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usagiarwen
Reviews
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: The Strip Strangler (2001)
Unrealistic, Infuriating Slog of an episode.
To be fair, I'm coming into this review 23 years after the episode first aired. This episode took place 4 years before Criminal Minds began airing on CBS. If my first viewing of this had been before Criminal Minds, I might have been more forgiving of the FBI in this episode.
In summary, the CSI team were investigating a serial rapist and murderer. They were using the forensics to go through the crime scenes as is their signature for the show, and suddenly the chief invited the FBI in to take over the investigation. Almost immediately, the agent in charge, Culpepper, gave the unknown suspect a name, the strip strangler, and began stomping all over the leadership of the team. Sara Sidle teamed up with Culpepper against Grissom's wishes as team leader, but their ops was not a success because another woman was found. Forensics did lead to this woman's husband being her murderer, and Culpepper decided to pin him for all the murders, despite lack of evidence tying him to the others. He claimed that the signatures matched up, despite parts of the signature forensically clearly not matching up. Grissom was suspended for publicly stating the strangler was not yet caught, and they had to go behind the backs of the police to solve the crime off the books. Grissom never even received any recognition for this, probably because it would make Culpepper look like a moron.
This episode was incredibly unrealistic, and honestly, quite stupid. I found myself saying "This isn't how the FBI works."
I couldn't help but call out the absurdity of how Culpepper behaved in this investigation. First, there's a reason police generally do not want the feds in their investigations. So inviting the FBI in would come with a lot of expectations. First off, why is Culpepper giving this guy a name, the Strip Strangler? Why is Culpepper going above heads to get Sidle into an op? Why is Culpepper not relying on the forensics to help him determine the facts? Why is he coming off as a total ignorant fool? Why was Grissom suspended when he is renowned for his professionalism? Why is no one taking anything he says to heart to reevaluate the situation? There are so many questions, and I find myself comparing this episode to Criminal minds because of how contrary the FBI agent is acting in this as compared to how the BAU establishes their own professional boundaries of cooperation with local police forces. I truly hate this episode.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)
Finally A worthy follow-up!
I grew up watching this franchise. I even loved the second movie, even though I know that many people didn't think it nearly that good.
Is this as good as the first two, no. But it was worlds better than the 2016 reboot. This one does pay a LOT of fan service, and it's not perfect by any means. But it does Harold Ramis justice.
Enterprise: Regeneration (2003)
What about Q introducing the Borg?!
Okay, I rarely give out reviews, but this one irked me so much I have to. First off, if you are any sort of Star Trek fan, from The Next Generation to Voyager, or The Original Series to Deep Space 9, and you see this episode, all you can really think is wtf is this crap.
First, the Borg have NO business being in any series that takes place prior to the timeline that exists with The Next Generation. If you've ever seen that series, you would know that Q from the Q Continuum, who both started the series up and ended the series with a bang, was the one who introduced the Enterprise - D to the Borg.
Now, some may say "well they didn't introduce themselves as the Borg." I call bull. Basically in this episode, you have researchers on a frozen planet find some frozen bodies of a cybernetic race and the nanos in their bodies regenerate them and yada yada. Then they escape the planet and attack a vessel - same thing there.
Enterprise finds the vessel, gets two people who were infected with the nanos, and they attack Phlox - injecting him with their tubules. Archer is eventually forced to shoot them out of an airlock and help Phlox with omicron radiation to rid his body of the nanos.
Other crap happens which I just stopped paying attention to because I thought the episode was utter crap, and a message with Earth's coordinates was sent out to the Delta quadrant which Archer says will take about 200 years.
Down to the nitty gritty. The Borg technology is basically as advanced as it is in say TNG or VOY. Why? I mean, if it is that advanced now, and there is a 200 year gap between now and then, and other species will have been assimilated, then how the bleep can this technology not be even more advanced 200 years from this episode? Then, they say that Zefram Cochrane said in a speech there was a cybernetic race that wanted to enslave humanity and because he wasn't taken seriously he recanted it later on. Okay soooo Enterprise would have to report this incident and recite his speech, saying that he may have potentially been serious and only recanted so as not to seem crazy. Which would have put this in the history books as first contact with the cybernetic race. There was no mention of anything like this when Q introduced them to Jean-Luc Picard. Nor was any mention made in the movie Star Trek: First Contact of Cochrane wanting to give a speech regarding the cybernetic life.
Just so many points of this episode make no sense when it comes to the facts of the Star Trek Universe. It is completely non-canon because there is no way that this report wouldn't have made it into Starfleet and no way that it wouldn't be taught to future cadets that there was some cybernetic race lurking out there waiting to attack Earth.
Olympus Has Fallen (2013)
This is a poor imitation of Die Hard
There are spoilers here, so reader beware. Normally I don't do movie reviews, but this one was so terrible that I couldn't keep it to myself.
Basically you have this movie that tries too hard to meet the standards of the Die Hard franchise but falls flat on its face. First of all, what was the point of listing Ashley Judd in this movie if she's going to die within the first 5-10 minutes? She was one of the reasons I even agreed to go to this film with my mother. The movie could have been a little shorter with it just starting out as the president being a widower. Or hey, they could have ditched Melissa Leo (because the lines she was given were awful, and of course her acting could not have been better than what she was given). They could have replaced her with Ashley Judd and do a little romance on the side. But they didn't even do that with the movie.
Then, the movie didn't even have great one liners. (Bruce Willis: Yippy-ki-yay mother ******). No, it falls short of that. But I think the most disappointing part of the movie is that it all seemed like a cookie cut out of Die Hard, where there's all this action that is frantic. The president says they don't negotiate with terrorists, all the while he's telling the other two people to give Kang the Cerberus codes claiming they'll never get his. Then, while they're giving up their codes, the terrorists are banking on him not giving up his, so they have this master code breaker program all prepped and ready to hack the final code they need.
Now let's start on Gerard Butler. You'd think that after he lost his job with the death of the president's wife, all his old access codes would no longer work. WRONG. Supposedly everyone forgot about his codes and the potential for a serious security breach and relied on trust that he wouldn't come in the office some day. So, working at the treasury, he also forgets he no longer works there and busts in unaccounted for. He gets into all his old haunts with the codes everyone forgot about - except for him. I call bull. So you have him pulling Bruce Willis's character, even the part where Forbes comes out and tries to share a smoke with him. Ring a bell with Alan Rickman coming out, putting on an American accent and playing buddy buddy with Willis? Only difference here is Forbes isn't exactly the mastermind like Hans Gruber was.
The whole idea of getting to the president's kid, and then Butler getting "sparkplug" out of there was ridiculous too. Why bother with the kid when Kang's got this master code breaker program? Last but not least - Kang states in the movie that it took only 13 minutes to overtake the white house. Bull. Real agents and army protecting it would not have been so stupid as to pour out of the entrance like ants and let their butts be riddled with bullets by these guys. There would be strategies, contingency plans....if it would have been this easy for terrorists to overtake the white house, then it would have been done in real life years ago. This "perfect" plan has so many plot holes in it that it could only ever work on screen with the secret service having blanks for bullets. There was no real story plot, or at least none that satisfied my mind for a reason to break into the most protected property in the USA.
The whole thing was boring, and the only reason my mother and I were laughing in the theater was because of the people 2 rows down, crunching on their corn like cows at a grain feeder, and the people behind us so wrapped up in it they were gasping and snickering at the awful one liners.