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A Discovery of Witches: Episode #3.3 (2022)
An example of good writing
This episode surprised me with some good storytelling; I came to this series after watching True Detective 4 (where the characters behave in random, unrealistic ways) and I was despairing of finding again well-written character interactions.
Well, in this episode we learn that Ransome has some real and believable grievances against Matthew, to the point that he threatens to kill him if he sees him again.
Marcus acts as an intermediary, telling Ransome some details that soften him just a tiny bit and make him willing to go check his story.
His subsequent interaction with Jack is short but well done, and convinces him to meet Matthew to listen to what he has to say.
The encounter doesn't *start* well, both are stubborn but they don't follow the tried-and-tested Hollywood way of escalating this to a fistfight before making peace out of the blue; instead they talk and explain their positions, and this leads to a touching monologue from Matthew.
It helps that both actors are excellent (especially Goode); in the end I would have been convinced, had I been in Ransome's place.
Every step is believable and sounds like how reasonable, real people would have handled the situation. I don't know if this scene comes from the books (I haven't read them) and in that case I extend my kudos to the writer, Deborah Harkness.
I really would like to see more of this on TV.
A Discovery of Witches: Episode #2.1 (2021)
A series with strong, intelligent women
I haven't read the books, but both the missus and I were pleasantly surprised by the switch to old London, with its costumes and buildings.
Acting from Goode and Palmer is still top notch (there's still good chemistry between them) and the new characters hold their own too.
Diana is definitely leagues away from Twilight's Bella; she's willful and independent and smart, and can argue with Matthew without turning it into a Hollywood fight - they act like real couples do when they disagree about something.
I was conned into watching True Detective Night Country when they marketed it as driven by "strong, intelligent women" when that show is everything but; I should have skipped it altogether (sorry Jodie) and started watching this sooner.
Leave the World Behind (2023)
Throw everything at the viewer, and see what sticks.
This was the same ploy that Issa Lopez used for True Detective: Night Country:
1) create some weird, unsettling imagery that will catch the attention of the TikTok generation;
2) pile up the questions without actually giving away any answer (because, I strongly suspect, even the scriptwriter has no coherent explanation for the jumble of randomly-assembled scenes)
3) hire some big Holliwood name so the final product won't be dismissed out of hand (Roberts cannot sign on a movie with no script, right?)
4) hint at some big resolution, end the movie when you're still ahead, and run with the money.
5) hope that enough people will be conned into believing this mess had some deeper meaning, and wait for the producers to hire you again. Lather, rinse, repeat.
I cannot wait to see the first ChatGPT-generated scripts; they'll surely be more interesting than this.
The Office: Pilot (2005)
Painfully unfunny pilot episode
After completing Resident Alien with the excellent Alan Tudyk, we started canvassing for good series to watch.
A colleague sang high praises for The Office, saying that it was even funnier than The Big Bang Theory; since the IMDB ratings are also high we watched the first episode yesterday evening.
And... not a laugh. Not even a chuckle. I'd have to strain to identify a scene that was meant as a joke; the things that came closer were cringeworthy moments when the boss made Pam cry, or his impersonation of Steve Austin.
I've just checked the episode duration and I'm a bit shocked that it's just 23 minutes; it's so boring that I thought I had wasted at least 45 minutes of my life.
Seriously, this is the only time in recent memory that I've checked the watch during a TV episode - usually something that I don't do even during a 3-hour movie.
I'm pretty sure that the series cannot do anything but improve from this low point, but the Pilot makes the idea of watching Episode 2 an act of masochism.
This reminds me of a Randall Munroe webcomic about TV series: "You should keep watching; after the first season it gets really good" must be compared to someone who says "You should keep watching: after the first 8 movies, the franchise gets really good". No one would bother with the latter, so why should we bother with the former?
So, currently we're looking for a good TV series *that hits the ground running*. Any suggestions?
Figli (2020)
Better than expected
Cortellesi and Mastandrea are excellen actors, and they really shine in this movie.
Several monologues stand out - the one by Cortellesi about the past generation stealing their children's future, and the guru pediatrician spouting platitudes with great confidence.
Stefano Fresi's boys were so annoying (on purpose) that I wanted to reach into the screen and slap them.
Honorable mention to the idea of the title card "By convention, whenever the baby cries you'll hear Beethoven's sonata 'Pathetique' " that does an excellent job of conveying the baby's constant crying without actually grating on the viewers' nerves.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024)
Easily the weakest of the franchise
The scenery is undoubtably gorgeously rendered, but the apes are lacking - I sorely missed Andy Serkis' and Karin Konoval's art in bringing the apes to life.
Most of the action scenes happen in simly lit settings, no doubt to add to the atmosphere... and to hide CGI defects.
The first two acts are more or less ok, even if the working telescope and the apes running around with futuristic cattle prods stretched belief a bit.
It's in the third act that the belief cleanly snaps: 300 years old technology comes alive at the flick of a switch, guns aren't a rusted mess, small isolated human installations can maintain 21st-century levels of technology by... manufacturing everything on-site, I'm led to believe: from transistors to lubricants to clothes and pharmaceuticals and food.
It doesn't help that the acting is bland all over, and the villain is more cartoonish than scary.
Fly Me to the Moon (2024)
A nice romantic comedy for space buffs
I wasn't interested in this movie at first, but then I saw a brief clip on TV and this led to me to watch the trailer.
I still wasn't convinced - I've always considered Tatum to be too bland in all the movies he's starred in - but there was literally nothing else in the theatres, so we gave it a try.
Fly Me to the Moon was a nice surprise right from the start: smart dialogue, quick pacing, excellent acting and an interesting plot.
The movie is mostly carried by Johansson, but Harrelson and Rash deserve honorable mentions. Tatum was not as bland as I expected - also his character is a space nerd and this fit rather well with his initial awkwardness when dealing with Johansson.
Ok, I admit - I'm a space nerd too, and the scenes of the liftoff of the Apollo 11 move me every time.
We saw this movie on the day of the 55th anniversary of the moon landing, and on a night with a full moon, which added to the movie magic.
Anna (2019)
Solid spy story and good action scenes
Luc Besson is back to his feet after a few disappointing titles (I stopped following him after Lucy and Valerian).
This movie is almost a remake of La Femme Nikita, but I'm ok with that - Nikita came out more than 30 years ago (argh, I'm old!) and Anna injects some freshness to the story - particularly to the fight scenes in a post-John Wick era.
The story is not linear with plenty of flashbacks, but it's quite easy to follow - and some of the twists were surprising.
Acting is above average for the genre, also thanks to the big names in the cast: I decided to give this movie a try when I heard that there was Cillian Murphy in it, and was surprised to find the always excellent Helen Mirren in a very sovietic makeup and dresses.
Sasha Luss is adequate as an actress, and stunning as a fashion model turned spy. Honorable mentions to Evans and Abova too.
Dark Matter (2024)
I'm entangled!
I've just finished the series, and it was a wild and interesting ride.
Recent shows had left me despairing over the quality of screenwriting; it seems that the modern trend is "put as many random events as possible in the script, the viewers will find something they like" (I call it the Rorschach School of Screenwriting).
Constellation is one example, and most of all True Detective: Night Country where it seemed that the characters' actions were decided with the roll of a dice.
Dark Matter has a tight script, no filler episodes, good dialogue, an interesting premise that was well developed (and I got a nice surprise after Episode 7 when they introduced a consequence I hadn't thought about).
I appreciated the fact that the series is self-contained; if they'll make a second season I'll watch it, but there are no cliffhangers to keep you watching forever: there's a satisfying closure.
Kudos to all actors, and notable mentions to Connelly and Braga.
The Fall Guy (2024)
Not quite satisfying
It's a run of the mill action comedy; I was expecting something more interesting.
Gosling's acting is better than Blunt's (usually she outshines her co-stars, it's apparent that she was here for the paycheck).
The karaoke scene is puzzling and could have been cut without altering the pacing (Blunt is a good singer, but this is not the Eurovision Song Contest).
Some characters make some dumb decisions just to keep the plot plodding along; the whole premise is a bit unbelievable. Aaron Taylor-Johnson was buch better in, say, Bullet Train; here he's as two-dimensional as it gets.
I appreciated some nice behind-the-scenes on how movies are made, and a few original ideas - even if these are few and far between.
The action scenes are top notch, at least.
Inside Out 2 (2024)
Movie magic at its finest
I liked the first Inside Out, but I thought it had some flaws. These were ironed out in the second installment, and the end result left me quite satisfied.
The initial idea of "puberty hits" with all its consequences is hilarious; the new emotions are spot-on (I'm really petitioning for an Inside Out 3 with an old Riley - Nostalgia had too little screen time!)
Envy was under-used, but the cellphone addicted Ennui was the perfect portrait of every modern teenager. Anxiety's twitches were beautifully rendered on-screen too.
Side note: the acting during Riley's panic attack is Oscar worthy. The girl has some serious acting chops! ...oh wait, she's just a CGI character. Can we add a new Academy award for these? Because if this is the trend, they'll soon outclass real life actors.
After the movie it was fun to ask friends and family what emotion they most identified with (I'm Embarrassment, in case you're wondering - that big softie :-) ).
IF (2024)
Bland, and mildly entertaining.
I really appreciated the CGI (Blue's fur was outstanding! Also his facial expressions were way above several real-life Hollywood actors).
I really liked to see Fiona Shaw getting back on her feet after her - let's say "puzzling" - performance in True Detective: Night Country.
The story was predictable; every actor did a decent job but there was no-one who rose above the "let's get the paycheck and go home" level - it's telling when the best acting comes from CGI characters.
I cannot say anything about the voice acting since I saw this in Italian; our dubbers are competent but we lost all the "star power" of the original cast.
Atlas (2024)
Does exactly what's written on the label...
...and this is quite refreshing, compared to the current offerings.
Let me explain: I watched True Detective 4 expecting a detective story and got a soap opera instead. Watched The Marvels and got a musical number. Watched Rogue Moon and got an inchoate mess instead of a story. Watched The Creator (a movie that shares the basic premise of Atlas) and got a warmed-up soup.
Somebody is apparently trying to re-invent storytelling to "modernize" it, and is failing miserably.
Atlas on the other hand has a simple story, it's developed with craft (if not with art) to its logical end, it has no glaring plot holes and doesn't slap you in the face with CGI: the special effects are there, but add flavour to the story instead of replacing it.
Acting is adequate; some dialogues may feel forced but most of them aren't; the director is competent.
To summarize, Atlas would have been an average movie ten or twenty years ago; nowadays it stands a head above the rest - mostly because average movie quality has fallen quite low.
Special mentions to JLo who manages to carry the movie and to convey some emotions from time to time; her character feels realistic enough and doesn't do stupid things just for the sake of the plot.
Simu Liu is creepy enough as the unstoppable villain; his motivations are refreshingly different from the usual desire to conquer the world - he just has a goal he deems worthy and is determined to achieve it at any cost.
The explosion of the ship near the end of the movie is amazing! The CGI crew somehow managed to inject some novelty into something as mundane as a Hollywood explosion. I'll have to re-watch that scene.
Gamgi (2013)
Decent movie with some excellent imagery
I saw this after the Covid-19 pandemic, so well after it was filmed. I'm european, so maybe some nuances flew over my head.
Acting is decent, even if a bit over the top at times. Min-ah Park is quite believable as the small child that causes most of the plot to move forward, the child actress is definitely talented but her character is annoying as hell.
The budget of the movie is more than adequate, with mass scenes that don't spare extras or special effects.
Just when I start thinking that this is just your run-of-the-mill disaster movie, the director hits me with some haunting, efective images (such as the orange peel grapple moving heaps of dead bodies to the fire pits).
Overall, a movie that's a bit better than average.
The Martian (2015)
I'm going to have to science the s**t out of this
I'm an engineer, and I completely *adore* this movie. In fact I've just re-watched it this weekend for the umpteenth time, and it still holds up exceptionally well, from the beauty of the Martian landscapes, to the ingenuity and humor of Watney, to the beautifully scripted dynamics in NASA offices and laboratories.
Do you want movies with strong female characters? Here you have a commander and a computer scientist on a mission to Mars, a competent PR executive and a lowly employee who rises through the ranks and gets into meetings with the top guys - NASA is an equal opportunity employer.
There's no tacked-on love story aside from a chaste kiss through a spacesuit helmet; on the other hand you get plenty of technical details made interesting and funny.
And, maybe it's just me, but this dialogue cracks me every time (Daniels' and Glover's acting is spot-on):
"I'm sorry what's your name again?"
"Teddy. I'm the Director of NASA."
... I've just discovered that there's an extended edition somewhere. I must go and get it.
Zootopia (2016)
Finally a movie with a strong female character!
...even if she is, you know, a bunny.
Judy starts her police training being smaller and weaker than the other recruits, but she overcomes all these difficulties not by some magical talent (live-action Mulan, I'm looking at you) but by sheer perseverance and cleverness.
She is bullied, mobbed and put down by her male colleagues, who are not intrinsecally bad or evil but simply old fashioned, and in the end Judy manages to show them the error of their ways.
I liked that the screenwriters didn't make Judy seem smarter by making every male around her look weak or dumb (True Detective Night Country, looking at you now): she actually comes up with some excellent ideas as to how to pursue the investigation.
Sure, she is scared and has her moments of weakness (who doesn't!) but this simply means that she is not a cardboard character. She's also a bit racist (understandably) but in the end she overcomes this bad trait and becomes a better person.
I wish more Hollywood storytellers would learn from this excellent movie when they try to tell stories about strong women! And, yes, the kids love this because it's full of fuzzy characters and funny jokes - but it's also a deep movie about racism, patriarchy and how to make them things of the past.
I.S.S. (2023)
Average, with some interesting parts.
I watched this because it's about the ISS and doesn't have inane alien stuff like Life.
The premise has been done to deadh by now: let's trap people together in an enclosed space and watch cabin fever, paranoia and mistrust set in. This has the additional background of a Cold War turned suddenly hot.
I quite liked the acting of Ariana DeBose, and Masha Mashkova does a decent job too (the others were forgettable).
Special effects were believable if you don't watch too closely (some objects behaved as in normal gravity, some movements had the wrong inertia - I'm pretty sure most people won't notice this).
Overall, this movie is average, maybe boring or slow; I won't re-watch it, but I don't regret having given it a chance.
Madame Web (2024)
Actually a 6.5 stars
I watched this with below-ground expectations, having read the reviews in the IMDB.
Actually it's not half bad, definitely not deserving the 3.something score that it currently holds.
I was waiting for the messy and incoherent script to materialize, and it never did: if anything, the story is linear and predictable - several other movies dealt with the predestination paradox in a more engaging fashion.
I've never read the source material so I cannot say if Dakota does a good job as Madame Web, but her dry wit - particularly the banter with coworker Scott, or the disaster at the baby shower - were rather funny.
It's a superhero movie, so don't expect Shakespeare; overall - and I see that I'm going against the mass here - I don't regret the time I spent watching this movie.
As a comparison, if I had a time machine - or clarvoyance powers - I would never watch Ant Man 3 or The Marvels again: *those* were movies with incoherent scripts.
True Detective: Night Country: Part 1 (2024)
We watched this series so you won't have to.
And, seriously, don't. Spoilers galore:
the cleaning ladies did it. The presence of about twenty armed women storming a facility with trucks and SUVs was somehow missed by the forensic team.
They made the scientists undress in the Arctic night instead of outright shooting them, but left their clothes nearby to give them a sporting chance. The Laocoön group of corpsicles stands as a good testimony of how well this went down.
The scientists had discovered that the Alaskan permafrost - thawed by the illegal activities of the mining company - held an amazingly miraculous bacterium. Instead of growing it in a Petri dish in a comfortable laboratory in sunny California, they remained in Alaska and allowed the mining company to keep polluting the land so they could get more specimens from the ground.
It seems that in this universe they never discovered DNA sequencing, since the destruction of a few samples of ice cores is enough to threaten the whole research and trigger the murderous instincts of the scientists.
The frequent appearances of ghosts and carved spirals and rolling oranges is never explained and does not further the plot in any way; they are there just to amp up the creepiness factor.
I posthumously gave three stars to all the episodes, even if some of them were even worse, since this is the overall value of the season.
I didn't see the previous installments of True Detective, so I cannot make comparisons; I was drawn to Season 4 when I saw that Jodie Foster was the lead.
If I had to explain her presence in the series, I could only hypothesize that she had a mortgage payment due.
Disclaimer: I'm a middle aged, non-American, non-Inuit white male. By reading the other reviews it seems that your ethnicity and sex is somehow relevant to your enjoyment of this series (or at least to your ability to "get it").
And here I thought that good storytelling had something to do with it, silly me.
True Detective: Night Country: Part 6 (2024)
Disbelief suspended by the neck until dead.
My girlfriend and I watched this episode last night, and the only way to make this bearable was to comment it a' la MST3K, pointing out the absurdities.
The two detectives go hunting for clues in the ice caves - alone, in the Arctic night, without equipment or backup.
The missing scientist killed the Inuit woman because she was messing with his research on life-saving bacteria; he probably never backed up his hard drive, nor knew how to grow the aforementioned bacteria in a petri dish in the comfort of a non-Alaskan laboratory.
The cleaning ladies avenged the killing by showing amazing SWAT skills and removing every trace of their presence so well that the forensic team never noticed tire tracks or the presence of a veritable mob on the crime scene.
The laboratory has a secret submarine-like hatch concealed under floor tiles. Because reasons.
Jodie Foster falls in the Arctic waters under the ice and survives without hypothermia symptoms.
Jodie Foster randomly finds the only handprint that can be traced to a specific person in the whole town without need for a forensic analysis.
I really, really have issues with two cops discovering clues by beating, torturing and finally killing the only suspect.
If you are wondering why I watched this, I can only say that I fell for the sunk cost fallacy - having seen five episodes so far, I felt that I had invested too much in this series to skip the finale.
The Marvels (2023)
Sure, let's inject some comedy in the MCU universe...
...since it went down quite well with Love and Thunder, right?
I've watched The Marvels twice now, since the first time I must have dozed off a couple of times. Even fully awake, however, I could not follow the plot due to some really, really unwise decisions by Disney executives: watching the MCU TV the series (in this case Ms Marvel and Secret Invasion) is becoming more and more necessary to understanding what's going on.
This puzzled me a bit when I watched Dr. Strange 2 ("did you miss Wandavision? Well, Wanda's evil now.") but The Marvels brings this to unprecedented levels: characters are introduced as if I already knew all about them, plot points and new locations appear out of nowhere, people keep referencing things that must have been apparent to whomever watched the series but were quite obscure to me.
I understand that Disney's ploy is to hook the customers with movies first, and then convince them to pay for the TV series too, but this is seriously backfiring: I watched only a couple of MCU series, considered them lacking and uninteresting, and stopped watching.
This means that by now there are several hours of MCU backstory that I'm missing, soon the movies will stop making any sense and I'll probably ditch the MCU franchise altogether. This is rather sad - I used to be so excited with every new release, up to and including Endgame.
Anyway, while I struggled to make sense of some of the story points, additional confusion was created by the superhero-swapping entanglement, to the point where I could not follow the action at all - to me it seemed that things were happening randomly.
To add insult to injury, Nick Fury is reduced to comic relief; there's a Bollywood moment that stops the movie cold, and please give a prize to the man who thought that a song from Cats was fitting as a background for the space station evacuation. A prize such as the Golden Raspberry.
As a final note, decades ago somebody wrote that Clint Eastwood had only two facial expressions: when he was shooting, and when he wasn't. Well, Brie Larson follows this lead: when she's not fighting anyone she opens her eyes wide, when she's fighting she narrows them.
The Killer (2023)
Does exactly what's written on the label.
Skip this if you are looking for action scenes (even if the only one, in the middle of the movie, is excellently choreographed and quite violent).
Fassbender's character is chillingly methodical, with great attention to tiny details, and paints a beautiful portrait of a psychopath.
I was a bit doubtful about this movie since the IMDB synopsis describes it as "a case study of a man [...] slowly losing his mind" and I wasn't interested in psychodramas; actually The Killer is nothing but rational and logical.
The plot is straightforward, but then again - if you are looking for intricate plots, go watch Tenet. What matters here is the execution, stylish and well crafted, and the acting skills of the main (and secondary) characters.
A small inside joke - you'll get this if / when you see the movie: the titular Killer must have seen the first John Wick movie.
True Detective: Night Country: Part 5 (2024)
I cannot say this is sloppy writing...
...because that would be offensive to honest sloppy writers.
IMDB ratings made me hope for an improvement in the series, but this was one of the most baffling episodes so far. I cannot understand how the producers could have read the script and still splurged money on this mess.
I'll write a few spoilers so you won't have to watch this episode: Jodie Foster made a big discovery about the mining company being in conflict of interest, but wait - this big reveal later fizzles out for no reason.
The dumb cop gets talked into killing a man in exchange for a better job, seems reluctant at first but then commits murder in cold blood as if it were a walk in the park. In front of a witness.
But wait, he gets killed a few moments later.
But wait, boxer cop says that the best thing to do is to hide all evidence and dispose of the bodies, for no reason.
The girlfriend of Jodie Foster's daughter gets seriously beaten by riot police that appeared out of nowhere in a small Alaskan town.
The wife of the young cop throws him out because he's willing to work long hours and bring home a paycheck.
Jodie Foster's daughter gets thrown in jail but later is released.
The young cop discovers Jodie Foster's cover-up of a murder, but does nothing about it.
Jodie Foster says that the investigation must stop at once, and is very vocal about it. But wait, a bit later she says just as firmly that the investigation must continue.
(Ok, I admit it - I made up one of the spoliers. I bet that you didn't notice which one.)
Frankly, how bad must a series be to make me consider stopping here instead of watching the next episode, that's supposed to be the last? (I watched the other five because I am usually a big fan of Foster. I could have watched two/three better movies instead of investing my time in this badly acted random collection of events.)
At least this episode didn't have ghosts or rolling oranges in it.
For All Mankind: Goldilocks (2023)
An Italian on Mars
Note: I'm Italian and I'm watching this show dubbed in my language.
Aside from the intriguing storyline, good production value and acting talent that is above average for a TV series (I expecially like the acting chops of Coral Peña) this episode had a detail that I found rather unusual.
"Goldilocks" introduces a minor character, Luka Gurino, and I immediately thought "hey, they put an Italian on Mars!".
...it was only after the episode was over that I noticed that I had immediately (and correcltly) tagged the character's country of origin, even if no one addressed him by name, he had no obvious Italian flag on his uniform, and of course everyone was speaking Italian!
So, it must have been some minor clue (speech inflection? A bit of regional accent?) showing the attention to details from everyone involved in the production of this series. A tip of the hat to the excellent Italian dubbers!
True Detective: Night Country: Part 3 (2024)
Waiting for something to happen
I started watching Season 4 after reading that Jodi Foster was in it (I've never seen other seasons of True Detective, so I didn't know what to expect exactly).
Well, the first two episodes were mildly interesting, but this one bored me to death - the plot was not pushed forward, characters weren't developed, the horror / supernatural themes are increasing.
Acting is below par, surprisingly even from Foster. The native music / chants of this episode were particularly grating.
I also noticed that this season has only six episodes so we're halfway through; with the long list of loose ends and unanswered question that we've gathered so far, the only ways to resolve this mess are "an evil spirit did all this" or "there was LSD in the water" (or "it was all a dream").