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Reviews
Road House (2024)
A five rating is generous; little heart
I didn't expect Road House to follow the original script but thought it might be enjoyable. Jake Gyllenhaal does his best. The lovely Jessica Williams disappears too much (and since the picture was changed so much would have been a better love interest). Hannah Love Lanier adds what little heart exists in the picture. Villains are silly; boss was ridiculous and barely menacing. There is no Sam Elliott to add to the good guys. Fight scenes are pretty decent. Romance is barely there which allows a (literally) cop out ending. Movie misses most of what made the original Road House a classic: the instructions from Dalton; the gradual improvement of the bar; the slow burn to the climax. Disappointing.
Halo (2022)
Solid first season. Down the tubes season 2.
Why do writers do this? I'm so tired of it. They put an a person - a bureaucrat - in charge. The lead is lied to and everyone is made to think he's gone bad. It's not any different from court scenes where lies are used to discredit someone. Or politics. Or any other poorly set up scenario where writers run out of ideas. This is how otherwise interesting to watch shows are turned off. By me at least. See enough of this in real life. Don't need my entertainment to emulate it. Season 2 episode 3 ends it for me. Rating based on an 8 the first season and a 1 the second. Good luck to anyone who finds this interesting.
El niñero (2023)
Some fun and chemistry wrapped in over exaggerated work tropes
Full disclosure: I stopped watching after episode four's juvenile all-around tone followed by the dumb ending. There is stuff to like about The Manny when it's not showing Jimena at work. Jimena is mostly a solid and complex character. Good chemistry between the leads and among the children. The interaction between Gabriel and the children works. Same with the school and home interactions with the two oldest. Show has a penchant for older female/younger male relationships. But work is ridiculous; an over the top boy's club that I hope is, at least, usually more subtle. Virtually all of the adult male characters, with the usual exception of Gabriel, are caricatures of real people. En masse, nobody acts the way they do. At least not all the time. Pleasant moments overpowered by sheer stupidity.
1923 (2022)
Impossible to Watch
If TV writers believe I want to watch a show, from the beginning, where nuns and priests beat schoolchildren; where priests beat nuns: where shooting lions is considered OK; where a man and an old woman square against each other with guns (and why the man didn't simply attack the woman when he found she was out of ammo instead of trying to load before her). Watching the Native American girl pound the nun was the only reasonable thing I saw in the few minutes I watched. With Ford and Mirren I really wanted to like the episodes. The cruelty of 1923 can be displayed without the visceral abject physical beatings of the weak and the poor. It's enough.
The Lazarus Project (2022)
The Lazarus Project is Trite
Note: I only got through the third episode. The idea that a group of individuals can reset time to the previous checkpoint if things get apocalyptic is a promising premise for a TV Sci-fi series. The first episode is promising, introducing the main characters and why they remember the reset. I expected a thrilling series of will/they won't/they with agents working to prevent a single reset. Instead it devolved into resets for reasons due to personal issues; real enough for the people but totally sophomoric for this type of agency. Told in flashbacks, what I saw, at least, were each agent's reset needs, none of it particularly gripping for me.
King Deo Raendeu (2023)
Not So Bad but So Mean
I'm writing this review while watching the fourth episode of the series. I don't get the hate or the love - that so many reviews are at the ends of the spectrum. King The Land is watchable. Not great but watchable. My main complaint - and I don't know anything about Korean life so it comes from a place of ignorance - is the overall nastiness of the people. Most of the higher ups are plain nasty as are many coworkers. Gu Won's stepsister is evil; tries hard to hurt her stepbrother whenever she can. Maybe it's the way soaps portray people; they're always over-the-top. Maybe it's the competition for jobs in Korea. I don't know. But I find such nastiness difficult to watch unless there is enough good stuff to counterbalance.
Deadloch (2023)
(my) Annoyance Hurts a good mystery
Deadloch is a sometimes amusing and well-done mystery, bookended by things that annoy me. Dulcie, a detective in Deadloch, gets assigned a police office from a bigger place. That person turns out to be a foul-mouthed woman, who turns everything into simplistic terms. And there's the initial annoyance. The visiting officer is totally over-the-top, which is not nearly as amusing as the writer(s) think. When the person finally offers why she is the way she is, Deadloch morphs into a pretty curious mystery with some interesting characters, and some not so. Late in the show, the investigation is commandeered by a bunch of men, totally misogynistic like many of the men in Deadloch. And that's the major annoyance for me, two parts of the same coin. I can't stand watching these aholes behave that way. And I can't stand that the writers need to depict men all the time doing this. Most men I know are not like this. I get tired of shows and movies hitting me over the head with this. If you're someone who likes offbeat humor and a combination of both misogynistic and anti-misogynistic bang me over the head behavior, you will enjoy this.
Fire Country (2022)
Starts Great, Devolves
The premise to bring a team of inmates to assist in fighting wildfires is good. Max Theriot as Bode exudes positive intensity and other characters, notably Jules Latimer as Eve add to it. The season started interestingly, with a variety of fires, reasonable distrust of inmates and some personal conflicts and relationships. But it devolves into a bad soap opera. Bode is a man child, going off the deep end at a moments notice. His relationship with Gabby had nice chemistry but, in slowing it down, the show has killed it. New inmates should have been flagged as untrustworthy but there seems to be no supervision of prisoners. Horrible storylines follow with huge weekly problems. Eve is turned into a sad character. The show gets less interesting by the week. Trying to finish the season but it's hard to sit through what is presented.
True Lies (2023)
Pretty Bad
Thought it might be fun to watch: the sexy little wife kicking a little butt, adding some humor, surprising everyone. And maybe something from the kids. But everything falls flat. It's hard to imagine the husband as a 17-year spy when his novice wife comes up with all the impromptu plans. Omar Miller does the best he can but can't raise the sophomoric level of the dialog. The other actors are completely wasted. The ignorant-of-their-parents children have added nothing, except teasers from their personal lives. And the other duo is given precious little.
An unfortunate complete miss. Don't think I can watch another episode to see if it improves.
In from the Cold (2022)
Solid but Marred Towards the End
Liked the series. Thought it was interesting with good fight scenes. But something that happened late in the series was pretty stupid - in my opinion - based on the intelligence of the characters.
Hanna (2019)
Boring
Very dull, so many long scenes of Hanna doing nothing but "learning how to be a teenage girl." And, no offense, but everyone Marissa smiles I want to ....
Jessica Jones (2015)
So Disappointing After Season One
Season one was well-done. Ratchet up the tension, showed Jessica's vulnerability, sometimes fun, sometimes sad, sometimes angry. Season 2 devolved into this ridiculous Othello thing where whenever something was about to happen that was positive, somebody did something monumentally stupid at just the right time. That's a plot device I don't expect to see
In a well-written drama, used over and over.
I couldn't keep watching.
Cloak & Dagger (2018)
Disappointing
Really wanted to like it but found it tedious. No character interaction, and all of the drugs and horrible people just make the show worse.