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Wednesday (2022)
Very good, but not quite great.
9 stars for Ortega. 10 stars for her delightful greyscale wardrobe. 5 stars for plot. ~7 stars overall.
Ortega (Wednesday), Myers (Enid), and "Thing" are mostly delightful in their roles. The rest of the cast are adequate to forgettable. It was good to see Ricci in a supporting role, even though her appearances were few. This Uncle Fester was a bit off, but at least he showed up.
This teen version of Wednesday is fun & more nuanced than Ricci's, but the overall tone of the show unfortunately doesn't go as "dark" as it could have. There were 2 moments when I nearly laughed, and only a few smiles along the way.
You'd hardly know Wednesday is at a boarding SCHOOL, as she's in class about 60 seconds total. The vamps do nothing, and the rest of the kids barely show their creature-natures.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (2022)
2.2 stars.
On the plus side:
+Jess Bush (Nurse Chapel), who injects some humor and fun in making the role her own.
+The CGI is mostly adequate to good. But some creature effects are laughably fake, and the opening 'rainbow' sequence is over-the-top.
I feel sorry for Jess Bush, who is nearly the only ray of light in this series. She gets 9 to 10 stars. The security gal is ok, if a bit too overwrought. Almost everything else here is a 1 to 2 star, painful-to-watch Wokey Trek. Intelligence level is grade school at best, with nonsensical convos, plot holes galore, and constant failures in imagination, science, and realism.
It's unpleasant and fake to watch all the poorly-acted (and often over-acted) emo conversations -- which happen even in the middle of life-or-death situations. And the writers don't bother to employ even a 4th grade level knowledge of biology, science, or physics.
As another reviewer said, where is the structured starship command? The crew is informal, over-sensitive, and worried about feelings and such, when they should be trying to stay alive for the next 5 seconds. Shoot back! Don't cower and ask everyone how they are feeling, and wander onto topics not relevant to the life-or-death situation!
Strangely, this Entererprise's look and tech are more advanced than Kirk's ship; a better (and more fun) choice would have been to make it more primitive/analog/retro. I won't bother to mention the many plot holes and contradictions, but they include such idiocy as fully-charged, battery-powered medical tools supposedly quit working for non-reasons, even though lights and other handheld devices keep working (it's a dumb plot device to have medical people resort to 'archaeological' surgical techniques).
STRANGE is sometimes better than ST Discovery, but that's already a super-low bar.
Zooey (2021)
Molasses-slow dialogue. A twist that goes nowhere. Visually, pretty good.
It's not a terrible film, but it is molasses-slow. If all the long, artificial pauses in the conversations were removed, and the slowly-speaking characters actually conversed normally, this would be a 15 minute movie. The acting is a bit uneven (the actress playing Zooey is the best of the small cast). On the positive side, the cinematography is decent to good, and this film shows what can be done with a tiny budget ($15K). Sadly, there's a twist that goes nowhere, and the movie just sort of ... ends.
VERDICT: 2.85 stars, rounded up to 3 (out of 10). Not without some merit, but I can't recommend it to the masses.
Brave New World (2020)
Worth watching, far better than most SF/dsytopia shows out there
I rarely give any shows more than 6 stars, but this one is better than most. The pacing is mostly slow, but I don't mind. Hope this one goes 3 or more seasons and keeps up the good quality. It's different enough from the usual boring shows, even if it doesn't follow the original book exactly. I like to not know/guess what's going to happen next, and that sometimes happens in BNW.
Bliss (2021)
Not SciFi. Contradictory and ultimately pointless, with no answers
Not SciFi. Contradictory, illogical, and ultimately pointless--and with zero answers.
Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)
Corny, illogical, unrealistic. A few good action sequences.
More Zero than Hero, but it had a few decent scenes.
3.5 stars out of 10. This could have been a great movie. And about 20% of it is pretty good, or at least tolerable. The rest is cheesy, and only mildly entertaining.
A silly plot, overacting galore (esp. the villains), and no science/reality whatsoever.
The CGI is (and I'll be kind here)... not as good as it should have been.
The majority of this film is riddled with plot holes, silly stuff, and illogical actions/behaviors. It looks good at times, but there is no substance here.
Gal Gadot still is the perfect actress to play WW; if only she had a FAR better script to work with here. Unfortunately, most of WW84 is little better than a senseless Saturday morning cartoon.
The Purge: Anarchy (2014)
A comedy of fools
A comedy of complete idiots who seem to be caught completely surprise by this year's scheduled purge.
Sound levels are all over the place. Prepare to constantly lower/raise the volume.
Greenland (2020)
3.25 stars. 5% disaster movie, 95% boring family/kid drama & social commentary. Decent CGI.
Can we please get a disaster movie for ADULTS?
Barely watchable at times, but at least the few CGI effects are mostly a bit better than in a SyFy channel film.
Full of tropes. Scenes and lines we've heard dozens of times in previous disaster movies. Laughable science.
Best tolerated on fast-forward, slowing only at the sporadic explosion sequences. Or skip to the 1:42 mark and watch the ending (complete with more tropes and poor science).
Ex Machina (2014)
Beautiful Robot & effects, but lacks punch
I really looked forward to this movie, but I was slightly disappointed. The concept, acting, cinematography, and effects were great. However, one character was much too unlikeable (one-sided), and I expected something surprising somewhere along the way, but was disappointed. The movie also seems to bow to the masses, rather than try for something truly intellectual. Instead, it resorts to a few clichés (though beautifully done).
They missed a great opportunity for something profound or shocking. Instead it fizzles out, leaving you with some beautiful moments to think about, yet a slightly bad aftertaste.
Worth watching, and way above average for the genre in spite of some shortcomings. 7 stars.