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SpitfireLil
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Travelers (2016)
It's watchable, but it has issues
If this hadn't come up on my Netflix feed, I never would have heard of this show. After having watched all three seasons, I can see why. There's some good, some bad, and then there's the time travel.
I've been a science fiction reader from childhood and I've even taken stabs at writing some stories for my own entertainment. That being said, I have some definite notions about how certain concepts should work and time travel figures largely on that list.
The storyline involves humans from the future whose world is on the verge of collapse due to certain events of the current day including the ignoring of climate change (which, thankfully, they stopped short of getting full-on preachy about that topic). To rectify the calamity of the past, volunteers' consciousnesses were sent back to the present day by an AI called "The Director". The initial mission was to alter the path of an asteroid which would kill millions of people. So far, so good.
The problem arises once it's made known by subsequent travelers that the changes they are making have not made things better in the future. This presents a series of holes in the show's time travel logic. First, they have acknowledged that there are alternate timelines, thus, we have a multiverse. This means that any change to the past will create a new timeline - TO NO EFFECT OF THEIR ORIGINAL TIMELINE! The travelers are sent off and that's it! Nothing will get better because it can't. Any change happens in another timeline. The Director that sent them off will never know anything about what happened even though they have a computer program that is supposed to communicate to the Director from the past, but it can't work for the same reason because their messages were never communicated in the original timeline. If you follow my line of reasoning here, you can see where the entire concept falls apart.
The other annoyance with the series is the "tough girl" aspect that is entertained frequently. The women from the future are trained how to fight and shoot, but they occupy bodies that are not in shape for that kind of activity. And they are usually fighting opponents (men) who are also trained to fight, so... Perhaps an accurate tagline for this series would have been "You can suspend your disbelief, but just barely".
Badland (2019)
Yikes!
I like Bruce Dern. I adore Wes Studi. I even like Mira Sorvino! How they got them into this dumpster fire of a movie is mind-boggling! This is Event Horizon bad!
The writing is horrible with much of the dialogue written in simple sentences which, when combined with wooden acting, is a recipe for disaster. Once the Pinkertons got brought up, I thought this movie must have been written by some amateur lifting ideas from Red Dead Redemption. Except Red Dead is really, really GOOD! Badland is really, REALLY BAD! I'm embarrassed for the actors and wonder how much the shills got paid for their absurdly glowing reviews. I couldn't finish watching this crap movie and take my advice: don't even start!
Christopher Robin (2018)
Very Sweet and Thoughtful Movie
I suppose these days Disney makes more news for the trainwreck that the Star Wars franchise has become. Christopher Robin shows that if Disney stays in its lane and makes those types of movies it does best, they can still make very good movies.
I was afraid CR was going to be something in the vein of Hook wherein Peter Pan had to rediscover the essence of his childhood, and there was a bit of that. However, there was something much more heartfelt in the way Pooh conveyed his simple wisdom to remind Christopher Robin of what he had left behind.
The story isn't the feature here: it's the wonderful characters rendered as they looked in the original stories, the superb voice acting, and a chance to reconnect to those things best remembered.
The Christmas Chronicles (2018)
Very Watchable, Fun Movie
I just wanted to see Kurt Russell in his beard (maybe a carryover from The Hateful Eight). What I got was a very well done Christmas movie that wasn't cartoonish, preachy, or sappy. The kids' acting, possibly because of the writing, was a little stilted in places, but overall was good. The CG was good, as well, with only a few places where I saw things that could have been done better (I do 3-D animation, so I tend to look for things like that). The elves were excellent!
Overall, the story was good, the humor was clever and refreshingly restrained, and some of the ways things were handled (the sleigh slowly travelling overhead as Santa zips from house to house and the toy bag) were very interesting concepts. Of course, there are some weak spots, but every movie has 'em.
Kurt Russell's a great Santa and this movie was a pleasant surprise.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
Highly Enteraining, Highly Unexpected
I remember many years ago when the common saying among those who feel compelled to divulge their shortsightedness was that "the Western is dead, it's a used-up genre". Some of the best westerns ever made - in my opinion - have been made since then (Dances with Wolves, Unforgiven, and Deadwood immediately come to mind). Buster Scruggs just shows that all it takes to make a good Western, or any genre, for that matter, is a well-written, entertaining story with actors who have the talent to make it work. There are six vignettes, so this movie accomplishes that six times over.
Well worth the watch and I gave it a definite nine; the current grade of 7.4 is much too low.
A Wrinkle in Time (2018)
What Did I Just Watch?
I read A Wrinkle in TIme as a child, nearly fifty years ago. I have to admit that I don't remember much about the details of the story or the characters, but even with that, there was a lot left out. This is the story that taught me what dimensions are and what properties constitute each one. As I became an illustrator/ 3-D animator, this is a pretty big deal - and they completely left it out of the movie; they didn't even try to delve into the science.
What this ended up looking like was some type of anti-bullying message-movie (and isn't that all the rage these days?) I rarely watch a movie based on a book before reading the book. In this instance, I feel compelled to go back to the book and rereading it to see how badly the movie got it wrong.
Altered Carbon (2018)
I Hope Syd Mead Got a Royalty Check
I was half-expecting to see the Blade Runner parking meters in the city scenes. The makers of this series made no effort in hiding that they were wholesale ripping off the Blade Runner look ... I realize it's an influential movie on many fronts, but come on!
That being said, and without having read the source material, I thought Altered Carbon was interesting enough to watch it all the way through. The body transference idea is one I had been working on in my own writing for many, many years, but not being published, well, there goes that idea! Unfortunately, due to the way the story was being told, it took me several episodes to figure out just what the "science" entails. I'm still not sure I completely understand all the facets of the real versus virtual worlds, but I can see the "stacks" is an interesting concept and the reason for that technology is brilliant.
Overall, I think we see a world that speaks to our current time where the "haves" have too much and are never brought to heel. Couple that with a science that, for all intents and purposes, provides immortality, the result is the "haves" have no regard for anything but their own lusts, no matter who gets hurt; everyone else is just scraping by. Not such a far-fetched fiction, is it?
So, I gave it an "8" because it was rather well done, if confusing at times, and there's always things that could have (should have?) been done better. With that in mind, though, I think the storyline would be better served as a one-off without sequels grinding it into the ground. I mean, where is the story going to go that won't be like fan fiction or a retread from some other franchise?
Craig Ferguson: Tickle Fight (2017)
Well, I Don't Know
I really liked Craig on his TV show, but after 10 years, he was running out of ideas and it became rather obvious. I think he's still out of ideas. I never really liked Craig as a stand-up; his Bing Hitler persona was just hot garbage drowning in a thick Scottish accent and a sheep song. And his other stand-up special was hardly
special. I suspect he is more clever in person than on stage.
Craig was always a good storyteller and that comprises most of this show. I could sit and listen to him tell stories all night. Then I got to the end of this and realized that that was what I had done and there were very few jokes involved. He even literally said that "there was only going to be one joke in this show". Mission accomplished!
The real question I had was the whole "tickle fight" thing. "Cheeky Monkeys" would have, at least, been an understandable reference. If he explained what "tickle fight" was all about, I missed it and it didn't add anything to his stories, so, what the hell? It seemed like he just randomly threw it in and it didn't mean anything. And, unfortunately, that kind of sums up this very forgettable stand-up act. Better luck, next time, Craig.
Kong: Skull Island (2017)
Just a Hot Mess
This movie is, yet again, proof that just because you can do CG really well, you can't use it as a substitute for a good script. Somebody must have thought that if they took influences from Apocalypse Now, a little Indiana Jones (for the wildly unlikely "primitive" optical illusion tribal art), and Jurassic Park (SPOILER: Samuel L. even said "hold onto your butts!"), throw in some name actors with one-dimensional characters, you could mash it up and it would be great! They were wrong.
The ironic thing about this movie is that the original King Kong used stop-animation to bring the ape to life; this movie used the grossly overused and immensely irritating stop-action-so-you-can-look-at-the-cool-shot cliché to drop this steamer of a movie on us. It just goes to show that making movies doesn't require brains or talent, just money.
Giving this a "2" seems generous because it is "awful", but it's not Event Horizon awful.
The Punisher (2017)
Another Great Marvel Show on Netflix Better than any Punisher Movie
I'm not going into any plot details, but after having read some reviews, there seems to be some people who have no idea what constitutes good storytelling. You can't have endless wall-to-wall gunfights –– that's not watchable and just plain dumb. There were enough portions of story, action, and good acting to keep it interesting without going over-the-top with gore and turning it into some stupid video game.
This was a mature treatment of a violent comic book character –– and by "mature", I don't mean sex and cussing, I mean having the maturity to watch this and demand more than merely some shoot-'em-up. It will be interesting to see where the show goes from here.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)
The MCU is Just an Excuse Not to Stick to the Source Material
I used to read comics
a lot! This movie reminded me why I stopped and Wolverine's "bone claws" was a big reason why. No one knew he even had them under all that adamantium until Magneto pulled it all out of Wolverine's body (why he hadn't done that before, given the ridiculous number of opportunities is a big storyline duh. But this all goes back to the TRUE origin story: Barry Windsor-Smith's "Weapon X". It was a comic masterpiece and ignored by Marvel with the bone claws and then completely distorted beyond all recognition by this junk movie. And ain't it curious how Wolvie's new claws were all sharpened and everything because that's what would happen if you just coat bones with metal
–_–
This movie was a lot of green screen jackassery and don't get me started about the dismissal of physics and this idiotic slow motion crap for action sequences that is still done today! This movie was made for the fanboys who think blowing stuff up is all an action movie is while calling it a "thrill ride". It's an insult to a superior comic origin story and doesn't even come close to being good. I just watched this because I had never seen it before. I wasted my time; glad I didn't waste any money at the box office!
Black Mirror (2011)
After One Episode
Perhaps the intern who has to write the synopsis for Netflix didn't quite know what to make of this series or, perhaps, just the pilot episode, but pilot shows as this one don't get green-lighted; yet this one somehow did. A better show would have been to explain how THAT happened.
A review of this episode: the English princess is kidnapped after her too-small-to-handle-the-job security detail is overrun
by one man, apparently. A ransom demand requires that the prime minister have sexual intercourse with a pig on national television, which he initially refuses to do. After a twit on the PM's staff arranges for a fake video to be created, the kidnapper somehow gets wise to this and sends a finger, alleged to be the princess', to a television station, which has been the focus of a subplot involving sexting and the leaking of information by a PM staffer. Some cybercrime specialist determines where the ransom video was uploaded. Surprise! The location was a waste of time and the television station's reporter is shot at the scene. Eventually, the PM does the deed, the people shake their collective heads in insincere regret while leering at their screens, his wife is humiliated, the princess stumbles out onto a bridge –– unharmed, and the kidnapper hangs himself. Okay?
The thing that irritates me about shows like this –– after having watched enough seasons of "24" –– is that they are so predictable and so avoidable. After the PM does his porcine performance, the finger's DNA results shows it was from a male, of course! And, of course! no effort was made to ensure that the kidnapper would ever honor his demand. Did anyone question why the royal family was not involved in this? The writing is amateurish and seemingly motivated by nothing more than sophomoric pretensions. No effort is made to explain the events or give meaning to any aspect of the story except as a most puerile of "wouldn't this be cool?" scenarios in the writer's room. Such logic is also often behind the thought process of bad tattoos.
To compare this dreck to "The Twilight Zone" is an insult to Rod Serling and his superior talent as the creator of the best show on television. To call "Black Mirror" "science fiction" is a misnomer
at least for this episode. I will watch at least one more episode just to see if there is any hope. Sometimes if you dig in the shite long enough you may find a quid.
**Of "special" note: I like how this show threw around the coarse language in verbal and written form, but IMDb seems a bit prudish in the same –– even if it's their own spelling suggestion!**