The characters talk like AI; they act a bit too dry, which hurts the extent of dry humour aimed in this show; and the comedy flies away from your hands. Other times the acting feels a bit pushed and due to too much effort. Some compare it to The Big Bang Theory; however, the latter wouldn't rush the comedy to fly away before you are given a chance to taste it -so time limit is not a subject here. Father-son acting together as father and son in the show could have been an interesting tension to watch, but no, that didn't help much, either. I am surprised to find that Netflix was involved in this. Thankfully, Fred Armisen and Sian Clifford are warming the show.
Reviews
13 Reviews
one-dimensional story
9 February 2023
Sadly, one-dimensional storytelling most of the time, and seems like an abuse of the acting skills of Melissa Leo. Her character seems out of tunes repeatedly, like a caricature of meaningless angst. I doubt it if her real goals and character were like that. If the movie aimed to satisfy a certain sentimental audience fixated on religion in U. S., it makes sense to shoot such a weak movie. Maybe, that kind of audience would like to watch caricatures of meaningless angst all along.
However, lots of controversial details about the story remain half-explored in the film. What's worse, the film takes a sudden turn to gore towards the end, while the whole thing never reaches a level of saturation to make justice to the story. Why did the director and the team even undertake this movie honestly?
I'd have liked to watch this as a documentary or a hybrid of genres.
However, lots of controversial details about the story remain half-explored in the film. What's worse, the film takes a sudden turn to gore towards the end, while the whole thing never reaches a level of saturation to make justice to the story. Why did the director and the team even undertake this movie honestly?
I'd have liked to watch this as a documentary or a hybrid of genres.
Man on Pause
(2022)
swollen
6 November 2022
Watching this series has reinforced my faith in the power of directing in a movie or show; so an average scenario could be elevated to a masterpiece with the right angles and acting employed, technical specifics brought to play, and wonderful use of that energy stuck in the margins of a storyboard. Likewise, a good scenario can be torn down to the ground with a directorship that likes to overspill bits and pieces of filmmaking. This series reminds me of what overspilling can do. It's as if the directors deliberately created gaps in acting or scenes so that they could repeat or amplify certain blanks and plant there the sounds/screams/typologies/moments of stupidity they wanted to brag about knowing. We already see too much affirmation of the very last feature on any random Müge Anli episode on TV. Why are the characters so swollen with banality? Why would we be content with stopping at that much if claiming to do dark comedy?
The Life and Movies of Erşan Kuneri
(2022– )
Good kitsch
7 June 2022
Warning: Spoilers
Try and take this series as an example of good kitsch --really, this series is neither crazy kind of funny that keeps the audience on the surface all the time nor it is as banal as some reviews here and elsewhere found it to be. But there is honest critique, not just frustrations and displacement of real-life situations with unlikely new situations, or not simply words, accents and bodies used to build comic material. There is comic spirit that wants to come to terms with the 80s, a period of going into anticipated oppression and neoliberal dilution of art and cultural production. I'm not suggesting Cem Yilmaz chose this motivation even deliberately, it could be just the time decor for the story, but the story definitely adopted troubles with the period. After all, his other works did not carry this tone much. With an added volume of neoliberalism (that values surface material all the more) in the country in the 2010s and 2020s, any worthy comedian cannot stay deaf to and uninspired by such motivation, nonetheless.
The character buildup for Ersan is worth seeing: episodes offer a closer look at the fiction character of Ersan Kuneri (whose name appeared as a knockoff of Sean Connery, gotta see Yilmaz's other movies' plots to make the connection). He's one amateur and inspired filmmaker, his original fictive name is Cemil Can Tarakli, his surface fictive name: Kuneri. An entrepreneurial character, his life of precarious jobs turned to porn-maker turned to foreign cigarette-smuggler in the 70s' Turkey turned to doing some jailtime around the coup. Then getting out and finding new motivation to make films unlike the earlier porn filmography, the persona wants to be true to his filmmaking ambitions and in that he is failing beautifully - until he turns to arabesk (the country's mode of culture, besides accepted and greatly promoted lifestyle in the 1980s and 1990s ). That's the end of season. Maybe he'll succeed after arabesk. Let's see... If I can borrow words from one of my favorite series, Futurama, there was the Bender, the lovable rascal. So, Ersan figure here becomes kind of another 'lovable rascal' to some of us. His team remains an earnest lot, in that they will be comical compared to the rest of the changes around them.
There are well-thought moments and absurd twists, which can clearly become more than constant or intense laughter. If there were more of those intense laughters, more people would be crazy about the show. If there were more of those constant laughter-materials, men who can't do without 'swearing' in their daily lives could still embrace those comic moments and repeat them in teen-spirited bro-meetings. But now many did find the series disturbing because there is so much slang and swearing in the show. Please. Suddenly disturbed by your real life?
Could this story be told without the slang and swearing? Could a character who's already involved in nightlife, running a bar and whose producer who formerly made sex movies wants to continue on that lane, open up to us by speaking clean, tidy, well-behaved Turkish? Could their cast of formerly sex movie stars look convincing if they didn't swear and use lots of slang?
Take the Cooperative Kemal episode: in one scene of a socialist movie they attempt to make, the father trying to calm down the furious bride-to-be swears at the bride unexpectedly, as if words of love, and everybody in the room is super cool with that, the urbanized and elegant sisters included. Instead, they go on to shush the bride-figure who's cursing and getting more furious. Why not take this part of a comic scene that is larger than a few reckless laughters? TV, news, morning shows in the country are full of male characters who treat their female family members and acquaintances worse than they would treat their dicks. Which one is less funny, the show or that part of us? If you don't see the scene that way, if you say that such a hint on sexism was not flowing into the plot, okay, choose to take it so. But do so by knowing that many figures who've been disturbed by the slang and swearing in the series can also be regularly swearing in their daily lives. Honestly, watching the whole thing twice, I couldn't convince myself that slang and swearing were down-factors. The character build-up has more veins that slang to baffle the audience. FYI: elsewhere on a TV program, Cem Yilmaz dropped some hints on why this jargon, why swearing in the joke remains.
Some scenes in Cem Yilmaz movies are cartoon-like. Always. That's inevitable due to his history as a cartoonist. Watching the series for the first time, those bits make one giggle and giggle more. But the cast is more than cartoons. Watching the series a second time, I didn't laugh with the same intensity; instead, details, gestures, plot, a time depicted in the movies struck me as more fundamentally comical. A few friends had a similar impression upon watching: we have realized again that the country has become more and more conservative compared to what's in the show. We were children in the 80s. We knew that was more in tune with the decade's mode of living. The shorts, the manners, the fights, and the small steps of arabesk in daily life... something about these is more decent, relaxed and real than what we have now. Perhaps I feel obliged to add this because I remember a common reaction to his most recent couple of movies, Comidark movies. After I watched them in the theatre, even the ticket-girl sneered at them: not the usual Cem Yilmaz, she said. He lost it (the comic vibe) they say, she added. I don't know, I had to reply. He seemed to be after something that is more than laughters on the surface. I was able to find the comic vibe in them. I could watch those as part of a transformative phase in his trajectory. But we live in a country that has become super-uncomfortable with transformation. That itself is one of the comical features of this place. Perhaps, Ersan Kuneri needs to be considered with that transformation.
The character buildup for Ersan is worth seeing: episodes offer a closer look at the fiction character of Ersan Kuneri (whose name appeared as a knockoff of Sean Connery, gotta see Yilmaz's other movies' plots to make the connection). He's one amateur and inspired filmmaker, his original fictive name is Cemil Can Tarakli, his surface fictive name: Kuneri. An entrepreneurial character, his life of precarious jobs turned to porn-maker turned to foreign cigarette-smuggler in the 70s' Turkey turned to doing some jailtime around the coup. Then getting out and finding new motivation to make films unlike the earlier porn filmography, the persona wants to be true to his filmmaking ambitions and in that he is failing beautifully - until he turns to arabesk (the country's mode of culture, besides accepted and greatly promoted lifestyle in the 1980s and 1990s ). That's the end of season. Maybe he'll succeed after arabesk. Let's see... If I can borrow words from one of my favorite series, Futurama, there was the Bender, the lovable rascal. So, Ersan figure here becomes kind of another 'lovable rascal' to some of us. His team remains an earnest lot, in that they will be comical compared to the rest of the changes around them.
There are well-thought moments and absurd twists, which can clearly become more than constant or intense laughter. If there were more of those intense laughters, more people would be crazy about the show. If there were more of those constant laughter-materials, men who can't do without 'swearing' in their daily lives could still embrace those comic moments and repeat them in teen-spirited bro-meetings. But now many did find the series disturbing because there is so much slang and swearing in the show. Please. Suddenly disturbed by your real life?
Could this story be told without the slang and swearing? Could a character who's already involved in nightlife, running a bar and whose producer who formerly made sex movies wants to continue on that lane, open up to us by speaking clean, tidy, well-behaved Turkish? Could their cast of formerly sex movie stars look convincing if they didn't swear and use lots of slang?
Take the Cooperative Kemal episode: in one scene of a socialist movie they attempt to make, the father trying to calm down the furious bride-to-be swears at the bride unexpectedly, as if words of love, and everybody in the room is super cool with that, the urbanized and elegant sisters included. Instead, they go on to shush the bride-figure who's cursing and getting more furious. Why not take this part of a comic scene that is larger than a few reckless laughters? TV, news, morning shows in the country are full of male characters who treat their female family members and acquaintances worse than they would treat their dicks. Which one is less funny, the show or that part of us? If you don't see the scene that way, if you say that such a hint on sexism was not flowing into the plot, okay, choose to take it so. But do so by knowing that many figures who've been disturbed by the slang and swearing in the series can also be regularly swearing in their daily lives. Honestly, watching the whole thing twice, I couldn't convince myself that slang and swearing were down-factors. The character build-up has more veins that slang to baffle the audience. FYI: elsewhere on a TV program, Cem Yilmaz dropped some hints on why this jargon, why swearing in the joke remains.
Some scenes in Cem Yilmaz movies are cartoon-like. Always. That's inevitable due to his history as a cartoonist. Watching the series for the first time, those bits make one giggle and giggle more. But the cast is more than cartoons. Watching the series a second time, I didn't laugh with the same intensity; instead, details, gestures, plot, a time depicted in the movies struck me as more fundamentally comical. A few friends had a similar impression upon watching: we have realized again that the country has become more and more conservative compared to what's in the show. We were children in the 80s. We knew that was more in tune with the decade's mode of living. The shorts, the manners, the fights, and the small steps of arabesk in daily life... something about these is more decent, relaxed and real than what we have now. Perhaps I feel obliged to add this because I remember a common reaction to his most recent couple of movies, Comidark movies. After I watched them in the theatre, even the ticket-girl sneered at them: not the usual Cem Yilmaz, she said. He lost it (the comic vibe) they say, she added. I don't know, I had to reply. He seemed to be after something that is more than laughters on the surface. I was able to find the comic vibe in them. I could watch those as part of a transformative phase in his trajectory. But we live in a country that has become super-uncomfortable with transformation. That itself is one of the comical features of this place. Perhaps, Ersan Kuneri needs to be considered with that transformation.
why say minimalism while you mean to tune into modesty?
5 June 2021
Warning: Spoilers
After you see this title, go watch a movie from the so-called corners of the world (looking from the center-view in the life of an American white-collar consumer). The gap between haves and have-nots will make better sense. The frame of this documentary will also be clearer, so before you get on board with such universal minimalism, acknowledge that this is not speaking much to rural, low-income, displaced people among several other groups of people who cannot let go of ordinary items in case they might never get a better deal/chance for the same price. It might speak to hoarders, people who have money to burn in their bank account, people who can roam the earth... It might speak to people who feel a subtle sense of guilt for choosing money over people at some point in their lives - albeit for justified reasons... Anyway, one major upside to the documentary has been to hear Schor's comment about materialism.
Los Conductos
(2020)
opaque statement, still liked it.
10 April 2021
A slow, strong, hopeful movie, and it will seem fairly opaque to many, I guess. The symbolism of color, reliance on self-voice but not much dialogue, and the ending pulled me to consider this movie in the 'hopeful' category, though there is very little sweetness involved in the plot. Slow, poetic, with a foggy plot at times, but it came full circle thanks to the end scene. Perhaps I watched it on a good timing. After a couple of mediocre, depleting examples, this one offered something else: it looked less inviting at first and more honest as it unfolded. It was far from depleting. It might as well be a statement in the form of a movie.
High Seas
(2019–2020)
Season 3, wth?!
13 August 2020
The rapidly-revolving drama and some carelessness with details kill the noir in this season. At one time some characters act like they are outside the scene (as if unaffected by the physical and temporal conditions) and in the next act, they are jumping back to the scene in light speed, understanding things the viewers might be still questioning.
Agir Romantik
(2020)
confused about the genre & the plot
18 February 2020
What could otherwise prove to be solid fun as a crime movie that used the potential of a messy neighborhood in Istanbul turned into a weird romantic comedy marketing item. What was the director/writer thinking? Did nobody assist him? Terrible linking of scenes, lost dialogues... Then, a bunch of good actors/actresses pump up the movie's prestige -- I guess --, but what for, in the end? In the middle of the movie, I thought maybe the movie aimed to promote the young actor and the actress. However, good-looking actors and actresses are not enough to make it a story. Clearly, the director was confused about the sequences, the length, and how to fill in the juicy details of a plot. Sad to see many examples of popular Turkish cinema still waste filming locations, seasoned actors, stories and time.
precarity
9 February 2020
''...guess I'm going back to the deli counter'' are some of the last words to take away from the first episode of this show. Despite how this show clearly exuberates colors, creativity and courage, it is surely stained by an 'outsider' reality. The words of a let-go contestant in the end of the episode put me back to that reality, and made me dispel the value of changing a face so radically and beautifully.
Ex
(2009)
great until the last scene
6 October 2010
Warning: Spoilers
What a rich movie! Rich by the number of characters, rich by the show of affection and unhappiness with humour, rich by the shortcuts to tell us what's going on (even though the film is literally two hours and the length sometimes causes short sighs by the spectator).
Watching the long-distance-relationship couple, I was reminded of a recently-watched movie "Nights and Weekends", but then I thought Ex has a better way to show the complexity as it combines many stories (although it's now boring more than interesting to see the aesthetic touch of those films that pull many private lives as single stories and clash them, push them or make them public around one lovable, profitable theme, while still every story belongs to their private boxes during most of the film). In the movie exists the kind of humour that gets you ready to smile even there's no occasion to; faces of actors are chosen well; it's even been a nice surprise for me to see the surnames Tognazzi and Gassman at the end, and to learn these are the sons of two remarkable names in Italian comedy.
But to me the film lost its richness a bit and turned to normal comedies at the very end. Until the last scenes of "many kisses later", the movie was flowing. At the last scenes of couples kissing -except maybe the two lovers who finally get together at the airport-, the act told the spectator: Hey, you're a spectator! Suddenly you're out of the film, which wouldn't be a problem if you never were in. But.. hey, we were in! Maybe the film should have ended when two ex's, the policeman and the doctor, brought together by fate, by the common cause of stalking, looked as a team under the bar lights.
Watching the long-distance-relationship couple, I was reminded of a recently-watched movie "Nights and Weekends", but then I thought Ex has a better way to show the complexity as it combines many stories (although it's now boring more than interesting to see the aesthetic touch of those films that pull many private lives as single stories and clash them, push them or make them public around one lovable, profitable theme, while still every story belongs to their private boxes during most of the film). In the movie exists the kind of humour that gets you ready to smile even there's no occasion to; faces of actors are chosen well; it's even been a nice surprise for me to see the surnames Tognazzi and Gassman at the end, and to learn these are the sons of two remarkable names in Italian comedy.
But to me the film lost its richness a bit and turned to normal comedies at the very end. Until the last scenes of "many kisses later", the movie was flowing. At the last scenes of couples kissing -except maybe the two lovers who finally get together at the airport-, the act told the spectator: Hey, you're a spectator! Suddenly you're out of the film, which wouldn't be a problem if you never were in. But.. hey, we were in! Maybe the film should have ended when two ex's, the policeman and the doctor, brought together by fate, by the common cause of stalking, looked as a team under the bar lights.
An Education
(2009)
A girl learning her lesson... A mainstream story of growing-up
14 July 2010
'Is this coming-of-age movie a bildungs-film?' I thought at first and went to see the film to find out. It seemed a bildung story, but it was not in the end, because it lacks originality and complex relations required in such a film. No, the interesting story of a young girl turns out to be a bad representation and "lecture" of what will become of a girl if she doesn't behave well. Overall, they tried to create a lively atmosphere of the 1960s London, you can sense that, but why on earth did they need to end the movie with a lesson about the right path? Does it matter that we see the girl learned her lesson? It reminds me of simple didactic films in my home-country; these movies can be made anytime and they all end the same way: a mainstream growing-up story at the end, leaving the psychological complexity of mind and soul out of the story. Such a story should have been screen-played with a different outlook.
Working on Leela's character
13 July 2010
Warning: Spoilers
I was kind of carried away by the way this episode builds up the tension and excitement, even though I guessed what happened as the words -wake up!- repeatedly made it clear that something was up -and it involved a hospital-. Still, so beautifully written that I now love the show even more.
Because, in this episode, we get to know another, more intimate Leela, whose feelings of compassion and responsibility mix with love and become stronger than ever in the plot. She's in dead-sleep but her feelings have opened up. We get to see Leela's love for Fry. In the earlier episodes, the relationship between the two remained sunny and funny, while energies mismatched in some way.It was as if Bender was always involved between Leela's and Fry's relationship. Now, in this episode, the third-person/robot goes back into the background, and it becomes a lovely show of what some Futurama viewers awaited for so long. I guess.
Because, in this episode, we get to know another, more intimate Leela, whose feelings of compassion and responsibility mix with love and become stronger than ever in the plot. She's in dead-sleep but her feelings have opened up. We get to see Leela's love for Fry. In the earlier episodes, the relationship between the two remained sunny and funny, while energies mismatched in some way.It was as if Bender was always involved between Leela's and Fry's relationship. Now, in this episode, the third-person/robot goes back into the background, and it becomes a lovely show of what some Futurama viewers awaited for so long. I guess.
Der ewige Jude
(1940)
fine trash... or, kitsch for the politics of its time!
16 July 2009
Warning: Spoilers
I would perhaps give 6 or 7 to this propaganda film because it shows when and how a propaganda film becomes successful. If there are people who watch this piece and think that "well then Jews must have done something to be treated the way they were treated in WW2", then the movie is very cleverly made to conceal 'why's and 'how's as well as mix correct and false observations on how a people live. What more can a propaganda movie aim for? The part in which an American movie about the Rothschild family is included is re-used very shrewdly here, for instance. The question of why the Jew keeps his wealth away from the officer is never asked. No one mentions the system of taxation within that particular social strata.
Besides, the level of excitement (or, the level of disgust) in the movie increases slowly and the solution-like end of the movie suits the aim and the musts of doing propaganda. The audience would leave in joy and gratefulness to the times that are coming up...well done.
In the movie, there is a kind of simplicity that addresses the most basic emotional perception of the audience. The movie is kind of history today, so no need to fuss much about it actually. However, in this simplicity of words of ethnic degradation, a careful watcher can find relevance to today's cultural hatred, violence, decivilization as well as the problems of integration. Overall, fine trash.
Besides, the level of excitement (or, the level of disgust) in the movie increases slowly and the solution-like end of the movie suits the aim and the musts of doing propaganda. The audience would leave in joy and gratefulness to the times that are coming up...well done.
In the movie, there is a kind of simplicity that addresses the most basic emotional perception of the audience. The movie is kind of history today, so no need to fuss much about it actually. However, in this simplicity of words of ethnic degradation, a careful watcher can find relevance to today's cultural hatred, violence, decivilization as well as the problems of integration. Overall, fine trash.
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