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Fallout (2024)
Magnificent picture of a fall
Very decent cast, some awesome settings, others quite poor, with cardboard characters and a penchant for senseless grotesquery that serves no narrative purpose.
They completely forgot that a videogame player is an active agent, and one not very demanding story-wise, that a videogame rushed narrative will eventually not translate very well into an engaging script.
And thus, yet another plastic concoction of our times. The devastation we see on-screen reflects directly the barren wasteland of script writing for a majority of large budget productions.
The loud noise and blood splatter equates with the clueless show runners tossing failed ideas in the recycle bin.
And time. Time utterly lost by way of mediocre storytelling.
It does seek some kind of redemption in the very last episode. Too little, too late.
Digest and forget, or avoid at all.
The Beekeeper (2024)
Why bother?
Why do they keep shooting these movies as if they were back in the 80s with direct to vhs flicks?
It is not just this Beekeeper. The Equalizer is the same. Eastwood's Pale Rider is a masterpiece by comparison.
The Beekeeper has no story, no drama, no character, no emotional depth, not a single acceptable performance, nothing, except an extensively romp, silly and impossible collection of hallucinated "action scenes".
Why bother? It's hypnagogic, it's dull, utterly boring, without a single redeeming aspect, the equivalent of 2 hours of loud noise mingled with teenager melodrama.
And they say it's also "dark comedy". In a perverse kind of way it is. It is a very dark comedy to try to grab two hours of our time with this thing instead of Nickelodeon.
In a more civilized world it would merely have been forgotten in Hollywood's recycle bin along with so many others.
Maybe some bot should really write these scripts.
The Flash (2023)
Sadly awful
Nolan's trilogy and Snyder's Man of Steel, although imperfect, tried at least to impart a modicum of seriousness, of gravitas, to their work, and were successful to a degree that seemed at the time to usher a resurrection movement of DC narratives into the big screen. Wonder Woman (2017) was another nice surprise, I reckon maybe because nothing much was expected, but the sense of adventure and nice perky characters managed to surpass its shortcomings.
Further iterations were but a pale shadow of those quite surprising initial attempts, mostly marred by lousy narratives, rushed acting (pure euphemisms), an excess of unbelievably bad CGI and loud noise, and children's worthy comic reliefs.
And now, right at the bottom of the nasty Hollywood pit of oblivion, we get this.
I still feel shame admitting that I endured about 15 minutes of this amorphous sad thing, past the baby shower, the awful batman, so little this batman, moaning under the lasso of truth, in a mockery attempt at comic relief upon comic relief until nothing serious is going on. But the final nail in the coffin was exactly that wonder woman complacency look before taking off certainly to a better place, in a completely unwarranted cameo.
Another one to upload to the recycle bin and immediately purge from the brain, followed by penitence for being so idiot in the first place to have any kind of expectation towards this hollywood fast food. Shame on me.
Station Eleven (2021)
Amazing but...
This is a symbolic gem, about the power of stories, the hope they convey, the way they simultaneously turn to myth, and cult and religion and the prison of structure, but also into freedom and creative subversion. It is a hymn to the humanity of art, out of our drives and chaotic emotions.
It is flawless in almost every aspect. Direction, acting, narrative, cinematography, soundtrack, it excels at all that.
So, why only 8* and not a straight 10?
It seems to me that someone took the symbolic aspect too far, to the point that it overruns realistic dramatization. And so, it is less about an amazing set of characters and much more about the story of a story and how it shapes minds and civilization itself. The caveat is that at times some previously full fleshed characters seem just cartoonish.
Some of the supposed synchronicities seem excessive, in a way that all major characters knew themselves from before the catastrophic event and all we are watching is their struggles and drama along decades, waiting for some kind of cathartic solution, as if they were stranded in an island surrounded not by space but by time.
And maybe it is contrived that way.
So, it drags, there is no real sense of danger, and even after the horrible death of a character and two children all the others seem more concerned with the next play than with what just happened.
But overall it is great, something truly different in an ocean of banality.
Star Trek: Picard (2020)
Pump action trek under a dark starless sky
Reduced to narrative idiocy by the ethos of big studios philistine mediocracy, this self-centered unsavory thing is the epitome of our times.
Hysterical characters, great upheaval constantly, incoherent jumble of mindless dialogs alternated between affected shakespearean overacted tragedy and silly comic reliefs, all is confusion and noise, until some hasty solution to our heroes grievances miraculously materializes by the grace of goddess pure luck.
These show runners clearly dislike all that The "Star Trek" stands for.
They mistake deconstruction for destruction of characters, and respect absolutely nothing, not because of the changes themselves but because of the gross lack of ideas and ghastly narrative incompetence.
However, the viewer is duly forewarned right at the beginning of season 3. Pump action and machine gun phasers?! No, they don't just dislike Star Trek, they hate it.
Picard is dying and goes on a last adventure for friendship. Gets cured, now partially synthetic but remaining old so morality is not blemished. The all powerful transdimensional AI beings sprouting from the sky are at bay, at least while no one is playing their "song".
Then, another adventure, during which he manages to psychoanalyze himself with the help of his late father mental construct, whom he does not remember, over the death of his mother in circumstances he also does not remember, and he does all this alone in his brain while borg roam the villa.
At this point the show became so utterly inclusive that even the Borg are now allies, the Q (that petty, awful, all-knowing but not very bright, *evolutionary pinnacle") is harsh but only because he wants to help (?) Picard reconciliation with his past, or something like that.
So, where to find enemies when all of them became the new best friends?
Why not the Star Fleet itself (again)?! Lest this sad real world autocracies get angry and censor the show for metaphoric aggression.
At some point, when the klingon old gentleman starts slicing and beheading gangsters, which is actually an upgrade from pump action phasing them, I kept wondering "if the 'The Legacies' witches ever went to space we would still have 'Picard' but with real magic".
So, on to the faery deck, divert all power from the brain core to loud noise and upload it to the trash bin. Engage. Maybe the core explodes. If not, proceed to the next series. Repeat.
What is happening with these entertainment conglomerates?
Mind boggling.
The Peripheral: The Creation of a Thousand Forests (2022)
Coda of an unfinished sentence
The acting and storytelling continues appalling as usual. Furthermore, consistency went through the roof.
Aelita (a dreadful character, not much better than Cherise or Lev), in less than ten seconds (1st episode), managed to transfer not only a key to the II quantum super computer but the entire amplituhedron to Flynne DNA via electromagnetic stimuli through the helmet. Couldn't be more silly. Oh, wait, judging by Westworld season 4 it really could.
Flynne goes to a location disclosed by Lowbeer in which it is possible to create and maintain information links to the past (parallel pasts). However, despite its importance, that facility is less guarded than the next door mall. All she needs is some awful jujitsu (and someone else retina, again - it is symbolic, we know) to get through. Future London confrontation is subsumed into hand to hand combat.
At last, as if it was not enough, Flynne sacrifices herself (ambiguous, the actual "death" is only implied - everything is nothing more than a mindless videogame by now) after creating a link to another parallel past.
Miraculously, "a" Flynne returns to Lowbeer in future London ready to battle Cherise and Lev and the dreadful Aelita. Which Flynne it is we do not know - couldn't be a parallel Flynne judging by the amount of time and number of episodes that took the original Flynne to grasp what she was doing.
Cherise has it coming, a multitude of parallel Flynne(s) eventually pitted against her mischievous intentions.
This first season seems like a painfully long sneak peak into some sort of story, a pageant of mostly unremarkable scenes, silly dialogs, and abusive use of technology concepts.
It is the kind of thing aimed at short attention spans and propensity to feel amazed. Nothing has to make sense or maintain a modicum of internal consistency. It is magic with the scent of sci-fi.
Worse, it is Westworld season 4 all over again.
Amazing how they managed to perform so badly.
Insufferable.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022)
So much money for so little
Most acting is unbearably stiff (still can't believe the childish Galadriel interpretation), some actors seem bemused by the green screens or simply rushed to deliver those lousy dialogs and get on to some detached and superfluous action scene.
The storytelling is actually so mediocre that I found myself relieved by the Harfoots side quest in spite of that pitiful Gandalf impersonation.
The Sauron guy is perky enough to save the day. Maybe he wins this time around.
Some computer graphics are well done but what do they ultimately contribute to the story? Nothing, absolutely nothing, forgettable things they are.
Don't really care they strayed from cannon. The writing is plain awful. The sense of detachment is so overwhelming that I still can't believe I actually got through fast forwarding.
Nowadays show runners would be able to quench a fire by throwing money at it, and they excel at wallpaper production.
Kudos, it takes insight to spend so much money on so feeble a thing.
The Nevers (2021)
Childish narrative with R-rated content
Neither is a problem in itself, but marrying a childish naive and derivative narrative and story with mature scenes makes this series an uneven and expendable ersatz unworthy of one's precious time. Which is a shame because of the mostly capable cast.
It does not take itself seriously, voiced by characters with the emotional maturity of adolescence, soap opera dialogs interspersed with a mockery of action scenes, and some serious overacting, and no time to think about consequences. Thus, characters are flat and unremarkable although I believe the cast would be capable of so much more, if allowed.
If you look a little closer you'll notice the same tropes of the likes of Buffy and Angel, which by now are old news.
A typical conformist structure trying, and failing, to depict self determination and rebellion against the establishment in a silly superficial way. Maybe it's what entertainment pretends to be nowadays, judging from all those stellar reviews.
The Peripheral: What About Bob? (2022)
Insufferable
Television as a pageant. Dramatic expression reduced to posturing and confused with mere cinematography. The show runners main concern is obnoxiously made manifest in their obsession with settings and scenery. Acting seems rushed and is becoming atrocious.
Last episode introduced the unbearable Cherise character naively explaining future society with four bread slices. Maybe it was meant to be some sort of comic relief. Of course we were headed to a foolish physical confrontation between her and Flynne. It's just the way Joy and Nolan work. Of course Conner's predicament is a consequence of the evil CEO's actions. And they send an assassin armed with a silly non lethal weapon so that Flynne immediately recognizes it, although they have perfect active camouflage at one's disposal.
And they keep up with "hack" my system and I'll "hack" you back. How naive their worldview is...
An unforgivable mess.
The Peripheral (2022)
Sadly disappointing.
First off, Gibson's "The Peripheral" is not that great. It starts quite well, suspenseful, it is incredibly boring through the middle (about twice the size it really needs, a lot of repetition from various perspectives), and it begets an uncanny very happy ending, so unusual in Gibson's best works. It excels only at fictional world building as social criticism.
So, having read that the series is only loosely based on the book, I could not be more enthusiastic. What a fine chance to marry some interesting ideas with a really clever and deft plot. But there's a saying about wishes...
Where the series departs from the book is also where it becomes clunky, incoherent and mediocre. The showrunners should not try to pretend that they grasp our current technology, much less the future's, and even less that they could be able to contrive a cleverer plot.
Aelita disappearance propels the plot in a much less subtle way than in the book. Big-bad-CEO/scientist, whose name eludes me (a new addition), in that matriarchal future London research corporation (also new), equates with the showrunners archetypal need to have an almost all-powerful villain. A typical pitfall in Joy and Nolan's plots.
Several characters seem just not very bright at all, in a bad way. Others, like Wilf, a fixer that proudly lies with all his teeth in the original, are just subdued with a kind of existential angst - the need for a redeeming moral aspect to Wilf Netherton is merely ungainly, and it isn't even convincing.
Aelita's sister (Daedra in the book, though in truth not to the 'same Aelita') is conspicuously absent (or simply does not exist), which is a shame, as she was involved in a major geopolitical plot.
Flynne's character, by Chloë Moretz, is engaging enough to find at least a single positive aspect to this underachieving series.
Now, some of the blatant inconsistencies:
-Why would all security levels of a major tech corporation (in a future world that masters matter via nanotech and where AI is Queen and Lord) be defeated by a simple iris/retina scan, while admitting a second person that goes unchecked? In what century are these guys writing stories? Is this from that old 007 back in the 70' where an eyeball is transplanted?
-At some point, it is stated that "there is major traffic at his IP address". This is utter nonsense when referring to a local drug lord. 'His IP address'. Would be some elaborate joke back in the 90'.
-Another one: in the 2030 thread, a merch hit squad has perfect "active camouflage" in their european vehicles (they become invisible even in motion) but not in their combat suits, which quickly makes all of them cannon fodder.
All of these are clumsy departures from the book. I may not have overly enjoyed the book but Gibson is far more subtle than that, and it is a pity when changes are almost all for the worst.
Whenever the plot is bordering the silliness kingdom we are introduced to some fancy action scene. Come on people, this is the way to drown a series. Think narrative, think plot, and less aesthetic cgi. Nowadays it seems to be easier to find unremarkable easter eggs than to have a decent consistent plot.
Passable, but very far from great. Do not approach having the outstanding Westworld first season in mind (and I'm beginning to think that Westworld owes everything to Anthony Hopkins). You'd be sorely disappointed.
Westworld: Metanoia (2022)
At last, someone decided to set it right!
Season 4 is so weak I actually enjoyed when William/host, after mumbling and groveling about himself to William/sleeping-beauty, decided to go berserk and do to the show what it deserves.
I hope he wins, especially as Dolores/Christina represents the clueless show runners and all the narrative pitfalls since season 3.
They should never have left the park. Alas, all is simulacra and simulation. It only exists in Joy's head.
Westworld: Fidelity (2022)
Utter Nonsense
The show runners have no sensible idea about complexity.
Dolores/Hale (very unconvincing) rules the world (a very small world indeed). How did she achieve this? No one knows. Maybe she just replaced all politicians in the world (God bless). Maybe humans rolled over and played dead. She is a sad ludicrous iteration of last season nonsensical world domination AI-ball.
Humans are overridden by nano machines controlled by sound waves (!), so there can be a beautiful tower on the outskirts of every major town(?). They are now the de facto hosts of the "real" world (or is it?).
Bernard is now the Oracle, just because he spent three decades watching simulations by The Architect Akhenateka in the sublime. Caleb remains something of the One, ex military, ex black ops, ex outlier, full punch bag - not a single action scene during which he does not have to be saved by Maeve. This the One parody is complementary to new Dolores hypnotic waking world. Alas, 3rd season was not very good but 4rd season is borderline ridiculous and uninteresting.
On top of everything, if any synthetic being ("host" by now is just confusing) speaks to a human "outlier" they are abruptly overcome by a sudden necessity to commit suicide!!!
Westworld has become derivative if itself, which is the worse single flaw of any show. It is intellectually naive, with no sense of narrative coherence.
At some point two characters rise two mirrors in the desert to interrupt a "laser fence". This is just about as ridiculous as the rest of this narrative.
Astonishing.
Westworld (2016)
Emotional journey at the expense of internal consistency.
The best sci-fi show in a long time is almost thrown to pieces during the last couple of episodes of season 3 by sheer narrative incompetence and the obnoxious need of:
- Surprise the viewer at any cost.
- Comic relief (almost always plaguing Maeve).
- Pay homage to the Matrix (of all movies), GitS, et al, maybe even John Wick 3.
Great roles and story arcs for Evan Wood, Tessa Thompson, Ed Harris and Vincent Cassel. Unbelievable disservice to Thandie Newton and Jeffrey Wright. And so much wasted potential with Aaron Paul's character.
Screenwriters were unable to deal with complexity. It is almost as if someone manufactured a perfectly detailed beautiful flag with the wrong colors! Great care with detail and yet some major narrative flaws.
Now we are not in the controlled "microverse" continuously monitored by Delos in the parks. We are outside, yet one predictive super system is watching all mankind, as if other mega corporations with their own private data and systems, and dictators with internet censorship, do not exist.
SIA Rehoboam did not predict the emergent host consciousness in the likes of Dolores, Maeve and Bernard, but the show goes on as if Delos was the only company in the world able to keep secrets from Incite.
The same problem plagued Person of Interest. That and the waves of "elite bad guys" that keep pouring in just to get shot John-Wick-style.
It's not believable by its own internal rules, and would be just fine in any other standard sci-fi show. But Westworld never aimed to be just any other show.
Trying to turn Caleb into a revolutionary Neo of sorts was borderline unbelievable in a show so keen to detail and perfectionism. It's kind of sad watch Game of Thrones mistakes all over again.
Barring the roles of Wood, Thompson, Harris and Cassel (there is no extravagant feminist manifest here, as someone always points out), and the two accomplished but short SIA dialogs, the second half of 3rd season is Terminator meets Person of Interest, with the scent of Matrix, poorly executed and action oriented.
I cannot fathom the need to turn upside-down the otherwise quite interesting role of Aaron Paul. Thandie's Maeve cyber-shinto-terminatrix character became ridiculous, the WWII simulation without any narrative value and excessive comic relief, and sadly Jeffrey Wright goes by with little screen time.
Maybe season 3 should have ended with "Genre", though there's some really nice scenes afterwards. Not entirely bad, but unexpectedly weak by its own standards. Unfortunate.
Westworld (2016)
Emotional journey at the expense of internal consistency.
The best sci-fi show in a long time is almost thrown to pieces during the last couple of episodes of season 3 by sheer narrative incompetence and the obnoxious need of:
- Surprise the viewer at any cost.
- Comic relief (almost always plaguing Maeve).
- Pay homage to the Matrix (of all movies), GitS, et al, maybe even John Wick 3.
Great roles and story arcs for Evan Wood, Tessa Thompson, Ed Harris and Vincent Cassel. Unbelievable disservice to Thandie Newton and Jeffrey Wright. And so much wasted potential with Aaron Paul's character.
Screenwriters were unable to deal with complexity. It is almost as if someone manufactured a perfectly detailed beautiful flag with the wrong colors! Great care with detail and yet some major narrative flaws.
Now we are not in the controlled "microverse" continuously monitored by Delos in the parks. We are outside, yet one predictive super system is watching all mankind, as if other mega corporations with their own private data and systems, and dictators with internet censorship, do not exist.
SIA Rehoboam did not predict the emergent host consciousness in the likes of Dolores, Maeve and Bernard, but the show goes on as if Delos was the only company in the world able to keep secrets from Incite.
The same problem plagued Person of Interest. That and the waves of "elite bad guys" that keep pouring in just to get shot John-Wick-style.
It's not believable by its own internal rules, and would be just fine in any other standard sci-fi show. But Westworld never aimed to be just any other show.
Trying to turn Caleb into a revolutionary Neo of sorts was borderline unbelievable in a show so keen to detail and perfectionism. It's kind of sad watch Game of Thrones mistakes all over again.
Barring the roles of Wood, Thompson, Harris and Cassel (there is no extravagant feminist manifest here, as someone always points out), and the two accomplished but short SIA dialogs, the second half of 3rd season is Terminator meets Person of Interest, with the scent of Matrix, poorly executed and action oriented.
I cannot fathom the need to turn upside-down the otherwise quite interesting role of Aaron Paul. Thandie's Maeve cyber-shinto-terminatrix character became ridiculous, the WWII simulation without any narrative value and excessive comic relief, and sadly Jeffrey Wright goes by with little screen time.
Maybe season 3 should have ended with "Genre", though there's some really nice scenes afterwards. Not entirely bad, but unexpectedly weak by its own standards. Unfortunate.
Too Old to Die Young (2019)
From hypnotic to hypnagogic. Intentionally.
NWR clearly teases the viewer.
Outstanding photography and soundtrack, strong story, excellent cast, and in the end it all mixed together just helps you fall asleep.
Winding Refn would have been a great painter or photographer. But here he is clearly delighted by his own devised "scenery".
What could have been an intense timeless exquisite symbolic narrative is lost to intentional inconsistencies. Time flows one hundred fold slower for almost all dialogs. A character says or asks something, the phrase seems lost in time, everyone keeping stone-faced expressionless, as if they were somewhere else, and half a minute later (if all goes well) someone answers back without any expressiveness. Over and over again, most acting reduced to posing.
All gravitas and archetypes lost, each scene a tableau, characters becoming as relevant to the scene as furniture or lighting. Maybe even less.
At a given point a character falls asleep while mumbling old memories. During a hilarious car chase all three characters are shown almost falling asleep while driving.
At times I did wonder if Refn has any respect for the viewer, because the deep themes he intends to convey, the extreme explicit violence depicted, do not coexist well with this kind of comic relief.
Eventually, camara pans right in painful slow motion. All characters just as statues so we may enjoy the "view" saturated colors and dark ambient soundtrack. Then it slowly pans left, everyone static while the psychedelic transe makes us sleepy. Then right again (I did fall asleep), a guy gets up and slowly goes left to get a girl. He slowly takes her back right to a stage. This takes around 10 to 15 minutes without a word or meaningful expression. It's a bad joke beyond symbolism.
There is a scene in a police precinct during which even Miles Teller can't keep his character stone face and shows an infinitesimal smile due to the excessive sarcasm that annihilates all meaning.
A disservice to Augusto Aguilera, his character lost in pure pose. Miles Teller character just keeps a stone face, his dialogs reduced to "Ok" and "I don't know", staring infinity while the camera pans or stands still. John Hawkes' character is a real treat, unfortunately lost in the white noise.
Unbelievable how what could and should have been a deep hypnotic and masterfully crafted series about the delicate balance between Order and Chaos in our minds and society, and how both aspects link to Death, seems intentionally derailed by Refn just to make a point, whichever it may be.
Unbelievable.
Altered Carbon (2018)
Great 1st season, awful 2nd season.
Gritty, hard-boiled sci-fi detective story. Great fictional universe unfolding, an eclectic mix of cyberpunk neo shintoistic narrative with plenty personal drama and old mysteries.
A bit camp in its own extravagance, it delivered nonetheless a great story with great characters and an abundance of social criticism - often voiced through the cynics well tempered remarks of the main character.
That was
Season 1 -- 9/10
The new Kovacs is less cynic, less witty, less dangerous, and much less interesting, as are the supporting characters. A dim, dull, subdued, ordinary narrative riding the first season's success.
Season 2 -- 4/10
Great 1st season, awful 2nd season.
A trend of late, narrative quality vanishing all the way down.
Unfortunate.