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taylorfredrickson-20943
Reviews
Blue Eye Samurai (2023)
Excellent story mired by a terrible finale
Tldr you should watch it but be prepared for a disappointing ending.
I can't praise the first 7 episodes enough, excellent characters and a compelling story. The action scenes in this are really good, especially the fight at the brothel. I generally don't like the CG anime style but this one is pretty good and cinematic. This was on the way to becoming one of my favorites until the finale...
Spoilers ahead
There are so many plotholes and inconsistencies in the finale. It seemed rushed and I had the feeling Netflix only gave them 8 episodes and they had to cut the story to fit because the narrative and animation is the worst of all the episodes.
Mizu supposed to be the biggest badass in Japan and she can barely hit a fat white dude who's been sitting in a castle for 20 years.
Thr castle assault scene is also bad. There are probably 50 guards guarding the shogun and his castle. The invading soldiers have muskets and they never reload and never miss, these little details annoy me, especially considering the rest of the show was so good.
Moment of Contact (2022)
Decent but not impressed
I'm casually interested in UFO phenomenon but don't have strong belief either way. After the recent JRE episode with James Fox I decided to watch this doc.
Tl;Dr there is nothing new in the doc that wasn't discussed on the pod. I was a disappointed.
The evidence is not as compelling as I would have thought and a lot of testimony raised questions in my eyes.
For example, one family, who doesn't wish to be shown, claims they saw a craft hovering at a very low altitude over the neighborhood for 10 -15 minutes like it was searching for something in a grid pattern. A big problem I have with this is they lived in a population-dense, urban area and it was broad daylight. There should be dozens, if not hundreds of eyewitnesses of the craft in that case but they only had a few.
The girls who allegedly saw the alien, lived in the same neighborhood and didn't see the ship but it would have been over the area at the exact same time. They also didn't mention the military blockade even though it was literally like a block away. How are they able to see the alien, go home and return to the site if the military had closed the area and were searching.
On a positive note, most of the witness testimony is compelling. Unless these random Brazilians are brilliant actors we have never heard about you can't deny they truly believe they saw something. But whether they actually did is another story. A big problem with hyped stories like this is the story becomes part of the myth of the city and people aren't unbiased and create narratives around the myth.
Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022)
If you thought Disney could afford good writers, think again.
Obi-Wan Kenobi follows the same bad writing formulas most of the new generation of Star Wars falls into with the exception of Rogue One.
The character development and writing is terrible, especially for the villains and there are many plot holes, inconsistencies and Mcguffins. It makes sense though because every episode is written by different people, there are like 20 writers for 6 episodes. Gone are the days where actual artists wrote scripts.
Every. Single. Bad. Guy. Talks. Like. This.
You see, speaking in staccato is menacing and that's how you know they are the bad guys. They are all the same, flat, boring, clichès.
Leia and Obi-Wan are the only decent characters and I mean decent as in, painfully average. Leia's "little kid that talks like an adult" shtick gets old fast. This is also getting to be an extremely worn out archetype.
I'm also tired of this Marvelesque ironic banter that these Philistines have to write into every show because they aren't creative.
Kathleen Kennedy needs thrown in the Sarlac Pit. Star Wars has been a disaster under her watch. Nothing but riding the hype and exploiting the fan base who will watch it even if it's garbage.
The Witcher (2019)
What a mess
This thing is so cliche it made me cringe.
Terrible writing and flow. The way characters interact is so illogical. For example first episode with Renfri. Renfri and Geralt literally have less than 5 minutes of conversation before they hook up. Just gratuitous and lame, no reason for that
Dandelion isn't funny as he is in the game, just annoying with the lame Joss Whedon / James Gunn esque "comedy"
Time in the show is a disaster. Weeks will go by in literally 5 minutes of show time. For example Yennefer in the witch school. Literally 3 scenes, a few minutes each and over a week has passed in the show.
Exposition is so forced. It's beyond me how this has over 8.