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grahamz1
Reviews
Fired on Mars (2023)
Honestly, I couldn't get through the first episode
Within the first five minutes, and I wanted to fire the main character myself. He grated on me, and everyone else in the show grated on me as well. The least believable aspect of the show wasn't that a person could get fired on Mars, but that the main character managed to survive a flight to Mars without being shoved out an airlock.
If, at least, the show was funny, I might have been able to tolerate a show with so many unlikable characters. I mean, there has to be a reason to tolerate so many cringe-worthy characters in order to want to spend time with them, and so the degree to which the characters are unlikable has to be balanced by a similar degree of humor. But this show didn't quite make it. I thought maybe to try to force myself to sit though the entire show with the hope that eventually there would be something to laugh at. But no, there was nothing more than unpleasant cringe to this show.
The Ark (2023)
Bland and forgettable
Let me preface this by saying that I'm writing this after only seeing the first episode.
The best thing I can say about the first episode of the series is that it is not absolutely awful. I rated it a 5 because it's also not actually good. Everything about it so far is mediocre and forgettable. The cast, the acting, the contrived/clicheed story, was just good enough that I didn't turn it off. But not so good that I feel like there's anything worth sticking around for more. Nothing about it -- the characters, the dialog, the story -- is interesting, much less compelling. If you are bored, I guess there are worse ways to spend 45 minutes.
The Last of Us (2023)
Richard Matheson by way of The Walking Dead and Fallout
I've not played the video game that this is based on and this review is based only on the first episode. I don't play video games on rails, nor do I play any games that require hand-eye coordination because I do have some visual issues, making many video games impossible for me. But I have been an avid science fiction reader going back to the Golden age and even some prior to that.
The story here is a riff on Richard Matheson's "I Am Legend", with modern cinematic sensibilities and influences from The Walking Dead and the Fallout games.
So it's not at all an original story. But that doesn't matter, because it's done very well. The cast is wonderful, and the story has a strong emotional core. It's also wonderful to see Anna Torv again in a quality role after such a long time since Fringe. Pedro Pascal is having a beautiful renaissance. And the rest of the cast is great as well.
Outer Range (2022)
Intriguing and original story and well-acted
So to address those who have complained about a dark screen, that's not a problem with this show in particular, but with watching any darkly lit movie or show on the wrong kind of device (one with a small or cheap screen with insufficient contrast). It's your device that should get a bad review, not the show.
As far as this show is concerned, It has interesting characters do not always behave as expected, and I expect the show will reveal more about that in the future. What I love is that Josh Brolin in particular, and the rest of the cast to a fine job portraying a family of ranchers in the midst of an existential crisis as well as a financial one. Brolin. And then things take an even darker turn. Imogen Poots plays an odd camper who clearly knows more than she's telling. And the actual supernatural or science ficiontal gimmick, the big mysterious hole in the ground in the middle of one of the fields is just another complication to everyone's life. I HOPE that the writers do not drop the ball on this. Far too many series surrounding supernatural mysteries/weirdness turn into arbitrary contrived mediocrity. But so far, especially by the end of episode 2, has me hooked.
Our Flag Means Death (2022)
It has its moments
The concept is that you have a gentleman played by Rhys Darby, who is totally unqualified for just about anything. And one day leaves his family and become one of the worst pirates ever. And that's the basic joke of it all, that plays out in various ways over the course of the series. He doesn't know what it even means to be a pirate. And that's the joke. There's a bit more to it. There are some laughs here and there. But the main joke is that this totally unqualified man tries to become a pirate. It's... fine. It's ok. But I wouldn't cry if the series got canceled, which it probably will.
Outlander (2008)
You've seen variations of this story before
This is a story about a battle between human beings and an alien monster. The major twist is that it takes place in 709 AD Norway, and the humans are Vikings, aided by a man from the stars, which is an interesting enough, but not especially outstanding twist on the usual tale. The characters are likable, even though you don't get to know most of them very well. It'll pass the time. But don't expect anything special.
La Brea (2021)
Extremely flawd, somewhat dumb, but still not horrible
There's so much about this series that is wrong, that by all rights, I should rate it much lower. The story follows no internal logic, there is no effort at all to get the logic or the science right. Most time travel stories are handled quite horribly on network TV shows, and this has a logic which is even bad when compared with the worst of them. Yet the characters are interesting enough that I want to find out what will happen next. I don't know whether or not I should feel insulted by how stupid the writers think the viewer is, or whether this is simply something so bad that it's good..
Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018)
Something new for Netflix, but with all the problems inherent in Interactive Fiction
I'm going to say up front that I don't like interactive fiction as a means to tell a story. It can be fun when it becomes more of a game. But I also feel that among all of the worst ways to tell a story, games come dead last. I'd rather see a story told through 30 second advertisements than through a game (if that's all you are going to give me).
I found the story to be tiresome and the choices no more than gimmicks to explore different possible story paths. It should be the job of the writer to come up with the most meaningful and moving story -- to me, interactive fiction tends to be lazy.
Because of the acting, it's not as bad as interactive fiction often can be, which is why I gave it a six. The game part of it forces you to engage when you really wouldn't want to because the story just doesn't make sense. The characters are fairly dull. And I didn't like being forced to make choices for them so much of the time I didn't. And they were not choices that I, as a character in the story, would want to make.
W. (2008)
Not what I expected
I just saw "W." this afternoon, and have to say that, although I'm glad I saw it, it wasn't what I expected. I expected to see a parody, or a biting political satire, or a critique of him, and W. is anything but that. Instead, the movie tries to paint a portrait of a sitting president and the people around him, and speculates about what made him who he is, and what might have set him on the path to war. It is not exactly (as some people have called it) a biopic, as there is a lot in the movie which is just speculation. Somehow the movie left me feeling a bit cold and empty at the end. I laughed about 3 or 4 times during the movie, and that was a whole lot more than anyone else in the audience did. I was entertained, but still a bit underwhelmed. Maybe it's just too soon for a movie like this.