Reviews
The premise is that Hercule Poirot is old and retired and somewhat disgraced in the public perception. John Malkovich was the wrong person to play the part, as his fake Belgium accent is at times terrible and you can hear his regular voice coming through.
The murder mystery itself is rather weird for an Agatha Christie mystery and is more like a modern serial killer story. Perhaps her story really is like this, but its different from every other mystery of hers that I ever read or watched which makes me think they rewrote it to be more modern and strange.
Its not a bad mini series, its just not great. The backstory for Poirot is interesting. The drama with the new young and dumb police detective is typical, but I kept thinking it was a Harry Potter mystery lol.
If you like serial killer mysteries and can put up with John M than you will probably like it.
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The first episode was quite funny, but 3 episodes in and I'm dropping it, its like episode 2 and 3 are no longer a comedy, they try to make jokes but its soo not funny. Maybe the good writer quit after episode one. Oh well.
Season 2 Episode 1 is terrible. How do these shows get made???
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It could have been good, but the main character talking to the audience was a mistake.
This is a showcase of annimation. Some of the very short episodes are classic animation and some are state of the art animation. Love, Death and Robots are supposed to be the different themes, so while some are about Robots, some are not at all.
Episode 7 is the best realistic human animation I've ever seen. If the same team makes another episode in a year or two, you will not be able to tell its animation because of the advances in processing power resolution and the physics engines. I kept saying "wow" throughout the episode, it looks that good.
Some of the stories are so-so and others are great. The Yogurt episode is so funny. There is a fair amount of nudity, its not a kids show. There is a lot of gruesome killing.
I really hope that the show continues and features another batch of short animation peices next year. This could easily go on for years.
Its in French, I'm not aware of english dialog tracks. There are subtitles available.
Its set in the near future where several types of technology are now a reality, virtual reality sex, nanites that control your brain and allow you to commune with another person in your shared mind. An artificial intelligence has been 'whipped up' by a single person like its an easy bake cake. And not just any AI, this AI has evolved and become concious and holds hig level conversations and controls the mind implants. And the weird part is that the AI is a back-burner sub plot that they hardly even mention although the AI character is in a lot of scenes. I really dislike the solo-genius angle that so many sci-fi shows use to invent AI, despite the fact that literally thousands of people are working on AI systems to get them to even have them translate languages... human level AI like that depicted in the show is more than 10 years off. So maybe you could say that the show was set in that 10+ year off future, but somehow everyone still uses Nokia cell phones O_o. And... was that a person driving that car? Is it 2017 still? Please.
The writer did what a lot of sci-fi shows unfortunately do... they take a very science based plot and then introducing a ficticous nonsense concept like a Soulmate. Since there are no souls, there are no soulmates. But if you can get passed that religious crap you might find the sci-fi story enjoyable.
Several times during the 8 episode season I found myself thinking that the plot was going down a dead end and it seemed like a writing mistake, but then there would be a plot twist that not only filled in all the blanks but it was rather well done. Episode 7, when you find out who Tom really is... was quite nicely done. I was impressed... even if it was incongruous with other technical aspects of the show world.
Problems: The outside corporation that is coniving and overly involved in all kinds of deception is not realistic. I think there were at least 3 people had been 'turned' and were working agaisnt Osmosis as double agents sort to speak. The girl that falls for the boy with the porn addiction would never go to the behaviorial center after he almost drowed her and the center would never have let her in. Then there is the whole other medical use-case sub plot with the mother having her mind somehow rebooted by a memory and all the deception involved with the three test subjects and the swimming pool incident. And the brother was even saved in a similar way prior to the start of the show timeline. I think it could have been a better show if there were fewer moving parts, less would have been more. Which is somewhat ironic because a main design motif of the near future world is a minimalistic aestethic.
All that said, its still pretty decent sci-fi.
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Firstly, it has nothing to do with that abortion of a movie called Terminator Salvation. Its just a side story that has almost nothing to do with the Terminator characters from the movies or TV show. In the last episode they mention John Conner once. I like that it is a new story with new characters, sooooo tired of ARRRRNAld.
The animation appears based on the half-life game engine. It very much looks like a video game circa 2005. But they did create some nice graphics and bump maps. Its about as good as you could do with that engine so I didn't deduct any stars for that, but its not the greatest graphics and of course would be much better if made today.
The plot of the story is creative and new to the Terminator World. The suspence is well done and the various terminator machines hunting the main characters keep you on the edge of your seat.
My main beef with the show is the use of the term "ghost". Our primative society just can't seem to let go of archaic concepts and story tellers keep regurgitating the same concepts again and again. There are no ghosts. The person they call ghost was fairly easy to find.
I do think the Terminator machines and Skynet would have evolved defenses against the radio frequency override that is the Macguffin of the plot. But if you can get passed that, it is a decent fun short 6 episode web series.
UPDATE: The other review mentions the Blair character is in T4. I didn't remember her. Though it might be that I was repressing the memory of Terminator Salvation altogether.
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Its the dark version of Harry Potter. An orphan with scare on his forehead is allowed into a secret school with different groups of kids learning the dark arts.
The near constant bodily injuries are rather dumb as the kids seems to heal for no apparant reason in an episode or two - even when they are stabbed. There is surprisingly little sex though.
The plot meanders all over the place touching on the backstory of all the numerous main characters. There doesn't seem to be much point to any of it. It might be somewhat interesting to watch if you like seeing people get beaten or tortured.
The acting and cinimatography are well done. Some of the fight scenes are well choreographed. The whole secret school thing comes off as contrived. The headmistress is weird and the monks seem artificially inposed for no reason.
Horrible last episode to the first season. If the only thing that happens is that everyone dies, then that is not writing talent, that is a mental condition.
Things I hate: Everybody smokes cigarettes. I think there should be a 1 million dollar fine for every second someone is smoking on screen.
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This show should have run for a couple of seasons at least, but it was cut short and didn't even finish filming the first season. The last episode looks like it was rushed on a shoestring budget. The last scene attempts to give a kind of conclusion but its vague and very unsatifying.
How a show with Brent Spiner and a young Peter Dinklage is not more well known is beyond me. I never even heard of this show until I saw someone else on Sidereel mention it.
There are definitely some great moments. My favorite is the last scene of episode 2. I LOLed in joy.
With a few cast changes and some better writting this could have been a cult classic. But in the end I kept marking it down in rating due to very dumb writting choices and certain actors that either can't act or were just wrong for the parts. I guess the aliens won.
Jock frat boys and magical secret societies oooooh uuuuuh... Lame.
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The show recurssively did not "spark joy" so I dropped it. I recommend watching the first episode up until she introduces the concept of "spark joy". Then stop watching the show and use that concept and catch phrase in your own life and never watch the show again. The catch phrase is the best part.
The problem with all these self help gurus is they come up with some anal overly individualistic process that works for them but isn't necessarily the right thing for you personally to be following. The folding of the jeans for example, its a total waste of time. If you are a guy, your jeans are huge compared to some petite little asian, and you simply can't fold things like that.
I have no doubt she helps people, but the same thing could be accomplished by parking a dumpster in the driveway and simply throwing away all the crap they have built up over the years.