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Das Signal (2024)
Many terrible choices for a good story
Sort of watchable but only if you have a high resistance to pain. The story, while completely unoriginal, might have been interesting but was developed poorly, the general execution is terrible reaching ridiculous levels in multiple occasions.
It is one of those weird modern series in which photography is actually good and professional but everything else is amateur. (probably due to good and cheap camera and lenses easy to operate and learn as opposed to acting, scripting and directing that require professionals...)
Acting is mostly horrible as the casting is. Script is full holes, dialogues are boring and the first two episodes especially were physically painful to watch. Characters actions make little sense, and at times it feels like watching a high school play of a middle school plot. In general the whole plot feels written by a kid with a kids comprehension of human actions, motives, politics and the world in general.
I would have loved to like this but in the end it is terrible.
The Queen's Gambit (2020)
Astonished
Can't easily put into words all that this "mini series" gave me. Simply media perfection! I've used media as limiting it to comparisons with other tv or streaming stuff (series, mini-series, movies etc) would be far from doing justice to it. Reality is that, imo al least, it's up there with the Shawshank Redemption, Forrest Gump and the few other that deserve to sit in the Oympus of entertainment.
Huge thanks to all those involved in allowing me to watch this.
Enola Holmes (2020)
Surprisingly good movie
Wasn't prepared for how good it turned out to be, watched it with no expectations and was pleasantly surprised, entertaining, fun, light, well acted and directed. The 2 hours run time passed with no hiccups (which is very rare, at least for me).
BTW, in regards to all the bad reviews........ they mostly are from very thin skinned people which somehow took an issue with the movie theme, ooff..... sad world
I'm not a teenage girl (not even a girl for that matter) and I consider myself a rather big Sherlock Holmes fan, safe from Mycroft (which deviates quite a bit from the original character) everything else is absolutely tolerable as per Holmes "universe" integration and historical representation.
Great job by everybody involved (perfect performance by the Stranger Things protagonist), thanks !
The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020)
Meh.... Nothing like hill house, a mediocre love story that should have been more
I absolutely loved the The Haunting of Hill House, I had given up on the horror genre and Hill House re-awakened my interest after over a decade so I was really excited for this new season / show. Well..... it has nothing to do with Hill House (except for the cast and part of the name), it has some possibly brilliant ideas but after binge watching in full this new season the good ideas where left unexplored and instead of a horror story, a thriller or in general something exciting we got something more similar to a Corpse Bride than Hill House but without the genius of Tim Burton. Its a love story and not even a particularly good one, the plot has huge holes and there are some savagely boring moments. Had it been released with another name without exploiting the original series success it might have deserved a slightly higher score (maybe a 6 but not sure about it) but it wasn't, it crushed my expectations and left me bored, un-scared and a little amused by the cheap horror elements that felt forced into the story to somehow fit the series but with no actual effect.
Its not scary, its not well written, it is not well directed and it gets boring, the plot has huge holes that break immersion and the few good ideas aren't elaborated (the doll house thing could have been brilliant but...).
All this said, the two kids did a tremendous jobs acting and their performance is, imo, the only highlight in the series.
5
Project Blue Book (2019)
Good show ruined by History Chanel editorial ethos
The show its good, actors do a good job, the 50's are well represented, the episodes are mostly well directed and the plot is entertaining. It took a lot form X Files but this ain't bad, the real problem, and its a huge one, lies in the extremely misleading text introducing each episode, the one saying that stories/cases are based on true events.
This ain't false, its worst, its willingly misleading which has a much deeper impact. "Based" can mean a ton of things but for the average viewer it roughly translates to "these are true stories taken from the work of Dr. Hynek", and this is far from true. The locations and very rough descriptions of the events leading to the investigators following a case are somewhat based on reality, but almost every single action, discovery and thought laid out in the episodes are complete fictional fabrications and this is far from clear given how History Channel presents them. It isn't surprising given History Channel past years of utter crap and money driven conspiracy theories and pseudo science fuelled fantasies, unfortunately this time it hit a show which would have been good.
Hope the show survives with a new producer abandoning the toxic aura of History Channel.
White Lines (2020)
Dawson Creek with drugs
I was engaged for the first episodes, writing wasn't good but tolerable or so I thought.... Then the story developed and it all fell apart.
The look is that of a constant instagram filter, might be nice for a couple of shots but soon annoys, acting isn't terrible (with some exceptions) but unfortunately the story doesn't support it. By half season I hated all characters and the series was looking like a teen drama with 40 years old characters and loads of drugs. Won't even touch the ending which had me thinking of suing Netflix for psychological damages.
Basically, I would have preferred spending my time on the toilet with abdominal cramps.
Jack Ryan (2018)
They got the worst from Tom Clancy, none of the good.
Season 1 was cringe worthy with way too much going on to be believable, BUT it provided decent entertainment.
Season 2..... oh my.... It has all the worst elements of 90's Tom Clancy such as superficial and unbelievable geopolitics and stereotyped characters with less depth than a sheet of paper with nothing of what made Clancy really good such as a detailed, easy to grasp and well informed description of modern warfare, its tools and their implications.
Actors are good, cinematography is good, in general one can see that many professionals and lots of money where involved in the production, but unfortunately everything was destroyed by terrible writing.
The Americans: START (2018)
Stunning, perfect. Thank you.
Huge thanks to the actors, the writers and all those who worked on this show.
Loved all the seasons of The Americans but sixth season and series finale brought the show on par or even on top of the most acclaimed spy novels ever written.
Probably never enjoyed a TV series so much (and I'm a series junky) and this final episode was the emotional climax it deserved.
Characters, story and storytelling remain consistent across all the seasons without ever falling to cheap "filler" episodes or idiotic and illogical decisions by the characters so the story can move on which many tv series, movies or even books often have to recur to.
Top notch entertainment with meticulous historical period description and narration, dense with moral dilemmas it immerses the viewer in the hearth of the cold war leaving every kind of moral judgment to the viewer instead of forcing it on him.
Again, THANKS !
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