Change Your Image
wissia
Reviews
Love: The Cruikshanks (2018)
Another bites the dust
Another show where baby talk is thrown into the mix. Whatever original or quirky there was about Love was, as frequently happens to any decent tv shows, obliterated by the most obvious, boring, predictable cliche in the history of love stories on tv: babies.
And when's all said and done: did we really need the recovering alcoholic to throw a tantrum because her jerk of a boyfriend she's known for 5 minutes isn't yet sure they'll ever be "ready" for a child? Why should these nut jobs even be made to think about being parents??? It ruins a decent show and it's also pointlessly infuriating!!!!!!!!
Bodies (2023)
A bit Dark and a bit Terminator
Dark redefined the time travelling sci-fi genre for tv series.
Bodies has that element of going back and forth in time, with storylines piling up and getting further complicated by family trees. Tye similarities though end here.
Bodies doesn't have the same depth, atmospheres, nor the acting and photography that Dark does. It's a pastiche with much mediocre acting, a plot that never takes off and a mystery that ceases to be such too soon.
The evil master plan does also have a bit of a Terminator quality to it. Sadly though, after failing as a mystery, it also fails as a sci-fi and action tv show. The science is barely a factor in this pastiche, and the action is both too much and not at all gripping.
It also fails as drama, cause we're not made to empathise with any of the characters.
Pity.
Les Gouttes de Dieu (2023)
Predictable, cliche, unrealistic
Whenever they focussed on the Japanese protagonist, the story more or less got interesting. The French lead though is an unlikeable character, whose story is built on a series of very tired cliches around the apprentice kind (remember Karate Kid)? She also seems to be learning all there's to know about wines around the world, in a month. She also appears to have retrained her neurological responses to food and wine in a matter of a few sittings with some sort of psychologist. The whole story is completely unrealistic and hard as I wanted to accept the premises, the series just kept on becoming more and more cliche and utterly, utterly predictable.
A Friend of the Family (2022)
Do not believe the bad reviews
This is not an easy watch and might not be for everyone. It is a very well made, well paced series that tells quite the unbelievable-but sadly real- story. There's not much more to say or the risk it's to spoil it: my take on the bad reviews is that throughout the series you constantly want to switch it off, as frustration towards individuals or the "system" (church, law, police, hospital,
etc.) mounts. This is no fairy tale, that doesn't mean it's not with watching, or that actors didn't play well. All protagonists were extremely believable in their roles, with that slight edge of surreality that actually adds up to the realism of the story.
Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (2022)
A very bad rendition
It is unclear why a film set in fascist Italy, a stop motion that doesn't require real actors, should be in English. There is also a very weird conflation of the two languages, Italian and English, here and there, which is unclear what it is for. The setting during the ventennio fascista had a lot of potential, but then it didn't lead to anything at all. A pointless adaptation that does not add anything to the long list of already existing Pinocchio adaptations, though it is particularly annoying due to the choice of language and the missed potential. The reinterpretation of characters with the merging of two into one in the case of La Volpe is also an inexplicable choice that, again, doesn't add anything.
Dead to Me (2019)
The sacrifice of the expendable non mother
This show was entertaining in a Desperate Housewives sort of way. Surreal, upbeat, larger than life. Yet they had to go and end on a sour, irritating and cliche note. Killing off the non - mother as the expendable character to insure surviving of the nuclear family, was simply very cheap. The entire ending is based on the symbolic sacrifice of the one who doesn't have children as a necessary death for a new life, a new and "real" family to form - as if J's life was less valuable, as if a real family cannot be formed by two friends and children and only a heterosexual unit blessed by a biological child is the only possible happy ending.
Undone (2019)
The old cliche
First season was interesting. About mental health, paranoia, hereditary issues. The second season is just boring family drama revolving around the most exploited and excruciatingly cliches of topics. Also, you know. Women are not just uteruses and sometimes we'd like to see someone deciding not to have children for a change. Not because they're scared or not ready, but because in real life people happen not to want any.
Not sure why interesting premises I'm season one we're jettisoned for yet another story of motherhood, a woman's journey towards realising she's ready to be a mum etc etc etc etc.
The Missing (2014)
Season two: awful
So a girl who has been kept prisoner by a pedophile shows up at somebody's door and pretends to be their lost daughter. Then she kills herself and all that the "mother" can think about is that she wasn't her own child, so really her death doesn't matter that much. Completely unrealistic.
This Is Us: The Train (2022)
Another one gets pregnant and settles
This is a show about a family but surely not everyone needs to marry their childhood sweetheart and get pregnant as their main life goals? One thing about this is us I always disliked is the lack of variety. Fundamentally, these characters do not just share the same values, they seem to believe there is only just way of embodying those values - that is by leading life in a certain way. Everyone's welcome professional accomplishments are always ranked second compared to the only thing that matters; settling and becoming a parent. Boring.
This Is Us: The Night Before the Wedding (2022)
Boring cheesy cliche
Cheesy, boring, cliche episode. Two people who couldn't make it work the first time because, as teenagers, they were in different places, eventually end up together-mostly- because they won't find someone else. The right person for Kevin, for the show's own sake, would have been Zoe. Symbolically, she represents what would have made the family whole again by reinforcing Kevin's ties with Randall. Also from a race perspective, which is an important part of their relationship as brothers from different parents.
Björnstad (2020)
Travesty
This is a travesty of the book. We all understand the concept of adaptation, but too many choices were just inexplicable-the worst of all, the mild Peter turned into another toxic male for the sake of economy, condensing two characters in one. I gave it a 3 and not less because the setting is well captured.
House of Gucci (2021)
Heard of Italian?
Have you heard of languages other than English? They exist, and are spoken. The expedient of the accent is just pathetic, grotesque, and pretty much unacceptable from an intercultural perspective.
Il filo invisibile (2022)
Bad actors
Enjoyable and relatable plot line.
The young actors are pretty good, especially the lead.
Some of the "older" cast should consider another profession. Especially the woman friend. Just awful.
And one note on climbing: that's really not the way you do it. It's so wrong I can't think of an equivalent.
Narcos: México (2018)
Not season 3
First two seasons were great. If you enjoy the genere, just watch them.
In the third one, the narrator's voice is simply out of place. The journalist's storyline to which the voice belongs is also ludicrous and forced - another twenty something year old explaining the injustices of the world.
Nobody needed another one of those.
Very poor choice.
Invasion (2021)
Boring cliches
I did not mind the pace, and the delay in showing the aliens etc. I would actually have cherished such slow buildup with fear slowly creeping in and reality eventually downing on everyone if the subplots had been interesting and with a purpose.
Nobody needed another representation of glorified motherhood, or of bullying.
It's just old cliches dressed with cliches coated in even older cliches.
Humans: Episode 8 (2018)
From genius hacker to boring new Madonna
Of course, the biggest hacker in history ends up being the mere vessel for a "new" life. Doesn't matter what women on tv accomplish, the biggest achievement must always be getting pregnant.
SKAM Italia (2018)
Amazing
There are way too many low marks for a series of this quality. Just amazing. I'd have enjoyed it when I was a teenager just as I enjoyed it now - there are so many layers to the characters and their stories that really it will appeal to a very varied audience.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)
Pity
Would have been an enjoyable nostalgic reboot, had they not decided to have as lead a very unlikeable character. The generational clash is tiring and boring; the kid all so smart whilst her mum is a dummy. Just another film in a long series of botched ones where it appears compulsory that adults look stupid and kids save the world. Enough.
Paul Rudd is worth the 5 by himself for carrying half the film.
Dexter: New Blood: Sins of the Father (2022)
Disgusting
One of the most complex and well realised characters of ti shows of all times honestly deserved much better than this pathetic ending. We waited 10 years for this crap that ruined the entire Dexter series? Shame on you.
You (2018)
Bad attempt to copy Dexter
Watch Dexter instead. First two seasons are monotonous and one the repetition of the other. Same pattern (though I guess that's the point). Season 3 is about amateur killers disseminating corpses all over a town and constantly getting away with it.
This Is Us: The Adirondacks (2021)
Almost very good
The show ending is realistic. Both couples had been walking on very thin ice for a long time. The final montage is constructed beautifully.
But one negative note: enough with the fake tolerance of all sensitivities, it undermines actual issues. Don't feel at ease in a dress? Don't wear it and don't be a bridesmaid - the world doesn't revolve around your clothing discomforts and pretending it should is a disservice to actual societal struggle. This was the rant of a privileged and ungrateful child, nothing to learn from this scene.
El inocente (2021)
Annoying
The show starts off reasonably well, it's catchy and holds well enough.
Then, sadly, it all goes awry because there seems to be no psychological logic whatsoever guiding the characters' choices or their actions. All they do is random, their persona are not merely flat, they don't make any sense. ANY. On top of this, we're asked for several episodes to feel empathy for somebody who's actually concurred in underage prostitution. And for all the reasons that may justify and explain and condone, this character still participated time and time again -as a bystander- in the prostitution of minors. And did nothing. I can decide to feel pity, but I shouldn't be asked by the Director with their very annoying attempts to force their morals on the viewers.
This Is Us (2016)
Conventional much?
There isn't a single woman in this show who has a career or who is independent in some way.
Disgusting.
A Million Little Things: Unexpected (2018)
Sometimes people actually get abortions
God forbid should they stage an abortion. They happen all the time yet not on screen, for some reason it appears that women are abound to change their minds last minute to suit cinematic conventions. Regardless of how circumstances are, you won't get an abortion on screen. But you will get the cheesy music and the tears and the final change of heart. Pathetic.
WandaVision (2021)
Pathetic. Another mom story
If this TV were an offspring, it'd be like the pan sexual quadruplets of Stanley Kubrick and J.K. Rowling. On acid.
Good.
But what did they do with the multilayered, meta-level, mix of genres? They give us another dumb, boring, story of a mother who - guess what? - finds redemption through having to protect her family and kids. Bla bla bla. She's like - a villain. But we are given more evil villains to hate so that we forget that she's kidnapped and kind-controlled thousands of people for weeks. But she's a mom who cares about her family so we are ordered to feel empathy.
It's all tragically pathetic.