zerobeat Reviews

John Wick (2014)

So bad it's bad.

[3/10 · 13 February 2024]

The rote and mindless tropes right off the bat had me convinced that I was about to watch something that might be clever, commenting on those tropes. But no... it's just one superficial action movie, the kind where, for example, a dozen skilled hitmen descend on Wick's home to kill him, but only attack one at a time. At no time does another hitman enter the scene when Wick is occupied with one.

It's a rare thing to be so utterly bored while so much is going on.

I've seen complaints abut reviews like mine which say "just watch it for what it is!" But that's like asking not to complain about crappy food because "just eat it for what is is!".

The series "Barry" and the movie "Nobody" did this sort of thing way way way better.

The Orville: Twice in a Lifetime (2022) Season 3, Episode 6

Doesn't shy away from serious personal conflict

[9/10 · 15 October 2023]

That some people won't like this episode is precisely why I do. That is, the uncompromising thing that the Union officers (Ed, Kelly etc..) must attempt to do even though from the audience's perspective (and certainly Gordon's) that it's incredibly mean spirited and ethically awful in various ways.

But one has to put oneself in the perspective of the characters, not in some kind of "divine overseer of the entire internal universe". The Union officers are taught that disrupting the timeline is a very bad thing, and that dying to prevent it is even worth it. No amount of speculation of "well, he didn't REALLY change the timeline in a significant enough way to matter" is relevant to what the Union officers must do.

I thought the conviction of both Gordon's AND the Union officers' reasons were very well thought out. That they both have excellent points, which makes no version of the outcome ideal, is what makes great storytelling. It's what much of real life is about.

Star Trek: Picard (2020–2023)

Season2 pales in comparison to Season1

[6/10 · 10 April 2022]

Other than the last episode of Season1, I thought the entire thing was quite good. I didn't mind at all that it didn't "feel" like any ST before it.

So far I've only seen the first 6 episodes of Season2. The writing is definitely worse. It has descended more into "continuity porn" - making references to other ST elements just for the sake of exciting fanboys I suppose.

Speaking of continuity, they can't even get THAT right when it ought to be included. In ST lore It's established that by the late 23rd century time travel can be achieved by a starship (The Enterprise A does it in The Voyage Home. And the Enterprise E does it in First Contact, and it's just considered "a thing we can definitely do with our regular starship engine"). Yet here they lament the fact that they can't do it without somebody as brilliant as Spock doing the calculations (there's that continuity porn again) - but oh wait, there's also the Borg Queen who's smart enough to do it. So THAT becomes the justification for letting her be part of the crew, and who will be necessary to keep around to go forward in time again to return "home". That's just super sloppy writing.

Alison Pill (Agnes Jurati) and Michelle Hurd (Raffi Musiker) are the best actors and characters on the show. There is some especially GOOD writing with Jurati's character. Well, except for the part where the band magically accompanies her to a song she spontaneously sings. That crap is "musical theatre logic", which has its place in the fantasy of a musical.

Patrick Stewart seems to be playing it all rather one-note. There often seems to be that "desperation" voice he does.

EDIT: After watching all 10 episodes of Season 2, it seems my review above might be a little too kind! Yes, it got worse.

EDIT: Season 3 has been excellent so far (I've seen the first 6 episodes). I am reminded how good TNG got starting in Season 3 too, but there wasn't anything so terrible in TNG's first two seasons that was as bad as Picard Season 2, or at least if there was it didn't span some multi-episode arc.

Minx (2022–2023)

Sitcom-style cardboard writing but good premise

[6/10 · 10 April 2022]

Ok, not ALL of the writing is bad. Generally speaking, they do a good job of feminism advocacy. But it seems such a missed opportunity to make it all more "realistic" to get better drama, better commentary, and better laughs.

For example, the character of Shane is portrayed as a "dumb" guy, but in such an unrealistic way. Don't get me wrong: there exist real people who are a hell of a lot more stupid than this character is. It's just the way he is portrayed, a kind of sit-com handsome dumb guy. Even Kelso (Aston Kutcher from That 70s Show) was more realistic.

I was 9 years old in 1971, so I'm sort of familiar with this time period. It also seems like they're hitting too many stereotypes and exaggerations for the sake of always telling the audience: Hey, this is 1971!

And it's not as if I always hate it when something's not realistic: I absolutely love Toast of London, a ridiculous sitcom set in modern times, but with many tropes of late 1960s early 1970s British film and TV. Or how about Lady Dynamite, and completely ridiculous and brilliant sitcom partly about mental health.

Roger Ebert once said this about special effects: Stop motion looks fake but feels real. CGI looks real but feels fake. I think a comparison can be made in scripts. It can be quite possible to have a script full of completely fantastical, supernatural, and/or scifi elements but FEELS REAL. And it can be quite possible to have a script with none of those things, ostensibly set in the "real world" but FEELS FAKE.

Upload (2020– )

Great idea, somewhat lazy execution

[7/10 · 23 March 2022]

I'm half-way through Season 2 with this review.

When I criticize fantasy for not having great internal logic or better plausibility in regards to more mundane elements of the script, the pushback is usually "How can you accept super mega magical fantasy #1 as a valid plot element and not give everything else a pass?"

A good example of great internal logic would be Toy Story. The premise is indeed super mega magical fantasy (sentient toys!), but the script has a lot of great internal logic. The script-writers seem to ask themselves: "How would this work in the real world if it could actually be true?"

Upload certainly has a more plausible premise than Toy Story (people's consciousness can be uploaded to virtual reality, thus preserving them after death), but I just wish it were more "realistic" for lack of a better word. It doesn't fail miserably (hence 7/10), but there are numerous times where I think a lazy piece of script made its way through for the sake of expedience (and maybe comedy, although for me, stuff that doesn't "ring true" is harder to laugh at).

Then there is stuff that doesn't seem well thought through, like the fact that this takes place in 2033 and it's already a well established industry that seems like it's been in existence for several years. Black Mirror has had a few episodes with a similar theme. And seems to nail the plausibility a lot more. The more it seems like "if this really were true, then it would play out like this", the more engaging it becomes for me.

There's a scene where somebody takes remote control of an elevator. And they make the elevator go up/down/up/dow extremely fast (like if you were shaking a can of coke), so that the person inside gets pummelled badly. This is just some average elevator in an average building. Obviously no amount of "computer over-ride" could ever make an elevator do this - it is mechanically physically impossible given their design, let alone their safety features. The fact that this COULD happen in this world has profound implications. THAT could be the basis for a very different "super mega magical fantasy" that explores a very different "given this, what are the actual implications?" What would happen if mechanical devices could be commanded to do all sorts of incredibly fantastic things?

Part of the reason I do give 7/10 and not a worse score is the philosophical implications explored reasonably well. But I just prefer when there is a terrific marriage of metaphor and philosophy with all the other stuff.

Sample This (2012)

Funkier Drummer

[9/10 · 6 November 2021]

In 1973 I was 11 years old and loved the music of The Incredible Bongo Band, or at least the 2 or 3 songs that played on the radio. One of them was a great cover of the 1960 song Apache (although at the time I thought it was an original - hey, I was kid!)

This documentary outlines the origins of this band. Basically, if somebody wrote a fictional account of this it would sound a bit too "interesting" and made up, perhaps part of a Tarantino movie.

The tunes had a lot of percussion (and parts with ONLY percussion), which ultimately lent themselves to being sampled and used in various tunes years later. Their version of Apache in particular ultimately became the most lifted piece of music in the hip hop genre, at first using record players and then actual digital samplers. I've also since heard music which very much recreates the sound and feel of TIBB's Apache from new raw elements rather than from the original recording.

As somebody who dug this stuff in the mid 70s, I kinda missed out on its resurgence into popular music later (mostly in hip hop and breakdancing, which I don't know too much about). Several years ago I decided to play Apache in one of my Ecstatic Dance DJ sets, thinking "hey, I guess only us old folks with remember this tune, but it sure is great to dance to", and then so many (younger) people seemed to recognize this tune and love it, although many had only previously heard the snippets and not the entire thing. Little did I know that it had infused into pop culture so much!

Spectre (I) (2015)

Hackneyed and Embarrassing

[2/10 · 6 March 2021]

Early in the movie, by the time Bond cozies up to the widow, I thought I was watching something so badly written that surely there'd be some kind of clever turnaround (even an unclever one, like it was all a dream so far). But nope, the movie continues (and continues and continues and continues) to be quite poor in many dimensions.

I've seen the odd Bond film that I didn't think was very good, and it's not like I have a great memory of all of them (some I haven't seen in half a century or so), but I'm fairly certain this might be the worst one ever.

A quarter of a billion dollars to make this stinker - and most of it went to things I do not care about one iota.

Will the powers-that-be see the error in their ways, and learn that script is the most important part of a movie, and so the next Bond film returns to good form? Or will it be like when Batman Forever was such a terrible movie, yet the very next one (Batman and Robin) was even worse?

The stars I did give are for Q and the mouse.

Doctor Who (2005–2022)

Season 11+12 are radically worse than what came before

[2/10 · 24 December 2020]

Jody Whitaker is a fine actor, and the idea of the Dr. regenerating into female form was a long overdue great idea. The scripts are just terrible for the most part, and I find myself clinging to the slightest bit of hope when there are episodes that are merely acceptable and decent. Wow, how the standards have dropped.

After watching Season 11, I thought "surely somebody high up at the BBC has gotten wind of how crummy this is and is doing something about it!". Nope.

Baroness Von Sketch Show (2016–2021)

Amateurish and incomplete sketch comedy

[3/10 · 28 March 2019]

This is after only seeing the first episode. Some of it is downright embarrassing - forced "goofiness" with no actual payoff.

Many sketches set up a potentially interesting premise, but don't take it further past that. An example would be one where it's the year 2050 and all the world leaders now are women, and they're at a conference. So they discuss various things like the environment and war etc. and it turns out that the women have solved all the big world problems and there's nothing really to discuss and so the conference is cut short. Ok, here's the part where clever writers would have advanced the premise further and fleshed it out (even with a short one-liner joke at the end), but nope.. the sketch literally ends right there. There's no "we have a kind of Utopia, but.....". There's only "we have a kind of Utopia". Of course, in real life this in and of itself would be awesome, but this is a comedy show and hence there's no comedy in this.

The Umbrella Academy (2019–2024)

A little less good than Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

[7/10 · 4 March 2019]

Ok, so that's the closest show I can compare this to, so being a little less good than Dirk still means I like the show a lot. I've only seen 5 episodes so far and I definitely am hooked.

Some reviewers don't like Ellen Page's "boring" acting, but that completely misses the point of WHY this character is like this. Yes, the other siblings all have more "pizazz" character traits to one extent or another, but there's a significant difference in the story arc that explains this. In fact, if Page's character had similar "pizazz", it would kind of suck in terms of realism.

Also, I love that certain "what the hell is the deal with this?" things (like Mom and #1's huge upper body) are just left unexplained for a while. They initially appear like dumb things....... but nope.

La La Land (2016)

Bland Expensive Mediocrity Clothed In Superficial Nostalgia

[2/10 · 4 March 2019]

When the film started out, it was so treacly awful that I was sure this was a gimmick that would be central to the conceit of the movie. And the film does improve slightly on the introduction of the second main character about 15 minutes later. But lo and behold, the script continued to be quite mundane.

It's as if the suits behind the making of this film said, "Just write a whatever script that will propel the set-pieces that will kind of evoke musicals from 50+ years ago."

Script is most important to me, and all the other technical excellence in the movie just doesn't amount to a hill of beans by comparison.

Roma (2018)

Mechanically good film, but weak on narrative and character

[7/10 · 7 January 2019]

I was originally going to give this film a 5/10, but then bumped it up another couple of points for NOT being a "Hollywood Blockbuster". So it made me appreciate the absence of fast cutting and bombastic score (this film has no score) and that American penchant for "punching up a scene".

But the main character was a little bit one-dimensional, hitting many of those stereotypical points of being the stoic, altruistic, humble, noble servant.

Also, there's this one scene with a bunch of party-goers spontaneously trying to put out a fire in the woods, and somehow a bunch of buckets materialized. That whole section should have been edited out... it had zero to do with the story, and there were no ramifications of this fire, and the whole thing stuck out like a sore thumb, which I have right now by the way, so I should know.

Lost in Space (2018–2021)

Cheeseball hackneyed dialogue but slightly interesting

[3/10 · 9 December 2018]

It pains me when so much effort goes into many aspects of production but the script has so much throwaway uninteresting clichés.

Does somebody really look at these scripts and think "wow, this is excellent", or is it more "meh, this'll do... there's an audience who just wants neato space stuff and doesn't care about dialogue and story all that much".

Pathetically hackneyed clichés like "you and me, we're not so different" are interspersed with a modicum of an interesting storyline.

And that whole robot befriending Will thing.... that betrays so much internal consistency and logic, but gets worse even later on in the series.

Black Mirror: USS Callister (2017) Season 4, Episode 1

First Black Mirror episode with "Hollywood" type plot holes.

[6/10 · 16 April 2018]

It could have scored higher had there not been grade-school science mistakes like what is encoded in DNA and how programming actually works (and doesn't). The drama is certainly fine, but it doesn't rise to the level of other virtual reality episodes like White Christmas and San Juniper, which much more nail the internal logic of their sci-fi "what if?" scenario.

There also needed to be a really solid reason why the newcomer was so easily able to do what the others (at least the other programmer) hadn't been able to do for a long time. That deux-ex-machina was consistent with the cheesy "Space Fleet" story lines (which made total sense), but not with the the real world and what we've come to expect from solid Black Mirror scripts.

The entire "call a pizza on the guy to distract him so you can enter his home and take stuff" was right out of a sitcom practically.

Simply put, the script needed to be scrutinized a lot more. The actual idea was wonderful, and merited more solid logic to it all.

I hope this isn't a trend. It was the first episode where everything seemed American, which tends to dumb down things more so than stuff from the UK, and choosing spectacle over substance.

Frank (II) (2014)

I want this to be a real band that I can buy records from and see live!

[10/10 · 14 April 2018]

The last time I saw a movie where I bought the soundtrack immediately following was for Swiss Army Man. But that movie wasn't about music - it just happened to have a fantastic soundtrack. Frank IS about music (and musicians), and the fictional band isn't just "pretty darn good for a fictional band" - THEY ARE EXCELLENT AS A BAND. I was sorta thinking Joy Division and The Residents, but somebody else said Flaming Lips and Jim Morrison, and I can kinda see that too.

The film very much nails the creative process too. On the soundtrack it was great to hear the film's improvisation and genesis version of "I Love You All" as well as the finished studio production (that doesn't appear in the film per se, but would have been the fictional band's attempt at recording a rehearsed and more developed version of the song). I relate to this process, as I've been in several (original music) bands for 35+ years (earning several hundred dollars in total so far, so yeah, it was a success!)

Black Mirror (2011– )

I was disturbed. And..... loving it.

[10/10 · 3 March 2016]

I've only just seen the first episode (National Anthem) and I am absolutely impressed!!! I've seen some negative reviews citing how the show is disturbing but that is quite literally the entire point of why I liked it. It would be like criticizing a roller coaster because it felt dangerous. Well, in my case, that would be a damn good reason why I'd LOVE a particular roller coaster.

I guess I have the ability to separate fictional strife (this show, roller coasters, scary movies) from real strife (which I don't like at all).

Aside from the story itself, I was impressed with the "realism" in portraying something that is in a slightly bizarro world version of ours. I guess I can imagine how Hollywood would screw this up with "over-the-topness". The British production values are at their best here.

Tron: Legacy (2010)

Bad acting, but at least the story is terrible.

[2/10 · 17 December 2011]

Tron? More like Troff

This awful movie gets a 2/10 instead of 1/10 because there's a few lines of dialogue that allude to some interesting things, like how we thought alien intelligent life would come from elsewhere but here it is.... spawned from the algorithms of programming and entirely virtual.

So much time is wasted in virtual reality doing boring stuff like fistfights and chases - and almost the entire plot hinges on who is best at doing this. Will the villain steal the disc? Will the hero steal it back? I kept waiting for something slightly more profound, something that plays with the nature of virtual reality, but it never comes.

Even in the real world (about 20% of the film) they get stuff so stupidly wrong. Like when Sam zaps a security camera to blank the image but the security guard fixes it by tapping his TV monitor. That's just a little tech thing that's inconsequential to the larger plot, but it's a omen near the beginning of the film that this will be one super lazy script where they just don't care one iota about any of the writing, about logic or consistency or good dialogue.

It's like they looked at the special effects and thought "this ought to be enough, right?" It's like it was made by people who make porno movies and thought "everybody just fast forwards to the sex scenes and doesn't care about the inter-connecting story, right?"

Top Gear USA (2008–2016)

Drown it in a bathtub and import the UK version

[30 July 2011]

My friend said "you've got to watch this show called Top Gear. You'll love it even though you're not a car freak. It's awesome".

So I watched a couple and told my friend he was sadly mistaken. I didn't like the show at all. He was perplexed. What had I become?

It turns out that he was only referring to the UK show (and had never heard of the American show). I had never heard of either, and only stumbled upon the American show.

Now that I have since seen the excellent UK version, and he has since seen the wretched American version, the Universe has become stable again. My friend is no longer convinced I had become compromised by a body snatcher.

The Uninvited (2008)

Stop watching it at the 30minute mark

[3/10 · 3 July 2011]

What's starts out with an interesting situation devolves into one of the stupidest hackneyed menu of random "scary" stereotypical imagery and scenes ever.

Before I watched it, I noted the description, something like "woman with mental problems...". Well, it turns out there's another movie of the exact same name in 2009 with a vaguely similar premise. But when I went to IMDb to check the reviews (just the ratings), I thought I was checking up on THIS movie. The ratings for the other one are quite decent. So I thought I'd take a chance and see the movie (or what I thought was it).

All through the movie (well, past the half hour mark... it's decent up until that time) I'm wondering what drugs those reviewers are on, or how much they were paid to write false reviews, or if the reviews were all written by the film makers directly.

Directly after the movie ended I logged onto IMDb to investigate such false allegations of a good movie and lo and behold after I started actually reading the reviews (and not just look at the ratings) I discover that they can't possibly be talking about THIS movie.

If I do one positive thing before I die, if might be to lower your expectations about this movie enough so that you expect crap, but come away pleased that there was indeed *some* good stuff about it.

Monsters vs. Aliens (2009)

Pixar has nothing to worry about

[4/10 · 21 February 2011]

This is what happens when the film-makers think that the audience will only be very small children who will only notice sounds and colours. A relatively small amount of script rewrite could have risen this film to the level of Pixar's greatest achievements. The premise is interesting, and the rest of the talent involved is top notch.

But as it stands, it's a lot of very lazy internal illogic an inattention to detail.

Pixar writers would have cleaned it up before one cel of animation was generated or one line of dialogue was recorded. And such improvements would not make it harder to understand for very small children.

Dreamworks is a microcosm of what I don't like about Spielberg. He's a very competent director in many aspects, but there's a "suck factor" that seems to invade much of what he touches.

Could it be that the thing that costs the least and requires the least amount of technology (writing) is placed way too low as a priority?

Doctor Who: The Family of Blood (2007) Season 3, Episode 9

Brilliant script acted brilliantly

[10/10 · 4 August 2010]

Others have said wonderful things about this so I don't want to repeat. One very effective thing was having actual children shown (actors playing their real age), thus having the impact of them as soldiers in The Great War in all its historically correct horror, although it was a fairly small part of the story.

That last 10 minutes packed a lot of emotional wallop, without being manipulative or treacly.

Those very dark punishments by The Doctor showed the high stakes. Downright creepy actually.

As great as this pair of episodes was, better stuff was yet to come the very next week.....

Caprica: Rebirth (2010) Season 1, Episode 2

Direct continuation of the pilot....

[7/10 · 30 January 2010]

Unlike BSG, where the first episode in the series was definitely an improvement from the 4 hour pilot miniseries, which is saying a lot because the miniseries was already quite good, Caprica's 1st post-pilot episode is roughly the same as its pilot (I give it one notch lower).

I have problems with the notion that CylonZoe would want to hide what she is to everybody except Lacie. When Daniel initially uploads Zoe's consciousness into the Cylon shell, she definitely tries to reach out to her dad (even by speaking), and she doesn't know the experiment will (seemingly) fail, so for all she knows it'll work and it'll be evident to everybody that there's a "human" consciousness driving this robotic shell now called a Cylon. So when she wakes up later, it would have made most sense for her to say "hey Dad, here I am.. it worked!!"

There's another flaw in the notion that Zoe would wonder why people are treating her Cylon self as just an object, a machine. She knows damn well that until now, robots aren't sentient at all, and that until she makes it known to somebody that this particular Cylon is sentient because it contains her consciousness, there's no reason to "respect" this robot any more than respecting a toaster or even the robot Serge. She even laments that her step mother said she looked like a monster she once saw in a movie... that's because the Cylon really is a scary looking thing, and the comment wasn't directed a Zoe but simply at a non-sentient thing that ostensibly has no feelings at all. If I managed to put my consciousness inside a rock on the beach, why would I be offended if somebody picked me up and threw me in the water?

So on one hand she's trying to hide the fact that this Cylon is sentient. But on the other hand she is doing stuff (like responding to stimuli, chopping off the guy's finger, trying to escape) that might betray this secret.

I also wondered how Lacie managed to gain access to such a top secret lab, housing this Cylon. Maybe there could have been a scene showing CylonZoe telling Serge to allow Lacie access? Serge is maybe confused, but then allows it. And later on Daniel wonders how Lacie gained access and Serge says it's because Zoe allowed it.... then more chips fall where they may!

Caprica: Pilot (2009) Season 1, Episode 1

Great pilot that leaves where BSG takes off

[8/10 · 23 January 2010]

When I saw some reviews of this that said things like "I loved BSG in the 70's and hated the remake and thus hated Caprica" or "it was so confusing" I just knew it would have a huge leg- up in terms of appealing to me. Yes sir, I did like it.

If you don't like watching something where you have to pay attention to every second, and can't sort of casually watch it and maybe talk a bit through it, or go to the bathroom without pausing the video, then this will definitely not appeal to you. There are virtually no "cool scenes". Let's hope this is what the eventual series will be like. And let's hope that any "cool scenes" are there by accident of serving the story, and not some soulless minion of orthodoxy in a suit ordering the show-runners that "you need a cool scene here to appeal to people who don't care about intelligence, complexity and/or story arcs".

Of course, I'm not saying that if you don't like the show that it's precisely because you don't care about intelligence, complexity and/or story arcs. The thoughtful mind is boundless, and so are its tastes.

My big beef so far is that it appears that the avatar of Adama's daughter (Tamara) is given the same emotional depth and memory and realism as the avatar of Graystone's daughter (Zoe). Yet it was established that Zoe had programmed her own artificially intelligent avatar while she was still alive, thus making it plausible that it would be so utterly realistic (a difference that makes no difference is no difference at all). But Tamara's was generated after she was dead, relying only on public records of her existence, so at best it should only have been superficially her without self-awareness.

Waltz with Bashir (2008)

"Animated" is the least descriptive term for this

[10/10 · 18 December 2009]

Describing this film as "animated" is about as useful as describing another as "live action". I've always thought the distinction has become more meaningless especially in the last couple of decades. It's really just a technical designation, like mentioning what kind of microphones were used or what kind of cameras were used.

Animated films Toy Story, Waltz With Bashir, Fritz The Cat and Fantasia have about as much to do with each other as live action films The Wizard of Oz, Apocalypse Now, Psycho and The 40 Year Old Virgin do. It's a bit ridiculous to have an animated category at an awards show, except if the award is merely for the technical execution of the animation itself.

I'm trying to figure out if the final live action scene had a huge impact on me because of how it evolved from animation or because of the simple insanity of the situation irrespective of the technical delivery.

Larry David: Curb Your Enthusiasm (1999 TV Movie)

Brilliant "pilot" I never knew existed

[8/10 · 1 November 2009]

I saw this sometime during Season 7 of the series and I had no idea it was from 10 years previous. The only clues along the way were that Jerry looked a lot younger and the joke about the Clinton BJ.

It's not a conventional pilot: It's more like a one-off mockumentary special that probably inspired HBO to pursue a series. The only reason I give it only 8/10 is because the series would become even better in many episodes.

It seems that some of the interviews (with Charles and Seinfeld for example) aren't scripted at all, but are their actual comments about the real Larry David. This isn't surprising, since even the rest of the screen time doesn't seem that outside reality.