Reviews

I would really enjoy this mindless romantic comedy with George and Julia, but I was constantly distracted on how the production was showing Bali: like a polished, sterilized, exotic fantasy coming directly from the mind of an average western privileged person.

You know like how the average American thinks holiday destinations are: exotic touristic places with only a few tourists in, lovely beaches without a bazillion of chairs and umbrellas on, caricature locals living the perfect life in huts with no doors or curtains but all kind of electric appliances being exposed to the rain, etc etc etc A fantasy, like a carefully photoshoped card postal.

In other news the plot is stupid and basically another fantasy of the average western person: a fairytale about a young person giving up everything to spend her life with her summer love on a polished exotic paradise. Cause let's be honest here, watching the best sunset in the world is the answer to everything in life!

2 stars for George and Julia, their star quality can make this mediocrity tolerable, in a few scenes anyway.

I am not sure I have ever been so seriously frustrated with a scripted TV show.

I have no clue what these people had in their minds, but the result was an insult to the victim and her family. And to our intelligence...

Maybe this is how our era truly is: a frigging mess with people who fail to realize the most basic of things.

What the writers wanted to achieve? What was the message of this series? I am asking cause I really do not know even after watching the final episode.

They introduced a semi-fictional character that hijacked the whole show and this to tell us what? I never understood the purpose of Rebecca. The thing I do know is that instead of trying to understand what really led this kids to commit this crime, what were the social circumstances, the environment, etc etc, we spend time with an irrelevant character the contributed absolutely nothing to the story.

Instead of getting to know the victim, Reena, we were basically only informed about her bad choices and her need to belong with the "cool" kids. Nothing else. Like she never existed before she met these kids that sealed her destiny.

But it was obvious this show wasn't about Reena, the victim. Do you see Reena in the show's banner/poster? No. You see two fictional characters. That says everything you need to know about it.

They do believe we are idiots, right?

They really do believe that a few good actors looking deadly serious, some angsty music and some predictable suspense can make a good spy series.

While the plot is completely unrealistic.

Like that UK can send someone to another country without even giving him the right to an attorney, just cause the other country asks for it.

Like that a plane where people start dying while on flight, keeps flying like nothing happens.

Like that in an 11 hours long flight there is not a 3rd pilot present...

Like the always present idiotic journalist who investigates the story without the minimal common sense in mind... Like..like...like...

I am in episode 3 and I am just searching for spoilers cause I seriously do not want to watch the rest of this...

Mr. Nolan doesn't do historical movies, he just does his thing.

Dunkirk was basically a long video clip lacking historical accuracy, and Oppenheimer is...well I dunno what it is, I stopped watching it after 1 and half hours of suffering multiple timelines, confusing storytelling, super fast editing and not making much sense scenes.

And definitely not really telling us much about Oppenheimer himself. 1 and a half hours in the movie and I only knew that he was a genius because other ppl kept telling us. Also that he might had been or not a communists sympathizer. And that's it.

There was no tension, no excitement or agony about the project, no character development, nothing.

And sorry to say, as much as I love Cillian, he didn't do any important acting, he was just carrying his pale face around.

Multiple timelines and confusing scenes cannot carry a movie, you really need decent writing.

There are not enough writers to cover the bazillion of platforms/channels/networks demand.

It is just a fact. You simply cannot find good writers for 600 series/year.

And in this case the writing is bad. And stupid.

How on earth can I take seriously a story where an ME takes his child to the crime scenes he examines and nobody does anything about it?

And this is the character development our lead has, that from the tender age of, 9? 10? 11 years old she was roaming around crime scenes and dead bodies.

This is just a small part of the script's stupidity.

The rest is just a collage of many ideas taken from old movies and TV, old crime stories, Agatha Christie's work, with pretentious and shallow dialogues and characters that behave like idiots and of course a lot of style over substance. A lot of style.

Yes, it has good cinematography...but you know what? Good cinematography is not enough to tell a story when the latter sucks.

The specific episode (and the ones before it this season) offered us absolutely nothing.

It seems that the showrunner's interpretation of the events was that Diana basically died because of daddy-Fayed's obsession to get accepted by the English Royals.

In any case, the whole thing felt flat. I remember well the period after Diana's death and I can reassure you that the show failed to give us any of the sentiments people were feeling those days.

There was no strong writing, no tension, not exciting directing or editing, nothing. Maybe it did not help that Dodi 's casting was really bad.

Not that the rest of the acting and casting was any good, especially West as Charles was a very unfortunate selection. I kept having the impression the actors looked like never really got any proper direction on how to play their roles.

The show is about very boring people, maybe they are supposed to be like this, but being so boring is not a plus for making good TV. And when the rest of the elements, like writing, directing and acting lack so much.. you end up with a very boring result.

Whoever wrote this film's script was too confused. As the one who directed it.

I can only guess the movie wanted to show the brutality of war.

In theory.

Cause after they put all the anti-war cliches in the blender, they came up with something that made no sense and it was completely unrealistic. Like the laughable finale of a mindless video game carnage.

But, I think, deep inside this film was an homage to Star Wars. Apart from overusing the colored tracer rounds, all the German soldiers, even the elite ones, were easier targets than SW Stormtroopers. Or maybe the ignorant writers did actually confuse the sci-fi Stormtroopers with the actual German Stormtroopers from WWI.

There were a few daring moments, like showing the American soldiers as rapists or not respecting the POWs rights and shooting in cold blood white flag carriers, but at the end all was lost when the same soldiers were fighting like if they were Wild West drunk Cowboys storming saloons.

Here is the problem: Last year 599 scripted series produced for the main networks and platforms. It is just not possible to find good writers for so many series. And Liaison is one of the "victims" of producing a bazillion of series just because you can.

There is an amazing cast, great locations, good cinematography and music, but the plot is weak.

There are two main stories: the spy one and the relationship between the two leads.

None of them is particularly good.

The big problem though is with the lead's relationship.

From the first moments they let us know there was some serious past between these two shaped by something terrible that happened. They keep not revealing what, to the point it starts getting quite frustrating, until they decide to finally tell us what happened in the penultimate episode and frankly the revelation is very disappointing and unworthy.

There should be some kind of awards for actors who manage to act decently even if they are given a stupid script. Especially Eva Green, her part is so badly written. She just wanders around looking vulnerable and worried, all pale white in her all black clothes. At some point I honestly thought the big revelation would be that she is some kind of vampire..

I find the idea of making a Star Trek musical episode interesting, as long as... 1. You know about musicals 2. There is inspiration 3. There is originality 4. You hire someone really good in this to write strong songs OR you cover famous hits instead 5. Your musical numbers are above the school play level 6. Your cast knows how to sing and how to dance.

Well guess what, they failed in all of the above.

The songs were indifferent (to say the least), the execution uninspired and all this at the end looked more like an amateurish school play.

The "dance" routine at the bridge reminded me of those lovely old people who dance during NBA games' timeouts. Although I should say the old people do it better.

This was just another item in the showrunners' checklist.

But it did not work at all. Cause they had not clue of what they were doing. And they wasted another episode in a 10 episodes season, where meeting strange new worlds has become more difficult than having someone from your cast knowing how to sing well..

SNW suffers from two things: 1. Really weak writers.

2. Short seasons of only 10 episodes that the already weak writers cannot deal with.

Like in Disco, most of things happen off screen, like all these big friendships we are just have to accept and appreciate just because.

Like in Disco, everyone behaves like if they are still students in high school and not like members of a Starfleet crew.

Apparently none of the writers ever bothered to Google "how commanding a ship looks like". Any kind of ship.

As for character development, they do not even try... and why should they? Most of the main cast is already established in the ST Universe and the rest... well we know the rest won't be in the Enterprise for much longer, so why bother to write about them?

You can't name your show "Strange New Worlds", and then from 20 episodes in total, to justify it's title in only 5-6 of those. Less than 1/3. And the rest are about Spock's marital issues, PTSD, Time Travel back to Earth, war, more war, Kirk, more Kirk.. wait why Kirk is so much present in this one?

Cause well, the writers have no clue, so they just use the good old safe recipe: more TOS!

And we have the big scary villain of the show, which is some kind of a twisted version of an old one, that nobody was supposed to even know about before Kirk became captain. Worst thing? There are already 6 movies made for this kind of "Aliens". Hint hint. Yes, our incompetent writers can't even create their own villains.

I hope somehow things will get improved in season 3, cause the cast is great and it seems like such a wasted opportunity.

I had the same hopes for Disco....

Everything in these series is shallow, superficial and full with tons of stereotypes and cliches.

Paris is presented as a perfect flawless paradise, where people with an average income can wear different expensive clothes every single day, and their only problems are love affairs, their instagram followers and sometimes business issues that are solved very quickly since in this fantasy world someone always knows someone important who can help.

There is no character development and they all behave like dumb teenagers.

The lead is an annoying, obnoxious, narcissist and very ignorant woman who has all the characteristic of entitled Americans who do not give a dime about other cultures and just try to impose their own.

I kept watching it for the locations, but after 3 seasons of having to deal with such stupidity I am done with it. After all, how much of a sterilized version of Paris you can cope with? And I love Paris.

You know some things are not supposed to feel contemporary for 60 years.

James Bond was written at a certain era, the hero was quite the representative of that era and that was his charm.

So, maybe they should just stick with that and leave the modern spies to other franchises like Mission Impossible or Jason Bourne, cause by "modernizing" Bond they just turning him to another action hero.

Anyway, about this movie... well, except from the Cuba sequence with agent Paloma, all the rest was boring and badly written.

First of all they had telegraphed the end from the very beginning with all the references from "On Her Majesty's Secret Service". They even had to say "we have all the time in the world" twice so we can get it for good.

Then, the whole romance had failed to create any sparks since there is no chemistry between the leads. There were more feelings between Bond and Vesper Lynd's tomb than with Madeleine, a character so uninteresting that I didn't care a tiny bit about her. Or maybe is the actress who lucks the charisma. I dunno..but it didn't work.

The villain was played by the "I can only play loonies & weirdos" king of typecast Malek, who let's say was less interesting than Blofeld's cat.

And the kid... dragging the kid like that in the villain's lair for the supposedly climactic finale was such a failure that I thought I was watching a Disney movie.

3 stars for all the Paloma scenes and the amazing Atlantic Road.

This a very well produced show, with most of the times an amazing cast and performances.

However, it has one major issue: It is about boring people. Very very boring people. Because this is how these royals must be, human robots living under strict protocols. And their monotonous life cannot justify 50 (soon to be 60) 1 hour episodes of TV, no matter how well are made.

Even if, very smartly, the creators of the show focused quite often in big personalities and major events that happened during Elizabeth's reign, I am afraid this is not enough to make The Crown interesting, simply cause these people are not interesting at all.

On top of that, as the show's timeline started to reach the recent years, they started recycling the same things again and again, apparently cause they thought recent major events would not be as appealing to modern audience.

But, how much can you keep watching the Queen not showing emotions or Charles whining about everything? Not much... Even Diana could not save it. And Diana was probably the most interesting thing that happened to them.

IMHO, this show should had lasted 2 seasons top, covering the whole Elizabeth period in no more than 20 episodes.

Still, it has managed to offer us some great episodes, like "Aberfan", for this episode alone I gave a 6/10 rate to this show.

Welcome to the world of Balthazar, a man who loves, admires and worship himself like no other in this universe.

He is handsome, charming, tall with a great athletic body, best forensic pathologist in history, he can solve all crimes, answer all questions, his house is superb, his cars are expensive antiques, he can cook perfectly, basically he can do everything perfectly. Oh and he is also haunted by a personal tragedy, so this perfect male also needs comfort. Awwww...

He is not just the ideal male, it is like you gathered all ideal males in the planet and you merge them to..... Balthazar!!!

He is also an narcissist self centered arrogant douchebag prick who likes to show off his naked and so amazingly built torso at least twice in each episode. I am not sure I have ever seen a TV show lead (that he is not a swimmer or a boxer) showing off his naked torso so much.

Well, despite the lead character, the show was actually quite good in Season 1, cause it left some room for the well written murder stories to breath.

But from season 2, it was only about Balthazar who got transformed to the mix of James Bond, Rambo and Ethan Hunt and the stories became so cliche that the whole thing simply got ridiculous. Still, it could be a nice parody if the show didn't take itself so seriously.

Apart from "the serial killer who is after the hero" trope, the galore of cliches also included the endless UST between our perfect man and the married lady police officer who had to work with him. "Will they do it? Will they not? Oh here's another love interest for our hero to make things even more complicated. (I got disappointed a bit, I mean it is a French show they should had ended up all this with a nice threesome, common!)

Well truth to be told, I dunno how all this ended, I stopped watching after season 2 when Balthazar got promoted from being the center of the universe to be the center of all multiverses.

If you like decent TV, MAYBE watch season 1 and then run away.

If you love romance paperback books with perfect charming dominant males, then go all the way, Balthazar will not disappoint you.

You read about police story in post WWII Berlin and you think this will be an interesting premise about the destroyed and defeated Germany. But nope, the creators just wanted a different background for another sadistic serial killer story. They added some cold war elements with nasty Soviet Union dudes, an evil crime lord whatever and on top of all this mess the American (anti) Hero.

The result is horrible, the main lead cannot act to save his life (he must had watched a lot of film noir from the 40s), the dialogues are so cliches and not 1940's and most of the characters are caricatures at best.

The production seems impressive (and that is where my 2 stars go) but I am not quite sure the writers involved did any serious historical research for that time era. Their research seemed to had been limited in finding special ways to torture someone to death.

What a wasted opportunity... I stopped after episode 2.

As a Greek and an Athenian I have to say I liked how they filmed the country and the city of Athens, even if some of the locations were messed up, but I guess they picked up the places that were more convenient for their filming/artistic needs.

I also liked how they portrayed most of the Greeks, I found it quite realistic.

What I found completely unrealistic was the lead playing an even more unbreakable version of Die Hard's John Maclane.

Especially near the movie's finale his antics made me laugh out loud (yeah that jump), and I am not sure that was the purpose of the movie.

In other news, the lead is not a good actor and has no charisma, sorry mate. I think with a better lead even the "jump" would seem more realistic. Maybe!

A show that without the words "Start Trek" on its title would had been probably cancelled before the end of its first season. Bad writing, indifferent characters, shallow stories and the worse lead in the history of the franchise.

No sense, just style, lots of confused style and lots of unnecessary special effects.

The writing is abysmal, not to mention that they basically write like if the plot takes place in the 21th century and not in the advanced society of the Star Trek universe. There is no character development and the the shallow stories focus almost entirely on the uninteresting, very annoying and emotionally unstable lead.

As for the rest of the crew? they looks more like high school teenagers who play "space opera" RPG games than professionals who are supposed to navigate spaceships.

Such a disaster, such a shame for the franchise...

Maybe it is the fact that all the movies after T2 were from bad to awful, especially Genisys, but what can I say, I enjoyed this one.

I loved seeing Linda Hamilton again as Sarah Connor and I really liked Arnie's part and its character evolution. I found the story pretty much ok. The direction could be better though, it needed to be more intense.

Anyway, I am not sure what else the franchise can offer us anymore. I see this as it's final chapter and well, I am ok with it.