feelinesound

I love Ryan Gosling and couldn't have been more excited for his return to film after a 5 year hiatus. Big fan of Ana de Armas too and Chris Evans has always been good, and so has most of what the Russo brothers have made. So why is this movie not good? Its certainly not the lead performances which are great. It just comes down to bad writing, the scenes never make sense, you're always left asking questions - why is it the bad guy one moments wants our protagonist dead, the next moment he doesn't kill him because he needs to know where the McGuffin is, then back to killing him, then back to the McGuffin, and so it keeps switching with no rhyme or reason? And just so many completely unrealistic things happen, decisions by CIA agents that make no sense whatsoever, a few poor cartoon-like performances in the non lead roles, action scenes that are sometimes too blurry to make sense and a pretty cheesy musical score, and what you get, despite so much money put into this movie and such great stars in the lead roles, an utterly mediocre film. What a shame.

A bit of a different twist on the post apocalyptic war movie, grim and dark and full of crackling ice and brooding synth drones, with a distinctly Scandinavian flavour. Nice to see a film like this done reasonably well in a language other than English.

Unfortunately it gets mostly undone by the usual cheesy character motivations, as the only thing our selfish "hero" cares about is a family member, not so much about the fate of every other human on the planet. Which in itself would be annoying enough as it is, but it's even worse when it causes the whole first 90% of the movie to become pointless when we reach the final 10%.

This was my review for season 1: Truly outstanding atmosphere and tension made possible thanks to incredible, patient cinematography and a mesmerizing musical score by Max Richter.

Not for the impatient, this one's rather for those of us who love sci-fi arthouse classics like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, atmospheric mood pieces which capture the wonder, mystery and dread of the unknown revealing itself.

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Unfortunately a lot of what made season 1 so special seems to have been lost in season 2 so far, most especially the incredible, genius level Max Richter score, now replaced by a just okay one by Bobby Krlic, and gone are much of the stunning visual landscapes and slow-burn atmosphere, so I suppose the show is missing the talents of some of S1's directors like Jakob Verbruggen, and the writing seems to be a notch below too, perhaps owing to the fact Simon Kinberg, who wrote or co-wrote all but one of S1's episodes, has significantly decreased his involvement.

It's still a decent enough watch but no longer one of the best things on TV, which is quite sad... I'll keep watching and hope it improves again though, though without that Richter score it's hard to imagine...