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Reviews
I Care a Lot (2020)
Opportunity Lost: An Episode of the Damned
Where to begin? The movie starts out well enough, creating a character you are supposed to hate. And they succeed in making you hate Marla. She is a conniving and cold-hearted person who robs old people to gain wealth for herself.
Then, she robs the mother of a Russian mobster, just like she had done to dozens of others. And the movie takes on the persona of a sweet revenge movie, where evil does in evil. It's all humming along fairly well in that vein, when some highly improbable things happen: 1) the Russian mobster turns out to be two-dimensional, lacking in basic survival skills as a professional killer, 2) the employees of the mobster lack the follow through they exhibited with everything else they do in the movie, 3) they force feed Marla large amounts of alcohol, but she isn't drunk, 4) they dump her in a lake, along with her car, but she wakes up, in full possession of her faculties in the nick of time, 5) and even though the car is under water with Marla inside, she manages to keep conscious and break out the rear window of the car, and then swim to the surface without passing out, 6) then, she gets to her apartment where her girlfriend has been beaten unconscious and left in a gas-filled room for hours, yet no explosion and the girlfriend hasn't been asphyxiated yet, 7) she rescues the girlfriend, resuscitates her, and gets out of the apartment all before the place blows up, dramatically, as they leave.
And then the really improbable stuff happens, where she captures the Russian mobster, taking out his whole crew, all the while where she should have been suffering the ill effects of drunkenness, car accident trauma, breathing natural gas for an extended period, and piecing together a revenge plan of her own, all within hours of her own abduction.
The only redeeming feature of the film is that Marla gets killed in the end by the son of another woman from whom she stole and eventually killed because of her negligent care.
Top Shot (2010)
Quality of Competitors
Watching the first and second seasons I have to wonder, sometimes, if these people are the gunners they purport themselves to be. Supposedly these folks are all "experts" in their areas. I don't see that in many situations. Their version of a bullseye isn't. Even their expert instructors don't seem to be as good as I would expect. And they get tired way too quickly, especially for younger persons. According to the host's commentary on the show, each competitor beat out thousands of others to claim their spot on the teams. I really doubt that.
Another thing is terminology. Why on earth would any "expert" gunner use the term "clip" where magazine is the correct term. Terminology should be second nature to any experienced gunner.
And why are so many of these experts so young in the team mixes? I think this was done for the appeal of the show. The female competitors are especially weak, and are quickly eliminated.
Gun discipline is sometimes lacking. Look at the intro for the second season. Watch where those weapons get pointed. In some cases the guns are pointed at other competitors. I have known a lot of good shooters over the last 45 years, many of whom could shoot circles around these folks.
American Gods (2017)
Disappointingly Divergent from Book
I really don't know why screenplay writers seem to need to mess with a good thing. The book, "American Gods," is a well-written tome where the author delves into mythology, modern drama, and the macabre. Think of it as Stephen King meets Herman Hesse, while delving into Japanese anime, then you have an idea of how the book goes. However, the TV series plays fast and loose with the main characters, as described in the book, as well as freely adding and subtracting from what the author wrote. What you end up with loosely follows the original story line, faithfully sticking to content in some places, not at all in others. The main character, Shadow, isn't black in the book. The slave ship episode isn't there either, and the flavor of the initial meeting with Mr. Wednesday loses its comedic value that the author originally included. I mean, Shadow does a good job of ditching Mr. Wednesday, only to have him materialize next to him at the urinal, asking if Shadow wants the job or not. Other story line elements, the black prostitute who turns out to be a god, is close, but no cigar here either. Hopefully the series will develop better as it goes along, because the first two episodes rate only a meh thus far. So much potential, and so little delivery.