... and decided I could unsub before the free trial week ended. Here's a review:
- Ted Lasso Episode 2.9
- Almost as inventive and cinematically interesting as people said it is. A good watch without having seen the rest of the show, but then it also didn't inspire a need to watch the rest of the show.
- Foundation
- Very painful to watch but honestly the most artistically interesting of all of their offerings. It's half modern YA multi-racial novel about chosen ones, and half Shakespearean stage play about three emperor clones and their robot advisor. It has nothing to do with the books of course, but let's be honest, every addition to the Foundation universe since 1988 has adulterated the austere logic-puzzle nature of the first three books with absurd soap opera melodrama. This is no different and just reflects the concerns of the modern day in its changes.
- Come From Away
- A cute musical that tries to take the tragedy of September 11th and turn it into something that brings us closer together in human unity (because the US blew that shot.) However, it mostly just makes you wish everyone was Canadian. I'm told by learned sources that the multi-angle filming makes you miss the true wizardry in the stage production, of how the different scenes and blocking flowed if you were viewing them from a static angle.
- For All Mankind
- WATCH THIS ONE. I don't even care about the space race or military culture, but it's supremely GOOD in the powerful performances it gives of normal people dealing with plausible-but-extremely-stretching situations. I can't even say there's much art to analyze, it's just beautiful like a very indulgent and well written fanfic delivered by convincing actors.
- Wolfwalkers
- The follow-up to "Secret of the Kells" with the same gorgeous animation style, but unfortunately now with an incredibly cliche story that was so oft-trodden I couldn't finish half of it. Watch this if you like pretty drawings or Princess Mononoke was too morally complex for you.
- The World's a Little Blurry
- The Billie Eilish Documentary, filmed with a lot of home footage. If you are a fan of her music, you will like this which has a lot of said music and fits its themes. However, you will also fail to be surprised by any of this because it's dramatic arc is exactly the story you would expect given her public persona and her music, filmed decently well with a fake veneer of intimacy. I don't know if that's because it's all a mask and this is a continuance of said mask, or this chronicles her genuine self. It didn't really matter though. I much more highly recommend "Val" the documentary of Val Kilmer which is weird as fuck and tells a story that surprised me a lot more with very weird narration style. (Both of course are self-flattering in a self-deprecating way, but it's autobiographies, you know that going in.)
- Boys State
- Someone recommended this but I didn't get it.
Anyway, as a streaming network, it seems to have a pretty high average quality and they're certainly ambitious. Most of the shows on the front page looked "interesting." But it's too hit or miss for me to want to keep on subscribing, especially if you can binge both seasons of For All Mankind in just three days.
