Chef74 Reviews

Fallout: The Beginning (2024) Season 1, Episode 8

I watched the wrong series

[1/10 · 23 May 2024]

After reading the positive reviews and watching the reason finale, I came to conclusion that I watched the wrong series or wrong episode. This episode has nothing positive about it. I will rate different aspects separately.

The story: 3/10 CGI and action scenes: 3/10 The dialogues especially the ones with the evil "capitalists": 1/10 The boring monologue by Lucy's father: 1/10 The frozen Lucy who just stands there: 1/10 Emerson's head: the best actor in this episode. 10/10 The face of Maximus: Still dumb. 1/10 Vault 33 Setup: A cheap copy of Matrix/The Island. 2/10 Lucy shooting her parents: 1/2.

Fallout: The Target (2024) Season 1, Episode 2

Script by a tween

[6/10 · 17 May 2024]

First thing first. The script feels like written by a 10-year old for other tweens. Poor little kid tried to write something in his little world.

The cinematography wasn't bad. Good use old junkyar stuff. Good example of recycle and reuse. Appreciate the cost reduction and environmentalism. It looked even good and funny until the 40 minute mark. Then came the terrible CGI again that reminds 90's video game graphics. Maybe that is their signature but they seems to have hired a teeneger CGI artist.

I would normally give 4 stars but extra one point each for Emerson and the dog. Although the dog quickly betrayed the guy who raised it.

Other stuff is as expected. The little chick still looking for her father with the make-up relics from a bygone civilization. The dude stealing the metal armor and acting quite stupid (supposed to be funny I guess). Well, of course the horse rider from the first episode came back as a bulletproof zombie? And the search for the father and the Moldover woman continues.

Fallout: The End (2024) Season 1, Episode 1

A bit cartoonish

[4/10 · 16 May 2024]

This is the first episode and they are setting up the characters. Probably it's quite normal that I don't understand what is going on. I never played the game.

As I watch the first season I feel like I am playing a game. Some scenes have worse CGI than a first person shooter video game. I would give 2/10 for the CGI.

The pace of the episode isn't great either. I understand the slow shots because the cinematographer wants me to take a good look at the CGI or the set they have created. However, it is too slow. Adding some old music to the scene is not saving it either. It seems like a desperate attempt to save face.

At the beginning of the episode, some chick goes to another bunker to find a mate. She doesn't use her radioctivity detector bracelet because she was too horny and only remembers to detect the radioactive groom after it's too late. Then she goes out to find her father.

On the surface there are some people who are looking for relics. It looks like they lost all the technology. I was expecting that are living in the iron age. Then comes flying ships. It looks like they are able to maintain such complex machines. Looks like not all is lost.

Then there is Dane who wants to join the Bother of the steel. I wonder why it didn't happen. He/they was very qualified to join the "Brotherhood".

Barbie (I) (2023)

Didn't work for me

[3/10 · 31 March 2024]

It was free on hbo so I gave it a try. After watching for 20 minutes, I had to give up. I am not understanding any references and not seeing the point for all dances, retina burning saturated pink colors, the same-sounding pop culture music, chicks in sexy designer clothes, consumerism to the brink... Maybe because I never played with barbie dolls when I was a boy. I am sure if I could survive, it would give me the meaning of life. But too tiring, too annoying. Didn't even have a chance to be bombarded any feminist messages. I just didn't have the patience to stick around. I am sure it will enlighten some dudes and encourage some girls to buy pink clothes or whatever the message is. The movie wasn't for me.

Constellation: These Fragments I Have Shored Against My Ruin (2024) Season 1, Episode 8

A big fat nothing

[6/10 · 27 March 2024]

This is a review of the final episode, NOT the entire season. I have no spoilers about Ep8, but I have references to the previous 7 episodes.

No spoilers because there is no new information. Entire episode is a repeat of all previous episodes. It also builds a little bit on top of the "universe switching" they did for lucky characters.

Let's see.. This Alice is from this universe, that Alice is from another universe. Let's repeat that at least 10 more times in the "final" episode. It still doesn't add anything to the previous 7 episodes. Henry is the lucky one, Bud is the loser one. Nothing new there. Nobody believes Jo's stories since episode 2. Keep quiet, lady! Unless you invent another machine to jump the universes your options are getting locked up or playing ball. In this episode Jo keeps repeating the same story over and over. Again nothing new. I guess they wanted to put some random stuff so they can justify Season 2. Oh, and we don't even need CAL for these parallel universe jump. It just happens. So need to even invent CAL.

Here is what I will do. When the next season is out wait for all 8 episodes, watch them as filler episodes when I get bored. No more waiting for a new episode with excitement. The production quality is good. It can play in the background.

Constellation: Through the Looking Glass (2024) Season 1, Episode 7

Well done

[9/10 · 20 March 2024]

This episode is well done. As in well done steak, a bit overcooked. I am not going to pretend I understand everything 100%. Maybe that is what the writer wants us to feel. Feel as confused as the actual characters. Even after they (and we) learn that there are at least 2 alternate universes, this episode was hard to follow. They even color coded the kids for us with their outfits and different hats. I liked the Schrödinger touch. Although I was surprised that a cat would stay alive with nobody around to feed it. As far as I know they didn't bring a cat with them. I was waiting for a scare jump with the cat for the entire episode. Too bad they don't that kind of stuff anymore. The father is a generic father in each universe. I guess this is what they mean by "men don't change" ;) There was one point where I said "continuity director fell asleep". Because, probably intentionally, events started jumping a lot.

They kept playing the mommy/mama card a bit longer. I kept thinking of family guy episode.

"Mommy, mama, mommy, mama, mommy, ma, mama. What? Hi!"

In short lots of tension, drama. Maybe universes will collapse or something in the last episode. In may go in any direction. Not sure why I cannot give 10. Maybe they tried too hard.

My review is like the episode itself: all over the place.

Edit: Spelling mistake and an excuse for my badly written review.

Lessons in Chemistry: Primitive Instinct (2023) Season 1, Episode 4

Nothing happening

[5/10 · 17 February 2024]

Very slow pace. Nothing is happening or happening very slow. It takes 9 months to figure out her research was stolen. It takes a long time to ask the neighbor. The main character is always mad. Whether she is discriminated or not or even if walking on the street. Maybe there will be a character arc from this woman with "WTF" written all over her face to a normal person. Being depressed all the time is not society's fault.

Also the signature of this episode is the dead dude walking around all the time. Like the talking dog of 3rd episode, another overused cliche. The men are all evil and irresponsible. The women are housewives or rebellios. Very black and white overall.

For All Mankind: Perestroika (2024) Season 4, Episode 10

Season 4 review

[6/10 · 13 February 2024]

First the positive: After beating the dead horse with identity and other politics in the first 3 seasons finally they had a chance to show average person's struggles. Workers want better pay, Big Space wants to count pennies while awarding bonuses, union attempts, strikes, greed by Martian settlers and Earth people. Overall more relatable. My complaints are a lot. The scenes are too long in most cases. I know slow burn, but some scenes were outright boring. I looked for 2x speed button on Apple TV. As another reviewer mentioned, they have taken the most phycologically unstable people to Mars. You would expect that they would find more suitable people out of 6 billion people (6 billion figure is from the series). They even took a sick child to a space journey whom they feed with peanut butter. As Babushka said, PBJ is not lunch.

The sci-fi movies that change one thing and keep everything else always bothered me. So 40 years of tech improvements in space exploration and related side industries and none of that tech trickled down to the other parts of the life? They are still waiting for Steve Jobs to invent iPhone in 2006? It is a bit weird. The people also act like they just teleported to this alternate reality and tring to adapt. 40 years of progress at that scale would change people a lot.

Overall it is a watchable season.

Reacher: Fly Boy (2024) Season 2, Episode 8

Free TV show

[7/10 · 20 January 2024]

I won't complain too much because the show is free on prime and there aren't any other good shows to watch. This season was a bit cheesy and predictable including the final episode. I was hoping a 1.5 hour episode where bad guys showed a bit more resistance. Instead the show too 25 minutes and the rest was filled with boring diner scene.

Neagley could have easily taken down the helicopter before it could take off; she took down 2 guards within 2 seconds, right? But no, Reacher has to jump inside the helicopter. And he knows the bottom door will open while nobody is watching. The AM guy, or whatever the initials, went down too easy as well. He was such a cunning villain, but he tried to talk his way put of the situation. Didn't work for me. Shooting down the helicopter was a nice touch, I wish they could show it from inside the helicopter.

Overall lazy script for a free TV show. But I enjoyed it.

Hijack: Brace Brace Brace (2023) Season 1, Episode 7

Amanda is smart

[6/10 · 2 August 2023]

Amanda, the newest hijacker, was smart and as soon as she entered the cockpit she locked the door and didn't let anyone in. I guess somebody knows the rules of protecting the cockpit. Or some writers decided to read the protocol and realized their mistake from episode 1. And what was that response to 999 call? I guess you need to be a main character to be able to rescue Sam's son. Regular cops don't even know to deal with 999 calls. Some commenter was comparing this series to Breaking Bad. Even Tuco is smarter than most of the characters in this series. At the end the writers tried to put some excitement by staging a fake fight between Sam and the lead hijacker. Totally meaningless. And too little too late after 7 episodes of torturous script. The writers have never seen a movie before. Same for the politicians and the passengers. Anybody with some Hollywood culture would avoid all the plot holes on this series.

Black Mirror: Demon 79 (2023) Season 6, Episode 5

Rubbish mirror

[6/10 · 18 June 2023]

This season has been quite different than what we were used to. Other than S6E1 (maybe a bit Aaron Paul episode) it had nothing to do with the dark side of technology or the screens that enslave us. Most of the episodes took place before Steve Jobs announced the iPhone. So maybe the dark side of VHS technology (E2), or dark side of not sending the replicas to space (E3), dark side of werewolf fantasy movies (E4) or dark side of failing your daemon assignments (E5). Not only most of the episodes were not black mirror style, they also had holes, weird characters, and rubbish stories. It would be better if they started a separate brand.

Directing and acting were great. So overall season gets 6 or 5 stars.

The Last of Us: Left Behind (2023) Season 1, Episode 7

Teenagers at a shopping mall

[3/10 · 28 February 2023]

The episode is 45 minutes shopping mall and 7 minutes of something happening. There are no spoilers in my review because there is really nothing worthy of mentioning inside this episode. It contains classic teenage activities at a shopping mall. I guess they wanted to get good ratings from teenager audience so they gave them something they can relate to. The only missing picture from "car dependent teenagers having fun at a shopping mall American love story" was the soccer man driving them to the shopping mall. There was definitely a childish cheer amond our 2 teenagers so I guess they did a good job acting. Well overall another bottle episode.

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

Nothing matters. Except the bagel

[6/10 · 3 February 2023]

I got excited after seeing the high rating. However this is another good concept wasted in the name of propaganda. When you combine time travel, alternate universe travel with emotions and good character arcs you can make great movies. Although I cannot even imagine what character arc would mean when time is not linear. It requires a great writer to write that script. These guys weren't.

First of all there were some really good ideas in the movie. Like crossing paths with the same guy and talking about alternate futures in the alternate universe. However the biggest 2 problems for me where the lack of any logic. You can create alternate universes but usually when you go beyond the lifetime of a person in any time travel movie, that person probably ceases to exist. So alternate branches of reality like sausage fingers and rocks should have been excluded. Also how did they achieve the same level of civilization without the ability to grab things. I though opposing thumb was one of the 3 key advantages over other apes.

Second issue is that the daughter lives all alternates realities, experiences everything, realizes that there is no difference in being a rock or human. She realizes "nothing matters". Except the "bagel" of course. She cannot give up the bagel and she will destroy the universe just to prove that she likes bagel. That part is the propaganda needed for an Oscar. And the part that made this movie absurd. At times it looked like "scary movie" or "epic movie" series. Bunch of absurd scenes stitched together.

Breaking Bad: Felina (2013) Season 5, Episode 16

Breaking Bad - that is the title

[10/10 · 13 November 2022]

I have watched the entire series in 2016 in one week, watching 9 hours per day. I was thinking of how the last episode got 9.9 rating unlike other series who messed up (like GoT). Then I started reading reviews other than 10 for this episode. They are quite crazy. All of them are "what if" or "too coincidental".

I agree that things have gone in a different direction. WW could have never chosen to "face the wind" and gone to the cops and it would be a different story. It is possible to find a chemistry teacher who cooks meth for his family and stops doing so after saving $630k. But that series would be called "Chemistry teacher who left enough money for family by cooking some meth". Or Gus could have outsmarted WW, the the series would be called "Chicken Man" because Gus would be the main character. Or Gus could have liked what Victor did because Victor learnt how to cook meth by just watching. Then the name of the series would be "Watch and learn".

In this series the story is what you saw. WW breaks bad and in the final episode he goes for revenge because the nazis took all of his life's work. He gets lucky and everything works as planned. If the machine gun got stuck, the final episode would be called "My gun dealer sold me dud".

In short whatever the producer and the writers had in mind, they executed the script perfectly.

Manifest: Inversion Illusion (2022) Season 4, Episode 10

Does anybody know how to use a gun?

[7/10 · 9 November 2022]

In this series there is always a gun around but nobody seems to have understood the use of it. When Angelina goes crazy with a sapphire (with tons of obscure references), you just shoot her in the head then ask questions. You don't go into a convincing spree by reciting different parts of the bible. A bullet will speak hundreds of pages to those people who twist every Bible verse to their benefit. Same happened at the farm house with the other nut job. Only Zeke, due to his stored anger, was able to use a gun. Of course I was hoping a head shot in that scene but still better than nothing. Also the dialogs are lame, cheesy or usually plain stupid.

Manifest (2018–2023)

Nobody has any common sense

[5/10 · 9 November 2022]

Nobody in this series has common sense. As a result what all 828'ers do is stupid, hence the storyline is stupid. Even the "good" people are reckless, imagine how reckless the crazy nutjobs are. Also there is no logic and continuity in the stories. While you think they are about to use their brain, some other random calling happens and story goes in a different direction. The series is like a collection of twists. So many twists that you would think they replaced writers every 5 minutes. The dialogs are also the dumbest ones. When nobody is logical, when the premise of the series is dumb, when the writers couldn't figure out if this is scifi or fantasy or supernatural movie, of course you will get tons of incoherent blabbering. But it is fun to watch random stuff.

House of the Dragon: The Lord of the Tides (2022) Season 1, Episode 8

New cast every episode

[8/10 · 10 October 2022]

The cast changes every episode and yet every character is still unrelatable. I root for none of them. If a dragon fell on them and accidentally squashed all of them, I wouldn't be upset for any of them. The characters are so low life and so idiotic and at the same time talking all high and mighty, that makes me laugh each time. Who are they fooling with this act? Also due to constant change of characters and everybody having the same name, I stopped following who is who and who has which nasty plans. I guess I am a fan of that loose cannon who randomly killed people to make the queen happy. So the highlight of this episode is, milk of the poppy.

The Life and Movies of Erşan Kuneri: Er-Man (2022) Season 1, Episode 7

Well written episode

[9/10 · 16 May 2022]

I love this episode because of mixing Turkish culture with a super hero's world. The superhero's father talking like a Turkish parent, the superhero's interaction with the Turkish woman who complains about everything, and the family trying to benefit from his powers. I think this was one of the funniest episodes.

The Life and Movies of Erşan Kuneri: Kuru Murad (2022) Season 1, Episode 1

The first is the worst

[3/10 · 15 May 2022]

The first episode is the worst. I guess they don't show the pilot episode to the target audience in Turkey. Or the target audience was horny teenagers. The first part is full of lame jokes. Maybe people is the porn industry have small brains and this is the level of joke you normally here. If that is the case, they did a very realistic depiction. Also the movie they made, Kuru Murad, was very low quality. Really looked like made by porn actors who are not expected to act. So again they did a good job reflecting the reality. But do you really have patience to listen to dumb puberty jokes among the cast and watch a Kuru Murad which is intentionally made amateurish?

The Life and Movies of Erşan Kuneri: Ebenin Avi (2022) Season 1, Episode 2

Decent episode

[7/10 · 15 May 2022]

After cursing through the first episode, I wanted to give a chance to the 2nd episode. Well it is not too bad.

Each episode contains a prelude where our director comes up with new movie ideas and during the second part they show the movie they have shot. In this episode, the planning part is watchable. The premise of spells and seances in real life is a bit absurd. However the cast is pretending to have a seance to trick Alev and the execution is quite funny actually. The cucumber joke belongs to horny teenager world but I will ignore it for now. At least they weren't direcly talking about d!cks.

The horror movie they shot was quite funny. There were references to classic Cem Yilmaz jokes. Nice to hear some stand up comedian touch finally. There were also some absurd but funny jokes like the hammer & sickle scene and the kokorec scene.

The Life and Movies of Erşan Kuneri (2022– )

Hit or miss

[7/10 · 14 May 2022]

After reading the reviews with no real review and polarized ratings of 1 and 10's, I actually expected a cult movie like "Dunyayi Kurtaran Adam". But this isn't.

The series starts with Kuru Murad which is kind of unfortunate. In my opinion, this is one of the worst episodes. It is pretty much horny teenager jokes. Maybe they wanted to characterize porn industry as just genitals and no brains. Whether this is real depiction or just sarcasm, tasteless it is nonetheless. To be clear Netflix did a great job translating to English, so 90% of those silly Turkish jokes made it to the subtitles.

I saw that people wrote that there is no story. To be fair Seinfeld or Friends were also shows about nothing. They didn't have a real story or a real message. But the writing and execution were superb. So you can make a movie with no real story line and succeed. This Netflix series is NOT that. At least it is not consistent. The writing and acting is hit or miss. I would rate some episodes 3 while some others 7-8.

The first episode was a mock of Kara Murat. They did an awful job. Almost unwatchable. I forced myself to watch the 2nd episode; that was kind of funny with some signature Cem Yilmaz jokes. Episode 3 goes down again; totally pointless. Episode 4 becomes absurd and funny and so on.

If you are native Turkish speaker and you can ignore the first episode, you may find episodes that you can like. If you are American, you may also find some good jokes (English translation is not bad).

PS: I am not trying destroy Turkish cinema. What is this automatic reaction to any negative reviews? Please don't be "hamamcilar birligi baskani".

Ozark: A Hard Way to Go (2022) Season 4, Episode 14

Trying to salvage it.. but not working

[3/10 · 5 May 2022]

The second part of last season was plain awful.

They tried to salvage it with some fake regrets from Wendy's mouth. This woman lied to many times to the kids to the husband, I don't even know if she meant any of the things at the mental hospital. Any ending other than Wendy and Marty getting what they deserved is unsatisfactory. All needed was a character smart enough to notice that Wendy is the head of the snake... Maybe they will shoot another season.

Ozark: Trouble the Water (2022) Season 4, Episode 12

A rare episode with a consistent plot

[8/10 · 1 May 2022]

This season has been full of random plots, random remarks and random mistakes inconsistent with the characters. However this episode was really good in the sense that everybody acted. And finally Wendy buying her way out, acting all neurotic and manipulating people didn't work out. Grandpa still got the custody even without the PI's appearance at the court. So Wendy bough the PI for no reason.

Ozark: The Cousin of Death (2022) Season 4, Episode 8

At least we got something out of it

[7/10 · 30 April 2022]

Among all the bs and the incoherent babbling at least we got something to be happy for. Ruth took care of one of the lowlifes: Javi. I am expecting a similar fate for Wendy. Even a bigger lowlife than Javi.

Better Call Saul: Wine and Roses (2022) Season 6, Episode 1

Great for the first episode of the season

[10/10 · 19 April 2022]

Usually the first few episodes of the season builds a story slowly. However this one is quickly building towards big stories. Kim and Slipping Jimmy quickly set their game up against Howard. Nacho, Gus, Hector, Lalo side of the story is with thrilling as always. Well it's difficult to write a review without spolilers. But I am even enduring the tons of commercials of live TV for the sake of Saul Goodman.