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tomjoyce1964
Reviews
Superman & Lois (2021)
I love this (very silly) show!!
I could write a novel about the things in this show that make absolutely zero sense (or less). You have to suspend your disbelief A LOT and then not think too hard about what's going on. And most of the actors are tier-C talent. A lot of the plot lines are soap opera-y cliches. And there are cliff hangers. And some cheesy effects. And annoying teenagers.
But that's the definition of a CW superhero show!
And I love it!
It's fun, and I look forward to every episode. Tyler Hoechlin is a great Superman for this level and this type of plot. They have him playing Superman as unambiguously good like Superman should be, with no darkness or ambivalence or shadows. Lois is a straight up Lois, and I am not sure the actress is perfect for it but she is good enough. Her dad played by Dylan Walsh is great even though his role makes no sense whatsoever and Adam Raynor (Morgan Edge/Tal Rho) is awesome and brings some comic camp to the show (especially in season 2). The Kyle/Lana plot line and the Clark/Lana dynamic are super cliched, but the actors play it straight and are enjoyable and attractive.
The show is pink sugar cotton candy. It's a TV soap opera with a classic goody two shoes American Hero super hero, bad guys doing bad stuff that doesn't make any sense, and literally none of it makes any sense. At all. And I can't wait for Season 3!
Andor (2022)
I have SW fatigue but this is great
Obi Wan was a disappointment and Mandalorian went nowhere so I didn't want to watch this. But it is great. It is realistic and not the same old cheesy Star Wars fan service with puppets and baby yoga's and Easter eggs. The first episode of Andor is boring and I almost gave up but from there on it gets better and better.
It is not very heavy on effects but those that are there are terrifically done, like the tie fighter scenes and the droid. Terrific show. Diego Luna and Skarsgard are terrific as are many others. This is what a 21st century Star Wars movie or show should be like. This is the way.
Elvis (2022)
One of the best movies I have ever seen
The first third of this movie was astonishing. I have to watch it again. Every shot in every scene was meticulous. There is so much to seein every single shot. Just perfectly planned, executed, designed and realized. The art direction, use of technology, color, design, styl, costumes, locations, everything was breathtaking. The performances throughout were really amazing. For the people criticizing the character development or the acting, this was not an actors' movie. This was a director's movie, really an auteur's movie. It was not a simple narrative "life of Elvis Presley by the numbers". It was a magical recreation of those experiences. For what this director was trying to do, he acomplished it times a million. Amazing. The only negative I could say is it's 15-20 minutes too long and I know exactly what I would have cut. And Tom Hanks' accent was a bit much but a creative choice that makes sense for the goals of the movie. This film deserves a boatload of awards including best picture.
The Lincoln Lawyer (2022)
The Bosch Lawyer
Basically, it's like Bosch. If Bosch was a Mexican American lawyer. It's a cheaply made-in-LA lawyer TV show.
But I enjoyed it. It was predictable and by the numbers but What it was trying to do it did just fine.
Outer Range (2022)
Weird and fun
This is a fun slow burn sci fi fantasy, with maximum weirdness. Through 4 episodes it has elements of shows like lost and invasion, in that you know your chain is being yanked, you can.t figure out what the big mystery is, and it all may come to naught, but it's still fun watching. Brolin is great, and so are Tommy Pelfrey and Deidre O'Connell. Will Patton is doing his standard moves, but dialed up to 11 and on acid, and Imogene Potts' character is also completely nuts. Some of the secondary actors aren't really up to it, but that's TV these days. Fun show. I hope they don't leave us hanging at the end.
Law & Order (1990)
2022 Law and Order is good
I don't watch much network TV but I like Hugh Dancy and Jeffrey Donovan so I watched the first of these and then the second. I thought it was great. I liked the original L&O and this is like that. One case a week, not serialized, formulaic, but you know what you are getting. The first two episodes have themes that are pulled from the headlines (Cosby, Theranos) and are pretty obvious. It is check-your-brain-at-the-door TV but very enjoyable. The writing is good. Dancy and Donovan are great. The only black mark is that Cameron Mannheim is on the show and she is just awful. I liked it a lot and plan to keep watching. Yeah, there's some politics, but there always was and people just need to stop complaining in reviews about woke this and woke that. This show is way better than the serialized versions of Law and Order - SVU, Organized Crime and that ilk.
Reacher (2022)
I have read the books and wanted to like this more.
I do hope they do a 2nd season and learn from season 1.
Pros:
Alan Richson is a good fit for the role and more like Reacher in the book.
The lead actors were good.
It was true to the book for the most part.
The action scenes were great.
Cons:
Reacher in this portrayal seems like a psychopath. In the books he is arrogant and very smart, but in this show he is also "off". He has zero affect and seems like he has something wrong with him. At first I thought they were presenting him as Asperger's or on the spectrum but that was not it. They turned him into a psychopath and that is disappointing.
Frequently his deductions were not believable, they were clairvoyant. That was stupid and ruined credibility.
The series dragged, it was three episodes too long.
Many of the supporting actors were just terrible. The money guy was awful. Reacher's brother and mother were bad. Kliner's son was a whole new level of terrible. Like unwatchably bad.
The dialogue was kind of poor overall it when they were writing for the supporting characters it got really bad. There was a lot of expository "bad guy says out out the all the laws he broke" kind of dialogue.
The Gilded Age (2022)
Excellent first episode
The sets and the clothes are tremendous. The style of the show is very Julian Fellowes; they are trying to hit all the familiar notes. It isn't fair to judge any show in this era after just one episode, especially one with so many characters and potential moving parts but I would say it is off to a great start. The first episode was a bit stiff as it was full of introductions and context setting. Downtown Abbey also took time to get beyond being a stock British costume drama.
People who loved Downton and are complaining about stiff acting and dialogue might reflect on the fact that many of those characters we grew to love were pretty wooden in the beginning. Bates, Branson, Edith, Carson... we're pretty lame and took time to develop. Give it time.
And I love the reviews complaining that they don't like these elitist rich people with snotty accents. Here's a tip: it's called The Gilded Age....
The Tomorrow War (2021)
Edge of Ridiculous
This review does not contain spoilers because the movie itself was already as spoiled as it could possibly be. This is by far the stupidest movie I have seen in years. I am only halfway through it. I'm going to watch the rest of it because it's so stupid that I don't think I can live with myself if I don't watch the rest of it and see if maybe it might even get stupider. Chris Pratt and Yvonne Strahovski are basically mailing it in. As is everybody else in this movie. There are a number of familiar faces in the cast that you have seen in television shows like 24 and veep who haven't gotten paid in a while who are also sleep walking through this and getting paid whatever the minimum is for bad horrible streaming the movies, and it is nice to see these people get a paycheck. But that's about it.
Invasion (2021)
Very good so far
I almost didn't watch it because of the reviews on here. I am glad I did. The first episode was uneven and Sam Neill was miscast; that was an odd segment, but after 3 episodes I am enjoying very much. It is another slow burn from Apple TV, which I like.
The production quality and music are excellent, and the acting from Farahani in particular but also the three other leads (the soldier, the kid and the woman in Tokyo) is really really good. This is clearly a show about the people more than the aliens; about their personal worlds and day to day relationships and issues and what happens when the bigger universe turns everything upside down. The choices they make, their reaction to carefully laid plans and assumptions and biases getting blown away. It reminds me just a bit of Lost; it's not really about all the "stuff" that happens, it is about people and relationships.
Regarding the IMDB reviews, it seems like people are quick to go negative. If it's character based people complain it's slow, if it's action based people complain there's no character development, and some people always complain about multiculturalism. Just watch and see for yourself.
Foundation (2021)
Good, but not your father's (or Asimov's) Foundation
Asimov's books were a cautionary tale about the fall of empires, written in the 50s, when the US was at peak-empire. They were about how the nature of humanity and historical forces cause societies to follow the same patterns of growth and decline, and that we should ask, what are the inflection points?
The showrunners and Apple decided to tell a different story, not about the rise and fall of nations, but about the conflict between individual human agency and forces we can't control.
Every major character in this show struggles with how do I do what I want to do in the context of big scary power (Empire, Psychohistory, religion, genetics/programming) controlling everything? Do I matter? Do I have a soul or am I a machine/clone/cog in the wheel?
This is a particular obsession of our times. Not about what happens to the world, but about what happens to me in a world where everything is controlled by powers bigger than me, real and imagined (govt, god, deep state, Google, secret patriarchal control structures, Qanon, whatever).
So if you can accept that this is what the show is about it is interesting. If you are interested in what Asimov wrote bout, there is little of that in this show.
Invasion (2021)
Very good so far
I almost didn't watch it because of the reviews on here. I am glad I did. The first episode was uneven and Sam Neill was miscast; that was an odd segment, but after 3 episodes I am enjoying very much. It is another slow burn from Apple TV, which I like.
The production quality and music are excellent, and the acting from Farahani in particular but also the three other leads (the soldier, the kid and the woman in Tokyo) is really really good. This is clearly a show about the people more than the aliens; about their personal worlds and day to day relationships and issues and what happens when the bigger universe turns everything upside down. The choices they make, their reaction to carefully laid plans and assumptions and biases getting blown away. It reminds me just a bit of Lost; it's not really about all the "stuff" that happens, it is about people and relationships.
Regarding the IMDB reviews, it seems like people are quick to go negative. If it's character based people complain it's slow, if it's action based people complain there's no character development, and some people always complain about multiculturalism. Just watch and see for yourself.
Westworld (2016)
Season 3
Season 1 was groundbreaking and better than anyone could have hoped for. If I had only watched Season 1 and not 2 and 3I would have rated this show 10 stars.
Season 2 was good but not great and was nearly impossible to make sense of. Acting was good, production values were good. Probably an 8.
And then... Season 3. 5 stars. It was easier to follow and the production was still high quality. Aaron Paul was a good add and Tessa Thompson was better in this than in anything else she has done. But the rest of the actors came off terribly. If Season 3 of Westworld was the first time I had seen Evan Rachel Wood, Jeffrey Wright, Ed Harris and Thandie Newton I would have concluded that they were terrible actors. But they aren't. So the fault lies at the hands of the script and the director.
The writing is terrible in S3. The dialogue is wooden and overly preachy, especially toward the end, with the major characters giving pompous speeches about humanity, free will and the future of the world. Evan Rachel Wood comes off the worst. Her behavior here is entirely inconsistent. I kept hoping somebody would just kill her to shut her up, and they would, and then bring her back again for more pompous speechifying. Also the second half of the season was an endless series of martial arts fights. Nothing new here. Boring to watch.
The major beef I had was that the major conceit in S3 didn't work. Without spoiling it, it was a nice sci if play on our current social media world and the power of Google and Facebook, but it was never explained how this whole thing actually worked. Significant suspension of disbelief is necessary in Westworld, but the In Season 3 this was a bridge too far.
The Expanse (2015)
One of the greatest sci fi epics ever
This is one of my bury favorites, up there with Battlestar Galactica.
It started slow and I actually quit watching it the first time and went back and then got hooked. Some
Of the actors are tremendous, but it's the realistic possible future that this series creates that makes it special. The belter culture and language is just a great origins idea.
My only beef is season 5. I have read all the books and the show closely follows them, except season 5 which makes a number of bad changes, probably because this is likely to be the last season for the show. But the changes they made don't help and it is confusing to follow. Also the acting is not as strong in this season.
Succession (2018)
Really like this show
Yes, the people are not nice, and if you come to it with a "hate the rich" mentality then don't bother. But what else is new? Half the shows on TV are about rich people. Anyway...
The actors at terrific and are allow to stretch out. My guess is there is a fair amount of improv. The writing is great, typical HBO with a lot of profanity, but great. Camera work is terrific. The fascinating thing is that though there are no characters that are "good people" the show is so well done that you become sympathetic to the plight of some of them, particularly Ken and Tom in my case. I laugh a lot, the show is darkly funny and often absurd.
Two stars off because though I like Kieran Culkin generally I do not buy his character in this, and I don't like the way he played it. He is not believable in just about any scene. But Jeremy Strong, Matthew McFayden are brilliant as are Sarah Snook and Brian Cox of course.
The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020)
Absolutely splendid
This is a beautifully done show, well acted and directed. Great sets, beautiful to look at. I liked Hill house a great deal, perhaps a bit more, but this was different and I liked it for different reasons. The pacing was slow in the beginning, and a star off for that. Honestly it takes a bit to adjust to, because it was not chock full of jump scares and cheap thrills like hill house though there are some. Ultimately it is a melancholy ghost story but one that is touching and I enjoyed watching it especially in the second half. Hill house also made a turn halfway through. I enjoyed seeing the actors playing different characters. Things I struggled with were Henry Thomas' accent, which overshot the mark, and the main construct with the Hanna Grose character. Also Victoria Pendretti tends to overdo it a bit but she was overall good. The kids were spectacular. I hope they can do more of these shows!
The Vast of Night (2019)
Enjoyed this 50s sci fi movie
I agree with the reviewers who thought the overall plot was lame in terms of it being a classic ufo sighting in a small town situation. But I didn't think this movie was about plot, it was about atmosphere. I don't think I have seen a movie that captured the 50s in a small American town so brilliantly. I will watch it again just for that. the language, accents, catch phrases, costumes, everything was a joy to watch. I enjoyed the risks the director took with blank screens, the TV screens, long unbroken shots, etc. I really enjoyed the creativity and different things I saw in this movie that you don't often see. Fun to watch!
The Handmaid's Tale (2017)
A mess. Time to put this series on the wall.
Season 1 was groundbreaking. Season 2 was good but more of the same with a mystifying ending.
Season 3? What a mess. The high points are Bradley Whitford and the woman who plays his wife. They are terrific. Also the scenes with Emily in Canada, the Aunt Lydia flashback and the Washington DC episode. The rest is ridiculous. Serena's baby obsession, the hospital episode, the visit to Jezebels and getting away with that, the rings in their mouths that nobody knew about, digging up radioactive waste in the colonies and surviving, the Waterford's trip(s) to Canada, the Swedes, the stupid muffins, the escape plan, the escape itself, throwing rocks at the gunmen, on and on and on. This season became a girl power revenge play which is fine but the way it was executed was absurd and made no sense. I guess I am in this far so I'll watch the first episode of S4 to see what happened, but it just got so stupid and if they don't come up with a different direction I'm out.
There are some tremendous actors on this show. They need to focus on some of the other characters and broaden out. Elizabeth Moss is great but her character has been pushed in so many extreme directions in this season it is played out. THEY HAVE TO STOP WITH THE CLOSEUPS OF JUNE'S FACE!!!!! I am now so sick of her face I can't stand it. The character just doesn't work anymore, makes no sense and needs a complete restart or to be in a General Hospital type coma for most of Season 4 so I have time to mentally regroup.
They should really just kill the show. They should have after S1 or S2. But there's too much financial interest from the folks involved, and people will watch, so it will be back, and hopefully it will be new and better.
Ozark (2017)
Season 3 is the best. Awesome.
I am binge watching Ozark while on quarantine and now I have REO Speedwagon stuck in my head. Thanks Ozark!
I was prepared for Season 3 to not be as good but it is better. Tom Pelphrey and Lisa Emery are just spectacular as are Bateman, Linney and the whole cast. Episode 6 I had to watch twice. Really, really good show.