Matt Jarjoura

3 stars for effort, and special effects. My main complaint is there is just something wrong with the casting more than the actual story being told. I'm fine with the streaming trend of "blind casting," and I don't think that's even a problem here. However, come on, I do not believe any of the characters are who they say they are, not even the skater son is convincing. There's no chemistry between the leads, and not because they are bad actors, as I've seen them all in other projects, it's just the wrong role. Then, there's the problem with the whole setup that sets the main plot in motion. If one of your lead scientists reappears after a year, why do you treat them like a caged animal? Of course, someone is going to flee if they are disoriented and made to feel trapped. Why is the CEO such an antagonist too? The whole over the top anger, guns blazing, makes absolutely zero sense. This whole thing was unnecessary and could have been left out. Jason 1 has plenty of internal motivation to go on this adventure without needing a ridiculous assassin chase b-plot. Finally, there's all the cringe sciencey bits, they try to explain, that should have definitely been left out. We as viewers do not need any explanation of how any of the mechanics of the black box works. My partner and I busted out laughing the second they explained what the purple serum was actually for. Was it left in to pad runtime or something?! The actors themselves couldn't even convincingly deliver those lines. Anyway, I'll finish the show since I am intrigued by how they plan to resolve the final showdown.

First off, excellent cast, holy cow. The first 10 minutes has to be the cutest modern romantic movie meet cute I've seen in film in a long time. It helps that the two leads have real chemistry, because it just oozes off the screen. Second, the cinematography was waaaay above what you could expect from what ultimately was this movies worst part, it's weak script. We learn nothing of our main villains in the movie. They seem to just love exploiting people in a vacuum, doing what they do, to honestly, seemingly nice people. Yes, the story does spend a lot of time focused on their fake past, but all that time is wasted as soon as we learn it was all an act. Who are Max and Madeline really?! How did they meet?! What motivates them?! Is it pure greed or is it a desire to take from the rich and give to the poor?! Next, the actual cons themselves are not really all that clever, and really require a huge suspension of belief. You get better cons of rich taking from rich in a single episode of Succession than what you get here in Sharper. The story tells us that these cons work because they practice their character lines 100s of times to nail the persona they need. Okay, but it never accounts for the 100s of possible outcomes in any real-world con. It probably cost Max $20k alone to stage and rent an apartment in NYC for Sandra to live in. I don't know, for me a con movie needs us, the audience, to know who the characters really are, to enjoy watching the con play out. Instead, the writers seemed more interested in conning us, the audience, but didn't spend the extra effort needed to make clever, believable cons. It's a fun movie, that's very well paced and kept my attention. I'd save this for a lazy rainy/snowy day when you have nothing else to do.

I can't quite put my finger on it, but this show didn't work for me. I absolutely loved the acting and production and you can tell everyone put their heart and soul into this project. So no complaints there. It's also an extremely well done mystery box show where everything was brilliantly layered in with air-tight logic. I was always asking myself why something was off, and then 15 minutes later the characters were asking the same thing and it was perfectly explained. However, and this maybe spoilers, but the overall themes and philosophy of the story didn't really come together. It started out with an amazing premise. A cowboy "warrior nun" out to save the citizens of Reno, in a world that has been overtaken by ChatGPT. This is exactly the topical science fiction we should be exploring right now as AI really is starting to infect our minds. Where it fell apart though was that throughout the show, we're constantly being shown how the AI is always one-step ahead of any attempts to subvert it. We're only show that Mrs Davis really does bring joy to everyone's lives as we're never shown it/her to be malicious or do anything that we should fear. In fact, the co-lead, Wiley is so broken that it took the AI pushing him to the brink of death for him to find his own Jay moment. Although the show sets up this opposing force in the pilot episode with religion vs. technology, the AI is never actually in the way. In fact, quite the opposite. The AI sends Simone on a holy grail quest, which ultimately heals her relationship with her ex and her mother, who all have very deep wounds. At the end of the show, when Simone and her mother have a final reconnecting moment. A moment that quite honestly was the most dramatic plot thread of the whole show, was completely ruined by her speech with Mrs. Davis. It came across as cheap and undid hours of world building. Then there's the religious component to the show. Once again, with Wiley, they setup up this really interesting resistance. Here is a group of people who's lives were actually harmed by the AI, but not for any reason like control. Instead, it's for purpose. The AI took away these men's purpose and they used the resistance as a way to gain new purpose. What a fantastic premise and I was so very excited to see where the show would take it. Once again, at the very end, there was a couple throw-away sentences that Wiley said to another character about play-doh and freedom that didn't quite work for me. So yea, all this to say, it was a well executed show, with very topical story beats, but fumbled at the finish line without really saying much at all. If the intention was to leave us with open questions, it could have ended without resolving anything and focused on the mom and daughter story. However, the show wanted to resolve everything and ended up removing its point.

I think I liked this movie?! I'm not sure though. One of the best moments in the movie was the very well acted and very uncomfortable exploitative scene that the lead (and rogue) engineer Gemma made her niece sit through a complete mental melt-down, fully exposed. This gave Gemma the blank check she needed to move forward with her project at the expense of her niece and I LOVED that moment. It was so poignant and gross to watch. It really set the story up to be a really good sci-fi cautionary tale without falling back to generic horror tropes. However, given James Wan and Blumhouse, it was not meant to be. Midway through the Act 2 it completely changed tone from a suspenseful comedy sci-fi movie to a generic horror. Other things I think ruined it: * The Alternative School open house. There is no way a bully would "molest" a doll in the middle of the woods alone. It totally ruined what was otherwise a hilarious take on privilege and "nice" parenting. Why not have the boy immediately befriend Caty and M3GAN gets jealous? It could have been so much more creepy. Maybe even the boy could be really into robots too and asks Caty to show her to him. * Why do we never see Gemma grieve about her sister? And where are the grandparents on either side? Both parents look like they come from well off situations, so it seemed more like an episode of Black Mirror than a movie.

I think it was a huge mistake to associate this show with Stranger Things. It set expectations for something it's not even trying to be. Season 1, at its core, is a character study on the young hopeful self meets the broken older self and the two are in conflict. The show spends most of the season exploring deep complex wounds and the interaction with their younger optimistic selves trying to make sense of it all. If that appeals to you, this is where you'll find the best the show has to offer. I absolutely adored when the show spent time exploring that. It not only forced the older version reconcile with their childhood dreams, but it forced the younger version to mature faster than they necessarily were ready for. One of the young girls says to another, "isn't it strange to see the world keeps going even when you're not there." The conversations felt genuine for the most part and they did a good job of keeping the time travel cliches to a minimum. "What's the internet?," for example, was eye-rolling, but it mostly made sense in the context of the moment and those moments were rare. Personally, this season fails when it explores its science fiction time-travel conceit. We learn very little of the motivations of the two background opposing factions the girls get caught in. The STF are presented as the good guys at first, and the Old Watch as the oppressive villains. Then it's later revealed the STF stumbled into existence by accident and are recast as a bunch of idiotic steampunk thugs. We only learn from the STF's perspective who the Old Watch are. So we still have no clue what their real intentions are. It's an unreliable narrator problem they'll have to figure out going forward. So my advice is not go into this season with even b-level sci-fi expectations. It's clear from the writing they weren't interested in telling that part of the story (at least not yet). It's really only there as a mechanic for character development. 4 stars for originality exploring the younger and older selves. Ali Wong was phenomenal playing the straight character, even with having the best witty dialog. The scenes with young and older Erin were some of the best scenes in the whole show. 1 star off for the poorly executed sci-fi bits. They'll have to go deeper here in future seasons which may end up turning off some viewers, and other viewers who were originally here for that probably couldn't make it past season 1, so this will be a challenge to overcome for sure.

9 episodes in (all that's available so far), I am baffled at the motivations of everyone. I think the problem is the writing is so lazy just to get us to some end game where "the prophet" wants to erase the past to create a new world. * The world didn't explode from war, it just kind of stopped because 90% of the population was wiped out. Yet the show insists that things are broken beyond repair as if war had blown everything up. For example, the electrical grid wouldn't just shut off forever. There are plenty of renewable sources and portable solar panels are a thing you know. * What is with the cliche idea that survivors are all thugs and gangs out to kill? It just feels unearned in this world. * The prophet subplot makes no sense. He ran away at age 7 or 8, left his mother and now he abducts children that somehow turn into little horror movie possessed characters that enable his power. All because he's upset that he had to quarantine for a month and wear a mask? When Kirstin goes to confront the prophet, how do the children know she's special or knows anything about Station Eleven? Then, instead of any concern for just losing her next best father figure the night before, embarks on a redemption arc story with the prophet. HUH?! * What about the prophets best friend, or was that supposed to be his partner? His character was honestly a waste, served no real point to the plot since a group of thugs killed him for no reason, just to have a throw away line for Kirstin to feel sympathy for him. We never learn the motivation from the red-bandana attack. One could speculate it's because they knew the prophet and wanted to kill him for abducting their children. Or they had just simply crossed over into red bandana territory without any warning signs to stay away. Do red-bandana warriors always stand on guard hidden behind trees all day? It takes a lot of energy and resources and potential human losses to attack others. So why?! Again, they just needed a lazy way to get the prophet and Kirstin alone to make the museum infiltration work. * WHAT is with the museum story, OMG! It also makes no emotional sense. Why is the troupe being quarantined and forced to perform a play? It all feels tonally wrong. In one scene there's compassion, the next, there's hostility. Who are we rooting for here? At this point, before the last episode airs, I am not sure I care about any of them. * Lastly, let's just talk about how terrible the acting is in the 20 years later timeline. It's inconsistent, tonally all over the place, and the lead actress who needs to carry the emotional weight of the show, has only one expression on her face, lost.

I really wanted to like this show but sadly after sinking in my time for all 8 hours of this nonsense, I feel I lost time I can never get back. I'm so curious how many hours of blood, sweat and tears went into this production. At what point did the crew realize this show was going no where? The main problem with this show is it never knows what it wants to be and the huge tonal shifts scene after scene constantly break the narrative. For this show to work it needed Masha to be the main protagonist with any one of the "perfect strangers" being the potential villain. However, the way it was filmed and edited, Masha was creepy and untrustworthy from the start. They spent many painstaking scenes with her appearing out of nowhere, watching the guests from her secret room and giving them mysterious smoothies. So instead of me caring about Masha's pursuit, I honestly wanted Delilah to shut the place down. Yet still, after all that, it ends happily ever after?! I give it two stars for the amazing art direction and better than average acting. I really felt like I was at that retreat.