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Shout by GnolRevilo
Bold of the writers to make the season finale the most boring episode of the entire season.
The continued failure of this show should be studied for generations, especially considering the hundreds of millions of dollars that has been pumped into it.
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You should go watch Bob’s World or Doug Funniest.
This is a very weird movie, but not by its content. Hard to tell whether it was worth watching.
Visually it's nice, extremely clean and ordered. But 90% of what happens has absolutely no interest. Family picnic. Wife showing the garden to her mother. Some random conversations. Dictation of work letters. Administrative work. It is very boring, soporific even.
The only interest comes from knowing who those people are and the whole context, and the contrast with the banality of their lives, with the clinical simplicity of administrative decisions.
The whole camp is hidden behind a wall. There is just a background noise, far away, muffled, some cries, some gunshots. And the chimneys smoke.
Among what is banal but extremely shocking by the context:
- The mother complaining she could not get her neighbour's curtains.
- The commander getting a new post, but her wife complaining about losing her garden
- The sales pitch of the new generation crematorium
- Being so happy that the plan is named after him that he calls his wife in the middle of the night
- Ashes used as fertilizer in the gardenThe only small moments that acknowledge the violence are:
- the wife, upset, threatening the maid that she could have her incinerated just like that
- the commander having a young girl sent to his office
- in the commanders meeting, the word "extermination" is said once, but all the rest is just logistics and quotasAt the end, a cutscene shows people cleaning the camp, and it takes a while to realize they are cleaning the current day Auschwitz museum, I guess showing the continuity of mundane tasks in all circumstances.
So in the end, this is definitely a work of art that succeeds in what it's trying to achieve. However the boringness is what makes it special, and you can't avoid the fact that it is mostly boring. Not to watch when sleepy or tired.
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The movie is all about contrasts of the war and indifference. There is horror in every frame of the movie.
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP97.5/10. It's really hard to grade the first episode of this show. I try to grade shows against themselves (e.g. what a 7.5/10 means is different for The Sopranos than for, say, Star Wars: The Clone Wars). The problem is that Better Call Saul has a past (or rather, a future). That means that, at least out of the gate, I'm going to underrate it for two reasons. The first is that it's a spinoff of Breaking Bad and seems to share that show's style and storytelling acumen, which means its baseline is going to be higher than most show's ceilings if it can keep that up. The second is that it needs some room to go. Sure, “Uno” would be an 8 or a 9 for a lot of series, but in the shadow of Breaking Bad, there’s an implicitly higher height that Better Call Saul is poised to be able to hit. So that means the early going of Better Call Saul exists in a strange kind of limbo between its Golden Age of Television predecessor in the past, and the expectations of quality in its future.
Which is to say that despite a rating that works out to roughly “Good”, I don’t have much, if anything to complain about in the episode. There’s a lot about it to like, and it has the same charms of its antecedent in many ways, but it doesn’t hit “wow” just yet, so the stellar work it puts in in the show’s debut episode gets a standard thumbs up, rather than an enthusiastic one.
But here’s what I liked about the first episode. The cold open, featuring Saul living as a “shnook” (in Goodfellas parlance), showing him in black and white with his old ads reflected in his glasses being the only color showed off the wonderful visual sensibilities this show has and shares with its predecessor. I loved the way that the episode, in both that segment and the episode as a whole, used blocking, framing, and color to convey information visually rather than having the characters devolve into exposition or simply stating how they feel.
That goes for the writing of the episode as well. It establishes Saul’s relationship with his brother, with the law firm and big shot partner he’s fighting against, with the lawyer at that firm he has something with, with his current position and frustration in his career, all without hitting the audience over the head with it. The pilot sets up the world of the show very well and very subtly. The position it puts Saul in, struggling to make ends meet, trying to do right by a terminally ill brother, and scraping by with his wits, charm, and ability to sniff out a con, is a compelling one, where the subtext is palpable but not obvious.
There was a similarly deft tack with the slowness of the episode. There's a very deliberate pace to the proceedings that conveys the restlessness of Saul in his circumstances, a sense in which he's frustrated at how he can't make things move better and faster that comes through in the small human moments, the seconds in between the big action and exchanges, that sets a perfect tone.
It also sets an appropriate number of hints to Jimmy McGill’s future, from the obvious ones like an appearance from Mike (and, I think, Huell?), to subtler ones like the nail salon, or his scam-wise nature in general. The episode perfectly toes the line between nodding too strongly to the huckster we see helping Walter White in the future, and presented a wholly disconnected schmuck who seems divorced from the persona Breaking Bad fans would come to know and love.
I also liked his caper with the skateboarders. It is a nice precursor to that hucksterism, and it’s well motivated both in terms of why he’s doing it (to get money and stick it to his well-heeled rivals in the process), why he would use those guys (his run-in showed that they were capable and it reminds him of his own past, though the latter part may also be a canard), and what it means (the first big step in Saul using underhanded tactics to get ahead in New Mexico). I also loved that it went completely sideways, with unexpected twist after unexpected twist right up to the big surprise at the end. It’s a great sequence, and bodes well for the series going forward.
All-in-all, it’s a fine start to the show, that did what it needed to do in order to establish its universe, gesture toward its predecessor, and chart its own, interesting path. I’m firmly on board, even if I may damn the show with faint praise due to high expectations along the way.
loading repliesmotherfucker be typing whole encyclopaedia on one episode
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I can’t believe that
that was a surprise. but oh well we need new entrants
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Is the last season dude, no need to do that
Is it just me or does anyone else think about the characters sitting down and talking to each other after having a misunderstanding so that they don't do something stupid, but in the movie they ARE doing something stupid instead of talking?
I'm gonna stop yapping now.
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Yes. The show since the 1st season is all about doing something stupid and deal the consequences.
Review by Jordy
VIP8If last year's Top Gun Maverick gave everyone the slightest bit of hope in regards to films that click with the general audience and blow up at the box office, this is the kind of film that'll make any self-respecting film fan lose all hope. Here's the deal: kids will pretty much like this by default, adults who are looking for validation of their childhood obsession will like it, and people who show up to see an actual movie won't. It's pretty much the blandest, calculated, do-nothing film they could've made out of this material. The animation is devoid of style and looks like it was originally rendered for a Dreamworks project back in 2008, the voice acting is mostly ass, it triggers the nostalgia & reference button way too often, the story & characters are watered down to a point where they're almost non-existent, it's not funny and its boomer rock soundtrack choices make absolutely no sense. It's irredeemable trash, like every product that rolls of the Illumination Entertainment conveyor belt. Nevertheless, I'm willing to bet that due to the large fanbase of the IP, this will be one of those films where in the short term some of the discourse will insist that "some people/critics don't know how to have fun" or "it's made for the fans" (only for those same people to deny ever liking it in the long haul, of course). Here’s hoping Illumination doesn’t listen to those voices in the same way that DC did after the release of Suicide Squad. This is not a foundation to build a franchise on.
2.5/10
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Dude. Relax, you are not alone in the world.
I will not understand why Connery was brought back. The last one was the best Bond in quite some time, and Connery REALLY phones it in here. The plot is back to nonsense and is equal parts confusing. Bond fans may get a kick out of it, but it is the worst entry yet.
Rating: 2/5 - 65% - Not Recommended to Everyone
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I don’t know. Nowadays this movie has another significance. It is a Connery movie, no matter how it goes at the time was launched. A must see movie as any other he did.
