mcantelon Reviews

American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders (2024)

A "limited hangout", but well worth a watch

[8/10 · 4 March 2024]

Ignore the suspicously odd number of super low reviews. This documentary is flawed, but well worth a watch. Addressing the flaws first: it's a bit plodding at times and there are parts that could have been clearer. It also seems to throw the main information under the bus to some degree (perhaps pulling back to lessen the possiblity of blowback for making it). Is it biased? Probably (it's on Netflix, after all). Does it tell the whole story? Nope.

It is, however, very much still worth a watch. It offers some fresh examples of how the world actually works: evidence that's buried by the police, murderous criminals who do little/no time (because they also work for powerful people), intelligence operatives posing as humanitarians, "whistleblowers" who dole out disinformation and try to determine what you actually know, intersection of intelligence organizations and organized crime, etc.

If you aren't already somewhat familiar with the world of covert operations like the CIA's role in the crack cocaine epidemic you might assume all of what's in the documentary is made up, but the world is a strange place.

Warrior (2019–2023)

Tedious trash

[4/10 · 18 July 2023]

It's pretty clear these days that "support" for a lot of shows is astroturfed. This is one of them. It's trying to ape the.titillation, stylishness, and intrigue of.well-crafted gritty hits like Game of Thrones but every aspect of it is mediocre.

Given the setting and premise it could have, had those who made it been inspired, been interesting and engaging but it's utterly disposable viewing. It's built on network TV-tier writing and has nothing else about it that makes up for that.

If you're looking for something that's well-written, truly stylish, or otherwise worth watching then I'm afraid your best bet if to sit this one out.

Am I Being Unreasonable? (2022– )

Narcissism and delusion portrayed through a veneer of comedy

[8/10 · 30 April 2023]

At first glance the show does seem, as one reviewer put it, "pointless". It does indeed incorporate a "bunch of lies and rubbish" and assumptions you've been led to make earlier in the series end up being challenged later on. You then shake your head and reevaluate, substituting these with new ones, but less assuredly.

There is, however, a point to it all. Narcissism, denial, delusion, and sociopathy are staples of modern culture and they are what this show is about. What looks, initially, to be yet another TV show humanizing and normalizing dysfunction ends up incrementally revealing itself to be something different.

If you're looking for a romp with no dark undertones, take a pass on this. Otherwise, it's worth a watch.

The folks playing the various characters do a good job, especially the protagonist's son. While season 1 is self-contained and concludes soundly it could be interesting to see where a subsequent season could take the story.

Euphoria: A Thousand Little Trees of Blood (2022) Season 2, Episode 6

The "last straw" episode

[4/10 · 11 February 2023]

Second 2 in general seems rudderless and poorly written, but the cheesy melodrama and bad writing in this episode seems to be the soap opera-y apex, so far, of the season's incompetence

How many of the characters are acting is inconsistent with how they acted in the past. Entire scenes don't seem to have any point.

Season 2 seems haphazard, with "things happening" but these things not necessarily contributing to a worthwhile plot. This episode seems like a microcosm of this: a bunch of "things happening" and scenes padded out with pointless dialogue.

I think I'm done. Everything seems throw together and given the inconsistency of the characters I no longer care about an of them.

The English (2022)

Tedious and pretentious caricature

[3/10 · 30 December 2022]

This show seems to follow the trend of churning out comic book fodder, except this isn't supposed to be comic book fodder but rather something artsy and profound. Spoiler: it's neither.

Right from the first episode things make little sense. A rich English women decides to avenge her son's death, but decides to go unarmed and alone? Why? She takes a stagecoach, presumably from an eastern port city, westwards and, despite looking rich and carrying a large amount of cash, manages not to get robbed until weeks into her trip. She is then rescued by a stereotypically laconic native who executes one of her captives, who'd personally offended him earlier via a verbal insult, using an overly elaborate setup utilizing a horse. There are so many silly and improbable details in this show. The stagecoach she arrives in, for example, has a James Bond-ish setup in which hidden shotguns are mounted around the stagecoach so it can shoot bandits. It's all so tiresome.

The Kids in the Hall (2022– )

I hope they got well paid for desecrating their legacy

[2/10 · 17 May 2022]

Check how the early reviews of this series universally pan it and then a bunch of "totally organic" reviews come in to laud it. Amazing.

Anyways. Back to the review. Watching this made me feel bad for everyone involved. As with a lot of current mediocre comedy the production values are fine but the writing shows zero effort. It's unsurprising that Lorne Michaels is involved because this series has the same phoning-it-in feel as modern day Saturday Night Live.

Ah well. Another lame reboot endured.

The Gilded Age (2022– )

Lifeless and uncompelling

[6/10 · 22 March 2022]

Unremarkable actors, shallow and unsympathetic characters, cloying music and a plodding plot... what's not to love? This feels like a half-assed attempt to make an American Downton Abbey. The costumes and sets are good but the core ingredients of something worth watching aren't there.

Curb Your Enthusiasm: The Five-Foot Fence (2021) Season 11, Episode 1

Larry phoning it in

[6/10 · 12 December 2021]

As a season premiere this doesn't bode well for the rest of the season. The episode feels stale, like a rehash of older episodes but missing a spark. Everything feels slightly off and uninspired. Larry David is one of the funniest guys on television but if this season's as lackluster as this episode then I'm going to sit it out.

Nobody (I) (2021)

The purpose of this type of movie is to hypnotize you

[6/10 · 5 December 2021]

As the establishment dismantles your future, watch this movie where an individual functions like a superhero and manages to avoid all bullets and prevail against far greater numbers!

This movie is okay - fun escapism - but is cartoonishly unrealistic and, like most movies, portrays some sort of enemy other than the enemies that we actually face in the real world: enemies that kill us in much more sophisticated ways than with simple bullets. As part of their strategy these enemies hypnotize us with vapid culture while they pick our pockets. And you continue to fall for their game, generation after generation, with each generation facing bleaker prospects than the last.

Casting "everyman" Bob Odenkirk is perfect for propaganda like this.

Lupin (2021– )

Cheesefest

[4/10 · 5 July 2021]

The fact this is critically acclaimed is hilarious and a sign of the times. It's like a comic book: the protagonist manages to effortlessly pull off all manner of unlikely feats. If you're looking for a cheesy show with hamhanded woke undertones then perhaps this is for you. If you're looking for something that's well written then look elsewhere.

Hacks (2021– )

Could have been great but marred by goofy writing

[6/10 · 3 July 2021]

The show is alright - it's very well cast and has good production values - but it could have been solid if the writing was tighter. From the start the younger character's portrayed a little too cartoonishly and as the show goes on it becom0es increasingly obvious that the writers feel the need to draw upon tropes that have been done to death in recent years to not-so-subtly preach. The season finale, in particular, is unrealistic and cheesy. Show some restraint, writers, and credit the audience with having a brain!

Snowfall (2017–2023)

Starts strong then gets really dumb

[5/10 · 20 February 2021]

The first season of Snowfall is tight: gritty, realistic seeming, and compelling. Things get sloppier in the second season then get downright idiotic in the third season (the season finale being completely absurd). This series is loosely based on "Freeway" Rick Ross (not the rapper) but, as Ross has claimed, is largely fiction (although the premise - the CIA bringing cocaine into the US and fuelling the crack epidemic - is true). Skip this disappointing series and watch "Freeway: Crack in the System".

The Queen's Gambit (2020)

Starts off okay then gets kind of silly as it goes on

[6/10 · 1 December 2020]

This show takes an idea for a series that could have been great but gets increasingly mired in silliness, for entertainment sake, as time goes on. A lot about the series seems solid, subject matter-wise, but there's also a lot of things tacked on that seem goofy/implausible/dumb. I'd have enjoyed the show if it was a bit more soberly executed.

Giri/Haji (2019)

Starts strong and immediately turns to hot garbage

[4/10 · 30 July 2020]

I saw all the glowing reviews of this series and thought "cool... I'll give this a watch". The first episode was great: well-shot, stylish, and engaging. After that, however, it pretty much immediately fell apart.The characters started doing things that they have no obvious motivation for. Implausible things started happening regularly (people running into each other at just the right time, etc.). For example the Japanese cop protagonist, who becomes friends (for no obvious reason) with an unstable gay drug addict prostitute, has no issue letting his underage daughter hang out with said prostitute. When his underage daughter, while hanging out with the prostitute, ends up becoming romantically involved with the prostitute's drug dealer the cop 1) doesn't have a problem with the relationship and 2) allows his underage daughter to spend the night with this adult that he's never met. Additionally this show seems to portray this relationship of an underage girl with an adult drug dealer as normal, even positive. Would a show portray a relationship between an underage girl and an adult drug dealer positively if the relationship was heterosexual? Seems unlikely. Beyond the implausibility in the writing there's also a lot of cheesiness and tropes. Given the promise of the first episode it's a shame how bad the rest turned out.

Little Fires Everywhere (2020)

Played Out Tropes Everywhere

[6/10 · 7 May 2020]

Only watched the first episode, but don't feel compelled to continue. Much cringe. Kerry Washington's perma-sneer has been repeatedly mentioned in reviews but the whole thing's done with little attention to detail. None of the characters are portrayed vividly enough to evoke any sympathy. Most are stock characters in stereotypical situations. The project smells like well-to-do show biz types intending to say something about the class divide yet phoning it in.

Joker (I) (2019)

Don't believe the hype

[7/10 · 29 December 2019]

Given Todd Phillips' body of work - his first project being a documentary about the Joker-esque G.G. Allin - I expected more. It was alright, but ultimately forgettable... basically: "Taxi Driver" with a dash of "Natural Born Killers". The association with the Batman franchise was kind of fun, given the extremity of the content, but that was the only truly memorable part of it. The movie was longer than it needed to be, with a number of scenes with Phoenix hamming it up by himself, and much about it was conventional, slightly cheesy Hollywood fare. Given the interesting premise it feels like more could have been done with it. Maybe the project was rushed, maybe the studio interfered too much... who knows.

The Haunting of Hill House (2018)

Slow pace, uninteresting characters... a snoozefest

[5/10 · 22 November 2018]

That this series has such a decent rating is puzzling... there's little to redeem it.

The characters are shallow and inspire ambivalence. They have many mini-monologues that are probably intended to be profound, but are mostly just verbose. The visuals are alright, but nothing to write home about. The plot plods along, slowly developing and only getting moderately engaging near the end of the season and the conclusion of the season is not that interesting or exciting. The series is by Paramount Television, which explains the Hollywood-esque air of mediocrity surrounding the project. Give this a pass.

Atypical (2017–2021)

Formulaic garbage

[1/10 · 30 August 2017]

After a few seconds of watching this I was already disgusted and that feeling never left during the entire episode. Pedestrian writing, tropes everywhere, idiotically unlikely scenarios, clichéd plot devices, and a repulsive, slightly cartoon feel. Acting-wise, the actors were generic and the characters they played were clichéd. The fact this series has such a high IMDb rating seems suspicious. Watching this show filled me with hate.

Garth Marenghi's Darkplace (2004)

Nails aesthetic, but not humour

[6/10 · 14 November 2015]

I wanted to like this series, as it really nails the aesthetic of low- budget 80s productions. The props are great, the acting and costuming is appropriately B movie, but that alone isn't enough to carry the series. If the same effort had been put into writing as was put into production, this could have been a classic series, but the writing's lacklustre. There are laughs to be had, but in some episodes they're few and far between. Everything feels tepid and safe. For a much tighter execution of the concept behind the series, Danger 5 series 2 is a much better way to spend one's viewing time. I'm surprised this has such a high rating.

The Avengers (2012)

A loathsome, sordid debacle

[1/10 · 15 November 2014]

This movie was very triggering. It made me recall the times in my life where I saw movies that were not good. The reason this was brought to mind was because this movie was not good, other than as a sort of cultural abyss into which to stare and wonder how things were before the kind of debased species that would make this sort of movie slithered into existence.

Despite the fact that this movie isn't very good, it has a lot of accomplished stars in its cast. Each of these unique stars brings to the film their own interpretation of a muted, listless performance. I felt Samuel Jackson's performance was especially so: his listlessness seemed mixed with deep despair, an existential disdain so consuming that even feeling disgust would be a comparative relief for him.

In the movie a lot of things flew around. There were threats of violence. There was all the drama you'd expect in a Mexican soap opera. There was even an animatronic Gwyneth Paltrow! Joss Whedon has ingested Hollywood's gold and laid a truly magical egg.

The Chaser (2008)

I don't understand the people that liked this movie

[6/10 · 3 November 2014]

Having seen some amazing Korean thrillers, I was expecting something sleek, stylish, and evocative. This movie was neither. The look of the movie was low-budget, the directing was pedestrian, and the only enjoyable aspect of the movie was the comedy.

The cast was decent, so the movie's mediocrity can't be blamed on the actors. The plot and pacing seemed the fundamental weakness. The story kind of lumbered along and the conduct of the protagonist, the villain, and the police seemed frequently hard to believe.

As a B-movie, it's alright, but if you're looking for something gripping there are many much better Asian crime dramas out there. The movie is currently rated 7.9 out of 10, which seemed absurdly high to me.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)

Plodding

[6/10 · 2 November 2014]

Although the apes are well rendered, they're not enough to save this plodding film. The film starts slowly, ambling along, until the one interesting twist. After the twist there's a bit of a build-up, but it's not that gripping and the rest of the film is fairly unremarkable.

Thematically, it's standard good-vs-evil fare, with leaders that are reasonable and wise and foils that are self-centred and hate- filled. The film's underlying message is trite and has been expressed better in other films.

Aside from the lacklustre plot and banal message, the character portrayal is also quite run-of-the-mill.

All in all, "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" is typical Hollywood fare: family-friendly mediocrity. Worth a miss.

Hugo (2011)

Retro-Hollywood mediocrity

[6/10 · 5 March 2012]

It's hard to believe this movie is as highly rated as it is. It is, through and through, lacklustre tripe. The fact it won more Oscars than The Artist shows what a complete joke the Oscars are.

The acting is unremarkable. The Hugo character mostly just stares and twitches his nostrils, while his gal pal mainly looks cute and smiles at everything. Baron Sasha Cohen is boring. Ben Kingsley is uninspiring. It's all Disney grade.

The characters are shallow. None of them are fleshed out enough to care about.

The plot is uninteresting. And slow. And full of clichés. And some of the plot transitions are so badly handled it's simultaneously comical and sad.

The visuals are big budget, yet devoid of character. Typical Hollywood conservative aesthetics. Lots of shiny, detailed blandness.

Nothing that stays with me, after watching it, other than a feeling of contempt towards Hollywood, Martin Scorsese, and anyone who thought this movie was actually good. The world would be a better place is this movie didn't exist.

The Hurt Locker (2008)

Flat

[20 November 2011]

Flat, muted, but with a large budget, this movie didn't really seem to say much and what it did say it said clumsily. The movie started out with tension, but then kind of dragged on, running through a number of scenarios that were likely supposed to be shocking or exciting, but unravelled tediously. There were scenes full of pointless dialogue, that seemed to be trying to communicate something but failing. Most of the acting was flat, with the exception of the protagonist which delivered a good performance despite having little to work with.

Given the resources it would have taken to make this movie, something interesting and resonant could have been made instead of the safe, lumbering piece it ended up being. The fact that this won "Best Directory" is a testament to the irrelevance of the Academy.