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Reviews
Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)
lacking in so many ways
Not enough Simon Peg, and not enough of the team solving problems.
The fun in these movies is from the characters different strengths and them playing off of each other. And that was missing here.
It starts off pretty good, I was thinking "Yeah! A
good action movie" and then it ended up feeling quite long.
While at times Pom was quite good, at other times she felt like a 90's Bond villain; which was just out of place in this movie.
Ilsa wasn't bad but I didn't see any real chemistry between her and Ethan and the way she died seemed silly and forced for the story line. With a fairly long sword she lost to a guy with a short knife.
Gabriel seemed like he was computer generated rather than just bossed around by a computer.
Briggs, while good, sounded silly complaining how Ethan always goes rogue, because he seemed to forget that he always gets the mission done that way.
And don't even get me started on why Ethan told Kittridge up front that he was going rogue, he could have pretended like he was going to get the key and return it to him for awhile.
While impressive, the real motorcycle/parachute jump was made odd by Ethan whining about it. His entire career has been stunts like that and he never whined about them before.
The tiny car chase was funny, but it felt like the movie switched to Inspector Gadget for awhile. It just didn't fit.
Also, a signal being analog doesn't mean a computer can't interpret it and even alter it. It would just switch it to digital then back to analog. Fun fact: when a 'digital' signal is transmitted over wires like network cable it is actually an analog sinewave where up is on and down is off.
And finally, if I had to hear them say "The Entity" one more time!!!! At some point they would just say "It".
A Merry Scottish Christmas (2023)
4.5 stars for production value
High production value. But low story value. The characters lack chemistry and there isn't the urgency to any of their decisions that usually exist in these types of movies.
The husband and wife are cold and distant. When he says they have a decision to make, she coldly replies "about our marriage, a baby or this place". Hard to cheer for them working things out at that point.
The brother and sister drama is hard to read and harder to care about. The 'events' in their past that drove them apart aren't that big and were years ago.
Lacy and Mac have little chemistry, largely because he is just too overly enthusiastic about everything.
They try to play it like the castle's existence depends on their decision, yet the idea is floated of taking the title and letting Mac run the castle. The Mom could have done that. And they don't just get to hand out the Duke and Duchess title to everyone, there can only be one of each and there is a chain and a process for it.
So we end up with a castle that can exist without them, successful adults that will be fine with or without the castle and titles, a brother and sister that could start talking more without being in a castle together and some very weak chemistry trying to draw some of them together.
It never gets annoying enough to turn off but it also never gets good enough to pull the viewer in.
Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy (2024)
Good message, too much filler and no suggested answers
There is probably 45 minutes of good material here and the rest is filler. The format with the Ai style voice throughout so much of it is annoying.
The annoying Ai filler could have been replaced with spending a lot more time on how marketing changed our buying habits from buying to replace worn out items to buying because we want to be like someone else, because of FOMO, because it is today's in thing.
They showed the 'influencers' but didn't really address their affect on people's buying habits. While, in reality, influencers are a massive part of the buying things we really don't need problem.
They put the blame only on the corporations, not the influencers and especially not us, the customers.
They didn't address the fact that, for a large part, our economy is supported by this kind of wasteful shopping. If people went back to buying a new pair of shoes only when their old ones wore out and buying clothes that lasted for years instead of weeks, it would be a terrible hit on our economy.
If we shifted back to "I'd like to have that someday" from the current "I must have that right now!" thinking about buying, it would hit a lot of companies quite hard.
Back when people shopped more out of necessity than want, much more of the items were manufactured here. That process supported multiple levels of jobs that don't exist with nearly everything being imported now. The economy could survive with less buying when people here were getting paid on every step from raw material to finished product.
Now the items just show up at the port and we get paid to sell them. And with the latest shopping sites even that step is being removed and they are going directly from the foreign factory to the US consumer.
The food waste is terrible, however how is a bagel shop supposed to figure out the logistics of getting old bagels to someone that could benefit from them? Are food banks willing to take old food like that?
In fact, the show made no real suggestions as to how any of the problems could be corrected, other than for companies to stop advertising things to us so well.
Hot Frosty (2024)
It has its moments
First, I guess a movie called "Hot Frosty" with the cover photo they have is pretty good warning that it will have a slightly different 'edge' to it from other Christmas movies. It may not be the 'snow man comes alive' movie you watch with your really little kids. The need to show nearly all of him when he is running around naked, the older women lusting over him, especially when he starts out with the mentality of a child, is a bit creepy. Just imagine how unacceptable it would have been if it had been a female and a group of old men. But the overall feel is of a Christmas movie.
The production value is good, the acting is decent and it has a lot of little fun moments sprinkled throughout. Lacey Chabert's acting seems to continually improve.
The little funny bits and references to Lindsey Lohan and a montage to "Pretty Woman" are fun and keep the energy going. Even the 'It's a wonderful life' style ending are done well enough to be fun.
There were definitely more odd moments than most Christmas movies have. Is this the new edgy Christmas movie style? But there were also more fun moments than most have.
Tracker: Ontological Shock (2024)
Hopefully just a Halloween oddity
Hopefully this was just an out of place episode that they had fun with and not a new direction.
It is a good show with good stories, it doesn't need some over the top government group dealing with aliens to contend with.
Too much that didn't make sense and was downright silly.
How did Scott Palmer not only get away from the sound beam that was immobilizing him, but also get to the other distant location.... without his car?
How did the bad guys not find him there but Colter finds him in the first building he looks in?
Why didn't Colter and Russel make sure Dr Blair got away safely? Her death is on them. She wasn't going to be able to expose the 'event' in time and was still killed. Yet the Shaws think they are safe because the 'event' is over.
Loudermilk (2017)
It is like two different shows
There is the show without Cutter and Tom and the show with them.
Without Cutter and Tom it is one of the most amazing shows I've ever seen.
With them it is like a live action cartoon, completely ridiculous. I keep expecting someone to pop onto the screen going "Gigidy gigidy".
Without them it pulls you into the characters. You love them, you hate them, you marvel at how they function with their flaws and sometimes you even wish you were a bit more blunt and honest like them. They are often the best and the worst friends you could want.
It looks like the Tom/Cutter storyline is just in the first season so I may have to do some fast forwarding for a few episodes.
Time Cut (2024)
If Disney did a slasher movie
Sometimes when they make slasher movies that aren't gory they end up good, like "Happy Death Day" or "Countdown" because they have to be creative and build suspense. This isn't one of those times. There are no good suspenseful moments, there are no jump scares.
There is the mystery about the killer and a bit of unique fun with the possible effect saving someone might have. That earns it about a 5.5 rating.
If you were a teen in 2003 then the nostalgia might be enough to make it more enjoyable.
It never gets annoying enough to turn off but it also never gets good enough to make it really worth while.
I know that they rarely use actual teenagers to play high school students but Summer often looked old enough to be playing someone's mom.
NCIS: Origins (2024)
maybe
Maybe, with some time, it will come together. Right now it is suffering from a lack of chemistry between the cast. Everyone feels like they are in a different show.
Gibbs seems like he took too much Nyquil. Instead of Mark Harmon's trademark thoughtfulness and calm we get disinterested. Franks is more 70's than 90's 'cop'. Randolf seems like he is greeting new members at the Frat. And Dominguez is very much 2020's.
But the biggest problem is that each character is the extreme version of that person. It is like they are on an improv game show and we are supposed to guess what they are playing so they are doing it to the extreme. Maybe they will mellow that out and let them have some depth over time.
Like often happens with shows and movies set in a different time period, the reminders they put in stand out like sore thumbs. "Look! It's a gameboy!" "Look it's an old car stereo playing a song from back then!"
Matlock: A Guy Named Greg (2024)
A strong showing so far
3 episodes in and they have all been quite good. The writing is much better than most modern TV shows and the acting is top notch. I expected as much from Kathy Bates, but the other actors are also quite good and don't seem out of place on screen with her. It is a risk when you put someone really talented on a TV show that everyone around them suddenly will look less talented.
The stories are very good and even thought provoking. The story of Madeline's experience in the workplace years ago really drove home the long term effects that things like that can have.
I did find it somewhat ironic that in an episode about the negative effects of unwanted comments and actions from coworkers and superiors, they had Olympia continue to user her position of power to psychologically toy with her employees.
I'm not sure that having her employees always on edge, always worried about angering her and always wondering what they might have done to displease her, is a great work environment either.
In this setting they write it off as some sort of character building exercise but I'm sure plenty of people in the real world have dreaded seeing people that treat them the way she does, at work and even altered their careers to avoid them.
Mr. Young (2011)
It is like a...
Mr. Young is pretty much a live action cartoon. Most of the stories are pretty ridiculous adventures by characters that don't ever show any personal growth. But that isn't a bad thing. You just have to look at it like you are watching a cartoon. Nobody expected Tom and Jerry to become better over time or do realistic things.
If you watch it expecting to see a real show with realistic characters then you will be let down. These aren't good people, they rarely actually help each other and are usually very destructive towards each other's lives.
They do have a fair amount of moments where they break the 3rd wall and are self aware of the oddities that are going on.
Happy's Place (2024)
It is never a good sign...
It isn't a good start when every character in a show is a complete stereotype and plays it at the level of 11.
Whenever they think that they have to hit us in the face with each character's specific one dimensional personality in the first episode it just isn't a good sign of things to come.
Maybe eventually they will add some actual depth to the people on the show but I can't see it lasting that long. Complex characters are harder to write and few shows seem to want to put in the effort anymore.
And, why do so many shows have to throw in the HR training video moment when a highly educated minority with a degree tells the undereducated waitress that she couldn't possibly have missed out on anything in her life because she is white.
Midnight Mass: Book III: Proverbs (2021)
the definition of a slow burn
While some of the scenes get a little long, this show is the definition of a slow burn. Sometimes it pushes really close to the edge with the long sections of 'music' montages.
Mostly this show does the slow burn well because we care about the characters and each episode reveals enough more to draw you in to the next one.
One thing that I notice with a lot of shows now is they seem to go way out of their way to explain to us how amazing the Muslim faith is. It is common have one of the characters say "In my faith...." and then go into a description of why the Muslim faith is so much better than others.
The Muslim characters are portrayed as being fair, level headed and devoted, while other religious characters are shown as shallow, pushy, unstable, weird or downright evil.
Prince of Peoria (2018)
It should be a much better show
It has a funny subject with all sorts of possibilities. The problem is, although the stories are generally about friendship, the acts of friendship always seem to only go one direction.
Prince Emil is self centered and Teddy is always expected to adjust his life and his plans to Emil's wants. Usually Teddy ends up apologizing, even though Emil rarely considers Teddy's wants or feelings.
That isn't how friendship works, and that isn't how they should be showing it to kids. There are so many situations where Emil should have thought about how his actions would affect Teddy. Instead he charges full speed into everything he wants and in the end people apologize to him.
Bunk'd (2015)
It is like 3 different shows
It is difficult to rate this show, because it is really like three different shows.
The early seasons were goofy fun with likeable characters.
The middle seasons were still some goofy fun but with more of with a message included. They were still mostly entertaining.
And the latest seasons are largely just a obvious message, delivered by people that don't really act; they simply say their lines loudly.
Unfortunately, their lines are rarely funny and the writers don't really put any effort into blending the lesson into a fun story. At some point in each episode Parker will just stand and say the message, loudly without feeling.
SOS: How to Survive: Desert Heat (2017)
nearly a tragic episode
This is a pretty interesting series but this episode seemed to, kindly, overlook some really bad choices by the search party.
First off, nobody was able to get a helicopter involved in the search? Not even any ATV's or horses?
Second, they go out searching but 'come back for lunch' when they don't find her??? They knew the general direction that she was in. If you didn't find her then you didn't go far enough. What search party decides to return to base for lunch rather than packing their lunch, plenty of water and searching until they have to return at sundown?
On the final day of searching they talk the husband into staying behind out of fear that they will find her dead, yet he would be the only one that could recognize the rocks near where she was and the tree she was under.
At the hospital it was said that she was likely within hours of death, yet with no indication of anything motorized in the search that meant they had to carry her back out of the desert for hours before getting to a road and then driving to a hospital?
Girl Haunts Boy (2024)
It has its moments
It is a sweet story with moments that are pretty good.
Unfortunately, between those moments it also has some really slow sections.
It has some fun and it has some real heart, but it also felt like it was about 20 minutes too long. They could have streamlined it a fair amount or added another character or two for him to interact with. More Lydia would have been great and perhaps another new 'friend' that would keep finding him appearing to talk to himself or even a sidekick for Lydia.
While the main characters generally did fine, they just weren't always enough to carry it through so long mostly by themselves. The fun, more lighthearted scenes were great; but the chemistry between the leads and the stronger emotional sections were where they struggled. Those sometimes felt forced. A couple good side characters could have easily distracted from much of that.
There were a fair amount of plot holes and overly convenient moments. Someone shouldn't be completely oblivious to the changes in the world when they can see out windows, front doors to museums aren't usually unlocked and unguarded after hours, if they can see and hear people living in the house over the years it would seem they would pick up slang and exclusive, high end parties aren't generally things that are super easy to just walk into unnoticed, especially out of costume. Like so many movies, it felt like just a bit more time spent on fine tuning the script could have made a big difference.
Container Masters (2021)
So much possibility
Such poor execution. I know most 'reality' shows like this are a lot of staged drama and silliness, however in this one they include such little actual information about the container homes that it seems to not have any purpose.
The group isn't actually that interesting but the subject is; yet we get mostly the group and very little on the subject of container homes.
We don't find out how much they cost compared to having a small home built on-site. We don't find out how an on-site built container home might differ from one they have to be able to ship across the country. We don't find out what, if any, the benefits are to having a container as the structure rather than building a traditional frame.
They basically have to frame out the entire interior in a traditional style so that they can have insulation and a place to run wiring and plumbing. At that point, is there really a purpose to the container under it all? I was hoping to find out if this was really a genius, cost effective way to build a small home or just a gimmick that gives you something to talk about. This show didn't seem like they were going to answer that at any point.
Hotel Impossible: Desert Disaster (2017)
It is nice to have a few likable owners
While likable owners are nice it is sad that they often don't get as much free stuff as the complete jerks that don't care about their customers and that abuse their employees.
On this episode the owner is in way over her head but she doesn't seem to be greedy or evil like some of the others. But I guess as they get near the end of the series their budget is lower and they get less free stuff from vendors.
On this one they get a mild redo on the lobby and that is it. They don't do a room or anywhere else. He gets them a 'deal' on new door locks but not free and an eCornell gift certificate.
Meanwhile on episodes with truly awful owners, where I often wish he'd just leave and don nothing for them, he's done their lobby and two rooms, free door locks, free linens for all the rooms, and more.
Westworld (2016)
It has its moments (1st season)
It has its moments but they are too few and often too far between.
There are few likeable characters and that number drops as the season goes on. And that includes interesting 'evil' characters. Sometimes the bad guys are the most interesting but that isn't the case here.
I think there was a good story there but it gets a bit muddled in their parallel timeline and flash backs, flash forwards, flash sideways moments. The overall story arch is interesting, it is just the journey to get there that feels long at times.
There is some funny irony in a show that has an underlying point that all people want is sex and violence that also gives us a lot of sex and violence.
Motel Rescue (2023)
Sometimes it is good, sometimes it is entertainingly bad
There are some things she does that look like they work and others that are so far off that it actually makes it fun because it just seems too silly.
In some episodes she mentions a budget but in others she doesn't. Are the people paying for the work or not? If they are paying for it then I often feel sorry for them. Some of the changes are nice upgrades but others are not and some she just messes things up.
She repeatedly tries to put coffee stands or smoothie bars in small hotels that are unlikely to have enough guests to ever make it cost effective to staff it. All that time and expense for something that would require another employee or two, just doesn't make sense.
A lot of the time she leaves the TV out of the renovated rooms. It is nice in your down time in a hotel to have a TV, especially at night. It shouldn't be that difficult to fit a reasonable sized flat TV on a wall.
She likes to downsize the refrigerators in the rooms with kitchenettes to dorm size. The small fridges are pretty much useless for anything but snacks.
Finally, the worst thing about all these 'rescue' or 'impossible' shows is they fix up 1 or 2 rooms and the owners immediately put those pictures online so that people making reservations think that is what they are going to get.
Alien³ (1992)
Lacking in many areas
There were interesting ideas to the movie but they were overwhelmed by what was missing.
They do the oh so popular sequel thing of starting out with 'you thought the second one ended like this? Well, think again! ' They actually go back and take away what was a satisfying ending to the prior movie by instantly killing off two of the main characters because they wouldn't have fit into this new story.
The biggest problem here though, was a lack of likeable secondary characters that you could cheer for and worry about harm coming to them. The Clemens character was starting to fit into that but then they kill him. And mostly all we are left with are rapists and murderers.
Instead of Ripley being fierce and driven she mostly travels through the movie like she has space lag.
There is also the issue of the special effects. The aliens in the close-up shots were so covered in slime that it was ridiculous at times. The distance shots were mostly bad low budget, early 90's CGI. It was distracting. Even the moments of the alien grabbing people wasn't good for jump scares. It was just 'oh no, that guy we don't know at all that is a violent criminal just got taken'.
I liked the setting, the set was well done; and I liked the trying to fight it without weapons but the ending made little sense. They went through this very long scene where they lure it down a 'piston shaft' for some reason, into the mold area for the lead. Which sounds great until you realize that, after all the time and lives spent getting it down this long hallway into the mold area, the mold is open at the top. What do the aliens do better than humans? Climb up things! How did they ever think that was going to be a good trap?
Even if I remove the comparison to the first two movies this one is weak as a stand alone creature flick. It lacks suspense, it lacks jump scares, it lacks good characters, it lacks a really terrifying creature.
I Love Lucy: Pilot (1951)
Yikes
Don't get me wrong I love Lucy, but there is a reason this was lost. The series gets 9 stars, this gets 4.
Reports are it was just made to try to sell sponsors on the show. I'm glad they saw possibility in it, because I didn't.
The start had too much Ricky singing, too much Pepito; it was very rough and the acting felt rushed. Probably the norm for a promotional 'pilot' but not what we are used to from the other 180 episodes.
I'm sure many will enjoy it, simply because of the beloved characters of Lucy and Ricky in it. However if it were someone's first exposure to the series they likely wouldn't be back for more.
Pieces of Her (2022)
passable but barely
Most of the characters are very unlikable and not in an entertaining way. Sometimes characters can be evil or unpleasant and still entertain.
I'm not sure if the Jane character (Jessica Barden) was told to act the way she did, but much of the time she seemed a bit mentally challenged and out of it. It was hard to take.
The adult 'Laura Oliver' character was just abrasive most of the time, when she wasn't being abrasive she was just unpleasant. The character Andy generally did the least bright thing most times. And they were both intolerable complaining about having to live where they did.... right on a river, walking distance from the ocean, in a nice house, in a nice neighborhood.
Gil Birmingham's performance was quite good, as usual. Jacob Scipio was also quite good. But unfortunately, two well acted characters couldn't save the show.
Overall it would have been easy to skip and I only stuck through it to see exactly how the story ended and if things would finally make sense.
Hotel Impossible: Jersey Shore Uproar (2016)
They should just leave
I wish they would just go to another motel on some of these episodes. There have to be more owners that care and just don't know what they are doing. Helping these ones that have no interest in taking care of their employees or their guests does a disservice to everyone.
They pretty up enough of the place that the owners can post nice pictures online. Then you combine that with a few fake positive reviews and Anthony is helping trick unsuspecting travelers into staying at really bad places.
Help the employees find new jobs but stop giving stuff to people that are just evil. There is no making the places better when the owner sees nothing wrong in mistreating their employees and giving their customers a terrible experience.
My Spy The Eternal City (2024)
Just watch the first one again
The first movie ends with the characters having respect for each other and yet this one starts with Sophie being the overdone teen. Why do so many sequels have to reset any character development that happened in the prior movie? And why are so many characters in movies now one dimensional?
The first movie had charm, humor and likable characters. This one seems to be missing those. A lot of the performances feel like they are cold reading the lines rather than shooting the actual movie.
I'm curious how many of the positive reviews are from people that spent much of the movie looking at their phone. It may not be a bad 'background' movie.