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bluesun03
Reviews
Unorthodox (2020)
Excellent
Shira Haas is particularly stellar in this, the true story written by Deborah Feldman about her own break from the extremist subculture of the Stamar Hasidic community of Williamsburg, NY. But be sure to read the book as well. THe parts in Williamsburg are true to the book (though, oddly, most are actually filmed in Germany), but what happens to Esty in Germany was totally rewritten for the movie. Feldman claims its because it's set 8 years later in a different Germany & its what she imagines Esty would find in today's Germany. But, to get the full flavor of the original story, read Feldman's personal account of her true-life experience.
Meanwhile, we need to see MUCH more of Shira Haas in English language movies. She is unearthly good.
W glebi lasu (2020)
Rearranging the living room furniture was a better use of my time.
The two Netflix Cobens, Safe and The Five, were pretty good (though moving the scenes from Northern New Jersey, familiar territory to me, to England totally changed the stories vibes). The Stranger, on the other hand, was so poorly executed - with major changes in plot and entirely new subplots - was so badly executed in direction and haphazard editing, it was close to unwatchable (stick to the book or audiobook instead). The fact that The Woods was to be set in Poland was a honking red flag (Paul Copeland becomes Pavel Gabor? Really?), but I still waited eagerly, prepared to binge this today when it was released. It was so incoherent, poorly edited to the point of incomprehensibility that my wife, a true Coben fan, lasted 10 painful minutes into the first episode. I made it through the episode and even tried part of episode 2 before giving up in disgust and digging out my old audiobook of The Woods to clean out my mental palate. I rearranged the living room furniture while listening to the audiobook and feel somewhat better now. DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME ON THIS - it ain't true Coben. Stick to his ebooks or audiobooks. Netflix just makes each new one even worse. Is Coben selling out? Is Netflix trying to do these on the cheap? Does anybody care? Stick to the original written versions - they're orders of magnitude better.
Bosch (2014)
Connolly's Bosch series is as good as it gets.
If anybody has listened to Michael Connolly's Harry Bosch series on audiobooks & finds Titus Welliver eerily appropriate as Bosch in the Amazon streaming series, its probably because, as the narrator & voice of Harry in the Bosch audiobooks, his voice & characterization of Bosch was already very familiar before you ever saw episode 1.
The Stranger (2020)
Unwatchable
If you want to know why I rated this 1 star, read the excellent book. Harlan Coben's plots are complex as it is, but logical. I lasted halfway through the series & decided the confusion of this majorly altered plot was as if someone had put the book into a blender. Almost everything was different & distorted. For example, it took place in New Jersey,the sport was lacross, the "stranger" was a small man who had no connection to any of the victims, & the cop never knew Heidi - she was called in to the murder investigation about a third of the way into the book after Heidi's shot & tortured body was discovered. The killer wasn't involved in the investigation, but was a separate entity from NYC. There was never a subplot about a party or the alpaca head & the teens involved. The trace of Corrine's phone located it in Pittsburgh - 500 miles west. It was like trying to read the book on acid. Save your time & treat yourself to the excellent audiobook.
Dark Matter (2015)
Not exactly Joss Whedon, but the first season was a good grade b ripoff of Firefly.
The first season borrowed a lot from the Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, et al.) cult TV classic Firefly and the followup movie Serenity in 2005. As long as Fox saw fit to sabotage & then kill a series that was too anti-corporate, Firefly has been a cult classic. When the one-year series was released on Amazon, it was the top selling TV DVD for a long while. When Whedon reunited the entire cast for his 2005 movie Serenity, it also became the #1 on Amazon movie DVDs. Dark Matter is not up to Whedon's standards in casting, plot, or dialog, but it is the best I'd seen since then - at least for the first year. After that, it totally fell apart, with semi-coherent plots, third-rate dialog, incompetent directing (did they bring in a new director?) that made the original characters seem stilted, & an endless addition of highly forgettable new characters. I enjoyed the first season (which earned the 7 rating), but made it through Season 2 Episode 3 before bagging it as a losing proposition deserving of a 2 at best.