jekyllgrim's Reviews

Black Summer (2019–2021)

7/10

28 April 2019

Black Summer looks more like a sketch of random events and it doesn't feel like it has a consistent storyline (although it does have one). It could work as a "found footage" show, and this feeling is only strengthened by the multiple long takes (which sometimes are actually quite impressive).

In terms of atmosphere it reminded me a lot of Dawn of the Dead (2004). If you're looking for a slow soap opera like TWD, it's definitely not for you. This mostly depicts early days of an outbreak, when things are messy and people are running, and panicking, and dying all the time. They don't build safehouses or relationships, they're just grasping at straws.

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Black Mirror: San Junipero (2016)

Season 3, Episode 4

9/10

A touching story (with some darker overtones)

10 November 2016

Yorkie, a shy and timid girl from an uptight family, goes to a night club, a place where she definitely feels out of place. And there she meets Kelly, a girl who is totally in her element there. Somehow these opposites develop a connection stronger than anyone could expect.

This is about as much as I can give out without spoiling anything (and I truly believe this episode shouldn't be spoiled even the tiniest bit).

I know two ways to explain what Black Mirror is about: 1. It's a show about our fears; 2. It's a show about how technologies could change our lives.

Most of the show's episodes lean heavily towards the fear aspect. This episode is an exception; in fact, I could say, it's probably the only episode that shows how technologies could change us not just in a scary way, but in a new and in many ways wonderful way.

However, while many say that it's entirely positive and light (some even claim it goes entirely against Black Mirror style), I wouldn't be so sure. As I said, I'm not going to spoil anything here, but after watching this episode a second time I can say that there are some ideas in this episode that are rather creepy if you look closely. It's just that in this one, in contrast to other Black Mirror's episodes, the creepiness is not a fact but rather a matter of interpretation.

Nevertheless, I'd say this is Black Mirror's only episode that isn't wholly dark and cynical; in fact it's actually sincere and sensual. So, if you're looking for the show's usual dark/scary aspect, this episode won't work for you. But if you just want to have a good time, I can tell you, this is one of the most touching stories I've seen in drama TV shows.

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Luke Cage (2016–2018)

6/10

The worst of the three so far

29 October 2016

Warning: Spoilers

What I can get from the recent Marvel's trinity -- that is, Daredevil, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage -- is that it's a matter of personal taste. Many people say that Jessica Jones is the best show, others say it's Luke Cage, but for me it's always been Daredevil with Jessica Jones coming a close second.

But I find Luke Cage a much weaker title than those two.

First, the character simply isn't interesting. There isn't much you can do when you make your hero practically invincible. He doesn't go through as much pain as Daredevil, doesn't suffer mental and physical abuse like Jessica Jones did.

Luke Cage's only weakness is the people who are close to him, but the main one gets killed pretty quickly, so there's no protection motif, it's only a revenge motif. This revenge, however, is slow and reluctant. The Crow is the movie that portrays an invincible hero on a revenge spree properly; Luke Cage doesn't. At the same time, Luke Cage doesn't try to be a loner, to avoid people to save them from being hurt -- a theme we've seen in Batman, Spider-Man and lots of other superhero stories. So there's no loneliness and suffering.

The problem is, a hero without suffering is simply not interesting. Sometimes authors of superhero movies would go over the top in this direction and make a character whiny and childish, but over the past few years we've seen many interesting superhero characters who were interesting because of the challenges they had to overcome (and both Daredevil and Jessica Jones are amazing examples of that). With this show, however, it simply doesn't feel like Luke Cage HAS any challenges to overcome; it's mostly other characters that do.

I feel like Mike Colter is to blame too. I didn't realize it at first, but then it hit me: this guy is just too cool. And that's the problem: TOO cool. This only adds to the feeling of total invincibility of the character. As a result Luke Cage simply lacks depth.

The other thing a good show requires is a great villain. Both Daredevil and Jessica Jones have simply tremendous villains (and with season 2 Daredevil got the Punisher, who is an amazing anti-hero that contrasts both Daredevil and Fisk). Luke Cage centers around crime boss Cottonmouth, and while I like Mahershala Ali, Cottonmouth is simply badly written. He's portrayed like an extremely powerful person, not concerned about having a dangerous enemy, laughing at any contestant. But when you see this, you just have to ask yourself: why? Why is he acting all-powerful when he's apparently not?

A lot of this is related, again, to Luke Cage's invincibility. For the best part of the season Cottonmouth has zero means to oppose Cage. It's not Daredevil, one little person going against the truly all-powerful Wilson Fisk, it's actually the other way around: a man laughing at a tank coming towards him. Luke Cage keeps trashing his establishments, harming his business, and Cottonmouth keeps smiling like it's all going "just as planned". He's not delusional, he's just written that way; the character simply doesn't align with the events around him.

My opinion may change later, but for the the show failed to impress me over the first 6 episodes, and that's when I strongly believe that if a show doesn't impress within first 30 minutes it's already doing a bad job. For now Luke Cage is mostly a show about an impenetrable hero who's main problem is bullet holes in all of his sweatshirts.

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John Wick (2014)

5/10

Ridiculous action movie trying to be serious

16 October 2016

I could talk for a long time about weak writing, one-dimensional characters and stupid and boring action scenes, but these are the things that simply make this movie bad. What makes it truly ridiculous, however, is its portrayal of Russians and Russian mafia.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind Russians portrayed as bad guys, it's just one of many action movie clichés that I easily accept. The ridiculous part is, this movie actually tries to focus on Russians while knowing NOTHING about them.

First, let's take John Wick, who is supposed to be a badass hit-man. The mafia calls him Baba Yaga. This fact alone is so hilarious it would send a Russian roll on the floor laughing, because it sounds about as good as calling a badass hit-man "the Wicked Witch of the East". Baga Yaga is a folk character mostly known through fairy- tales, she's an old witch who is portrayed as wise, scary and occasionally villainous, but quite often helpful (and she's mostly known from fairy-tales where she's practically never a big villain). "Baba" isn't really a part of the name, it simply means "old hag". That's right, a badass hit-man called "old hag" and a female name.

I assume at some point there was an idea to find a word similar to Boogeyman and use it as a nickname for John. There indeed is a Slavic "boogeyman" called Babay which they perhaps confused with Baba Yaga. Boy, how many laughs this confusion produced.

Naturally, not a single character in the movie can speak Russian at all. Plus almost nobody has a real Russian name. I understand that Americans tend to struggle very hard with Russian surnames, but first names? There are no Russians named Iosef, let alone Viggo! The mafia boss looks about as realistic as Boris in Snatch, but Boris was purposefully over-the-top, while John Wick is presented to us like a serious movie.

And there's the hilarious scene in club sauna where Russian mafia guys actually sing Kalinka-Malinka. It's about as stupid as American criminals getting reading Dr Seuss aloud together. In real life there's a whole genre of criminal songs called Blatnyak and in many ways it fulfills the same function as some types of rap; it's songs sung by criminals (or people pretending to be them), for criminals and about criminals. This is something that Russian mafia could actually sing. Not goddamn Russian 19th century songs that were common on Soviet TV!

And I could accept all that, even though it's crazy to see this silliness in 2014, if not for one thing: somehow this movie pretends that it actually is ABOUT Russians. Russians are everywhere, they talk about their thoughts, customs, motivations, et cetera et cetera, while NONE OF THIS has ANYTHING to do with real Russians. This reminds me of a historical museum scene in the movie called "Idiocracy" in which future people got so stupid they think that Charlie Chaplin fought with Nazis and dinosaurs that shot lasers. That's how far this movie is from reality, and for the life of me I simply can't understand WHY the authors of this movie tried to talk about things that they literally know nothing about.

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The Machinist (2004)

7/10

Great directing, obvious plot

20 December 2015

The Machinist portrays Reznik, a lathe operator, struggling with unexplained insomnia, loss of weight and progressive perceptual disorder, trying to find solace in a brown-and-gray world where his only friend is a lonely prostitute. Basically that's the whole plot of this movie. Reznik doesn't have cancer (that would be a surprise) but apparently has some mental problems.

Christian Bale delivers a very powerful performance, and his photo as Reznik could be used as a perfect illustration for a dictionary entry on 'gaunt'. How much weight he lost for the role is perhaps the most impressive thing about this film. The direction is skillful, effectively delivering the atmosphere of depressing self-doubt and loneliness.

However, the plot is as obvious as it can be. The symbolism is superficial and shallow. "Look!", says the camera, "there are two possible turns here! How symbolic!". And then, "Look how much this scene is reminiscent of that previous scene! We'll ZOOM IN here and then ZOOM IN AGAIN in case you missed it!" There are practically no surprises on the way, especially if you've seen Hitchcock's films or something newer and shallower like The Double.

Even though on the whole it feels powerful, at the end of the day I'd rather spend 2 hours re-watching Fight Club.

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Jessica Jones (2015–2019)

8/10

Okay but unimpressive

13 December 2015

First was Arrow which was so laughably cheesy and boring that I could barely get though 3 or 4 episodes. Then came Agents of Shield which looked like it was just for kids. But then here came Daredevil and it turned out to be really really cool. So I had hopes for Jessica Jones. Didn't happen.

The show has style, that's true. The conflict between Jessica and her nemesis Kilgrave is pretty engaging. There are some good moments. And the nemesis is pretty terrifying with his power, I'll tell you that.

But the storyline is not especially engaging, and it's not because of slow pace, it's because it's just often not really interesting. I didn't sympathize with most of the characters so didn't really care what happened to them. The story takes twists and turns, but while some of them are cool and unexpected, others just seem weird and awkward.

Most of all I'm annoyed by Jessica. Don't get me wrong, Krysten Ritter is doing a terrific job and she's nice and I like her personally, but the character annoys me screenplay-wise. When I started watching the first episode I thought: "Wow, lots of female characters made to look like stereotypical male characters". I don't like to see female characters who gulp down bourbon like Coke without wincing, yet don't have any signs of alcoholism, wake up with a perfect face and smoothly-shaved armpits (because decapitation is fine but not smoothly-shaved armpits would apparently kill our gentle viewer). I've seen real broken women; that's not how they look, and I don't think super-strength would really mean much here. If you're trying to make serious TV (and it seems pretty serious by the amount of dark past and haunting memories all the characters seem to have — so much, in fact, that there's barely any relief in the storyline), you can't make things that unnatural. If you want to see broken people check out True Detective.

IMO this show fails to create a perfect balance between a comic-book feel and realism, between darkness and lightness that Daredevil achieved.

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Hitman (I) (2007)

3/10

A very funny comedy

26 January 2009

I never expected to see a good movie based on a video game and I wasn't surprised when I watched Hit-man. I should point out that for non-Russian person it's difficult to realize how ridiculous all it seems, because the number of various mistakes and nonsense episodes is immense. And that is especially vexing, as the original game never contained such mistakes and showed elements of other cultures precisely.

I'm not going to describe all the differences between movie and game plot lines, the facts that in game all the hit men were clones, that clone 47 was one and only effective hit-man, that the place where hit men were created and grown and the place where they found their jobs were actually two separate independent organizations - these facts are not really important. The first and main problem was that the genre and style were chosen wrong. Authors tried to make a serious movie, and this resulted in a ridiculous movie. Hit-man should've been made in a way Tarantino's and Rodriguez' movies are made; stylish, effective and not serious - the way the game is.

Because how can it possibly be serious? Really, a bald guy with with a bar code on the back of his head being a hiding professional? C'mon, guys, that makes me laugh. The movie should've been directed in a way that the spectators wouldn't think about, like they don't think how much blood there's in human body when they watch Kill Bill.

Let alone that absurd representation of Russian reality which has nothing to do with the way it really is. Not at all.

Of course the movie still could've been saved by a main character shown in a right way. It didn't happen. No, Olyphant really is a good actor, but what he plays has nothing to do with that cold, straightforward, self-assured, calm and elegant agent 47, a silent Grim Reaper itself, though not without a sense of mercy. And the scenario writers are to blame.

On the whole I'd say that making such movies is just insulting. I won't say that, though, because it made me laugh. But that is not a good characteristic.

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