The film has been described as dreary. It would have to add a whole lot of gags from the best of Woody Allen's "earlier funnier films" to rise to dreary. It has been described as a 'redemption' film, but I must have missed that. And it all unfolds so slowly, painfully. The character stumbles onto a situation that motivates him, apparently. However, we can only guess as to why. Before that he appears to be aimless and purposeless, like the film itself, really 'gripping' stuff. His actions do not truly redeem him, no lessons are learned. And to top it off he doesn't "count cards", his casino action is virtually all poker!!
Reviews
10 Reviews
Russian Doll
(2019–2022)
Useless, obnoxious people
7 February 2023
I've watched the first episode twice and never got through it. I found every character I saw to be obnoxious, self-absorbed and uninteresting. The conversations were as inconsequential as the individuals engaged in them. It has a weak and unoriginal storyline, unlikable and unrelatable characters, with a main character who is illogical, ridiculously self-involved, etc. The dialogue sounded like scripts and not good ones. All unnatural speech patterns, poorly acted. To avoid spoilers I won't point to specific behaviours, but some of that struck me as absurd as well. Ultimately, there was no point in continuing since I couldn't care less about what happened to any of them.
Too silly
9 January 2023
Warning: Spoilers
I'm watching more than a decade after the fact. But I've noticed Alias following the arc of many such shows and I am about to give up. In short, these shows seem to at least attempt to be somewhat realistic in the early episodes and slowly but surely get 'faster and looser' as time goes on. For example, in this episode a group of CIA agents, armed to the teeth with automatic weapons are in a firefight. Auto tires are blown out, many folks are shot. In the midst of this a single car starts to drive off, picks up two hostages and drives away. NO ONE can find a way to shoot the tires or the driver even though the car is within a stones throw of the principals. Why? Because they need the hostages escape for future episodes. Absurd on it's face. I could cite similar events occuring in recent episodes and they occur decidedly more often now as the show progresses. Unfortunate, and may lead to my turning it off all together, as I have with Homeland and others for exactly the same reason.
Space Sweepers
(2021)
Unintelligible
11 October 2021
The many action scenes were an absolute confusion of lasers and guns of various sorts, fired at something, for some reason. It is regularly unclear who is firing at what and why. There are various space vehicles, but it's unclear who is in them, where they are headed, and why. But there is plenty of ACTION, even if for no apparent reason.
One of the best of the new bunch
4 December 2020
Away
(2020)
Daytime Soap in space.
25 September 2020
This is actually a daytime soap equivalent with a space backdrop. The 'mission' could have been anything since there is so little focus on journey beyond the predictable mishaps and danger(!). Nothing wrong with emotional drama, but why bother with space? Much of the dialogue seems wooden. There are some predictable errors on the science aspect, e.g. at their departing press conference one reporter asks the crew what they think of the study that said they have a 50-50 chance of survival! No one blinks.
Seriously! And there are even ethnic stereotypes aboard in the Russian and Chinese characters. But even as a family drama it seems very pedestrian. I gave up after the sixth episode and I don't believe anything that developed in the plot surprised me, and rarely interested me.
Tales from the Loop
(2020)
Beautiful photography, ugly characters
1 September 2020
There are some interesting story lines and the series is getting universal praise for camera work, but the characters, for lack of a better word, are schmucks; hardly a redeemable one in the bunch. Virtually all the featured characters are profoundly self-centered and it's fully reflected in their behavior. As the series progressed, I kept hoping to find a character I could root for, or at least one who learned some lesson and grew from the experience. It did not happen. Knowing what I know now, I would not recommend the series.
Unsatisfying
27 August 2020
Warning: Spoilers
Others have commented on the similarities to an old Twilight Zone episode. That similarity was a deal breaker for me because I anticipated a similar ending. (In the Twilight Zone episode a man has a stopwatch that freezes time and all activity but his. Predictably it breaks and he is left all alone.) In this episode, May constantly harps on how she hates to be alone. Logically, I anticipated through the entire episode that the same would happen to her as that Twilight Zone episode, so I could never enjoy the episode on it's own terms.
Although that 'nearly' happens here, it is not the same. Nonetheless, even looking back at the episode it is unsatisfying because the main character is quite self-centered and unlikeable. If this were the Twilight Zone, she would have learned some parable-like lesson and changed. She did not.
Although that 'nearly' happens here, it is not the same. Nonetheless, even looking back at the episode it is unsatisfying because the main character is quite self-centered and unlikeable. If this were the Twilight Zone, she would have learned some parable-like lesson and changed. She did not.
Yep. Tha't Black Miroor
17 June 2020
Warning: Spoilers
The episode is shot entirely in black and white, which helps establish the bleak feel of the episode. But of course it's bleak, this is Black Mirror. Then within the first two minutes, two of the three human characters in the story have their heads blown off by a hideous four-legged machine, just to further establish the tone of the story; bleak and getting bleaker. But again, this is Black Mirror. Then there is a relentless machine chasing human plot that continue to the end. A couple of other disgustingly mangled corpses are thrown in because, why not? But ultimately through fierce determination and some cleverness on the part of our 'heroine'; she defeats the machine! So, after all that, a victory! A note of triumph, or least some satisfaction at surviving! Hell no, this is Black Mirror. Because of a literal parting shot from the machine, the human has fatal implants in her that she cannot successfully cut out. So she slits her own throat. Then, one last, absurd and gratuitous trashing of the notion that anything uplifting might be gleaned from all this; it turns out the initial outing to a warehouse by our three humans, which ultimately killed them all, was to get some teddy bears. That's Black Mirror.
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