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From: "Ian J. Ball" <ijball@mac.invalid>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: What Did You Watch? 2024-04-26 (Friday)
Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2024 08:22:42 -0700
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Yesterday, I finished off Fallout, and watched a movie:

Fallout (Prime) - Last two episodes of season #2.
    Yeah, I figured it was going to turn out like this... I have no idea 
if the premise problem here is from the video games themselves, or if 
the TV show sort of grafted on their own "premise" here, but either way 
I didn't buy this world's "origin" or the motivation of the "bad guys".
    It also seems like the TV series didn't delve enough into the 
background with the various "factions" (esp. the New Calif. Republic vs. 
the Brotherhood of Steel).
    Anyway, I will keep watching this - there's some promise with more 
Lucy teaming up with The Ghoul. But the resolution to season #1 left a 
lot to be desired. In addition to strongly disliking and not buying the 
motives of Vault-Tec, etc., I was also strongly annoyed with Norm's fate 
(though I did very much like the brain-in-the-jar robot!) - Will we even 
see Moises Arias in season #2?!

I Am Rage (Prime) - This 2023 film is absolutely ridiculous - 
unfortunately, it wasn't *ridiculous enough*!
    It opens with a seemingly unrelated thing showing some masked woman 
(Marta Svetek), surrounding by other apparent cult figures in masks, 
killing and exsanguinating some dude.
    This stars Hannaj Bang Bendz (who I am quite sure I have seen in 
something else before, though I can't for the life of me figure out what 
that was!) as a woman who clearly has psychological issues. Her new 
boyfriend (Derek Nelson) wants to take her on a camping trip with his 
brother, and then to his parents' country estate to meet his whole family.
    The movie itself is kind of weird - Bendz is clearly British, and 
this clearly filmed in the UK, but the boyfriend and his family, and the 
"big client", are clearly supposed to be American(?!).
    Anyway, the boyfriend's brother seems shady, though his fairly hott 
slutty girlfriend (Antonia Whillans) seems OK.
    Of course, things are not what they seem, and when they get to the 
parents' manor, soon enough things take a turn. It's not long before the 
lead's "rage issues" start coming in handy.
    The problems here are: 1) this takes way too long to get going, 2) 
when it does get going, it's still sluggish, and 3) with such an 
ridiculous over-the-top concept, they should have just embraced it and 
taken it to the hilt by going "over-the-top" with it. Instead, they 
never really embrace the ridiculousness (save in one or two places), and 
so the whole film doesn't really work.
    Another issue is that Bendz doesn't seem like any sort of "martial 
arts expert" (none of the cast do!), and if you're going to do a flick 
with a fair but of hand-to-hand fighting, you really need to have 
castmembers who are good at that (or good at faking it!), or the film 
suffers from being unbelievable, with lackadaisical fight scenes.
    So, the problem here wasn't the premise, at least in terms of the 
lead's origins - it was more like a lack of preparation and follow-through.
    Also, I was disappointed when it turned out the baddies weren't 
actual vampires, just a kind of "faux vampire".


What did you watch?