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colmhain
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Reviews
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022)
Meh
A $1 billion budget? Where? It ain't the costumes (coarse "wool" for mail and scale pouldrons?). Or the writing ("Who fights/stands/goes with me?!"). It's shallow, trite (9000 forearm grabs), and NOT the story as Tolkien wrote it. Which is fine, as far as that, but call it something else (because it is). And then air it on the WB (because that's where it belongs). Why do people feel the need to write their own story but title it after something already written? I mean, this is a mediocre fan-fic overhaul, not The Silmarillion. It's hard to judge acting with such.....gray....dialogue. But it seemed like many actors were not impressed and just "doing their job", saying their lines.
The set design and CGI are pretty good, though.
Apocalypse: La 2ème guerre mondiale (2009)
A Francophile's documentary.
An adequate, but sometimes misleading, docu-series about the Second World War. It doesn't outright lie, so much as omit or over emphasize. The demonization and lionization of combatants falls short of propaganda, but still feels a bit sycophantic. I love the use of authentic footage, colorized for the most part, but left entirely original for the Holocaust images.
There are better documentaries of WWII.
There are also worse.
American MC (2017)
LOL!
This is some of the silliest ---- I've ever seen.
That's all I have to say. I'm just filling characters now. Gotta get to 150. We'll see how it goes.
Dunkirk (2017)
Dunderkirk
One of the greatest triumphs of arguably the most pivotal six years of human history, reduced to 1 hour 40 minutes of, "Look what I did with the light in his eyes!", "You see, the sea foam was a metaphor of Death's cold blanket...." to, "See how deafening that silence is here?" ego stroking. The cinemetography was erratic and the dialogue would've been predictable if not for it's constant contradictions. It is as if a crew of hipsters wanted to make an Avant Garde art film from whatever subject was picked by lot out of a tweed trilby. Twice I've sat through this, the second time to give the film a fair shake, because I really, REALLY wanted to like it. Three stars for the acting (because I believe they really wanted to honor the evacuation of Dunkirk) and for good costumes.
The Last Kingdom (2015)
I really, REALLY, wanted to like this show.
I loved the books. They are historical fiction. Not a history lesson, but an entertaining story of a (fictional) man's lifetime spent reclaiming his birthright within the influence of actual people and the tide of actual events. And, in spite of some silly costumes and a mud fetish, the first four seasons did O. K. in telling that story. But season 5? Well, somebody is apparently butthurt that Vikings is cancelled, so thay made Vikings 2.0. Straight up copy-n-paste. And a disappointment that didn't have to be.
The Legend of Hercules (2014)
Ridiculous
Alone one night, I decided to watch a movie. I liked the other Hercules film released in '14, so I thought I'd give this one a shot. About 1/3 in, I realized I kept glancing at my all glass front door.
Why? BECAUSE I WOULD'VE BEEN EMBARRASSED TO BE CAUGHT WATCHING THIS RIDICULOUS WASTE OF TIME!!! Seriously, don't bother. The best thing about it is that it was consistent.
All of it, acting, cinematography, costumes, CG, music, sucked.
The World Wars (2014)
LOL! Wut?
2:20 marks the finish of the series' FIRST speculative over-dramatization. I am sick of these so called "docu-dramas" passing bald-faced lies off as actual history. Don't waste your time on this one.
USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage (2016)
What the.....?
Uhg! Shallow, anachronistic, and trite. The screenwriters and director were all trying to tell different stories. The actual and historical mission of the USS Indianapolis seemed to be relegated to being a vehicle to carry the other stories. This "Three way Romance", "Racial Conflict and Redemption", and CGI nightmare could have been told at any time period over any event. The crew of the USS Indianapolis and the Japanese sailors who sunk it are rolling in their watery graves over this debacle.
What a horrible movie. And it didn't have to be. Indeed, it shouldn't have been.
The Universe: Ancient Mysteries Solved (2015)
....Wha.....?
Could barely last five minutes. First off, Spartans ARE Greek. If a "documentary" is false in the first 2 minutes, what else is inaccurate? In the endeavor to relay facts and teach, details are extremely , indeed, of paramount, importance. I weary of poorly researched, made-up, or staged sensationalist drivel. Nature, Science, and History ARE interesting enough without ridiculous embellishment.
Roman Empire (2016)
I couldn't finish the second episode.
It's a History Channel clone. An over-dramatized production of historical events in an historically false manner, with an occasional talking head. Regardless of their credentials, which I'm sure they've earned, the commentators' semi-scripted narrative comes off flat. Perhaps due to the editor's cherry picking of what they said for "effect"? Docu-Dramas can and have worked very well before. This one didn't. The needless outright falsifying of seemingly minor events made the historian in me cringe. (For example: Faustina the Younger died of an apparent accident, and she was interred at Hadrian's Mausoleum in Rome.) I couldn't tell if this was a movie, or a documentary. As I wrote first, this is the History Channel's M.O., and the biggest reason I stopped watching that channel.
Now, a good show does not need a big budget, and a big budget does not mean a good show. Having conveyed that sentiment, I feel there was plenty of budget to go around for a good show, but it was poorly used. The CGI backgrounds were passable. With a documentary, or indeed, a pure drama, backgrounds are not the feature like in an action film. But with current CGI capabilities, I felt they lacked for money rather than talent. The physical sets and costumes were pretty and cool, but erroneous to the historian's eye. I also did not expect Emmy (or Oscar) winning performances from the actors, and was neither disappointed, nor surprised.