Dimakovtun Reviews

Fallout (2024– )

Probably the best gaming adaptation ever

[10/10 · 14 April 2024]

Fallout franchise had a few shifts in the lore and perception, resulting in even the fans arguing about "what Fallout should be".

While the series are not as gritty-depressive as Fallout 1-2, and followed a bit closer to the Bethesda's vision, the level of actual dedication to the franchise will make it liked by everyone!

The props are amazing, the lore is very fitting, the characters are matching the universe. In-game brands and characters are exactly in place. It is no Master Chief from AliExpress, but a great adaptation which does not retell the story of any of the games directly.

The storytelling will both properly introduce the universe to those who had never heard about it and please the fans. It is rare. But what is even more outstanding - even if Fallout games wouldn't exist, the show is highly entertaining.

Nowadays we see more and more game-sourced shows, and it is great Fallout joins Cyberpunk, Arcane and The Last of Us in the list.

Avatar: The Last Airbender (2024– )

Much better than reviews imply

[9/10 · 26 February 2024]

The adaptation is of amazing quality. The similarity between the characters in the animated show and the live action is great (Azula, for some reason, excluding). Costumes, environment are of high quality and the story is close to the original.

The live action show had taken a more serious stance on the events and had removed some goofy and untimely moments, while keeping the humor when appropriate.

The show is depicting WAR. Where lives are in danger and people actually die. Avatar's mission is under the time pressure. That is a very good approach.

Screw the haters. I don't give 10 only because of some too cheesy moments.

The Night Agent (2023– )

Good all-rounder

[8/10 · 11 January 2024]

The story is a good balance between complicated enough to have many strings to follow, yet simple enough to connect the strings eventually. There are some questionable things, but other shows have it worse, so it's better than average.

Of course "an IT person can hack anything" cliche is still there.

The villains are depicted well and are actually good actors just like the main characters.

My personal bonus point for hand-to-hand combat, because for once it shows that 2 people fighting 1 will kick the ass even if they have somehow lower skills.

Overall, for an action-packed TV show with a bit of a thriller, it's worth watching. Not likely to remain in your memory for long, as it's more on the generic side, but won't disappoint much either.

Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire (2023)

The rating is objective

[5/10 · 24 December 2023]

The biggest problem of the movie is the plot. It is just bad. And not just the main storyline which makes little sense and the villains are comedic, but almost every interaction ends up with the viewer asking "but, why?" or "how does it even make sense?".

The assembly of heroes (what the movie is about) is also rushed as hell, and the motivation of the people to join is straight-up nonexistent in most of the cases and is simply skipped entirely.

As for the villain who comes to find mysterious troubling rebels, apparently every single person knows who are the rebels and how to find them and shares that information to the first stranger they meet. It's not like they are even hiding.

Next, combat and action scenes. Blasters that penetrate people in armor through, but can't penetrate a thin piece of wood. Remember when in the new Star Wars trilogy a red guard could strike Ray but was just making dumb random moves to simulate action? Well, it's absolutely the same here. Maximum drama, lots of slow motion, frequent switch of the scenes every few seconds and very little sense.

The acting is ok, but it's difficult to judge the actors if they do good because the script tells them to follow an unnatural character arc in the first place. I'd say Sofia played Kora well, but Kora is just a poor character which is out of place in the very story she's central.

It's not all bad. The picture is nice.

I'd say it's the most disappointing Snyder's movie so far.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023)

Hits and misses, but hits prevail

[7/10 · 16 December 2023]

I went to the movie having low expectations and was pleasantly surprised it wasn't even bad. The story has holes in some places, but it catches up in other with complexity. The design and acting are good.

Not a movie to become a classic, but likely you won't feel it's a waste of time either.

The story is all around Snow (played by Tom Blyth) and his path to success at all costs. It was a complex role and Tom performed great. He carries the whole movie on himself, and the character passing a whole roller-coaster of events and an afterthought of him remains even after you end the movie.

The other actors had been unltimately outshined. E.g. Dr. Gaul and Sejanus were played by good actors, but the roles were too bland, it's not on them. Or the actors had simply way too short screen time (Tigris). The only exception was Jason Schwartzman who had played an eccentric showman, but not as absurd as in the original trilogies.

I am a split about evaluating Rachel Zegler playing Lucy Gray. Usually the characters/actors can show that there is one face they show to the public and another when in private (e.g. Jennifer Lawrence in the original Trilogy). That builds up trust to the viewer. But Lucy Gray was always the same person for whom pretending costs nothing. She carries the same "poker face" and demeanor all the time (except it is cheery-naive look). Lucy had no less and often more obvious psychpathic traits than Snow's character, especially when it comes to the lack of remorse and manipulations. And it just doesn't fit to the character so young and put into an extreme stress. So either Rachel played an extremely skilled psychopath or she had slacked and didn't bother to provide depths to the character. I don't know, honestly.

It's interesting that the Hunger Game itself is a plot-mover, but not what the movie is about. The game battle itself is bloody and just like in the original, has huge and dumb plotholes, but one must give a slide here. Luckily, it's not the main plot thing.

Anyway, an interesting shift of the perspective, and I find it to be a great move from Suzanne Collins and a fitting expansion of the franchise.

Bodies (2023)

Actually better than Dark and 13 Monkeys

[8/10 · 13 November 2023]

Thinking about time travel in such genre, Dark and 13 Monkeys immediately come to mind.

In my opinion, the writing of Bodies is a head above Dark and 13 Monkeys (series). Dark was plagued by the characters who had always made dumb decisions and would go into a long tirade of "please, listen, let me explain..." that could last from 2 minutes to several episodes without any explanations (pseudo intellectualism and nonsense philosophy excluding). 13 Monkeys also suffered from people going insane to justify the plot development.

Bodies did much better in the consistency of the characters and their ability to think, not just being reactionists with no foresight beyond 5 minutes in the future.

"Bodies" is not perfect. You still need to somehow ignore how many people turn henchmen and keep a cult alive not only for a long time, but also in secret. Even Elias as a 15-year old teenager grown in a cult gets some slack, but that part of the plot is the weakest. Yet as far as the writing goes, the time periods are covered well and the glaring issues of the other shows had been covered where possible. The last episode falls suddenly behind with a few ridiculously dumb moments to contrast the whole earlier series, which gets -1 from me.

The other drawback is just that the plot in general is quite overused over the decades, and being the second series on the same topic from Netflix, even being an improved version creates a deja-vu a bit too strong even for me, who liked the new show.

For me the show where the characters don't have to be conveniently insane (Monkeys) or consistently dumb (Dark) to move the plot is a great relief and a sign of success. Not so much for some other reviewers, but it's a matter of taste, of course.

Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix (2023–2024)

It's Ok-ish

[7/10 · 22 October 2023]

The show has its good moments. Action and plot twists are a delight to watch.

The show has strong positives in world-building and character development. I hope the pacing will be more streamlined in the future and not a random "plug a bit of everything" as it seems in the first season. The follow-up seasons (if happen) definitely deserve a chance to be better than the first one, given the show solidifies what it wants to be.

As for the criticism: Some characters are too out of place, e.g. The leader of the Eden Army is just too comedic and it doesn't fit well into what Eden represents.

As a person who recognized probably all the Ubisoft characters in the series and did play Far Cry "Blood Dragon", I feel the addition of many was often too stretched and unnecessary. I heavily doubt this show will be made canon, so plugging Sam Fisher from Splinter Cell and Assassin's Creed represented by a frog-assassin felt to be just for the sake of cheap fan-grabbing audience, and even there it's done so cheaply that it felt rather repulsive than "a nice touch". It's far more crude that "Arcane" or "Cyberpunk" adaptions of their games.

"Nice touch" was a dedsec logo. "Nice touch" was an inter-dimensional species design. Maaaaybe, a name "Pagan Min" of one of the characters. But the rest was obviously made because "we have dead/dying franchises by Ubisoft, let's add them somehow into the show. I don't care how, just do it", and it feels by the viewer.

The scenes where the animated characters were turned into humans were on the boring side. I'm not entirely sure what was the purpose of that. Actually, no, I straight up don't get why would they do it at all.

Foundation (2021– )

It's amazing

[10/10 · 28 September 2023]

Full disclosure: I haven't read the original books and write the review only as a sci-fi fan.

While the first season left me with a conflicting feeling: is it a drag about nothing or a deep storytelling? The ending of the 1st season also could be better. Yet, the 2nd season was impressively consistent in the continuation of the story. There is a tiny time discrepancy with parallel stories, but it has no real meanings, as the stories are truly parallel.

The focus of the series became far clearer in the second season and the characters became better understood. The acting is great on every behalf, and as the story unwraps, it gets clearer why the decisions and actions happened the way they did.

I'm glad to watch the show, as even if it is not in line with the books, it's one of a kind. Totally worth it!

From (2022– )

Good idea, bad writing

[6/10 · 4 June 2023]

The series are quite forgetful, since it's extremely slow with no story movement whatsoever. When I started watching season 2 half a year after I've watched the first one, I thought it was a bug the website claimed I had already seen season 1, as I had no recollection. A helpful "in last season" reminder could still be made 2 times shorter since there was just 1 event that semi-mattered and the characters are all the same sort of bland.

The show is slow and the characters do all they can to avoid sharing any information or display a personality. That creates lots of dumb artificial problems. The season 1 culminated with an utterly unreasonable rush to build an object like it had to be built already yesterday, ignoring the safety and security, despite there being no reason to hurry whatsoever.

The first episode of season 2 contains 10 minutes of a couple of characters being in a place where they had to be silent since their lives depended on it. Obviously, they talk non-stop on elevated tones all the time.

One could argue that the writers had made most of the people idiots to show at least the main hero(es) as smart, but there is **not a single** character with at least average intellectual OR emotional intelligence OR common sense.

Highly recommend to skip it.

FUBAR (2023– )

It's good in a "drama comedy" subgenre. The rating is a popularity of the genre, not the show quality

[8/10 · 27 May 2023]

The show is based around the CIA operatives pursuing a mission of capturing a "bad guy" through the whole season 1.

My taste in comedy is a bit specific, as I didn't finish "The Office" or "Parks and Recreation", but enjoyed the "Space Force", "30 Rock" and "Orville".

FUBAR is similar in the combination of the "real drama" challenges and a comedy. It's not the most popular genre, since people who love "serious" TV series find it too cringy, and "comedy" fans - not funny enough. I can't watch pure comedies as they are too cringy, and the current genre is the only thing that's tolerable. A taste thing

It's a tricky subgenre, but Schwarzenegger nails it just like Steve Carell, John Malcovic and Tina Fey do.

If you are the person who enjoys such type of comedy - you'll like FUBAR. If not, you will find it "lacking" in whatever corner case you prefer.

While not perfect, the main reason of the low rating is a specific sub-genre of the comedy. There is nothing wrong in being a fan, but just like Steve Carell attracted a specific audience to the "Space Force", Schwarzenegger attracts a specific audience to "FUBAR", which expects something different. It lowers the rating below the justified one. But as a standalone, it's a good show. You either like it from the first 2-3 episodes or not, it's up to you. It's a genre/taste question. Within the genre it's good, IMO.

Andor (2022– )

Best SW series so far (6 episodes S1)

[8/10 · 12 October 2022]

Seeing all the other series, Andor provides a fresh breath into a franchise that's ultimately does nothing but reuses its own ideas.

Even in Mandalorian with the fan-service baby Yoda, the planets/locations which we've seen and known from before, plot armor of the main hero, linkage to the established characters... The quality of Andor is a full head above.

Or take Obi-Wan, that is a remarkable impotency of story writing and directing, having no reasons to exist but to exploit the fan base.

Since Rogue One, we see another successful try to make a "realism" show instead of arcade.

Creative script, good acting, dynamic development. It's great when quality and creativity wins over safe-betting and prioritizing fan-service for the sake of extra cash grab.

I just hope Disney doesn't spoil the series. But knowing the company, I won't be surprised. Still, so far Season 1 is extraordinary good and is exciting completely irrelevant of any other SW lore.

Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

Completely forgettable experience

[5/10 · 14 September 2022]

I think that Thor story is one of the better ones in Marvel Cinematic Universe. It has potential to expand (and it did) independently of the other movies. Thus, I decided to give a try for the 4th installment.

Jane Foster entry into in the movie felt stretched, but otherwise fine. Christian Bale did a good job, but his presence in the movie is quite short. Thor was just the usual. The ending is a dumb cliche.

Pros: 1. Decent cinematic.

2. Music selection is good.

Cons: 1. Poor humor.

2. Use of children as child-soldiers by supposedly good guy.

3. When not poor, the humor is just dumb.

4. Uncreative story and plot armor all around.

5. The sexist scene with Thor was completely unnecessary.

I think the current rating of almost 7 is way too much. The movie is not good, but okay-ish at best. Graphics and acting can't do much to a horrible script. It's also disappointing to see the low moral level displayed by the director that's just spitting on the cultural progress of last decades.

Spiderhead (2022)

Weak movie

[5/10 · 1 August 2022]

The story is ok, but the final was completely idiotic.

The moral of the story: it's ok to drug and torture people if they are bad. Because the characters had a choice not to do that, and decided for it anyway.

Baki (2018– )

Plot. Is there one? But we have violence!

[8/10 · 29 July 2022]

Baki is a show where MOST of the time the fights are going on. The characters pop up and reappear later. The power of the character is defined by the plot and fluctuates, and I couldn't follow the story. "Meatgrinder" would be a matching name, since Baki, in 20+ episodes I watched, is no more significant character than many others.

The story is not really about one character. If you are fine with senseless violence, that show is great. Good guys are losing, but also winning. Sometimes good guys are only "good" due to circumstances, sometimes "bad" aren't really bad, objectively speaking.

I surrendered to the fact I struggle to follow the plot, since I haven't binge-watched, but those pieces I do capture are sufficient.

Set you expectations right. In for a sensible plot? No? Then just move on. In for a senseless violence here and there just because "why not"? Huge recommendation. This show is mostly a filler with stand-alone episodes.

As for the shortcomings, I found an attempt to link the in-universe events and characters quite weak. It had contributed more to the break of the immersion rather than improvement of it.

The third season is much more coherent in the plot, even though the resolution is weird. A special award was for making one country suffer absolute humiliating defeat, yet showing how people from that country pretended it still won. Quite authentic when you look at it nowadays!

The Old Man (2022– )

Great start (which made 8+ rating), but lame development

[5/10 · 15 July 2022]

In the first few episodes we follow the live of a badass guerilla/spy on retirement who hides from uncle Sam all his life, but who now has to run away again.

Yet later it follows absolutely illogical blackmailing, nonsense drama and a plot twist that makes viewers cringe (all 3 are separate events).

I completely agree that through the first 3 episodes the series had potential for the rating of 8. Yet it was somehow wasted in an effort to make a good concept branch extra boring plotlines to last beyond a season or two. It might mean it won't even get more than 2 seasons at all.

Thus, the current rating doesn't reflect the situation of the first season, far less if there will be a second or third.

Morbius (2022)

Cringe

[5/10 · 2 June 2022]

The story is a joke, the characters make little sense being illogical and applying custom morality where it makes no sense.

I was prepared for the movie to be bad from the memes, but it's bad even for comic book standards.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (2022– )

Star Trek: classic formula

[8/10 · 9 May 2022]

Recent newcomers to the franchise has been experimenting with the formula.

While ST:Picard has made a full story per season, ST:Discovery made it all about Mary Sue that doesn't even need a crew (except the jump guy, duh), ST: Strange New Worlds (ST:SNW) is much closer to the classic "story-per-episode" approach with the secondary overarching story in the background.

So far only the first episode has been released, but it's in line of the exploratory setting of the original TV series. We can only hope it's not going to screw up the historical lore, as prequels usually do. The story is entertaining, there is action and little painfully boring dramatizations. Not groundbreaking, but good.

If the series continue in the same way, it has a chance of getting a couple of seasons before the ideas expire and the scenarists will have to add more and more crazy ideas that mess with the franchise' history.

Halo (2022– )

I thought that Halo is overhyped

[5/10 · 12 April 2022]

Never played the game, but know that it's highly praised for the story and worldbuilding. In the series I see poor dialogues, questionable story and not that believable characters. I struggle to see how something like that could build a fanbase large enough that even someone who hasn't played Halo knows about it.

The answer is simple: it's a butchered version of the game's scenario and fans don't like it as well.

The Adam Project (2022)

Not bad, but quite bland

[6/10 · 12 March 2022]

Ryan Reynolds plays his usual role of all-around joker.

Mark Ruffalo plays another Dr. Banner.

Zoe Saldana has only brief exposure and not significant overall, but plays a usual badass woman.

The story is ok-ish. Nothing new, and pretty much in line with a typical time-travel story.

Conclusion: Forgettable cliche movie. I'd rather see investments in creativity than overpriced actors.

Star Trek: Picard (2020–2023)

It's still not the Star Trek fans expect

[7/10 · 7 March 2022]

The show is largely using nostalgia. Some actors from the old shows reappeared either for a brief role, the other - as secondary characters. It was a great opportunity to answer old questions and actually make a continuation, not a reboot or alternative timeline, as it's unpleasantly popular nowadays.

Yet the slow pace is borderline boring, and the story is just not believable, being mostly independent from the wast past lore. It is also fairly narrow, such that in a big picture of the Star Trek universe it's completely insignificant. That's where the viewer sees that it's just a spin-off of little significance and not an attempt to take over the legacy and develop it further.

There are no big mistakes, but no achievements either. And let's be honest, if not for the fact it's THE Picard in Star Trek universe, the rating with such writing and story would be lower than it is.

Hardcore trekkies will probably like it. Sci Fi fans will find it ok. Casual viewer might be disinterested, though.

Snowpiercer: The First Blow (2022) Season 3, Episode 3

Build up for the new conflict, but in a dumb way

[6/10 · 10 February 2022]

Layton made a person lie to the train.

That's a pretty idiotic move that shouldn't have happened.

It's dumb because: 1) Chances the new place is actually good are slim.

2) His lie will 100% get revealed, since too many people know about it, not mentioning that following #1 everyone would see it. I'd also expect Layton's team to oppose it much more openly.

3) There is no real urgency to go for a new place. Sending Alice alone would make more sense.

I think that the plot twist was out of character. It now paints Layton as evil, who is ready to risk thousands of people for a whim. His moral values worth nothing after such move.

Maybe that was the plan, to show there are no good sides? Wilford wasn't actually that bad? Jennifer Connelly still to appear in S3, and I feel the window of opportunity for her becoming a main character again is closed.

This season could be an opportunity for slow-down with action and refocus on exploration, the build-up is there. Yet the scenario seems to suggest a continuation of an unending war.

I'm disappointed because there is no side to root for any more.

Raised by Wolves (2020–2022)

Something quite unique

[9/10 · 7 February 2022]

The series is weird, no denial about that. We have androids, fanatics, foreign flora and fauna, strange technologies and almost mystical impact on humans and androids.

It's easy to get confused, but eventually almost everything has an explanation. I'm happy this show is not only limited to Sci-Fi, but it shows a strange fictional society, far more than just "kind of like today, but the smartphones are translucent".

I think it's very worth watching. The stories develop and overlap, so I recommend looking through the whole Season 1 before coming to conclusions.

The show doesn't go easy neither on the faction of "Atheists" nor "Mithraists", so for people on the far side of religious spectrum it might be uncomfortable.

Reacher (2022– )

Satisfactory no-brain detective

[5/10 · 6 February 2022]

If MacGyver was a detective, he'd be similar to this version of Reacher.

The most positive thing about the series is a fast story progression. Something keeps happening all the time, promoting reset of the attention span and displays a great entertaining value.

* The drawback is pretty much everything else about the plot. The story is filled with multiple cliches in each episode. Sometimes there is an urge to simply skip the next 5 minutes, because the following scene is predictable. The character writing is quite poor. Stereotypical grunts and "baddies" are dumb, but so is decision making of the heroes. There was no point of writing all of them very high IQ, if that's not reflected in actions. The context of the series implies heavily stressed situation, yet it's not reflected in the character's behaviour. The plot itself relies on several things which make no sense, but at least the writers admitted the nonsense and explained it. The explanation is not plausible, but bonus point for honesty here.

Because of the huge writing problem, it's difficult to judge the acting. The characters are often non-believable, and it's difficult to say for sure whether the director told to play that way, or actors are simply too "wooden".

Overall it's watchable only as long as one doesn't think about what's going on the screen, but overall the show is pretty mediocre. Neither it presents anything new, nor does it great. The current rating of 8+ is unjustifiably high.

The Matrix Resurrections (I) (2021)

Franchise reboot that pretends it's not

[6/10 · 7 January 2022]

Story-wise the movie could be satisfactory, I appreciate the idea how to return the original characters to the matrix. But the sheer amount of the scenes from the original trilogy is quite annoying and unnecessary.

Second, the action scenes are poorly made. In some cases it's due to a frequent camera changes, making it difficult to track the action, in other - simply not enough "action" itself.

Third, the development inside the matrix from some point became too rushed and quickly unbelievable. It lasts until the end of the movie, leaving plot holes that shouldn't have been there in the first place.

I cannot blame actors, albeit I've expected more action from Keanu, but I guess age puts its limits. New actors, including Morpheus, are good enough.

Overall, it all boils down to a story. A story what has happened to humans after Matrix 3. Unfortunately, while this story has some good parts, overall feels unbelievable for the fans.

I'd say it's worth watching just to see the vision of the authors, but it falls short of even moderate expectations.

Vikings (2013–2020)

One of the greatest shows

[9/10 · 31 December 2021]

Strong and good, even after the end of the Ragnar's story. Great combination of legends, history and mysticism. Special thanks for acting and costume selection. The latter makes it especially amazing.

Season 6 is unfortunately much weaker, but it closes the story of the family, and is still worth watching, albeit representation of Rus is pretty bad.