acg_imdb Reviews

Secret Invasion (2023)

A muddle of a Marvel mess

[4/10 · 9 August 2023]

I'm afraid this series is destined to be the comparison for other series of debatable quality, as in "Well, at least it's not as bad as Secret Invasion."

I don't expect any Marvel series to be done on the cheap (clearly there was money put into this), and I'm willing to follow wherever any story of theirs wants to go (their diversions can be as interesting as the main plot), but this one just doesn't get off the ground.

I spent too much time during the earlier episodes wondering if we were ever going to get past the dramatic gag of having some character we thought we knew as human turn out to be a Skrull instead. Do that once or twice and you might have a clever plot twist, but this series does it over and over... and over... and over again, to the point that because you can't trust your eyes, it's hard to get invested in the worries of any particular character. He probably isn't who you think he is anyway.

Couple all that with the fact that Samuel L. Jackson is wearing the world's worst stick-on beard, and seems to consider his eye patch to be optional headgear depending on his mood, and it becomes difficult to finish the series, or wonder why we started it.

Signs (2018– )

An Elegant Mess

[5/10 · 17 November 2021]

Watching both seasons (so far?) of this series took me back to the late great "Twin Peaks," in that they went into Season 1 with presumably honest intentions to tell a rather complex story, but once Season 2 got underway, they were less interested in logical storytelling and more interested in surprises and plot twists because, hey, we're stuck in a storyline that we can't figure out how to finish. Season 2 introduces more progressively ludicrous events and plot holes showing more hole than plot, until we finally reach Season 2, Episode 8, which simply goes off the rails.

I seek out European dramas for their interesting characters, languages and environment, but they are just as capable as Americans of making an elegant mess.

Sophie: A Murder in West Cork (2021)

Looks great, but...

[5/10 · 10 July 2021]

I really wanted to like this more, but it's two quarts of plot in a five gallon pot.

I should say up front that the cinematography is gorgeous, the soundtrack and music are expertly done, it has all the current tropes of a streaming documentary (though perhaps a bit too much use of the interview gimmick where the subject stares silently into the camera as their voiceover plays on the soundtrack), and within the first fifteen minutes I wanted to visit Schull; after the first hour I wanted to live there.

That said, stretching this documentary out to about three hours of episodes seems more like a contract fulfillment than a need to tell a long story. There are very few cliffhangers; and while Episode 1 ends on a suitably Wow note, the story sort of bumbles along after that, mindful of the need to have long, gorgeous shots of scenery in between interviews so as to not reach present day too quickly.

While the case is practically entirely circumstantial, there is a lot of evidence implicating the chief suspect, with little to none pointing elsewhere and no other plausible suspects to talk about. Our suspect's chief defense seems to be simply saying that he didn't do it, over and over, and as we are now used to seeing how a trace of DNA can nail someone to the wall even decades after the crime occurred, the absence of much new insight into the case now makes one wonder why the film was made. As we moved through Episode 2, it seemed like Episode 3 was going to be the final, modern-day resolution at last. It wasn't.

Blow the Man Down (2019)

Please Slow Down to Tell the Story

[6/10 · 15 April 2020]

I really wanted to like this more, with its gorgeous cinematography and interesting characters, not to mention a mostly-offstage Greek chorus of fishermen singing sea shanties at random intervals, but its overstuffed plotline racing towards a conclusion only 90 minutes after it started gives the strong impression that the producers were unable to secure an 8-episode commitment from Amazon, and were forced to compress everything into a single movie timespan instead. It did not go well.

The characters are interesting, and one wants to follow them individually a bit more to learn their backgrounds. The problem is that there are so many interesting characters and so little time. A number of scenes along the way build to a tense finish, apparently intended as a cliffhanger that would have made a great ending to one episode and made us hungry for the next, but instead we have to rush headlong into the next scene to get on with things. The increasing complications along the way make the ending only more abrupt, with too many things left unexplained. (For example, why would a certain character feel the need to pull what would have to be a 200-pound floating container out of the sea, how would they physically manage it, what would they do with the contents, and why would they be cleaning it outside in plain sight of everyone passing by?)

This is the sort of Modern Gothic undertaking that Ozark (2017), for example, does so well, but they, in contrast, take the time to tell a story in detail and let us settle into it. This film rushes through a similar saga in 90 minutes, when a better approach would to either seek out a longer format, or at least unpack some of the baggage before making the trip.

Longmire: Objection (2016) Season 5, Episode 6

Suspending disbelief is starting to get difficult

[9 February 2020]

I was reluctant to label this as a spoiler discussion, as the main event took place in the previous episode, but the fallout from the ambush incident was about as implausible as the attack itself.

It simply defies credulity that a law enforcement officer transporting a prisoner in a high-performance pursuit vehicle would let himself get boxed in between a slow-moving truck and an SUV on a wide, flat road in broad daylight with plenty of escape opportunities in practically any direction, even simply across the desert. No weapons were drawn until long after all vehicles had come to a stop. There was plenty of room for Ferg to either make a U-turn or simply drive around the truck and escape at a speed higher than either of the attackers would be able to achieve. The truck's movements made it plainly obvious what was about to happen even before that.

The producers' efforts to avoid damaging what was certainly an expensive squad car took us right out of the story. Any attackers springing an ambush will first ram or otherwise disable the target car, especially in a case where the victim can easily outrun them if given half a chance. These are questions that even Walt and the FBI should have been wondering about.

Ad Astra (2019)

A Feast for the Eyes, not so much for the Mind

[7/10 · 20 September 2019]

There aren't too many actors in current film who can do a Look of Steely Resolve like Brad Pitt if he's put into a drama that requires it. Pitt does a masterful job of that here, underplaying and hiding his emotions as required of the character, but this film is in need of a screenplay worthy of his effort.

It starts off with a great air of mystery and a flawless look at Things To Come in the near future on Earth, but as we leave there and progress further into space in pursuit of the plot, later contrivances, red herrings and headscratcher scenes threaten to stretch the film into one long space opera.

We are just far enough into the future that we can travel to the well-colonized (if not peaceful) Moon, Mars, and assorted outlying space stations and such, but scenes along the way are more like excuses for action or fight sequences than actual story, such as a rescue attempt that disposes of one character for no particular reason, or a moon-based chase scene that feels stuck in because a movie executive somewhere insisted on a car chase, despite this being a space film.

Perhaps all the side trips along the way are to keep our attention off the fact that this story will inevitably telescope down to the two main characters, Roy McBride and his father, out there by themselves in The Vastness of Space, or at least Neptune. We know that our story is going to come to its resolution out there, and the film seems determined to avoid getting there too quickly. In hindsight, that was probably a good idea.

Sitting Bull (1954)

A great period piece... for how Hollywood made 'em back then

[3/10 · 20 January 2006]

Okay, I admit it, we haven't finished it yet; we're somewhere into the second hour. It was packaged as the back half of a dollar-store DVD with "Custer" on the other side, so we bought it on a whim to see how badly you could repackage an old (probably public-domain) film in modern technology.

The answer is: pretty badly. Watching this film is a challenge to determine which part is the filmmakers' fault (e.g. wooden acting; stilted dialogue) and which part is the result of an aging film that no one can be bothered to handle properly (e.g. a badly discolored old print; a truly horrendous pan-and-scan job of what was once an interesting-looking widescreen film).

Of special note is the maddeningly constant, wall-to-wall musical background: cheesy weeping strings and such, non-stop, as if the filmmakers were terrified of having actual silence in the background once in a while. On the other hand, this _is_ how they liked to make films back then, so if you look at it as a period piece -- no, not as an example of life in the west, but as an example of what Hollywood churned out in the early '50s: the lighting, the acting, the hairstyles, etc. -- then it's actually interesting to watch... for a while, anyway.