veleskir Reviews

Tracker (2024– )

It's reacher lite

[6/10 · 12 February 2024]

I really wanted to like this show because Justin Hartley is in it, but it's honestly not that good. It's Reacher made for network television and everything that entails. If single case is a whole season in Reacher, this is a case a week. If something takes a serious turn in Reacher, this softens everything. And because it's Network Television, it of course has to follow rules of having every second person be some kind of minority, which isn't terrible, but it is obvious. First we have the lesbian couple, then we have the cripple Asian Man.

It's not terrible, it's just exceedingly average. The only reason it's a 6 instead of a 5 is because of Justin Hartley. Even ignoring my obvious bias, he's easily the better actor in the show.

The show has an overarching plot that in the first few episodes, fails to feel like anything worth sticking around for. There was no real big hooks for anything except some kind of vague "accident" and some kind of shadowy group behind the scenes, but nothing is shown except for a past trauma and I honestly found myself pressing skip anytime it was brought up. Hell, I found myself doing that through most of the show to be quite honest.

It has a pretty great premise which they could have done something really great with. Even in a Network show, it could have worked out a lot more interestingly. It just feels all too safe and sanitized. Like everyone was thinking about the ways they might terrify or hurt someones feelings and decided safe was a better investment.

Justified: City Primeval (2023)

Raylan is as great as ever, everyone else... not so much

[6/10 · 27 July 2023]

Raylan is fantastic. His dry sense of humor has returned and he's still an absolute hoot to watch. Whenever he's on screen, it feels like the Justified I used to watch.

It's almost everyone else that's the problem. The bad guy ain't anywhere near as charismatic as the bad guys from the previous seasons. The daughter is annoying at worst and boring at best. He doesn't have any fun, witty partners like Art Mullen or Tim Gutterson.

And none of this is even bothering to mention how outside of Raylan, the writing seems... off. Every two seconds someone has to say "white guy bad" or remind Raylan of his "privilege". Even his own white daughter does it, "He's not bad for a white guy".

It's embarrassing.

If this show didn't have Raylan in it, I wouldn't watch it. I'd rate it a 2/10. Not a 6.

The Mandalorian (2019– )

Was good. Now it's awful. No longer the same show.

[1/10 · 5 April 2023]

As the title says - the show is no longer the same. In Season 1 and Season 2, the show has a western feel to it. An almost silent protagonist, Bounty Hunting, Adventure and Shootouts. The show largely keeps that tone for the most part throughout season 1 and 2. There are a few parts that aren't so good, but for the most part, the show is solid.

That show we all loved in season 1 and 2 no longer exists. Instead we get several episodes in Season 3 that have NOTHING to do with The Mandalorian, that doesn't feel at all like the show we originally were watching and now in the last few episodes, the main character of the show, The Mandalorian (Din Djarin) has taken a backseat in his own series. He's a side character who barely speaks and lets others take the lime light. He barely does anything and if he does, it's quickly followed up by him failing and needing to be protected or being outdone by others. This has happened more than a dozen times now in only a few episodes, from being captured to getting beat up, to failing to fire on a rogue droid before someone else, he feels more like the plots tool to make the new characters in the show feel more impressive than they are. The flimsy rules for things that were established in a previous season are now thrown out the window to prop up side characters or, well, now they feel like the main characters again with the Mandalorian taking a backseat. Like the Darksaber we see on the new posters. Pointless and now used as prop to make others stand out. Forget all the subtext that he was to be someone special in this new series, nope. It's all been thrown out the window.

The show went from one of the better things on TV in season 1 and 2 to one of the worst things on TV in season 3, that now feels like something The CW would spit out.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022– )

Really, really, really bad

[2/10 · 2 September 2022]

First of all, lets ignore all the lore butchering. The Movies also weren't exactly beacons of lore purity either, but ignoring that and focusing on it being it's "own thing". It's dull, boring and just straight up bad. Half of the actors can't act. The dialogue is incredibly cringy. The set pieces scream cheap CGI half the time. And a lot of the costumes feel like something out of The CW. There is a woman wearing scale armor, though when it zooms in, you can see the creases in her shirt. It's not scale, it's just a tight shirt with a scale pattern painted on.

I mentioned dialogue - going deeper into that, they talk like it's some sort of Marvel garbage. It's so incredibly bad. I can't believe people might actually like this trash.

The Terminal List (2022– )

Refreshing

[10/10 · 4 July 2022]

Easily one of the best shows airing. It doesn't do anything new. It doesn't have some revolutionary story. It doesn't "subvert" expectations. It's exactly what it appears to be and that is so utterly refreshing, I rated this way higher than it probably should be. That's not the say the show is bad. It's great. It's a typical revenge fantasy action show. It's exactly what you expected. I picked out all the bad guys from a mile away and yet it's still entertaining. The scenes are well acted. The action is good, quick and satisfying. And there is no crappy padding taking up run time just to take up run time. And best of all, it doesn't pretend to be something it isn't. It's a show meant to be entertaining. It's a show about brutal action and conspiracies in the government and corporate America mixing. And that's what it delivers.

It's The Punisher if the Punisher was actually a good TV show. I'm really hoping for a season 2.

Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022)

Awful

[2/10 · 3 June 2022]

Easily the worst piece of crap on TV. I had hopes due to The Mandalorian, but I guess that was a fluke."

Don't bother with this garrbage. It's not worth. I feel robbed having seen it.

Reacher (2022– )

Absolutely fantastic. It's surprising.

[10/10 · 4 February 2022]

I'll try not to spoil anything, but for a show coming out of Amazon, I expected something a lot worse. Instead it's about as faithful an adaption I've seen in a long, long time. The casting is perfect and Reacher is exactly as how I remember him from the book.

The Wheel of Time (2021– )

Absolutely awful.

[1/10 · 20 November 2021]

Even ignoring all the absolutely idiotic changes that break the worlds lore from the books; it's awful in it's own right.

Don't bother. Don't waste your time. I refuse to believe there are real people here and not bots that like this.

Q-Force (2021)

Wow

[2/10 · 2 September 2021]

I don't think I've ever seen something with so many big names in it fail so fast. It's like they really, really wanted this to succeed and be a hit, but oh boy...

I don't even know what to say other than, don't bother.

The Tomorrow War (2021)

Felt like two different movies.

[3/10 · 4 July 2021]

I have this vision of a writers room where the director and the screenplay writer are sitting down and hashing out the ideas for this movie only to get a call by some top level executive in Amazon telling them they won't get any funding if the movie isn't "Hollywood-i-fied". It's like two completely separate movies with two completely different parties vying for a seat at the table. I, of course have no idea if this is true, for all I know it could have been the exact opposite, but that's what it feels like. It doesn't feel like one solid movie with one specific idea in mind. It feels like a mash up of two different scripts that were put together because generic action movies with big names make bank.

The first half of the movie is good; or at the very least, interesting. The movie starts off in a normal every day world following a normal every day guy only things start going wrong abruptly. Time Travel is revealed to the world, alien invaders and a dying world. The wife of the main character is a nurse or doctor who works with survivors of this future war in a group therapy capacity. All of which have PTSD on a level apparently beyond anything else imaginable. According to the military, only 1 in 5 survive said war. During one of the wifes sessions, one of these survivors comments on a clicking noise the aliens make(which by the way is never heard in the movie outside of one specific scene). At this point the premise is set. The future is horrifying and grim. The movie hasn't done anything that puts it above other Alien Horror movies, but it's at least somewhat unique and more interesting than another generic action that doesn't do anything new and doesn't have the fun, larger than life cast of those other action movies (Swarzenegger, Stallone, etc. Etc.).

The main gets drafted and forced to fight in this war. No pictures of these monsters are shown or even allowed to be out for the general public to be seen. Why? They're that terrifying. They think that if people see them, they would rather take any and all consequences of running away from the draft.

At this point, the movie is solid. It has set itself up as a horror with action elements. Even when they first get into the world, the screw up of their 'jump' and the creatures stalking them and watching them from a distance as well as the fact that you still can't make out exactly what they look like makes it a great scene all around.

It's everything after this that is awful. It quickly drops any and all of this premise and starts taking the road of generic action war movie that takes the most laziest and boring route possible and because of this, killed any and all interest I had in the movie to begin with. If it had stayed as that terrifying action movie instead of just generic action, it would easily be up there as one of the better movies released this year.

Instead it's easily one of the most disappointing.

On a side note; you can tell how this is a movie from 2021 on a streaming platform. 95% of the cast is black. Not Latino or Asian or something else. Not reflective of modern American demographics. Nope. Just almost entirely black.

Army of the Dead (2021)

An incredibly unlikeable cast

[5/10 · 22 May 2021]

I found myself rooting for the smart zombies that could communicate with one another rather than the actual people.

The Rookie: Revelations (2021) Season 3, Episode 6

And we've gone back to garbage.

[2/10 · 23 February 2021]

Last week I rated the previous episode about a 5. It felt a lot more like season 1 and 2. Not perfect mind you, but still better than the episodes before that. This episode feels more like a return to season 3, i.e. it's awful.

Lets just ignore the awful, awful pandering going on. Even if you completely ignore that, you can't ignore the massive drop in writing quality. I'm not sure if these two are related, but it definitely seems to have some form of causality. The more it panders, the higher the drop in quality.

A simple example would be how easily fooled those supposed high level criminals were. They made it that far. They had millions upon millions of dollars. This isn't some low level criminal. They had multiple expensive cars in mint condition. Yet they fall prey to the most obvious bluff in history within on a day or two? If they were that stupid, they wouldn't be as rich and powerful as they were.

The Rookie: Lockdown (2021) Season 3, Episode 5

Much better than the previous episodes, but writing quality has dropped

[5/10 · 19 February 2021]

I was gonna go on a massive lengthy tirade of how badly the writing has gotten, but instead I'll give an example on how the "evil white cop" was caught. It's been explained at length that the body cam is always recording. Every Training Officer drills this into every rookie. Then for no reason at all, the experienced older officer decides to completely ignore that fact and do something so incredibly out of character by ignoring that fact, when he is previously shown to be intelligent and conniving, planning a failure for the black rookie by baiting erratic and emotional behavior. Then for no reason at all, he falls for the kind of idiotic bait only a mentally stunted individual would fall for in full view of his body cam.

This show has never been anything special. It's always been a fun mix of comedy and drama that never took itself seriously, but this last season has so clearly been one gigantic jerk off session for the writers and director to show how much of an "ally" they are for the black community. This team of all white writers pretending they know anything about the black community in their million dollar condos in walled off communities surrounded by other white people. And because of it, the writing quality has dropped immensely. Maybe this is the kind of thing they expect from the people who like this tripe, because you'd have to be mentally challenged to enjoy this in comparison to season 1 and 2.

Resident Alien (2021– )

A mix of dark humor and interesting themes

[9/10 · 28 January 2021]

I was laughing at almost every turn. What a breath of fresh air from all the garbage on TV. Alan Tudyk does a fantastic job and the female lead is absolutely fantastic in the supporting role.

The Rookie: Sabotage (2021) Season 3, Episode 4

Better than the previous episode this season, but still bad

[2/10 · 25 January 2021]

This was closer to season 1 and 2 than the last few episodes this season, but it's still pretty terrible. It doesn't feel like the same show. And I think we all know this is just build up for an even heavier political pandering coming later down the track, especially with the way this episode ended.

The Witcher (2019– )

Probably the worst adaption I've ever seen

[1/10 · 21 December 2019]

The casting, the writing, the costumes, the acting, the story, the choreography; you name it, it's all terrible. I feel embarrassed wasting several hours of my life just to get a proper feel for this.

It is bad. It is worse than bad. The people who made this, who were involved in this and the people who like this should never be allowed to be involved in making entertainment ever again.

If this was truly medieval times, they'd be executed. What a trash.

Bosch (2014–2021)

Probably the best cop show on television.

[8/10 · 20 December 2019]

The only real problem I have with this show is that a few of the side stories and drama included ruin a lot of the continuity and as Harry Bosch himself would say, "Momentum" of the investigations.

The series shows a single investigation and it's conclusion on a single season with a new case every season and so far, it's been one of, if not the most realistic portrayal of such a thing. It's exceptionally good, has great acting and is incredibly accurate to the books. It's not 100% word for word copy, but it has the general outline of each story and it does them exceptionally well. I still prefer the books, but this is also good.

Watchmen (2019)

Wow. What hot garbage.

[1/10 · 22 October 2019]

I tried to be as open minded as possible, but it just didn't work. This show does not let you do that. It forces politics into your face and attempts to force you to agree with them.

I don't care so much about the politics, but the fact that that's all the show really has going for it.

It's not good. Not at all. Don't waste your time like I did. I've never made a review of a Movie or TV show before, but felt I had to do my duty as a person to stop you the viewer from wasting your time and poisoning your mind with absolute trash. God, is it awful. I feel like I've lost several points of intelligence for simply sitting down and watching this. I hate everyone involved in making this. You're all terrible people for putting something like this out to the public. What were you thinking?

Watchmen (2019)

Absolutely terrible.

[1/10 · 21 October 2019]

I can't even begin to fathom how this show has a rating above a 5. It has some of the worst writing on a TV series I have ever had the displeasure of witnessing. The acting was just "okay". And the theme and music choices were sub par.

I usually do not review. I usually do not even bother to make accounts on websites like this. But I felt as a human being it was my duty to inform the public not to watch this trash. I wasted my hour so you don't have to. It's bad to say the least. Terrible in fact.

Most of all, who was this even made for? It's nothing like the comic. In fact, I feel like fans of the comic will be insulted. It's nothing like the movie, so there goes that fan base as well. It's filled with political pandering, so most normal people, or people who just want to relax and watch interesting shows like myself also will hate it.

I feel like this was made solely for the "professional" critics who everyone usually disagrees with or just outright hates and the annoying Twitter crowd who do nothing but sit on them all day crying about this and that.

I guess the only thing I liked about it was that the set pieces and production was pretty nice, but that's obviously going to be at least half decent when you throw money at it. It's too bad they wasted their money on trash. But it's a pretty piece of trash. Like a two dollar hooker who remembered to brush their teeth this time.