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aaronlmichael1970
Reviews
Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022)
So close
McGregor is great. I think it suffers from some weak writing but mostly from casting. Leia is almost as annoying and bad as.episode 1 Anakin. Reva is horribly overacted. Special effects and creature costumes and set design doesn't nearly live up to the Mandalorian season 1. It feels at times a lot like Firefly without enough humor and with100 times the budget but the same results. I put kind of on the same level as episodes 1,2,3.
Still, I was glad I watched it and would have liked more. If you're a star wars fan you'll certainly want to watch this. It doesn't add much to the narrative but it gives some more depth to a couple characters and the star wars world in some ways where it's not polluting it with things that don't work well.
Prey (2022)
Good production value, bad everything else
Obviously there is a girl power element to this story that is executed in the typical way, to make her better at the stereotypical male stuff than the males, despite being smaller and weaker. Meanwhile you have her being treated by male tribe members in ways that would not be acceptable to these people.
These people led a fairly hard existence of conflict with other tribes, tough physical labor to gather resources to survive the winter, primitive medicine. Yet the story for the most part follows young, attractive first nation people spending all of their time running around in the woods wasting time while the old people hang around camp working.
The cgi is pretty good and effects overall. It suffers from a complete lack of knowledge of animal behavior and the wild. There is a beaver dam cgi'd in across a flowing river that isn't even constructed like a real dam. The strangely aggressive behavior of the bear, cougar, and wolf seems totally out of place to anyone who has spent time around these animals.
There is a buffalo slaughter scene despite the fact that this was not going on until more than 100 years later than the time the movie was set in. The girl knocks out and cuts the leg off of a much larger man. He would have bled out from the cutting of his femoral artery but also physically she would have no chance of dragging this man up from the river where she knocks him out to where he wakes up. There is no rhyme or reason to when the predator can and when he can't see things that are right in front of him. His physical abilities, strength, and speed seem to vary greatly depending on on what the scene requires.
I feel like they could have done so much more with this.
The Stolen (2017)
So much wrong
Bad acting. Main character is completely unlikable, unrealistic, entitled. Writing is horrible including ripping off lines from other movies.
Her reaction to baby being stolen? A strange noise. Reaction to finding her baby? A smile and moderate happiness. Hair after many many dairy of rough travel and no bathing? Perfect curls and full body. Impractical fancy dresses?
Actually there is just too much wrong to continue. Don't watch.
Land (2021)
Hard to watch for an outdoorsman
So many liberal elite blind spots that its just difficult to watch without constant eye rolling. Look i get it. Its about loss and finding meaning in life after a tragedy.
So why is the male Latin hero in Wyoming with a job providing water to "people in this area on reservations that don't have access to clean water" as if Wyoming is sub Saharan Africa? Solar powered water no less. Older, physically feeble city person who learns in a year to thrive in the wild off the grid, despite the filmmaker obviously having no realistic understanding of the hardships that she's documenting in the story.
She's able to feed herself and a dog with so little problem that she then has time to sit around just wasting time in contemplation and thought. She's killing deer easily despite obviously having no idea whatsoever how to handle a rifle, with open sights shooting deer from over 100 yards. Even during the warm months she seems to have no problem continuing to have deer steaks to eat meaning she's either killing deer regularly and letting the meat go to waste or she has some magical way of preserving raw meat.
I could go on and on but thats enough.
The Wheel of Time (2021)
I read the first few books when I was a kid
So I hoped to like it but I was skeptical given what I saw from the trailer.
The books were interesting but basically Mr. Jordan was writing what amounted to a commercially successful series that he pumped out sequels as fast as possible. I was an avid consumer of fantasy books and I found the first few books to be interesting but I thought they became a mess by the 4th or 5th and I stopped about the 6th. That was a long time ago though and I'm just going by memory. I did assume someday someone would make a movie or series of it after the success of game of thrones but the difference in terms of the source material couldn't be more different. The game of thrones series, although never finished, was masterful writing, and very different from anything else in the genre. The budget for the series I assume puts WoT to shame at least given what I've seen.
I won't go into the casting choices and story changes that were made as obvious acknowledgement of "woke" ideology, for lack of a better term.
The script in so many places suffers from a lack of imagination. The characters are just not very easy to be sympathetic to. Contrast that to the delicate balance that the character in GoT struck. They all were flawed in their own way and even the worst of them you loved in a way. There is no development of the world that makes you feel like you have an understanding of place and time and history.
Let me insert here my plug for making a series out of the Dragonriders of Pern books. The writing isn't the greatest but the world is far more interesting and I think some good script writers would be able to do wonders with it. I'd put a vote in for Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser as well but that will never happen because they're too ... male.
Overall... 5 episodes in, its better than the Sword of Truth series, but nothing close to Game of Thrones.
Roman Empire (2016)
Such a disappointment
There is so much wrong with this "documentary" that it's difficult to know where to start so I'll just use the shotgun approach.
For anyone who has any knowledge of the history of the Roman Empire, by watching this you will actually come out less informed than if you had not watched it. It's a cynical attempt to keep the attention of of the dumb masses by throwing in action sequences, bare breasts, and dramatic scenes. Often the cut in information from actual historians is even contradicted by the recreation scenes that follow. The scenes themselves are often long production quality and very short on acting and dialogue.
One of the glaring examples of liberties they take with facts is the identity of Narcissus. Repeatedly they refer to him as an accomplished gladiator and he's depicted teaching Commodus to fight with a sword and teaching him about brotherhood of gladiators and motivated to kill Commodus by his anger at Commodus betraying the brotherhood. No historical accounts even come close to backing this up and all of them I can find directly contradict all of this information.
The depictions of Commodus in the arena show him killing his opponents. This is directly contradicted in the historical accounts. In addition the cut in information from the historian says his opponents lost on purpose because they knew what is was best for them. Cut to scene of Commodus plunging his sword into a guy in the arena, blood spurting and the crowd going wild. Absurd.
I'm not a social justice shill, but in our world today, watching scenes obviously designed to needlessly show female nudity is extremely cringey. Even worse is that they throw in narration that attempts to offset this by magnifying the power and influence of a select view of these female figues.
Raising Dion (2019)
I really wanted to like this
Wanted a new series to watch and this sounded good. Full disclosure I've only been through 3 episodes.
Unfortunately the good premise is not done service by the poor writing.
I hate to criticize a child actor but the lead character really needs to be a good actor to make a series like this work and although I'm sure he's a great kid and he is cute, he just doesn't have that natural ability.
Take for instance Esperanza his friend in the wheelchair. She just has an innate ability to seem natural in her lines.
Medicine of the Wolf (2015)
Biased
I love wolves. I grew up with Brandenburg's book White Wolf.
Here's the problem. Nature documentaries like this focus on this magical surreal feeling of what wolves are and are filled with anecdotal baloney designed specifically to try to push the audience in a direction. Fair minded people resent this. It's nothing more than a puff piece.
Brandenburg early on relating a story about all the human emotions he saw in the reaction of a wolf being surprised by him. The focus on the absurd notion that people are worried about being attacked by wolves and that is what the problem is between wolves and humans. The anthropomorphism of wolf behavior over and over. The refusal to look at the real problem of livestock predation that rural families have to deal with on a regular basis.
Brandenburg says with a trance-like gaze "the wolf made the decision 50000 years ago to join the human family. That was a decision that they made." Okay Jim... based on what evidence?
They introduce the concept of trophic cascade as if it was settled science and readily apparent nearly magical resumption of environmental harmony in Yellowstone.
They finally admit to a wolf attack in Minnesota but give the discredited excuse that it wasn't the wolf's fault he had a deformed jaw so he had to do it. I live in wolf country and bear and lion country. Every time there is a wild animal attack the nature "scientists" come out of the woodwork blaming the people or whatever other thing they can for the incident.
But it's in the lectures from the director as she's driving in her car that we find the true problem. She thinks of the wolves as people. In talking with the wildlife management agent talking about sustainable harvest numbers she can find no middle ground whatsoever. For her killing any wolf is tearing apart a family, killing a sentient unique being. Therefore there is no solution except to allow the wolves to live their natural lives ... which apparently she can't see will unavoidably lead to conflict with humans. Predictably you find out she's in her car the whole documentary because she has to drive 1000 miles to get to where the wolves are. Therefore of course she is an expert.
Everything in this documentary is an emotional reaction to wolf population management, with no nod to the real need to keep populations out of conflict with people.
In the end it's emotional propaganda with no science value.
Traded (2016)
Poor acting, low quality, derivative
Some really poor acting. The one bright spot is Kelly Kristofferson's brief appearance. Sizemore is alright.
They re-use lines from other movies. Character appearance changes from scene to scene. Out of bullets one minute, full gun the next. Extremely poor writing. Uwe Boll quality of film.
The entire narrative and story gets hijacked by paying homage to Kris Kristofferson. Trace Adkins does a terrible job acting in this role.
SPOILER Not really a spoiler because nothing about this movie is unpredictable. The daughter rides home with him the whole way which apparently is at least hundreds of miles wearing her whore outfit with shiny long beautiful brushed hair.
Overall the movie lacks any sort of charm, grit, feel of reality, emotion, etc... Doesn't draw you in in any way.
Warcraft (2016)
Surprising
SPOILERS
They made a mistake revenue-wise and for the future of the franchise by five choices. They focused too much on humans and orcs instead of putting the entire realm on display. They chose older lore for their story line. They miscast Medivh with a boring actor. They should have had Paula Patton do her voice work without the teeth. They made the movie like a lore cut scene instead of keeping it focused at the player level.
Karazhan is one of the most popular raid instances in wow history. The struggle of players to overcome its challenges in service to the world is an epic story itself. The movie however doesn't even really address lore immediately relevant to the instance.
There are epically good touches that are too many to name that will only have meaning to WoW players. Re-creation of rooms and costumes. Garona. Legendary weapons such as Atiesh. Small iconic items are throw in like feathered fishing bobbers, mailboxes, polymorphed sheep. The final fight follows a boss fight pattern of stages.
The story itself loses the viewer in that it never comes down to the level of the common man. It's all kings and guardians and chieftains and royal families and clan leaders, and warchiefs.