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Reviews
Star Trek: Picard: Farewell (2022)
It was all an allegory after all.
It took me a while to understand but now I think I finally got it.
Q represented the whole Star Trek franchise in the hands of these worse-than-amateur writers. Just like Q only appeared in the beginning of the season just to frame it, similarly the season had only a very weak connection to anything Star Trek. Q/Star Trek was dying all through the season and for some reason Picard knew it too. Star Trek visited old characters like Data but it didn't help at all. Q Trek tried all of its old tired tropes and Easter eggs just like finger snapping but without any interesting content it just didn't do anything. In the end Q died, just like the franchise has done.
Of course they had to show Wesley Crusher in the end, the most hated character of TNG. It's only fitting. Seeing only that bit made it abundantly clear why Wil Wheaton sticks mainly to voice acting.
Star Trek: Picard: Mercy (2022)
Stuck so very deep in the mud
You all know the meme pic where Picard face-palms, right? This was another Picard face-palming Picard worthy episode. There are two episodes left and the series is still treading water. The two leftover ones will most probably introduce some awe-inspiring (not really, just being sarcastic) curveball and a major cliffhanger.
This review doesn't contain spoilers because how do you spoil nothing?
It's really tough being a fan of both Star Trek and proper scriptwriting nowadays.
The Call of the Wild (2020)
It's a dog-suplex-dog world at the uncanine valley.
Harrison Ford as a veteran actor made an excellent showing, the scenery was stunning and computer animation has taken huge leaps. Kudos to people responsible for modelling Buck. The lighting, bones and muscles moving under very realistic fur - great stuff.
That's where the good ends, unfortunately. As good as the animation was, it was not good enough. Movement of the dogs failed just enough so that the dogs had a plastic and unreal feel to them. It really didn't help that the director had them wrestling like people and behaving like people instead of dogs.
This is a family movie, I get it. It still doesn't justify having a cardboard villain and pushing forced diversity where it clearly creates anacronisms. A tale told poorly is just that regardless of the audience.
Alone: The Beast (2020)
Huge disappointment.
They've dropped the ball really badly. This is right on par with Naked and Afraid with showing the same footage over and over again. Add some facts about dangers the competitors will never come close to and there you have it. They're given more than enough food just to hunker down and lose weight for the period.
Everything that was great about Alone has been lost.
Ultimate Ninja Challenge (2018)
Painful
The show has nothing to with ninjas but is a survival show for people with very differing skillsets (not in an interesting way) . There's around 15 minutes of real content per episode and everything gets shown twice or thrice.
This just Naked and Afraid without being naked nor afraid.
Avoid.
Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017)
Fresh but underdone
Sigh, it hurts.
It hurts because some parts of me liked this movie. Really liked it. I even go as far as to say that this was the best Star Wars movie after 1983. I guess I need to back that up a little. The Force Awakens was a lot more coherent movie and a nice introduction of the new guard. And it was better than this movie. But TFA wasn't really a movie because it was just a reimagining of great movie named Star Wars: A New Hope and thus a sure hit. Rogue One was good but in the same time it didn't have much anything to offer since all the characters were killed off and it was always known what the ending would be. So, it was a very nice filler scene and not a stand-alone movie. Episodes 1 through 3 were awful for reasons I shouldn't need explain here.
So, the best SW movie since Return of the Jedi? Well, yes. And no. The Last Jedi was extremely stylish, entertaining and it felt somewhat fresh instead of spoon-feeding the well tried recipe like in the last instalment. But unfortunately that was only the very outer shell. Digging a little deeper, The Last Jedi's plot was just a thematical re-hash of both The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Luke was Yoda being a silly old hermit and giving insufficient lessons to a young pupil. Rey was Luke trying to find the legendary master. The whatever planet the rebels landed on was Hoth, Kylo Ren was Vader and so on and so forth. BUT, it was still a thoroughly enjoyable movie.
But then come the bad pieces. My grievance is two-fold: the characters and the future of the movie series. I'll go through the horrible handling of characters first. Apologies beforehand, the list will be boring.
General Hux was as good a general as stormtroopers are marksmen. Almost as credible too. The SW universe has a long history of incompetent baddie commanders but this was just too much. On to the next one, Captain Brienne of Phasma. Captain Plasma was a useless let-down in the last movie and there were promises she would be much more menacing in this one. Cpt. Pasha was also blaster-proof, thanks to her mirror-like armor. Are you suggesting that blasters can be deflected with an armor like that, what the f..? Captain Phantasma added absolutely nothing but a slight meh to the movie and she died off as stupidly as a garden variety stormtrooper would. Next, Luke. This pains me so even though Mark Hamill gave a stellar performance. Luke's behaviour and logic of denying the whole jedi order was a big slap in the face. It would've been a lot easier to stomach if Luke gave proper explanation for it. Not just saying I failed and nobody should have the power, boo-hoo. Luke maintains the position that there are no more jedi and there shouldn't be and then goes on saying just a moment later that there is a new one in Rey. Huh? And Luke died because (?) Kylo skewered his projection with a lightsaber, double huh? Wait, why, what? Neeeext. Snoke, the extremely powerful boss with a mysterious past. Great job darthmauling him, Rian Johnson. So much potential and then being a single-serving End Boss totally wasted. And that past got never explained. Neext! Holdo, she's a neverheard and now leads the resistance, and now she's dead, next! Master Codebreaker from the planet of rich people, 2 seconds screentime and then being substituted with Benicio Del Toro (very good performance by him, though). And Leia as the last item on this list of horrors. Vacuum-cleaning-force-pulling her back to the movie felt so bad and keeping her through the movie was a really odd choice. Carrie Fisher was a great actress and I valued her screen time but this will be problematic later on.
So, where to from here? Leia needs to disappear awkwardly because unfortunately Carrie Fisher isn't there to portray her. This could've been done with a dignified heroine's goodbye in this movie. Now it's a problem and she needs to be deleted in the next movie. Snoke, the big evil got cut (mmm-hmm) from the movie and there isn't natural continuation for the next movie. Luke vanished in a puff of logic so there shouldn't be a new jedi order either. Rey is still (!!) an under-developed character without any past or depth. I like her but she feels like cardboard. Kylo Ren is the best developed character by far and also the most complex one. In TFA he was prepared to be the ruthless, ultimate evil but now he's gone soft too. Kylo Ren isn't a good choice for the big evil for the new rebels to fight against.
It's really difficult to understand where this saga could go next. And I'm not sure if I want to see it go there, either. Being a realist, the expectations for any new SW movie are almost impossible to fulfill. But why, oh, why you needed to do this to almost all of the characters?
Star Trek: Discovery (2017)
War Trek looks good but tastes bad
Let's play a little mind game. Forget for a little while the name of the series and call it, say, Journey in Space. Or something else if you like, just not Star Trek.
Journey in Space looks like a brand new sci-fi series altogether. Except it really isn't that. It has ships, crews, guns and explosions. And that's about it. In other words, the setting is truly nothing new. The only difference to most sci-fi series is that this series has a lot of money behind it. That money buys you great visuals, sounds, editing, nice uniforms and whatnot. But you cannot buy an interesting story nor relatable characters.
People like the older versions of Star Trek for different reasons. There is, though, one thing that connects the old ones and separates the new one. No more is there that altogether positive outlook into our future, exploring the wonders of the Universe nor even the naive perspective of a peaceful Federation. All those older series had more or less focus on ethical problems, humor, clever analogues on the current zeitgeist or even personal matters of the crew. This was for me what Star Trek was all about and what made it different from other series. I readily admit that redirecting tachyon beams through the main deflector disc (or similar techno-babble) wasn't always that great but it wasn't what it was about. Technology was always just a sideshow. Human problems and human feelings were the main event.
What is happening in Journey in Space is only that trendy, dark and gritty universe with war, death, misery and crisis. This contrast to what is Star Trek was very pronounced when the XO got killed off in a way that would make Prometheus/Alien:Covenant scientists proud. Not one of the crew cared about it at all. The audience didn't care. Nobody cared. Almost all other members of the crew are exactly as relatable or interesting as the poor XO. Saru and Stamets have some hope but other people on the bridge are just... who knows? Would anyone even notice if all of them were swapped? It doesn't really matter if a series has a continuing plot or flavor of the week. It can be good or bad either way. I don't have a problem with "stuff looking too modern when it should be antiquated for the time line" because making everything look clunky would be just silly. The thing I have a problem with is that this series is going boldly where too many series have gone already. Dark and gritty crash-boom-bang with no depth. Eye candy and production values won't carry a series very far.
I didn't rate the series yet because there is still a small glimmer of hope. Maybe, just maybe, Journey in Space will get what a good series is about. As for the Orville, it's sad to see that a satire has more depth than the target of it.
P.S. Why do many 9 or 10 reviews say "don't believe what people are saying here" in different words? Why should I believe what you are saying, then? :)
Sausage Party (2016)
Eat mushrooms first.
It's not very easy to find words to describe this movie. What is obvious, the World would be a better place without it. In general, I find Seth Rogen as some sort of Anti-Midas. Everything he touches turns into excrement. I read a few reviews of the movie (mostly very negative) but I decided to give it a fair chance. I'm not disturbed about jokes about religion nor am I very uptight about being politically correct. Maybe it's one of those misunderstood movies that are actually really good? Fat chance.
What I, like many other reviewers, noticed first was the excessive use of curse words. Not that I have a problem with strong language but if it doesn't serve any other purpose than shock value, it's just lame. And truly lame it was in this movie. Then came the absurdly bad taste in jokes. Not bad taste in the sense of being vulgar or improper but childish, clichéd and simply stupid. I found penis/gay/racist jokes funny when I was twelve years old but not anymore, sorry. If you're an adult and watching this movie makes you laugh, I warmly suggest you take a good, long look in the mirror.
Oh yeah, there was supposedly a deeper message in the movie about being open-minded and not believing what you're told at face value. It's just as bad as Damon Lindelof's sad dabbling with religious themes. Trying to make a very bad script have more depth by heavy-handedly inserting aspects about religion makes it only cluttered and worse.
I did sit through the movie, mostly because I wondered if there would be even one thing that would make me laugh out loud. There wasn't. I snorted once or twice and that poor a reward is just not enough for the pain of tasting through the whole smorgasbord of absolutely untalented directing.
By idiots for idiots, avoid at all costs.