Jeremy-608 Reviews

Expats (2023–2024)

I'm still going ...

[10/10 · 7 April 2024]

Please scroll down to the bottom for an update. Sorry this is a tad TLDR.

I've only just finished E3, so this review is a bit early, but I figured out how to watch it which worked for me, so it might help others. But first a couple of comments.

I think the opening sequence is rather silly and much too long ..... talk about labouring the point.

The makers then spent the next 50 minutes confusing the heck out of me, like they were taking pleasure from it. Annoying.

Next, I think some of the -ve comments about Nicole Kidman are harsh. That haunted, blank, fixed-expression, thousand-yard-stare which many are putting down to work being done are I think what you'd expect from someone in her situation. It might take many years, if ever, for someone who's experienced such tragedy to have her smile once again 'reach her eyes'. I think NK gets it pretty much spot-on.

And finally ... what I did to watch it and enjoy it.

I'd finished E1 and it went straight to E2 as usual. At this moment, it was borderline ... will I stop or persevere? And this is what happened.

At the very start of E2, on the boat, I thought "OK, it's making some sense now."

So I stopped watching right there, about 30 sec into E2, and went back and started over from the beginning of E1 (I FF'd through the annoying history of tragedies opening sequence).

And this time, with the benefit of having been confused through E1 once and picking up a couple of things, I really enjoyed it because I picked up everything else.

I could relax and not have to try too hard. It all made sense, and I enjoyed it. And I still am.

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Welcome to the bottom! OK, I wrote the above after I'd watched 3 eps. At that time I rated the series 8/10.

I've now finished and I have just changed my rating from 8 to 10/10. It just got better and better.

The episode, #5 I think, which was an hour and 40 mins long and was all from the PoV of the service workers, the (predominantly) Filipino women conversing in Tagalog, was a master-stroke of film making. The best 100 minutes of television I've seen in a long time.

Heartland (II) (2007– )

S10, Amy's pregnancy.

[10/10 · 18 December 2023]

Watching S10. I have never, ever, seen an actress play a character who's pregnant as well as Amber Marshall plays Amy. Every nuance, facial expression, awkward movement .... it's perfection. And the best part of her acting is that *nothing* is overdone. The character Amy would naturally play-down this state she's in, but Amber takes it to a whole new level in her portrayal. So good, that I had to look up 'was Amber Marshall actually pregnant?' And then, after a few more episodes into S10, around rock slide / Tim coming off Spartan time, E10 I think, I looked it up again just to make sure! Wonderful acting.

The Loch (2017)

Hard to rate this series.

[3/10 · 28 August 2022]

It's hard to rate because it spans both extreme ends of the spectrum with not much in the middle. Maybe Henry Wadsworth Longfellow can help .... "There was a little girl, Who had a little curl, Right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, She was very good indeed, But when she was bad she was horrid." This series is good, very good indeed, when the screen is filled with the lake, boats, mountains, rolling countryside, pretty much anything green or blue, and the only sound is scary or boring music. It's so bad that it's horrid whenever there's a person on the screen acting (and I use the word loosely) and trying to deliver - with a straight face - the script of a screenpaly that is so cringeworthty, I think the makers had the comedy genre in mind.

Hunted Australia (2022– )

Plumbs new depths of embarrasing garbage.

[1/10 · 22 July 2022]

The concept seems reasonable and maybe the o/s versions are better, but when it's cast, both hunters and hunted, with bogans trying too hard to be taken seriously - e.g. The hunters' favourite line is Go! Go! Go! Which they probably think makes them sound like real action guys but just comes from too much time watching D grade cop shows, there's just no hope. You can tell how desperate the channel is to drag this heap out of the stinking bog, by the relentless attempts at 'encore' episodes promoted by a guy trying to impersonate a zombie, which is an insult to real zombies. I switched channels and found a re-run of the ten hour live count of the recent federal election night, which had me stabbing my eyes with knitting needles at the time - and not the pointy end, the big round buttony end because I wanted to do the job properly - but compared to this deadwood, is 10/10 must-see TV.

Downsizing (2017)

Was going to give 2 stars .....

[6/10 · 15 May 2022]

I got about 1/3rd of the way through the film and was going to bin it for being boring/annoying/depressing (hard to pick the top one of those). Kept going for a little while before giving up, when the Vietnamese refugee/stowaway amputee woman came on. And I watched the rest of the film. She is the absolute stand-out. What a character. So bossy/pushy/domineering/funny, had me laughing. So ... 2 stars for the first half of the film, 5 stars for the second half with 'the message' and because it had her, upsized to 6 stars overall .... she earned it a bonus star all on her own.

Kiwi Christmas (2017)

Relax

[10/10 · 11 December 2021]

This is a very well-made and directed and acted movie for children... and grown ups who can let go and appreciate things through a child's eye. It does what it sets out to do, brings the joy of Christmas and the excitement and expectation of the days leading up to Christmas Day itself back to young and old alike. I was disappointed but not surprised when I saw the 5 rating. If you're looking for a high-budget millennial movie with car chases, bad language and violence and trendy hand-held camera action you won't find them here. Enjoy it with the kids or by yourself. It reminds me of our family's camping holidays when I was a kid.

Nine Perfect Strangers (2021)

Run

[1/10 · 6 December 2021]

The book was garbage. After Big Little Lies I had hopes. But no. But as is usually not the case, this series exceeds the book. It's a steaming pile of garbage. It's just a bunch of unlikeable in every way cretins being 'guided' by an Aussie with a pathetic school-yard Russian accent that randomly morphs into American and French and I think I detected a little occasional Chinese in there too. She's basically Gru without the charm and sex appeal. Cruise Control will be obsessively analysing this 'work' (and I use the word loosely) as I'm sure he does with all her stuff, and thinking "At last! Something sooo much more cringe-worthy than jumping on Oprah's sofa." Nice to see McCarthy, who should have been fired after S1E1 of The Gilmore Girls, just being annoying and forgettable as opposed to her usual obnoxious gutter-mouthed slob routine. You just sit there hoping and preying they will all be killed off sequentially in extremely painful circumstances. But no. We need a new law passed - anyone who gave this stoolstack more than a star or two should be taken off the electoral roll right now.

Mega Zoo (2020–2021)

A hidden gem ...

[10/10 · 8 April 2021]

... well, hidden for me. I came across it quite accidentally. What a surprise. A superb production.

Pilot Week: Trial by Kyle (2018) Season 1, Episode 6

More aussie garbage

[1/10 · 7 November 2019]

Typical aussie trash with posterboy aussie redneck, likely watched by legions of backward aussie rednecks.

Tonightly with Tom Ballard (2017–2018)

One star is at least two stars too many.

[1/10 · 21 March 2018]

Who signs off on this garbage? Seriously, does anyone in control in the organisation that puts this to air actually watch it? Here's some words that come to mind: Tries too hard, unfunny, uses crude language to make up for unfunniness, cringe-worthy, unfunny (bears repeating), If the host is Australian and I assume he is, I can see why Robin Williams, on returning home after a visit to Australia, said in an interview that Australians are just English red-necks. Pathetic, embarrassing and sooo unfunny. I want my star back; this rubbish doesn't deserve it.

City in the Sky (2016– )

Had potential.

[2/10 · 13 September 2016]

Ditch the presenters, both as bad and amateurish as each other, get a decent writer, and this could have been a worthwhile series to watch. As it stands, it was hard to get through. A good example was the presenters' glee in bidding at the mega unclaimed bag auction. Any presenters or writers with half a brain or sense of decency/empathy would have said "Wait, what? How could ONE bag ever go unclaimed, much less the ten quadzillion bags in these auctions." That was the question that kept hammering at me, and they didn't give it a moment's thought save for a half-hearted "Oh a bit sad" from the female as she happily trawled through what might well have been a child's prized and loved clothing and possessions. 2/10 is generous.

Thunderbirds Are Go (2015–2020)

f a b

[10/10 · 19 May 2015]

I'm such a hard marker I'm annoying and I just gave this a 10. I actually cannot see any valid reason to give it less. Actually, maybe Grandma should bring it down a couple of points, but I'll stick to a 10 even with her. I grew up on the original (yes I'm that old) and was totally hooked as a kid. I'm still hooked (on the original) and force the re-runs on every child in the family as an important part of their basic education. The movie was a nice idea but the less said about that the better. *Because* of the movie, I had low expectations of this latest. Watched the first episode ... after 5 mins I was feeling disappointed. Modern language, no strings attached, blah blah. By 15 mins I was thinking "Damn if I don't think I might like this." By the end of the second episode it's all over ... I'm sold. This series is outstanding and I can't wait for each new ep. Sure the language is 'modernised' .. remember that they have to be all things to all people with this series; children of today won't sit through the dialogue that accompanied the original version, delivered by cgi characters. The balance they've achieved is stunning. The 'remake' eps (e.g. Fireflash) are just as exciting, maybe more so, as the originals. And as much as I might try to get kids to love the originals as much as I do, they .... don't. Times have changed. The kids do love this new series; they love the scripting, they love the action, they love the speed at which it moves, they love the fact that they don't really understand a lot of what just happened. They just love it. And so do I.