Change Your Image
robertedwardmacdonald
Reviews
Nerdrotic (2016)
Americans love a redemption Arc
I wanted to wait a few years before I wrote a review. See The Good The Bad and The Ugly of long-term content before putting my two cents in. I prefer to do that with real people, who are speaking off the cuff and have to fill up content on a regular basis. You Can't Hide Who You Are. And what you are. At this point, I can say that I enjoy not only the character of nerdrotic, I think The Man Behind the coke bottle glasses, has done what so many people have espoused since the early '80s, about getting clean. Becoming a better person. Taking the opportunity to get Beyond a criminal past and become a productive part of society. These are things I had no idea about this person. I just liked the energy and passion for all the things us Geeks like. And then over a period of time, you hear him talk about his troubled past. He owns it, owns his addiction and crimes that put him behind bars. He did what everybody hopes will happen with a misspent youth. He became a clean and sober adult, a father and husband, partner to his wife. And a productive part of society. This is what I was told what America wanted to have happened with those people that had crime and substance and alcohol issues in their youth. If you did right. Then Society would fully back you and not throw your past in your face. Unfortunately it seems like every few months that's exactly what happens to this guy and his family. Somebody that's trying to make a few bucks and get clicks on whatever streaming site that they have started or a journalist that has no ability to come up with a new story. The point that this guy and says hey, you can't be a conservative. You were a problem young adult. You are a hypocrite. So that's enough about the guy behind the coke bottle glasses. Now concerning the content. It is exactly what geek stuff is supposed to be about. He has passionate positions on almost every aspect of what is considered nerd or geek content in the US over the last 50 years. He only comments on those things that he has a passionate opinion on and has knowledge of. I'm not sure if you've ever spent more than 5 minutes with a group of nerds discussing a topic they are all passionate about. If there are 10 nerds discussing this subject, they will collectively have about 47 widely disparaging opinions on those subjects. And they are passionate in defending their side and saying why the other side is 173% completely wrong. If you have ever been in a comic store. And there are five people in there that actually have been reading comics for more than 5 minutes. You are going to hear diatribes and treatises on those comics, which can vary from the storyline of those comics from year to year. Based upon the author's and artists and anchors that were custodians of those characters before another group took them over for the next run of comics in that series for a few years. Star wars, star trek, Babylon 5, farscape, firefly. You are going to hear rages back and forth on what was good and what was bad. Since so many of the comic stores went away of the dodo bird in the last 15 years, due to the horrendous mismanagement of American comic industry. YouTube and other places are where that conversation has gone to. And for some reason, the disagreements that were embraced in those stores for decades. Has now become problematic to those that only want to blow smoke up the back side of those that create the product. With no consideration towards those that actually have invested decades in that product. The fans. If your personality is to only agree with what the manufacturer of a product produces, regardless of the quality. Then you will enjoy about 75% of those sites that say they are for geeks and nerds. If you however have a discriminating taste in quality. And are not afraid to say that the emperor wears no clothes. Then nerdrotic and some other people like him out there. Are more your taste. Disagreement is not problematic. Passion is not problematic. Passion is what creates the fandom that keeps the IP ongoing for decades and decades. Just about every form of entertainment that human beings enjoy. At least enjoy long-term, must have some form of conflict, and conflict resolution. It's what creates interest. Any show without conflict will die a slow withering death on the vine. Like a Vineyard without water. Disagreement over quality is not problematic. Agreement over qualities is very problematic. I hope you give this guy a try. He's surrounded by some great talent. They don't all agree on everything. But they are passionate about what they like and are much more passionate about what they like being turned into corporate, boardroom approved, Bland mush oatmeal.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)
The best part, might finally put a stake in the heart of Walt Marvel
"Honey I shrunk the D list supheroes."
Could be the least bad Marvel MCU Stage 5 movie. Based upon what's coming up over the next couple years. However, that may not be anything redeeming. So much green screen / volume / CGI/acid trip colors. Well written and executed with practical effects would have been so much better.
1) stop having the characters take their masks off anytime there's any dialogue, even the Power Rangers didn't do that
2) once again they try to make Evangeline Lilly as unattractive as possible, while also saddling her with almost no story participation considering she's supposed to be half of the Super Couple. Not sure if the requirement by Michelle Pfeiffer's contract was to make sure that Evangeline Lilly was made to look extremely rough. Otherwise the movie makers are intentionally trying to sabotage this beautiful woman in these movies.
3) Believe It Or not, Another young female that is amazing, and is the "bestest" at everything that has ever been and ever will be. And even smarter than Hank Pym even though she's not his granddaughter.
4) some of the dialogue is so bad and storyline contrivances that make you feel dirty, with editors that don't even seem to realize the glaring contradictions from scene to scene or even moments apart. It's like watching a modern sitcom with the laugh track turned off.
Treason (2022)
They took a shot and missed
This show has all the subtlety of a sledge hammer to the face. And forced contrivances that writers of Threes Company would feel slimy putting Jack Tripper into.
I should not have to say this. But this is NOT what you want in a spy vs spy, cloak and dagger MI6 show. The Rock's "San Andreas" was less contrived after an hour.
Maybe I'm 100% wrong and will so happily amend this if proven so in the next 2.5 episodes. But lord please, don't let the horrible writing of Hollywood over the last 6 years also spread to Netflix Europe. Please!
I can only imagine the cast rolling their eyes when reading the sad dialogue and scenes.
My spoiler: pretty dang bad.
Captain Marvel (2019)
What happened to Marvel?
I decided to rate the show, after having a regrettable argument with my daughter over this movie, between Christmas and New Year's. She has recently turned 18. And had decided to start watching the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the MCUs universes, chronological order. So I jokingly started off with asking how she liked some Thor parts, since there were the bits about being here in the past and that Captain America was not first in the timeline. That joke did not go over well and fell flat.
But my innocent comment about what a piece of trash Captain Marvel was, ended up causing an argument with the one human I love more than any other. Of course it was a one-sided argument, I was just stating my opinion of what absolute trash Captain Marvel was, and she melted down saying that my opinion was based solely on the fact that I am a straight white male.
So here is my review of this piece of trash, 2 years after we Marvel fans had to choke down this cold lump of wet newspaper(a no longer extant form of media).
This movie is so bad, that not only did Rotten Tomatoes have to change the way it allows the general public to review movies on their site, but Disney/Marvel has not so discreetly for the last two years been promoting, on as many forms of social media as they can, that anyone critical of this movie is critical solely due to: (insert bad white male trope of your choice: racism, misogynism, homophobia, bigotry or current phobia of choice for that week).
I had to do a bit of research on reviews of this movie and commentary of this movie created over the last couple years. And what I was able to find through watching oh so many hours upon hours of false praise reviews, by supposedly independent social media reviewers. It became obvious that these independent, free thinking, individualistic, non-affiliated critics, were more or less speaking from the same script. As if somebody had presented them with a carrot or the stick option. If you say this about this movie we will make sure to put ads in your show or contribute to your patreon, or if you don't play along we might have to complain to the platforms you are on how about you using our copyrighted and trademarked intellectual property, in your revies, making money off of our intellectual property.
And I realized that what my daughter had said to me last week were the same things said by these movie reviewers comments about people that were critical of this movie. That any white male saying how a movie with a superheroine lead, was a bad movie, obviously solely did so because of whatever tropes they wanted to assign. Usually misogyny. The problem with these fallacies, is that they are completely shown to be utter falsehoods, by one simple truth. And that truth is the 2017 Wonder Woman movie. RT score of 93/83. Anybody that understands how hard it is to get a superhero movie into those scores vs Captain Marvel 79/45. Will understand that one of these movies was loved for its story and production value, and one of these movies was despised for the same aspects.
I dislike this movie because it was bad. It was cringey bad. It was bad like watching two cousins kiss. It was bad like eating a salad and crunching down on something crunchy that should not be in there, but you're somewhere really nice and you can't spit out the bite.
The Wheel of Time (2021)
$90,000,000.00 amateur production
1) This review is not getting into or about deviation from canonical material or trash-daptation knock down drag out fights going on around the world, in every language the original series was printed in books or narrated in, for audiobooks.
2) If the amount having been tossed around for the creation of this short series is accurate, then Mr Bezos may wish to have some deep forensic accounting performed and/or have an accounting of who and how so many people involved in the sausage making behind the scenes, got their positions. And I mean from top to bottom: writers, lighting, EDITING, all production and directing personnel, scenery/set design, clothing/armor, did I mention the WRITERS, and any and all "experts" on Renaissance Era technologies/armor/clothing/etc (yes, even if this particular world has gone from stone to space age, thousands of times before), CGI: either A) they are all from 1998 and brought not only their skill sets from that year when they time traveled, but also their PCs running Windows 98, OR B) they were not provided anywhere near the time in post production or instructions on what they were to create.
Casting: HUMANS: the casting department appears to have done a competent job in gathering a rainbow of skin colors in the British version of the CW evening soap opera actors they presented. I will for the benefit of the actors involved, assume they can all act very well. However, I have no way to confirm or deny this, based upon the pablum of idiocy(dialogue) they were forced to regurgitate on screen.
OGIER: this poor actor, it's not his fault. Not sure which is more atrocious: A) the brillo pads glued around his head and face. Where are his long dangling eyebrows, his super tall twitchable ears, both of which can convey depths of emotions with the slightest movement? And he's only 90 years old, barely a late teen, he can't grow a beard yet B) his super deep soul and open heart, he is to be a bright eyed babe in the world of men, innocent and open, where the sights of the Ogier Groves around the continent that have been clear cut, and the evil that men do to eachother, start to harden his heart and blunt his endless confidence. C) he's missing about 3 feet of height? If 6'1" Robbie Coltrane can effectively pull off 10 feet of height and over 4 feet of width on screen, almost 20 years ago, come on, what the heck?
C) WOLVES: one runty wolf and the back sides of German Shepherds & Belgian Malinois. What the heck? Is there a wolf shortage?
All around its bad. Very, very bad. Plot holes and contradictions the size of the Grand Canyon, sometimes in the same episode, series just seconds apart. Did no one screen test this farce in front of test audiences?