leftbanker-1 Reviews (666)

Hoarders (2009– )

Are You Kidding?

[1/10 · 30 May 2023]

How is this entertainment? It's basically people picking over the garbage of severely mentally ill people who have no control over their lives. What is astounding to me is that this series is now into its 14th season. It seems like it must be the same thing, episode after episode. Maybe they should make it a competitive series, like who can be the most disgusting human being on the planet.

It's hilarious that IMDb requires contributors to state whether or not their review contains spoilers. Here's a spoiler: watching this will turn your brain into a place as filthy and useless as the piles of trash these folks call home.

John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023)

Itchy and Scratchy: The Movie...again and again

[1/10 · 27 May 2023]

He fights and bites, he fights and bites and fights. Fight, fight fight, bite, bite, bite, it's John Wick, the silliest action movie franchise in history...and it runs 2h49m so there's a lot of extra fighting and biting.

Serial killer John Wick is at it again, folks. They should have a graphic in the top right corner of the screen counting how many people he kills in every movie. If watching this doesn't make your brain hurt, you may need to get yours fixed.

There can be zero tension in an action movie when there is this much carnage going on. If the hero always comes through, no matter how daunting the odds are against him, why bother watching? Just fast-forward to the end, or stand up and walk out of the theater.

FUBAR (2023– )

Stopped Watching After the First Scene

[1/10 · 26 May 2023]

In the very first scene, there is this very elaborate plan where Arnie has to change into fireman's gear, jump on a moving firetruck racing through the streets of Antwerp, and then he jumps off as it speeds away. Then Arnie removes a manhole cover and drops below the street. Why didn't he just walk up to the manhole calmly and do the same thing. It maed ZERO sense. The "Diamond District" is not that secure and there are countless other, less dangerous, less stupid ways to do the same thing.

If you're going to make a new, slick vehicle for Arnie, it wouldn't hurt to make sense, at least a little. Or you can just hop from one poorly-written action sequence to the next.

Headless Chickens (2023)

A Good View of Pro Football

[8/10 · 13 May 2023]

I'm never one to complain about the bad ratings a series or movie earns here in IMDb, but this series isn't bad at all and gives an inside look at football. I just finished EP03 and it was a blast, the best of the three I've seen so far. I thought his former teammate and superannuated player was a great character and a lot of fun. The Brazilian diva is a riot and steps right out of the pages of Marca, or whatever football rag you read.

An ex-footballer making his way as an agent whose best prospect dumped him for a more powerful broker, and now he's holding the hand of a diva on the skids because of poor behavior. Sound familiar?

Maybe the poor reviews are people watching the dubbed version of this, something I'd never do, preferring to read subtitles and listen to the real voices, even in a language I know nothing about. I speak Spanish, so, of course, I'm watching this in the original (I just wish they had Spanish subtitles available as I miss some of the slang).

I'm sticking with this.

King Charles: The Boy Who Walked Alone (2023– )

It's 2023. Why Are We Talking About Royalty?

[1/10 · 3 May 2023]

The idea of royalty in this day and age is pure filth. To say that anyone is in any way better than anyone else simply by the accident of their birth goes against every idea of equality. All men are created equal (and by "men" we mean Homo sapiens). Period. I can't believe that people are expected to take this half-wit seriously simply because he fell out of a womb that other people thought of as superior. How much longer are we going to continue with this medieval rubbish? The guy is a billionaire yet he's asking Brits to volunteer service to help others. Why doesn't he donate a few hundred million to help the poor?

Let's encourage societies to promote people on merit and not by the accident of birth.

The Last Thing He Told Me (2023)

Yet Another Tale of a Woman Who Doesn't Know the Man She Married

[3/10 · 16 April 2023]

I wish that I had a nickel for every book and movie I've come across with this theme. My advice to these women, do a better job of vetting the dude before you enter into a legal contract.

I read the book and didn't like it at all. I thought I'd see if someone could improve on it with a series. Good cooks say that you must begin with good ingredients, but sometimes good films come from mediocre books. The book was slow and boring, this series is glacial. Much of the "action" is two dimwits walking around trying to remember something. If that's your idea of a good series, you'll love this.

We begin with a horrible teenager who needs to have the teeth slapped out of her head. What adult would allow a question they pose to be dismissed by "Whatever?" Whatever is a synonym of "F#$k off" and if you'd allow a child to talk to you using that sort of language, you deserve to have a miserable child. What kind of parent would allow this level of disrespect from their own offspring? And what sort of monster would result from this kid's level of venom? I was bored with the series, but the kid drove me away for good.

"Protect her." What the heck kind of note is that? If the husband has time to write a note, write a real note with clear instructions instead of two words he'd scream as he'd just been pushed out of a tenth story window. The book never had a clear explanation as to why the dad couldn't call, or why he left such a short, cryptic, stupid note. The wife has no idea what's happening and "protect her" could mean buying sunscreen for the lippy brat, or drive carefully when the the kid is onboard.

And speaking of lippy brats, is that the only model of teenager these days? I see this same archetype in every movie and TV series, the Meadow Soprano version of youth. Maybe teenage girls enjoy this character, but most people cringe at this.

Who would puke as a reaction to a bag of money showing up in their step-daughter's school locker? I could think of a million responses with puking being in last place. Just saying.

If you are wondering why this series is so, so slow, it's because nothing much happens, or will happen. I read the book not too long ago and I can't recall a single exciting thing that happens in the entire story, unless you count the completely ridiculous and sudden end of the story. Even in the first episode you can see that they're really dragging this thing out because they have so little to say.

Giuliani: What Happened to America's Mayor? (2023)

Rudy: the Half-Witted Enemy of Democracy

[10/10 · 16 April 2023]

First of all, he was never "America's mayor. I cringed every time they showed that banner. Just because he happened to be mayor of NYC on 9/11, doesn't make him anything but the mayor of NYC. He never really did anything besides not running around screaming in a panic. He got a lot of credit for no reason whatsoever, so enough about America's mayor. It was simply a nickname someone thought was catchy, probably a TV reporter.

Then he began sniffing up to Trump after Trump humiliated him on several occasions during the run-up to the 2016 election. Then came Trump's huge lies of election fraud in 2020, not one bit of his avalanche of filth had a shred of evidence and every sane person has washed their hands of the mess, everyone except Rudy the moron who has continued to embarrass himself again and again and will probably end up behind bars, just like his buddy, the ex-prez.

This series isn't all Anti-Giuliani as many praise his efforts against the mafia when he was the D. A. in NY, but he was mostly a creep. Now he's so disturbed that he probably needs professional help, or a prison cell--sort of the same thing.

Florida Man (2023)

Jumps the Shark Early in E01

[1/10 · 13 April 2023]

Maybe this series rises above One Star, but I can't be bothered to stay in the game that long. It got stupid really early on, stupid and ridiculous. When he saves the girl and then gets bitten by the shark, this is when it jumped the shark for me. It was just so stupid and pointless and had nothing to add to the plot. The same goes for his sister and her family with the malcontent teen daughter.

I held my nose and made it through the first episode, but with some serious questions. A question like how could a cop not know the difference between a dead person and someone acting dead? That was just too stupid and was stupidly explained at the beginning of E02. I couldn't go on after that.

Beef (2023– )

Two Stories that Together Make Zero Sense

[3/10 · 7 April 2023]

The series begins with a stupid premise, so if it continues to build on that, I don't see much hope for a story that'll be worth watching. A road rage incident? Try growing the hell up. What kind of an ignorant child flips out over a car horn? Ride a bike, take the bus, or walk. Both drivers put the lives of many other people in danger because of a pathetic macho outburst.

On the one side, there is a rich Asian couple with White People Problems, i.e. Money, or I should say lots of money. Whether or not they should sell a chair for $100,000. On the other side, there is a kid who thinks he's some sort of boy in the hood gangster complete with gangster friend. Mix both of these silly worlds with a really stupid road rage incident (a honked horn) and what happens next is even stupider. Two episodes in and I don't get it, not even a little bit except that the two protagonists need serious therapy for anger management. She shouldn't have a gun. Period.

The woman isn't much of an actress yet she's plastered all over the screen most of the time making horrible facial expressions. Whatever dynamic they are going for with these characters just isn't hitting the mark. Why don't they just get it over and kill each other over a childish incident?

The White woman plays the role of villain, I guess, but the story is such a complete mess that it's impossible to follow or keep score. And we get back to the road rage incident, although videos of this nature flood the internet, this one case (where nothing much really happened) seems to be in the consciousness of every person.

A flimsy premise to carry a series.

Honest to God (2022)

The Entire Movie is in the Trailer, So Why Bother?

[1/10 · 27 March 2023]

It's impossible to write a spoiler for this movie as you see the whole plot unfold in the trailer. A man is diagnosed with a terminal illness, then recovers, and now he has to make good on his promises to his God, Hare Krishna or whatever.

There isn't a solid, adult joke in the trailer, so that bodes poorly for the rest of the project. This will appeal to people who believe that there is a higher power out there that gives two cents about their sad little lives grasping for wisdom in a sorry book written thousands of years ago by flea-ridden cave dwellers. If that sounds like you, this is the movie for you. If you read other types of books that explore the infinite possibilities of the human mind, don't even bother watching the trailer for "Honest to God."

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

Either a 10 Star or a 1 Star Rating - No Middle Ground

[1/10 · 11 March 2023]

IN A WORLD...where diversity and inclusion matter more than quality or even making sense, this is what rises to the top of the heap. Reviewers and award presenters are falling all over themselves slobbering over this movie. I tried to watch it when it first came out and it was just too silly and stupid to get through more than a few minutes. I tried harder this time, but I still couldn't make it to the end.

Everything Everywhere All at Once took 3:29 to introduce a lesbian scene. And then shortly after, the daughter mentions that her girlfriend can also serve to check off another box in the diversity bingo game we're all playing these days in TV and movies.

"She's half Mexican." She chimed in at the 5:50 mark. Why not give her one more inclusivity* attribute to win the trifecta? They could ring a bell to celebrate.

(*Ha, this recently-invented word, "inclusivity," is so new that it flagged the spell-check on this site).

I have nothing at all against inclusivity and diversity, just don't throw your arm out of the socket patting yourself on the back about it. All it took was a stroke of a pen, so you haven't really done anything. Why do cultural warriors always act like they've been down in the trenches fighting? Furthermore, diversity may lead to equality, something any thinking person favors, but diversity, in itself is not quality. You include representatives of every racial and ethnic group, along with every sexual persuasion on the planet and the movie can still be stupid. For me, this movie was unwatchably stupid.

Joyless people working themselves to death for no apparent reason. Are they starving to death? Why would anyone kill themselves over a laundromat, and evidently, they're stiffing the IRS on their taxes. Sorry, folks, that's part of our system.

The woman is either a terrible actress, or the director doesn't understand acting beyond a childish level of the art, or both. I defy anyone to watch this with the sound muted and just study her ridiculously-exaggerated facial expressions and then tell me she can act.

White lady bad. The tax woman is actually shown as evil, a grotesque slob who is attacked physically, but that's OK because she's a white lady. Wow, nice reverse stereotyping. You'd better be able to take a joke if you are Caucasian these days (wait, can I even say Caucasian?) because White people are awful according to the new rules. A bunch of IRS security guards are viciously brutalized, but that's OK, too, because they are white, or white-ish (even their uniforms are white for the subtlety-impaired).

Here's the thing, I CAN take a joke, I really can. I just don't have to laugh at them if they aren't funny, or if they don't make any sense at all, like everything in this film. The "alphaverse" and "verse jumping" that this movie throws at the audience could be described as infantile and stupid, at least by me, but a lot of folks are eating this up as fast as it can be shoved down their throats.

Furthermore, at 2h 19m it's way too long.

A Man Called Otto (2022)

A Creep Called Otto

[6/10 · 1 March 2023]

More than anything, Otto is craps at offing himself. For all of his abhorrence for incompetence, he was really bad at that. I read the book, then watched the Swedish film, and now this one and I'm left with one thought: if Otto's wife was so wonderful and he was such so uxorious back when she was living, he became and inexcusably rude creep after she croaked.

He can't even be bothered to say hello to people and suddenly he becomes a real human being at the drop of the hat. I don't think it works like that and the whole transformation was just too facile in all three versions. What saves all three versions is the empathy present in the title character. I just think he would have had more of it earlier instead of being an insufferable gasbag.

Keeping Up with the Aristocrats (2022)

Where Did We Put Those Guillotines?

[1/10 · 22 February 2023]

What a load of useless filth these people are, creeps who haven't done a decent day's work in generations. "All men are created equal" are five words worth fighting and killing for, and maybe a good place to start would be these worthless royals, or whatever they are.

Sickening excess as a lifestyle isn't something to be admired. It should bring about revulsion and anger. It's this crowd who are to blame for Britain's appalling decline and why this is one of the worst places to live in Europe. So much of the country now looks like Belarus or Poland than a modern, European social democracy.

Throw them out, tax them into submission and the sooner the better.

Station Eleven (2021–2022)

Stop Telling People to Ignore the Bad Reviews!

[1/10 · 19 February 2023]

I really don't enjoy hate-watching or hate-reading, but sometimes I'm forced into it by public opinion. When so many people rave so much about a book or series (or both, in this case), I feel compelled to give it another chance. I tried to watch this when it was released. Just couldn't get through even two episodes. I read the book with a clothespin over my nose for the entire 300 pages. I just don't get it.'

Just like in the book, I thought the opening was just creepy. Why would an adult male feel the need to escort a child home, a child he doesn't know? As if introducing himself makes him any less creepy. Then pushing six shopping carts through the snow was annoying to watch and took way too long. $9,417. 56 for some junk food? How does that happen unless he has like twenty bottles of Crystal champagne in one of the carts? A small point, but still annoying. Why show a price if you have no freaking idea how much groceries cost?

So, it's the end of the world and all that remains is a troupe of smelly hippies? No thanks. I hated the book so there's not much chance that this series would have turned my thinking around. This is just one of those cultural phenomena that I just don't understand, not even a little, like I have to ask myself if I'm reading / watching the same thing as so many others.

"What if a wolf ate the baby?"

Is this some sort of allegory or metaphor or symbolism, or just really stupid dialogue? Horses pulling huge formerly-motorized vehicles? Sort of cruel and just about any other sort of wheeled thing would have been lighter, and if the went downhill, the horses would be run over as none of these ignorant hippies could possibly be expected to repair the brakes.

The whole skipping back and forth in time made me seasick. I don't find this technique interesting in the least, and it's over-use here was thoroughly annoying and confusing. And don't make me read text messages.

Which of the smelly hippies was the most annoying for me? That would have to be the bald, composer troll. But more annoying was the fact that so little happens, there's so little about the end of the world or the results of a humanity-ending pandemic. Instead, we get a soap opera with mild hints of dystopia with swaths of Shakespeare thrown in to impress, and bad music. The only nod to the dystopian world they inhabit is that they wear dirty clothes and don't comb their hair.

Ep03 started to pick up with Miranda's escape from Indonesia, but then it was quickly rerailed by a boring dinner party and Arthur violating her precious privacy by showing her stupid book to someone. Didn't get this part and didn't care. An end of the world love story? Yawn!

And her partner Jim was just a moron. Of course, because he's a white male and they're all morons. All of the score keeping was just so obvious: diversity good, White bad and foolish, or worse. Violent, murderous.

Old (2021)

Old and Stupid and Too Long

[1/10 · 29 January 2023]

"Visionary filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan." I laughed when I read that. He's an awful filmmaker and needs to grow up and stop it with the stories the rest of us left behind in preadolescence. Graphic novels are mostly Creepy with drawings which don't improve the childish stories. I can't believe that anyone liked this movie, even M. Night's mom.

The acting was mostly terrible in this, especially the children and all of the unknown actors, and that is the fault of the director. Either keep shooting until they get it right, or drop the scene or the actor, or don't let them speak because they have no talent.

If I'd seen this in at the cinema, I would have been embarrassed to have paid to watch this thing, embarrassed to see myself among other fools who watched it.

The Godfather (1972)

A Personal Anecdote

[10/10 · 27 January 2023]

I can't believe with 652 of my unlettered reviews on IMDb, I've never written about The Godfather, the best movie ever made, maybe. What brings me out here on this occasion is my second viewing of the superb TV series The Offer which has done so much to heap even more praise on the Mario Puzo-Francis Ford Coppola film, not that it needed it.

I remember before I'd even seen the movie, I heard talk of it, especially the horse head scene. I would have been about fifteen years old, and although I can't even remember when I saw the film for the first time. I remember how everyone in the world was reading the novel back then, as people used to do, you know, read. The series also talks a lot about the movie Love Story, another film that came from a novel that EVERYONE was reading back then.

I have nothing new to say about The Godfather except to throw in a personal anecdote.

This must have been back in about 1989 on a Thursday evening. We were at a friend's house; I think we were three couples. We were having a beer before going out with The Godfather on the TV. We'd all seen it countless times by then, but we found ourselves riveted once again. We weren't in any big hurry to leave with nothing important going on that night, certainly nothing more important than watching this great film for the umpteenth time.

We may have already had our coats on when the film approached the pivotal moment when Michael is taken to the Louis Italian-American Restaurant when the screen went blank and a message appeared: To Be Continued Tomorrow Evening. We all let out a gasp. Then we took decisive action.

One of us headed out to the video store (remember those?), someone else went out for beer and wine, and someone ordered pizza. We stayed in and watched the second half. Who needs to go out?

Midnight Diner (2009–2014)

Visual Comfort Food

[10/10 · 22 January 2023]

These short, sweet episodes are perfect for filling small gaps of time when you can't invest in a longer production. You'll go away feeling happy, like you do after a good meal. They are like little modern fairy tales with a moral and a happy ending.

The can also act like a palette cleanser after you watch something truly awful, and there's so much of that out there.

I've never been to Japan, never thought about it much before, but these stories and the food make me want to pack up and move to some hidden corner of Tokyo.

We have a joint in my neighborhood similar to the place in this series called Café Saxo. It's also run by one guy and he keeps a very limited menu. He basically just prepares what he feels like cooking and it's always exceptional. He always has jamón serrano at the bar. It's also open until the wee hours of the morning. And it has an eclectic clientele. Check it out if you come to Valencia.

Last Holiday (2006)

I Wanted to Like this, But the Message is Destructive

[3/10 · 18 January 2023]

First of all. The movie is too long. It's supposed to be a light-hearted comedy which means nothing more than ninety minutes.

The message of idolizing the rich is an enemy of the people.

What is supposed to be a nice, feel-good movie is really a class war in disguise. It's just another salvo fired at the lower ninety percent of us sent by the rich. Its purpose is for all of us peasants to look up to the wealthy. Even though the proletariat woman is the hero in this fairy tale, the goal is to live a life of extreme, ridiculous luxury. That shouldn't be appealing to us, we should find this excess to be sickening.

If I had a couple of months to live, I wouldn't want to spend it around rich, conniving creeps. We shouldn't admire the hyper-rich, we should be dismantling their power and take them all down several notches. It's called taxation and they have been stacking the deck in their favor.

Speaking of taxation, gambling is simply a tax against the poor, or another way to rob people of the money they earn through their labor. In the big scheme, no one who gambles wins. The house wins every time. This goes the same regarding religion, another thing the movie plays up. The new opiates of the masses: religion and gambling.

While this film had some nice performances, the villain was just way too stereotypical and cliché.

What the Health (2017)

Vegan Hippy Cherry-Picks His Way Back to His Original Opinion

[1/10 · 10 January 2023]

I saw the hippie director on a panel discussion where he didn't defend himself very well and was insulting to other panel guests who disagreed with his brand of orthodoxy. In this hard-to-watch film, he loads it with the gotcha moments in which he ambushes some minimum wage slob at a health organization, asking them scientific questions as if scientists were answering the phones.

He asks an operator at one foundation why they didn't refer to a study that he supported. Does this idiot have any idea of how many "studies" are published about health and nutrition each year? Most of them are hogwash. Every single "expert" in this film is saying something that is the complete opposite of what other researchers are saying. So, who are we supposed to believe? He interviews doctors who are still talking about dietary cholesterol as a leading cause of heart disease, a myth that was never backed by science and has since been shot down by an avalanche of research.

Doctors have been telling us lies, untruths, and unsubstantiated malarky for decades. He definitely cherry picks his "experts" while giving no voice to those on the other side. To see the flip side of what this documentary is selling, I suggest you watch Fat Fiction, available on YouTube.

He interviews several very morbidly unhealthy people who he infers are the way they are because they ate meat or dairy. Maybe these people have never exercised in their lives, or perhaps they had lousy diets. We don't know because he didn't bother to ask them, we're let to assume their ill health is due to the BS he's heaping on us in this film.

His panel of experts include several "registered dietitians," what ever that is. They aren't researchers, they are only passing on whatever they learned at community college. He has several lawyers lecturing us on food science.

Nightcrawler (2014)

Best Criminal Since Tom Ripley

[10/10 · 27 December 2022]

Lou Bloom and Tom Ripley have so much in common: both are smart and driven by ambition, unafraid and unconcerned with anything that stands between them and getting exactly what they want.

This movie is a noir thriller, the type that doesn't come around often. What is noir? Noir stories typically feature gritty urban settings, morally compromised protagonists, dark mysteries, and a bleak outlook on human nature. This story checks all of those boxes. Lou Bloom is one seriously morally compromised dude, yet as we do with Tom Ripley, we want him to succeed. I doubt a single viewer is rooting for the police to stop him. What is wrong with us?

"What if my problem wasn't that I don't understand people, but I don't like them?"

I love this line. Lou Bloom, like Patricia Highsmith's creation, understands people too well. He uses the weaknesses in others to make those faults his assets. If Lou needs to make this happen through violence, they that's how he does it. Like Ripley, Lou is a very quick study and goes from inept amateur to master manipulator in the shortest apprenticeship imaginable. It's easy when you love what you do, as he'd tell you.

It's pure brilliance how the movie shows Lou creating the tension and suspense as a product to be sold to the public. As the audience to this film, we see him doing it in real-time.

Hart to Heart (2021– )

Dick Cavett He Ain't

[1/10 · 23 December 2022]

First of all, I just don't care enough about the guests to be entertained this long hearing about their lives. I think the standard few minutes of talk shows is more than adequate to hear what Miley Cyrus or whoever has to say. I didn't know several of the guests (not that I bothered watching the show) but one is described on her IMDb bio as being "a strong believer in God."

Kevin Hart is really not qualified for the job. He isn't very articulate and he doesn't seem to have a lot of experience to draw on when asking questions. Go watch David Cavett reruns on YouTube and you'll be rewarded. That guy could really do an interview.

Yellowstone (2018–2023)

I Don't Get It

[1/10 · 20 December 2022]

Review of S01E01:

I read many of the Ten Star reviews of this series and none of them articulated in any meaningful way why this show is worth watching, just lots of "great acting" and "great writing" with nothing in the way of specifics.

I don't get the first episode, and I definitely don't get the insanely high rating for this series.

I've tried twice to make it through the very first episode of Yellowstone. I won't say that the third time was a charm because I didn't find it charming-or entertaining-in the least, nor did it make any sense, but I made it to the end. There is so much back-story thrown at the viewer that you need to have a scorecard to keep track of the plotlines and character.

First, we meet John Dutton, the family patriarch and horse murderer. He seemed to have walked away from some sort of horrific traffic mishap, but this isn't explained. Sutton tells developer Dan that Jenkins owes him a horse. Is this about the traffic mishap? And doesn't Dutton remember that he shot the horse?

Next, we get two scenes that paint the daughter as a viper. Got it. She's a huge hag. Hates horses. Then she has sex with someone I figured to be her brother as John Dutton was schooling him on how to be a cowboy, but it turns out this is Rip, a hired hand with a small weenier, at least according to the daughter. They introduced so many characters in the first episode that I couldn't tell them apart, and bot the son and Rip look very similar.

Next, we have the estranged son, Kayce, who is married to an Indian and seems to be working for the Indians except when he's killing them or executing them as he did with one guy. He has a son but has kept him from his grandfather, John Sutton. All we know of the relationship between Sutton and Kayce is that Sutton told him to leave, and Kayce left. No reasons given. He's some sort of war hero.

For a story, a handful of cows strayed on to an Indian reservation and the Indians don't want to give them back. Range war ensues but is called off at the last minute by Dutton when he sees his estranged son working with the Indians. Another clichéd plotline is the housing development cooked up by the evil outsider (I think they refer to non-Montanans as transfers, as if they aren't even American).. The U. S. Army Corps of Engineers has nothing on a couple of quasi-literate ranch hands who divert a mountain river with a few sticks of dynamite. Impossible is nothing in Taylor Sheridan productions as most of his work is reality-defyng.

Is this about right so far?

I don't like anyone in this episode, and don't see why I ever would. Sutton is a power-hungry creep with a ranch "as big as New Hampshire" according to one guy. Why we would allow anyone to own that much of the earth's surface is a crime in itself.

Review of S01E02:

It starts off ridiculous as can be: they duct tape an inexperienced kid to a wild stallion. I know nothing about horses, and don't care to know, but I'm almost positive that this is a stupid thing to do bordering on murder.

The next scene is a mentally handicapped guy trying to pull a one-meter wide stump out of the ground with a tractor, then he blows it up with a plastic bucket of something that he ignites by shooting it with a rifle, which I'm not sure would work. It leaves behind a crater like a 500 pound bomb from a B52 strike. Wow, this show is truly stupid.

What really gets stupid is the story. A Sutton son killed, Indian executed, and an investigation led by morons. The only thing dumber is the dialogue, like this attempt to sound heavy:

"Do it fast. This is the kind of ship that sinks everyone."

"That's the only kind of ship I ever find myself on."

Stupid, especially when you consider that his dad is the richest man in the state, so he was born with silver spoons stuck in every bodily orifice, not just his mouth.

The direction is also way to invested in the new trend of filming so much of it in extremely low light making black the color of about ninety-five percent of the screen. If you don't like images, maybe you should try radio.

Children in the forties who act like pre-teens is enough evidence to condemn John Dutton to donating everything he has to support abortion.

He drives by exactly when the meth lab blows up. Coincidences are the absolute laziest trick in writing. Why would a guy cook meth in rural Montana two meters off of a road? I thought the whole reason people lived out there was to get away from it all. He may as well put his trailer in the parking lot at Walmart. It was the dumbest plot fabrication so far in these two episodes I've suffered through, and that's saying a lot.

Then he mercy shoots a scumbag who deserves to die in agony after blowing up his family? He could have covered the guy's face and he would have suffocated. Just an incredibly stupid thing to do and a worse thing to write into a script. So he's executed two people in twenty-four hours. He also implicated his wife in the killing. Then the cop is going to admit that he did it? There is no "mercy killing" law in the USA. What he did was murder, plain and simple. It wasn't the right thing to do.

People who like this show must have a high tolerance for non-reality based stories. The writers just introduce random acts of violence just to jerk around the audience without there being any logical reason for these acts. Either people get hurt or animals die right and left, and there's nothing at all clever about how they do it.

That's it for me. I'm tapping out after two episodes.

The One in Charge (2022– )

My Favorite Spanish Series Ever!

[10/10 · 13 December 2022]

This is a lot of fun and a great idea that I'm sure will be redone for the American audience. The sometimes sinister, sometimes macabre, and always Machiavellian machinations of Eliseo, the thirty-year concierge of a posh high-rise tower who is about to be tossed out in order to make room and money for a roof-top swimming pool for the residents.

Eliseo is the obvious underdog and the guy we are rooting for as he scrambles undercover to sway residents against the vote for the pool project. But Eliseo's methods and tactics become increasingly evil. He proves again and again that he's a fantastic doorman and a jack of all trades, but his real talent is in deception and intrigue to the point that I half-expect in the final episode to have a CIA representative meet with him and recruit the handyman for service in the spy world.

Although I rate this series at Ten Stars, it could have been much better, funnier, and with better writing, but I'm thoroughly enjoying it thus far (eight episodes).

The White Lotus (2021–2024)

What's There to Like in This Series?

[1/10 · 9 December 2022]

There isn't a single person to like in this entire series. I need at least one person to like, even if they are awful. Instead, we get an entire cast of people you wouldn't want to share an elevator ride with, let alone a six episode series. And almost nothing happens.

I tried to watch this when it was first released and couldn't make it through an episode. I forgot about it until I heard friends saying how much they enjoyed it so I gave it another go. Nope. Hated it. There isn't a single memorable scene or bit of dialogue in the first season. Not one. Every single character is stupid, boring, and pointless. If I had to listen to the guy complaining about not getting the room he paid for I would have thrown my TV out the window. Instead, I just fast-forwarded.

There wasn't a word of clever dialogue and nothing that even approached humor. So why do people like this? I don't need six long episodes to tell me that rich people are creeps.

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

Scumbags Are Admirable? Is That the Message? Behind Every Great Fortune is a Crime!

[4/10 · 27 November 2022]

I'm just now getting around to finally plowing through this steaming pile until the end of its bloated three hour runtime. I tried to watch it years ago and my better instincts told me it wasn't worth it. It's not, it really isn't worth watching.

If this film has a point, I doubt it was what the director was after, because what I got out of TWOWS was that it's cool to have lots of money, whores, and blow. It's almost three hours of lifestyle porn, literally and figuratively. We are made to admire this guy, which is completely sickening, even if it is fiction, which it is about ninety-five percent.

Almost every single scene went on WAY longer than was necessary, which made this thing run three hours. Did I mention it runs three hours? I got a cramp in my finger hitting the fast-forward so much.

In the end, we see him as an extraordinary salesman. I've never been a salesman, but if he represents the ideal of this breed, we need to throw them all in prison, and for a much longer time than thirty-six months. We never see the people he destroyed so that he could buy kilos of cocaine for his personal use, or literally plane loads of prostitutes. We never see one working guy who was just trying to do something with his hard-earned savings, something honest but instead was sold stock that his broker knew was dog crap. We're actually made to admire this scumbag.

Instead of selling him a pen, someone should stick it in his eye.