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ben-angstadt
Reviews
Five Days at Memorial (2022)
Poorly Made, Horribly Acted
I was really looking forward to watching this show but the execution is laughably bad. The acting is truly woeful, made infinitely worse by the comically stupid teleplay. Characters speak in a way that actual humans don't actually talk - and in some of the worst fake accents I've ever heard. Camerawork and editing are frequently terrible and at times the camera whips around so fast that it's actually nauseating. Characters are under written, pacing is uneven, and the entire show has a uniquely low budget corniness. I give it 3 stars because the core story is interesting, but by the end we were watching just to laugh at how poorly made it was. I wish the source material book had been made into a documentary instead.
The Hip Hop Nutcracker (2022)
Dancing is great - I think, who knows with all the cuts
I love Hip Hop specifically and dance in general, but this really missed the mark. What we can see if the dancing shows that there were a lot of talented dancers cast in the production. Many of them I know as performers at the top of their game. But the directing choices here are inexcusable. There are CONSTANT cuts. In one brief, 1 minute 30 second long routine, I counted 47 cuts. FORTY SEVEN! Add to that some absolutely atrocious camera angles, poor lighting, and laughably bad special effects and the whole thing just feels cheap. The music is pretty bad to boot - there had to have been the opportunity to do a recording of the tracks that didn't sound like it was a MIDI mixer on a $50 keyboard. I really, really wanted to like this, but it simply wasn't possible. I'd love to get a better recording with a more adept director, but with tWitch's tragic passing, we aren't going to get it.
Only Murders in the Building (2021)
An inexplicably overrated show
I can't, for the life of me, understanding the extreme adoration for this show. The pacing is lethargic and inconsistent. The supporting characters, with only a few small exceptions, are painfully unlikable. The few likeable supporting characters are shoved to the sidelines. Selena Gomez is an awful, expressionless actress with the charm and charisma of a mossy log. Martin Short is great, and Steve Martin is solid, though it just makes me want to watch better material from them. The plot twists are half telegraphed to the point of self parody and half nonsensical to the point of absurdity. The one legitimately great thing about the show is the score. I think if you're from New York City, this show is probably funnier (since it's riddled with winking in-jokes about the city) but even then the humor is one note. There are countless better mysteries, comedies, and Steve Martin/Martin Short content out there. Don't waste your time.