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Reviews
Shôgun: A Dream of a Dream (2024)
A Steep Drop Off
I thought the series was great from the first episode up until the earthquake that destroyed part of Toranaga's army. After that, it started falling apart. Too many plot holes, narrative dead ends, and contrived conflicts followed in the last half of the season.
Here are a few questions:
1. Why would the heir's mother completely change her attitude toward Toranaga and support a man she wanted dead for her entire life?
2. Why would Mariko's husband decide to befriend Blackthorne, a man he held in contempt throughout the series?
3. Why would the Catholic Church agree to spare Blackthorne, someone they rightly saw as a threat and wanted dead?
4. If the Regents were so inept by the end of the series, why did they have so much power?
5. What exactly was Crimson Sky? It clearly meant something different when it was first introduced in the series.
6. What happened to Blackthorne's artillery?
7. Speaking of Blackthorne, how did a man who was so shrewd and perceptive in the beginning of the story, devolved into a baffled idiot?
8. Where are the Ronin from Macao?
The Long Goodbye (1973)
A Disjointed, Muddled Mess
I've seen this movie featured on Amazon for quite a long time and was encouraged by its high ratings. Rolling Stone actually put it in the top 100 movies of the 70s.
Well, it is not exactly Citizen Kane. Not by a long shot.
In fact, the whole thing is a mess, which is a shame given the director and the cast.
Where to start?
The plot is filled with narrative dead ends, motivations that are never explained, and characters who drop in and out of the story for no reason I could figure out.
I like Elliot Gould as an actor, but he is terrible in this role. Why he had to constantly mutter to himself throughout the movie was beyond me. I get the whole antihero approach, but this is more incoherent than anything else.
The sound quality and dubbing is terrible. Aside from the fact that I can barely understand the actors when they do talk, the overall audio is pretty bad. The dubbed barking Doberman is particularly annoying.
Robert Altman is a great director, and he has MASH to his credit, but his approach to this movie is beyond me. He really seems to enjoy filming scenes through windows, dirty or otherwise, and out of focus.
Anyway, hard pass on this one.
Reacher: Fly Boy (2024)
Go Back to Season One Standards
I really enjoyed the first season. But season two is different. I get the point that the story is following the book, but it is a bad choice and poorly done.
First, Reacher is much better as a lone wolf. Adding his team of two-dimensional sidekicks dilutes everything, dialogue, story, character. Everything.
I like Alan Ritchson, but there was a reason why they made him so stoic in season one. Silently staring down people, like he did in the opening of season one, works well given Ritchson's limited acting range. There are many points in season two where, he looks like he is struggling through the autism spectrum when he interacts with the team. His romantic relationship is tacked on and pointless.
By making everyone on the team equally excellent at everything - investigating, fighting, shooting-the show is again diluting what made Reacher interesting and unique.
Then there are the catch phrases. Why do they have to be repeated in every episode, sometimes more than once? How many times do I need to know that Nealy likes cereal? As many people have pointed out, this smacks of lazy writing.
Maybe Season Three will be better, but I am on the fence now.
Leave the World Behind (2023)
The Happening, Part 2
The movie really reminded me of The Happening. It might have seemed like a good idea on paper in the beginning and it does have some big names in the cast. But it looks like the writers never got past the treatment stage for the script.
Nothing is fully developed. The characters, the story, nothing really gets to breath or grow. Monologues from Kevin Bacon and Mahershala Ali towards the end of the movie are not a good substitute for plot development.
Meantime, we are treated to unlikable, two-dimensional characters and plot dangling plot threads (the animals are trying to tell us something!). Fancy camera work can't paper over these gaps.
The ending is abrupt and dumb. The young daughter cares more about the Friends finale? That isn't clever meta commentary. It's just dumb.
Fargo: Linda (2023)
This Show
Well, I never thought that I would ever see a puppet building montage, but here we are.
This had to be one of the dumbest hours of television I've ever seen in my entire life.
We are treated once again to another rehash of Nadine's story, this time in puppet form. Somehow this became an essential excuse for Fargo's very own tribute to Wes Anderson, via the weird, pointless cult of recovering women.
Meantime, Nadine's husband remains as brain damaged as he was before and Gator continues on with his own stupid escapades leading to nothing. We learned along the way that capitalism is bad.
I think the only man in the entire show with any redeeming qualities whatsoever is the improbably 500-year-old Ole Munch.
Dark Winds: Hózhó náhásdlii (Beauty Is Restored) (2023)
Jumped the Shark (Cliff)
I really enjoyed the first season. It had nuance, well-defined characters with understandable motives, and good story arcs.
Season two is different in a bad way. It started to remind me of Longmire when it went off the rails.
I think the Dark Winds really jumped the shark when Sheriff Leaphorn made his plunge off the cliff. Why? Because a little boy told him that the mad bomber had killed his son? There is no way the first season Joe Leaphorn would have done something so reckless. Part of the reason I liked him so much in the beginning was the fact that he had his feet on the ground and made decisions based on what he knew as opposed to simply overreacting to what he did not.
I also don't understand why they sidelined Jim Chee in season two. Rather than make him integral to the story, he seems to be spending a lot of times in hospital beds, hotel rooms, in cars, sitting and waiting.
Meantime, there are too many characters and too many half-finished subplots. We really don't need A. Martinez, who adds nothing to the story. I like Jeri Ryan, but same problem. If the show wanted to focus on women, why not Manuelito?
Did the cult matter? Not really. What about Rosemary Vines' (Jeri Ryan) affair? No idea. We had a whole story about Native American reproductive rights that did not mesh with anything and just killed what momentum the other stories might have had.
Just a shame.
The Last of Us: Long, Long Time (2023)
Love It with One Caveat
I think there is a lot that the show does extremely well. The set design, special effects, etc. Are all basically works of art. I hope that the show wins some well-deserved Emmys when it comes to these features.
Generally, the acting is also very good. Pedro Pascal is a solid Joel. Anna Torv is outstanding. She is able to convey a world weariness that fits her character like a glove. She also exhibits a very quiet authority.
Honestly, the one weak link that I see in the show after three episodes is Bella Ramsey. I get the desire to depict an adolescent, but her character is just grating and obnoxious. She also makes a constant stream of dumb decisions that endanger everyone around her. The first time she is out of the Boston quarantine zone, she almost gets them all killed by standing up and exclaiming right in front of a spotlight. She is never quiet when she needs to be and never listens to anyone.
Nico Parker would have been a much better choice as Ellie. She had a much more organic rapport with Pedro Pascal and frankly is a better actress than Ramsey.
Well, here's hoping or something close to an improvement as I watch,
Justified: City Primeval: City Primeval (2023)
A strangely passive Raylan Givens
I was a great fan of the original Justified series, particularly the Mags Bennett season.
It isn't fair to compare that show with the current product, but it is also unavoidable. Boyd Holbrook has solid chops in past work. Narcos comes to mind. But he is no Walton Goggins.
The writing also isn't up to par. I could start a drinking game just with "This is how we do it in Detroit."
What struck me though is just how passive Raylan Givens is in the first episode. I get that he is older and wiser, but most of the time he is a bystander, occasionally dismissed or pushed around by the other characters. It is a sad comparison of the Raylan who gave the gun thug his ultimatum in Miami long ago.
The Stand (2020)
Strangely Soulless
The core of The Stand is the conflict between good and evil and I'm surprised to see how poorly the 2020 remake handles that basic relationship. The writers don't seem to know what to do with those two qualities and it shows.
The "bad" characters come across as obnoxious, grating, vicious, etcetera. The 2020 Lloyd Henreid is hard to watch and my god, Ezra Miller's depiction of Trash Can Man is next level annoying. But evil, no. Miguel Ferrer played Henreid with the quiet resolve of a man who made peace with his decision to join the devil.
As far as the "good" characters, where to start. They are tentative, feckless, and overall, pretty bland. The committee in the 1994 version at least demonstrated some kind of resolve regarding their faith. I particularly liked Ruby Dee's interaction with Rob Lowe when he told her he did not believe in God. In 2020, it came across as another line read. No heart. No soul.
Mother Abigail, who essentially represents the Messiah, is reduced to an old woman waiting to die in a retirement home. The 2020 Randall Flagg is a non-entity throughout the series. When Dayna Jurgens killed herself before revealing Tom Cullen, Flagg almost looked bored.
No heart. No soul.
Station Eleven (2021)
Too Many Baffling Decisions
I have the book and enjoyed it a great deal after multiple readings.
I also understand that adaptations can be different, and these differences offer the viewer interesting opportunities.
As many people have already noted, the art design was beautiful throughout.
The problem is with the writing.
I can understand reducing Arthur Leander's role to increase focus on Kirsten. Okay, but do something coherent with that.
Why is Kirsten portrayed as paranoid on the show when the whole symphony in the book adopted basic survival skills to, well, survive. Why make her an outlier in the series?
In the book, she treated killing with regret and remorse. In the series, not so much.
Her bizarre changes of heart baffled me. First, she stabs the Prophet, but doesn't kill him? Why?
Later, after the attack on the golf course, she seeks him out to finish the job, until she did a complete 180 after finding him. Why?
Why did the writers think making the Prophet a sympathetic character was a good idea? He kidnapped children, murdered their parents, and trained them to be suicide bombers.
Why make the comic book into some weird Rosetta Stone? That was all it took to stop the children converging on the airport to kill everyone. Why?
I really wanted to like this series but found too much of it very frustrating to watch.
The King's Man (2021)
Hilariously Awful
I like the first movie, especially Colin Firth and the general tongue-in cheek approach. It helped that they did not take themselves too seriously.
The King's Man is different and not in a good way. If was as if the writers kept painting themselves into corners and picked the dumbest ideas possible to move the story forward.
Setting aside the obvious malpractice committed against history in general, there are too many moments where the movie is just hilariously awful.
Here are two:
A silent movie camera crew posted outside the Oval Office to film Mata Hari seducing Woodrow Wilson. I burst out laughing just looking at that scene.
Ray Fiennes (who is great) climbing up the cliff face like one of the Mario Brothers. Classic stuff.
Sensei Fran Kicks Ass (2020)
A Patient, Inspirational Documentary
It is pretty rare to find a person whose humility is greater than her formidable accomplishments. Fran Vall is one of those people, a former career foreign service officer, martial artist, and ski instructor. I would highly recommend this short documentary to any of my friends and colleagues interested in the life story of a truly inspirational woman.