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Reviews
Tex Mex Motors (2023)
The acting is terrible, so at least you know the mechanics are probably legit
I've watched other very obviously fake car shows on Netflix, but none so obviously fake as this. It's a shame as the show doesn't need the silly dramatisations.
People watched pimp my ride to see the car transform (as ridiculous and often dangerous and pointless as those transformations were). I don't know why these shows can't do the same format as pimp my ride but with the actual talent that these people obviously have.
The transformations look great, and though I know nothing about cars the general consensus seems to be that these guys actually know what they're doing. Such a shame they aren't just showcasing that talent in a real way without the bad acting and dumb setups.
Synchronic (2019)
Tries to be Donnie Darko and Back to the future, fails to be either
Such a wasted opportunity. The acting is great, the concept is great, but as others have pointed out it's just terribly executed. A lot of the cinematography looks lovely, but the writer obviously couldn't make up his mind whether to explore time travel, or the drudgery of one of the characters relationship with his wife.
Everytime I got excited for the time travel we'd bounce back to present day and be exploring how bored and unappreciative the secondary character was. I kept wondering why, when we hadn't really been made to care about him or his wife's relationship in the first place.
Then there's the 'telling the story out of sequence' thing which just wasn't useful; we're obviously meant to be confused, but the primary character doesn't seem to be confused with us. Who was the confusion for? It's like the editor just got wrecked one night and cut the film wrong.
Finally, the totally irrelevant cancer story, what for?? It seemed to be to make us feel sad for a bit and then it's pretty much forgotten about. It basically get's written out like they changed their mind half way through making the film. Perhaps that's what happened, the whole movie does feel a bit like it was written as they were shooting it.
The time travel mechanic was interesting, but badly implemented, as another reviewer points out the past wasn't wall to wall danger; imagine if Sam Becket quantum leaped into a lion's mouth or the centre of a volcano every episode and spent the whole run time being chased by
vicious tribesmen. There was absolutely no chill in the past.
The ending is a rushed mess too sadly. It's played out, badly tied up and as morose as they could make it. 5 stars for the time travel, -5 for everything else.
The Playlist (2022)
A riches to riches story of how an arrogant millionaire became an arrogant billionaire
It's tricky to know who to root for, and the first episode will leave you thinking "I hope he doesn't make it, he's an arrogant rich man-child". We of course already know that he makes it and I almost turned it off until the reviews on imdb convicned me to stick around.
The difficulty is that they skip over the far more interesting rags to riches story of how he became a millionaire from a young boy making websites, and instead get straight into the millionaire trying to become a billionaire story, so your first point of reference is that a rich man is trying to get even richer by stealing and commercialising the pirate bays idea.
The music industry was and still is an ugly place. Musicians these days earn a pittance on Spotify, but it was always a massive leap even in the early 2000s from starving artist to millionaire, so I guess it's nice to see the record industry squirm, but the whole thing feels like bad guys versus bad guys.
The Sony record industry character is right to be frustrated that art is being stolen by the pirate bay, but it feels like a hypocrisy as he sits in his enormous mansion charging £15 a CD.
Similarly, the pirate bay characters are pretending to be on the moral high ground whilst making a mint out of advertising porn. Just more business men disguised as revolutionary visionarys.
Every character is in some way offensive and greedy, and it would be an interesting watch if you can enjoy a show where you hate all the characters if it wasn;t for the fact that it's not historically accurate.
Sadly a lot of the history is re-written and it's kind of senseless. They somehow have "all the music"; literally every piece of music ever made on their servers with no explanation as to how they got it from the record companies before they had yet done a single deal.
In real life it simply didn't happen that way, and this hurts the show because much of the enjoyment comes from seeing the characters react to this incredible unlimited jukebox. In the fantasy world it's how Daniel Ek convinces everybody to get onboard and I'm just left wondering how he actually convinced them in real life. I suspect it was a much less interesting case of having a few MP3's on a server.
In real life money talks, and he was an arrogant millionaire that easily convinced other arrogant millionaires that they could monetise the pirate bay. Not quite the romantic plot of 'the playlist' but if you can bring yourself to forget that they're re-writing history and you can bring yourself to root for an unlikable set of characters, then it's fun to see how it all plays out I guess.
The show fails as a historical account of events, and as a drama because 1. It isn't real, and 2. The characters all deserve to lose.
The Mole (2022)
Some of this doesn't add up
It's hard to know whether some of these people are just ridiculously thick, or if they are the mole. You spend a lot of the time thinking "if there's only one mole, why did 2 people simultaneously make the dumbest possible choice?".
It's not scripted, but it's not entirely real either. Netflix keeps pumping out this sort of show, 70% reality, 30% people being told what to say or do, or at the very least being guided in a specific direction.
There's a specific challenge right near the beginning where it's clear the dude knew where to look for an object that really changed the game up. Without him finding it there would have been very little drama, and it just seemed implausible to me he would have found it unless told "go check over there" by a producer.
It's great fun, but infuriating at times. At one point there is entirely self destructive behaviour for absolutely no reason, and you do keep asking yourself "does anyone here actually deserve this money?". I started to really enjoy it once I started rooting for everyone to fail, which I'm not sure was the shows intention.
Blonde (2022)
Misery porn and nonsense
I have to learn to stop watching "dramatisations". I know even less about Marilyn Monroe than I did when I started.
I often go into these things thinking "there'll be some exaggerations I can fact check later, but I'll learn a bit about who she was in an entertaining way". I am almost always wrong, but never as wrong as today.
This was the tale of a 1 dimensional woman with daddy issues that seemingly never met a single kindness from birth to death. There is no story. Let's be clear, this is a collection of disconnected scenes designed to make you hate men, and feel sorry for a child trapped in a womans body.
I know practically nothing about Marilyn Monroe and even I know they've done her a terrible disservice, because no person has ever been so hapless and weak as the character portrayed here.
There are some artsy gimmicks that might fool you into thinking this is high brow intellectualism, but when you reach the fetus voice over scene you will realise the whole thing is a weakly told non-story employing as many distractions as it can.
Anyone that tells you this is "art" and that it's "gone over the critics heads" are ironically not clever enough to realise they've been had.
I am positive Marilyn would have hated this, because NOBODY would ever wish to be portrayed as an incapable perma-victim, running from one replacement father figure to another, in a state of never ending confusion.
The Future Of (2022)
Absolute make believe
I couldn't get through the first episode. Everything is pure speculation about how we could one day talk to dogs by having our smart phone analyse the dogs behaviour so that it can literally speak. Complete drek, the algorithm will just be surmising as best it can what the dog wants, which is A: never going to work properly, and B: a far cry from the actual dog speech we are promised trhroughout the program, and yet the the show optimistically floats from one man in the street to the other asking them "how cool would it be if your dog could talk!?"
Let me save the researchers the hassle, the dog is saying "I am hungry", "can we go for a walk", "please don't do that" and "please don't do that or I will bite you". Dogs aren't that complicated.
I was hoping for some actual science, all I got was "wouldn't it be cool if?" and even that wasn't fully explored. Step it up Netflix, this is dross.