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sebwilliams
Reviews
House of the Dragon (2022)
A Soaring Return to Westeros
This is a show for both new viewers and those who watched GoT. The politics are back. The drama is back. The characters are grounded and layered. This show comes in with GRRM's oversight clearly felt in the writing. The acting, direction and music are also fantastic. It will be a crime if Paddy Considine does not get an Emmy nomination for his role as King Viserys. Like the first seasons of GoT it's obvious that time, thought and effort has been put into crafting a good story. You will be spending a lot of time intimately with a cast of complex characters; the first season is obviously mostly here to set up the characters, but it manages this without being boring or stale, because the characters are interesting and the story is gripping. This first season stands on its own and is nothing short of an achievement for the franchise, especially in the aftermath of the final seasons of GoT. And I can't wait to see where it goes from here.
The Vow (2020)
Thorough but unfocused
While the series has plenty of recorded phonecalls, recordings and interviews with people who were involved with - and since escaped - the organisation, the series lack of proper pacing trips it up. There is no straight timeline being followed, but instead it steadily introduces more people and might then go back to previous events we have already seen because these newly introduced figures were also involved in that. This leads to topics switching quite randomly. As such the series might struggle to hold your attention past your innate interest in seeing where things go in the end. In conclusion the series seem to portray events accurately enough, however it meanders too much and doesn't have a defined 'thread' you can follow that will keep you in suspense. I would put this slightly above average 6 episodes in.
Midsommar (2019)
Lesser payoff than Hereditary, less disturbing than Anti-Christ
I either missed something or this movie was way overhyped in my experience. While the cinematography was good and the mood of the movie progressively disturbing, it never advanced the mood into proper Horror territory.
As I wrote in the title I kept waiting for a payoff like in Hereditary, though it never came. I kept thinking it was like Anti-Christ in tone, but more straight forward and unlike that movie the imagery never quite made me twist in discomfort or had me thinking about it afterwards. On top of that the movie felt very predictable.
In conclusion, the packaging is nice and contains some interesting ideas, but in terms of story build-up and climax, I found it very disappointing. So it will land a squarely average score.
Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017)
Style over Substance
I will try to keep this as brief as possible, but I will provide a TL;DR version here in the beginning.
TL;DR: If you only watch Star Wars for the music and the visuals, you can enjoy this movie. If you care about anything else, such as a sensible plot, the story of the characters from the Original Trilogy, the established universe and the captivating heart of the Originals, you will not enjoy this movie.
The movie has more failings than positives, I will point out the most grievous failings first:
Luke Skywalker's character is horribly assassinated, every character trait he earned from the Original Trilogy butchered and given to others who didn't earn them. Couple this with every character that JJ set up being made even more bland. There are plot points that go nowhere and just take up screen time, instead of developing the characters; to justify them one must go to ridiculous mental gymnastics and start writing the plot for the writers after you've seen the movie. People argue that the movie is full of "subversion of expectation", but none of these add anything to the story and serve more of less as tone deaf "Hah, gotcha!"-moments. Political themes are ham-fisted without any sign of subtlety, it's just jammed down your throat and the film beats the audience over the head with it repeatedly. From a plot perspective, this movie is a nonsensical mess that's insulting to the audience's intelligence. If you care about the stories and character consistency, you will not enjoy this movie.
On to the positives: It is the most visually stunning Star Wars movie. The music is also on point and there are cute animals. If that is all you care about, you can enjoy this movie.