mday008 Reviews

The Brave Ones (2022– )

Terrible 'Action' choreography

[3/10 · 29 September 2022]

This show had a great idea at its core, but it was completely wasted on bad writing, bad acting, and bad editing. I was expecting something like an African Ms. Marvel, but instead the hero only used her powers for a total of 3 seconds over almost 4 hours of episodes.

The choreography was cringe inducing. In one scene a small woman grabs a large guy by the shoulder and barely pushes him and he goes limp and falls down some stairs unconscious. In other scene a guy hits another guy in the shoulder with a crowbar and he falls limp and unconscious. There were many other ridiculous examples of people just falling unconscious at the slightest smack or touch.

The world of the dead looked like a cheap high school theater production with a paper mache stage.

Finally, the editing and story progression was so bad that at the end of the final episode of the season, it felt like the editor just quit his job and went home without finishing it. It feels very rushed, and not at all like the cliffhanger I guess it was supposed to be.

Spencer (2021)

Pretentious Film Festival Snooze Fest

[1/10 · 13 March 2022]

The choice to do this in a grainy film style was a big mistake. I've seen old films converted from 35m to 4k that looked good and kept their detail, but this looked utterly terrible on my 4k TV. There was no good reason to not shoot this in 4k HD. I kept squinting or thinking I needed to put glasses on because all the detail was missing.

The director seems to have missed out on a key tenet of movies. Namely, drama is life with all the boring bits removed. In this case, it was a long boring movie that consisted of only boring bits. I couldn't even finish it. I nearly fell asleep after 45 minutes of this drudgery and had to turn it off.

This is nothing more than a pretentious bad production masquerading as art.

Carnival Row (2019–2023)

Entirely Unimaginative

[3/10 · 6 August 2021]

There are no redeeming qualities in this show.

The characters are bland and two dimensional, the story is boring, the world is cliche, and as others have noted, the fairies could have just as easily been star trek aliens without wings and it wouldn't have changed a thing.

There is a lot of wasted potential here given how much money was thrown at the costumes, set design, CGI, etc.

The Tomorrow War (2021)

They threw logic out the window

[2/10 · 3 July 2021]

This movie literally makes no sense at all.

Let's start with the premise : there are 500,000 people left on earth, so the solution is to go back to the past 30 years ago and then bring those people forward to die ? Why not just send everyone back to the past and then spend the next 30 years preparing for the invasion? Then the aliens would be attacking an empty world, and in the other timeline they would be met with a force that could easily destroy them...

Why do the people drafted only get a week of training? Why not just draft people earlier and give them months of training? Even WW2 draftees got longer than that.

Also, how do space traveling aliens not know about time travel, but humans who haven't even put a man on mars yet know how to create it.

Why do the aliens just run around doing physical attacks? How many spikes does each alien have inside their arms and how fast can they regenerate them? They invented space travel but can't make guns? They have vulnerable throats and bellies, but rear up and expose them every time they are about to attack?

If they like eating people so much, wouldn't it make sense to farm them matrix style instead of just killing them all and running out of snacks?

Do the aliens literally have no anti-aircraft technology even though they can space travel? Don't they have bombs? Can't they just bomb the 'hidden' time travel portal in the middle of the ocean? Do they lack radar?

Did they not bother to conduct any form of intelligence gathering to asses the enemy capabilities?

I'm not sure how this movie got funded, but I think everyone involved was half asleep and just hoping people would see 'OMG Chris Pratt' and then watch it...

Save yourself the 2 hours and watch some paint dry. It will be far more interesting and logical...

WALL·E (2008)

Boring, Pretentious, and Predictable

[3/10 · 17 January 2021]

There is nothing unique or special about this movie. My girlfriend forced me to watch it and I hated it!

It's a lonely robot completely devoid of personality who spends the whole movie in some emo-like state.

I'm sure some environmentalist will probably find this to be 'profound', but only if they had the intelligence of a 5 year old.

There are a hundred other movies that have told the same story of the "trashy earth that humans ruined". This one adds nothing original.

Pacific Rim (2013)

No plot

[2/10 · 17 January 2021]

Ok, I get it... it's a movie about giant robots. That doesn't mean you can skip the plot, character development, or logic...

Aquaman (2018)

Unwatchable

[1/10 · 17 January 2021]

Bad acting, bad special effects, terrible water effect and zero character development. Don't waste your time.

Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)

I wanted to like this but...

[6/10 · 26 December 2020]

There is so much wrong with this movie from the fact that escalators were first used in 1892, NY and Paris already had subways in 1905, plus Britain already has a linked radar system to spot German aircraft in 1942 (so seeing any of those things should not have surprised him).

In addition, fighter jets kept in museums aren't kept fully fueled, it's 11,000 km from the US to Egypt and even a fully fueled F15 can only go ~4800km.

They just decided to make Diana able to fly and have super hearing like superman, and make a villain that has all her powers, and then is an even more stronger apex predator on top, yet gets knocked out by electricity, but Diana is fine.

Jack Ryan (2018–2023)

Season 2 Ruined This

[2/10 · 25 November 2020]

I don't remember season 1 being anything special, but it was a fun popcorn series to watch when I had some spare time.

Season 2 was so unwatchable I couldn't make it through 15 minutes of the first episode before giving up. It's like they hired a 15 year old to write the script.

Re: Mind (2017–2018)

No: Mind

[2/10 · 18 February 2018]

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD There were so many things wrong with this series that I don't think I can cover them all, but I'll try to cover the major stuff at least. 12 girls are kidnapped and held in a room. They were all taken on their way home from school independently by people speaking a foreign language.

The logistics of taking 12 people from 12 different locations at the same time in daylight and not getting caught would be pretty much impossible, so you just have to accept that if you want to move on. You'll also have to accept that none of their families called the police and had them track their cel phones to the final location where they went offline. Then you'll need to suspend belief that the girls magically got a wifi connection to a network they had never configured that only appeared long enough for them to receive only a single twitter message and none of the other stuff that would have come through in their twitter feed (like worried messages from their parents).

Then you'll have to believe that when a suit of armor falls over with a spear in one hand, they don't use it to pry up the floorboards of the room they are in to help escape the locks that are holding their feet in place. They instead choose to have 10 episodes worth of drawn out conversation that should have been covered in about 4 episodes of flashbacks instead so the viewer wasn't subjected to so much yapping and talking heads.

The largest flaw by far was the way each of them disappeared from their seats. It is revealed that this was all done to them by one of their group so their is no magic or mysticism here. When they disappear, it happens when the lights are out, yet somehow the bank of 15 CANDLES on the wall doesn't illuminate the room during this time!!!!

There is also no noise while they disappear (presumably through the floor) and the locks on their feet cages remain locked even after they are gone. This would require them to have been dropped through the floor chair and all, and because it all happens in less than 5 seconds their chair and lock would have to be replaced with an empty copy of their chair and lock. Except it isn't because water stains remain from the water that comes through before they go away. Since presumably every space in the room is rigged with drop floors (due to the teacher dropping through too when he tries to destroy a camera), this would require an extensive mechanism that would definitely make some noise. There would also be some screaming from the girls as they suddenly felt themselves falling because the whole swap happens rapidly in less than 5 seconds. There is no mechanism I am aware of that could do that without a lot of mechanical noise.

This brainless 'thriller' has so many plot holes it makes Swiss Cheese look solid by comparison.

Don Quixote (2015)

A funny movie with likeable characters

[8/10 · 8 January 2018]

I've never read the book so I had no expectations going into this.

I found it was quite funny and I really liked the characters.

After watching a slew of utter garbage movies where the main characters were so unlikable that I was rooting for the bad guys (I'm looking at you Dead Draw and Skyline), it was quite refreshing to find myself drawn into this story, waiting to see what would happen next, and laughing the whole way.

The Magicians (2015–2020)

The Drama Queens

[3/10 · 24 December 2017]

I saw the previews for this and immediately though it looked dumb and unoriginal. I was really bored one night so I decided to give this a chance just in case they had hired someone with no talent to make the trailers.

Apparently, my first instinct was right. This is like Narnia meets Harry Potter with all the drama of The 100. To be clear, the only one of those 3 things I just mentioned that was actually any good was Narnia.

Harry Potter was already terrible and unoriginal enough that there was no reason for anyone to use it as a template for another bad Millenial show. Apparently whoever made this thought that drinking, partying, and arguing at every opportunity makes for good watching. Manufactured drama for the sake of manufactured drama does not make an engaging show. They also totally copied the idea of a magic academy.

Being innately magical (which is something that should come from your mind) is somehow useless if you don't have hands because you need to move your hands and say certain words to get spells to work.

Beyond (I) (2016–2018)

An original series

[8/10 · 6 December 2017]

I wish I could give this 7.5 stars, but I'm going to give it 8 for being so original.

I love the fact that the description is intentionally vague (boy wakes up from coma with abilities). I also love the fact that there was no trailer for this, because most trailers are full of spoilers.

The show did NOT start with captain exposition walking on screen and explaining the entire plot in 2 minutes. I really had to pay attention in literally every episode, and it wasn't until very late in the season that we get the full story.

That is the essence of binge-able TV, wanting to watch the next episode to see what hints they will drop and to slowly watch the plot unfold.

Bonus points for being an original idea not based on any previous franchise I have seen before.

Star Trek: Discovery (2017–2024)

A refreshing take on Star Trek

[8/10 · 4 December 2017]

I've been a Star Trek fan since I was a child, and loved TOS, TNG, and Voyager. I did not like DS9 or Enterprise.

THE BAD: First, let's get the bad out of the way. This takes place before TOS, in the mid 2200s. There is no explanation of how we advanced so fast in 200 years from where we are now to transporters and warp drive and a spore drive that can get you anywhere in the galaxy instantly.

It is a complete break in continuity with no explanation given for how or why (the way they at least tried to in the Movie reboots with Spock going back in time).

Also, cosmic subspace mushrooms growing throughout the entire universe... Gimme a break, seriously!

At least in the earlier Star Trek the technobabble made some sort of scientific sense. They do tend to really gloss over those types of concrete explanations in this series.

THE GOOD: Despite these continuity shortcomings, I found this really enjoyable. The thing that sucked most about TOS and TNG is that they were watchable exactly once and going back they were so campy and cheesy it was hard to rewatch. The characters were cardboard cutouts with no emotions and bad traits.

I love the fact that we are faced with jealous and selfish humans in this series, it makes characters more relatable. I found the acting to be much more believable in this series.

I also loved the fact that the technology got an upgrade.

Overall, even with the issues I have, I would give this a solid 8 as it kept me coming back to anticipate each new episode and I found it very binge-able.

Singularity (I) (2017)

Warning : Fake Ratings on This Movie

[1/10 · 5 November 2017]

I really wish Amazon would clean up the fake ratings issue. Any time I see a completely terrible movie that is this bad and has a rating of more than 6 you know the completely dishonest producers bought ratings.

Honestly, Amazon should take a stance that if you buy fake ratings for your movie, all future projects attached to your name get an automatic 1/10 public rating or even better, all your movies are barred permanently from IMDb.

First, the beginning is cheap, bad cgi of buildings blowing up and steel / concrete buildings collapsing like they are made out of wood and paper.

The idea is totally rehashed from the Terminator series and doesn't feel original at all.

Then, 97 years after the world was blown up, 2 people in brand new clothes meet up and don't find it suspicious that they have brand new clothes and look like they just got out of a shower and had their hair professionally done.

This suffers from all the same issues that the walking dead suffers from... magical medicines that don't expire, magical gasoline that doesn't separate into base elements over time, magical clothing that moths don't eat etc.

I'm really tired of "science fiction" movies written by people who have zero understanding of science, physics, chemistry etc.

I think a grade 5 elementary school student could have written a script with more critical thinking than this.