Street (2022– )

7/10

Lots of reviwers aren't really watching. They got mad without thinking.

13 September 2022

There's way more thoughtfulness and far fewer easy spoonfed answers here than most of the reviewers would have you think. It's far from perfect, and doesn't reach the level of its closest comparisons "The Wire" and "The Night Of"/ But it's way, way too easy to paint this with the Woke brush and convince people that it's nothing but tropes at work. There are tropes, and there are common themes, into which category you fall depends on execution. I'd urge you to think about a few things.

If this show is so blatantly "all cops are bad", "all the poor black kids are totally innocent victims", and every BLM activist is the true hero, then please tell me:

Why is the character with by far the most internal struggle and most significant ongoing dilemma about loyalty versus doing the right thing, the younger white cop (1 of only 2 named recurring cop characters)? If he's the embodiment of bad in this supposed liberal fable, where does the agony come from?

Why is the impetus of all of his dilemma the evidence that his partner gathered on their corrupt boss when actually doing the right (but hard) thing?

Why is the young cop shown isolated and without a fictionalized and unrealistic "blue brotherhood" to fall back on and glean excuses from? That's not complex enough of a picture of cops for you?

Why in god's name is the undercover cop revealed to be stringing along and gaining intel on the defendant's mom a Black guy?

Why is the defendant's younger brother openly shown getting involved with and making money on unjustified crime? Why is the local shady (Black) kingpin try to manipulate the soon-to-be elected official? As a supposedly celebrated BLM neighborhood hero, why is she show taking the bait and not standing up to him?

Why is the shooting of the drug dealer in the first episode set up as a tool for the gang to retaliate against his mother? Where's the suggestion that the shooting of the drug dealer (who was also a snitch) was not justified? Oh yeah, there is none.

Bottom line: please think. Stuff like this isn't made to accuse anyone, to make you mad or guilty, or to serve some "agenda' like state sponsored television (what would that even look like? Lol). It's a story that hopefully engages all kinds of people and has some value, even if it's not perfect. No one can deny that such situations as on this show reflect true life in some way. Dropping your guard and giving stuff a chance won't bite. The great thing about movies and TV is that you lose nothing, you don't have to answer to or argue with anyone else. Just pay attention and think for a little bit, all by yourself. Don't believe the Florida politicians. Learning about bad stuff doesn't hurt you, it can make you better.

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Death on the Nile (2022)

7/10

Not revolutionary, but who was expecting that?

30 March 2022

Still better than the self-important, smug "Knives Out". If you saw KB's "Orient Express", you know what you're getting. If you have no preconceived notions of Agatha Christie (or no particular loyalty to her word as dogma), you might even be mildly entertained. As far as big budget, all star Hollywood vehicles go (and they aren't my favorite genre for sure), you could do a lot worse.

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Knives Out (2019)

5/10

Not as great as it thinks it is.

6 September 2020

While the fairly dense plot of this movie is certainly *clever*, fast paced, and structured in a way that never loses you and leaves the big bits for the end, it completely lacks all heart and soul. It's rather pleased with its smarmy, low brow rich d-bag characters and outting their rottenness with a maximum of irony and slappy wit. Start to absolute finish. Snore. What would have been unpredictable and satisfying by the end, is if someone in this garbage family did one right thing for one right reason, and it wasn't just the outsider who was decent. I'd be fine if she was the only "winner" at the end, I would just liked to have seen a glimmer of unpredictable humanity even in dark places. How clever and fresh can something be if trope characters fall to trope fates and motives? Give me a break.

And also, just disregard the dumb reviews that see this as some "woke" angle. Biased minds make for biased viewing. I can say with absolute certainty that Knives OUt completely skewers liberal elitists and the rich right in exactly the same way. The fact that the nurse is a CHILD OF, NOT HERSELF an immigrant is absolutely immaterial. It was only necessary that she was not related to them, and of few means. Her mother's status or her own accent has nothing to do with her characterization and very little to do with the plot.

This does not need to be politically biased to kind of suck. And kind of suck it does.

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Taboo (2017)

6/10

A lot to like here, but ultimately lacking where it counts.

1 December 2018

Ok, let's get a few things out of the way. Tom Hardy is as fierce, committed and compulsively watchable as ever. If you're a fan, you get what you expect. Jessie Buckley, though lesser known, has a zesty charm and intelligence wherever she goes, and the same is true here. She's a highlight in a show that could otherwise have defaulted on cliched female characters. Set design and cinematography is decadent, dark and high budget... like a deeply sinister Dickens adaptation meets Black Sails from hell. Truly awesome. Sometimes passages of dialogue have the trademark Stephen Knight superiority... if you're ever going to be stuck in an elevator or on an island with someone, any one of his characters would be a fine choice.

On the other hand, Taboo suffers irrevocably from intensely bad pacing, among other things. The first two episodes establish only the bare external minimum, and are much more dependent on personality than progress. Still, without this initial momentum of progress character suffers too, even as plotting eventually picks up after about 4 eps and James vs. The East India Company gains twists and turns and little reveals. Hardy's character is distinctive, but only in distant shades and biting one liners. What he wants and why can be told by the external, as later on various action-y clever plots unfold to his ends, but going forth he remains oddly opaque even as the script attempts flashes of spiritual/ mystical perspectives on his part. At this point it is very difficult to buy into him a genuine mystic in any way. He just seems insane and his connection to the mysterious mother transient rather than profound. Is that the point? I don't know. However, he is not nearly the closed book that the sister/ former lover is. This character and her portrayal is so insistently cold and confounding, that even by the end it is unclear what went on here, and who wanted what out of this particularly odd connection. If you are thinking Lannister siblings, you certainly aren't going to get that here. The siblings here have an intensity that is manufactured, rather than built from narrative building blocks. I still have no idea how she fit into the story, or his motives. Or if she even harbored genuine motives of her own.

The character of James also has an opportunity to connect with an audience via his estranged young son, who he now intersects with for the purpose of this story. Yet the two continue to have the dynamic of a boss and a young employee played by an extra and it is too easy to forget that the son exists. This puzzled me the most. Even absence of interaction itself could make a big part of story. This subplot could have been the heart of the story, and I hope there are plans to make this such in the future. The dynamic with the step mom came closer, and by the last two episodes that FINALLY picked up the pace, was a highlight. She stands to force James to become easier to understand as a character. Characters like Godfrey the drag queen and Atticus the clever, rough sidekick eventually played well into forming a bit of a "tribe" for James... but too little too late. Again, pacing is the death knell here. I'm still not sure what I think about the outrageously over the top royal and all the scenes he took up. I appreciate that humor was attempted here, regardless of how dark, but I'm not watching because I want more of this guy.

Ultimately, the impression is that Taboo is cool and has a sharp, esoteric tone, but that no one has thought about a deeper purpose aside from Tom Hardy outdoing some old white guys over some land. That stuff is needed, but should be secondary, or you are forced to redo the essence of your character each time you put him against a brand new nemesis or in a new context. He will sound and look the same, and be as clever as always, but his arc will be unmoved and he will lack a theme for true motive from season to season. People may argue with me but in passages (and to a much smaller degree) I feel like Peaky Blinders, Knight's other and hugely lauded show has the same problem, at least with its main character (not so much the secondary scene stealers who have no matching counterparts in Taboo). You're better off just watching that one. There is less to scratch your head over. And if you already have, then I recommend passing on Taboo unless you're ready to watch one show's problems greatly compounded, not improved upon, in another.

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Troy: Fall of a City (2018– )

3/10

The problems here are NOT in Historical Accuracy or Race of the cast!

1 April 2018

Warning: Spoilers

Let me be clear: I don't care at all about this adaptation's accuracy to history or to source materials, or to the physical appearance of the ancient Greeks. Not even a single bit. The only thing I care about is its effectiveness as its own story, as a standalone work that can be enjoyed (or not, in this case) without the benefit or challenge of any other context.

So it is through the purest form of judgment that I deem this pretty atrocious. First and foremost, character development is just in the toilet. Characterization only arrives when convenient in dialogue, and makes consistent motive for most characters arbitrary.

For example, absolutely nothing is done to initially establish the marriage of Helen and Meneleus as toxic one that she suffers in. She just leaves him for what simply appears to be a younger and hotter version of him, and mentions later how miserable she was and what an awful husband he was. Yet his only bad act against her happens seemingly after she leaves. Okay, sure. Also, Odysseus is mentioned as loving war simply for the sake of battle.... in episode 5. Was I supposed to know this as he made teary goodbyes with his wife and son? Or was I supposed to think he has some mysterious loyalty to his king? No one knows. In another case, King Priam is said to have handed off Alexander to the wolves because he feared a prophecy. And yet, nothing changes, in fact the prophecy seems prudent now, but he still agrees to not only welcome Alexander back, but decides to go to war for some woman Alexander just met and brought home. Huh? Wouldn't a man so fearful long ago immediately throw them out, ESPECIALLY her? At one point Agamemnon becomes a sadistic, out of control rapist, on a dime.Achilles is convinced in mere moments by Helen to turn on Menelaus because Achilles was never really "respected" by the king. Yep, could have used some reference to that BEFORE Achilles made this brand new decision. Or hell, even AFTER, but nope. Elsewhere, in the second episode, it takes 3 men 10 minutes to decide to sacrifice one of their innocent young daughters to the gods for the cause. Like, what? Bottom line, WHAT is it about this Menelaus that inspires enough passion and loyalty for everyone to commit to decades long war for him to just get his woman back? Are there actually other motives? Your guess is as good as mine, and no, I refuse to look to the source for any answers because if that is what is required to understand a film or a show, the adaptation has already categorically FAILED.

With a weak as hell story, the actors scramble. Unfortunately, the absolute weakest link here is Paris/ Alexander, who feels like he belongs on a CW show, looks confused that he isn't, but nonetheless has tons of screen time anyway. The woman playing Helen tries for... something, and comes up with a noble sort of melancholy that hints at something that isn't in the script. (She certainly doesn't seem to be any happier in Troy or abidingly in love with her new man). The same goes for Odysseus, who admirably reflects some version of soulful conflict and compassion that the actor is forced to make up on his own because, well the Odysseus in the script offhandedly championed murdering a child for sacrifice with no regret. Achilles is portrayed as steely and sharp, but it just doesn't make sense with how the script has him changing his mind so often. What is an actor to do with that though? The dude playing Menelaus has been charming and even disarmingly effective elsewhere, but here simply lingers in the background in vaguely angry banality because Menelaus is virtually useless as a character. The man is searching for cues from a director. Can SOMEONE give him some, please? There are many others, and yes, they all have problems. On top of that, the lovers have zero chemistry. In short, there is a lot of long distance staring for everyone as they try to dig up ANYTHING to communicate, and lot of unintentionally funny moments for the viewers. Dialogue is as inconsistent as the characters and the plot moves awkwardly in a fashion that make idiots out of all the characters (Achilles fell for the lame trick in Ep 7? All he did was ask Odysseus? REALLY?)

So really, unless you are searching for something to fill an eight hour sized quota of hate watching, skip this one. It's an awful lot of pretty landscapes, gorgeous gauzy dresses, cultivated beards, and hours upon hours of Crossfit gone to waste. The BBC needs to do some contemplative staring to figure out what the Efff went wrong here.

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