dkmovieman Reviews

Guy's Grocery Games (2013– )

Chopped Possible: Like it for lightness and fun, hate it for Guy's sons

[5/10 · 21 January 2022]

I really like this show as compared to Chopped, it's a light hearted show with Chefs nonetheless but with almost everyone able to produce something almost 99% times without missing an ingredient.

It's like Chopped Possible if you could say because people are able to cook things which can cook in 20 minutes but... it's staged. Like you have 20 minutes and have to shop for ingredients and then have to cook them in 15 minutes and you have chicken, shrimp and lobster and yet no one is really in a hurry at anytime to cook these 3 in 15 minutes. I know they are chefs but man if they don't hurry all of these won't cook by themselves in 15 minutes.

Yet at the end of the round, and I have seen countless episodes most of them have overcooked food and not undercooked chicken or anything. It's a marvel

That said I don't like this show for cooking ability or realilty, I like it for showing some recipes and techniques that are showcased well.

Also, Guy's sons should get a job unless they are producers of the show.

Decoupled (2021– )

Curb your Wedding

[7/10 · 28 December 2021]

Binged watched decoupled and the first thing Madhavan reminded me was of Larry David in Curb your Enthusiasm, his mannerisms and his lack of social skills are very similar to Larry so I wondered if this was India's version of curb, but it wasn't. It has some jokes inspired from old movies like Money hai to Honey hai as well involving Madhavan and Chetan Bhagat.

Overall his social awkwardness end up being a major part of every episode and Surveen Chawla as his wife Shruti agonizes over it but also gives back appropriately (Champion of Maids)

Overall the show is built around sarcasm just like Curb with an Indian twist, however, there are some places where they try too hard and fall flat. Overall, it's a good one-time watch and there are some really funny scenes if you enjoy this kind of humor, however, some of the scenes might also come off as highly offending so watch it with an open mind that it's just a TV show and not a lecture on social skills.

The Clovehitch Killer (2018)

Okay movie which leaves you unsatisfied

[3/10 · 4 June 2021]

I watched this movie with no expectations at all but came out disappointed. This movie ended up making so many people look incompetent including the story writer and director that I really overlooked the son's eulogy which was really bad.

1. The cops who are clueless about so many killings in the same town, a serial killer who abducts women in daylight and brings them to his house and fulfills his BDSM fetishes and kills them in but no one has any clue.

2. A writer who shows no serial killing at all, but assumes that holding a vigil at the start of the movie and showing pictures, 10-12 driver licenses would make the person a serial killer and in the later parts making BDSM a motive for everything.

3. A killer who wants to look at photos of girls in some sort of BDSM and is frustrated once he burns all the photos because his son caught him and needs new pictures of women he tortures in BDSM poses, but cannot go online and needs a picture only taken with his camera. And the new woman he kidnaps is in daylight by climbing into a house.

4. A killer who can easily and quickly abduct women locally without detection, then bring them to their house and kill them and get rid of their bodies, and multiple of them even if 10 years ago.

5. A story which says that the killer stopped 10 years ago, which was when he was married with a young kid and with no reference to where he committed the crimes and assuming he committed them at home all the time and no one raising any suspicions.

Overall, it was more frustrating than reading this comment and I really hated the way the writers thought was the best way for closure to those women he apparently killed.

It's as if, the writer and director basically wanted to lit a pyre of women who were tortured and killed and light a fire.

Evil Genius: The True Story of America's Most Diabolical Bank Heist (2018)

Great Documentary but came out with Doubts about the Director's Intention

[9/10 · 17 April 2021]

I hadn't heard about the Pizza Bomber before watching this documentary, so everything was a clean slate. This documentary, definitely was intriguing and built-up several crazy characters who you wouldn't think would be part of this bizarre incident. Each episode is weirder than the last and builds up a intriguing story of what happened before, during and after the bank robbery.

The documentary highlights the lapses that happened between the state and federal investigations, how, they missed out on so many things, things the director kept chasing on his own which probably set things in motion with the investigations and more.

The 4 short episodes does develop some of the conspirators and tries to answer the eternal question as to why, but probably falls short in the end and ends with the directors intention being put into question at-least for me.

The director comes through as someone with a motivation to make this documentary that is not clear enough, albeit it's possibly to clear things out about Wells. In the end, there is this reveal, but it seems too cliched and too forced towards the narrative the director was building for us.

Even with that bias, I liked the series and while it's not a masterpiece in itself, it's a documentary that is worth watching whether you already knew about the details of the case or not.

WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn (2021)

More about the Cult Leader & Not the downfall

[5/10 · 14 April 2021]

I followed the WeWork story for a few years and was a skeptic of the company even before they filed their S1. I was excited when I saw that they were making a documentary about this and watched it recently but came out disappointed overall.

The documentary is more like them pulling out notes from several different articles written about WeWork with added footage they obtained and interviews with about 4-5 employees and several journalists and experts.

There is nothing in this documentary that was not public knowledge except for few tidbits from the employee interviews.

Overall the makers spent about 95% of the time talking about Adam Neumann and his cult like personality and how he misled the people he worked with. While this might have led to their eventual downfall, the downfall itself was the least interesting part about this documentary where they spent about 4-5 minutes on what happened.

Additionally, Adam's wife Rebekah Neumann was given some mentions but they failed to bring in how much she was responsible for the toxic environment that WeWork was. I have read several articles which had interviews with former and existing employees who talked about how Rebekah was there and probably one of the big reasons for the eventual downfall, however, you won't find much details in this documentary.

Overall, this is not a bad documentary and shows what WeWork was and how they enticed (or maybe fooled) young people into giving up things (including taking lesser salaries) to work at WeWork with the hopes that they were building a better world and how they were fooled. However, if you are watching this to know more about the failures and insider views you are better off reading articles around this.

Hello Charlie (2021)

Logicless Unfunny Monkey Ride

[2/10 · 13 April 2021]

There are movies where there's no logic and yet they are funny because of the characters. However, this movie is not one of them. You are basically a monkey taken on a ride in this movie and it's not a good ride.

The cast is also below average and even though we have Rajpal Yadav, his comedy is even worse in this movie.

Overall, avoid this ride.

Hostages (2019– )

Season 1 is Okay, Season 2 Should be Avoided

[3/10 · 11 April 2021]

The first season of Hostages is decent enough to watch with an engaging plot and characters which are defined decently, although not well enough.

There are moments in the show where you ask yourselves questions as to what is going on here? For example, the container scene, where they the kidnapper has mapped out everything about the doctor's family but there is no backstory around why or what they did it for. The show does explain here and there as to what is going on but it's so subtle that you'll most likely miss it and have no clue that you as a viewer had to understand something important about the plot.

In the same scene, we have this established cop, who basically just pours kerosene in the container and burns it and then in the scenes after that they have recovered some evidence which has the doctor's photograph but no one other than the CM's security chief pieced it together.

There are several such plot holes all over the place, like they have kidnapped people but everyone still has access to the internet and use it for personal browsing but no one uses it to inform someone of their kidnapping, yet they are plot points where they are planning their daring escape by using the girl's boyfriend.

There are so many head-scratching plots in the first season, but it's still decent.

** Season 2 Review **

You should completely avoid season 2 if you can. There are so many plot holes in this one that them completely copying Money Heist setup is not the worst thing about this.

However, with the mention of Money Heist, they do take this toooo far. I mean, they just build a huge tent which is about 3000-4000 sq ft in a forest next to a dilapidated building where the supposed kidnappers are, all with carpet and high tech devices in like 10 minutes after two cops hear some shots and one of them is kidnapped and that is not the most unbelievable thing about this season.

I would say that there are more plot holes in this season than pot holes in Mumbai. At the end of it, you will have more unanswered questions than answers. It's so baffling that you could watch any episode in any order probably and still not be any the wiser.

Season 2 is really not worth the time, I feel really robbed about the time I spent watching it and at the end of it I want to say something that my wife says when we watch a bad series which does not have a concrete ending, saala chu kat liya.

Gunda (1998)

Mithun's Masterpiece

[10/10 · 8 March 2021]

What can I say, this movie is a cult-classic with rhyming dialogues galore. The first 8-10 minutes have the best dialogues in the entire movie.

The movie does not have a story, but who needs a story when you have one-liners that are going to make you laugh every 30 seconds or so. In addition to that, you'll love the fact that most of the scenes are repeated in the same places which adds continuity to the movie scenes.

There is a famous saying. There are two types of people in this world. One's who have seen Gunda and One's who haven't.

I Care a Lot (2020)

Bad Bad Plot

[1/10 · 6 March 2021]

The movie has a thin plot which could not be stretched but they decided to add garbage in there to stretch it out and it's today unbelievable. Was so angry at the end that I couldn't believe I sat through the whole movie just to see someone die.