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Murderville: Triplet Homicide (2022)
Solid
Marshawn killed it, he did a great job of driving the humor in the episode despite the script. One of the best episodes of the series. Worth the watch for sure.
Master of None: Moments in Love, Chapter 4 (2021)
Tedious
I appreciate what MON did with Season 3. It's a timely artistic piece when we need more diverse stories like this one.
But this episode should have been a 15 minute segment within another episode. It's raw to the point of being painful for the viewer, honest to the point of being uncomfortable but not in a challenging way, and ultimately it renders a powerful character one-dimensional. The peak of the episode was the conversation about equal access to healthcare, but that message was lost in a series of tedious and repetitive pedestrian scenes like the one in the laundromat.
I like Aziz's artistic direction and duty to the subject matter, and Naomi Ackie's performance is excellent. But this episode was just off.
The Titan Games (2019)
Overproduced to a fault
This is an hour long show with 8 minutes of action. The sets are outrageous, the challenges underwhelming, there are 4+ announcers for no apparent reason. The focus is on the characters and their personal lives rather than the competition and at the end of the day I just don't understand what they are going for. Is this a human interest reality show, or is this a Gladiators clone?
The reality is that it is neither and it is so overproduced that it is almost unwatchable. The contests are poorly conceived so that the outcome is clear within seconds which renders the competition boring, and it is difficult to get invested in characters when they are dispensed with in one or two competitions which last less than 2 minutes each.
This needs a lot of work and should have a much lower budget.
Ender's Game (2013)
Disastrous
Ender's Game is a poorly executed mess of a film. If you have not read the book beforehand do not bother watching it as I suspect it will make almost no sense. Those who have read the book will find themselves confused at the decision making which went into this movie and will likely regret seeing it as I do.
The entire first 60 minutes of the film feel like a throw away where the director tried to cram in too many scenes but did not bother or did not have the skill to flesh them out properly. They end up being a series of disjointed and unfinished scenes which would be near incomprehensible in context if you had not read the book. Character development is non-existent even for Ender and Peter may as well have been left out of this production for all his brief appearances added.
What were the writers thinking by changing minor details of the story from the book when they add nothing to the film - why is Bean in Ender's launch? Why bring up gender relations at the Battle School (and why change them from the book)? Why on Earth would Bernard be one of Ender's toon leaders? And why leave out the scene where Ender breaks Bernard's arm? None of these changes do anything to help the story work as a film.
Half way through the film upon arrival at Fleet School the story begins to work a bit better and we actually get a bit of the atmosphere of the book and Ender's internal struggles. Unfortunately the only adult actor in this film who seemed to put forth any effort was Kingsley and his character was neutered and completely devoid of any backstory or character development. The omission of all conversation between Ender and Rackham concerning the social structure and communication abilities of the Formics results in a hollow relationship and no connection to the story for the viewer. They don't even bother to explain why or how the ships have arrived at the Formic's homeworld so the deception game between Ender and the commanders during the final battles falls flat. All of this combines so that the climax scene comes and goes with a whimper with little context or meaning. The final scenes of the film where Ender retrieves the Queen larvae should have been cut entirely and the run time used to flesh out the story in the first half of the film as it makes no sense in the context of the film due to the decision to not explain how the Formics work as a society.
Ultimately this film is not worth watching. I struggle to see how this script made it to production with such a massive budget.
Evan Almighty (2007)
Forshame
As a preface allow me to say that I loved Bruce Almighty. It was very funny and a relatively original film. Those two reasons and the fact that I think Steve Carell is hilarious are why I went to see this flop.
The acting is beyond poor from everyone involved (honestly, who cast those kids?) though I can't blame them too much, asking anyone to perform well with this laughable, mundane and horribly cliché script would be asking to turn water into wine. The effects for a movie which cost $175 million to produce were quite simply laughable. It is more than obvious that every other scene is shot on a blue/green screen (and edited poorly might I add) and there is a horrible fuzz which invades the screen in the scenes involving animals. For a comedy it lacks any comedic punch whatsoever, they tried to cover that up by randomly and annoying cutting to Wanda Sykes spitting out some pretty awful one-liners.
And all of that is beyond the fact that the directors and writers quite obviously chose to pursue a far more religious offering this time around rather than focusing on making their audience laugh. This movie is more akin to a (mildly) comedic companion piece to "The Passion of the Christ." Not that there is anything wrong with that, but I felt bombarded by Christian doctrine when all I really wanted was to laugh.
In short; Steve Carell and John Goodman, you should be ashamed of yourselves. You're both capable of much much better work.