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johnpauljones
Reviews
Misha and the Wolves (2021)
A bit of a slow go, but worth it in the end
Misha and the Wolves takes a while to get going, a long while. And toward the middle, it really bogs down. But the last 20-30 minutes are a decent payoff.
If this documentary were edited better, and if we lost the 20-30 minutes of people staring at the camera and making faces, it would have been so much better.
This could have been a stellar 40-50 minute piece. Instead, it felt very stretched out and felt time-wastingly slow.
I had to stop halfway through and check in with the friend who recommended it to me. He told me the twist at the end was worth it, and it was.
I still recommend watching it, but I'd recommend multitasking for the first 50-60 minutes.
Fargo (2014)
Seasons 1-3 Great. Season 4, swing and a miss. Season 5, strike 2.
Season 1 rating: 10. A bit derivative in plot, but brilliant in its acting, casting, and production.
Season 2 rating: 10. The best season of Fargo so far. Plot, direction, acting, casting, all are clicking. Fantastic use of subplots involving Hanzee Dent and Mike Milligan.
Season 3 rating: 8. Great characters, great acting, and production value. Plot is a little watered down at this point.
Season 4 rating: 2.9. The only way Season 4 makes sense as a Fargo story is as an origin story for Mike Milligan (as a younger version of himself in the form of Satchell). Satchell's story with Rabbi Milligan is compelling and well thought out. It's the only reason I've been able to keep watching through this error-prone season.
But the errors with Season 4 though.
Major casting/acting errors: These errors really held Season 4 back. Chris Rock, Jason Schwartzman, Salvatore Esposito all seem to be taking turns between overacting and underacting. Jessie Buckley is doing some sort of cartoonish impersonation as Oraetta Mayflower, which makes her interactions with Etherlida Smutny, who does not seem to emote at all, very odd and jarring.
Writing errors also plague this season: Many of the characters seem to be people plucked out of 2020 who exhibit contemporary values and patterns of communication. Examples include Loy, Josto, Etherlida and her parents.
At the same time, the others seem to be stereotypes plucked out of 1919 (Gaetano, Calamita, Deafy, Oraetta, Zelmare, Swanee).
These two groups seem to be speaking different languages much of the time. Maybe that was intentional because the 2020 characters weren't talking to the 1919 characters at all, because they were really talking to us. More to come on that below.
But the unsavory result is most characters come across as either all good, or all bad. No shades of grey results in flat characters, and most of these characters wind up flatter than a Wyandotte County pancake.
Perhaps the biggest problem with Season 4: Exposing every subtext through excessive dialogue verging on the pedantic. The 2020 characters do like to give long, extended speeches explaining what it is we're watching and what it is they're feeling to the 1919 characters. It makes Season 4 come across as ham-fisted as agitprop at a Leningrad dinner theater.
The writers were certainly trying to make this season a commentary on race, immigration, and assimilation into America. But if the show was put together better and acted better, this prolonged verbal exposition would not be needed.
For example, Josto's speech to his jailed opponents on why he can get away with crime and assimilate with mainstream America -- because he is seen as White and they are Black -- was what could have been a particularly salient moment.
But it wound up coming across as a prime example of over-sermonizing by one of the 2020 characters to his antecedents, while using language that won't relate to them at all: "Americans love a crime story because America is a crime story." At that point, it's clear the character is not talking to the other people on the screen. He's monologuing with the audience.
You can probably get away with breaking down the vaunted "third wall" like that once a season. However, Season 4 broke down that wall about three times per episode with its oratory.
In contrast, Season 2 did a much better job exploring issues about racism in America (with Hanzee and Milligan) without a single prolonged oratory. You felt what they felt because they were well acted and well-rounded characters dealing with discrimination.
All in all, I'm still watching for Satchell and Rabbi Milligan's story. But the rest of Season 4 is a time sink. Let's hope it hasn't sunk the franchise.
Season 5 rating 4:
Some excellent casting and acting. But the writing was on the nose political messaging. No shades of grey. Flat characters. Horrifically bad dialogue at times. I'd write a more in depth review, but season 4 ate up all my good will. Season 5 was an improvement over season 4, but not by much.
Don't Look Up (2021)
Great beginning, okay middle, tropey third act cuts its own legs out.
Don't Look Up is worth a watch as excellent satire, for at least 50 minutes. It mocks society today quite well, picking apart the media, self-serving politicians, and mindless social media distractions -- and it does so in an even-handed fashion at first. Though it starts off as an equal-opportunity critic, it does go off the rails and becomes rather transparently, onesidedly political by the end, negating the impact of its earlier strengths.
All in all, worth a watch even if it fell a bit short of greatness.
Vikings: The Best Laid Plans (2020)
Incoherent mess
Without getting into spoilers, the story telling and direction in this episode leaves much to be desired. The scenes are so Frankensteined together, that no one knows if the show depicts an actual battle or if it depicts Ivar The Bonerless' fever dream of being a hero.
The lingering sentiment after the episode:
The show runners are venturing into Walking Dead territory here (remember kill Glenn --> unkill Glenn --> kill Glenn more graphically).
Yellowstone (2018)
They were going for The Sopranos meets Bonanza. What they got was General Hospital meets Young Guns II.
Yellowstone desperately wants to be more than it is, but it has all the trappings of a soap opera.
However, Yellowstone lacks the depth or character development that even a soap opera has. Most characters are flatter than a Wichita pancake. The characters who aren't pancake flat are invariably homicidal -- yet they flit through life without consequence until a minor inconvenience happens that takes 30 minutes of plot time to resolve.
They were going for The Sopranos meets Bonanza. What they got was General Hospital meets Young Guns II. It's just not very good.
Magnum P.I. (2018)
Critical errors from the inception
It's one thing to reboot a procedural with flat characters like Hawaii Five-O. You can basically stick to the formula and overwrite the characters with reasonable facsimiles.
Magnum P.I. was a character driven show. And by overwriting the original characters, you have missed an opportunity. This cast, Yoga Instructor Higgins and moustacheless Magnum and all, could actually have worked if this was a soft reboot, next generation scenario.
Imagine if the new Magnum was the original Magnum' s son and if the new Higgins was old Higgins' granddaughter. Hernandez could easily be Selleck' s son. There could have been guest appearances from Selleck and the surviving members of the cast. It would have been tons if fun.
Instead, we got a hash of a reboot, nullifying the old characters, dependent on CGI and massive explosions that is making a mad dash through character development that should have taken seasons.
Pros: They got Higgins' dogs just right. And this show reminded me how great the original show was and set me on a course of bingewatching the real Magnum.
Cons: Just about everything else.
Valhalla Rising (2009)
Sound and Fury and signifying....
More like a poem than a movie, Valhalla Rising antagonizes the viewer with prolonged suspense in multiple scenes. Ultimately, this movies fails to deliver a coherent meaning. The viewer is on the edge of a plot starting to take form, but even the most patient viewer is left to ask, "What the hell was that all about?"
Of course, the viewer who asked that question just wasted more than an hour on watching digitally enhanced cutaways, waiting for a plot to happen.
Ultimately, the movie promises a great climax between iron-age Norsemen and stone age Indians, yet fails to deliver.
Even as a poem, this motion picture fails to deliver. 2/10.
Enemy at the Gates (2001)
This movie blew.
This movie was a travesty for many reasons, let's list a few.
A) The Russians did not have cockney accents. "Let's go kill some Jerries, Govna!"
b) The dialogue was as if it was written by a 4 year old illiterate.
C) Too long, not much action for a war movie.
D) Too sappy! It's war for heaven's sakes! The Russian people of Stalingrad would have been more stoic in their approach to war, instead of crying over every last little thing.
E) Overpropagandic against communism at the end.
F) German-Russian shoe shine boy exchange program never existed!
G) Too many unexplained conflicts and friendships.
H) Movies about snipers should contain more sniping, and less kissy- kissy time.
Mission to Mars (2000)
Utterly Without Socially Redeeming Value
The concept was great. The acting was better than the dialogue they had to work with. But the Direction of Brian De Palma was more appropriate to a romantic comedy than to a science fiction epic. When the plot called for suspense, we were treated to a barrage of awful music closer to Foghat than Straus. When scenes should have been quiet, we were subjected to noisy music and chattering background noise. The film was pure trash. Why would it be necessary to show the dead man's face in space with a close up? If anyone was subjected to that kind of vacuum in space, their entire body would explode. We would not see a rotting mummified face free floating in space. This movie should have been treated with suspense and danger, but what came out was a typical hollywood piece of trash film. We might as well have been watching "Adam Sandler and Jennifer Anniston Go to Space."
Small Time Crooks (2000)
Whiney Dribble.
The second half of the movie was the worst example of New York whining imaginable. No entertainment value could be siphoned from this film save for Tracy Ullman's slow sister. Aside from that, if I were given a choice between hearing Woody Allen whine for 90 minutes, or endure a massage at the hands of Hannibal Lecter, it would be the hardest choice of my life.