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silverwoodchuck47
Reviews
Greatest Events of WWII in Colour: Pearl Harbor (2019)
Servicable Documentary
Some of the footage is real, but some of it is from "Midway (1976)". One scene in particular is the stuntmen running for their lives when a prop airplane goes awry.
The black and white footage is colorized. The subject matter experts are articulate. The narrator is British, so his accent adds authenticity and percipience.
If you have watched lots of World War 2 documentaries, there really isn't any new and interesting footage here. But when you seeing GIs storming the beaches, newly-constructed liberty ships released from their berths, bomber squadrons flying across the sky, etc., it makes you want to yell "USA! USA"
Spoiler: The Allies win the war.
Away (2020)
Drama has to believable in context--this isn't.
There's no way that this crew of astronauts with secrets (for example, "I am a closeted homosexual/lesbian") and unresolved psychological and family problems ("I was a bad father", "My teenage daughter is suddenly rebelling", etc.) would be allowed anywhere near a launch pad.
Real astronauts aren't mawkish and nauseating. Real astronauts are calm, educated, grounded in reality, and don't act as the characters do in this show. Real astronauts don't gossip, act crazy, etc. (Well, maybe Buzz Aldrin is the exception, but at least he confined to antics to Earth, not on the Moon.)
There's more crying here than you would find in a kitchen full of chefs looking at overcooked prime rib.
This show is about the dysfunctional families of astronauts, not about going to Mars. They could have had the astronauts trapped in an elevator communicating with family on their cell phones and saved a lot in production costs.
Pieces of Her (2022)
Perfect if you like Lifetime movies
There are too many episodes--this series desperately needs some editing--I'm thinking excising the one or two hours of material that makes this series drag.
The main cast is women with a bunch of men who are saints or evil--just like a Lifetime movie--you know, the channel where "Woman is victim" or "Men are evil" movies are the plot. The exception here to the Lifetime movie paradigm is that it looks like they spent a bit more money than a Lifetime movie, has better acting, contains a bit more violence, but not nearly enough nudity.
I really thought things were concluding during episode 7, but they managed to stretch things to an eighth episode!
The Center Seat: 55 Years of Star Trek (2021)
Could have been better, should have been better.
It's obvious that the interviewees spoke at some length, but the editors appear to think that the audience has no attention span. So their responses and recollections are clipped to show clips from the various shows. Much is left on the virtual cutting room floor.
Gates McFadden is a great narrator, though.
Star Trek deserves a Ken Burns style documentary, not this.
Debunking Evolution: What Every Christian Student Should Know (2016)
Bad science.
The acting is amateurish. Perhaps it's to distract you from noticing that the "science" presented here is mostly incorrect. The reason that public schools teach or are supposed to teach evolution theory as fact is because it is a fact. "Evolution" also shares its name with the Theory of Evolution, which is currently the best explanation for the diversity of life on earth. If you can prove the theory of evolution wrong, you would win a Nobel prize.
My recommendation: Skip this video.