Valentijn78

After watching several seasons of the Hunted UK series, my expectations were certainly realistic when approaching this one: the state surveillance capabilities were always going to be entirely simulated, and not very realistically either. But with the UK series they at least tried to make it look like a fair competition in the earlier seasons.

Hunted AU went directly into taking all the short cuts. Step outside in the back garden of a rando who let you hide out after you pled your case? Oh look, the "neighbor" saw and helpfully "called in a tip." Game over!

And don't even get me started on the sibling of a Hunter who happened to be hanging out in the countryside near a team (and their accompanying cameraman), coincidentally spotted the fugitives, and called her to turn them in.

I can accept the simulated detection of fugitives, but this series is just incredibly lazy and implausible.

First, I don't consider myself a gamer and my only prior experience with this franchise is from having played a bit of Fallout Shelter, a very basic and simple spin-off on mobile. My partner has played several of the real Fallout games.

But much like The Last Of Us, this series stands on its own without any familiarity or investment in the video games. The characters are complex and well-developed, and the world building is absolutely astounding. Any fan of sci-fi, nuclear apocalypses, and/or dystopias will probably have a lot of fun with it. And unlike The Last of Us, Fallout is filled to the brim with morbid and edgy humor along with a generous helping of kitsch.

The primary setting is the American wastelands hundreds of years after a nuclear apocalypse which occurred in a futuristic "atompunk" 1950's. That earlier era is also featured in numerous flashbacks as more is revealed about Vault-tec, the enigmatic corporation which created the vaults still occupied by the descendants of the original inhabitants.

In that wasteland setting, the main characters are introduced and eventually intersect (sometimes repeatedly) with each other, as they all desperately chase the same valuable object for very different reasons, and with none of them even knowing why it's valuable.

First and foremost, The Regime is a vehicle for witty and pointed national and international political commentary. The tiny central European country is struggling with famine and poverty (among the peasants), while the elite enjoy the dysfunctional high life in an ostentatious hotel-turned-palace and the world's superpowers circle like vultures as they vie for control of the nation's precious natural resources.

A devoutly nationalistic, violent, and unhinged soldier is then thrust into that setting, and his close proximity to the neurotic leader of the regime disrupts the careful management of her by other national and international parties. As their relationship develops, the monstrosity of both characters becomes more and more apparent. Yet the vulnerability of both personalities is strangely endearing and makes their relationship all the more compelling to viewers.

The script and acting were top-notch across the board, with frequent hilarity amidst the politics and carnage. I'd never been a Kate Winslet fan before, but I was awestruck by her performance in this show.

This comedy special consists of 8 stand-up routines from a diverse array of LGBTQ+ performers, from both the UK and the US. Most of them were excellent, though a couple fell a bit short with their material. But even those ones had strong deliveries that bode well for their future performances.

With 8 performers with a related background and a unifying theme I would have expected there would be more overlap in their content, but each one was surprisingly fresh. There's quite a bit of range in their approach to gender, with some laughing an their own personal experiences while others deftly made a mockery of social media and political attacks against the community.

I'm definitely looking forward to more content from these comedians.

I gave up midway through the third episode. There are some pretty good actors on the cast, which is why I gave it a try. But they couldn't save a weak script, poor direction, and a muddled plot. And the rather bad acting from the actress playing Katie just compounded those problems - nothing about her was subtle or convincing ... just a kid reading (or shouting) her lines.

Filming was good, though there was an excessive amount of shaky-cam to try to make everything look more exciting I guess. The soundtrack wasn't bad (or good) enough to be noticeable.

The young-adult relationship melodrama was constantly over-the-top, and it was what finally got me to pull the plug on trying to watch this.

This movie is the unfortunate result of a bunch of Italian-Americans deciding it would fun to dress up and pretend they're actually Cuban, with exactly the shallow and inauthentic results that anyone could expect. The fake accents are awful, and each actor and actress manages to make it awful in a different way - even the fakery isn't consistent. This carries over to everyone mispronouncing the names of major characters. Major cringe.

The general plot is depressingly predictable: impoverished guy wants to make it big, does a bunch of crime, chases the pretty lady, and a bunch of people get shot. But starting from the intro, the producers want to impress how very common it is for violent Cubans to enter the US ... and perhaps they believed their own lie to the extent that they were afraid to cast more than a few Cubans in background roles.

Much like the characters, the music was generic and completely lacking in any Cuban influence. Oh look, they found an Italian guy to write that too.

The acting was very good, and Netflix appears to have adequately funded this movie. However it's hard to get any thrill out of a thriller when the characters are generally bland and not particularly likable.

There really are no twists, despite extensive tryharding from the writers. Each is transparent from the start, aside from a somewhat baffling and implausible revelation at the very end. Yes, there was a surprise, but the only reaction elicited was to acknowledge the sheer ridiculousness of it and get a bit more annoyed at the movie.

It's also generally a rather slow movie, and could have cut 30 minutes or so without losing anything of value.

While there is a central fantasy element with the presence of witches and magic, those simply add complexity to the efforts of residents of a small town to solve a murder (or prove that it wasn't one), rather than being an end unto themselves.

The magical hand movements seem to have come straight out of The Magicians, but work in this series as well. Nothing about the fantasy element is particularly innovative, except perhaps combining it with a crime genre and setting it in a community where witches can live openly among their non-witch neighbors.

The acting is good and the script gets the job done without being unduly annoying. The teenage drama is fortunately kept to a minimum, and focused only on the central plot points thus far. Some misogynists may be upset about the plethora of strong female leads, but there's more than enough relevant guys in the story to satisfy a reverse-Bechdel test.

It's an easy and enjoyable watch.

First the summary: acting was top-notch from everyone, including (especially?) the kids. Every detail in the production added to the immersion in the mysterious situation unfolding. The script was also excellent, effortlessly combining realism with both raw fear and insights into both the characters and society. Effects were generally very good, and even the animal CGI was as good as it could be (which is never entirely convincing).

The suspense was building nearly constantly, with only the gentlest of lulls. Intense moments of action were more selectively applied, briefly ratcheting up the suspense to overt terror.

Some events seemed improbable bordering on impossible for reasons of technological limitations. But IANAE, and the other aspects of the movie quickly pushed doubts into the background regardless, as I was caught up in the events unfolding.

There are sufficient answers (finally) at the end, but don't expect the characters to fully understand or explain them to the audience. What does become apparent in the last moments is that the protagonist of the movie is not who anyone would have expected it to be. Though in retrospect, plenty of hints were dropped.

I'm giving this 8 stars for now, but might revise upwards after rewatching it tomorrow to see what other clues I missed the first time around.

This is not a movie, but rather half a dozen short stories with little link to each other except "dystopian future."

The shorts themselves are done pretty well for the most part, but with the expectation that this is a movie, you'll be looking for a coherent connection between the different scenes. There really isn't one, and even the (presumed) connecting story interspersed between the other ones never goes anywhere.

The sets and acting are actually good, as well as the special effects. The sound was all over the place, requiring drastic changes on my television to keep up with it in different shorts. The music was uninspired, and mimicked the Blade Runner aesthetic which also was also blatantly ripped off as a setting for one of the shorts.

Would have rated this higher if the summary had been honest. But then I probably wouldn't have watched it anyhow.

I'm another lover of the original Orphan Black - it had a fast pace, good character development, and some phenomenal acting. This sequel has none of those.

At best it could be said to be providing detail regarding the creation of the clones, but even that didn't make much sense or even spark some interest. It's just used as a platform for more tiresome melodrama.

While the lead is an experienced actress I've enjoyed seeing in other roles, she simply lacks the range to carry this show. And with such a weak script, that otherwise passable flaw becomes a major failing point.

After 6 episodes of boredom, I finally gave up after another soap opera rendition of attempted dialogue between several characters I simply couldn't care about.

A bunch of teams go on a series of missions, which each culminating in a quiz and/or transportation to a new exotic destination.

The quizzes are bad. Very bad. Either woefully simple, or something no one would know and has to guess about, with or without an obvious clue in the question itself. Each team has different challenges and questions, so some get a far easier time of it than others. Regardless, each team spends 5-10 minutes of camera time tediously and repetitively debating the answer, which is only going to happen if they are being intensively coached by the producers.

Most teams get quickly eliminated, often after very little screen time. Then new teams pop up in the midst of the show, apparently already having completed the preliminary challenges. The general impression is that most teams didn't provide good content for the show, and/or got tripped up early on by the pick-a-random-answer quiz questions.

It appears that the producers then recruited some additional teams to get more footage for the series. Except those super-teams are massively scripted and guided through the challenges, and obviously not the normal every-day Brits they work very hard to portray themselves as. Eg, a team in the medical profession also has a variety of the same uncommon adventuring skills. Extra "duh" points for the convenient rock climber who tries to downplay their skills by proclaiming a discomfort with heights.

But that's the theme with the super couples: they ham it up as bumbling ordinary blokes who persevere by virtue of luck, cleverness, and hard work. It's probably meant to appeal to the average viewer: "If they can do it, so can I!" But with the heavy-handed scripting, coincidences, and editing blunders, it all just comes across as deceptive. And for good measure, some vanity shots of the guys emerging from frolicking in the ocean at the various luxurious villas they stay at while being dutifully waited upon by Black locals - while the lodgings of the other teams are mysteriously never shown at all.

I can't count the number of times teams conveniently knew exactly what to do, and enthusiastically did it ... even when it involves apparent trespassing that the supposedly random locals nearby would likely view as an attempt at breaking and entering. Or the cuts away from an especially arduous part of the challenge to show the team members suddenly emerge victorious on the other side. And one scene of the same team discovering and investigating a location was blatantly filmed at least twice, with some heavy filtering thrown in to make full daylight look like dusk. Plus a slip-up in the editing showing a "dangerous" animal a team had to work near was actually tied in place. And loose items in a suitcase being neatly arranged when opened, after supposedly being lugged around rough terrain. Etc, etc.

But the scenery was nice, and the filming was excellent. Good music, and 007 fans will like the movie references. The series is watchable, though I probably wouldn't have bothered if I knew how scripted it was earlier on. The main detraction is the fundamental dishonesty in presenting this as a reality-based competition.

The series opens with a woman deciding how to deal with her cheating husband, having herself grown up with a cheating father and a mother scorned. But every time a simple solution presents itself, fate and bad choices conspire to intervene, in a manner which is both generally believable as well as refreshingly unexpected.

The main characters were all well-acted, realistic, and complex - it's never clear who's the good guy/gal, and becomes even less clear as the series progresses.

It does get a little slow during the later episodes, but the plot still plots onwards and reaches a nice crescendo shortly after. There certainly were a couple plot holes and/or unfathomable actions/inactions from the characters, but nothing glaring enough to detract from the experience.

The problems start with the basic plot, which could have come straight off a Qanon fanboy site: the Europeans (globalists) have somehow caused Spain to start rounding up and killing children and pregnant mothers to solve over-population.

Then it just progressively gets even less rational, coupled with bad acting from the background characters, a silly script, non-stop drama, and completely unrealistic and often nonsensical developments at literally every turn.

This is not a survival movie nor a thriller. There are literally no survival aspects to it which would ever help anyone, and not enough character development to even care about the lead (who does seem to be a decent actress at least). It's just more filler trash from Netflix, getting upvoted a bit for a change by extremists who like to fantasize about being persecuted.

2 stars for the lead actress. She was the only marginally believable thing in the entire movie.

Pros: Many moderately endearing characters, decent acting, lots of action. New and interesting gravity effects, though not particularly realistic.

Humor was hit or miss, and most situations were simply ludicrous, as was the entire plot.

The Chinese funding also had a big impact, with the nanny somehow becoming a major character while having no background or personality, and American racism against Chinese people is referenced repeatedly. Then the Chinese step in because the silly US put all of their shuttles in museums, of course (US is the past, China is the future, etc etc). The only billboard in the movie prominently featuring extremely dodgy Russian software was also ... interesting.

Overall it's not painful to watch, and enjoyable enough if you don't have to pay for it and can stomach the recurring propaganda.

Alex's snark and food have always been a fun combination. Now three chefs get a chance to take advantage of her weaknesses by choosing ingredients, cooking times, and other factors as they attempt to beat her dishes for a cash prize.

Thus far the competitors are top-quality, with diverse cuisines and extensive experience. So it's nicely inspirational to watch, and usually mouth-watering.

The only drawback is that the judges likely know Alex's style very well, and it stands out from most of the competitors. But they also aren't judges known for cutting anyone a break, and their blind assessment of strengths and weakness of the dishes seems genuine enough.

I barely paid attention to Suicide Squad after the intro, and didn't remember the Peacemaker character in it at all. But the Peacemaker series is next-level entertainment, even if you aren't particularly into the comic book scene. It also helps that it functions as a stand-alone series, without an annoying reliance on having watched a bunch of movies from the same franchise just to understand the plot - though there are a few references to Suicide Squad events.

The script is simply genius. Dark and slapstick humor are a constant, beginning with the entire cast's deadpan retro hip-thrusting dance routine in the intro at the start of every episode. That intro should seriously get an award of its own.

Personal dramas of the characters are touching and relevant, but not overplayed, and interspersed with plenty of action and comic relief. The sound track is always fun, and I've fallen in love with all of the actors, some of whom I'd seen before without really appreciating.

I hope John Cena never goes back to movies and keeps doing this series for at least 20 more years.

This is classic Chucky gore, with some fresh new faces in addition to the classics. The first couple episodes seemed a bit directionless, as "humorous slasher doll" is a bit of strange genre to present in anything other than a movie format. But then the plot emerged from the random acts of violence, slowing things down briefly until some darkly comedic and clever plot twists kicked the series into high gear.

Great acting from both the kids and the oldbies, as well the doll, voices, and other effects. Hopefully they're back for a second season - if they get the pacing tidied up, it could be an excellent series. And as always, triggering the regressives is appreciated.

The first several episodes of Invasion are focused on the beginning of an alien invasion. As various characters are developed (and occasionally killed off), scattered details emerge about the invasion as everyone first takes notice of strange events and then tries to piece together what is happening and survive it.

The pace of action is good for a series, but this is not a fast-paced action movie. However, the characters and their circumstances are compelling, as are the various mysteries to be unraveled. The series does flash between different main characters in several different parts of the world, but it's easy to follow the events for each group as the invasion progresses.

Excellent filming, acting, and special effects, including a lot of detail during some of the alien encounters.

Showgirls is a movie about the exploitation of women looking for a career in dancing in Vegas, and could reasonably be extrapolated to include similar industries where young women are at the mercy of the men who run those industries.

While that is an important message, Showgirls delivers it via one-dimensional stereotypes with no character development at all, and the acting of the main characters is subpar. The dancing and choreography are really the only saving grace.

This is Part I of a two-part adaptation of Frank Herbert's novel Dune. It ran a little long with the escape to the desert, but did an impressive job of introducing the multitude of necessary plot details.

Even more striking was how artfully the movie recreates the emotions and awe of the novel. It's been 25 years since I read the books, but this movie pulled me right back into how it felt. The special effects were flawless, and the soundtrack achieved the drama and grandeur of the 1984 version without following it in going over the top.

Perhaps the biggest improvement over earlier versions is the superb casting and acting. I also appreciated that the gender imbalance in the novel was slightly corrected - extra point for triggering the people who can't handle a supporting character packing different junk. And I can't imagine that even Frank Herbert bought the all-white cast of Fremen from the 1984 version, so the addition of diversity there was a sensible improvement as well.

I trudged through two episodes before throwing in the towel. I'm fine with the general plot of a contagious outbreak being very common in many shows over the past few years, but this might very well be the worst implementation of it.

The characters are shallow stereotypes, with only the teenagers being marginally interesting and relatable. Good cameras for the filming, but due to the lack of better content, random and distracting filming effects are inserted instead. And regarding the soundtrack, apparently someone Googled "zombie apocalypse" then converted the score from 28 Days Later into elevator music.

This was a completely generic plot which could have been happening anywhere, and Netflix just decided to throw it at Russia.

Squid Game has a very high body count, and lots of gore to go with it. But even while the blood is spattering, the focus is on the characters, their relationships with each other, and the mysteries they're unraveling. The attention to detail in every aspect of the series elevates it from enjoyable and entertaining to truly exceptional.

The sets in the Game are mostly simple, with a childish surreality. Yet also artfully designed for the impact that they have, and exquisitely memorable.

Usually when the acting is good, we don't notice or think about it. But there were several times that actors displayed their emotions which such perfectly controlled subtlety that you have to stop to admire it: the uncontrollably trembling chin of an actor pushing himself to the edge of tears to do honor to the scene, or an actor's blank face with the character's emotions "betrayed" by only the twitching of one eye.

Needless to say, the directing and production must have also been top-notch to create these scenes and put them together to tell such a simple but compelling story. The emotional impact is also carefully crafted: somehow, in the midst a huge number of violent deaths, the audience is left sobbing for half of an episode as both developed and undeveloped characters face impending death.

And ultimately, there is a fairly clear moral to the story. But that will have more impact if it's seen and felt, instead of described here.

Absolutely stunning visuals and effects, strong script and acting.

This series is not the novels, even if it's ultimately telling the same story, and that's a good thing. I'm pretty sure most of us have seen movies which try to directly imitate novels, and they're uniformly awful.

Some characters are different, but I very much enjoyed the mystery of trying to figure out where Eto had disappeared to, and how these characters might evolve as the series continues.

Regarding the negative reviews, I can only say that IMDB has long had a huge problem with racist and misogynistic jerks coming here to dump their edgy viewpoints upon the rest of the world. IMDB finally stopped accepting and even started deleting the overtly racist reviews, but the same users now make disparaging use of terms like "sjw (social justice warriors)", "wokeness", and "diversity" to spread their messages of hatred instead. Their reviews have literally nothing to do with the quality of any show they're attacking.

With only one character in most of the movie, it needed an excellent actor. Instead we get a child actor who's gotten too old for the part and never learned to do more than act as a prop to support someone else's performance. But hey, great hair I guess?

There was no concept of subtlety in portraying the main character's struggles, so we get a bunch of overly-dramatic situations interspersed with over-the-top tantrums when he struggles to survive, instead of the introspection, problem-solving, and determination that made the novel so excellent.

This was obviously a low-budget movie, made for TV by an educational channel (PBS). So many of its sins are understandable, and maybe even forgivable. But it would have been nice if they'd at least found a lake in an actual forest. Some scenes seem to be shot in a forest, but there is only a narrow tree line visible at one edge of the lake, with open fields and bare rock everywhere else.

Hopefully Hatchet gets an appropriate adaptation some day, with the excellent acting needed to carry the role, and a script was can appropriately covert the inner-dialogue of the novel. Preferably in a forest ;-)