Salem: Season 1 (2014)

*CONTAINS SPOILERS*

What I liked: 

• The intro song being a Marilyn Manson track. Yes, fan. Also, the intro itself was alright.
• The animals that Petrus (the seer) has, and their crazy stitched up eyes. Creepy stuff I tell you.
• Some of the effects are pretty good and the show can be surprisingly graphic.
• Isaac Walton. Probably the only character I liked. He was so childlike and innocent, and always being used and walked over, which was really sad. But he was sweet, and passionate, and always did the best he could.

What I didn’t like: 

• I was not a real fan of Shane West as John Alden. I think my biggest issue here was the fact that he plays someone so badass and it really, really doesn’t suit him – he comes across as a sissy trying too hard.
• We all know Mary went all darkside and all that, but it was just so abrupt and sudden, not a fan of that. She’s also so completely darkside, which just seems a little sketchy.
• The dialogue is just ridiculous, and cannot decide if it wants to be modern or traditional or what. No idea.
• There are no characters that I like and that I am rooting for or anything like that.
• The potential that this show just wasted.
• The casting really sucked. And I was pretty excited to see Xander Berkeley in here, especially after The Mentalist. No such wonderful winning. Seth Gabel, too, whom I absolutely adored in Fringe felt so wasted and weak here, though he is one of the better characters, to be sure.
• No real progression. Everything went in circles and was ridiculously predictable. Plus, no plot twist or revelation was ever delivered with any finesse, so it all just felt hollow overall.
• The whole character progression of Mercy. I mean how the hell did she get so strong and knowledgeable so quickly? Pffff, it was just frustrating.

Rating:
Well, it is rather evident that I was not a fan of this. I don’t know why my other half insisted on watching this. He was told by some colleagues/friends that it was really good and really interesting and blah blah blah. Now, we have never actually gotten anything good to watch from them before, or a great recommendation that stood out, and all I really wanted was to watch Deadwood, but this was short, so if not, why not? Right? Pffffff. This was such a painful experience for me to get through, but because it was only a thirteen episode long season, my OCD would not allow me to simply stop watching and move on. I hate that about short seasons sometimes. Dammit. Well, I figured that once I had started, I may as well invest some time in this, even if just to bitch and moan about it, and trust me, I will. The casting just felt all wrong, really. From the off. Like none of the characters was suited for their role… I know we are supposed to identify with Alden and all that, but I just wanted to cut his hair (the long hair didn’t suit him – and I am sure you all know how much that must kill me to admit it) and I thought he was such a sissy pushover. Not to mention my excitement levels went through the roof when I saw Seth Gabel as a cast member, I like him, and thought he was simply superb in Fringe. Queue a teeth kicking, cause that’s what this show was. There are so many holes in it, and so many stories that get introduced and forgotten and rushed away from. It’s like… why?! The worst is this show had potential. Like the concept, and the fact that the effects were halfway decent and there was some impressive gore. I was like yeahhhhh, let’s have a lookie here, and then this is what we got. There were moments that were pretty good, albeit predictable. It’s like Salem never catches, never finds itself, never draws you in, which is a pity. Also, I didn’t appreciate Janet Montgomery in the main role of Mary one little bit. Logic also makes some impressively confusing and mind-numbing leaps and bounds, which just adds to the irritations within this show. Also, the pacing was terrible. Something would happen and only be addressed again much later on, undecided as to whether something was relevant or not. Make up your minds, people, it can’t be that hard… The camera work was also incredibly sketchy, and sometimes the way it would rapidly flick between two characters in a single room made me think of a soapie. Meh. As much as Increase Mather was a twit, he was one of the more entertaining twits, and Stephen Lang had more screen presence than anyone I had actually seen this season. The one great thing about this show is the amount of laughter it provided for me and my other half due to ripping it to shreds and taking the Mickey out of it completely. I cannot, with a clear conscience, recommend this show – it could have been so much more if it wanted to!

Review: Taken 2 (2012)

“I have to find them… and bring your mom back. And then I have to make sure these people never bother us again in our lives.”
– Bryan Mills

I actually wanted to watch this right after I finished the first one, and did not realize that so much time had passed in between my two viewings. I did not expect greatness from this, but damn, maybe a bit more than we got?

Retired CIA Agent Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) continues his life since saving his daughter, Kim’s (Maggie Grace), life. His ex-wife, Lenore (Famke Janssen) and her husband, Stuart (Xander Berkeley), are pretty much through with one another since what happened when Kim was almost trafficked. Bryan steps in, trying to comfort Lenore as well as get Kim’s life together so she can get her license. He is unimpressed to learn that Kim has a boyfriend, Jamie (Luke Grimes). What he does not know, however, is that he is a wanted man after all the slayings he inflicted when looking for Kim. The families cry for vengeance, and are led by Murad Krasniqi (Rade Sherbedzija), the father of the man Bryan strapped to a chair and electrocuted.

Payback is a bitch

Lenore is upset when Stuart cancels their trip to China for Kim’s spring break, and Bryan offers that they come and stay in Istanbul with him after he has finished a job. They arrive before he decides to pack up and leave, surprising him. He is so thrilled. Soon, Kim starts playing matchmaker between her parents. On their way out one day, Kim says she will not be joining her folks. They leave together, laughing about how it will be, when Bryan notices a car tailing them. He gets Lenore out, but despite all his efforts, he and his ex-wife are taken. Bryan informs Kim of this via the phone just before it all happens, and urges her to seek safety. After all the slayings to save his daughter, this would have had to happen at some stage I guess…

Apparently rocking that stick

Kim becomes instrumental in helping Bryan escape from the people, as well as retrieving her mother. Bryan’s best friend, Sam (Leland Orser), who helped plan the surprise for Bryan with Lenore, needs to step up again and see how he can be of assistance to Bryan, but is not the most elemental in the plot. Bryan’s training kicks in full on and he starts devising an escape, even if the plan is rudimentary at best. Bryan needs to learn to not be so overly protective of Kim, and she becomes his greatest help. They need to recover their family and return home to safety as soon as possible.

Will Bryan be able to protect his daughter as well as recover his wife with minimal damage? How will he get rid of the Albanian gang if they are so intent on revenge?

With long teeth I am going to give Taken 2 a 4/10. I mean, I knew there was no ways it was going to be as good as the first (sequels rarely are), but I really expected a bit more than this. I don’t know, all of it was a bit wooden. Liam Neeson was, as always, great, but the rest of the movie did not really flow (even with him!). Not the dialogue, not the acting, and the story left a lot to be desired. Not even the action sequences helped this movie out at all. I don’t know, Taken was fantastic, and there was a lot of hype surrounding it, and there must have been much higher expectations for this one, but Luc Besson let us down, and could not live up to his predecessor. I hated how his daughter battled to drive an automatic back in the States but can suddenly rock a manual as if she at the very least has a defensive/advanced driving course under her belt. Pfffff. I could not buy into that logic, sorry. So no, this movie is actually one that you can go without seeing.

Review: Taken (2008)

“You don’t remember me? We spoke on the phone two days ago. I told you I would find you.”
– Bryan Mills

Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) is a retired CIA operative that has moved to California to be closer to his daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace). His ex-wife, Lenore (Famke Janssen), has remarried Stuart (Xander Berkeley), and he seems to outdo Bryan on all fronts. Bryan is trying his hardest, but it seems Stuart is always upstaging him. Kim just turned seventeen and Bryan buys her an expensive karaoke machine because she always wanted to be a singer.

Friends come over to visit Bryan, and Sam (Leland Orser) convinces Bryan to take on a quick and easy job getting a singer to and from her gig. He decides to do it, as it is a few hours work for a decent sum of cash, and scores points with his daughter when she hears her father is looking after Sheerah (Holly Valance). Things go wrong at the show, and Bryan saves Sheerah’s life, and she is now indebted to him, and sets him up with her vocal trainer and manager’s numbers for him so he can take Kim there and maybe realize her dream of becoming a singer.

He thinks he has his foot half in the door when Kim calls him to meet with her for coffee, and unbeknownst to him, Lenore joins them. It eventually comes out that Kim wants him to sign off on her travel documents to let her leave the country for France, seeing as she is under eighteen.

Bryan is very unimpressed, and after arguments and all of that, he finally signs off on her forms with a very strict set of rules. When dropping her at the airport, Kim asks her father what he did for a living, and he briefly explained his position as that of “preventor”, and that it made him very aware of the brutalities of the world. Once at the airport, Bryan finds out that his daughter is in actual fact not going to see the museums around Paris, but follow U2’s European Tour. As upset as he is, his wife makes an issue out of his just letting it go, and against his better judgment, he does.

When Kim and her friend Amanda (Katie Cassidy) arrive in Paris, they are greeted by a man who offers to share their cab with them, and he invites them to a party later. Amanda shares too much information about their living arrangements with him, and he calls his friends up. Bryan establishes that Kim’s flight landed hours before and that she has not called, and so he decides to ring her. Kim only answers on the second call, and in the space of a few minutes, sees Amanda getting taken by some strange men. Bryan’s “preventor” instincts kick in, and he walks his daughter through what is about to happen to her.

Now Bryan needs to save his little girl in a foreign country, from men that his contacts have discovered to be a human trafficking ring. He has a window of roughly ninety-six hours to recover his daughter before she slips off the face of the earth. Time is against him, and he works rapidly, calling is as many of  his old contacts as he can to track his daughter down and bring her home safely. Lenore finally realizes the importance of what Bryan did and what he gave up. As time runs out, the path of destruction he leaves in his wake grows, and starts setting alarm bells off for the French authorities  who want him out of their country as soon as possible.

Taken scores a definite 7.5/10 for me. I loved the movie the first time I watched it, and I thoroughly enjoyed it again. It has tainted my perception of travelling a little bit, but the world is my oyster and will still be explored in detail! I did, however, come to the conclusion that I need to find a friend with a very specific skill set… maybe I can have my brother trained? Taken was incredibly action packed,  but had enough emotion put into it to bring a sense of realism to it. There was not really an overkill of anything in particular, and the aspects were all brought together very well. The betrayal is potent, and the desperation is tangible. I still think it is great how Liam Neeson plays his roles, and so successfully, too. He is awesome, and plays his hardcore yet emotional roles very well. It is terrifying to think that trafficking happens every single day, and I think that this movie awoke the brutal truth of it all to many people.