Change Your Image
notany
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Lists
An error has ocurred. Please try againOrdering is not exact. It's just a list. Every title in this list is really good somehow.
Reviews
Jack Ryan (2018)
The writers are dishonoring Tom Clancy's reputation
Tom Clancy novels are known for their detail, logic and research behind them. He was actually interrogated by Feds because he had so many details right.
Writers of this series are the opposite of all this. They made no attempt for realism, characters, detail or good narrative. No research behind writing, just trying to string along action scenes with. It's like B-level tv-show from the 80s.
Even the action scenes are from the cheap 80s tv series. Minions who die for their boss, attack by running towards the enemy one by one, shoot with heavy weapons without destroying boxes between the bullets and the hero.
Tom Clancy died in 2013. Jack Ryan's character died with him. Now it's just milking the name. The writers and producers for this are not worth of their pay.
San ti (2023)
Surprisingly faithful adaption to already classic sci-fi book with questionable narrative choisces.
The three-Body book series is high-concept sci-fi and already a classic. It's hard sci-fi with little speculative physics added.
POSITIVES
A typical way to adapt popular sci-fi books into TV or movies is to throw out the concepts, take some characters and broad storylines and make it a conventional mix of adventure, action, and drama.
Not this time. The Three Body TV-series takes the concepts seriously and takes time to walk the audience through details step by step. Even an attempt is worth one star. Unlike typical TV-series where the sense of mystery is made up just to keep people tuned in, there is really clever plot and concepts behind all this.
NEGATIVES
Some characters are added or removed, different storylines are out of sequence. That's understandable if they are well justified and improve the adoption.
Unfortunately, the writers made some bad choices that slows down the narrative without any good reason. They opted to keep explaining some nerdy details for over 20 minutes that don't contribute to the whole story and are not the main ideas. There are already so many concepts that absolutely have to be explored that keeping smaller ones seems like bad decision.
CONCLUSION
For someone who has read the books, this is walking through the memory line, slowly. I fear that for people who did not read the books, the narrative may be confusing. Some visual hints about what is going on are potentially misleading (as can be seen in other reviews.)
If you don't already know the story, it must be approached as a scientific whodunnit. The progresses is slow like in a detective story where nobody knows what is going on. You understand to the scientific explanations to make sense of it. Protagonists and antagonists are both grasping for the whole picture.
Netflix is doing another adaption. I don't think they do as good job as this series with all it's faults.
1899 (2022)
Artificially extended
Netflix needs hours to fill and this is a result. Spoiling nice idea by stretching it too much. I want my money back.
This would have been a good 3 episode miniseries. It was artificially extended to 8 episodes.
Middle episodes are just useless "mysterious" wandering and exploring.
Most characters are just added to fill in time. They don't contribute to the plot meaningfully.
Plagiarism accusations related to graphic novel Black Silence are understandable. On the other hand the plot is not that original if you are familiar with SciFi. There many movies with similar theme. Only the details vary.
Russian Doll (2019)
1st season great, 2nd season is pure cashing in season.
The first season was great, original and even deep, worth watching.
The second season is complete trash. It's "Lets do more wacky stuff" for no reason. The protagonist speaks "pseudo deep" and walks streets with attitude to make it appear something other that cheap family drama.
Don't Look Up (2021)
Modern Dr. Strangelove, with brilliant actors.
Many strong performances, but Mark Rylance as Peter Isherwell, and Leonardo DiCaprio as Dr. Mindy steal the show.
The movie: A dark comedy that hits the nail on the head. Good ending.
Black Widow (2021)
Peak soulless - Introduce new location, banter, boring action scene, repeat.
Marvel is reaching peak soulless. They have finely tuned industrial movie production where movies are produced using checklists and must have scenes.
The movie is just think plot to tie in sequence of introduce new location, banter, action scenes.
Action scenes are boring and don't advance the plot. Banter is forced. New locations are just new locations.
Blood Machines (2019)
Thin plot, great visuals.
The plot is thin, almost nonexistent (2/10) acting is over and wooden. Visual style is very original, creative and amazing (10/10). Beats standard unimaginative Marvel blockbusters in that respect.
This feels more like demo than finished film. Creator should get good writer, story and maybe director before creating the next movie. There is only so far you can go with only visuals.
Snowden (2016)
Clueless grandpa directs hacker film. Snowden deserves better than this.
Oliver Stone is simply trying to tell a story about subject can't relate or understand.
The beginning is directly from Citizenfour but with actors. The dramatization of training in the CIA is full of melodramatic monologues. When you don't understand something, you treat it as magic and Stone is doing just that. Stone don't understand what Snowden's world is and as a result he can't make the movie work.
Oliver Stone was the director of the 80's and 90's Salvador, Platoon and Wall Street, Born on the Fourth of July, The Doors, JFK, Natural Born Killers were based on something he knew or could understand.
Watch the documentary Citizenfour instead.
Population Zero (2016)
Well done nothing
This film is made documentary style and quite well. It's very slow burn style I liked and the scenes are beautiful. It's the story that can't carry the film. If I want watch TV for an hour, I don't wan't to watch fake documentary. Yes, it has some drama an thrill but it's only purpose seems to be there because it has to.
Wasted an hour for a very short story stretched unnecessarily. Slow burn is OK, but it must deliver. Four stars because it was technically well done.
Incorporated (2016)
Solid dystopia cyberpunk sci-fi
After season one, the judgment is clear. This show is better than average.
Classic cyberpunk themes like, climate change and society collapse, "high tech low life" in red zones and luxury bought with loyalty to the megacorporations in the green zones.
Protagonist and other characters in the series are constantly facing the same moral dilemma in every level: choosing between self preservation and morality, looking after the number one and looking after the common good. Everything in the society works against choosing the latter.
The show has good production value and grand vision. The story itself, what happens to the people and how they manage provides suspense without being very original, but it's good fun. The real star is the world those characters live in.
(It's clearly better than Colony. Close or similar in quality to Expanse)
Dark Matter (2015)
Entertaining space opera
Review after 4th episode in 2nd season.
There are so many dimensions you can use to judge a TV-series. I give solid 9-stars in the category of space opera TV-series (subgenre of science fiction that emphasizes space warfare, melodramatic adventure, and often risk-taking, interplanetary battles, as well as chivalric romance).
This show is like Farscape with little bit of Firefly. It's not as ambitious as Star Trek TNG or as high quality writing as Firefly/Serenity, but I put it's well above average with a budget that I assume is modest compared to many series that did worse.
It entertains and surprises the same way as Firefly. There is no excessive brooding to build up seriousness into characters. Characters are free to brood between episodes :)