ichsachmalso Reviews

Futurama (1999– )

One of my favourite shows ever

[10/10 · 7 March 2024]

I love Futurama!

Now this is how you do jokes for nerds. Big Bang Theory wishes they were this funny.

Not only that, but Futurama also does it without being mean-spirited and knows how to do heartfelt storylines.

The bouquet of characters is varied enough to make for interesting stories and apart from the rare stinker, I feel like this show has been much more consistent with quality than many others when taking into account how many seasons there already are.

Anyway, Futurama remains one of my favourite shows after all these years and I'm thrilled that we're getting new seasons. Here's to many more!

A Haunting in Venice (2023)

Unworthy of Poirot

[4/10 · 13 February 2024]

This was so boring.

Honestly it felt like this production had nothing to do with Poirot or any kind of Agatha Christie style mystery. Did they just take a random paranormal mystery script and rebrand it? It's not a great film by any standard, but especially not for Poirot.

Christie's Poirot at the best of times is smart, often humorous and handles matters deftly but heart-felt with a twinkle in his eye.

Humour has left Branagh's Poirot entirely, he's really trying his hardest to suck all of the fun out of the character and turn him into a tragic figure. His portrayal is joyless and serious as a car crash at all times.

Ariadne Oliver was charming in her own way in the books, but here she just comes across as an annoying opportunist and it's difficult to believe that Poirot would let himself get bullied out of retirement for her whims. And I do love the actress in other roles!

This was an odd mix of paranormal mumbo-jumbo and thoroughly depressed characters all around. Poirot's deduction got thrown in at the end, and was the only mildly interesting bit of the film.

The White Ribbon (2009)

Wow

[9/10 · 14 January 2024]

This film struck a real chord with me.

The themes of silence and cruelty are profound. The film is very focused on its characters and the spaces between what is being said and what is being shown.

The cinematography was beautiful and really served the mood of the whole piece.

The end came rather suddenly, but it felt befitting of the film. There can be no clean way to tie this up. It's not an easy watch for the material, but the story flows well and it's interesting to follow.

As someone with German heritage who was born into a very traditional family, I grew up knowing exactly those values and morals and all the hypocrisy and enforced control that can come with them. I think this film is historically quite accurate.

A Royal Christmas Holiday (2023 TV Movie)

Pretty dreadful

[4/10 · 14 January 2024]

In my opinion the most unbearable part of this movie was the actor portraying the prince - he tried SO hard to appear charming that it constantly looked like he was emulating "sexy squidward", and not in a good way. The acting itself definitely fell by the wayside (not to mention the accent but that's to be expected I guess).

The result was that any scene with him was just immensely distracting and comedic at inappropriate times. The rest of the movie was pretty by-the-book, but there wasn't any proper conflict.

The production value was okay.

Overall I wouldn't recommend it. Even in the narrow category of fake country royalty christmas movies there's better to be had.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023)

Entertaining

[7/10 · 14 December 2023]

When the book The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes was published, I liked it a lot more than I expected (having been apprehensive of it being about the villain of the preceding trilogy rather than any of the other characters' backstories).

Needless to say that I was proven wrong and waited for the movie adaptation with baited breath!

All in all I think they stayed very true to the source material, especially considering the very limited timeframe a single movie provides.

This of course meant that a lot of side characters got the shaft and some nuance was lost (especially relating to the finer points of Coriolanus's inner monologue), but I think they still hit all the emotional beats from the book.

Being this time-constricted and still crammed full of plot that needed handling, certain key moments had less time to breathe than I would have liked, but I guess that's always the gripe of book fans with movie adaptations. This could've easily been a two-parter.

My favourite casting choices were Lucy, Gaul, Highbottom and Sejanus. Coriolanus was acted well, but I kept thinking how he was too tall and old looking, and I didn't like how fake the blonde curls looked when his hair was still long.

The costuming was great I thought, and I loved the academy uniforms with the skirts over trousers.

Restore Point (2023)

Wow!

[8/10 · 14 September 2023]

The special effects and world building in this film were superb! I love how all the sci fi elements were a natural part of that society, even though it was so similar to ours. A lot of things were so subtle.

The story beats weren't anything new and some of the scenes dragged on a bit (probably didn't help that they were showing the film really late and everyone's eyes struggled to read the subtitles nearing midnight) but overall I found watching Restore Point a very enjoyable experience.

More of this type of world building please! :) Big studios really have no excuse for their substandard cgi if yours can look this good.

Anton & Giovanni's Adventures in Sicily (2023)

Too heavily scripted

[5/10 · 16 April 2023]

So I watched this hoping to learn a bit about Sicily... this is not what that programme does. All in all it contains maybe 4 facts and the rest is heavily scripted faffing about by Anton and Giovanni. It seemed more like a sort of wannabe Top Gear without the car stats.

It was well intentioned enough and the guys (and Rose) are likeable, but jeeez a lot of it came across so forced. I'm sure some spontaneous ad-libbing while learning about Sicily would've been charming enough without all those fake scenarios.

The only moment that seemed genuine was when we meet Giovannis family in the second half of the last part, that was sweet.

The Lost City (2022)

this movie is corny and knows it

[10/10 · 20 March 2023]

Absolutely loved it!

Sandra Bullock has always had stellar comedic timing and this is no different. She and Channing Tatum make for a great combo (he's got the golden retriever energy needed to balance out her intense nihilism).

David Ratcliffe as the zany supervillain was so enjoyable, I hope he gets to play these roles more often! The whole rescue scene with Nick Cave playing in the background? Amazing. I loved the soundtrack. There are so many iconic visuals as well.

This movie riffs on so many tropes and cliches, it's a delight. The stuff of tales. It also kind of makes it timeless? No notes, loved it and will watch it again! It's a classic in this household already.

Charming Christmas (2015 TV Movie)

A jumbled mess

[4/10 · 9 January 2023]

Usually these types of films are very straight forward: A person who isn't into Christmas meets a person who is (most likely in their place of work/town), romance happens.

It's always very clear who the sympathetic and the unsympathetic characters are, and who the redeemable ones are. Usually.

Not so in this film. For the first half of the movie Meredith is so irredeemably rude/dismissive to everyone and grossly greedy with nary a positive trait in sight that she comes across as the absolute villain of the movie. That's her whole personality in every scene.

On top of that we constantly get shown the much more likable struggling single mom, which genuinely made me think that SHE would be the actual love interest.

Then Nick appears and pursues Meredith romantically for literally no reason (she's consistently rude to him as well). And somehow that turns her whole personality by 180 degrees within a day??

I am willing to suspend my disbelief a great amount for these types of movies, but that was just ridiculous.

Now I've read in the comments below that this used to be a book with 3 different stories and suddenly the mess makes a lot more sense. This definitely wasn't consolidated well and the side plots seem very disconnected and only confuse the main storyline.

Violent Night (2022)

Lazy

[5/10 · 4 December 2022]

This movie doesn't really appear to know what kind of genre it wants to be.

There is a lot of graphic violence and David Harbour is good at coming across like a cynical bad Santa type (5 stars for him), but at the same time they tried to make about a third of this film into a hallmark Christmas movie which just.... doesn't gel at all.

Despite the "wholesome" aspects they tried to add, even the girl's parents appear to be horrible people (beating someone to death and stealing millions respectively).

On top of the tonal mess there were some very odd plot threads that never led anywhere like Santa originally being a viking (??!?) and apparently also an alcoholic who's got troubles with his wife, which is also never elaborated on nor resolved. And the dad just moved 300 millions out of his mom's safe (money which btw she embezzled??) and put them outdoors into bales of hay(????). It all felt lazy and not very thought through.

They weren't as creative with their "defense" of the house as they could've been, which arguably should've been the main draw of the movie. It's all very graphic yet pretty bland.

This is not the fun classic it's trying to be and it doesn't really read like a satire either.

Triangle of Sadness (2022)

And we are all sinking with them

[9/10 · 17 October 2022]

This was thoroughly enjoyable. Packed densely with neon metaphors, commentary and humour, honestly I couldn't have been more entertained.

The power imbalances were often hard to watch (all on purpose obviously) and Abigail's comeuppance and the reveal in the end felt like the right moment to stop.

All in all I felt like it was a great interplay of entertainment and clear commentary about what we're (as rich nations in general and billionaires/capitalism in particular) are doing to the environment and everyone around us. Humanity came through in its small facets like the Captain and the Russian bonding over their nihilistic quote-off.

The pacing was snappy and I never noticed that over 2 hours had even passed.

The Winchesters (2022–2023)

Sweet start

[7/10 · 13 October 2022]

I was feeling very muted about a Supernatural prequel being made, but I think this has brought me around to the idea.

I like all of the main characters, especially Mary and Carlos. I didn't really like grown-up John in the original show for neglecting his children, so it's really interesting to see him all sweet and innocent here (albeit with PTSD it seems).

To everyone raging about John suddenly knowing about hunting: Do you not think Jensen Ackles, who has acted on Supernatural for 15 years, knows that? Of course he does. I'm sure there will be some kind of reveal within the show that explains this discrepancy.

See How They Run (2022)

Regrettably lame

[5/10 · 18 September 2022]

I didn't know anything going into this, just that it was a whodunit.

I expected to like this a lot as I am a big fan of whodunit mysteries and Agatha Christie in particular. Imagine my joy when I found out it was actually partially set in The Mousetrap theatre!

However that's where the fun ended. I liked Saoirse Ronan's character, but it felt like maybe she would've gotten a better story in a different movie. Her constantly jumping to conclusions was a nice spin, but it really mostly didn't feel like a whodunit.

Everything fell a bit flat in this film. Most jokes didn't land and the ending wasn't witty and somehow neither subverting, nor adhering to the genre. It just felt a bit meh.

Nope (2022)

Visually stunning but didn't grip me at all

[6/10 · 12 August 2022]

The whole movie I was waiting for something to click into place, but it never did. The pacing felt off and too slow for most of it, without suspense to make it interesting.

There are some cool concepts and designs (the ape, the cloud, the design of the you-know-what), but it's like most of them just got presented and then never really connected to the story in a satisfactory way.

For most of the movie the stakes weren't clear to me and the introduction to the characters was meager (lots of monotone mumbling for much of the dialogue), so I didn't really feel like I could latch onto something emotionally. This led to me just being mildly confused and mildly bored for a lot of the film, waiting for something to connect it all and resonate.

The pace picked up for the climax, but because nothing led up to it emotionally, it was just sort of cool to look at.

Get Out is one of my all time favourite films and I liked Us well enough, but Nope I just couldn't get into.

Mandibles (2020)

Hilarious

[9/10 · 7 August 2022]

Like some other reviewers, I was instantly reminded of Bill & Ted in a good way.

Hapless bros on a mad adventure, getting by with complete luck and coincidence. Loved the puppetry, too!

Lots of laugh out loud moments, though I gotta say the portrayal of the disabled lady was a bit offensive.

Speak No Evil (2022)

Chilling

[8/10 · 7 August 2022]

I really liked it. The last couple minutes were very graphic, but I loved that most of it was very subtle psychological horror with situations that many people can relate to.

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022)

extremely boring

[4/10 · 22 July 2022]

Wow, this was bad.

The only reason i'm even giving it 4 stars is some good visuals and effort by the actors.

However the rest of it was dreadful. Despite knowing all those characters and having been at least partially invested in them, this movie made me feel absolutely nothing. I did not care what happened at all.

The plot was so obscure, most of it was just people walking places, doing boring things and having conversations about other boring things.

Also no matter how good(?) the CGI may be, all the excessive use left me cold. I think they should've used more practical effects, especially in those scenes where humans directly interact with the beasts. Not that there were even many beasts to be seen.

The fan service was embarrassing and seemed desperate. Look, a snitch flying past Hogwarts! Look, now it's a hippogriff flying past Hogwarts! Hey, remember the Great Hall??

All it did was remind the audience of the infinitely better original stories. I'm no fan of JKR but I liked the Harry Potter books. It's shocking to think that the same author had a hand in this atrocity.

I only managed to sit through the whole thing because I was waiting for the epic final battle... and then I remembered that they intended to make FIVE of these movies, not three. No thanks, I won't be enduring another one of these..

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (2020)

A fun romp

[8/10 · 17 June 2022]

As someone who's grown up watching Eurovision, this was more fun than expected! The way they gently poke fun at the event is sweet instead of grating. I don't usually watch Will Farrell movies but he wasn't too over the top for this film.

Dan Stevens should definitely keep the Wham! Aesthetic, it suits him.

Roadfood (2021– )

Could this get any more wholesome?

[10/10 · 17 January 2022]

Food and travel and Misha Collins?? Sign me the hell up.

I love all the stories of locals and their connections to the food that is being presented. There really is so much heart and love in these conversations and I'm actually learning things.

The only drawback of this show is that it consistently leaves me hungry, but on the other hand it also gives me a lot of inspiration to make my own dishes, so really I'm not complaining.

I hope there are many seasons to come, how about editions on different continents?

Sherlock (2010–2017)

What the heck was season 4

[7/10 · 17 January 2021]

Being a long-time fan of the Sherlock Holmes books, naturally I was very excited about this show. And the first season really wowed me back in 2010, drew me in and made me a fan. I followed it for years even as the quality declined and plots grew more chaotic and motivations harder to follow.

I will admit that I had experienced Moffat's writing before and that I should have known better, but like a fool, I ignored that knowledge. He has that thing where he's really good at setting up premises and pretending to be deep but then doesn't follow through. In the end, it's all about looking as smart as possible, regardless of whether it makes sense for the plot or character continuity. And by "smart", I mean unexpected (and those are definitely not the same thing).

Anyway, Sherlock's long-lost sister?? Watson beating up Holmes?? These points alone are enough to make me want to roll my eyes so hard I pass out. I would not recommend watching beyond season 2.

Supernatural: Carry On (2020) Season 15, Episode 20

They did Dean dirty

[2/10 · 22 November 2020]

Finally watched it and oh my god. I can't believe Dean died like that, it's such a shame. He never got the life he wanted to have and then he just gets killed by a random vampire? And where were Cas and Eileen? Covid isn't a very good excuse for these things, since you can have representation of a character without even having the actor there (not to mention that I'm pretty sure the actors wanted to participate). Anyway Dean just driving around heaven apparently for decades feels so hollow and meaningless, he deserved better.

By the way, why was this episode soo short? Did they cut out half the plot or something? Is that why it was so drab?

Downsizing (2017)

Unexpected

[7/10 · 25 October 2020]

You know what, it wasn't bad. It definitely wasn't what I was expecting (a humorous exploration of society split into normal-size and small people), but it wasn't a bad movie. It takes a while to notice that the film is actually about the main character's midlife crisis and a look at different ways people deal with big changes in their lives. It's definitely interesting enough to keep one's attention if one doesn't go in with the expectation that it's a Hollywood blockbuster. If they had made it just a little bit more self-aware, zany, visually more interesting, played a little less straight, then this might have been a successful festival film.

Stargate: Atlantis (2004–2009)

Season 4 blew up the show

[6/10 · 27 August 2020]

I enjoyed watching the first 3 seasons of this, but then they "mixed up" the original cast by blowing up half of it, making me lose all interest. It was clear that the showrunners cared only for their own self-insert character (Rodney McKay) and whoever they had a crush on (Samantha Carter and Dr. Keller), the original character dynamics of the show sort of went out of the window with that.

Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars (2004)

A great continuation of the show

[9/10 · 20 August 2020]

This encapsuled all of Farscape's best qualities and was an absolute pleasure to watch!

Rygel being pregnant was hilarious. The chemistry between the leads was as at its top game. Aeryn having the baby while actively participating in the shoot out, John's joy and their journey onwards was actually incredibly moving.

What a great way to end the series, though I wouldn't say no to more of course. The great thing about the long time lapse if there was a further continuation would be that the kid would be completely grown up and an independent character already, ha!

Farscape (1999–2003)

Space, Found Family, Creativity, Romance and so much Latex.

[8/10 · 19 August 2020]

I love Farscape. It's unapologetically sci fi, it's got all the tropes that make the genre great, as well as imaginative costumes, characters, scenery and story lines. What I particularly like about it is its strong focus on the "found family" trope. Whereas other spaceship-based sci fi shows are often about a military-style crew or at least a practiced and fairly homogeneous team of some sort, the main characters of Farscape are a mixed bunch of complete strangers to each other who barely know what they're doing in the beginning and much of the time after.

The first season especially focuses on their bonding and offers a lot of lovely moments of the characters getting to know each other, strengthening their bonds, being kind-hearted and making difficult decisions to save each others' lives (and that of their ship Moya) again and again. Following seasons started focusing more on external influences in the style of classic sci fi plots and things become a bit more violent and standard space-combat in the process, but the found family bonding did still remain a strong part of the narrative.

I think the Henson puppets add great otherworldly value (in addition to ageing much better than CGI) and I loved the alien designs in general. We got a good bunch of non-humanoids and the overall variety and crafty nature of the set pieces reminded me of Doctor Who. Another funny thing is that Crichton makes a lot of now outdated references to Earth culture. Usually that would detract from a show when viewing it years later, but in this case it means that as an audience member you can now feel the same confusion as the aliens having to listen to Crichton's references, making it kind of charming. The ship Moya (and later Talyn) being an actual character with separate motivation which can communicate through Pilot and interact with other characters adds great emotional value and higher stakes in dangerous situations.

More things I love: The continuity. It must tell you something about other shows when you are actually positively surprised that continuity exists in a show, haha. Also, characters aren't afraid to cry or get teary-eyed, male ones as much as female ones, if not more. I think that this is great because it makes everyone appear very relatable and emotionally invested and not just tough super hero type idols who want to shoot things up. Zhaan was a great character and I missed her a lot after she left. I wonder if they couldn't have kept her on with a sort of different makeup (as the actress got health problems from it).

The John/Aeryn romance is a great part of the show and my opinion the first 3 seasons were a masterclass in how a romantic relationship between main characters can be kept fresh on-screen. At all times the tension between the characters was tangible and well balanced, allowing for frequent points of high emotion. When you think about how other shows have tried and often failed to get a grip on this, that is an amazing feat. Normally with a central pairing that drives a lot of the characters' motivations, it either gets dragged out in really annoying and contrived ways or the tension is resolved and results in stagnation or even the end of the show. Farscape manages the tension admirably with a mix of sci fi tropes and inherent character traits, despite John and Aeryn having acted on that tension since the very first season. Season 4 made it a bit too erratic to really rekindle the old dynamic through a frustrating lack of communication.

Some criticism: I think Scorpius/Harvey was overused. He was a worthy villain, but on the whole there were so many of these slapsticky Harvey mind sequences that I did tire of them after a while as the novelty wore off after a few episodes. Also, in the latter half of season 2 & first half of season 3, there is a weird undercurrent of misogyny, and I'm not even talking about the ever deepening cleavages. It is particularly visible in how Chiana & Jool and other characters' reactions to them are portrayed. Especially early on Chiana is being infantilised and sexualised simultaneously, and frequently insulted for it. A lot of slurs are used, not just for them but also other female characters. Usually curse words in Farscape are replaced by made up equivalents, which made these in contrast all the more jarring and extreme. It was very uncomfortable to watch and luckily started dissipating again for the most part halfway through season 3. We could already do a lot better in the early 2000s.

Overall, Farscape is a fun, imaginative romp and a great addition to the sci fi genre. Predictably the early CGI didn't hold up very well, but luckily mostly real props, sets and puppets were used, making the show still very watchable decades later. The finale is a cruel cliffhanger and I'm kind of glad that I only watched it now that we know "The Peacekeeper Wars" followed. Can't wait to watch those as well!