nirvana_state_of_mind

The title of my review is automatically going to be downvoted but it just represents exactly how I feel. This was a perfectly serviceable film that I was able to watch from start to finish and come out saying "yeah it was fine."

When it comes to any Paul Thomas Anderson film digging for a point and meaning to them is in my opinion a waste of time. You either connect with the characters and the surreal world that they live in, or you don't. Here I just didn't, I don't understand anything about what motivates the characters and only see surface level topics around immigration, racism and political revolution. For a PTA film the black humor is mostly absent, it is actually mostly played straight with a simple plot and nowhere near as much action as they are saying there is. I don't know who this was really made for because it seems too strange for wide audiences and too vanilla for PTA fans. Obviously some people say they love it and I'm not taking that away from you. But I fully expect the ratings on this film to normalize to an average film rating. If I'm wrong I'm glad audiences got something out of it.

No idea how this is getting outstanding reviews from fans. I had no expectations out of this series but I thought it would just focus on Dexter being tutored by Harry. Instead we are given entire recasts of Dexter, Harry, Deb, Angel and Masuka and it's impossible for me to watch this show and not see how these actors are trying to impersonate the prior actor's performance. Patrick Gibson and Christian Slater are at least doing their own thing with their characters but those playing Deb, Angel and Masuka are almost unintentionally comical.

At this point the Dexter series has provided more bad than good and if this ends up being decent I'm not surprised long time fans will say it's great. But for fans who only thought season 1 and 4 of the original show were great, this is just kind of same old.

The first season of From was a very engaging show with a great premise. The show was great when it was kept simple. For unknown reasons a group of people are stuck in a town that they can't leave and at night monsters come out that will violently kill them. The group can stay safe if they stay indoors with talismans that have power to keep the monsters at bay, but the risk the individuals of the group pose to each other is also a risk. This was a great hook executed perfectly in season 1.

However, Season 2 and onwards the show has turned into something completely nonsensical and boring. Most of the show now involves two characters being in a room together and talking about their feelings. And in a show that's basically psychological torture this would make sense, except that you need compelling characters and dialogue. This show has neither and there are many times where I tell characters to shut up because of how cringe their lines are. The background characters we know nothing about often say things that make way more sense than anything the leads have to say and that's a problem when you can no longer identify with the leads. Boyd in particular is the worst protagonist I may have watched in any tv series, he's incompetent and has no idea how to inspire people to keep hope alive. He is bumbling and does things that had no build up whatsoever and only occur because something had to happen in the show. The first season the building up to discovering what happened to his wife was the peak of the show and for his character, since then it's been all downhill.

There is no development in understanding the town they are in and the rules that govern it. Lots of different things are thrown at us and none of it expanded on in a way that provides greater clarity. This is annoying but I could handle this if we had characters we could relate to and compelling dialogue. Or it would be nice if something just happened in this show instead of basically nothing but endless conversations between just two characters in a room or isolated setting. What a waste.