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cmcphee1965
Reviews
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022)
What's wrong with Gandalf?
I'll admit right off that I grew up on Tolkien in the 1970s and would have a problem with anything but a faithful adaptation of the Silmarillion. And boy is this not it!
It's just a mess, trying to incorporate a bunch of things the writer feels are important to Tolkien fans, but instead it's just a bunch of nothing with people sitting around talking about nothing.
Seriously, so Gandalf arrived in a meteor and had to be cared for like a baby by the Hobbits? Give me a break. I assume Saruman and Radagast have the same experience and Saruman is saved by evil men and Radagast is saved by forest animals, right? I'll be shocked if I'm wrong about that.
Stranger Things: Chapter Nine: The Piggyback (2022)
Mistake in Police song
When El is up on the bridge and the turntable is playing "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic" it shows the artwork for Synchronicity (1983) but that song is from Ghost in the Machine (1981).
Black Summer (2019)
First season was decent, but the second season was lame
There was nothing at all to the second season. It was just the same nonsense of people looking for houses and attacking each other. It got really boring and I couldn't even finish the series.
Black Summer: White Horse (2021)
So incredibly boring
Two guys talking about a pretend past in the hood. Who wrote this crap? Why would we want to watch such a boring episode? Finally at the end there was some action, but what was the point of all that talking about nothing?
Maniac (2018)
Couldn't even get past episode two
When the characters act absurdly silly to show how edgy and different the show is, all it does is take me out of the story. It's just a stupid show that is trying too hard to be clever, so it ends up being disjointed and illogical.
The Prestige (2006)
Decent to watch but falls apart a bit under inspection
It was a decent story about the two rival magicians. The "secret" was pretty obvious from early on though, since seeing the twin brother already in the apartment gave it away and they made too big a deal out of the "only being in love some days" deal.
For me the biggest issue is believing that a person would murder so many duplicates and keep them, over 100 planned, in tanks or even have to bury or get rid of the bodies. And Tesla would invent a replicator and then not use it himself? That would be the most incredible invention ever, even now, and would change the world and make him the richest and most powerful man in it, but he just gives it to a magician to do some stupid trick with? That's just too much.
The Wheel of Time: The Dark Along the Ways (2021)
The show is decent, but this fight is absurd
I read the books many years ago, so I'm not sure how faithful to them this series is, but this fight was ridiculous.
I understand that now we are supposed to accept small, middle-aged women being able to beat multiple young, strong male warriors in a battle, but seriously? A woman in the throes of pregnancy killing a dozen large male warriors clad in armor? She only was wearing a cloth outfit and was having birth contractions during the battle. Like her water broke two minutes before we joined the action. It's just so stupid.
Manifest: Call Sign (2020)
Worst law enforcement ever
The prison guards are total imbeciles, clearly not trained at all. Then once they escape, nobody seems to care. Just idiotic.
Star Trek: Discovery: Such Sweet Sorrow (2019)
Wow! Another young woman in charge of everything!
I was SO hoping that yet another young woman with attitude would be in charge of it all and inventing everything, and now we have this idiotic child empress! Are we sure that Kirk deserves to be a captain? Does he actually make his own decisions or does Uhura really run the ship? I used to want to live in the future, but as a straight white man, apparently there's no real place for me.
Star Trek: Discovery: Through the Valley of Shadows (2019)
Main issue is that we know the future
How can we get all concerned about this "Control" taking over everything and killing everyone when we already know that this is the Prime universe with Kirk and Picard in it? Everything will work out fine. We already know this.
Star Trek: Discovery: Will You Take My Hand? (2018)
Idiotic
The entire evil emperor thing is stupid, and then her being the captain but acting like that on the bridge? And the Tilly/Killy thing is beyond idiotic. Yeah, she's one of the show's main characters, we get that, but that doesn't mean she has to go from cadet to captain just to be a bigger part of the story.
Counterpart: The Crossing (2017)
The flower
How could he forget the flower for the nurse! I was screaming, "Why aren't you telling him about giving the nurse a flower!? It WILL come back to bite you!"
The Crossing: Pilot (2018)
Ridiculous flaw
I'm most of the way through the first episode, but I am very disappointed by the obvious issue with him forgetting to mention the flower. I was literally yelling at my TV the whole time they were talking, "What about the flower! Tell him to put the flower in the nurse's vase! It WILL come back to haunt you if you don't!"
I hate it when writing is so lazy.
Time Loop (2019)
Truly horrible in every way
It almost angers me that people are able to make money off of this. They get it on Prime or Netflix and waste an hour of my time and they walk away feeling good with a paycheck. I want my time back.
28 Days Later... (2002)
Cliche storyline and directing
The story itself is not much, so it's not really worth summarizing, but my main issue with the movie is the absurd camera work. It's that typical haphazard, hard to follow jerky motion that is, I guess, designed to make you feel that some really crazy action is going on. But all it does for me is make it hard to see what the hell is really happening. If you make a good action scene, the LAST thing you want is to jerk the camera around and make it a mess. If you can't make a good action scene, and you have to rely on frantic camera movements, then maybe you should be in a different profession.
Vivarium (2019)
Horrendous
Just total drivel. Almost nothing created by these streaming services is even slightly interesting.
The Invention of Lying (2009)
Ricky Gervais movie, so I had no real hope anyway
I just don't find anything he's ever done funny, but I am stuck home because of this stupid Coronavirus emergency, so I'm short on things to watch.
Lying? It's not avoiding lying when you intentionally volunteer every nasty thing on your mind and intentionally talk in front of people. It's just stupid. And so many of the typical things that go into Ricky Gervais type of comedies, like the incredibly unrealistic world everyone always lives in. In what world is your rent due THAT day, your landlord shows up at your apartment to get it, and if you don't have it you have to be out tomorrow? How does a world without lying make that happen? I thought everything else was the same? So you don't pay first and last month?
Us (2019)
Nonsensical
Just awful. It's another story that has no real explanation or reason. And as I was watching, I was wondering to myself, "What will be the stupid 'twist' in the end?" And there it was.
The Confession Tapes (2017)
Informative and infuriating
After watching the first 3 shows of the first season I have to take a break. The injustice portrayed here is stunning and enraging. Prosecutors and police will lie, cheat, hide evidence, manufacture evidence, all the time KNOWING that they need to do this to make people seem guilty, then when they are clearly exonerated by DNA, confessions, or other means, they still have the gall to insist that these poor people deserved to be punished. Until we hold prosecutors accountable, this travesty of justice will continue. In the last one I saw, a group of black men had their case brought to the Supreme Court, THIS disgusting and stolen Supreme Court. I don't have to tell you what happened.
The Twilight Zone: Eye of the Beholder (1960)
Classic episode
For people who think they look good, they spend a lot of time in the dark! Also, is everyone the same height? I guess they'd have to be.
The Twilight Zone: To Serve Man (1962)
One of the better Twilight Zone episodes
My only real issue with it is why would such a superintelligent race carry a cookbook around like that? And then leave it at the UN? They should have figured out a better way for them to get the book because it's just silly.
Star Trek: The Next Generation: Night Terrors (1991)
Just say what you want!
So Troi keeps hearing the aliens tell her, "Eyes in the dark, one moon." The crew figures out that his means that they need to send hydrogen to the aliens, because they figure that one moon is one electron revolving around one proton. But if the aliens can send a message in English, and are sophisticated enough to use metaphors, why can't they just say, "send hydrogen." It makes no sense and the entire episode is base on it.