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Reviews
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel: Interesting People on Christopher Street (2022)
Where I officially jump ship
I enjoyed the first few seasons well enough, but this season just isn't doing anything for me. I stalled after the first couple episodes, but then recently tried to pick back up and finish the season. By the end of this episode, I realized that I just don't care about any of these characters anymore. Nothing's really intriguing or endearing about any of them. They all seem to make short-sighted and frustrating decisions. There's certainly nothing particularly marvelous about Mrs. Maisel herself. And her standup routines have never been very funny, making the audience laughter feel all the more forced/fake. The overall acting and set pieces continue to impress, but that's just not enough for me to keep spending time on this show. On top of all that, the amount of swearing, particularly f-words, is really just ridiculous. It's not just pointless - the excessive use seems legitimately out of character for the time and people. I don't think I'm going to miss any of this.
Widows (2018)
Ugh
Having just seen this movie, I'm trying to remember why the trailer made me want to see it so badly. This movie was not just slow and snooze-worthy, but had me actively disliking it. I can't remember the last time I've wanted to quit partway through a movie so many times - I've got a serious completion complex, but it still took some serious willpower to not turn it off. As others have mentioned, there are simply no likeable or sympathetic characters in this movie. On top of that, it seemed overly and pointlessly violent at times - some of it just plain disturbing and sickening to me. The only reason I'm not giving it the lowest rating of one star is to give some credit to the very competent actors. Overall, though, I simply wouldn't recommend this movie to anyone.
Voltron: Legendary Defender: The Feud! (2018)
Wow
This is probably one of best filler episodes ever created. There's no mistaking that nothing in this episode carries the story forward or develops any characters, but it had my son and me in stitches. Some surprisingly great writing, considering its nature.
Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)
Better the second time
I've been playing with Transformer toys since the beginning, loved the cartoon series and animated movie, but have mostly loathed what Michael Bay has done to my beloved franchise. His first movie was decent, the second appalling, the third passable, and when I left the movie theater after watching this fourth installment, my general feeling was, "Whatever." Being a little hard of hearing, I couldn't hear much of the dialog and was seriously confused about what was going on (not that Mr. Bay seems to worry much about telling a coherent story). I had been meaning to get back around to seeing it again at home where I could watch it with subtitles, and I was finally able to do just that. This time, I paid very close attention to try to understand the story and was rather surprised to discover that there was a very nice story that played out in a relatively orderly and logical manner, but with enough unanswered questions to leave you wondering where they might take the story in subsequent installments. Being all too familiar with Michael Bay's brand of humor and obsession with never-ending battle sequences, I had adjusted my expectation and found myself, overall, quite enjoying the film. I liked (or at least, didn't hate) many of the characters, including the main actors. There were also some very cool transformations and special effects. My main gripe with the movie (and I still have many of them) is that Michael Bay just doesn't know when to quit - this movie is entirely too long. He's made the same mistake before. The action sequences are so frequent and so long that I end up getting simultaneously bored and traumatized (never imagined that would be possible). If he could just scale back on the incessant action and ridiculous humor, I might start to actually form a moderately positive opinion of him - but I continue to hope that they'll hand the directing reins to someone (pretty much anyone) else.