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Tzaddiq
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Beyond Skinwalker Ranch (2023)
Lost hundreds of IQ points watching the first episode
The pseudoscience, the stilted expository conversations and performative amazement. It's as cringeworthy as you'd imagine. Particularly because it's not a parody. This show is delivered as though the work is sober and rigorous. Disco lasers "adding energy" to the environment... "This blob is an interference pattern"...
These grown adults grasp each flicker from their instruments, turn it into a quirky hypothesis and then leap to scientific certainty, all while proclaiming to be skeptical and serious-minded.
Maybe it sells, to some audiences. But, to anyone with any exposure to physics, audio, science, data analysis, or just common sense, you're in for a rough time.
In a nutshell, adults behave like imaginative kids who just got new toys, except with no humour.
Monster Hunter (2020)
Made me break the fastforward button
This film falls in the pitiable uncanny valley between plain stupid and outrageously crazy. I lasted 20 minutes and fast forwarded the rest.
Questions:
Why do monsters which are just about to stomp our protagonists retrace their steps off-camera and in the next shot appear half a mile away from their quarry?
Why bother shoot a charging 10,000 ton behemoth with a 9mm pistol? You might as well be blowing bubbles. Just run.
A Discovery of Witches (2018)
Mislead by other reviewers
I was lead to believe that because this contained adults, it was going to be for adults. But the writing suggests these 1000 year old creatures were born yesterday. They have no wisdom of years, do not act at all conservatively, can be defeated by parlor tricks despite somehow surviving for a dozen generations, and fall in love after a couple of glances. The actors are hot; I'll give them that.
Devils (2020)
Not entertaining
The good:
I suppose in the abstract, the message of casting harsh light on the exploitative nature of big finance. The script is okay.
The bad:
The editing, the acting, the music. Once you see the editing mistakes, you can't unsee them. Lines delivered in one tone just to be cut at a different angle and they're speaking in a different register. Every character except the young tech guy and the Argentinian lady, might as well be cardboard puppets. But even them I didn't get to like.
I'm willing to overlook poor characterization if the subject matter is interesting enough. It isn't. Somehow the high stakes battlefield of financial misdealings and political power, the intrigue of a shadowy Wikileaks organization, and an unsolved murder, is utterly stale. How is that even possible? Maybe because of an indifferent protagonist who mumbles every line? I got to halfway through the final episode, something broke my habit of watching for a couple days and I've felt no compulsion to give it more time.
Westworld: Genre (2020)
No tension, no brains
While I admire a show for trying to tackle philosophical questions, it has to match the ambition with something better than sophomoric bar-side commentary. Nothing that has been brought up about morality, consciousness, or free will has been anywhere close to the mark. This time, we get to hear about Insight's master designs which predict extremely complex dynamics of individual humans well into the future, despite our not being able to predict the weather 1/100th that long.
This particular episode which could have been exciting is totally let down by any sense of danger to any of our protagonists. As usual, bad guy bullets do nothing, good guy bullets are killshots. Bad guys take cover yet get easily hit. Good guys take no cover yet 5 magazines worth of bullets miss them. Why bother with these kind of scenes if they're not going to convey any sense of risk? Why put characters in adversarial situations if they can easily diffuse it with unlikely tricks and show no ingenuity?
I think this typifies Westworld. Flashy production, big budget sets, and completely lame writing.
Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
Insulting to intelligence at every scene
At every minute, it assaults your models of physics, logic, human+ nature, causality, and continuity. It does this by brainlessly inserting randomness and chaos.
It's a postmodern vapidscape where anything can happen because there are no laws, just expedient plot-driven events, despite those laws and structures being well define and refined in the starwars universe in previous works.
Here are some examples: the Force can now do whatever is necessary. It's more powerful than any spell in the Harry Potter franchise. No limits are respected, no potency of powers earned.
Rei is going to win every engagement, even though she just learned of her force powers a few days ago in this story. Don't worry, it's more convenient that way.
If our heroes are in an impossible situation, they get out of it without doing anything, physics be damned. Shame on you for your prior intuitions that quicksand would fall through a hole conveniently opened up in an underground cavern to let our heroes escape!
Enemies are going to be good cops who won't fire on our heroes even though they are brandishing weapons and invading a warship; no, these lenient storm troopers will ask them to put down their weapons.
Vastly outgunned forces will prevail in situations they would get immediately crushed.
Very few titles irritate me enough to spend 15min on a review, and this one earns that dubious distinction. I suspect a head injury would be required to enjoy this.
Killing Eve (2018)
It's one of those chick shows
You know the writers have a chip on their shoulders when every male character they create is impotent, powerless, degraded, and humbled at every scene. It would be fitting to have an "empowerment" counter going ding-ding-ding at every snappy line of dialogue for the female leads. Now, I have no problem whatsoever with progressiveness, but this is so on-the-nose it's unwatchable. Well that's my reaction; hope that saves some guys the irritation. And according to the other reviewers these first two episodes were the good ones...