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silveredspirit
Reviews
Clique (2017)
Underrated gem
The first season is brilliant in my opinion, I've rewatched it several times now (6x45min episodes, 4,5h altogether). The dark and alluring atmosphere, the suspense and how the crime is intertwined with the main characters' past is mysterious while (more or less) realistic.
The story isn't complicated but there are layers to it, it's fragmented, with recurring flashbacks. The writing is excellent really, it deals with heavy themes in a graceful way. It's executed beautifully.
My only criticism is related to casting: the actors who play Sam (the musician/bartender) and Charlie (one of the bank interns), who are polar opposites, look way too similar. Since they don't really appear in scenes together, I thought they were the same person at first (or this might have been intentional actually).
A key theme in the show is "saving" people. Holly's backstory is that in her childhood, a prank goes horribly wrong and she can't save a little girl from drowning, yet she "saves" Milly/Rachel by (unintentionally) implying with her actions that being evil can be normal, basically. Then Georgia shows up and saves Holly from Milly/Rachel's bad influence. Holly carries the guilt into adulthood, while Rachel the psycho proceeds to thrive in the corporate world. The show deals with how Holly wants to find out what happened to Fay, in an attempt to somehow make up for that tragic childhood prank. Finally, she also has to save Georgia from Rachel(who is completely unhinged by the end of the season). I wish we learned more about Rachel's motivation and how she's supposed to know so much, aside from the fact that she's a damn maniac. She's an interesting character. To me, the others were likeable as well, and I loved Louise Brealey's performance (Jude is a great example of how someone smart and competent can still be painfully clueless).
A good story and very pleasant to look at, overall a great season. I wasn't impressed by the second season though.
Bo Burnham: Inside (2021)
Where's the comedy? Where's the special?
There were 3 remotely good songs in this (the ones he uploaded to his Youtube channel anyway), the rest is fake deep, incoherent, pretentious ~art~. Pleasant to look at but boring and forgettable on every level.
Pooh's Grand Adventure: The Search for Christopher Robin (1997)
Eerie
This gave me nightmares when I watched it as a toddler and 20 years later I still think it's way too anxiety-inducing for a kids' movie. I wouldn't recommend it to children who don't go to school yet.
Lucifer (2016)
Turned into campy fanfiction by Netflix
It started out as another 'case of the week' crime drama with an interesting concept (the Devil in LA) where the detective theme serves as a backdrop for the characters' relationships (think Bones and the like), with a good balance between light-heartedness and darker plotlines.
When Netflix picked it up, the show went into a different direction. I'm not saying it's much better or worse, just clearly different. The crime solving itself, which has become less central as the seasons progressed, serves no purpose at this point: the show has shifted into a full-on bingeable fantasy soap opera with lots of action. It's still highly entertaining, but at times it feels like an over the top spin-off of itself.
I'm so afraid (and I REALLY hope I'm wrong) it'll have a Sherlock or Game of Thrones ending. Guess we'll see next year.
Fleabag (2016)
S1 shouldn't exist
Season 1 of Fleabag is utter garbage. All we get to watch is a bunch of absurdly disfunctional, obnoxious, flat characters. The story doesn't go anywhere, it feels like nothing of substance happens during those 2.5 hours, the whole season could be summarized in three sentences. What makes it particularly irritating is that there are so many scenes that are clearly meant to be awkward in a self-aware, #relatable haha kind of way... They aren't though, they come off as forced, trashy, and cringe. How did this even get a second season...? Regardless, season 2 feels like a completely different show. Almost all the characters get a personality reset so luckily they become less unlikeable, and there is actual plot, a story to get invested in at least. If I could watch this show for the first time again, I'd just skip the weird, pointless cringefest that was S1 and I'd go straight for S2. (I won't rewatch it though... it's still nowhere near that good.)
Heathers (2018)
Charming and cringe
It's about offensively sterotypical characters in cliché yet absurd situations where the show keeps switching between taking itself way too seriously vs. feeling like a parody. The characters either give spontaneous pseudo-intellectual speeches or speak exclusively in one-liners. It isn't clear to me why anyone would want to tell a story this way, the writing is just weird. With that being said, I actually find this series entertaining and enjoyable, apart from those moments (you'll know) where I can't help but roll my eyes.
Sherlock: The Final Problem (2017)
What on earth did I just watch?
i've never written a review here before. I logged into my account just to express my utter disbelief and disappointment. I can't wrap my head around this episode. It feels like the whole show turned into a terrible parody of itself. These 90 minutes made perfectly no sense whatsoever. Full of unanswered questions regarding the previous episodes, we are left with several plot holes, ridiculous "twists" and some bad CGI action effects. All literally spitting the past 7 years in the face. I can't believe the writers seriously thought this was a fitting ending. It's not even the queer-baiting that annoys me the most. It's the fact that nothing adds up. The whole thing was like a bad acid trip. I'm honestly baffled.