Reviews

The on-off relationship between Alice and Jack is at the heart of this drama. Andrea Riseborough is subtle and deep as Alice; Domhnall Gleeson brings believability to the rather gullible and wimpish Jack. Neither is particularly likeable - that's not the point, but I suspect it's why some people will dislike this series. Alice's traumatic childhood doesn't explain her unpredictable and sometimes cruel behaviour towards Jack over the 15 years which the series covers. Yet they are powerfully and inexorably attracted to each other.

Sunil Patel is excellent as Jack's colleague Paul - witty and sometimes incisive and wise.

Some of the dialogue is brilliantly funny.

Alice and Jack owes a lot to "Normal People" and the painful emotional struggles of its characters. At times it is over-written: in fact the author Victor Levin tends to get characters to say things about each other, rather than show us. The wedding speech is a case in point. The other weakness concerns the plot twists, which are sometimes hard to believe. It is not free of sentimentality.

But the drivers behind the series are the weirdness of love, the nature of attraction and the limitations of monogamy and the institution of marriage. Along the way, the pain of emotional honesty gets a look-in. We see that some things are best left unsaid.

The opening flood sequence sets the scene and introduces most of the characters, but it feels like it was written by someone else. From halfway through episode two, it becomes an intriguing legal and political mystery.

Housing development is hardly the stuff of thrillers, but After the Flood works by showing us how naïve law-makers and cynical politicians combine to create the ideal environment for crime to flourish.

We're told repeatedly that "exceptional weather conditions" are the cause of flooding, with climate change making them increasingly frequent. It's ordinary people who pay the price - with damaged property and unsaleable homes. After the Flood should make us think again.

So the characters in this series are the kind you get in soaps - simple, nice/nasty and usually predictable. No-one is going to watch this expecting dramatic depth or fine acting. The script is adequate - no more. The boys and girls are uniformly beautiful. The plot twists are more like gentle turns, rather than shocking surprises. You're not going to watch this with your grandparents, either. It's a bit graphic - well, a lot graphic really.

There's one huge problem with "Tell me lies" and it's this: why does an otherwise clever, insightful and sensitive person stick with a devious loser? Everyone else in the series asks that question, and it doesn't get answered.

This is a Grade One Meh! Series.

Allegedly a re-working of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, The Beautiful Lie has a great ambition. Some of the script, parts of the acting and occasional moments achieve something really worthwhile, but as a whole it isn't satisfying or believable.

More than that, none of the characters really engages us as viewers, so we may want to find out who ends up with whom, and why, but we don't get the sense that any of them are real.

The contrast with Tolstoy is vast: his moral and psychological vision was profound and engaging, whereas The Beautiful Lie takes us into a world of mostly trivia and lust, disguised as love.

I suspect this was a 6-part series that got extended. That makes it even less likely to retain our attention.

Ana de Armas is exceptional as a tormented and advised Marilyn Monroe. She struggles between the victim and the star, with moments of real passion and pain.

It's not a film for the faint hearted, though - the dislocations of time and place make it a challenge.

But the core of the film is Marilyn's onder life, and Blonde captures that brilliantly.

Some of the other reviews seem to miss the whole point, as if another biopic depicting Marilyn the legend was necessary. In these days of #metoo and increasing awareness of the noxious impact of social media and fame, Blonde shows us one of its first victims.

You're not going to get simple answers from this film, or rational behaviour. And that's the point: "I'm thinking of ending things" takes you into a confusing and yet fascinating interior world which obliges you to go deeper, reflect and ask questions.

Jessie Buckley is quietly wonderful with her winsome calm and studied thoughtfulness. She is indeed a better version of Jesse Plemons' character, since he shows his messed-up and fearful personna as he travels through the dark and the driving snow.

The terrible weather and the darkness are an important backdrop to everything that happens. They cover the landscape to create uncertainty, so that we, like Plemons' character, don't know where we really are.

It's as troubling as a Kieslowski film, and one that sticks in your mind long after watching. It richly repays the effort - and it does take effort!

This series has a diabolical script, very wooden acting, an impossible story-line, really incoherent flashbacks, some very corny cliché characters, fake accents, and weirdly distracting music.

The other problem is, we really don't care because it's preposterous and the sisters are so boring and full of B. S. There's excellent TV around - Better Call Saul, Stranger Things etc - but this series just doesn't allow us to suspend our disbelief. We need to believe that the characters and events have at least some contact with reality, and it's clear from around 1/2 way through the first episode that the show is never going to reach that basic point.

The horse lies at the base of a rock. She asks "What does it mean?"

Otherwise, this is great tv to do your housework to. Really, why did they bother?

Why did they make a 2nd series? It's anyone watching?

Ridiculous, trivial, poorly-acted and filmed, this movie really is of a lower quality than many tv soaps. Hazing is a serious problem in some cities and this film dues nothing but exploit it.

Avoid.

Excellent, thought-provoking, engaging film with superb acting and beautiful photography. It raises serious questions, not only about the ubiquity of CCTV, but the morality of knowing and the burden of it. Without secrets, normal life is not possible.

This is the kind of series that stands or falls on the strength of the acting, rather than the plot twists, suspense and action. The drama - the "secret" events of 30 years previously - is what haunts the characters now and the series handles all this pretty well, with the lies, deceit and self-delusions thick on the ground.

I found two or three of the characters a little weakly-drawn but the interactions were well acted and believable.

Belgium cinema/tv is building an excellent reputation for high quality drama, and this series is proof of that.

Don't watch this if you need action sequences, smart plot-twists and intrigue. But if you want a series that deals with serious issues in a serious, interesting and adult way, Two Summers is for you.

Ana decides to leave her very normal and predictable life, when her doppelganger takes on her identity.

It's a strange but interesting film, with reflections on identity, truth and reality. The music-hall setting acts as a backdrop to her efforts to rebuild her life.

The film has echoes of La double vie de Véronique and Belle du Jour, but it's a confident and enjoyable ride, provided you can live with the odd premise of the story.

Superbly written and acted, with intriguing and engaging plot-lines, witty and clever in equal amounts, beautiful photography and a way with tension that makes you hold your breath... The characters are top-drawer and moral greyness is left, right and centre. That's the point, and that's where Saul Goodman lives his grey life. Kim shines like a light through it all.

The adhesive run out. Breaking Bad was good, Better Call Saul is so good, it's B-A- D!

Fairly run of the mill thriller, with little to commend it - no great acting, dialogue, storyline or filming. Kinda predictable. One of those series to find yourself thinking about something else halfway through, so you lose the thread.

Years ago they made a brilliant series called The Prisoner, with obscure but dark forces at work and strange events keeping things interesting.

Welcome to Eden starts out out like that, on a lovely Island and happy people, but it soon degenerates into a meaningless babble of eco-banalities and counseling-type encounters that leave your eyelids drooping.

There is a lot of Botox evident, and some pretty ladies and boys, but the prudish and timid story-lines suggests the producers realised halfway through that their target audience had dropped to around 13-14 years old. Weirdly boring.

There's a lot to like in this movie - the acting is mostly high standard and mostly avoids melodrama, the cinematography is moody and threatening, the music is great. But there's not much going on and too much slightly gratuitous violence. It didn't grip me, I'm afraid.

This is a nice soap with some pleasant characters and good camera work, but it doesn't get off the ground. We get sorry-of interested in the characters, but the content is too thin. The actors just don't have enough to get their teeth into. The dialogue is very soap-opera-ish. It's very quickly forgettable.

This is a strange mixture of a film that didn't write make it, for me. Jessie Buckley shows tremendous depth, passion and energy, but that isn't matched by Olivia Coleman, strangely enough.

The story meanders around and losses its own plot, somehow, so I kind-of lost interest in everyone apart from Buckley - whom I could happily watch if she was reading the phone book. She is developing into a very fine actor indeed.

Nice graphics in the opening 5 minutes, but then a slow descent into cliche, melodrama, and fake conflict, via wafer- thin characters and implausible plot-lines.

Dr Who is way better!

Whatever the many other virtues of this series, the violence and dwelling on blood and gore undermine it. I find it odd that squeamishness about showing physical love and nakedness can sit alongside a celebration of physical conflict, pain and injury.

Witty, dark and well-acted, this is a good take on the vampire legend, with a Nordic noir twist.

There are some laugh-out-loud moments, and some tense and scary scenes too.

The early twists in the tale of the second series of Baptiste raise your expectations somewhat. It becomes something that you really didn't expect, and it really grabs your attention.

Fiona Shaw is outstanding as the Ambassador, but I never quite believed Baptiste was for real... The last episode confirms the BBC's reputation for creating smash hits that fizzle out, I'm afraid.

Charming, sweet and funny series with a gorgeous backdrop of the Bay of Naples and its islands. It's a love story with a "will she/won't she?" thread running thtough it. Total escapism: throughly recommended!

There are some matters of fact about Sheela's involvement in Rajneeshpuram with Osho / Baghwan, but you won't find them being addressed here. The odd thing is that a clearly angry Osho is quoted repeatedly making clear his denunciation of Sheela as a cheat, liar and criminal, while Sheela blithely speaks about her devotion and love for him, never dealing with the substance of his statements.

A search for redemption is just about the only motive she can have for seeking this amount of attention, 35 years on. She certainly doesn't want to set the record straight, or answer the "insufferable" questions about her crimes.

She was a charismatic, angry, funny and efficient leader back in the 80's, who loved to rile the rednecks of Oregon who opposed the very notion of Rajneeshpuram in their State. She's now a shadow of her former self with nothing to say. Sad and boring.

Tense, engaging, brilliantly acted, very well scripted, with a gripping story-line. This has it all. It's a "whydunnit" and the parallels between patient and psychiatrist add both poignancy and depth to that.

Surely a big contender for Baftas this year.

I found myself watching this all the way through in about three days. The story is engaging and the topic is both controversial and lurid. Claire's poor relationship with her immature husband is well developed, but I didn't believe how she changed from defiantly pushing Eric away to leading him on. Kate Mara didn't make me believe that Claire would or could do that. The impact of media and infamy on Eric were well outlined: Nick Robinson (who looks for all ther world like Don McLean in 1971) judges his character well and walks the line between naive emotionalism and genuine innocence very persuasively. His exit at the end of the last episode is forceful: I would have liked to see and hear him in therapy, which he apparently received; I would have believed his pain more. The criticism of the US legal system is very effective: how does anyone escape the after-effects of a spell in jail? I think that US film-makers find this sort of series difficult; I guess the pressure is on them to ensure neat closure and moral simplicity in a way that Europeans don't. So I would have liked to see the court case and the arguments between Claire and her husband, but they are denied us. Kate Mara's Claire is very uneven. At times, she lives and breathes the part very convincingly; at others, she seems to not really believe in the words and she comes over as superficial and unbelievable. That's perhaps due to the writing, which is also uneven and sometimes hackneyed: "I can't eat, I can't sleep..." Her revelation to her friend is particularly forced: Claire is anything but open and honest and she would have lied and denied it, not confessed. The editing is also odd: we jump from one stage to the next, without really seeing the emotional and psychological consequences for Eric and Claire at school and in the courts. It becomes episodic in a frustrating way; you find yourself saying to yourself: "I wanted to see what happened." Did the writers shy away from the most difficult parts?