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Reviews
The Ark (2023)
Maybe pre-teens will enjoy this?
This is simply a dreadful show on all levels. The dialogue is predictable, the characters even more so -- even the special effects are anything but. It's as if the Sy Fy channel asked a local community college to send their most promising screenwriters and actors to make a low-budget show to keep the space drama crowd engaged at the lowest possible cost. EpicFail. And if the characters on this show -- these geniuses, who regularly use poor grammar and make poor word choices, are the future of humanity, they really ought to do the Universe a favor and just hit the self-destruct button.
Some sci-fi shows are great from the start, and some start off iffy but become good over time. None, in my experience, start off with such an unlikable crew and somehow become worth watching. There's no way this comes back for a second season, no matter how cheap it is to produce (and with these actors, it is doubtless very inexpensive).
I guess it was inevitable that with over 500 channel and streaming what little writing and acting talent there actually is out there would eventually be stretched so thing that poorly-written scripts like this with no-name young actors would eventually become a thing. But there is zero chance that this would have been green-lit even 10 years ago.
If you are a pre-teen and haven't seen much science fiction, you may very well enjoy this program and look up to this crew as role models. Just know that the show won't age well and you'll be amazed when you are in your 30s that you ever watched this.
As usual, the producers have sent people to this site to bombard it with 10 star ratings as if this tripe is somehow better than the original Star Wars trilogy, The Expanse or even Dark Matter. Thankfully there are enough honest reviewers here to warn the rest of you not to waste your time. I'd finish by saying "SyFy: You can do better," but I'm not sure they can anymore.
Leverage: Redemption: The Belly of the Beast Job (2023)
OMG! What have they done to this show?
35 minutes in and we've barely seen any of the main characters. What am I watching? You only do something like this if you are introducing new main characters and... OMG NO! Please tell me the two main guest-stars are not joining the team.
The previous episode was terrible. It seemed to be directed by a teenager. But this one. This is by far the worst episode of Leverage by a wide margin. And it barely even qualifies as an episode of Leverage given that the four characters who get the most screen time are all guest stars for this episode. This show won't see a third season if they keep this up. (The sound effects in the two seasons of Leverage Redemption are also really childish and a few steps below the original series. I am sure of this since I marathon-watched those for the first time last month. If it wasn't for Parker, I'd have bailed on this show.
Leverage (2008)
Missing likeable characters and some sense of decency.
I get this is a show about thieves. I loved the British show Hustle, and I also loved Dexter, so I have no issue with rooting for people who do bad things. But there are limits. So... Are we supposed to like these thieves? First off, all the money they make was actually at the expense of innocent shareholders whose shares lost 30% of their value. Second, the security guards that the token thug beats unconscious (to totally chill music) were not bad people and were just doing their fairly-lowly paid jobs and now have concussions and perhaps worse. And we are supposed to root for them????? What kind of a world are we living in when these are the heroes? And the only attempt to vendicate any of them is to play at our emotions by suggesting that the one character is haunted by his son's death. Ironically he gets mad because someone uses that tragedy get him to do the first job. But isn't that exactly what the show is doing to us?
At least Hustle had some ethics and likable characters.
Moonfall (2022)
Sci-fi without the sci
What a dreadful movie. Barely any of the actors are believable in their respective roles, but particularly the so-called astronauts who are played by clowns who couldn't possibly enter the astronaut program, which features some of the most accomplished members of society. It is like casting chain-smoking, obese seniors as NBA superstars in a sports flick. The typical arrogance of a US-based writer assuming that only the US could figure out that the moon's orbit has changed and that because of that the only way the rest of the world could find out would be if some low-IQ American certified nut leaks it is appalling. And what is this crap about Colorado? As if being in Cheyenne Mountain will make any difference is survivability! Add to that some stereotypical eyeglass-waring science types suggesting that the moon getting that much closer to the Earth couldn't cause seismic tremors and you have anyone with even a 5th grade education facepalming every few minutes. If you are going to waste $100M on special effects and actors, you can afford $25,000 to get someone with a background in science to check your script. I get that one needs to suspend disbelief when watching a movie, but one shouldn't have to check one's brain in at the popcorn stand. Stop treating the audience as blithering idiots, Roland Emmerich.
Bullet Train (2022)
Blockbuster? More like lackluster.
There are plenty of ludicrously attractive people in this movie, but not a single likable character. Nor do any of them get a single clever or insightful line of dialog. I guess that's the new normal in Hollywood, but it makes for a tedious movie from a director who obviously admires Tarantino. That sounds a lot better than it ends up being. I feel sorry for the teenagers who must be the target audience of this film because they have rated this highly here. On the other hand it does mean they are in for a treat when they grow up and start watching the far better action/comedy films that predate this utter garbage.