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Reviews
Batwoman (2019)
Frustratingly predictable and void of emotion
Contrary to Gotham and other TV shows I choose to invest time in, watching Batwoman is a painful experience where all your worst writing scenarios and clichés come to life before your eyes. The plot so far has been super predictable and everything is telegraphed miles away and spoon-fed and highlighted afterwards just to make sure you didn't miss it.
I really, really, want it to be watchable but so far the two episodes have been full of cringe and littered with uninteresting romance / drama bits. If this is what the show is then it's just not for me, no matter how much I like the rest of the Bat-verse.
Castle Rock (2018)
Stephen King in bitesize format with plenty to chew
I understand many people were looking for an ending that explains it all but it's evident this show is not about untying the knot. Much like in the real world things don't always end with fireworks and sometimes we're not able to find out the complete truth but build our reality out of the subjective scraps we can find.
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
Do you hear it?
Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016)
Concludes the film series
While the action scene editing was a pain to watch I still found the story surprisingly good and perhaps the most meaningful out of the films in the series.
Blackout (2008)
A crumbling masterpiece
From the start on it is clear that this movie has a beautiful setting and prominent, talented actors. The soundtrack is so close to what you would expect that you hardly pay any attention to it most of the time. Yet as you continue watching you'll begin to wonder if this is your average mystery thriller after all. By the time the credits roll up, you're sure of it.
What ultimately causes the movie to fall apart is the plot. The role of the mysterious events in the past is augmented and the tension keeps building up, keeping the audience on the edge of their seats until suddenly the original conflict is seemingly forgotten and the film takes a focus on another series of misfit events. The viewer thereby is provoked to think up ways to link the two of these mysteries together and form a solution, although the characters in the movie are somehow completely oblivious to the idea. A couple of very intriguing characters and relationships are also presented, none of which turn out to connect to the key events either. To put it simple, there are just overwhelmingly more pieces that one needs to complete the puzzle. Most of the time when you are certain you picked up an obviously intentional hint and are waiting for the moment to call out "I knew it!", it just never comes and you are being offered an abundance of hints leading elsewhere instead. This movie certainly surprises you all the time but only because it gives you no chance of guessing the next turn of events.
In longer run, the plot doesn't slowly unfold, rather it is a game of passive guessing and not-so-surprising revelations that are rubbed on your face. Towards the end you just stop guessing and semi-reluctantly take whatever the film has to offer. After that they get twisted and canceled out by both past and present events so that in the end the viewer DOES have to do some piecing-up. This dynamic and chaotic nature of the movie is naturally brought up and supposedly justified by the main character's amnesia, but this movie rides on the flashbacks too much to keep the audience with it.
In the end, I couldn't even really tell what the theme of the movie was. The tagline supposedly lives up to its name ultimately but the middle portion of the movie deals with melodramatic relationships and surprisingly enough, problems of the Finnish health care system. Every time there was a longer cut between the scenes I could sense the audience holding their breath wondering if the credits would roll up or not, and eventually they did.
Still the movie has its merits which aren't to be neglected. The actors were convincing playing their roles even though I've mainly seen Petteri Summanen do comedy pieces before. The settings and props were on par with Hollywood films and overall I couldn't just believe they spoke Finnish in a film of visual beauty of this magnitude.
To sum it up, perhaps this movie should have been put together better. All the ingredients of an excellent film are clearly present but they aren't properly in their place. The plot is too complicated with fractured timeline but also seems to have a lot of air in it. I couldn't really recommend this to fans of mystery genre unless you're okay with not being able to solve or even find too much logic in it.
The Simpsons: 24 Minutes (2007)
An episode no Simpsons or 24 fan should miss
What makes this episode so special is that it's 100% pure parody without a hint of getting serious with current themes or teaching a lesson like in so many other episodes. "24 Minutes" is not only an excellent parody of the TV-series 24 but also includes some clever jokes about the Simpsons universe which make any viewer appreciate this episode as a traditional Simpsons episode, too.
The Simpsons has kept on going for almost 20 years and even the most loyal fans can probably agree there were times that the quality of episodes was going downhill. While it's unlikely they'll make more episodes as daringly different as this one, what "24 Minutes" proves is that the writers still can come up with fresh ideas and jokes and even have the courage to break loose from the format that has kept the show on the air all these years.