Even if you only touched a basketball :basketball: just once, you have got to watch this! A window to a stunning sports history.
Yikes. Seems like I'm solidly in the minority here. I have not read the book, but the show is not great, not as good as I was expecting.
I have problems with a few choices:
All the Light We Cannot is too over the top, saccharine, cheesy, and cringy. Feels like a WW2 show made for 12 year old girls. It has 0 subtlety.
Character build up is so not smooth. Like I'm expected to believe in seconds that Werner is this intelligent, warm and sensitive kid who's just stuck in the war. Not to mention the kiss in the last episode, it was unnecessary and unbelievable. Especially when Marie instigated it, she'd only known him for like 5 minutes.
Common tropes and clichés everywhere. Werner is only one to survive the bombing of the hotel and just waltzes out of the rummage barely hurt at all. I cannot believe Marie is walking barefoot around a bombed out house, let alone a bombed out city. I am wondering if those scenes were accurate to the book.
It's so jarring to see foreign stories staring Anglos. I don't understand why they use these strange accents, that are neither really French or English, or whatever they were supposed to be. Mark Ruffalo's was particularly awful.
American storytelling needs to stop making Nazism cartoonish, it is bad writing. The gem obsessed Nazi was the worst. I don't know if it was the actor, or if he just got terrible directions.
Why are 30 year olds playing teenagers? The lead guy playing an early teen in the boarding school was simply absurd. Also young Marie and adult Marie are different races? Like we get it, Hollywood needs more diversity but you can't change the race of someone mid story in a historical fiction that’s based on actual events where race was a huge factor.
Boring. Just over the half of the movie and I don’t care of any of the character, I’m not interest of the plot and I don’ t understand what the movie want to tell. Worst marvel movie ever seen
By modern horror movie standards, it's a slow film. But that's because most people don't care about set-up and character development when they watch a horror movie.
Regarding how scary it is, horror is like comedy, it's all subjective. I think it's effective and extremely well made. There's a reason it crossed over from horror movie fans to mainstream audiences.
Unexpectedly theatrical and with substance - like gothic thrilling vice laden modern Shakespeare. This is a film about consumption, the weakness and naivety of arrogance, and a complex first love emotion rolling obsession/jealousy/narcissism into one driving force.
There are three acts for me: Oxford, Saltburn, & madness.
The first act didn't work for me till the second act kicked in. I was worried about a overly-parody-fied and caricatured script. Whilst I recognised the feelings and experiences of Oliver at Oxford, the people were too larger than life and the early laughs didn't land properly for me. Laughing at silly posh young people or uber geeks just wasn't my thing. Some of the cruelty and snobbery played out well though.
The second act puts the first into perspective. The first act which shows an alienated and floundering Oliver gain acceptance from a dislikeable group through the actually sane, kind-ish and likeable Felix sets up for the second act. More unlikeable rich people consuming each other and tossing people away like toys. But Oliver has Felix now and has picked up skills in getting things his way, seduction and sweet talking. But the acting from everyone at Saltburn estate is spot on - I properly laughed at Rosamund pikes and Richard e grants moments. Even though they are all spoilt, sheltered, unwittingly arrogant and judgemental - these characters you like, you see their vulnerabilities and insecurities - you have fun when they have fun.
Things start looking beautiful in the second act. Sometimes distractingly so. The light play, framing, and camera work are stunning. You feel you are in the throws of first love in the best summer of your life. Sometimes this was at odds with the drama or tension in the story.
Final act madness. The sympathy built up for the family now leads into the thrilling dramatic unwinding. The consumers become the consumed. Arrogance and haughty ideas of invincibility led to weakness and fractures.
This isn't an overly cohesive film for me, but I think that's intentional as mis direction. Clues for the real story are laid throughout and I had guessed the ending about two thirds of the way in. I really enjoyed the moments of summer headiness, where everyone is enjoying each other's company. Sometimes the inter-character drama and tensions were too much for me - almost descending into reality tv pettiness. I think thats intentional to show the unsympathetic side of the upper class and olivers push back - I just don't think it needed so much.
The pacing and focus was a little off for me at times. The film was full of symbolism and clever lines but it almost felt too full sometimes. Like vacillating rapidly between moods. There was a moment where I was full of tears at portrayal of grief when others were laughing - very interesting but it left me feeling a bit all Over the place. But excited!
The score and the setting and sterling acting efforts lift the film up into a grand feeling vision. I was a little disappointed that the tone of the trailers wasn't present in the film at all (bloc party song teaser trailer was amazing) . But the score takes this to a different place - British, establishment, old money, young love, hubris and longing - great score.
The film is exciting and there are unexpected moments and some brave choices too. I enjoyed watching this a lot and am excited for more films. There's a lot to enjoy here. Barry keoghans metamorphosis through the film is really really thrilling. Reliving 2006 is fun too - wish just a bit more was done with the music and feeling of that time. Some duff moments for me too so a 7.
Recommend
Absolute painful watch at times - the plot holes were a many. Imagine going to apprehend an arms dealer ALONE, for starters. S1 way better.
The first 3 episodes were excellent, the next 3 were okayish, the last 3 were atrocious.
I’m not a monster movie expert but this is pretty good. The acting is decent, the pace is quick, the monsters and special effects are well done. Plus it’s a bit refreshing since there have not been that many monster movie series compared to zombies, super heroes, space operas etc Just finished the second episode and I’m eager to keep watching the next one when it comes out…
The show is watchable and entertaining - especially if you like Native American themed mysteries "a la" Thunder Heart. That being said it's a bit corny, sappy, mopy, unrealistic, stupid and pretentious... and the only likeable and almost not annoying character is the bad guy. The lead is unfortunately almost unbearably annoying IMO. How could he not be with a name like "Zahn". Hi, my name is Zahn but my friends call me Zzzzz.
Full of gorgeous cinematography and some tear-inducing acting by its cast, especially a surprising breakout performance by Alice Halsey, Lessons in Chemistry is a better-than-serviceable but too-trite-to-be-great miniseries that is, despite its faults, absolutely worth your valuable time.
Brie Larson is magnetic as Elizabeth Zott, a brilliant wishcast of a woman whose talent and ambition are stifled by all of the sexism and ignorance of 1950s America. As insidious as all of the offenses against her are, and as affecting as her performance navigating them is, at times the scenes feel like a checklist of problems that women trying to break through into male-dominated workplaces in a male-centric society face. Ironically, it's during her scenes with other women when the real malevolence of gender discrimination comes through and when she loses many of her battles.
But what starts out as the premise of the show is quickly overshadowed by the love story between Larson's Zott and Lewis Pullman's Calvin Evans. They have a wonderful, um, chemistry, and the twist that sends the show down a totally different pathway is gut-wrenching, to say the least.
The appearance of Madeline gives the show another boost, and Alice Halsey simply mesmerizes in the role. Her brilliance and precociousness suck up every scene that she's in to the point where the parts that she wasn't in felt unnecessary. Who cares what happens to Elizabeth's show? I want to see what Mad is up to!
And that's the irony of this show: The parts that are good are startingly good; they make the parts that feel too contrived or too convenient, or too formulaic stand out all the more. There's a great show buried within the series, but it's surrounded by to much fluff to ever break out and truly shine.
An update that fundamentally lacks the essential element that allowed the original to exist at all.
What's missing? (Spoiler: It's intelligence)
It's a dumb action show with philosophical pretentions, that sometimes manages compelling scenes, with extremely expensive visuals that show off truly excellent CGI (because it doesn't 'look like' CGI), and has some great cinematography and production design (but also some pretty weak/generic/nonsensical production design, mainly in the abysmally stupid Hardin/Terminus bits.)
What about the actual source material?
Asimov grew considerably as a writer throughout his career, addressing his weaknesses of having rather dry dialogue and matter-of-fact storytelling, and, more specifically, kind of flat characters, and weak female characters. Foundation itself saw a considerable upgrade in its depth and focus on women and girls as main characters, as it went on, but it is still dry by comparison to his later works such as Nemesis, which is still one of my favorite books (the main characters of Nemesis are a plain, probably autistic teenage girl and her mother. So, yes, there are a number of different ways a Foundation adaptation could have gone, stylistically. Although, there's really only one option nowadays with the current trend of dark, overly self-serious, and frankly suffocating mid-brow pretension in "serious" "science fiction", the formula could have definitely benefitted from a transfusion of dramatic lifeblood.
The problem is that they forgot (actually, never understood) the core ethics and dynamics of the story, and the story told therein ends up as a confused mess of incoherent melodrama that completely and utterly slanders and wastes its core concepts. They also frontload and spoil two of the biggest reveals of the book series within the first few episodes, for absolutely no narrative reason, and absolutely zero payoff. They also utterly assassinate every single aspect of arguably the most important character to the centuries-spanning plot as a whole. So do yourself a favor and read the books before getting more than five episodes or so in.
Yeah, Lee Pace is a dead sexy beast as a charasmatically domineering and ever-young Cleon. Lou Lloubell is also a great actress and Gaal and Hari compelling characters until they make her and Hari into idiotic telenovela characters because modern Hollywood (non)writers don't understand how to write stories about the conflict of empirical and religious values without making it into incoherent emotional nonsense, likely due to working out their own personal issues without actually having read or understood, or likely even been exposed to decades-old knowledge and exegesis on the subject.
And it was predictable. Friedman showed he had a surface-level attention to and understating of SF concepts with his Sarah Connor series. I liked that at the time, but even as a twenty-something I could tell he didn't understand basic computer science, and didn't bother to consult with anyone to write it properly. One look at Goyer's filmography and it's clear that he doesn't do anything but dark, pulpy action fantasy. We got children without sea legs and hacks sailing this boat.
Fish could win an Emmy, but Forks is a better episode, a journey off the chaos, not into it
Definitely expected a bigger finish to the first season but I really loved watching this series and happy for the season two set up!
Ugh that really pisses me off, the way Calvin was treated!!!! Don't even get me started on that priest :angry:
Kurt Russell to the rescue! As I hoped for, he managed to get things interesting when there's no MUTO around. And I really hope we get to see more of those darn things in the next episodes, they always save them for just a few seconds at the end of the episode, it's getting annoying.
Oh boy, this was freaky af! It felt a bit awkward, amateurish and b-movie-ish, in places, but the overall ambience was eerie enough, sometimes creepy and even downright disturbing at the very end. Hope this turns out to be a solid horror series, since there's a severe lack of those, these days.
The best Hitchcock film that Hitchcock never made.
I must admit that I watched it happily thinking it was Hitchcock and just how good it was, how it has more humour that other Hitchcock films and so on. I felt like a bit of a fool when I saw it wasn't.
The back and forth between Hepburn and Grant is excellent, what other film has Matthau, Kennedy an Coburn knocking around as well. It's really a classic film which honestly does deserve to be classified as both a comedy, a mystery, a thriller and a romance. The cinematography is first rate; that rooftop fight, the chase scenes. Everything carries the tension or humour.
The only small negative is for modern viewers people are too used to expecting twists and double crosses etc. Everyone expects everyone to be in on a scheme. However that's your fault not the movies.
Yeah, this is absolute gold
Meg 2: The Trench, more like Meg 2: Where Are the Megs?!
Excellent sweet and quirky show, it had some funny moments but it was so sweet all the episodes.
And of course Antonia is more cute than a puppy. Missed her in good doctor, deserve to be on this show, it is so her.
Hope for a second season
Mel Gibson put me off from the start and then it continued to be boring.
Wow, so unoriginal !!! So soon you figure out the killer, not twist no nothing, dragging season, nothing fresh except from Selina. It is time to cancel it. This does not need anything more. The season was mediocre at best with a very very underwahlimg finale.
Didn't know it was a musical, didn't know it was a broadway show. Both are a no for me to begin with.
Apart from that, it started a bit ok but then i went bad and crazy. Having him singing to the sister "the letter" and explaining that i love you but as it was her brother was awful. Evan was a bad person clearly. The good part was the song on the stage.
The rest fell flat and 2 hours and 20 minutes super long and unnecessary.
Outstanding performances from all four leads. Truly riveting drama.
Damn this show is so amazing. Just straight up story telling without any of the woke shit found on American TV shows. Love it. Hope they make season 2. Highly recommend watching this show.
Unfortunately, there is no tension here in the first episode and not the desire for a sequel with me.
I think I’ll give the series another episode to convince me, although unfortunately that will be a bit difficult.
The previews made it look like a female 007... but after 35 mins I had switch it off. Dialogue and stupid scenarios ruined it from the get-go. Yes I was prepared to disengage logic within reason, but to completely disregard gravity and physics is pretty hard.
One example (not a spoiler) how the hell did she 'dispose' of 6 bodies in 30 seconds?
0/10
This was the most generic, boring movie I have seen. I wasn't engaged even for few moments.
How egomaniacal should you be to put your own name in the actual title of the movie! Removing a star just for that!
They got their US Visas, great, wait these are US Passports. Who let that pass?
I feel like I would've preferred this as a straight drama, rather than a black comedy; the style and tone of the show didn't really milk my prostate. It's not terribly lengthy, so there's that.
At the time of writing, this sits at 65%, and I think that's pretty spot on. Obviously I can't score halves so I'll go higher, but it would be a 6.5 for me.
