Mystichydra

I really don't understand the low ratings for this series. People are acting like it's akin to the morbid curiosities of poking a dead frog with a stick, or something. This is a mirror, you fools! It's a microcosm of swaths of fractures within our cosmopolis. Or perhaps that's the true reason of rote dismissals from the critic class.

Undeseen, underrated show. Not just one of the best animated shows of the year, but one of. the best, period. The guy rating it 0 because of 'new age' leftism or whatever, is impervious to thinking.

It's a shameless, pathetic, transparent attempt for image rehabilitation. And it falls flat in every conceivable way. Baldwin has frankly never been a compelling figure. Ever. Even during the apex of his career. He is inherently full of himself, aggressively unwitty, rigid, and let's face it - utterly tired. Everything about his life was kind of annoying anyway. His having a ton of kids whom won't know him in their young adult life because he will likely be dead. His truly irritating wife. who's Spanglish is still quite cringey. The show just wants to show a wacky and relatable household, of which it is authentically neither. And seriously, the way it's edited... The entire Rust incident is presented as just another blip in the 'crazy and compelling' mosaic of Baldwin's life. This is one of the most shameless reality shows since Anna Nicole Smith. And it has the inverse effect of image rehabilitation.

As long as you don't mind a little bleak in your coffee, it's certainly worth watching. It's an unflinching, unsparing, often implausible, series with a really interesting historical backdrop. The pacing does get a little overloaded, and the chronic relentlessness of it actually dulls its edges a little bit, but it's solid. The acting is really good, and the screenplay (by the same guy who wrote the revenant) is much better than average, Most of the critics just complain about lack of character development, and basically a lack of cliche formulas. It does try to do a little too much, with 3 storylines, of which one of them could certainly have been omitted. And episodes 3 and 6 specifically I thought were kind of poorly done, for varying reasons. And the ending was truly unsatisfying. But it's been one of the better series I've seen on Netflix in a while.

It's great so far! Haters are troglodytes. Honestly, it's choppy animation as that's how the original was. Almost never do I feel genuine nostalgia when some redux of whatever comes out. This is not the case this time. It's seriously borderline perfect - save for some of the voices being different - especially Rogue.

This show is really a 'is the show better than the sum of its parts' kind of thing. And considering such equations - it barely is.Concept is a 9 - I haven't read the book, but overall the concept is far and away the best aspect of this series. Science - 8 - it's believable enough (for the most part. Some of the abilities of the Sophons and whatnot stretches the limitations of belief. The Script is probably a 5 - I know multiple writers are generally involved involved with screenplays, but there's basically 3 veins of incongruent writing in this series. The theoretical physics jargon and whatnot, which often one does need to be at least mildly erudite, and which also is palatable enough for your average viewer. Then there's the sloggish interpersonal drama which unfortunately takes up the bulk of the show. And finally, there's the cliche government/Mi6/clandestine speak. Stuff like 'Oh, you don't trust us? That's EXACTLY why we need you'. You have seen these cliches many times before. The casting and characterization is probably a 3. Utterly miscast, entirely unbelievable. I get the need for both compartmentalizing the character from the book, as well as changing the geography from China, for a Western production. But having all these slacker stoners or whatever, and then having them be the smartest people in the room, and having Auggie be the founder for these game-changing nanofibers, etc. Ugh. And that's not even getting into, yes - the raceswapping/genderswapping and whatnot, which will opaquely linger throughout the entire production. Out of the Oxford 5, Jin Cheng is the only semi-believable one. Saul is an implausible character in almost every facet. Although the science isn't bad, some of the logic is less so - not only is this threat taking 400 years, but the fact Earth is even target, and why, also makes no sense. Won't get into it due to spoilers, but much of the motivations don't hold up under scrutiny. Also, the pacing is awful. It's slow, and I revert back to my criticisms of hearing a bunch of unengaging interpersonal drama and relationships and whatnot. Finally, there are a few really good and memorable scenes. And some of the acting, despite ham-fisted lines, was actually really good. Which is unsurprising, since many GOT alumni are present. Liam Cunningham and Benedict Wong absolutely kill it. Overall, this is a truly mixed bag, and I kind of wish those showrunners would go away.

Should have been good. It's a history drama-series for people who don't like history. And it's not focused, and the creative choices are questionable at best. Like having Edwin Stanton be clean-shaven. But there's an irrefutable reason for this. In the showrunners own words - That freedom to make Stanton's story accessible for a modern audience is key to Manhunt's goals. "At a time when there's a quite consequential election in November, a story that speaks to the sort of fragility of these institutions and how they must be maintained and defended," Menzies says, "felt like quite an important story to be retelling at this juncture." If that is the kind of logic and historical compromise (It's not even for narrative purposes!) the showrunner openly admits to having, it speaks volumes of the approach towards this disappointing show.

This is based purely upon the pilot - shows are subject to change. In a strange way, I almost feel compelled to rate this show higher, merely based upon comparison. But it's not good. Not only is it not good, it's illogicism makes it basically unwatchable. All of the clues in the pilot could have easily been misconstrued. It's far from the logic of Holmes, r even the inhterpretations of Monk. It's lowest common denominator, airport literature crowd type deductions. Not to mention, her mere citizen role of outside council or whatever being allowed access and time with witnesses is problematic. She can just talk freely to witnessess and suspects, and they all let her. Not only that, they humor and even try and placate her. The show shows you who the antagonist is, right **** the worst thing is, is that this is the show that was focused **** live in a bundling age, and regular television is a true backburner. But good God, this is average at best. Except it's not, under an objective microscope, this show kind of ****. Just because a ton of other shows are worse, does not increase the score of this one.

(No idea why a bunch of words that shouldn't be censored, are. Truly, they're regular, non-offensive words) Really 7.5, but I'll round up. 4 episodes in, it's a truly mixed experience. The expectations for this show were sky-high, and to be perfectly frank, it really comes nowhere near those lofty forecasts. First, the good. The Aesthetics - They built two B-17's from scratch for this series. I'm not an aviation enthusiast, but I still really appreciate the little things and accuracies regarding basically the entire look of the show. The insignias and uniforms and planes and everything is super accurate. Which meshes into the second point Historicity - These missions aren't really in the mainstream consciousness regarding WWII, and it's an important and often overlooked part of the war. There's certain unknown instances where artistic license is warranted, but overall they did painstaking research and it shows. Acting - Although many characters lack depth, overall the cast does a commendable job. Now the bad. Comprehension - Not sure how they could have gotten around this, but it's near impossible to tell what is going on exactly during the air battle scenes. They all look like generic dopplegangers anyway, but then you put their masks on, and especially if a plane goes down, you just have no idea to whom it happened. And even on the ground, the flow of time is not smooth. It all contributes to a rather muddled viewing experience. The characters - One of the things about Band of Brothers was the obvious said brotherhood. There's some closeness between the brothers Buck and Bucky, and Crosby is an engaging figure. But most of the characters you barely get introduced to before they have their masks obfuscating their faces, and then they get shot down. There's just no emotional investment whatsoever. It's almost puzzling how indifferent some of these scenes make you feel, as there's intense, historical dogfights going on. And the casualty rate for the 100th was atypically high, so there's going to be a lot of 'unimportant' (in terms of these characters we are following) people who die. But everyone is so one-dimensional, most are like StarTrek redshirts. The Script - I wish this wasn't so, but the script is flat and full of **** a lot of it is purely expository. Some general we hear about but have never seen thinks poorly of the squadron, as we hear not infrequently. But we have yet to see this figure. I don't know what it is about the 1940's, but it seems like one of the hardest decades of the 20th century to not fall into tropes and cliches. Of which both Buck and Bucky certainly are. Buck is wooden as wooden can be, and he just scowls and stares stoically all the time. Butler does a good enough job given the material, but man - that material is paper thin. And Bucky - I guess the character supposed to give us levity? He's a cliche womanizing pilot from the 1940's with a clark gable mustache (many have this who comes across as pure caricature. Honestly, I wish I knew the backstory on the historical figure more, because it just seems unlikely he would be a Major, given his **** CGI - It's not all bad, and mixed with the tangible, built B-17's, it often looks quite impressive. But not all the time, and sometimes it looks like a video game or (shudders) Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Particularly when they show CGI people, parachuters and the like.I frankly don't know if we will ever perfect CGI enough to where it doesn't look cheesy ot like a video game, and even though it's cheaper, it makes it look much cheaper as well.Overall, this series is certainly worth seeing. Especially if you are interested in WWII and liked BoB, The Pacific, and Saving Private Ryan. But it's far from perfect, and sometimes the flaws take a nosedive.

A decent but flawed show that probably doesn't hold the same appeal since covid. It's definitely worth seeing, however certain motivations make no sense. It's largely disjointed, it jumps around times and scenes way too frequently, it race-swaps characters from the bool for no reason other than forced diversity (though overall the acting from everyone is a strong point), and there are a ton of unnecessary, unfortunate compromises regarding plot points and even characters from the source material. The character of 'The Prophet' being the biggest example. Some scenes work, many don't. There's an odd, unearned sanguinity regarding the tonality and moral messaging, and there are incongruities regarding the extremities of post-apocalyptic life. Even outside of the museum of civilization, people just seemed way too clean, nourished, and comfortable. Still, it's a series which will linger with you, and much of it is praiseworthy. It's just inconsistent, and often frustrating.

An ex investment banker makes a pretentious vegan restaurant, then marries and gets scammed by AJ from the Sopranos while Johnny Fairplay is her lawyer. It's REALY hard to care about what's happening to this absurdly gullible woman. She seemed like a decent person when she befriended that homeless guy or whatever, but honestly - she's probably more culpable than the doc suggests since she's the main one telling the story. But the douchiness and obviousness of her scammer husband goes beyond mere gullibity. I get she's a new age vegan. But come on, believing that your dark-triad abusive husband works for the CIA and will make your dog immortal... I get that he's a predator and she's inherently attracted to dysfunctional and abusive individuals. But the fantastical, ever evolving claims go so beyond the pale of anything. He might as well have told her he's the tooth fairy, but he needs a million dollars top pay back all the toothless kids first, then they'll be wealthy gods. Her total malleability comes across as honestly not sympathetic at all. And that definitely affects the story. I felt badly for her unpaid workers way more than I did for her.

It's a genuinely interesting, and oft unexplored, aspect of history. Despite a couple of the professional critics taking issue with the talking heads, I found the historians to be much more engaging than the dramatic reenactments. Which is the bulk of the problem with this series. I imagine this wasn't the most funded project on Netflix, and it shows. It often looks cheap, and feels stock. Especially with any kind of action scene, which often has the same caliber as a daytime-tv episode of a CW production. Think one tier less than Hercules, quality-wise. It's bad, and anti-immersive. But all those things could have been mitigated in more capable hands. My biggest problem is - the script. Generic, lacking fluidity, overly dramatic in some scenes, and seemingly not enough in others. It's often laughable and borderline unwatchable. The acting frankly ebbs and flows in quality, and I think much of that incongruence is due to the script. There were odd creative choices, too. Such as when playing dub music and implying 'alteration' (i.e being stoned on something) when introducing the Imbangala (hired mauraders for the Portuguese), and they happened to have dreadlocks. That's personally questionable for a couple reasons - the first is the obvious reductive stereotype. But the second is - generally speaking, playing modern music when trying to portray something historical almost never works. Some people are fans of say, Peaky Blinders, playing PJ Harvey and Nick Cave and whatnot. Most aren't. Lastly, when compared to other Netflix historical miniseries, the overall quality difference is noticeable. The series that dealt with Rome, Japan, The Pirates, The Ottomans, etc - they all had moments of low-budget cheesiness, but their strengths mitigated their flaws. Sadly, I cannot say the same for African Queens.

The presence of that kid could bring out the rage in even the Dali Lama. His face is just so unbelievably punchable, and I guess if you didn't enjoy Big Bang theory, you're not the target audience so disliking it shouldn't be a surprise. But good god, what an abysmally unfunny show.

Where to begin with this predictable disappointment? Seriously... For starters, it feels amateurish through-and-through. I could just 'see' every scene getting shot, and the poor editing (it really is bad. No fluidity between cuts, often noticeable lack of background continuity, etc) and merely adequate acting only exacerbated that. It felt like a lesser homage to so many things. The scene near the beginning which introduces the multiracial hobbits (sorry, 'harfoots'...) was taken straight out of Hook with the lost boys. Only very poorly done. This series so far is sappy, saturated, unengaging, unimmersive, and dismisses the source material in fundamental ways, only to replace it with unnecessary drivel. Totally formulaic, with undeserved swelling orchestral music over pretty and ultimately vapid imagery. Hope you like glittery shots of shimmering forests of soft lighting. So much soft lighting. They **** Galadriel, and basically turned her into a less charismatic Xena. In general, elves are cool. Or at least they should be. They were impressive for all kinds of reasons in Middle Earth. Rankin/Bass elves were amazing. Jackson's were... ok. For some reason nowadays, it's common to portray them as effeminate, preppy-emos. Well, they certainly did here. When not trying to force awe with a sledgehammer, the dialogue is just facile words coming out of a sad-puppy-dog-type face. Unless it's Galadriel, who's a neurotic-paranoid Xena, talking about the arbitrary evil she senses. And of course the polarizing issue - the rather inorganic multi-diverse representation. I don't have a problem with elves as whatever colored skin as a general concept. I think racism is anachronistic and disgraceful. I also think one can criticize the opaqueness of the casting choices, within the parameters of the Middle Earth universe, and not be considered racist. It saddens me that we are in a place where this distinction cannot be made. It breaks immersion, and totally thwarts the long-nurtured understanding of the ins and outs of how Middle Earth works. That universe happens to not really have any people of color in it, canonically speaking. Largely because Tolkien was inspired by Norse mythology and things like Beowulf. If there were a show about African mythology and had some Asians in it, i'd be making the same points. People love Tolkien. Serious fans who have had LOTR embedded in them since growing up might get reactionary if fundamental aspects are changed for the alleged sake of equality. And the ones who don't care about these common sorts of modifications or appropriations, in my opinion, are not truly fans. Probably of anything, since ideology supersedes any kind of taste refinement whatsoever.

Absolutely hated it. Not only is it beyond uninsightful, it's sycophantic af. I was looking forward to this, and it is indeed disappointing. Honestly even if you're part of the Trump bandwagon I couldn't see anyone enjoying this. I saw a freemasonry 'documentary', trying to recruit people and this doc had the same tonality. Just awful.

Absolutely loved it. It's a truly unique show, and one that is clearly not for everyone. Some consider it slow. But to me slowness is due to lack of engagement, to which Severance never suffered. Honestly, whether you like it or not depends basically on one key element - do you contemplate things? Before people get offended at the very notion of the question, consider this - there are people in this world that literally have no inner dialogue. There are people with aphantasia. And when I ask about contemplation, I don't mean a cursory glance at mortality and meaning, but a marination and meditation on deep concepts. To enjoy Severance, it's basically a prerequisite. If philosophy makes your eyes glaze over, you should probably seek your escapism elsewhere. Criticisms like the L.A Times frankly shows to me that they just didn't 'get it'. Same with criticisms of plotlessness. Ben Stiller said this was his longest project to date, and it shows. It's a layered and complicated endeavor, and it actually rewards you for investing in the series. Unlike so many dead end shows. The performances are great all around, not a single bad actor and perfectly cast. The directing is phenomenal (Stiller has always been underrated in this department), with many innovative camera angles and framing. The graduality of it was to me, perfect. Every added revelation or element was palpable and usually mystifying. And it shows how intensity can be achieved without relying on tired, uninspired tropes of death and violence. The script is amazing, and there are TONS of clues interspersed around both with dialogue and detail. I found myself pausing often to read things and take note. To think that this started primarily as a workplace comedy. Some of the many examples of themes and concepts within Severance include - Religion, free-will, ship of Theseus, existentialism, compartmentalization, fascism, corporatism, pleasure and pain, escapism, connection, power, consciousness, duality, autonomy, meaning, the afterlife, paranoia, ontology, information, essentialism, cults, time, identity, memory, solipsism, nihilism, diligence, the psyche, humanism, happiness, surveillance, control, conditioning. There’s even an argument to be had that it has Gnostic and Kabalistic elements with the demiurge and the ascension/descension, respectively. Honestly, you’re lucky to find a show that incorporates even one of these themes compellingly. Severance manages to interweave seamlessly and simultaneously, all of these and more.

Couldn't finish it. The first episode, albeit largely boring, is probably worth a view for a few scattered reasons, one of which being an examination of Exotic's cop stripping days. But after that, it becomes clear it's merely an empty cash grab with nothing to show for itself. It's sloppy, unfocused, vapid, and patently desperate. Netflix's American productions have been frankly well below the bar for of kind of a while now.

It's alright, easily the weakest of the Narcos/El Chapo Canon. It's worth seeing if you're still interested in the storyline, and overall history. However, it's padded by a bunch of soap operas no one cares about, and the narration evolving into a local news journalist is simply not very engaging. Literally half the viewing time is unengaging, but the other half is solid.

Truly awful. Even if this weren't laced with a sledgehammer and an overtly sanctimonious approach towards racism, it's just poorly done. Every single character feels one-dimensional if not a full-blown caricature, and the dialogue is utterly cringe. It reminds me of a less talented Aaron Sorkin (whom I can't stand), writing argument after argument to win against themselves. All the while, snarkily gloating about being able to defeat their own straw men. And regarding the black-face party that is the rather convoluted seedling for the plot... Not to suggest black face doesn't happen, it still does. But it's frankly overrepresented. I have been to countless Halloween/Frat/Costume parties over the years. Not once, ever, has a even a single person donned blackface in my experience. Let alone a whole coordinated and themed event take place. "It's a thing white people do. Google it", the show tells us. I don't want to go down the rabbit hole of explaining how stupid college students ignorantly engaging in (literally) surface-level racism is so not an equivalent as to when, say, lynchings were normality, but I will say such occurrences are still atypical. Speaking of convolution, the classical/operatic score only compounded the pretentiousness and sanctimoniousness of the entire experience. Hearing Carmen while being spoon-fed wokeness is just a laughable approach. Kubrick you are not. Lastly, the showrunner who just resigned due to Dave Chapelle is a WHITE trans-woman! Why is that particular racial demographic ok instead of someone of color? I hate when alleged moralisms have no logical consistency.

Beyond disappointing. I'm frankly tired of the word and concept 'woke'. It's ubiquitous in todays society, and complaining about it (and catering to it) only propagates the unending cycle. There actually is such a thing as "too much awareness". For example, If you are aware of every sensation of every nerve ending while you cross a cross-walk, you are likely to have a relatively awkward walk, since you are hyperaware. If you are in "auto-mode", it is organic and fluid. There is not even a hint of organic fluidity in this very scripted show. Obviously, the first 3 seasons were scripted as well. But it had depth. You could get lost in the characters, and their psyches would surprise you. This new iteration has no such depth, and it makes up for it with patronization and pandering. I had my preferred characters in the Byrne originals, but I can honestly say I didn't palpably dislike any of them. This is inverted regarding this new edition, and I struggle to tolerate almost every figure throughout. Exploring therapy can often uncomfortable, but not for reasons of anti-charisma. So, what's good about it? Well, pretty much only Uzo Aduba. She's a damn fine actress, and she portrays the right amount of warmth and adamancy to be effective. Honestly, the restrictive parameters of her character only highlights her acting skills. The other cast has their moments, but are overshadowed by transparent and unengaging emotions, as well as outlandish theatricality. Also, the camera framing. These details are likely to go consciously unnoticed, but is a more important element than one may think. For example, during webcams sessions, framing those shots is harder than meets the eye. That's kind of all I can think of for the pros of this show. The best thing I can say about it, is that it is making me want to re-explore the first three seasons