eljay-8 Reviews

Baking Impossible (2021)

Scale of the challenges seemed off, too serious

[5/10 · 6 December 2021]

I'm not against the idea, but this show needs some refinement. The teams seemed randomly created and this led to some odd pairing between the contestants. Some of the "engineers" in particular were poorly prepared for the show.

Many projects were needlessly big. The apparent food waste was absurd. Why was a build filled with tons of cake? What was the point? If the show wanted some mass in the creations, there were less wasteful ways to do that. There was a huge focus on things edible, except when they decided that steel or electronics were fine.

The food the judges ate were always showpieces that the baker part of the team created and stuck onto the piece somehow. This made the obsession with edible seem a bit strange. I also felt the judges were oddly harsh. The overall contraptions often seemed to be at "Nailed It" level, and then the critique was very serious. Overall the show could have been a lot more fun, but it took itself way too seriously. Editing also fails the show in that it's trying to hide the reveal of the machine, but the same time they aren't really showing what is coming together to make it work.

Annie Live! (2021 TV Movie)

Nice dancing and the songs are still great

[6/10 · 5 December 2021]

I grew up on the movie and it's still one of my favorites. This production was no more than okay. Nicole Scherzinger seemed to always be singing to the beat of her own drum, which is not what broadway songs need. Celina Smith was trying out for American Idol, singing at 100% all of the time. Harry Connick Jr. Did fine singing, but acting doesn't seem to be his thing. I was surprised at how bad the bald cap on him was. The number of shots with crew in them was high, and it felt like the camera operators always seemed a bit surprised in everything that was going on. The recording sounded fine to me, but the 'sweetened' chorus was really obvious. Overall I was happy to watch it, but I don't need to see it again.

On Becoming a God in Central Florida (2019)

Would have made a great 5-episode "limited series"

[5/10 · 7 October 2021]

Less is more when it comes to this show. It went off the rails after around episode five. Overall, it fails as comedy, it fails as dark comedy, it fails as drama. It goes from entertaining and satirical to pointlessly surreal and sad. I found it quite a slog to watch in the second half. The main plot was cast aside, and by the time the ending came I was disappointed in the downer of a trip it took to get there.

Tenet (2020)

Far better if watched as an action film without trying to understand it

[6/10 · 27 April 2021]

I was really anticipating this movie, but I am ultimately glad I did not go out in a pandemic to see it. I watched it a couple of times at home with captions and volume leveling enabled.

The first watch through was entertaining but definitely left me confused. Some of the action set pieces are great and the locations are interesting. Robert Pattinson plays a cool sidekick character who comes and goes while John David Washington is oddly calm through just about everything that comes his character's way.

After the first watch, I read numerous explainers online and found diagrams attempting to make some sense of what I watched. The film seems to desperately want you to focus and think a lot about it, but the more you do, the more it just falls apart and becomes nonsensical. It's just a movie and to its credit, it does at least try to explain away some of its inconsistencies. (Make sure you're paying attention to every line of dialog, some important pieces come and go quickly.) As a total package though, it is far less successful, entertaining, and satisfying than Nolan's other time-bending films. It's also at least a half hour too long.

Interrogation (2020)

Solid show that over-sells the "watch in any order" idea

[7/10 · 2 April 2021]

This is an interesting ten episode crime drama. The casting and acting is great, and they did a good job with the period settings. Some parts of the story get told a bunch of times based on different viewpoints, which was wearing a bit thin by the end. Overall though, it stays interesting even as it retreads certain scenes or stories.

I watched in my own order (1-4,6,8-9,5,7,10 if anybody cares) and I don't really know what extra that gives the viewer. Black Mirror: Bandersnatch this ain't. The episodes jump around in time anyway, so even if you wanted a more linear experience, you can't really get it given how the episodes were edited together. This is probably good since if we had a number of dedicated prison-set episodes, I wonder if I would have watched it all the way through.

Tesla (I) (2020)

Too zany and ultimately pointless

[3/10 · 29 November 2020]

It's trying too hard to be different and entertaining, and only accomplishes the former. At the start, it feels like it wants to be informative, but also quickly throws that away with weird filler scenes that are fantasy. It also appears to be trying and failing to be a black comedy.

I don't expect biopics to be totally bound to the facts due to the desire to make movies that are entertaining. Unfortunately, this film just blasts a bunch of various different disjointed stories together, with far too many only tangentially related to Tesla. It's not an amusing work of fiction nor a good biography. It's like if somebody made The Greatest Showman about PT Barnum but without the singing, dancing, and amazing period sets. What's the point?