silverspawnx

It's difficult to critique overtly stylistic movies because any apparent flaw can be excused as being intentional. The characters are all simpletons -- well duh, that's the point! Their actions in the later parts of the movie are unrealistic -- well duh, it's a metaphor for the war! And so on. So how does one get around this?

I think the punchline is that it ultimately doesn't matter whether it's part of the point; the only thing that matters is the viewing experience. And for me, that experience was one I could do without.

I think the part that bothers me the most (aside from the fact that this kind of self-harm disturbs me on a visceral level) is the unreasonableness of Cole. I'm here for the premise and even for taking drastic measures, but not after two days. Have a bit more patience, and if your former friend still bothers you after a month, then you can cut off your finger. And don't start by ignoring him out of nowhere. This behavior is just so incredibly childish.

And again, you can say Cole isn't meant to be reasonable, and that's fine, but then, what emotional connection am I meant to have to this film? Who am I supposed to be rooting for? It sure isn't Pádraic, who is, in fact, exceedingly dull. The only tolerable person in this entire movie is Siobhán, and for what it's worth, I did like her.

Perhaps I'm not supposed to be rooting for anyone, but if that's the case, I don't know why I would watch this movie. The stuff that happens is not entertaining enough to keep me interested, it's mostly dull or gruesome, neither of which is interesting. The best I can say about it is that some parts are very funny, and they're funny in a pretty unique way. But ultimately, the movie just left a sour taste behind; it succeeded in making me feel things, but they're not things I want to feel.

With very few exceptions, people who are perceived as strange by society view themselves as normal and society as insane. When someone creates such a character without understanding this, the result is almost always awful -- it's not just that they got one thing wrong; the fact that they got it wrong shows that they don't understand what drives their character. They typically create a strawman; someone who, e.g., is cynical for the sake of itself, who couldn't justify their own behavior to others. There's no coherency to such characters, and you don't understand why they would be this way.

The biggest reason this show works is because the main character avoids this trap. Far from being pointlessly cynical, her behavior is perfectly logical: there's a monster going around killing people, so she's trying to stop it. Just about everyone else is wasting time worrying about irrelevant things like teen drama, romance, social media gossip, or PR management. This is really stupid. Conversely, Wednesday is almost entirely working on the one thing that matters. This is normal. As someone who also thinks that most people's behavior is insane and stupid, I can attest that Wednesday is well written.

The other reason this show is good is that it's incredibly entertaining, especially the first half of the season. It's overflowing with ideas, and most of them are pretty cool.

Admittedly, Wednesay is a bit overpowered, seeing as she's impressively knowledeable about various things, speaks at least two languages, is great at fighting with and without weapons, is witty, a fantastic cello player, a ridiculously good archer, a writer, is fearless, has great will power, is highly skilled at untying knots, and is also a great dancer because why not. It's a bit much, but she's so much fun to watch that it's easy to forgive.

My only real complaint (and why I'm not giving it a 9 or 10) is that the writing degrades noticeably in the second half of the season, and the finale in particular is bit weak. Everyone basically stumbles through the main plot points with the help of various deus ex machinas, much as you could see in a lesser show. But I can't be too mad because even at its worst, the show is still a lot of fun; I'd say it operates between a 6 and a 10, and a 6 on my scale is still worth watching; most shows never get there.

Given the success, there's almost certainly going to be a second season, and I will almost certainly watch it.

A lot of people seem to think there is something special about Earthquake Bird, but it's not clear why. The most commonly talked about aspect of any movie is the plot, and the plot here is about as generic as you can get. Girl meets boy; boy becomes interested in friend of girl; generic love triangle ensures; all ends in dumb exaggerated finale.

And yet, I thought it was one of the most unique movies I've seen. Why? Naturally, it's because of the plot -- no, I'm kidding. A part of this is the setting (I do love Japan) and acting, but the larger part are the themes. The way status is depicted is a big one, so let's talk about that.

In most movies, couples are either presented roughly as equals, or they are unequal in some obvious way that corresponds directly to their observable circumstances. But in the real world, a lot of relationships don't work that way, and that goes for romantic and platonic ones. There is usually one person who is higher status than the other, and even though this is never acknowledged, both people tend to adjust to their roles. This can even be measured, e.g., the higher status person will make more eye contact And while these roles are sometimes based on objective measures of achievement, just as often they're not.

The kind of complex relationship that is so common in reality and so rare on screen is depicted in this movie. Lucy has a relationship with Teiji in which she is clearly and almost totally accepting him as standing above her. They always meet at his place, almost always do what he wants, and seem to move entirely at his direction. Take the scene where she starts taking off clothes, clearly offering sex to him, and his response is "I didn't tell you to do that". If you reflect on this, you will realize how strange it is. But you've probably picked up on the status dynamics in their relationship even if you've never thought about it explicitly, and if you did, the scene may have felt normal.

And notice that there are no achievements to justify this dynamic. Objectively speaking, Teiji is a failure. He lives in a small apartment, works a blue-collar job at a restaurant, and as far as his passion goes, there's no evidence that his photography is any good. He doesn't sell it or even share it publicly. On the other hand, Lucy has a somewhat more academic and probably higher-paying job as a translator. But it doesn't matter. On the contrary, the lack of success in his life is just more motivation for Teiji to be recognized as the authority in their relationship since he has something to compensate for...

The real world is littered with relationships that work like this, typically with the male side taking Teiji's role. But I've never seen it depicted in a movie before, or at least not nearly as well. I mean, there are movies about abusive relationships, but usually they're far too obvious. What's great here is that Teiji is *likeable*, and also charming.

I also remember that I didn't understand any of this the first time I watched it, yet I immediately liked the movie. I bought into the characters as real people, even if couldn't have said why.

It all reaches a climax during the trip at the end. The more Lucy accepts her inferiority, the more desperate she gets for Teiji's approval, so when he shows interest in her friend, it's all the more hurtful for her. This, too, is the kind of sick dynamic that happens all the time in the real world.

The encounter with the police is also interesting. Remember how Lucy does this childish thing where she doesn't tell the officer that she can speak Japanese? Quite odd for someone who's shown as quite mature for the entire rest of the movie. What's up with that? I think it's a sort of lashing out against the humiliation she has endured from Teiji. Status is always dependent on context, and here's one context where she's the most powerful person in the room because she speaks two languages flawlessly. It's silly if you say it out loud, but to our evolution-shaped monkey brains, it counts all the same.

There's more to this movie than just the status thing, but that's the most memorable part to me. I like the movie more the more I think about it. I went into it wanting to give it an 8, but changed it to a 9 near the end.

This show starts off very strange. The tone is all over the place, the main character is an enigma, and there are a lot of moving parts. Then at the start of episode 2, it jumps into an alternate universe, which looks like a fever dream or flashback at first, but turns out to cover over half of the show.

That is the good part. It's hard to figure out where it's all going, but it's interesting. I like strange shows.

But then it gets much less interesting the further the plot progresses, and in the end, we're at a totally boring, one-dimensional story about drama from sexual assault. I have no moral objections to how anything was handled, but it's just... boring. I've seen this before. There's nothing new here. And after a show with this kind of a first episode, that's really disappointing. It looked like an 8 at some point, but the last three episodes are basically a waste of time, so it averages out a 5, just barely worth watching.

All the way back in season 1, Leavo was introduced as a throwaway joke. "No-one ever left Elfswood." "Except Leavo." ... get it? Because the elves have names that describe what they do. ... yeah, it wasn't super funny.

But now Leavo is real, so what was once a dumb joke became genuine world building. And not only is he real, he's one of the more active characters.

Leavo was shown to be assertive, smart, but also a racist. You probably don't think much of it, but I've rewatched a bunch of scenes, and there are quite a lot of moments where he makes derogatory comments about Trogs, even though he's not generally cruel.

My point with all that is that I think him turning into a Trog is actually a pretty strong moment. And I also like that the show doesn't think you're too stupid to get it yourself. It doesn't explain why his transformation is meaningful, it just shows it.

This episode is the pinnacle of human achievement in art form of parodying bad fanfiction. It is work of perfection, written at a level of accuracy to that lesser writers can only aspire to reach. And while brilliant in itself, it's gets even better if viewed as a character moment for LSP.

10/10 yo.

If you ignore the fantasy setting, this is a genuinely good episode about relationship drama. Finn makes understandable but selfish and harmful choices, and FP has the appropriate reaction. It's not a contrived conflict based on a misunderstanding; she is angry at him for a good reason.

This alone is rare enough in fiction, especially children friendly fiction. But what makes it really special is that it ultimately doesn't work out between them. This episode was the beginning of the end for the two. It shows that not all relationships will work, and that's not something any other show will teach you.

My only critique is the inclusion of the cosmic owl, since that gives Finn a more legitimate reason for his actions, which lessens the gravity of the episode and also seems entirely unnecessary. You could have easily done the same episode without that.

Tree Trunks is just a dreadful character, annoying and offensive and above all unfunny. I don't understand why she is in the show. She doesn't get any better, either. Just about every scene with her across the entire show is bad. This is where it all started.

So I think what makes plot twists good or bad is generally something like the degree to which it's more plausible in retrospect. If you didn't see it coming but you could have, then it was done well. And perhaps it is okay to violate this rule sometimes, given that the real world isn't always fair. Sometimes, you really couldn't have known better, and if you want to be genuinely unpredictable, I suppose you could go with a lower probability outcome.

This one, however, has long left the realm of plausibility and dived into sheer idiocy. Anna, the viewer, and the father are all perfectly justified in not considering it as an option, because from all we know, it is completely ridiculous. Young girls basically never commit cold-blooded murder. And young girls who seem perfectly normal and nice and have had zero traumatic experiences super don't commit cold blooded murder. This is not an opinion, it's an actual fact about what actually happens in the real world, the world which this movie supposedly takes place in. Go look at some flippin numbers.

Nothing that we're shown makes sense of this. There are no disturbing behaviors that look like hints in retrospect. There's no foreshadowing. It's blatantly obvious that they just wanted to do the unexpected thing. And yes, I did indeed predict that Buell was the murderer from pretty early on, and I was wrong. You got me. Unfortunately, you only got me because the reveal doesn't make any sense.

I did enjoy this show up to the final episode. It's cute. It's funny. It's got a lot of heart. I specifically thought it did a great job portraying the main character. And I love love love the title. This is why I'm still giving it a 5. But it's probably top 3 among the dumbest plot twist I've ever seen.

I nominate this move for having the least believable plot twist of all time. Movies about AI tend to be technically bad, but this is on another level. Usually, it's about how the AIs are anthropomorphized. This movie does that (probably worse than any other movie tbh) and then has a quadrillion more conventional plot holes on top of that. There is just so much wrong with this story. It's a dystopian sci-fi thriller, but it has the logical cohesion of an episode from a children's cartoon, if that.

And also the cliche dialogue and pointless action and all of that, though that's more par for t he course.

I love the Series of Unfortunate Events as written by Lemony Snicket. Ostensibly aimed at children, the series is chocked full of curiosities and symbolism, which makes it not just appropriate for adults, but in fact one of the most intriguing things I've ever read.

There are a lot recurring themes in the series that one could tease apart in great detail. But perhaps the most important one is the introduction of mystery that is never resolved. Again and again, Lemony Snicket lets his characters be confronted by questions that are never answered, In the final book, he wraps a bow on it all by outright telling us that the world is so complex that it is completely impossible to ever truly solve any puzzle because every puzzle is intertwined with a thousand other things, and those are intertwined with yet more things. One can only ever hope to uncover parts of the truth, answer some questions and ignore the myriad of new questions that will inevitably arise.

And, out of all the mysteries raised in the books, the greatest one revolves around the sugar bowl. The sugar bowl is the key object in the last couple of books, and at one point, we're told that, if evil gets hold of it, all of the efforts of volunteers will be for nil.

But alas, we never learn what's in it. The final book makes a final attempt to fool you into expecting a revelation, only to instead deliver the aforementioned rant about how mystery can never be truly solved even in principle.

The show is, rather obviously, not really a 1/10, but I'm hereby giving it a 7 point penalty for its treatment of the final book. I think revealing what is in the sugar bowl may be the single worst decision ever made in a movie adaptation -- although "revealing" may have to be put in quotes as I don't consider the reveal to be the answer for the corresponding mystery in the books. Needless to say, the reveal is painfully stupid and doesn't even begin to make sense of the importance ascribed to the object throughout the book.

Am I being petty? Indeed I am. I am so angry at the show that I delight in being petty and spiteful. May my rating help drag down the average.

Beyond this worst of all crimes, adapting the final episode with half as much length as any previous episode is also, well, it is in equal parts baffling and idiotic. The final book is the heart of the entire series. It is the most intriguing, the most symbolic, the least formulaic. It is also, which matters for the movie adaptation, the most complex.

What they should have done instead is make an entire season devoted solely to book 13. Give it triple the time of any previous episode, rather than half. Frustratingly, this would have also been the way to go to maximize profit. The financial incentives align perfectly with the artistic ones, so how on earth could you mess this up so badly? It is truly sad, and doubly so considering that the setting they've chosen for the final book is really beautiful. It could have been a two hour long adaptation, one that is more serious than previous episodes (just like the book), and gives the characters more room to breathe. The book is also the only one that spans several months. How could you possibly not take a hint?

Bottom line: the writers either did not understand what makes the book great, or they chose to ruin it on purpose. Both of these options are terrible, so pick your favorite. And if you haven't yet, read the final book of the series.

Spike Jonze is a genius. Her and Being John Malkovich are both phenomenal. That's why I was looking into his remaining work.

It turns out he made one the biggest piles of trash that I've ever seen. I have no model of how people find this enjoyable. I can only assume it is supposed to be funny. Whatever the case, I couldn't detect a trace of humor.

I would be lying if I said that I hate or even strongly dislike this. It didn't leave enough of an impression for that to be possible. But I would struggle to name another movie that's so entirely devoid of value. I award you no points, and may god have mercy on your soul.

I love this language so much. Japanese >> English > Everything else.

I probably wouldn't have made it through episode 1 if this were in a different language. The first few minutes of this show do not give the impression of a well-written story. But whatever the reason, I did watch further, and it turned out to be much better than expected. The show has heart. And it also remained surprisingly unpredictable throughout. It's easy to think that you get it a few episodes in, but comes a turn you didn't see coming.

The best part of viewing experience is the ever-increasing sense it leaves you with of just how deep the rabbit hole goes. Everyone seems so shallow at first, until you're shown more and more of what's underneath. The last line of the epilogue was perfect.

So many bad takes!

This is the best episode of season 1, with the only real competition being episode 3. The stuff before certainly had its moments, but the challenges were far more forgettable and cheesy. Meanwhile, the entire second half of the season is just too over the top.

This one is where the show peaked. This is the challenge that felt the most real, and certainly the most memorable. I wish the show had staid like this. No exposition, no organized group, no over the top climaxes. One game per episode, and make in meaningful.

I like this show. It's well-directed, it has characters who feel like real people, it has a pleasant setting, and it never annoyed me.

But that's not what this review is about. This review is about a single scene. It's a scene in the first episode; it begins at exactly 30 minutes and lasts 95 seconds.

Matilda and Hal are taking a car trip to a small town in the mountains. Hal is driving, but the scene describes the experience of Matilda, slowly drifting off to sleep as she watches the scenery. This is a feeling I know well. I used to have an unstable sleeping rhythm, so I would often be tired on drives or even during lectures. There is nothing quite like this feeling, when you're slowly drifting off into a more peaceful world. All of your struggles don't matter anymore. When the fog pulls you under, there is not a worry left in the world.

It is hard to describe how well the show captures this experience. I think it may be the most masterfully directed scene that I have ever seen. The drive commences. It becomes harder to stay awake. The atmosphere gets ever more peaceful as the camera zooms out, until at last, we've left the car entirely.

The music throughout this scene is phenomenal. It does what images alone could never do.

And then, it abruptly ends. Matilda wakes up. It takes a few seconds to comprehend what is happening. They're in a town. The drive is over. Whatever her experience has been about, all memory of it has disappeared. Only the feeling remains. This, too, is painfully accurate. It's not like waking up in the morning. You don't feel tired in the same way, and you never remember what your dream was about. It doesn't matter how often you repeat this experience, either; in the few moments after you wake up, you feel like you would give everything if you could go back. But you know you can't, so you just move on. Back to life.

I cannot praise this scene enough. I've only watched the show once, but I've come back to this scene over and over again. It is utter perfection.

Disliking a movie due to historical inaccuracies is one thing. If this is your only issue, the movie in question may be fine as a work of fiction, just not as a record of history. But here's the thing. I don't know anything about Turing's personal life, nor about the details of how encryption played into WW2. And yet, based mostly on having a degree Computer Science, I can immediately tell that this isn't how it works. This isn't how any of this works. It's not that the movie fails to tell the true story; it fails to tell a *plausible* story.

Here's an example. Turing tries to crack the encryption machine Enigma and builds his own machine to do so. Once started, the machine just keeps running until it cracks the code, without providing intermediate results. If this takes too long, all you can do is stop it manually.

But that is just not how it works. No-one does engineering that way. If you write a big piece of code, it's going to have bugs. You have run parts of it and get intermediate results to find the bugs. Even if it's bug-free, there just is no reason not to add something indicating progress. That's not hard to do, and moreover, we see in the movie that Turing didn't know how long his machine would take, so intermediate results would be extremely helpful.

"Alright," you say, "but that's just a detail, and it's not even important to the story." Fair enough. Here's a more important case. After the team fails to crack Enigma for a while, some random person in a bar mentions that messages encrypted with Enigma often start the same way because people use recurring phrases to open letters. This provides them with a way to restrict the search space, and they crack Enigma on the same day.

Again, this isn't how it works. To elaborate: it certainly is true that knowing things about the plaintext could be extremely helpful, so good job on that. But the fact that no-one in the team figured this out after months of working on the problem is completely asinine. This is basic stuff. Of course the plaintext distribution isn't uniform; messages aren't a random sample of letters, and any capable cryptographer would consider that immediately. This is the kind of the first things you would think about, and I mean that literally. If you made a list of what properties to exploit, that would be one on the top of the list.

I've singled out these two points because they're fairly objective, but they're really just a symptom of a bigger problem, which is that the movie evidently doesn't understand cryptography, computability theory, or even basic engineering -- and as a consequence, Turing is not a plausible depiction of a highly intelligent mathematician. He often says that things are too complicated for others to understand, but when he does talk about technical stuff, it's usually pretty basic, and what's worse, it's often off-topic. The ugly truth here is that neither the Turing Machine nor the Turing Test have much of a connection to cryptograhy. The Turing Machine is theoretical model that is capable to perform arbitrary computations given unlimited time, which makes it useful in formal proofs about what is and isn't computable -- where 'computable' always means 'solvable with definite, explicit rules in a finite number of steps'. However, its runtime is comically awful (it requiers thousands of steps to multiply two 2-digit numbers), so it's utterly useless on any practical problem. It's pretty telling if you watch the scene where Turing is asked about his paper; he doesn't say that the machine is the Turing Machine (presumably because that would just be too blatantly false), but he also doesn't make it clear that it's a different things, so you're sort of left with the impression that the two things are connected. They're not. I don't know what the machine did (the movie doesn't tell me), but I can promise you that it has no meaningful relationship to the Turing Machine. It's honestly just really bizarre that the movie hedges so much on that point.

And the Turing Test? Well, the Turing Test is a philosophical thought experiment about when AI reaches human-level. (It's probably something that Turing got wrong, too, but that's beside the point.) How is that related to cryptography? Unfortunately, not at all. My guess is that the script writer just wanted to have the Turing Test in there because it's the most famous idea associated with Turing, so they just did it even though it really doesn't make sense. It gets away with it by being very vague, so that all you remember is a bunch of buzz words without anything too concrete to be wrong.

On the other hand, the movie doesn't tell you how the Enigma Machine actually works, and that's kind of a shame. I've once had to implement it for my cryptography class as just one exercise on the biweekly exercise sheet -- point being, it's not that complicated. Take three minutes and a nice visualization, and you can explain to normal people what the machine does. Wouldn't that be better than hinting at unrelated topics without ever saying anything concrete? (I notice myself getting more annoyed with this the more I think about it. The only reason not to tell you how Enigma works in a movie about Enigma is that the movie thinks you're too stupid to understand how it works, which is kind of insulting.)

Then, there's Turing's personality. Here is where I'm speculating; maybe he was like this. But I honestly doubt it. A lot of people have this streotype in their heads that the smartest mathematicians are the worst about communicating their insights, but I think the opposite is true in most cases. If you understand a subject unusually well, you're also better at explaining it in simple terms. There are exceptions to this, but given how unreliable this movie is, it seems more likely that Turing was nothing like this and the script just wrote him as the stereotype because that's what lazy writers do. Also, just keep in mind that he's a professor, which means he's working at a University. Teaching basic material is part of his job.

Watching this for the second time made me think about the Queen's Gambit. Both shows (I'll just refer to this movie as a 'show' to have a common name) are about a person with an extreme genius; in one case it's math, in the other it's chess. Furthermore, both shows have pretty positive reception. However, the Queen's Gambit is great both in terms of depicting what a genius is like and in terms of the chess it shows. Here is what it gets wrong: In episode 2, people talk during tournaments, which is not allowed, and (also in episode 2), there is a part where Beth says "I don't have to move the Queen", when that makes no sense in the position. (Very likely someone messed up "Queen" and "King" there, because "I don't have to move the King" would have made sense.) As far as I know, that's it. Everything else in the entire show is spot on; the games are all based on real games played by extremely strong players, the commentary all makes sense, and the players can do the things that real chess geniuses can really do, like playing entire games in their heads and playing several games simultaneously.

But here's my point -- looking at the two shows side by side suggests that most people don't notice these things. They don't see the difference between a supposed genius who doesn't build a progress report into his machine on the one hand, and a realistic chess-prodigy on the other. They don't see the difference between a show that would get an A and one that would get an F in terms of technical accuracy. People probably just like the Queen's Gambit for other reasons, and its hidden qualities are incidental. Similarly, people like this movie without realizing that it's all empty talk and no substance. Even the people who give it flag for historical inaccuracies mostly criticize that it *didn't* happen that way, not that it *couldn't have happened* this way because it's just not how any of this works.

So yeah. In conclusion, I'd say this movie sucks and also watch the Queen's Gambit.

The Queen's Gambit is a very realistic depiction of someone with an extreme talent, which is rare in film. Beyond that, it's also just really good all around -- well acted, well written, well directed.

And it's gotten me into chess. I've watched an analysis of one of her matches (they're usually based on famous historical games), and that made me want to play myself.

The first time watching this movie, my experience was one of utter bafflement and marvel at how bizarre and random everything appeared to be. The second time was one of realizing that, in fact, nothing is random. Far from arbitrary, the writing is quite tight: almost everything that happens does so for a specific purpose, and the most innocuous seeming lines turn out to be carefully crafted. Remember the sales girl saying, "it's not varnish, it's not why it smells, you should know that"? Yeah. Here's a line you're not going to forget once you understand what it means. Brutal.

This is pretty impressive. People sometimes talk about how 'everything makes sense in retrospect', but this is usually an exaggeration. i'm thinking of ending things is the only movie I know where that claim is justified. It really is the greatest change in perspective after understanding what is going on that I've ever witnessed. Shutter Island comes to mind as a distant second.

But the truth is, I can't stop thinking about the movie now that I get it. I can't stop watching scenes. It is all just so well done, especially the ending. We need more movies like this. More movies that try something that has never been done before.

Special props to the main actress; she's phenomenal.

There's something perplexing about how utterly clueless people in Hollywood are about artificial intelligence. I'm not sure if this is true about other fields as well, and I just can't tell because I'm not an expert in those (there's a real danger of not properly extrapolating from the areas you do know), or if AI is somehow special. Either way, it's perplexing.

I can partially forgive the entire consciousness package. The show pretends as if consciousness is a binary property that can be put into a system ( there are 16000 lines of code 'implementing consciousness' or whatever), and if it is, it turns the system into a mind that's essentially the same as a human. This is as far removed from reality as you can get, but at least you can argue that consciousness is very confusing. It is true, for example, that you won't get a consensus if you ask people in the field about what exactly its relationship is to AI.

What cannot be excused is the show's perpetuation of the the stereotype that AI can understand logic but not emotions because emotions are MYSTERIOUS, and only if thy has the magic light of CONSCIOUSNESS can thou understand the mystery of human emotions. In reality, not only is it not the case that AI is better at logic than emotion, but the precise opposite is empirically true, and there is no reason whatsoever to expect that this trend spontaneously reverses in the future. The most impressive AI system in the world today is GPT-3, which is a text-generating language model. I recommend googling 'why GPT-3 is good for comedy' to get a taste of it being funny. Humor and emotions are its relative strength whereas logic is its weak point (although it can answer very simple questions like 'what happens if I had invested 10$ in Bitcoin twenty years ago' if you set it up right).

I really want to double down on how embarrassing this is. There is no other field in which this kind of thing would be tolerated. If you made a movie about farming and get the basic facts about crops and farming techniques wrong, people would justifiable criticize you for that. Only when it comes to AI does everyone give people a free pass to just make up BS that is directly contradicted by the literature. It's as if AI is philosophy rather than applied mathematics. It's gross. And it's unhelpful to keep lying about this. It's not like the fact that AI can do just fine with emotions and humor is going to be lost on people as it plays a progressively bigger role in society.

As for the show itself, it's fine. It's no Black Mirror or Westworld, but it has its moments. I've watched about eight episodes before I decided that I didn't really but into the characters anymore. If it weren't so comically wrong in everything it says about AI, I'd probably give it 6 stars, but I think a -2 penalty is justified here.

Watch it if you want. But for the love of god, don't think you're learning about AI by doing so. Reverse everything the show tells you, and you're closer to the truth than you were before. If you do want to watch a movie about AI that knows its stuff, sadly the only choice I'm aware of is Ex Machina. It has its problems (not very plausible that one person builds AGI by himself), but the writers knew stuff about AI, much unlike the writers of this show.

There's nothing particularly special about what this show is - the premise isn't anything new. But it's just really good. I certainly have never seen a similar show that had anywhere near this level of writing.

Special praise to the main character. She's fantastic. Whenever bullying is portrayed in media, I almost always get annoyed at the people who are trying to help the victim (if any). This is a noticeable exception. Sofia just does the right thing, without ever saying brilliantly unhelpful things like "oh by the way I won't always be there you have to learn to take care of yourself."

And she's great in other ways, too. Likeable, believable, super fun to watch. As long as the writing doesn't degrade, I'm totally down for a second season.

As hinted at in the title, "Girl From Nowhere" is a show about a human-shaped sadistic pokémon with supernatural powers getting off on torturing other human-shaped pokémon.

As you may know, every pokémon knows a total of four moves, and the central mystery of this show revolves around the move set of Nanno, the main pokémon. The structure is a bit odd, however: all four moves are already revealed in episode 2. First, Nanno ingests a drink spiced with pills that would knock our any ordinary pokémon, yet she wakes up after just a minute with no apparent deficit to her health or psyche, thereby demonstrating that she possesses the move "Rest". Next, she gets hit over the head repeatedly by an iron shovel but suffers no injuries ("Harden"), gets buried alive but appears unharmed the next day ("Dig") and creates multiple concurrently existing copies of herself ("Copycat").

Despite having botched the Mystery plot, the show picks up in episode 3, by having Nanno interact with the well-known pokémon Mew. Nanno convinces Mew to pose as a genius artist by printing out artworks from google image search and adding some spray paint on top. In the real world, she would be found out immediately - the teacher would simply take a photo of her work, make a google search (yes, you can query an image) and find the original. However, the same does not happen this show as it takes place in Pallet Town, Kanto, a place without internet.

Then comes the twist! The school has an open house event, and Nanno convinces the school to orchestrate a live-streamed event where our non-genius student Mew is to create a painting in real time. It turns out that, despite Mew's ability to learn every TM, she was unable to learn the "paint" move in time.

If Mew were a human, she could simply say something like "I can't concentrate with an audience" and that would be that. But as a pokémon, this excuse doesn't fly (pokémon are being watched all the time and thus can't be bothered by an audience). She also can't pretend to be sick because pokémon never get sick. Instead, she takes a hammer and hurts her own right hand. A futile attempt - Nanno convinces the school that she can draw with her left hand because she once said so on Instagram. At this point, a human would have the convenient excuse of "yeah, that was a joke, sorry" but alas; pokémon never joke.

There is also a second twist: since the ending of episode 2, Kanno has learned an additional mysterious move that lets her mind control other pokémon. This is illustrated by the fact that everyone always reacts to every situation in the way that is maximally convenient for her, even if it doesn't make any sense for them do be doing so.

Anyway. Since there was no way for Mew to avoid the event, she appears on stage but is interrupted by a girl-pokémon from another school I mean gym who brought one of the original paintings she plagiarized. It literally looks exactly the same but without the out-of-place spray paint. Unfortunately for her, the director declares that they don't look similar at all. And in case you're wondering: there is no newspaper in Pallet Town, so there won't be a big story where both versions of the picture are printed side-by-side on the front page.

Okay, enough of this. I think you get the idea.

I've only watched episodes 1-3 of this show, which I actually enjoyed based on just how over the top they are. Kanno is straight-forwardly evil and all powerful; the only times she ever displays emotion is when she laughs a the misery she's caused to others, and everything always works out exactly the way she intended it. She is never challenged or has to adapt her behavior. But that's not my problem -- my problem is the baffling disregard for how the real world actually operates (that extends beyond the fact that Kanno has supernatural abilities). This would be a far better show if Kanno pulled of similar things in the real world rather than in a strange world populated entirely by caricatures.

Here's an example: at one point in episode 3, Mew brings her first plagiarized image to the school but gets scared last minute and doesn't want to show it. Kanno, who wants her to show it to get her plot rolling, publicly declares that she thinks it's very good. Now, you could argue it's realistic that the teacher demands to see it - it's school, you don't have a right to privacy for what you've created. But her precise reaction is completely unrealistic. She just goes, "Kanno says your painting is good, therefore I now demand to see it." It just shows such a baffling ineptness for human psychology (hence the pokémon joke). It feels like something written by an autistic teenager with a fetish for powerful highschool girls. Maybe it literally is? Either way, the show is incapable of predicting how social situations actually play out in the real world, to a degree that I've never witnessed anywhere else. People often say that anime is autistic, but this show is genuinely more autistic than any anime I've ever seen.

I've never seen a movie which treats the viewer with as much respect as this one. There is no exposition, no hints to make sure you can keep track of what's going on. Every conversation is written for the characters, not for the viewer. And the scenes of nudity - they are neither drawn out or overplayed, nor is the movie coy about them. Everything just is. It's truly extraordinary.

Furthermore, the main character is extremely likeable. She's smart, direct, honest, open, and well-acted. With this directing style and that kind of protagonist, I would probably give it a positive score even if the story was completely boring. Which is not the case at all - the story, just like the rest of the movie, is unconcerned with tropes. Highly unpredictable, highly authentic.

As you can tell, I appreciate this style of directing a lot. More movies should be like this. It might even be a 9 - I've given it an 8 because the watching experience wasn't mind blowing, but it feels like the kind of thing that I will probably appreciate more over time. The plot is definitely worth thinking about.

Edit: I am changing it to a 9/10, and I think I figured out what the plot is about.

At first glance, it is merely a mystery.

At second glance, you might guess that Maureen died at the scene in the hotel. Ingo, who was probably also the one who texted her, has killed both her and Kyra. In the scenes where doors are opening and closing by themselves, it is really her ghost walking out.

But this is a bad theory. Why is it bad? Because a theory should explain the strange things that happen, and this theory explains almost nothing. Yes, it fits the doors opening and closing. But that is the only thing it explains. It doesn't explain who texted her (they knew things about her that Ingo wouldn't know). It doesn't tie into the specter she encounters in her brother's house. And it doesn't explain the ending at all. Worse still, the one data point which fits well is contradicted in the next scene. She is clearly visible to other people. Yes, perhaps her soul is still here for a while. But then, why would she be invisible in the first place? No matter how you look at it, it doesn't explain the movie well. If this theory was correct, then the plot would be poorly constructed.

Here is what I think really happened. Maureen is distraught about her brother's loss. A part of her can't let go. Because she is a medium, that part has taken on a form of its own. The specter is her. The person messaging her, it's her. The doors opening and closing - it is her, but it is the separate part of her that has been separate all along. Maureen didn't die. She's still alive at the end of the movie. The ghost she encounters then; it's her again.

This theory explains almost everything. It explains why the messenger knew her as well as they did. It explains why it started right after the specter appeared. It explains why it wanted her to do forbidden things. It explains the doors opening and closing on their own, despite Maureen being visible in the next scene. And it explains the ending.

Also, notice that the hotel room was booked under her own name. With this theory, this is literally accurate.

It's not obvious what happened with Ingo. Maybe she made him kill her. But more likely he acted by himself, and then the specter decided to steal the jewelry.

But despite this one loose end, it is the far better explanation. Most of what happens fits into it, the key moments of the movie obtain meaning, and the beginning and ending ties it all together. Her brother's spirit is still there; we see him at some point. He has emotional importance for her. But the one whom she encounters at the beginning, at the second scene in the house, during the text messages, in the hotel, and at the end - it is all the specter, who is a part of herself.

La trêve is a strange beast. The problem I have with this show is one that I almost never have, and conversely, most of the problems I frequently have do not apply to this show.

Let me first list some of what's good, because there's plenty. The writing feels fresh and authentic, nothing is cheesy or over-the-top, and the main character is miles away from being a typical hero character, or indeed a typical character of any kind. The show understands that different people see thew world fundamentally differently, and that this is reflected in almost everything they do. As a consequence, most of its characters feel highly believable.

And the landscape shots deserve special praise. There are so many wide-range camera shots in this show, and I'm super into it. They're amazingly beautiful. I especially love how, even though they were already common in season 1, the second season totally doubles down and adds them even more frequently. They never stopped being gorgeous.

The problem then, simply put, is that the show is too tragic. I don't generally mind stories being tragic, hence why I said I almost never have this complaint. But this show is -unnecessarily- tragic. It goes out its way to be tragic. It's tragic even at the expense of making sense. In both seasons, but particularly the second, the ending is basically optimized to be as tragic as possible It's just too much. It's way too much. The series finale is just absolutely horrific and miserable, and it was neither necessary nor called for. It wasn't even a plausible way for events to occur. It doesn't feel earned, it just feels unnecessary.

To a lesser extent, I also took some issue with the ostensibly supernatural elements in the second season. They were quite out of place.

There are no major twists in this story, and the entire premise is fairly straight-forward. Despite that, it is great. A school shooting such as this naturally has enough complexity and drama to carry a story - one only needs to make it all feel real, then further elements are unnecessary.

And this is where Quicksand succeeds. Every element is competently made. Everything is grounded and believable - even though I am ignorant on the details of the Swedish justice system, nothing I've seen makes be doubt that it could take place this way. The characters are solid, everything they do is understandable. Particular credit goes to the main actress, who gives a perfectly convincing performance of a difficult role.

The final product feels extremely authentic, and I appreciate that a lot.

The best way to understand the problem with Sherlock is by comparing it to the anime Death Note. Both shows feature a "genius" detective, a man who displays an extremely high level of skill in his work. But whereas L is all around one of the greatest characters I have ever seen, Sherlock is, bluntly put, awful.

Why is that? Well, Both Sherlock and L are great at solving crime, but that is about where the similarity stops. With L, you have a character who demonstrates his intelligence every time he is on screen. His conclusions upon reviewing evidence are always understandable: you usually agree once you hear it, and you can see how they follow from the facts (but you may have trouble making the same deductions yourself). Similar things are true for the plans he comes up with. They're effective in reaching their goals, and they're not any more complicated than they need to be. Furthermore, you usually won't come up with something else that works better. This is what I would call an honest display of intelligence. L's plans are not clever because the script says so; they just *are* clever.

Writing a character like that requires the writer to be clever too, because otherwise they couldn't come up with these things. The only way to have your character make clever deductions is by making these deductions yourself. You can take more time doing it, so perhaps you can write someone just a little smarter than you are, but that's about it.

Then there are a lot of neat details, like how L sits, or how he holds stuff, how he has really poor posture, or how he has his assistant always go around giving everybody sweets. You can tell that there was real thought put into how such a person would live. This is why everything he does has so much gravity.

Sherlock, on the other hand, is in the running for the most naive conception of a genius I have ever seen in film. He has one super power, which is looking at someone and then "deducing" a variety of things about her or him, which normal people would miss. One problem with this is that his deductions are probably logically impossible. (By this, I mean that they probably don't follow from the facts on display even given infinite deductive power. Another way to say this is that there would be a different set of conclusions for which there exists an equally valid justification. "Hindsight bias" is a relevant concept here.) If true, this means it is not an honest display of intelligence, rather he's clever because the script declares that he is clever. The writers simply decide that every time he does his crazy deductions, they are correct, even if the evidence present wasn't enough to rule out alternative deductions.

But that's only the small problem. The big problem is that he isn't intelligent outside of his superpower. In fact, he's kind of a moron. In the first episode, he missed the big plot twist, which is something that I immediately thought of while watching. Think about that! Of course, just one minute later he will make deductions that exceed my abilities by some astronomical factor. But that's it: he's not smart, he's an idiot with a superpower... or, if we're being generous, an average guy with a superpower. He's the result of someone who isn't that smart themselves trying to write a genius. I've said early that you have to be about as smart as your character in order for you write him believably, and here we see what happens if you try to violate that rule. Sherlock is the result of someone writing a character who is supposed to be far smarter than themselves. They had some caricature in their head of what "genius" detective would be able to do, which is itself incorrect, and then they didn't extend it to every other situation.

The result: someone who is ridiculously overpowered in one very narrow domain and fairly average everywhere else. If Sherlock's abilities were genuine, he would actually be smarter than L; nothing L does reaches to that level. But it's a moot point, because as a matter of fact, L behaves more intelligently 99% of the time.

If you have not done so, watch Death Note. Notice how the the script deals with him differently. Notice how everything he concludes is actually supported by the situation. Bask in the joy of watching an *actual* genius at work. Because this show, this character, this isn't it.