Uncle Rico – Google

Entertaining with good acting and a few interesting characters. The plot and storyline were enough to keep me tuning in, but some of the blatant "insert your woke message here" moments that were peppered throughout, left a bad taste in my mouth. It would be nice to have productions these days without the subtle side of, and sometimes not so subtle, ideological messages. Furthermore, the character of Izzy was completely annoying and unbecoming of the supposed protagonist. She's an America hating, rude, selfish, obnoxious, immature mess of a girl...much like many in that age group in today's society I suppose, just not the type of qualities that make it easy to root for as you would envision in a protagonist. I eventually found myself wanting to fast forward through her scenes. I did enjoy some of the other characters such as Ronald and Phil, and the series provided a fairly well written and intriguing backstory for each. I just had a hard time getting past the little snot that Izzy was, which again, as the protagonist, makes it very difficult to enjoy and ultimately reflects on the creators of the series. Maybe it's just me though? One other truly annoying aspect was the lack of subtitles during the scenes where they are speaking Russian and Spanish. My Spanish was adequate enough to get the jist of the conversation, but I wasn't so lucky when it came to the Russian dialogue. Every time the ruskies would start talking I'd have to pause, turn on the subtitles, then pause and turn them off again when it went back to English. Again, maybe it's just me, but I found it completely annoying. All in all it's worth a watch for the storyline and the acting, as long as you can stomach the random wokeness and lack of subtitles.

Not getting all the fan fair in the reviews for this show. The first season was entertaining, but this show quickly became unwatchable during season two as the storyline seems to abruptly stall and peter out. I enjoyed most of the characters, especially those of Rick, Amara, and Yago, but the two main characters of Miles and Louis did absolutely nothing for me, except put me to sleep, and I soon found myself longing for scenes without them. The film was able to take a bad guy in the character of Chili Palmer and build him into a charismatic, cool, and likeable protagonist that you wanted to root for, but the series falls dramatically short in this regard. In fact, the characters of Miles and Louis were simply annoying and anything but cool, and I found myself actually rooting for their downfall. All in all I was pretty disappointed as the concept had so much more potential.

I'm an MMA fan and was looking for a new series to watch and wasn't really finding anything else so thought I'd at least check this out for an episode or two...didn't have too many expectations aside from being curious about the MMA aspect and wasn't really expecting this to be anything other than some sort of shallow action series geared towards fans of cheesy B flicks. Basically I could not have been more wrong. This turned out to be one of my favorite shows and binged the forty episodes over four days. Completely different but right up there in my book with shows like Peaky Blinders, Narcos, Mindhunter, and others of that caliber. The depth of this show was a huge surprise and is conveyed through a genuine and believable story line, and is accentuated with a phenomenal music selection throughout. So surprised that this show has been around since 2014 and I have never heard of it. Do yourself a favor, put aside any preconceived notions you may have, watch a few episodes, and I'm betting you'll be hooked.

I really enjoy Adam Sandler apart from his comedic roles. If you have seen Punch Drunk Love or Reign Over Me, you know what an excellent actor he truly is and I really think that these types of roles along with his performance here in Uncut Gems, is where he really shines. In Uncut Gems Sandler plays the role of Howard Ratner, a degenerate gambler and schemer who moonlights as a jeweler. I say moonlights as a jeweler simply because his character's life seems to be consumed first and foremost by the consequences of his gambling debts and trying to stay a step ahead of his shady creditors. The pace of the film is swift and sometimes chaotic and leaves the viewer feeling as frazzled and anxious as Sandler's character...I absolutely loved it. By the end, I was left almost with a sense of empathetic relief by the fate that befell Ratner, simply because the mind numbing pace and circumstances that he had brought into his life were finally at an end. Thoroughly enjoyed this film!

Initially seemed pretty promising and the first few episodes were interesting enough to hold my attention and make me want to stick around for the next one. After about the third or fourth episode however, the story line begins to drag and seems to be filled with meaningless and boring events that left me wondering if I would have been more entertained by tuning into Governor Cuomo's daily Covid briefing instead... Also found it very comical that every time the prosecuting attorney would get a good tip, or some major insight into the investigation, she would immediately end up at the karaoke bar getting hammered and completely ignoring what she had just learned, haha...completely unbelievable. Good acting, pretty awful writing...only made it to the seventh episode so maybe things changed, but I doubt it. Really could have wrapped this up in five episodes rather than ten.