Wednesday, September 9, 2020

Rogue/Mr. Mercedes (Season 2)


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In case you haven’t seen the intro from my entry dated 1/26/19 (it’s in my archives whenever you want to read it), I’m no longer going to review every single movie I see.  I’m going to review one, with the occasional bonus, and just give ratings for the rest from now on (unless I decide to pick it up again in the future).  You can always ask me why I gave the ratings for the films without reviews though (via comments or the e-mail addresses under the ‘About Me’ section).
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Rogue                                                                          OK
The title shares its name with several others, but one that comes to mind first is the exceptional killer crocodile film from Australia.  This film involves a lion somewhere in Africa.  A group of soldiers, led by Megan Fox’s character, rescue some young girls from a terrorist organization involved in human trafficking and end up at an abandoned lion farm where they now have to protect themselves from a rogue lion as well as hide from those terrorists they escaped from.  The lions were very real when we first see them at this lion farm in the beginning, but the rogue one in question is CGI when attacking people and when running.  Why did the CG lion have to be less than passable?  Don’t they know bad CGI (and most CGI) can ruin an otherwise good movie?  You mean to tell me they could afford to cast Megan Fox and shoot in Africa, but couldn’t afford to train a real lion or at least create a more realistic-looking one?  Aside from that, plus some parts being too predictable, and that the film could’ve been 20-25 minutes shorter, this really wasn’t a bad movie.  They did manage to meld genres well (war/action fused with natural horror), but, unfortunately, those negative factors (particularly the lion) caused me to feel a bit less than content.  9/9/2020



Mr. Mercedes:  Season Two                                        OK
I never read the trilogy of novels by someone named Stephen King---Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, and End of Watch, released in that order---but I do own the first two and hope to one day read them, preferably when this series isn’t so fresh in my mind.  That being said, I went into this season, as well as the last, blind with nothing to compare it to.  I enjoyed the first season enough (you can read my review for it in the archives---www.abcreviewarchive.blogspot.com), but wasn’t sure it needed to be ten (roughly hour long) episodes.  I was curious to see how another ten-episode season would pan out (this time, all roughly 50-minutes, give or take), let alone a third season which was recently released on DVD (and I’m also curious as to how that season will pan out based on the end of this season).  At the end of the first season, the titular villain (played by Harry Treadaway) ends up in a coma after a certain incident and is now watched over by several people here, including Bill Hodges, the detective played by the Irish-as-they-come, Brendan Gleeson, complete with his signature brogue.  They made it a bit interesting when showing the inside of his mind while in this coma and when he eventually gained a specific supernatural-ish ability.  It’s too soon to tell since I haven’t seen season three yet and haven’t read any of the novels as previously mentioned, but it felt like this season was mostly filler between the previous and upcoming season (as of now, according to Wikipedia, a fourth season is uncertain, so season three might very well be the last one---makes sense…three books, three seasons).  One, I made it this far, so I am going to continue.  Two, I did still kinda like tuning into this universe and wanted more when it ended.  And three, like always, I’m going to watch anything with Mr. King’s name attached (in hopes it’s not as bad as Kingdom Hospital).  9/9/2020



Other movies I've seen and their ratings (see above):

Angel of Mine  >>>EH/OK

Retaliation (2020)  >>>B/EH


---Sean O.
9/9/2020

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