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kierannurmi
Reviews
The Dropout (2022)
A cautionary tale worth watching.
Survivorship bias is when the risks of a particular option are underestimated because failures can't be reported. The Dropout helps counter this by having a main character whose business dealings, while initially well intentioned, are a trash fire from beginning to end.
The story highlights several problems with her path including toxic workplace culture, intellectual property, casual sexism and deception. I particularly enjoyed how they made it obvious that attempting to emulate high flying tech bros was part of the problem.
While similar to Inventing Anna, the focus is less on other people being easily conned and more on her personal missteps. I find it depressing and most of the characters are unlikable but the message is important. Highly recommended watch for anyone who considers an entrepreneurs lifestyle.
Inventing Anna (2022)
Unlikable main character but interesting.
This is not Great Expectations, nor is it Catch Me of You Can, Wolf of Wall Street or Silence of the Lambs. Anna lacks the charisma to be any of these. Not through failings of the actress but from being a generally unlikable character, reminiscent of an undergrad with delusions of grandeur.
She's portrayed at one point as being a genius with eidetic memory but she only seems to use this to bluff her way through a couple meetings then it never comes up again. There's even a meeting where she clearly flubbed it by lack of preparation, relying on what she heard in the lobby to get her through.
The supporting cast is interesting with their stories being mostly self contained even when characters carry over from one to another. For me, the investigative work by the reporting team being of particular interest given how reporters normally gets portrayed in the media.
This series could have been improved by fixing pacing in earlier episodes and better addressing why people continued to fall for Anna's lies even when they were aware that she was a con. The reporter and lawyer get hung up on her in the last episode that puts their professionalism into question despite both potentially ruining their personal lives for this outcome. If Anna's not charismatic, we need better portrayal as to what the moviation people have for helping her despite knowing she'll burn them.
Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Adventure (2022)
60s Nostalgia with space themes wrapping
Based on the description Netflix provided, I was expecting ths story of a child going on an imaginary adventure to space or following his years as he becomes an astronaut, which felt deceptive.
It starts with the main character being recruited for what is deemed Apollo 10 1/2, but once his training starts, they pause the plot and treat you to 45 minutes of a goldbergsesque childhood, though lacking a core character trait or interest like Adams interest in fim making which makes it seem like it's trying to pad the runtime rather than develop characters. These interludes happen regularly over the runtime.
The runtime dedicated to the mission the show is named after is about 30 minutes is relevant to the movies namesake, including the Apollo 11 launch which overlaps.
Not a fan of the art style. The background art is fine but there's a weird contrast between that and the characters which gives it an uncanny valley effect which isn't helped by the characters looking like King of the Hill reimagined as a rotoscope animation ala Matthew McCleskey. This probably has something to do with high contrast between shades with the animation software having trouble with multiple light sources because it's a lot nicer and cleaner in the space scenes. Motion also seems to be a problem as the cable car scene looks terrible.
Halving the runtime by restricting anecdotes to ones that support the narrative would, have bumped the score up to a 7.
Time Bomb Y2K (2023)
A lazy cash in with no new insight
Splicing archival footage in with a contemporary retrospective, but that isn't what this is. Th list documentary is entirely from archival footage with the most prominent voiceover being Leonard Nimoy, who has died over 5 years ago.
There's about 5 minutes dedicated to explaining what Y2K was and it's potential impact and the rest of it is just padding. You could swap half the runtime with an episode of doomsday preppers and the only noticable change would be video and audio quality.
This could have been something great some modern commentary about lessons learned, shortsighted management, other potential ICT disasters or even parallels to global warming but as it stands, it's merely an 80 minute timesink.