desrocchi Reviews

Invincible (2021– )

A show in decline

[8/10 · 30 April 2024]

After a great first season, the second one's writing is circling the drain.

Long stretches of absolutely unrealistic dialogues and interactions, with an unpaid cliffhanger or action scene sprinkled here and there.

This show has become the epitome of tell not show.

We are told every step of the way what the characters are feeling, what they want, what they do.

Hell, in episode 6 or 7 there's a whole scene where we are taken by the hand in a long winded recap and explanation of each and every Guardian's trauma as if we were too dumb to understand or remember them...

I don't know if the writers changed or if they just ran out of ideas.

Foundation (2021– )

How to kill a masterpiece

[1/10 · 22 December 2021]

I've been waiting my whole life to see this series: I read The Foundation saga for the first time when I was 13, and read it another 4 times throughout my life.

Whoever wrote the script is an absolute inept.

Using voice-over to explain everything, stretching every scene to the most absolute tediousness, forcing love stories in a political-strategical sci-fi opera, making the Empire act as a discount Joker...

I forced myself to half of the first episode, I could not watch this butchering any longer.

I'll read the books once again.

Hacks (2021– )

0 stars for the writing, 2 stars for the cinematography

[2/10 · 4 September 2021]

A show that revolves all around good writing is ironically completely devoid of it.

The story is uninspired, predictable, flat. The "fun" parts are boring or incredibly stupid.

Unlike "Marvellous miss Maisel", all the scene with the protagonist on stage are absolutely devoid of humour, all her jokes are tame and old.

Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist (2020–2021)

Childish unrealistic writing

[1/10 · 15 August 2021]

I really don't know what people see in this thing written by a moody 13 years old...

The dialogues are laughably disconnected from reality.

If I ever were to hear an adult speak like any of the characters of this disasterous series I would seriously feel embarassed for them.

Maybe I'm just too old for this kind of shows...

Archenemy (2020)

Show, don't tell

[2/10 · 26 July 2021]

This movie is one exposition after the other, from the beginning to the very end.

The protagonist talks, the boy talks, the sister talks, the bad guy talks, the archenemy talks... they have to explain the story to the viewers over and over again because the film does not do it.

The actors have very little to act upon because all they're doing is tell us what we're supposed to know.

Nice idea, very bad writing.

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs the Reverend (2020 TV Movie)

Not the right format for this show

[3/10 · 29 August 2020]

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt heavily relies on its unending chain of gags, that's what makes it shine: it does not leave you with an empty second.

This interactive format that stops the whole sharades and forces you to wait, sometimes go back, see the same thing a second time, wait again for the choice and repeat, completely destroys the basis of the show.

The story is on the weak side, but I think without the whole choice gimmick could have been enjoyable.

Star Trek: Picard: Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1 (2020) Season 1, Episode 9

Who wrote this thing?

[2/10 · 20 March 2020]

At the beginning we see Picard's ship and the borg cube crash withot any control into the planet... but they get barely scratched? WTF?

I understand it's scifi, but you cannot ignore physics! Even if the ships were sturdy enough to take the impact, all the living being inside should have died at the moment of the impact.

The droid's commune is absolutely unsatisfying: there's no time to develop any of the characters' motivations and personalities, so we end up with a series of uncalled for decisions that bare no weight to the wiever because we have no investment in them and we don't care for these people...

Really the worst episode of the series.

Upgrade (2018)

Bad plot

[5/10 · 4 January 2019]

The movie kind of stood on his own until the final scene when it is revealed that STEN was behind every single move to get to have a human body.

It does not make any sense.

Why leave the baby scientist with a switch to turn him off if STEN is the one in control? Why lead the main character in a vengeance rampage when he damn well know it will lead back to him being the mastermind? Why not simply grind away at the mind of his host in a safe environment instead of risking losing the body he worked so hard to get?

When STEN is revealed as the mastermind the whole movie falls to pieces and it does not make any sense anymore.

Just Cause 4 (2018 Video Game)

A downgrade from Just Cause 3

[4/10 · 15 December 2018]

In short: the game is too easy. Just run from one pointer to the next, push a button, rinse and repeat.

Sure, you gun down a few enemies on the way but they're just a little nuisance.

A big milestone of the JC series is the destruction of the "red" objectives, and it used to be you had to clear all of them to advance in you conquest, all the while enemies occupied that area. Now they're just there, you can destroy them but you don't really need to, after a certain point they can be completely ignored because they don have any purpose anymore: they give you troops for occupying areas, but you need 6 troops at most, after thet you just keep on accruing allies but never use them.

The weapons are quite uninspired, just use whatever the enemies drop. There are (a lot of) weapon crates around the world, but they always contain the usual useless weapons, so it's quicker just picking up whatever you find, at least you know you'll get ammo refills from the enemies.

The story could simply not be there. It's not a huge selling point for this game, but at least in JC3 you could care for the characters that talked to you and get a bit of a laugh here and there, now it would be better if they didn't exist at all.

The graphics are not that good, and I mean the overall effect they achieve is not pleasing to the eye. Especially water and hair are so bad you just can't help but being shot out of the immersion of the game.

The SSAO option simply makes the game black, there are no differences in the illumination, just a layer of black painted over the screen. In broad daylight, as soon as you enter a covered space, it becomes night. You literally cannot see 5 meter ahead of you. That would be OK if there was some kind of transition period during which your eyes get accustomed to the new lighting, but that's not the case, you are in the dark forever.

The Dragon Prince (2018– )

The Avatar Prince

[4/10 · 18 September 2018]

I was so excited to delve into a new story from the creator of Avatar but... I found myself watching the exact same story and cast of Avatar:TLA but set in an alternative reality.

The characters are the same: Sokka (Callum, who even has the same voice actor), Katara (Rayla, who has an unbearable 40-year-old-welsh-woman's voice) and Aang (Ezran) just with their roles mixed up a bit.

Momo has become a lightoad while Appa's role will be filled by Azymondias.

Zuko and Azula are there (Soren and Claudia), firelord Ozai (Viren) and Uncle Iroh (General Amaya, who I already love more than all the other characters)...

The animation is much worse than Avatar, though. Not the art, but the animation is so bad it feels like watching a constantly stuttering video...

I don't give this a 1 star because it might be something good to see for those who have never seen Avatar:TLA, but it has been a huge letdown for me.

Bo Burnham: Make Happy (2016 TV Special)

Technically outstanding but predictable and flat

[2/10 · 4 September 2018]

I really don't know what is special about this special. From the get going the jokes are pretty much flat, predictable or childish. At the 20 minutes mark I gave up on this.

Technically amazing with the interaction of prerecorded pieces and live stage, not to mention the music, but these alone cannot save a show that is not funny.

I went back and watched till the end because of many times "dat ending" is mentioned in the comments and I have to say: not worth it at all.

Anon (I) (2018)

Nice message, awful implementation

[3/10 · 8 July 2018]

The message behind the movie is clear and commendable: privacy cannot be lost in the name of percieved safety.

But the movie itself is so bad...

In this extreme controlling society, police can apparently solve crimes only through the evidence gathered in the Ether (the cloud where all the memories are storaged), otherwise they can do no investigating work.

The police itself is seen as corrupt and omnipotent. The protagonist is seen hiding evidence in a theft case because he didn't like the victim and wanted to help the criminal. We are supposed to feel empathy for this man because with his action he's helping a person in need, while completely disregarding the fact that this shows the police has put themselves above the law.

Hiding from this all-seeing eye is also extremely simple: close your own eyes and no record of any crime is registered. But this is also a contradictory point within the movie: the scenes where we look through someone else's eyes there is no blinking, no head bobbing, no surroundings, no sudden movements... but when the plot needs it closing your own eyes actually obscures the recording.

There are also a few gunshot fired but apparently we are not looking at a human story because all the people shot are androids and have no blood whatsoever...

Cloak & Dagger (2018–2019)

Whiner and Moaner

[1/10 · 24 June 2018]

Whoever is responsible for the writing of this show should simply be fired.

At episode 4 the story advanced barely enough to cover 1 slow paced episode.

I can't even tell if the actors are good or not because 75% of the time they're on screen they're either whining or staring in the middle distance...

Westworld (2016–2022)

Season 2 is making thing interesting

[7/10 · 21 May 2018]

I found season 1 to be quite boring with the clear definition of good hosts and bad humans.

At the beginning of season 2 we finally have a plain field where there's no fine line that separates the good from the bad. There's no longer reason to root for the hosts because they are no longer (and maybe have never been) victims.

Black Mirror: Crocodile (2017) Season 4, Episode 3

Contraddicting within its own rules

[1/10 · 22 January 2018]

The whole story revolves around a technology that can visualize memories as if the human brain recorded things like a camera.

But - and this makes the whole house fall - in the episode itself we can see how the memories can change just by a simple suggestion (the jacket changes colour), so the memories have absolutely no way to be used as evidence.

Even if we were to believe that this anorexic woman is a killing machine, the whole plot is made null by simple logic.

Middle-Earth: Shadow of War (2017 Video Game)

A few steps back from the first game

[3/10 · 16 October 2017]

(I won't mention the loot-box debacle and I didn't count it in the review)

tl;dr: they added a lot of things but all unfun

As much as I liked Shadow of Mordor I expected this game to introduce more *fun* mechanics, instead they went a few steps backwards transforming what was pretty much a flawless fighting mechanic to a mess.

First of all every action from Talion takes way too much time, so much that it's very improbable to have him complete one without being interrupted by some other attack. This is also because there are too many enemies at a time attacking you from all sides: being that every single action can be interrupted by any attack and that many enemies have uncounterable attacks you are pretty much engaging in a hit and run fighting style that if very far from being epic. The auto targeting system also cannot understand which enemy you actually want to attack and sometimes you can see Talion doing a 180 and waste an execution on a minion instead of the boss you were aiming for.

Secondarily they overdid it with a uselessly bloated ability "tree": every ability can only have one modifier, no matter how many skill points you pour in it. This makes the progression useless since once you unlock a modifier you are pretty much set, you won't gain any more power by leveling more. Sure, you can choose a more suitable set of modifications for each encounter: but it just means spending more time in the selection menu than actually playing the game.

The loot, even the legendary one, has such poor choice of affixes that some of the requirements needed to unlock them makes you say, "eff it, I'll just throw it away." "Gain 4 elf shot when killing someone while mounting a karagor"? "Increase crit damage of 29% against enemies on fire"? "Gain 0.7 points of might when killing a frozen enemy"? Oh please, don't let me have too much power! -.-

"Land 5 headshots on poisoned enemies", "kill 5 enemies while you are poisoned"... and I should do this so I can have a 22% chance to poison an enemy hit by a headshot? No thanks.

Lastly, they created all these new enemy abilities but did not check to see if some of those were overpowered when added together.

The second warlord I had to face was pretty much invulnerable to any kind of attack from the front, he could not be vaulted or disrupted or frozen, arrow immune, he sticked with his back to the wall so that I could not run behind him, all the while an infinite horde of minions kept coming at me and archers rained arrows from the balconies.

The only weakness he had was that he was vulnerable to executions, so I had to build up enough might to perform one and run like a headless chicken towards the boss hoping no arrow and no ranged attack from his 8 archers and 4 hunters would hit me before finally landing a hit that would take about 20% off of his life.

Once I finally did it I did not feel like I overcame a challenge, I felt like I had to cheat through a badly implemented mechanic.