3-Pack (Unpublished)

 

I tried something a bit different this week and The Keizertimes didn’t want to publish it. Wanted me to stick with the one movie or TV show, one review format, which is fair. I will be writing a full review for one of the below, but here is the 3-pack I initially submitted. Enjoy.

 

 

Because there are just so many darned things to watch these days, I thought I’d do something a little bit different this week and write three mini reviews for the price of one. Here are just a few things that I have been enjoying recently:

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (Disney+)- Marvel Studio's latest is a blend of courtroom shenanigans, comedy, and superhero action that unfortunately bores more often than not. Tatiana Maslany's charming performance as the jade giantess is not enough to disguise the mostly bland writing, thoroughly uninteresting side characters, and questionable CGI. There are funny moments, sure, but they happen far too infrequently, and it’s kind of sad that the show is at it’s best only when a guest character from another Marvel franchise shows up. If it weren’t for them I wouldn’t have felt much of a need to check in with the show week to week, which is a shame. Shulkie deserves better.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 1 (Amazon Prime)- Although it’s not technically affiliated with Peter Jackson's Middle-Earth films, Rings of Power obviously takes a lot of inspiration from them, from its majestic scenery to its soundtrack to its creature design. Less impressive are its costumes, which often look cheap despite the show's staggering budget, as well as its glacial pacing; there are so many storylines going on at once that barely anything happens each given episode. But the cast is great and the dialogue is appropriately pretty, even if the writers do occasionally overdue it a bit with flowery phrases that they apparently think are profound but don't really mean anything. Any Tolkein fan can tell you that the lore itself is quite questionable, but if you treat the show like the very expensive, non-canonical fan fiction that it is you just might like it. If you don’t mind a really slow burn, that is.

Black Adam (only in theaters)- I actually enjoyed this film a lot more than I thought I would, or at least the first two-thirds of it. A long brewing passion project of star/producer Dwayne Johnson, Black Adam is pretty fun until you realize that only an hour and a half has passed and the movie still has a long third act ahead of it. This act decides to throw out any hint of originality the film has had up until that point (which is, admittedly, not much… the pitch for the film apparently boiled down to the question “What if Shazam straight up murdered a bunch of people?”) in favor of every superhero movie cliché in the book, ending with, you guessed it, a sloppy CGI slugfest with a sky beam. The CGI in question isn’t that great either, nor are the plethora of supporting characters (with the exception of Pierce Brosnan as Doctor Fate… that dude’s awesome). But kudos to Johnson himself for a job well done. I still wouldn’t call what he’s doing here “acting,” but it’s certainly different than what The Rock is usually cooking.

Well that was fun. Happy watching!

 

This review was not published in The Keizertimes. You can still visit at http://keizertimes.com/ , though.