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Those About to Die (2024)
I watched all 10 episodes
Yes, the CGI is a bit amateurish in spots. Yes, there's some bad acting. Yes, the writing isn't great.
Here's where I'm supposed to say "but..." and recommend this. I can't do that. The series is very predicable, down to who we know is going to die and who will miraculously escape their fate. Compared to HBO's "Rome," it's a poor cousin.
So much effort and expense to produce an OK diversion. Can't see a Season 2 getting the green light. For all the length available from ten 50+-minute episodes, you get the feeling of rushing through the story. There isn't the kind of character development one expects from a mini-series.
Star Trek: Picard: Penance (2022)
The lack of creativity is mind blowing
Are you kidding me? The Borg, Q, time travel to present-day Earth (hey, saves on the SFX budget when you can shoot on location in LA!), alternate timelines, peaceniks find themselves running an authoritarian government...sheesh! Yes, we've seen it all before on ST, but never have all those fan-servicing plot threads been tied up in a single series in a single episode.
BTW - is Picard still a synth?
Star Trek: Discovery: Rosetta (2022)
Space Jesus will save everybody!!
Wow! If you thought Michael Burnham was Space Jesus before, you ain't seen nothing.
The intro to the episode is insufferable, as Space Jesus Falls into her "I, I, I" routine. She will lead the away team, she will find a solution, she promises to find an answer, she will do it all. Why? Because she's Space Jesus! And sure enough, when they get down to the planet, it's Space Jesus who comes up with all of the ideas that lead them forward to find the solution that of course she is the first one to find! Somehow she can even intuit what the dust on the planet is doing to them.
Every new episode is worse than the one that preceded it. How do they do it?
1883: Racing Clouds (2022)
Suspending disbelief
As others have pointed out, the writers do us no favors when it comes to our ability to suspend disbelief. The sloppy sillinesses include:
1. Not believable that the Lakota men would not see two trails leading away from the massacre in opposite directions. Why go after the wagon train?
2. Not believable that a seasoned wagon master would abandon the train, riding off to find the murderers. Why not stay put until the Lakota return, explain it wasn't your people who did the killing and offer to help the Lakota track down the killers? At least you maintain strength in numbers. And what if you didn't find the killers, or the killers ended up killing Shea et al? How does that in any way keep the Lakota at bay? And, Shea tells a hired hand who does not speak Lakota to do the best he can communicating with them when the Lakota arrive back at the scene of the massacre. Really? They find their families massacred and they're going to stand there while some white guy talks incoherently? Of course, it turns out that at least two of the Lakota warriors speak English, so the settlers would have been able to communicate just fine.
3. How did the Lakota track down cookie first when he had a huge jump on the rest of the train leaving and was moving much faster than them? Wouldn't the Lakota have encountered the train before they encountered cookie?
4. Why does Elsa not spur her super fast horse Lightening on to a speed greater than a quick trot when leading the Lakota away from the train? A big deal is made about his speed in earlier episodes.
5. Gut shot with an arrow. What's that like?
6. The cattlemen massacre the Lakota women and children because they want to massacre the men, who will no doubt track them down.
Er, wha? First off, why not surprise attack the Lakota camp while the men are there? At least you'd kill some of the men. How is it better to massacre the women, putting the warriors on an enraged war footing to come after you? If you're looking for a fight, why ride 10 miles or so away from the camp? Why not lie in ambush near the camp? Made no sense at all.
Ad Astra (2019)
Really bad.
It's kinda unbelievable how bad this movie is. I tried to imagine being the person sitting in the chair editing this movie. I couldn't do it.
Space Force (2020)
Promising cast can't overcome the lame writing
This show reminds me of Carell's movie *Little Miss Sunshine* - a promising cast wasted in a project that ultimately doesn't deliver. Sure, there are moments of mild amusement, but nothing really memorable or outright funny.
Ignore the apologists who aver that the humor of this show is high-brow and goes over the heads of the brain-dead public. That's not it at all. More a case of The Emperor's New Clothes.
Not recommended...and yes, I watched all ten episodes.
Miracle on 34th Street (1994)
Just as bad if not worse than the other remakes. Stick with the original.
We had the Thomas Mitchell version, then the Sebastian Cabot version (for TV?). Now comes this flat, annoying, over-produced, saccharine disaster of a remake. None of them come within a mile of the original.
I guess this made money. How?
The Boys (2019)
Dwight?
Is it just me, or does actor Jack Quaid not bear a remarkable resemblance - both physically and in how he delivers his lines - to Rainn Wilson?
Hanna (2019)
Pathetic
They lost me when the young protagonist showed her "toughness" by punching a tree. Seriously? I know this particular act is standard movie fare to show how superhuman some people are, but, c'mon, man! Ever heard of biology? Physics? Any human being punching a tree is going to end up with bloody knuckles and more than a few broken bones that won't be healed by leading a survivalist lifestyle.
And can we mention the child abuse inherent in what "dad" is doing to this girl?
These are totally unsympathetic characters. The slow pace of the show adds boredom, not depth.
A waste of time.
The Christmas Chronicles (2018)
Very enjoyable and better than expected
This film was totally enjoyable. High production values, good acting and a story that is just off center enough to be engaging.
Will it become a classic, like "A Christmas Story?" Well, I wouldn't go that far. There are a few scenes that will not age well over time, as well as contemporary references that will be a mystery in a few decades.
But for 2018, this is a step above the typical made-for-TV holiday fare.
Jack Ryan (2018)
Better than I expected
The big question in everyone's mind was: is John Krasiniski believeable as a dramatic actor? Based on this series, the answer is yes.
I appreciated that there was a bit of ambiguity thrown into the characters, so we aren't given stereotypical good guy/bad guy story lines. At least initially. But eventually, we see who the bad guys are, and it's up to the good guys to prevail.
Convention is served in that our hero (Ryan) ends up in the very thick of things at every twist in the plot, SPOILERS: from interrogating the head terrorist, to saving his wife and kids from a tragic fate, to being the only person in the vicinity to bring the guy down with a well-placed shot. There's also the deal with his new girlfriend ending up in an elevator with a terrorist as a hospital is under siege. But these and other stretches of credultiy are what people love about Tom Clancy novels and the movies they inspire.
So, worth watching, espcially as a binge as there are only 8 episodes. It will be interesting to see where they take the series in Season 2.
Dunkirk (2017)
Maybe giving it a 2 was being generous
I was so looking forward to this movie. What a major disappointment!
The biggest problem: there is absolutely no sense created of how monumental was the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of men. No feel of the flotilla of pleasure boats it took.
The movie concentrates on a few vignettes that follow the trials of small groups of people, with each vignette overstaying its cinematic effectiveness. The effectiveness is made even worse by the attempt to tell 6 or 7 stories simultaneously - the back and forth between the stories becomes tedious quckly, as we revisit situations we had already lost interest in and forgotten.
But worse is the annoying film score from the usually dependable Hans Zimmer. I get the attempt to create a feeling of oppression using minimalistic composition techniques, but the effect here is what one feels when a car alarm is stuck open for a 30-minute stretch outside your home, with the owner of the car who knows where.
Seriously, I can believe people were raving about this flick. Awful.
Star Trek: Discovery: The Vulcan Hello (2017)
Ho hum
I give it a 4 based entirely on the CGI.
This is going to be another war and explosions Trek.
It is tailored for fans of the movie reboot time line. A real letdown.
The story is not very Trek-oriented.
Read the critical review posted here. It sums it up well.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: What You Leave Behind (1999)
Good acting, but the whole DS9 storyline sorta sucks
By that, I mean the entire plot about gods and prophets. Too many cases of *Deus ex machina* pop up in this series. Star Trek has always been about humans evolving beyond the severe limitations of religious belief. TOS dealt with this often: the Apollo they meet on their voyage was a member of an alien race that once visited Earth and helped kickstart civilization. The Metrons and Organians, who had evolved beyond the need for corporeal existence and existed as pure mind energy. TOS recognized them as evolved alien races that may have appeared to have been gods, but were just more advanced.
DS9 turns it all on its head. Prophets and gods return with their deity to the fore, the Bejorans are obsessed with these supernaturals who exercise power over them. Miracles happen, like when the Dominion forces are destroyed in the wormhole when facing down a lone starship.
Yeah, it's the big flaw in this "spiritual" series.
Star Trek: Voyager: The Fight (1999)
One of the least enjoyable episodes
I agree with the reviewer planktonrules who nails what is wrong with this episode. One sympathizes with the actors who go all in on a bad concept, but that hardly helps.
Chakotay announces he "needs to go on a vision quest" the way one might announce they need to go to Ralph's for a gallon of milk. Beyond that misreading, Robert Beltran gives it his all. Just sad that every episode that gives him a solo shot is tied to the whole vision quest BS.
Love Voyager, but not this one.
Enterprise: Similitude (2003)
Deus ex machina episode
One would hope that we could move beyond the old "God in the machine" plot twists that used to bail out classical literature and bad operas, but here we have it on ST.
Crew member had an accident that puts him in a coma? Hey, we can fix that using this alien life form that has never been mentioned anywhere in the ST canon, and that makes its overly convenient appearance here, just in time to not only fix the crew member, but to present us with a moral dilemma.
Enterprise is, IMO, the weakest of the ST series. This episode shows us why that is.
The Legend of Tarzan (2016)
Really awful
So, this movie got three award nominations and won two, those two being "actress most in need of a new agent" and "worst of the year."
Spot on.
I caught this stinker on TV. They spent a lot of $ on meaningless special effects. Apparently, they thought the way to engage an audience was to have lots of motion on screen - running, jumping, swinging, etc. Here's an idea: just have the actors and CGI animals run around in circles for two hours. Put em in cars and slap sponsor stickers on them and you've got NASCAR.
Don't waste a second of your life on this.
The Alamo (2004)
A decent film that could have been so much better
Personally, I have never understood the adulation for the Texicans who died at the Alamo. These were for the large part a group of swindlers, cheats, reprobates, adulterers and who knows what else lowlifes who were fed up with the good ol' USA and decided to hitch their fortunes and futures to the government of Mexico. When things didn't go their way on that account, they decided hell, let's form our own country, our agreement with Mexico be damned, driving the Mexican military out of Texas.
Things didn't go so well after that, at least at the Alamo. But America loves its pseudo history and heroes, so we continue to make movies that tend to whitewash the ugly parts of our history.
That is not the case with this movie, which gives us the clearest account of the men who fought it out at the Alamo, warts and all. We finally get to see these legends put in the perspective of what and who they really were, and it isn't flattering, to say the least.
Indeed, one doesn't come away from this movie feeling much sympathy for the defenders of the Alamo. Davy Crockett shows up thinking the fighting has already ended, and as his friends die around him during the final battle, he expresses not any patriotic or heroic thoughts, but regret that he got his friends into "all this." Bowie, Travis and the rest are cut down without fanfare, or a star turn at dying with dignity and profundity. As Santa Ana tells his officers, "what are soldiers lives but like those of chickens?" Apparently, that goes for the Texicans as well.
Speaking of Santa Ana, he comes off quite well in this film. Was he a dictator? Sure. Dictators were the norm at that time. Was he cavalier in sending his troops to their deaths by marching them into fire in wave attacks? Not according to the way wars were fought at the time. Santa Ana was prescient (in the movie, at least) by realizing that the Mexican people would forever be under the foot of the Americans if they couldn't defend and hold their territory. He declared the Texicans to be pirates, and adopted a "no prisoners" policy. In the movie, he calls the Texicans "bandits," which they were. The discipline of the Mexican army stands in stark contrast to the rag-tag Texicans, who indulge in a false sense of security by convincing themselves that the Mexicans would never be able to reach the Alamo quickly, as doing so meant marching 300 miles in the dead of winter. Well, guess what? They did it, taking the Texicans totally by surprise (and suffering tremendous casualties in the process). The hubris of the Texicans shows - they had no idea what they were up against in Santa Ana's army.
Worse, as Bowie tries to negotiate a truce, Travis fires off a cannon shot, provoking Santa Ana in declaring that no prisoners will be taken, though he does show compassion by allowing any Mexican in the mission to leave under a flag of truce before the battle ensues.
The professionalism of the Mexican forces also stands in stark contrast to the Texicans. The clear chain of command in the Mexican army allows for discussion of tactics and philosophy, even if Santa Ana stands as final arbiter in making a decision. Compare this to the "every man for himself" power struggles going on between Bowie and Travis, and one realizes there was just not enough time available to the Texicans to gel into a disciplined fighting force that could win the day.
Visually and story wise, this is a very good film. The casting is good all around, with Billy Bob Thornton producing a unique and honest portrayal of Crockett. Where the film fails - and fails miserably - is in the musical score, which is boring, repetitious, and in many places at odds with what is happening on screen. This is no more true than in the final Alamo battle scene, which would have been more effective without any music. One doesn't expect or want a John Williams Star Wars-style composition for this scene, but almost anything else would do. The score is completely at odds with the battle, leading nowhere, highlighting nothing, without crescendo or climax. It is really awful.
I think the film would have been much improved had the subject of slavery (Mexico outlawed it, Texas wanted it) been more deeply explored. And there are many other aspects of those 13 days - raids and other pre- battle operations - that never seem to get mentioned or even hinted at in the movies.
That aside, this movie is definitely worth seeing at least once. I find the denouement after the final Alamo battle to be both anticlimactic and entirely unnecessary. The Sam Houston-led battle is under-manned, small of scale and looks cheap, especially as it follows the battle at the Alamo itself.
I give it a 7 out of 10, with most of the stars withheld due to the lousy score.
Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
Overrated and really quite awful.
This movie was a MAJOR disappointment for me as it features so many gifted comic actors whom I otherwise love.
But the premise of this movie is so beyond belief that it's nearly unwatchable. Great comedy has to have some connection to reality. Yet time and again, this movie fails miserably in that respect by presenting situations and behaviors that are beyond belief.
I'll give you one example: a couple of times in the movie, the travelers need to get out and push-start their VW van. Their very young daughter participates in this ritual, which is seen a couple of times. Once the van gets going, the "pushers" need to run alongside the van and jump in as it gains speed.
Now ask yourself: 1. just how much help would a pre-teen child be in physically push-starting a van?, and 2. what family with ANY semblance of responsibility would have a child do such a thing? I'd think that roughly 100% of families would realize that the little girl's physical efforts add NOTHING to getting the van started while risking danger to her life by having her jump into a moving van.
Of course, the director sees this staged scene as distilling the essence of the flick, even using a still from one of these scenes as the promotional icon for the film.
And so goes the rest of this flick, with similar caricatures of human behavior littering the screen.
Worse, the movie is incredibly predictable. It's just a matter of in what order which unbelievable behavior will occur.
Just awful.
Shower of Stars: A Christmas Carol III (1956)
A Hidden Gem
This is really a wonderful production and very well done. It's a serious take on the story - I doubt it could be made today.
Fredric March inhabits Scrooge. It's a performance unlike any other Scrooge or any other by March. Understated but not boring. I really was surprised by just how well he does. Rathbone is also an understated and pitiful ghost of Marley. His screen time is short, but effective. He doesn't try to make the most of it, if you catch my drift. He plays his part effectively and is gone. Today, any director working with an artist of Rathbone's talent and notoriety would feel obliged to somehow work his presence into additional scenes. That doesn't happen here, and it's refreshing.
This production is quite daring in what it attempts and achieves. Without giving anything away, I will say that the very end of the show is unprecedented in the demands it puts on March in an extended shot that would never be attempted on TV these days.
The rest of the cast is also very good. There's not a weak link. No mugging from anybody, either.
Bernard Hermann's music is just perfect in that it foots the bill without drawing undue attention to itself. It tends to the operatic, or maybe, operetta-ish. In addition to the incidental/background music (most of which has a note of foreboding to it), it's striking to realize that all of the music is original. That includes Tiny Tim's Xmas song (reprised at the end by the chorus), a duet for the young Scrooge (tenor) and his fiancé (soprano) (here called Belle, and sung by a young SOPRANO Marilyn Horne), a buffo baritone song for the Ghost of Xmas present (which turns up later in the show with a few catches sung by none other than Fredric March), and a Christmas Carol sung at the beginning of the production by the chorus (the Roger Wagner Chorale).
The DVD itself is very basic. Contrary to the blurb on the DVD case, there are no interactive menus and there is no intro by William Lundigan included in the video. The disc goes in your player and one option comes up - Play. I watched it through my BluRay player, so I don't know if there are options available if played in a DVD player.
Finally, I have to believe this show was shot on film and isn't drawn from kinescopes. The quality of the picture is simply too clear and steady to not have been a film production. It was shot by DesiLu, who I believe were using film on "I Love Lucy," so why not for this production as well?
Scrooge (1935)
OK, Not Great
I've never warmed to this version of A Christmas Carol, probably because I've been spoiled by the wonderful Alastair Sim version. While I find Hicks' portrayal of Scrooge to be quite good and believable, the production itself feels a bit raced through - because it's missing 18 minutes of footage from the original version! - and is lacking human warmth. It's also quite a drawback that there are no special effects at all to speak of when it comes to the portrayal of the spirits. Old Marley's ghost isn't even seen, and the Ghosts of Xmas Past and Future are pretty basic. The opening of the film is quite good in establishing a real feel for London of the 1840s, especially with the not-refined playing of the amateur street band.
The blu-ray brings a bit of improvement to the DVD version I own as part of VCI's "UCE" of the Alastair Sim version (which - like the BD under review - is also the 60-minute "cut" version of the 78-minute original). The included colorized version is so drab as to not seem to be in color at all. Little if any effort has been made to clean up or sharpen the film's image, though the soundtrack is relatively quiet for such an old film.
Still, it's good to have different versions of this classic story available on film. I would certainly rank this production higher that the horrible George C Scott version, which is over-produced to within an inch of its life, and which has in Scott possibly the worst portrayal of Scrooge ever set down on film.
Okay and nothing more.
The Conqueror (1956)
Much Better Than Many People Say
Those reviewers who call this one of the worst movies ever have apparently not seen critically acclaimed stinkers like "Ordinary People" and "Little Miss Sunshine." I mention those two over-rated snoozers because 1. the acting and direction in OP is a lot worse than that in "Conquerer," and 2. the story and characters in LMS are a lot more far-fetched than those in "Conquerer."
This is a typical epic film from the 1950s. It features a great all-around cast that does what great casts did back then - deliver a movie at a level that showed their talent and professionalism. Most of the main characters in this film are taken by well-known and talented actors. It's not like they all suddenly forgot what they were doing. They put their talents to work and it shows.
Sure, John Wayne sounds like John Wayne, but wouldn't it be worse if he tried to be something he never was? Do we expect actors to learn a Mongolian accent to speak English dialogue? That would be a lot more farcical than what we have here: a star delivering a star performance that his fans would enjoy. All of the actors adopt a "white man come, big trouble" way of delivering their lines. That's just the way it was in the 1950s, a convention accepted as readily as Nazi officers in movies speaking with a British accent. White people playing Mongols? Well, white people played everybody back in the day.
The battle scenes are effective and more-realistic than the norm for the time. The musical score by Victor Young is really delightful, a mixture of quasi-Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov, with a "love theme" that's quite appealing.
Is the story historically accurate? No. Guess what? It's Hollywood.
Give this movie a chance, preferably by viewing it uninterrupted on DVD with the sound piped through your stereo set-up. You might be pleasantly surprised.
I'll be watching this movie a lot more than I will modern movies with historic/mythical story lines like Kevin Kostner's "Robin Hood" and Mel Gibson's "Braveheart." At least "The Conquerer" does its Hollywood era proud in a way that those updated versions never will.
Recommended.
Black Sails (2014)
Better Than I Expected
I tuned into this expecting the worst, so I've been surprised at how the series grabbed me at the beginning and has kept my attention. Granted, I don't have it marked as "must-see TV" on my calendar, the way I did with new episodes of "The Sopranos," but I've seen the first 6 episodes and am looking forward to the final 2 of the season.
The plot has gone off in directions I didn't anticipate, and that's good. The story line is much less predictable than, say, "House of Cards," which NEVER surprises me beyond those times when utter disbelief rears its head.
I don't understand the reviewers who say the characters look clean and pristine. Quite the contrary - most of them look dirty and the worse for wear at all times, even when they fall into the water! One can almost smell them through the screen.
The only drawbacks to the series is that the dialogue is often mumbled, which - combined with the heavy Brit accents - can make understanding difficult and there are a lot of night/dark scenes that are really hard to make out. The worst drawback is the insufferable theme song - loud, boring and musically vapid. At least there's no music underlying the episode itself.
Update 2/23/17: here we are about halfway through Season 4, the final season of Black Sails. I must say that I have thoroughly enjoyed this series. Great plot twists, high production values, excellent acting and direction. What more could one want?
Recommended.
Les Misérables (2012)
The Musical Without Any Music
I have never been able to comprehend what anybody hears in this "musical." The score is a trite, repetitious, uninspired and unmemorable collection of chords that go nowhere and say nothing. For as many times as I have heard and seen this show, none of its music sticks in my mind's ear...and I say that as a musician. Ask me to hum a few bars of this aria or the other, and I can't. It's THAT unmemorable. The limited musical vocabulary of the composer(s) of this score is truly frightening.
The score imagines itself to be more like an opera than a musical as every single line of dialog and "song" is intoned. I say "intoned" rather than "sung," because song - from which singing derives - requires a melodic line which rises and falls, and which reinforces the text being sung. Much of Le Mis is sung on a single tone, extended speech, as it were, that grows boring in very quick order. It's like a trip to an old Roman Catholic church where all of the monks were unfortunately monotones. I have visions of the composer writing a single note as a placeholder for 15 pages of music, with the idea that he'll come back later and write the actual melody...only he never did!
This music is ghastly stuff! It's The Emperor's New Clothes in musical guise. To quote Gertrude Stein, "there's no there there" when it comes to the music.
And so along comes this movie which drops this horrible, uninteresting score into the hands of a bevy of actors who couldn't sing "Mary Had A Little Lamb" were a gun put to their heads. There is more awful singing per minute in this movie than in any other musical in history. Much has been made of the director insisting that his actors actually sing their intonations on set, rather than syncing to a prerecorded soundtrack. BAD IDEA, because what we as an audience get to witness are the contortions and physical agonies many of these "singers" go through to emit the simplest of musical thought. This is not art. This is the amateur hour, a hack show of, well, epic proportions.
Singers who actually know how to sing "give their all" NOT through convoluted and obviously painful and visible tensions in the throat and body, but by having a singing technique that allows them to produce their basic sound freely, with emotion and drama added to what is, in fact, a balanced and easily produced sound. Of course, the masses see this physical distress as a singer "giving their all," rather than what it actually is - ie: a singer struggling against themselves to produce the effect they desire. Can one imagine admiring an athlete for whom simply putting one foot in front of the other in a foot race was the hardest thing to do in life? No, we'd say "that person is an amateur who hasn't a clue as to what it means to run a race." Yet in this 2012 version of Les Mis, we are supposed to praise amateurs for their INABILITY to sing. Pathetic.
But does it matter? The truth is that one could drop the finest singers in history into this "musical," and they would still be stuck performing the musical equivalent of singing the phone book.
Dreadful, dreadful stuff. The stuff of adult nightmares, in fact.
Were there a "zero" rating available, I'd give it to this turkey.
House of Cards (2013)
Disappointing, predictable and occasionally well acted
Anything that Kevin Spacey does is usually worth a look, but this series misses the mark.
The problems start in the very first episode, which resorts to a blatant "deus ex machina" to advance the entire series plot in the form of a partially shredded education bill that ends up in the intended "wrong hands," thereby setting into motion the grand plot to secure the Vice Presidency for Mr Spacey's character, Rep Francis Underwood. BTW- Underwood intends to ascend to the VP spot not through an election, but by appointment, by enticing the sitting VP to give up his job and to go back to Pennsylvania to run for governor, the job he left to take the VP spot on the newly elected President's ticket. Sound far fetched? Uh, yeah!
The release of this toxic early draft to the press is central to the entire plot moving forward. We're to believe that Rep Underwood purposefully and personally half-shreds a document in front of the eyes of the newly appointed Education Secretary who wrote it, and that neither this Secretary nor anyone on his staff had the smarts to fully shred the document after Rep Underwood leaves the office. All that's left is for one of Underwood's operatives to dumpster dive after hours to retrieve said document - psst: it'll be easy to find...it's the half shredded one! - so Underwood can turn the document over to the insufferable cub reporter Zoe Barnes, who will unwittingly initiate Underwood's plot by getting the contents of the toxic bill published in the Washington Post, er, Herald.
This sets up an unbelievable set of domino-like circumstances that lead to one person after another falling victim to Underwood's lust for power. By Episode 3, we're to believe that Underwood - the Democratic Majority Whip - has somehow pulled off a major coup by getting the House Majority Leader of his own party to unwittingly run a challenge to unseat the House Speaker, a plot that when discovered costs the Majority Leader his job. Underwood pulls off this little coup by going against his own party, getting 205 Republicans to pledge their votes to oust the Speaker, coupled with the help of 13 renegade Democratic Representatives. We're asked to suspend disbelief in a scene where the three men meet privately, with the Speaker believing the Number 3 man in the House (Underwood) over his right-hand Number 2. It all falls apart as planned: the Speaker retains his job, the Majority Leader is ousted (replaced by a member of the Black Caucus hand-picked by - guess who? - Underwood) and Underwood's first major victory in his quest for the VP slot is secured.
And what is the comeuppance for that #3? Why, nothing! In a town where everyone knows the deepest secrets of everyone else, we're supposed to believe that Mr Underwood's Majority Whip faces no retribution from his own party for conspiring to lead a Republican-dominated coup against a sitting Speaker in his own party. We're to believe that no one sees any personal political advantage in informing the Speaker that his #3 is a dangerous man, a man who by Episode 10 or 11 resorts to murder to clean up a mess he's created. (BTW - the murder happens when Underwood leaves a car running in a garage to asphyxiate his drunken victim. He wipes down the car to erase his fingerprints. Question: if the police are going to check for fingerprints on the dead man's car, wouldn't the total lack of fingerprints on the driver's side door and the steering wheel set off alarms that maybe this wasn't a suicide?)
All of the characters in this series are self-centered assholes who draw little happiness from anything they do. None of them seems to have a game plan that considers an end game - it's like high school, where the bullies spend each day finding new ways to bully different people with no reason or ultimate purpose behind their actions. Sadly, each character comes off as a half-written caricature of a human being. They're all unidimensional and transparent.
Because of this, the series is quite predictable. Scene after scene evolves exactly as one expects it to evolve. I found myself imaging lines of dialog that then came out of the character's mouths an instant later, I kid you not!
Other reviewers have noted the many, MANY asides Mr Spacey has. I know that this is a sop to "Richard II," upon which the original House of Cards was based, but this breaking of the fourth wall becomes tedious rather quickly, especially as the asides do nothing but confirm what we've already inferred was Rep Underwood's inner monologue.
The music to the series is dull as dishwater as well, annoying, in fact (it's like the music from "Glengarry Glen Ross" coupled with the remake of "The Italian Job."). So much so that I was muting the opening credits by Episode 3. There's also way too much music serving as background to dialog. Like I said, it's annoying.
That said, there's some good acting going on, especially when one considers the unimaginative material.
This is another series that didn't live up to the hype I've heard. I will say it's better than "The Newsroom," which has even more stereotypical characters and leaden, unnatural dialog than this, but that's not saying much.
4 out of 10 - worth watching at some point, but not exactly high on the list of things to do.