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Penderworth
Reviews
Homeschooled (2022)
An underrated delight
It's a shame this show isn't available in the US. I had it on my list to watch when visiting Canada, because Veronika Slowikowska is in it and I was intrigued. I grew up homeschooled and found it to be an amusing collection of sketch-ish shorts on the experience. The production quality is also really high for such a quick little show - I wonder if perhaps it was originally meant to be a movie, since 10-minute episodes are very short for anything that's not specifically geared toward children, and usually those are going to be animated.
I doubt it'll be renewed, but I do hope they bring it to the US so more people can watch it.
The Bear: Fishes (2023)
Fantastic, up there with Succession
This is a family dinner episode that rivals Succession's. Chaotic through and through with incredible writing and dizzying direction. The slower moments made it a lot more tolerable too - without them, it'd feel exhausting and simply out of control. Finally getting a backstory to the family that we've seen the current generation of helps flesh out the characters a lot better.
The visual style do the episode is peculiar, with lots of vignetting and darker lighting throughout, while still feeling cozy in a midwestern way.
I also loved the cameos. Wasn't expecting Odenkirk and Mulaney to show up. Both did a wonderful job in their usual style.
Succession: Church and State (2023)
The best episode of TV in years
This is probably the best episode of any show I've ever seen. Roman's arc throughout it is completely unexpected. Every single one of them panic at the funeral. Kendal finally picks up the gauntlet and I somehow believe he'll be the one to land the plane. Shiv yet again seems to be set up to fail. The history of this family repeats itself over and over again, and only the lucky ones happen to escape - will that be Ken?
I loved the little moments in this episode, like Greg carrying the coffin. This show will be forever remembered for perfecting a switch from comedic to dramatic so quickly you're both confused and amazed.
The White Lotus: Italian Dream (2022)
"I would date a cave man"
Some great writing in this episode. The way White likes to explore the troubles of modern masculinity is more unique than most TV and I've been enjoying it. The first season had the emasculated brother, and this one has the son who says he doesn't want to be like his dad, that he wants to be the nice guy. Yet he finds himself attracted to "pretty wounded birds".
I was surprised to see some vulnerability from the character who I thought in the first episode would be the bro; what he said about his experience when his wife gave birth was totally unexpected.
It's also nice to see someone on TV talking about what we're all exhausted with right now: the online world, from dating to social media to all things non-reality. Truly a good season so far!
The New York Times Presents: Elon Musk's Crash Course (2022)
There's more nuance than 1 star
There are an amusing amount of 1 star reviews on this. I found it informative and interesting. Anyone who's complaining about this to the point that they only give it 1 out of 10 stars is a clear fanboy of Musk. If they paid attention to the documentary, they'd find lots of clear reasons to be disappointed with Musk and Tesla as a whole when it comes to the Autopilot feature. It's a mess. So many broken promises.
Sure, the doc uses the directorial choices that these types typically do and tries to convince you that the deaths are the main issue, but even just the misleading way that Musk himself talks about the promise of the Autopilot feature is worthy of criticism.
Foundation: The Leap (2021)
A fantastic finale
This sets things up well for season 2. There were still a few meh lines here and there, but I love what they did with this episode, especially the Empire storyline. It's nice to see Gail's get some more solid movement as well.
Oblivion (2013)
Moon starring Tom Cruise
Oblivion is not at all original. If that were the only bad things about it, the film would still succeed at being entertaining. But it continues to stumble in several areas:
- The trailer is so misleading that it may as well have been for an entirely different film. - Technology in Oblivion is beyond anything we have right now, but for some reason an omnipotent artificial intelligence cannot manage to send clear transmissions to its servants on the Earth. - HAL was a character of 2001: A Space Odyssey, not a 2013 film starring Tom Cruise and Morgan Freeman. - I got tired of the idea behind Oblivion halfway and just started hoping it would end. - As always, the enemies (this time drones) are incapable of shooting down a ship flown by a man, but somehow they can annihilate hundreds of humans in seconds. Also, they sound a lot like Tie Fighters. - Only Jack Harper knows this: there's actually a lush green portion of Earth which the AI didn't see, even though its main goal was to turn the Earth's water supply into energy using a series of fancy towers. - There are thousands of drones in the mothership, yet all the AI manages to send to attack the rebels three. After that it has to start thinking again. - With all the fancy DNA technology, how did the AI not know Morgan Freeman was aboard the ship Harper flew in? How did it not detect a massive nuclear bomb? Was it too busy concentrating on opening the pod bay doors? - M83's soundtrack began a lot like Hans Zimmer's Dark Knight Rises and ended up being too noisy. - The moon is destroyed. Wow, just like in Time Machine.
In the end, Oblivion is a spectacle from the director of Tron: Legacy. It's his second film and it's obvious that the guy needs practice. The whole experience of watching this Tom Cruise flick makes one feel inferior. The story never gets the redeeming end it deserves.
Sorry, Kosinski. I can't do that.
Iron Man Three (2013)
Superfluous and ridiculous
Ah, Iron Man. To the Marvel Universe, he's the iconic philander of Malibu, California. His country praises him for the explosive weaponry he brought it. Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) brings many things to his world, but he's mainly known for his ability to create peace on the Earth. As a part of the Avengers, he aided in the fall of an invasion. He also has his own adventures. But then he fell from greatness, like so many do. The third installment of the cinema's Iron Man franchise tells this story. Or rather, Tony Stark does.
Things spin off with a flashback. Stark looks back at something he did on New Year's Day in 2000 which ends up changing his whole perspective of things. The story Tony tells is a solid one. It's about a hero who invites an attack from a terrorist and ends up losing nearly everything he loves. The problem is, Tony isn't sure what he loves. Is it his girl, Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) or do his hobbies come first? And so the story of love and loss goes. I'll admit I was surprised with the significant plot twists the writers threw at me, but I won't say they were all that original.
As with the other two Iron Man films, this one approaches humor like Tony Stark in his Audi R8: relentlessly. Most of it seems forced. The typical Iron Man humor of Stark and his converser is strong as ever, and growing very dull. Some lines aren't so bad, but overall I got the feeling that this humor just can't adapt to a different situation. Instead, Robert Downey Jr.'s character resorts to being obnoxious in any situation thrown at him. Yet somehow the next minute he is able to understand how someone feels and finish a serious conversation. It feels like it wants to be a comedy, joking about truly serious matters and even acting irresponsible in terrorist situations, much like a child. Only this time, it's so immature that the Iron Man portrayed has reached a new low, one that's not honorable.
The main problem with the whole film is that Downey Jr. only has so many actor cards and the new director here, Shane Black, used up his last batch early in development, leaving nothing for the rest of the film. That's why you can easily locate scattered fragments of comical behavior and when you try to put together the puzzle, the pieces don't fit. The Iron Man watcher is not looking for a family comedy mixed with some Django Unchained, but rather chasing the character Robert Downey Jr. created back in 2008. Where has that magic gone?
Most of the character development went well, until it got to the villain. First, he's given a short backstory at the beginning of the film, but the writers don't go into much depth. There are clues here and there as to what the man does with his life, but when it's suddenly revealed that he's the terrorist the world seeks, things get interesting. Maybe it was terrible acting on Guy Pearce's part or maybe there's just a disconnect between the director and writer, because he almost seems like he's not paying attention to his character. All I saw was a constant circle of throw, smash, choke, and walk away enraged. He had the potential of — and even seemed to strive towards — being the Joker from The Dark Knight, which is a character that every nemesis suddenly must try to be.
Lastly, the soundtrack. I love hearing a beautiful score whenever possible, but Brian Tyler failed with this composition. The music was a noisy, redundant, and even dull kerfuffle. It had its moments of excitement and there were just too many. That could have been the fault of the film itself, which was thoroughly intense, but all this soundtrack did was make me think the film would be better without it. It wasn't unoriginal, just overly-epic.
Like with the soundtrack, Iron Man 3 as a whole is overshot. It tries to be so great that it falls just like the hero within. Thankfully, it manages to recover most of its parts and reassemble things by the concluding ten minutes. In a nutshell, this film was disappointing. The trailers made it out to be something completely different and it had a hard time succeeding at just continuing the legacy of Iron Man. It's good this makes a trilogy because there's not a reason to keep going. Even though its lesson (heroes must fall; terrorists shall rise) has potential, the implementation isn't all it could be.
Still, after the credits there was a clear message: "Tony Stark will return."
Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011)
Transformers 3: When the third time is not the charm
Please note that there are few small spoilers so be careful before reading on.
I see you're brave and have ventured to the review. First off I'd like to tell you that Sam's (Shia LeBeouf) new girlfriend Carly's (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) acting was decent and no worse than Fox's; and in the long run it was better.
The CGI was, as you would assume, amazing but still doesn't take home the trophy of Avatar and is rather far from that. This movie relies too much on the special effects and in doing so leaves you with three main battle scenes and rubble. At the end there is no indication that everything is okay, but it obviously is since this is a movie. Megatron doesn't need to get killed again either; it needs a better plot because this one is just old.
Transformers 3 wants to be one of those amazing battle movies, and it tries hard at this: only to fail. The problem is that the battles were short and things just get destroyed all the time at a ridiculous frame-rate that you can't keep up with. Someone would have to watch this a few times to actually remember what took place during the battles besides the good guys winning, as always. LeBeouf's "Optimus!" will always be classic, but doesn't necessarily need to be in every movie.
The biggest annoyance of this movie was its soundtrack. I was appalled to hear what sounded like Hans Zimmer's Inception soundtrack during the dramatic scenes of the movie. The melody was far too similar to it, and I thought it was the same thing at times. The other tracks in the soundtrack were just boring as they were the same Transformers melody that we've been hearing since 2007.
Overall the reason I really didn't care for this addition to the Transformers series is because of the idea itself. The first was great and we didn't need anything other than that, but now they've gone to make an unnecessary trilogy or more, who knows. I didn't feel like the movie took me through a fun adventure, but a dramatic journey instead. Different, yes, but for good or bad?
I'll let you decide that as I do recommend that you go watch it, unless you want to save that money for the final Harry Potter or Captain America.
Avatar (2009)
Well done but then again too well done
Okay first off I know a lot of people love this movie and they're going to hate me for this review but its the truth that a lot of you just need to understand...
Avatar was NOT very creative in any way whatsoever. Let me list the issues:
- A story that reminds me of Disney's Pocahontas too much. If you want to make a good movie, make the story better. If it takes you 15 years to make this thing then you need to get it right. The story needs to be much more original than that. It needs far more development and they should have more information in it for a 2.5 hour movie.
- Special effects that weren't actually very good, they could have done better when they spent that much money on them... The "big battle scene" at the end wasn't very big really... It had lots of explosives yes, but thats about all.
- The acting wasn't 5 star in any way. There were some pretty cheesy lines too. Why do we need this nonsense? If its going to be the movie we'll remember then great... But I'm not going to remember this thanks to its lack of creativity. Inception beats it, times ten.
- 3D? Meh, overrated. Okay so 3D gets really old; I saw How to Train Your Dragon and Avatar in it. You don't even notice it after 10 minutes into the movie! 3D is overrated and definitely overpriced.