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Reviews
The Witcher: What Is Lost (2021)
Grimdark and joyless
So disappointed so far with this series. The strength of the first season was, on top of Cavill's watchability, that it (mostly) didn't take itself too seriously. It was confusing but enjoyable especially where there were elements of fun in there- Jaskir acting as a foil to Garault's dourness or the Witcher's own well-timed expletives when things didnt go to plan... There is also a Grimms faery-tale quality which clearly owes a lot to the original source material.
The new series so far is just dark and takes itself incredibly seriously. To get away with this, the writing has to be icily good. You need clear, clever dialogue; you need strongly written characters. Unfortunately the writing and directing has taken a turn for the worse, and we don't seem to get any of these things. Instead there are inconsistent characters; lots of unhelpful exposition; and events and decisions which make no reasonable sense at all.
The political/mage plotline is a mess and the whole chain of events in this episode is just too silly and incredible to waste time critiquing.
The Witcher/Ciri thread is central as the story goes on and we need to see the development of the relationship and the emergence of Ciri's foreshadowed abilities- but so far the relationship is joyless and dour and this is a problem which needs to get better, quickly.
I'll stick it out and hope there is an improvement, but I'm not holding out a lot of hope.
Shutter Island (2010)
Atmospheric but...
Quite enjoyed this but the twist is fairly predictable. Thats not a bad thing necessarily, but the problem I had (and this is something I'm surprised not to read on other reviews) was that the supposed reality revealed within the ending was simply too far fetched to be believed.
When presented with an existential tension in a story of this ilk, Occam's razor should be a good guide to what reality is. In this case of Shutter Island the opposite is true; the idea that this amount of risk, expense and effort would be entertained for some elaborate roleplay to try to rescue the sanity of "the asylum's highest risk patient" is simply not credible and left me thinking that no one sane would actually believe it.
Far more believable is that the conspiracy theory is the true story, and a "double twist" might have been far more satisfying outcome (at least for me). Regrettably, this was not the case.
I thought this slight plot failure was shame as the atmosphere and performances are excellent and other than this the film is very enjoyable.