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Reviews
Fargo: Insolubilia (2023)
Action sequence is filler. Strange and incorrect emphasis on what local sheriffs enforce
This seems a filler episode. Ironically there is an action sequence that takes up about 1/3 of the episode that I frankly wish I had fast forwarded, it as it became interminable and did move the plot forward at all.
Also episode three, and now this episode four, make a strange emphasis on a local sheriff deciding what laws to enforce. Really I like Noah Hawley's writing generally, but this is a very strange point to emphasize. In fact this is common. My home city of Baltimore is a "sanctuary city" with local politicians and sworn law enforcement directly deciding not to enforce federal immigration law. Plenty of municipal, county and state law enforcement are not enforcing a lot of federal drug laws. There are scores of areas of law where local authorities decide not to enforce. I am in Washington DC right now and the local Attorney General has joined in suits against enforcement of "felon in possession of a firearm" federal laws due to "desperate impact" on some groups and is not fully enforcing. So the emphasis on this, in two episodes now, is strange. Can one picture two FBI agents going to LA County Sherriff and asking him why the sheriffs' office is not arresting people for being illegal immigrants?? Hawley seems to simply not know US legal and law enforcement system. The federal government is not legally able to insist local law enforce federal statues with the exception of very specific and narrow civil rights violations law.
This kind of major error, major because it is being emphasized several times, is like the gun store error. You in fact can buy about 90% of shotgun types with no waiting period in Minnesota and the gun store owner would have told Dot she had many more to choose from when she mentioned she was not safe. Also the gun store owner saying the waiting period is a federal law that is in the process of being targeted in state house is exactly backwards too. There is no federal waiting period. Federal FBI checks average four minutes.
Overall I feel like I have sat through four episodes and that the net plot, the amount of dark humor and just smart storytelling that has characterized prior seasons of Fargo, could have been delivered in 15 minutes instead of near three hours. Even the dark supernatural element of Munch as sin eater, has been mixed up with Much as avenging force and we get nowhere near the subtle, or even overt, menace of Malvo.
Napoleon (2023)
Napoleon as a mediocre soap opera
4/10. The idea that Josephine Bonaparte had any power is well understood by historians to be a British calumny against Napoleon. In the long war against Napoleon the Brits thought up an applied practically every insult. That is fine, every side does that. But we don't have to believe it. And Scott did not need to make a film centered on laughable and debunked claims.
Napoleon was, simply put, in the top five military and political geniuses in human history. Yet this is given second tier in Scott's soap opera treatment. We see some tactical genius, but in this film we get none of the strategic genius.
Finally we get no picture of Napoleon as the ultimate self made man, and for whatever motive, the pinnacle of actual export of revolution; which is exactly what he was, and why he was hated and feared by the early 19th century status quo.
Band of Brothers: The Breaking Point (2001)
Otherwise excellent episode, marred, again, by inaccuracies that are character assassinations
It is hard to criticize this episode, since everything about the attack on Foy, as a piece of series TV, is just astoundingly dramatic. Even the musical score that accompanies Speirs run though the farm outside of Foy would wake the dead with its rousing drama.
But this episode also falsely makes Donald Hoobler look like an idiot who shot himself with a trophy Lugar pistol, which is not true but plays into Hollywood views. Worse yet this episode also grossly slanders Lt. Norman Dike, who was awarded two bronze stars for heroism in combat and who was admired and well like by his men for his courage and self sacrifice while under fire.
The fact is according to interviews done after Winter's book, the Foy attack, and Dike's initial command, is badly misportrayed in the series in several elements. Dike was sent in with almost no support, there was not even covering fire nor mortars from the rest of company. Dike sent two platoons on a flanking maneuver, which was textbook tactic, but they hit up against armored defenders and were taking murderous fire, and and the three sergeants let their men to take cover and not advance due to the murderous fire. As Winters sent in Speirs to relieve Dike, he also ordered several companies to move up, and to open up in support. So what really happened was Winters sent in a seriously inadequate, lightly armed force, that attack failed to advance due to it not being powerful enough to dislodge the defending Germans, and after seeing his mistake Winters sent in Speirs, but also tripled the attacking force, added a huge amount of support, several times the firepower. In fact if you watch this episode you would not even know that Lt Dike was himself shot, and heavily bleeding from the wound, trying to get to and help the squads he (again properly) sent on the flanking maneuver
It bears emphasizing that Lt. Dike was mentioned in orders for courage in action in the Normandy jump. He also was awarded a Bronze star for heroism in Market Garden, when he was under heavy fire from very strong German elements attacking Eindhoven while Winters was celebrating with civilians in Eindhoven. Dike later received a second bronze star (the oak leaf award is for a second Bronze Star) for personally exposing himself to fire pulling three injured men from exposed positions while under a murderous 88mm arty barrage.
Not to take away anything from Speirs, but in order to achieve the goosepimple Speir's run moment, complete with rousing musical score, Ambrose and Hanks grossly slandered an heroic, battle tested, honorable veteran. As the case with several other gross misportrayals in the series, they chose the veterans who were already dead and whom they could slander without repercussion.
Less egregious but still a nasty falsehood is the claim that Hoobler was "playing" with a captured pistol and shot and killed himself. This is apparently used for irony by the writers. In fact every single soldier with him at the time stated Hoobler was climbing through some heavy brush, while advancing, encountered barbed wire and his rifle was caught in the barbed wire and discharged into the femoral artery with his rifle, not the captured pistol. The claim about the pistol was only made by personnel that were nowhere near the event, and in fact were likely motivated by jealousy for Hoobler having acquired the Luger.
Sadly the reliance in the series on Stephen Ambrose has resulted in quite a few others being slandered as well. Even Sobel is portrayed falsely, and the dislike of Sobel was largely based on his rigorous training, and anti-Semitism of some of the men, including, indications are, of winters. That anti-Semitism was common, so I am not picking out Winters and some of the Sargent's, but several Easy company veterans have noted that the dislike of Sobel, and the "Sargent's revolt" had that at its core. In fact most of the Easy company combat veterans interviewed by historians other than Ambrose described Sobel as a top officer and credited his rigorous training for their survival and success in combat. One could watch all of Band of Brother and not know that in fact Sobel did jump into Normandy on the evening of June 5, and organized a combat team and -- while outnumbered -- attacked and destroyed a set of machine gun nests, and in fact, in the dark properly navigated himself and the men with him to his proper assembly point in Carantan.
Asteroid City (2023)
Apex Ansdersonness, ultimately trope filled bottom of the barrel storybuilding
Firstly the reviewers and critics "explaining" this mess are not doing Anderson a favor. This film is not a subtle and complex cypher with any meaning or hidden narrative -- it is utterly obtuse and shallow. And not even deliberately so. There wasn't a moment of irony, nor even a single smart scene. Being intentionally eccentric can work, but here it is just tedious, well worn and repetitive. Ultimately the result is as starkly two dimensional as the filming style.
I had a friend who worked on this in Spain. The fact is, contrary to the spin, Bill Murry shot all his scenes. They were, according to my friend, the only interesting scenes shot, and had to be left on the cutting room floor due to Murray being cancelled and now a non-person in Hollywood. Anderson didn't even have the cajones to stick up for his long-time friend and collaborator. Steve Carrel was brought in to reshoot all of Murray's scenes. The post production was dragged on forever and no one involved was happy with result.
I would skip this and watch Tenenbaums again. Or anything instead.
God Is a Bullet (2023)
7/10 Dark, raw, brilliant saga for genre
Award winning novel very well adapted. Film conveys saga of complexity and brutality of similar films like American History X.
Not at all drawn out, the world building is expansive. S
This film is a stunningly well done work based on the ancient theme of descent into the dark world in order to pull a victim back out. It deeply mines themes of revenge and rage. It is quite violent. But none of the violence is actually gratioutious.
The villains in this are not cardboard cutouts that most audiences are used to. I don't mean they are good and bad, I mean the amount of raw villainy is intense.
How often do you see a hard bitten, jaded urban vice detective, who presumably has seen everything, shaken and shocked?
Unknown: Killer Robots (2023)
Unsophisticated, frankly childish and dumbed down
This is probably the worst of the various ham handed Netflix documentaries I have seen. It is simple minded and well behind the curve on potential issues with AI. In fact it conflates AGI (artificial general intelligence), with AI (artificial intelligence). And it portrays usage in warfighting the main threat. When existential threats are much more likely to come from general population, and in areas seemingly benign compared to warfighting.
Frankly a listen to any couple of lex fridman podcast with the top AI thinkers will teach the average person a lot more, and a lot more accurately about the issue.
Case in point: this documentary frets about AI making decisions about who to attack on the battlespace, which it calls a life or death decision. With zero AI 18 and 19-year olds were already already making such decisions for thousands of years, and from up to half a world away using non AI attack drones for the past 20 and 30 years. AI and algorithms have been demonstrated to make better decisions on that. In fact even in policing AI algorithms have been shown to be profoundly less biased than even expert humans
And the existential threat to humans from AI is actually in the most banal of applications, not warfare. Tell an enabled and non-aligned (AI "alignment" is elusive goal of getting AI aligned with human interests) AI to produce as many paper clips as possible and an AI system may turn all atoms on earth into paper clips.
I would skip this nonsense dumbed down junk documentary.
Last Sentinel (2023)
Anti science. Plodding and slow. Would have worked perhaps as a short
Firstly the earth has had no glacial, mountaintop or polar ice whatsoever, none, for 90% of its history. Including the geologically incredibly recent conditions before the current ice age. Secondly if all the ice and snow in the world melted, every ounce of it, se levels would go up less than 70 meters. 90% of the current dry and arable landmass of earth would still be here. Nothing can make just "two continents" except for continental drift creating amalgamations and super continents, and that will be over tens of millions of years, and there would be roughly the same dry land and sea covered ratio.
I just mention that because a couple of the people involved in the making of this have bizarrely claimed the set up of two small remaining patches of dry land is a "warning" due to climate change, when that is absurd.
The general human premise, of an distant rare and isolated military or colonial outpost or outposts, though would be a better premise and has served a lot of good literature. Greek poet Constantine Cavafy long form poem served as inspiration for the novel "Tartar Steppe" and the recent "Waiting for the Barbarians" with Johnny Depp, Mark Rylance and Robert Pattinson.
Those are good treatments of this idea. This dumbed down "Last Sentinel" is just mind numbingly bad. The plot twists become tedious, and in fact are so telegraphed as to be cringe. No one in the film can act. And you will be checking your watch every five minutes as more and more boring and pointless filler plods by.
3/10.
Hypnotic (2023)
Hypnotic? More like catatonic
This film is the most dumbed down, truly cringeworthy mash of tropes of the year. It has no narrative structure, and is a jumble of Deus ex Machina to get out of absurd situations, plus regular exposition (explanation of plot) since the film's dialogue and progression doesn't convey a cogent plot. The level of exposition tells you that no matter what cut they made in the editing room they knew that it would not make sense and needed external narrative.
The acting is just awful as well. Affleck seems to be playing several different characters. I don't know if that is laziness and sloppiness on his part or the directors'. But it is cringe.
2/10.
Vikings: Murder Most Foul (2018)
Core historic errors that there is no reason to have in show
I get moving characters around, condensing several into one. Etc. But the number of very bad historic errors, which are not needed to tell a dramatic story, in this series is stunning.
Female warriors was always a joke for anyone who knows the period history. There is exactly ZERO evidence there were any. In the sagas there are NONE. Yes out of thousands of graves found, there are two or three that MAY be female skeletons with some military grave goods. But those could simply be ways of lots of sons honoring their mothers.
In this episode we get the ridiculous idea that the character of the bishop having a mistress would be a huge scandal. All the evidence is that this was very common. Bishops could not get married, but they were priveledged NOBLES, second or third sons of noble families, and they lived quite like any other nobles. Very few were esoteric theologians. In the main they would have been eating very well, had lands, and had mistresses. Just not married.
Fall of Japan: In Color (2015)
Widely considered among combat journalists as top five WWII combat photographer
10/10: This compendium of Pacific War combat film by war correspondent Bill Courtenay is widely considered as top five of WWII combat photography and and perhaps the best from the Pacific Theater. Courtenay was a witness to unfiltered history and documented it with expertise, personal bravery and difficult to use color film as well.
We tend to get a skewed view of US experience in Pacific, seeing it in most basic history or in documentary as Pearl Harbor - Midway - Marine landings - Marianas Turkey Shoot - Atom Bomb.
We also tend to think of D-Day as the most horrifical event for US fighting men, when there were much more murderous landings and fighting on islands in the Pacific that 99% of Americans cannot name. We also think of beaches and jungles, when in fact extremely difficult urban combat, fought by, of all things, US Airborne troops, also occurred, (eg Battle of Manila).
Most Americans would not know that if you were an American Army soldier or Marine exposed to combat in the Pacific your risk of dying was was 1.8/100, and your risk of being injured was 5.5/100, while in the European Theater it was of dying 0.36/100 and 1.7/100. I.e. It was near five TIMES more dangerous for US Army solders and Marines to deployed to the Pacific than to be deployed to European Theater.
Nor know, if you were an allied soldier who surrendered to the Japanese, your risk of dying as a POW was about 20 times what it was in the European theater. It was in fact much safer to be a POW Soviet solder in Nazi hands than an American soldier, sailor or airman POW in Japanese hands.
And even if you watch Spielberg's/Hanks "Pacific" you will think the US Marines' did all the fighting in the Pacific, when in fact more than twice as many US Army and US army airborne in the Pacific fought and were casualties compared to USMC
Rarely do we get color photography, or coverage of the US Army fighting, when the US Army, not the Navy or Marines, saw the most casualties.
Courtenay also has been buried in the history as he also covered Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who was the tremendously successful Allied Commander in the Pacific. Despite being likely the most brilliant commander in WWII, and going on to pacify and democratize occupied Japan, and reversing massive looses in Korea and accomplishing stunning military successes there -- because he also publicly disagreed with Harry Truman during the Korean war, MacArthur, was to use modern parlance -- "cancelled." So the fact that soldiers and Marines in the Pacific loved MacArthur, and it comes though on Courtenay's work, his full work was never featured until recently.
There are also great tidbits in this. For example when the atom bomb forced the Japanese to finally surrender, McArthur had the very tallest 11AB come with him to the initial negotiations meeting in the Philippines. And the 11th was also first into Japan, when if the bombs were not dropped they would have had to fight their way in, with millions upon millions of more casualties.
Overall this is just brilliant work. Early color photography in combat conditions was extremely difficult.
Queen Cleopatra (2023)
Riddled with historic errors and incorrect timelines
It is hard to take this "documentary" seriously when there are errors is in just about every scene. Ancient Egypt existed for three and a half millennia, and the Ptolemaic period of Greek control and its involvement in Roman policies, especially the Roman civil wars is a very specific period. For example no Egyptian was spoken at the court, Greek was spoken.
But getting costumes wrong, getting basic timelines of battles (like Actium) wrong, placing Cleopatra at events we know she was not present at, mixing up things done by Anthony with those done by Octavian and an unending series of errors just makes this impossible to watch. It is clear no experts, or even anyone with a basic knowledge of the history of the time and place was involved, or if they were, their advise was inverted.
The dialogue is also laughably childish s is the acting.
Queen Cleopatra: What Must Be Done (2023)
Timeline wrong, Actium wrong, even costumes all wrong
What a complete mess. Did the makers of this care for any facts? How can you get Actium completely wrong, and just make up aspects of that battle not attested in any primary history?
Newsflash. Anthony had less ships, about 140 to Octavian's 280. And Cleopatra had her fleet abandons Anthony and flee without taking part whatsoever in the battle. That is a fact attest too in both primary sources and academic peer reviewed secondary sources. And it was Anthony that burned the remaining ships, since he had not the manpower to man. It was a common tactic to burn your own ships after a lost battle when you know they will be seized by your adversaries and used against you in future battles. Even in WWII naval combatants did that.
One has to ask: Where were the actual history expert advisors in this mess? They have Egyptian court history wrong. Egyptian clothing wrong. Military history of this wrong. Even the hairstyles are wrong! Wrong in detail and wrong in big picture.
Ghosted (2023)
Was going to write that it "feels" like it was written by committee, and then I saw from credits that it was!
I was going to write that it "feels" like it was written by committee, and then I saw from credits that it was! Sadly that is the sole element of irony in this lowest of low brow, garbage, film.
Apple really needs to get out of the content production business. As it stands they may as well just permanently rename the Razzies Apple junk. Everything about this film is so contrived, so trope and cliché filled. Ana De Armas is clearly sleepwalking thought this. Evans looks embarrassed to be in it. The plot is telegraphed over and over in such a patronizing way that one is sure the writers assumed their audience has an IQ of 50.
The amount of gun violence is stunning even for Hollywood and one gets the feeling it is just stuffed in there to try and save the film.
And these two actors have the least chemistry of any on screen couple -- ever.
Lyra (2022)
Tragedy of woman killed by anti-police protesters
This is a well made documentary on the life, career and death of Lyra McKee.
Ms. McKee was killed during a protest in 2019 when a police reform protester fired a .22 pistol in direction of riot police hitting Ms. McKee. I remember in my city in the US a very similar incident a bit over a year later, when an anti police protester during the same type of anti-police 2020 riots in the US, threw a brick at police hitting and permanently blinding a bystander. Also in summer 2020 in the US we had police shot at by the same type of "police reform" rioters and others hit as well.
This film is well paced. One gets a sense of the victims life and challenges, and her achievements accomplishments, and lost potential.
While the broader global context of the disgusting anti police views of the violent protesters, be they those in this film or the Molotov throwing Antifa type thugs we broadly saw in the US in summer 2020, or the people committing violence arson elsewhere in Europe at the time, is present and implicit, that context could have been more broadly explored.
The New Americans: Gaming a Revolution (2023)
Incoherent, disjointed and lacking in context
I am thinking that the makers of this mess never took Econ 101. General, industry specific, and commodity specific boom and bust of have been going on since the Bronze Age, and likely before. The most elementary econ courses start with the Bronze Age collapse, move to the Dutch tulip bulb boom and the 2008 housing credit market collapse brought upon by 1990's policies.
In this documentary these natural phenomena are somehow tied to the Jan 6, 2021 event, yet not tided to the much broader summer 2020 insurrection. In fact if you look at the digital currency boards on reddit there ae as many left wing/Antifa aligned major digital currency in those for quite a few years. And like the right winged ones they are trading in same idiocy, logical fallacy, poor understanding of banking or commodity history, and conspiracy theories about he government.
Somehow the makers of this jumble make Elon Musk a causal villain in the virtual currency disruptions, when anyone who understands that topic knows these disruptions and swings in a revolutionary new currency (with its good and bad aspects) would have occurred if Elon Musk did not exist. And contrary to what the film implies, this did not destroy a generation, it did what the Tulip craze, airline stocks, the Dot Com boom and bust, and other disruptions did: educate a generation that it is not all upside.
And why are we only seeing former Trump and Bush admin officials? The current major financial mess, he Silicon Valley Bank failure, where that banks board is 95% Democrat contributors and former administration members, and where the academics are already showing us that specific policies brought in under Democrat Banking committee head Barney Frank caused that issue, is germane in instructing this is a bipartisan phenomena (google: WSJ Barney Frank SVB)
There is an interesting and unintended irony in this documentary though. Politically partisan documentary makers are media, just as reddit is. There is no regulation of documentaries or old media either when they tell outright falsehoods, or systematic subtle falsehoods. All old media themselves, be they news media or film or documentary, engage in problematic and often false or deeply biased interpretations of events. I think this old media documentary maker is simply displaying the jealousy traditionally media has as it sunsets into irrelevance.
Really, reddit has some people trading and engaging in BS? People on twitter coalesce into left or right wing tribes and identarian groups? How shocking! CNN, Fox, NY Times -- and documentaries such as this trade in this nonsense, essentially a gigantic confirmation bias, all the time. If you go into it, without an agenda, and looking at the phenomena as it reflects all of our culture, you may produce an interesting documentary. If you go into it out of context , and with a goal for example of tying Jan 6 insurrection, but not mentioning equal or lets face it more broad and violent summer 2020 insurrection for the other side of poltical extremism, you will just find what you were looking for -- even if it is not accurate in the broader context.
Master Spy: The Robert Hanssen Story (2002)
Highly accurate dramatization of outright traitor who aided the Putins of his day
This is one of the most accurate portrayals of a spy. As anyone who knows this case knows, Hanson is responsible for the deaths of about 100 Russians who fighting against the various bloodthirstily dictatorships that have run Russia for 100 years.
Hanson was a sociopath with a deep narcissisms as well. Spending large sums on clothes, expensive cars and prostitutes.
He set up a secret room in his house so friends could watch his wife naked, and sometimes of him having relations with her. He videotaped her as well and distributed those tapes to acquaintances.
In return for money he helped the dictatorships in Russia despite himself being more well aware than the average person of just how bloody and bloodthirsty that dictatorship was. He endangered the lives of everyone in the world as well destroying accurate assessments of Soviet plans. Even more outrageously he gave to the Russians the extremely secret US government "continuity of government" plan. That is the plan for who has authority to do what in the event of a decapitation strike, and vastly increase the risk of a Russian first strike and all out nuclear war.
This film does a good job of showing Hansenn's reactions as the spy hunt progresses. Sadly it does not show the lives of freedom fighters in Russia and Eastern Europe that he destroyed.
Liaison (2023)
Stunning density of cliche, everything telegraphed. Plothambles from trope to trope
I don't always agree with professional critics, but this has gotten stunning bad reviews for good reason. Even the lead actors refused to do scheduled promotion for this mess, this clearly wanting to distance themselves.
To be frank, this production is just awful. The series has a feel of a committee project where every possible trope and cliché is pumped into the script.
Like most of us I am forgiving and willing to suspend disbelief in an action series, event for a cringingly bad dialogue and plot. But the action here consists of innumerable foot chases and absurd shootouts that demonstrate no one here is credibly an "operative."
There is neither anything stimulating, nor is also not a single smart movement in the entire script. Not one.
Worse yet, Eva Green and. Vincent Cassel are deeply ill-used, frankly abused in this mess.
Alice, Darling (2022)
Unintended irony winner: The audience is being forced into an inappropriate intervention and abused!
Wow. This was just mind-numbingly bad in every way even for a lifetime knockoff that it is.
Script and dialogue are terrible. Poor acting, lousy concept.
Everything is obvious and telegraphed and repeated as if makers assume audience has IQ of 50. Then a screeching soundtrack is added as if makers are worried audience still won't get it.
By the time you are 15 minutes in, it is you who will feel like you are trapped in an inappropriate intervention and you will be looking for any escape.
How is garbage like this even being considered never mind released? The lead character is so weak and helpless.
High Noon on the Waterfront (2022)
Foreman named names to the Soviets, but apparently Hollywood thinks that is ok
Firstly this film, in it short length makes numerus factual errors. It is not honest about either Foreman or Kazan. Foreman was a supporter not of socialism, but of Stalin. And in Fact Kazan rightly named the names of the most slavishly Stalinists and apologist for Stalin's genocides and totalitarianisms.
Carl Forman was not blacklisted in the US for not naming names, he was blacklisted for being dishonest about his own membership in the Communist party. He outright lied. That membership continued long after the Hitler Stalin pact. Foreman was not simply a confused socialist. He was particularly aligned with the most Stalinist faction of the American communist party as well. His did not join as a idealist young person and get alienated by the Hitler-Stalin pact. His avid support for Stalin persisted and became stronger as the world well understood that Stalin was as nasty as Hitler. Soviet archives also show he helped Soviets attempt to coerce other people in Hollywood as well.
In contrast, Kazan actually knew from family in Greece in areas occupied by Stalin's sycophants what was going on under communism. That it was as murderous and corrupt and soul crushing as Hitler and his goons were.
This short is frankly just another totally uniformed and ahistorical take on this issue by Hollywood. Those in Hollywood ought to read the Kremlin archive on this issue. They have been available for two decades. Would it be wrong to name names of persons who were active supporters of Pol Pot during the Cambodian genocide?
And why leave out Foreman's metoo issues?
Don't Worry Darling (2022)
Film has an amzing amount of upshilling here, 90% of 9,10 star reviews are single use accounts
Wow. If you have IMDB Pro you can see the demos of the 35,000 "raters." The 8,9,10 star ratings are virtually all single use accounts. (ie fake PR/marketing flood)
Same with the reviews. The highly positive reviews are accounts whose sole activity on IMDB is to give gushing reviews to this trainwreck of woketude.
I have daughters. I am glad they want equality and have taught them to fight for it. I also love any intelligent critique of white picket fence idealized suburban life. But this film is so hamhanded and lacking in subtlety. It is just the most dumbed down lowbrow treatment of the issue imaginable. And what a disservice to great actor Florence Pugh.
Only Murders in the Building (2021)
Season one was mostly good. Season Two is heavily dumbed down/lowbrow
I think overall Season one was quite good. Steve Martin and Martin Short, while not a magical duo, worked very well together, especially as each others' straight man. In think we all agree the false leads was overplayed and season one could have been perhaps two episodes shorter.
Season two, in contrast, is just insufferable. The writing is cringe. The humor has changed from subtlety, repartee, and irony to entirely dumbed down sophomoric or physical humor that simply does not work. I dare anyone to show how and where this is a script with any intelligence at all. Where is there anything that would even bemuse a New Yorker. Were are the funny references to well known Manhattan foibles and uniqueness? The only one I saw in the entire season was stolen directly from Woody Allen. And this seasons supporting cast is there for what exactly? Selena Gomez did a yeoman's job considering her struggling with serious illness and being thrown in with the mega talents.. Great comedic star? No. But she did well considering. People should know the original script did not include her character. But Cara Delevingne and Schumer? Please, their inclusion is forced, artificial and they add nothing at all.
The repetitive gushing positive reviews of Season Two here on IMDB are glaring in that they are uniformly not specific. (they also include a lot of repetition, making many possibly shills) What is so enjoyable about it? They don't say. I can only guess it is because they got more of the jokes because it was so dumbed down? And what on earth is with the ticking of every woke box? I can see that if it supports the story, but how does that does that support the story here? It doesn't. It seems like a glaring and forced substitute for quality writing.
Enjoy Season One, skip Season Two.
Season One: 9/10 stars
Season Two: 2/10 stars.
Westworld: Generation Loss (2022)
Same two reviewers writing a dozen or more "wow" Westworld is back" reviews even as viewership plummets
Ran the episode "user" reviews for this season through my school's plagiarism software. In fact there are only TWO reviewers who wrote all the 30 positive reviews for this episode, and they are also the writers of the reviews for all the 10 star in prior episodes this season. It is obvious.
Actual viewers agree (and just put "Westworld viewership" into google) that season four is worse than season three, which was worse than season two, which did not compare to the excellent season one.
Viewership has declined all this season as well.
This "Westworld is BACK" is just desperate when the truth is Westworld is flailing and worse than ever.
Marnie (1964)
10/10. I am in no way a hitchcock fan, but this is a masterclass in filmmaking
In general I am no fan of Hitchcock. I find his films generally tedious.
But this film, with the complex psychological aspects, highly skilled acting and direction is a riveting and truly satisfyingly viewing experience. Sean Connery was perfectly cast and directed, and this is certainly his best performance.
When people like Cassavetes and Bertolucci, who could no be further from Hitchcock in their methods, noted it is one of their favorite films, you know it is good.
The Forgotten Battalion (2020)
Not accurate, repeats canards about combat veterans
OK, lets get a couple of things straight about veterans, PTSD and suicide.
Firstly multiple peer reviewed studies, of Afghanistan and Iraq era US and UK veterans, have shown that suicide rates are HIGHER for veterans who never served in combat compared to combat veterans. Surprised? The same thing is shown in studies of violent crime and domestic assult by veterans: It is those veterans that were never in combat that have the elevated commission rate.
What the studies show is that the issue is not combat or PTSD at all, but rather that during times of increased personnel uptake, the military takes in more ALREADY troubled young people. The military ends up detecting disorders during training, and not sending most of the personnel with disorders into combat. If they have a very serious disorder, they are usually discharged, but those with existing mild to moderate personality disorders, mental health issues, are not discharged since the military needs the personnel, they are just not sent into combat. It is that later group of people with EXISTING significant depression, moderate personality disorders, etc., and who never went into combat, that causes the entire elevation in veteran suicide per capita. Retrospective studies of WWII and Vietnam veterans has shown the same thing. Combat veterans actually had considerably lower suicide rates, in and after service than combat veterans did. And non-combat veterans had higher post service arrests, especially for violent crime. But in fact the data how this high suicide cohort also had 1) higher arrests, 2) higher unemployment, and 3) higher depression rates than average BEFORE joining the military.
For more info google: "Study: Mental illness, not combat, causes soldier suicides"
A couple of other points. Also of combat veterans who do commit suicide, the driving element of their depression is not a trauma they incurred during combat, but rather missing the camaraderie and excitement OF combat. It is more of a dopamine and endorphin withdrawal than anything to do with trauma. In fact the feeling among soldiers immediately after combat has been shown to be similar to after sexual activity/orgasm. Now that does not mean personnel in combat are excited by harming the enemy, but is postulated to b excitement from the shared intense bonding, and the risk (much like a frightening amusement park ride or film has been shown to create a post experience euphoria and bonding).
Lastly, multiple studies of coroner and medical examiner process when presented with self caused death and the determination of accident vs suicide, show that gun suicides are accurately counted but all other methods of suicide are profoundly undercounted. This is called "hidden suicide." This is why gun owners have a higher reported suicide rate, but do not have a higher self caused death rate. So if you have a population with access to firearms, and over 90% of veterans in the US are gun owners, that group is going to show up statistically as higher suicide rate, but may not be committing suicide at higher rates at all. Instead what we are seeing is the effect of the documented propensity of medical examiners to presume suicide with self inflicted gunshot; but also presume accident when dealing with a case of self caused death by other means -- even when those other means are known to be associated with, and likely to be, suicide. It is well established medical examiners are adverse to making a ruling of suicide, and will not do so without strong and absolute proof. We know that from Australia, where a fast and broad reduction of 75% gun access was initially thought to have reduced overall suicide rates, but where ten years later all the peer reviewed studies found it had not fallen at all -- just driven most suicide into "hidden suicide" wrongly recorded as accidental death. Hence self-caused death that was not gunshot, eg falls from buildings, self poisoning, certain types of drowning, asphyxia all sharply and broadly rose, exactly as firearm access fell. Google: "Revealed: Australia's suicide epidemic" to see the discovery that suicide never fell in Australia even when they initially thought it did. The underlying data showed simply that substitute means more likely to be incorrectly ruled accidental skyrocketed.
1996, hold-up à Moscou (2021)
Idiotic film with blatant falsification of polling numbers
Right out of the gate this "documentary" shows that like all modern documentaries, that it is willing to falsely portray statistics.
When we learn in this film that Yeltsin "started" out with 3% of the vote (actually 19% in average of polls, compared to his opponent's 17%), ended up with 53.7 of the vote it sounds incredible and shady. Well what the "documentarians" did with those numbers is use Yeltsin's lowest polling numbers -- in the lead up to the GENERAL election -- and then compare it to his much higher numbers in the RUN-OFF. There were a DOZEN candidates in the general. There were only TWO candidates in the run-off.
Oh and I am not a supporter of any of the scumbag Russian politicians, nor of Soros who funded Yeltsin and his oligarchs in 96. I just do not like to see such obviously manipulated and unexplained numbers in a documentary.
Yeltsin's opponent was a communist who praised Stalin, who advocated reneging on the independence of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Belorussia, Ukraine and the "stans" and who is currently under sanction by the UE and US for supporting war crimes.