arcang7 Reviews

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (2022)

A great star stuck in a mediocre show

[5/10 · 26 August 2022]

Let me say this first -- I don't agree with the people review bombing the show and giving it 1 star. It doesn't deserve that.

There are intriguing things about She-Hulk, and things to like. Mainly Tatiana Maslany, who is one of the most charismatic actors around. She manages to bring a lot of charm to Jen even when the writers are making her seem shallow. The show also genuinely tries to do some new things -- breaking the fourth wall, fake news reports, etc -- even if many of them don't work.

Where the show really suffers is in two areas -- one, it's too damn short. The first episode was barely 30 mins of actual action, and the second clocks in at about 22. A good 1/4 of the runtime is just credits. I know they tried to sell the show as a comedic half-hour, but it's not. The show isn't tight at all and has far too much backstory to weave in to work well in such a constrained time allotment.

The second issue is that the writers don't seem to know what the show is about. It's called She-Hulk: Attorney at Law and She Hulk has spent about 10 mins doing lawyer things. She's spent more time drinking than in a courtroom or at the office. They also seem determined to make Jen the most unlikeable character possible. She talks over other people, doesn't listen well, seems annoyed by most people, and is supposed to be a smart attorney but doesn't even demand a hearing from the DA's office before they fire her from a government job for doing something that almost certainly wasn't forbidden in the employee handbook.

All in all, I feel sorry for Maslany, who's been great in everything from Orphan Black to Perry Mason to her supporting role in Destroyer. I'm glad she's getting a marvel paycheck, but she deserved better than this.

The Sandman (2022– )

A really good start... and a disappointing finish

[6/10 · 17 August 2022]

The series starts off wonderfully, with excellent acting, a decent through line, and then promptly sputters the second the first story arc is over. There would obviously need to be changes made to bring Sandman to the screen, and the first half of the series does a decent job of compromising in the name of making the piece fit a new medium.

The problem with the second half is two-fold -- for one, Dream is no longer really the protagonist and spends the entire time reacting to what other people do, and two, the acting quality is noticeably worse than the first half.

In the first half of the series, you get Charles Dance, Gwendolyn Christie, a fantastic David Thewlis, Joely Richardson -- and then in the second half, several of the actors are just subpar. There are some woefully bad line readings, things get shmaltzy at points, and it just feels like a very different show, like you went from watching something made by HBO or AMC to something from Lifetime.

It's worth seeing the series, as it does have some very stylish visuals and a few wonderful performances, but it just doesn't stick the landing.

Last Night in Soho (2021)

A joyless fever dream

[5/10 · 4 July 2022]

I love Edgar Wright. Hot Fuzz is one of my favorite films of all time. I loved Shaun of the Dead. I loved Scott Pilgrim. I enjoyed Baby Driver. But this film just didn't work for me. While it's beautifully shot, it's hard to really get behind any character in the movie besides John, the one kind person in London. Eloise spends most of the movie gawking at things, being incredibly passive, or screaming, and it's a frustrating experience.

The film lacks all the humor of Wright's other films, to the point that it feels like it's directed by a different person. It also has none of the pacing of his good films, and drags heavily in the middle, particularly the second half.

I'm giving it a five because the acting was generally quite good, the cinematography was lovely, and it has some visual flair, but the story, the characters, and the film itself just fell flat for me.

Lovecraft Country (2020)

Beautiful, Promising, and Disappointing

[5/10 · 29 November 2020]

I wanted to love Lovecraft Country. Jordan Peele, Misha Green, period horror, the occult -- it all sounded great. And you know, a lot of it is. The cast is extremely talented, the cinematography, particularly in the first two episodes, is gorgeous, and some of the musical choices are perfection. The show, however, is a giant mess.

Oftentimes things just happen. You're dropped into an episode and it feels like you missed an episode, but that episode doesn't exist. People do things without any particular motivation. Characters appear whose backstories are told in clumsily done exposition -- only for you to find out they're sort of irrelevant anyways. And those musical choices that are sometimes perfection -- other times you get jarringly out of place music that doesn't work at all for the time period or the action onscreen.

The show delves into certain areas of racial politics with great nuance, and then at other times has cops behave like caricatures out of Dolemite movies. The tone is all over the place. Sometimes we're meant to be scared, and then in the next scene people dance around to the Jeffersons theme like it's a comedy. There's a lot that's delightful to it, but also a lot that's just emblematic of a show in which no one seems to have focused the vision of the creator. There's a wonderful episode that takes place in Korea -- it's beautifully shot, and as a self contained piece, lovely, but it does absolutely nothing to advance the plot of the series as a whole.

The biggest weaknesses of the show are the CGI, which looks noticeably and oddly cheap at times, and uses of historical figures like Emmett Till that felt oddly exploitative. Where Watchmen masterfully used the Tulsa Race riot to frame an entire season of drama, Lovecraft Country trots out historical figures like winking nods, often using them to justify torturing characters in the show in the manner in which those figures were killed. You can see where the creators were going, but it just feels off.

Is it worth a watch? Yes. Particularly for the first couple of episodes. But after that it spins wildly off the rails, never really delivering on the promise of the beginning of the series.

Goliath: Tongue Tied (2018) Season 2, Episode 8

One of the worst season finales in the history of television

[1/10 · 19 June 2018]

There are bad season finales, and then there's the season finale of Goliath, Season 2. A lazy, poorly paced, ludicrous, unsatisfying, garbage heap of an episode. It completed the downward arc of Goliath Season 2 in general. Such bad writing. Great acting and directing wasted on a terrible story that basically felt like the worst season of Dexter ever written instead of Goliath.

The Edge and Christian Show That Totally Reeks of Awesomeness (2016– )

Hit and Mostly Miss

[5/10 · 14 May 2016]

I'm a big fan of Edge and Christian, they're two of the more charismatic stars from the WWE, and Edge has put together a really nice acting career the last two years. The Edge and Christian show has some promise and likable leads, but they need better writers. A lot of the material is just awful. It's both dated, and unfunny. Making jokes about dial up internet in 2016 is honestly pathetic. The best bits on the show are stolen from elsewhere. The mean tweets segment was fun, but that's taken from Jimmy Kimmel. They stole web redemption from Tosh.0. Edge and Christian deserve better than that. I hope they beef up the writing staff for season 2, as the show has some potential.

Lilyhammer: Tommy (2014) Season 3, Episode 5

Not Lilyhammer's Best

[4/10 · 16 January 2015]

Tommy is one of Lilyhammer's weakest episodes. It starts off with a failed hit on a character we don't have any reason to care about and mostly goes downhill from there. Despite some funny scenes involving Norway's obsession with Palestinian rights, the episode is bogged down by a bizarre subplot in which Torgeir sees the ghost of Duncan Hammer, and tries to kill himself, among other things. Meanwhile, Roar continues his meaningless escapes in Brazil, which seem to have been written merely so that the cast could go to Brazil and enjoy the beach. While Lilyhammer can often be a blisteringly funny critique on both Norwegian and American culture, this episode is far too odd to make much of an impact. The introduction of semi-supernatural element to the show (even if it is all in Torgeir's head) is particularly off-note and annoying.

American Horror Story (2011– )

Show at a crossroads, could be good, could be a disaster

[5/10 · 20 October 2011]

It's hard to give a rating to American Horror story. It's one of the weirdest shows I've ever seen on American television. I actually found myself thinking that it made John From Cincinnati seem normal by comparison at certain points. There's a lot of good here -- stylish directing, suspense, well done horror; but there's also a lot of bad -- over the top acting, poor characterization, too little normal life to balance against the weirdness of the home life (even the daughter's school is strange). I fail to see how a show like this could sustain itself for more than one season either. Eventually these idiots have to move or die. If neither happens by season 3, it would get hugely boring. So I give the show 5 stars. It has room to grow, but right now it's a bit of a mess.