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Reviews
Dune: Part Two (2024)
Very enjoyable but strange pacing and editing at times
This movie looks and sounds amazing. The cast are all great in their roles, the special effects are the best I've seen this year and easily stand up to the best of Villeneuve's movies. Cinematography also as goos as I've seen. The costumes and makeup also add great deal to the amazing universe they've created. I really enjoyed it over all, but I have to say that I found the pacing very unusual.
The first 2 hours seemed to pass along at a normal pace for this kind of movie - lots of drama and character development with interspersed action. Around when I felt that it was starting to look like the movie was starting to wrap up and was neatly building up to a cliffhanger for the next instalment, it explodes into a colossal battle scene between all of the main characters, and the movie carried on for another 30-40 mins of action and major plot turns. You could say it's a good complaint but I just felt like they were cramming in all this really important action when they really could have chopped out so much of the first 2 hours instead and had a much better, consistent action movie throughout.
Also, regarding the editing - a couple of times I wasn't sure how a scene with multiple people in it instantly jumped to a scene with just 2 people in it. For example, when Paul awakens from the coma, and after he stands up after getting slapped, he looks back at his mother and it jumps from a full room to just him and his mother. This happened in at least 2 scenes with the main character Paul, and was a little confusing - almost like they were chopping out random transitional sections to shorten the movie run time.
All in all, its a fantastic sequel and an enjoyable watch, but by no means a perfect movie.
Fargo: Bisquik (2024)
Anti-climactic climax to a poor season
Very disappointed with the conclusion of this season. There was some potential with the cast and the strong female character in the lead, but it really didn't have any sort of interesting or satisfying ending.
The last episode left us looking forward to the face off between the law and the bad guys, but there was around a minute of a battle that involved absolutely terrible use of blackening the whole screen every few seconds between a few few second of shots of some random person shooting.
And the mysterious crazy Scotsman - what the hell was that conclusion. I think this show has been deteriorating since the second season, but this is confirmation that it's time to pack in it.
The Resident: 6 Volts (2022)
Writing seems to be completely detached from reality
I enjoy the show in general. Some of the scenarios that arise over the seasons are clearly convenient and to be taken with a pinch of salt but the writing in this episode: Pravash asks a patient, who just fell from the 6th floor balcony, to "hang tight"! Such a careless moment in the script. It's either an in-joke to the writers or a complete slip when realising the irony of the commentml. Either way, a real doctor would likely be called up on that and cautioned for such insensitivity. This is the most recent episode that I've watched and I can clearly see the decrease in the standard of writing. I hope it revitalises itself as I like the show in general.
House of the Dragon: The Lord of the Tides (2022)
Why so slow?
How is this getting so highly rated? This episode was an average, slow paced, costume drama, with no real action, and is all centred around the few same characters. Game of thrones had so many parallel plots on the go, action in nearly every episode, mysterious magical stories, and so many twists and turns. In this episode, nothing of note happened, and while the acting is good, so much more could have been included.
In this series, the jumping years ahead from episode to episode doesn't give you any time to associate with the main characters, and the slow pacing and lack of events doesn't provide the opportunities required to adapt. It's a really disappointing show so far and needs to stop trying to drag it out - the opposite of what Game of thrones did.
Cobra Kai (2018)
Entertaining but overrated driven by nostalgia
This is an entertaining show that follows up on the old classic Karate Kid franchise. They seem to have recruited most of the main cast from the originals and have added a lot more depth to the characters, good and bad, and have some funny, subtle jokes speckled throughout. But it's basically still a formulaic 80s style, teenager-centric, cheesy show. It's worth a watch especially if you watched the originals, but people are rating this ridiculously high (like other 80s follow-ups e.g. Top Gun Maverick) purely driven by nostalgia and sentiment. C'mon people - as they stay in the show, "You can't live in the past!".