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balazsjason
Reviews
Jessica Jones (2015)
Netflix's unrelenting ability to ruin shows in their post-debut seasons holds true for Jessica Jones
I was a huge fan of this show for S1. I stood by it even when people were iffy/against the show.
Even though I was worried about Netflix's ability to ruin shows, I was still excited to jump into S2 to follow the story.
I got to episode 3 and saw enough to draw a conclusion, and what do you know? They've ruined it. Absolutely any character outside the core group of stars has been given garbage dialogue. It's at the point where I cannot tell if the acting is horrendous, or if it's the writing.
On top of that, and as another user said, the constant love affair with alcohol is getting into billboard territory-it's an advertisement. For as much as Netflix loves throwing leftist-extremist political innuendos into its shows, its producers never cease to turn a blind eye when the alcohol industry gives them a bump in revenue.
Hint: They don't deserve to turn Netflix into a political platform if they, themselves, are the personification of garbage.
I've lowered my rating of Jessica Jones from a hype-based 10 star rating to a more reality-based 4 star rating.
I'd be happy to give them:
1. ..another 2 if the writers were more focused.
2. ..another 2 if the producers weren't pushing a political agenda
3. ..another 2 if Netflix wasn't so blatant with its advertising.
The Founder (2016)
Interesting case study in protecting one's assets
This is an inspiring tidbit of insight into the beginnings of McDonald's and the making of millionaires. I understand that the "founder" is portrayed poorly, but he gave ultimate capability to a growing brand, its franchises, and made its original founders each millionaires even though they took active measures to attempt to restrict the company's growth. They don't deserve any sympathy for being an impediment, especially so after becoming wealthy men.
I'm happy for them, but this piece seems to set a tone where I'm supposed to feel bad for them. They took rewards even after taking said steps to impede the construction of what would yield said reward.
It gives us a taste of business which I believe may be able to give today's youth or those who aren't savvy in business (yet) an idea of what a semi-hostile takeover can look like.
Bright (2017)
Netflix's extreme leftist-preaching from their angle of hypocrisy, once again...
The whole idea is neat, a group is discriminated against and Will Smith captains the charge against it, the said discrimination.
This would be neat, maybe valuable too, if Will Smith didn't spend his off-time advocating hitlerian action against those he disagrees with. He wishes America could be, "Cleansed" of Trump voters (60+ million people).
If he didn't advocate death and/or outright removal of those he disagrees with, maybe we could give him some room in this.
I'll give it two stars for the overarching message, but taking away eight because the co-star has no place in that position. It's productions like this that further prove that Hollywood-elites are the only racists left in the world and they continue to pretend it's us.
Wormwood (2017)
"Cinema of the unsettling"
If you happened to enjoy the tidbit of the "Cinema of the unsettling", shown by The Office's Gabe Lewis, then you'll like this.
It's not for me. Steer clear.
Vägen tillbaka (2017)
Surprise: Criminals enjoy free luxury condos
The Warden of the prison from Norway has an interesting system. His prison serves excellent meals and has a high staff to inmate ratio.
The prison in America had recently installed update security equipment which enhanced the feeling of safety among inmates.
The Norwegian prison has a luxury, high class restaurant inside. Literally, it's not a joke. For committing a crime, the inmate & proprietor/chef was rewarded by being allowed to live and start a business for free - something law abiding citizens have quite a hard time doing. The American prison had small but well-kept cells and a safe work environment for inmates to learn skills to reenter the job market.
In short; the Norwegians give their inmates a luxury experience-incentive for committing a crime. The warden was very smug and, surprisingly, seems to be genuinely surprised that America won't reward rapists, drug dealers, and murderers with luxurious amenities.
I'll give the warden from Norway some credit, though, he made a good point about relations between officers and inmates; they could use some restructuring. It's a good point, but it's the only one he made.
There's a middle ground here, and it's reachable. I'm disappointed, though, that this documentary portrays the Norwegian option as the only one. I'm giving it a rating of four starts for its decent production value.
The Walking Dead: Some Guy (2017)
All talk, no action
I want to take a second to make a note of something before I get into my take of this episode:
Remember when each episode had its own goal? It was in the earlier seasons, but mostly S1. One episode they rescued Merle, one episode they visited the CDC, another one reunited Rick and Lorry.. It had a pace, and each episode was a story. These days, not so much. It has taken 1.5-ish seasons to even begin to talk about knocking out Negan and we're still no closer to taking him down (another note: That is solely attributed to lazy writing, nothing else). Negan could've been killed quite a few times by now...
Okay, let's get into the episode:
If I have to sit through another hyper-annoying, 1600's, medieval dialect, get-you-going speech from the tiger-handler (what's his name again?), I'm going to go to Amazon and knock out some orders for some bulk gummy bears. Why? Because, you know.. just go read the reviews. That experience would be better than another Scott Gimple-rendition of Inception, in the key of The Walking Dead.
After that speech (or before that..), it cuts to tiger-handler crawling out of underneath his dead body guards (who, for whatever reason, prioritized a guy stuck in the 1600s rather than themselves). There's a rather neat scene where we get a stream of JPegs, then instantly cut back to tiger-handler (I know he has a name, just can't think of it) screaming. It was kinda neat, but came across as a budget shortage more-so than content-loaded cinematography. ***T-H (it's faster than typing tiger-handler and it's what I'll be going with.. but maybe writing this explanation has eaten up all my supposed time savings...) then shoots his way out of a mob of walkers with some suspenseful music and some overused near-miss scenes. ***
...want to hear a fun fact? I literally typed the bit in asterisks before it even happened. I promise you that. I will never promise you something else, it's just that predictable.
About halfway through, Carol is up against some bad guys. The magically bullet proof sheet metal of a car's body saves her life, but only after the bad guys' aim is restored. They (for whatever reason...) couldn't aim at her for the 10 or-so seconds she was running, right to left, about 20 feet away from them. They both had fully-automatic firearms and chose to shoot at the ground, mostly, and a little into the sky. Carol literally could've gone through entirety of the learning-curve of one of those hoverboard things to traverse that distance and she would have been totally A-OK. Maybe even better, actually, it it weren't for everyone having unlimited ammo.
Back to T-H... T-H literally slices the enemy's stomach with a knife and the guy doesn't retaliate, he just takes out a stick, puts it in T-H's face, cranks out some more crappy dialogue, and then someone (a T-H minion) comes along and kills T-H's captor with a sword (again, I typed up to the, "then someone comes along:" without it even happening. Sharknado 12 is less predictable than this).
Over again to Carol, she gets held up by those 3 (or more) guys with machine guns and she manages to escape. Yay, I guess. I'd probably care more if Gimple wasn't trying to force as many characters into the storyline as however many are allowed since Twitter's latest update..
With Carol and T-H after the commercial break... I thought T-H died, but maybe not. I genuinely can't tell if this is a flashback or not. I'll get back to you.
OK so it WAS a flashback. More weird dialogue, a conversation nobody would ever have. Seriously, how hard is it to get a normal conversation in this show? Everything is a get-you going speech, overly goofy comic relief, or some inspirational tidbit of dialogue between two characters. I genuinely can't remember a normal conversation in this show.
The episode cuts away from Carol and T-H, who obviously weren't cutting it. Now it's Rick and Darrel in a WW2 dogfight! Nope, it's actually him and Darrell following a Savior Humvee. Rick is in a Jeep, Darrell is on his motorcycle, and they're within 50 feet of the back of the Saviors' Humvee. Guess what, though! The Saviors have planned for this exact scene! The back of the Humvee tips down, lo-and-behold, there's a guy manning a heavy machine gun. Think: the type of thing you see soldiers in Afghanistan firing out of the side of a helicopter. The guy misses 100% of the shots. I was actually laughing during this scene (a rare event outside of select comedies). Rick and Darrell were literally within enough space that, had it not been for roaring engines, the group could've had a dainty conversation about the weather. This was the most poorly written scene I've scene in TWD, bar-none. It was the on-screen equivalent to the experience shortly after binge-eating a bulk-amount of gummy bears (go to Amazon, type in: "bulk gummy bears" and read the reviews. Hilarious!).
The episode ends with T-H, Carol, and T-H's minion walking into a horde of swamp- dwelling walkers and self-induced coups. T-H steps down from his throne and assumes the role of, "I'm just some guy". Note that shortly before this (in the flashback), he was talking to Carol. He told her that he'd accept leadership if it was given to him, but I guess that doesn't matter in nothing-matters-because-Gimple-can't-write-for-his-life Land. Also, the tiger died.
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P.S. In case you're one of the two or three people who have been following my reviews this season and were wondering why I didn't post a review of last week's episode, it's because I didn't write one. I missed the episode and only watched it last night. By the time an episode is that old, on this site, people have lost interest.
The Walking Dead: The Damned (2017)
Stop & Stare
This episode is of the same quality as last week's big season opener. If you liked it, then that's (honestly) good for you. If not, then we're in the same boat. Read on.
During one of the raids, Morgan and his group invade an outpost. On the way in, Morgan looks to a nobody-character and tells him, "I don't die." Spoiler alert: He instantly gets shot while wearing a bullet-proof vest and walks out.
A little later they bust a door open and take their shots. Many hit their targets, bingo, tango-down, all that.. There's a scene in there though, where some members of the good guys, of our "team", rush in and take one shot, then they just stop and stare.
They literally have a group of enemies storm up to them, and they've stopped. They stare at them and await their plot-induced, poor writing-induced, lazy writing-induced deaths and we are supposed to sit here and take it in like idiots.
Another door gets busted down and we are greeted by a guy begging for his life. He wet himself, he's shaking, etc. There are no shackles, he is obviously not a prisoner. But hey, when you're forcing a plot down people's throats, nobody has time for weird things like, "sensical writing", or "respecting your viewers". This leads into a cheesy, "We gotcha, but we didn't actually gotcha!", moment where this guy steals Jesus' gun. Jesus then steals it back in under 30 seconds and they get rid of him, rendering the scene pointless.
Tara has another bout of goofy dialogue. It takes away from the entire suspenseful drama of the show. Other shows; like Breaking Bad, have had relief characters, but they were wired into the show and their relief was organic (..think: Walt Jr.'s innocence in contrast to a harsh scene between Walt Sr. and Gus). Tara just feels like yet another personification of the TWD writer-fatigue.
Understand yet? The show is force-feeding us with little tidbit problems, little oopsies, little shucks-darn-dang moments, which all instantly resolve themselves. The writers are doing this because of this: They think if they can have a Problem with an instant resolution, they can fool us into thinking the show's story is getting somewhere. They think we're stupid. They think that we'll forget Negan and his gang still frolic freely and we have yet to move closer to his inevitable death.
The writers need to go take a long vacation and rack their brains, and completely recalibrate their approach.
The Walking Dead: Mercy (2017)
Fabricated scenario after fabricated scenario
So this is a pretty predictable episode, nothing special (try to see through the hype, here). Kind of disappointing, honestly.
They opened the, "War Against Negan," with a series of interlocking armored vehicles. Pretty neat. Negan strolls out of his office which apparently overlooks the EZ-access-entry-for-revolutionaries. Then after some tacky, hyper-cliché dialogue and some mental projectile vomiting, Rick decides to take his shots. He misses... somehow. He has a fully-automatic rifle and misses his dozen or-so shots he takes. Surprise: Negan is faster than bullets, and shame on you for not knowing that (wink). It wasn't even the cliché, "Oh they missed!" - it was a blatant and reckless spin in the story's writing to sustain Negan and his role in this everlasting, looping story that is the bundle-o'-disappointments: The Walking Dead.
Later, the Pastor (what's his name?) is locked in a room with Negan. Scary! Here's the twist, Mr. Pastor is armed to the teeth with a fully-automatic rifle. Negan has his bat (spooky!). The tone of the scene leads one to believe Negan dominates Mr. Extremely-Armed Pastor, which is pathetic writing. The scene dims out and the episode ends with an overplayed get-you-going speech from Rick, tucked in nicely with some glittery eyes from Maggie and other followers.
Between some of those scenes, when Carol and her gang were raiding the outpost, how did they miss? A group of a dozen people with fully-automatic (that's the firearm-theme here, if you didn't catch on) rifles somehow miss a guy who slowly ducks behind a beat-up car. Watch the clip, there are literally bullets fired directly at the ground.
Get it yet? The whole episode was a fabrication, with sub-fabrications forced in here and there to sustain the rest of the season. They lead one to believe that they'll get the season going with some momentum (a foreign idea to TWD fans), only to throw in constant impossibilities to drag it all out (a familiar idea to TWD fans).
For those of you hanging on for the rest of the season, enjoy. I know reading this will be harsh for those caught up in the hype, and that it's difficult to see through the hype's fog.. I genuinely hope they restore some dignity from this one. It seems to me, though, that they're tumbling into the same loop they've been in since after the CDC episode (remember that?).
Orange Is the New Black: Riot FOMO (2017)
Not a fan.
The undercurrent of political narratives is emerging as the sole current in the sea of what was a decent prison drama/comedy. The consistent dehumanization by/of BLM members and other groups only serves to perpetuate a conflictive society and the only way to move past such conflict is to, you know, actually move past it. Constantly re-spinning these notions is a disservice to a peaceful, harmonized, and multicultural society.
Get back to character and story development, and keep it there. Don't turn this show into a weapon.