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Reviews
Efterforskningen (2020)
Should Be Named Pensively Staring Off Into the Distance
This 6-part series could easily have been told in 2-parts without a single loss of anything important.
First, you ditch the entire "my daughter doesn't understand why my job is more important than her life" subplot - that saves you one episode.
Second, you cut back on the innumerable "let's watch the ships go out of the harbor: shots - that saves you two episodes.
Third, you eliminate 97% of the shots of someone walking down that boring, bland hallway and 99% of the shots of the chief detective driving in and out of the parking garage and all of the shots of the inspector sitting in his car outside forensics and all the shots of the inspector staring out his office window and the repeated shots of the whiteboard that says the same things over and over and over and then you trim the visits to parents back to just a couple of times. A tight edit of these repeating images would save you another episode.
Now, you're down to a 2-episode arc that tells the core portions of the investigation, discusses the Danish legal system that lets a defendant endlessly change his story without any penalty in terms of guilt, and you end with the uplifting funds established to promote journalism.
Bringing this series in at 2 - or the most 3 - episodes would have much better result in getting people to watch this series and understand the story. As it is - if people actually get to the 4th episode, I'd put money that most are fast forwarding through all the endless shots of leaving the harbor, staring out the window, sitting in the car, arguing with the daughter, walking the dogs, etc.
Sh'at Neila (2020)
Melodramatic Fantasy Not History
It's one thing to decide to tell an historic story by focusing on the lives of individual characters in that story - but when you leave out the main events of the historic story (the constant tank battles) and instead create insufferably self-centered, childish, and ANNOYING characters (the intel specialist) or artsy parents who put hundreds of others in harm's way to make themselves feel better for their decades of parental neglect and give those characters over half of the screen time - you destroy your film and any pretense that people should watch your film because of its importance