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Reviews
Move Me Brightly: Celebrating Jerry Garcia's 70th Birthday (2013)
The Prophet Jerry
This movie starts with interviews and testimonies and then transitions to a house concert led by Bob Weir, but featuring a whole bunch of young artist playing in a style inspired by Jerry Garcia. Not really a tribute band, they play many Grateful Dead hits, but with their own fresh style. Truly a new generation inspired by the Prophet Jerry.
Ilana Glazer: The Planet Is Burning (2020)
Not Ready Yet
Very puerile humor, much of which was just not that funny. Plus the production quality was very weak, almost amateur.
Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
The Perfect Movie
I don't get the criticisms, this movie exactly hit on every story thread and gave satisfying and complete resolution to them all. The perfect summation of a 9 episode story arc. I also liked the way they brought most all of the past characters back into the story, without overdoing it.
OK, there was a scene or two that kind of dragged, especially in the first 20 minutes, but once Rey and Kylo Ren started to interact the story really takes off. If you are a fan of Star Wars, don't miss it!
Westworld (2016)
What an enigma
This is a difficult show to review. The acting is terrific and for SF fans, the story of advanced AI is compelling. But as TV it is really a flawed show.
The premise is that the android hosts are on the verge of becoming sentient (for reasons that are well explained). And this is upsetting to the designers, upsetting to the hosts and eventually, I predict, will substantially change how the hosts interact with the guests. Here is the problem, as long as the hosts are programmed and replaceable, do we really care if they struggle and die? Repeatedly the show reminds us that their emotions and even pain is artificial and can be turned off by a simple command. So, why invest my psychic energy in their well being? They die and they come back, repeatedly. Boring.
This leads to another problem (or feature if you will) -- "black hat" guests who have figured this out, are cynically "cheating" the game. Several scenes now have a single human winning a firefight with dozens of hosts by just standing there confident that the hosts can not hurt the humans. Is it at all interesting to watch a fixed fight, even if it is consistent with the show's premise? The writing is good and so far internally consistent, so I am going to keep on watching for a while to see if they surprise us. I think pretty soon a host WILL kill a human and then the s**t will hit the fan. Then, maybe, this show will take off, but for now, meh.