Reviews

This reminds me of the old SciFi Channel movies from 20 years ago, but without the sci-if or the kitsch. I'm not sure which is worse, the writing or directing, but both are not good. I give the actors a bit of a pass because they don't seem to have much to work with. If you're a fan is saying "Wait. What?", a lot then you might enjoy this movie.

Looking for a way to waste an hour in a way that you'll feel disappointed/ashamed about later but don't have the energy for proper self-degradation? May I suggest this "documentary" on Hulu about H. H. Holmes that's a master-class in how NOT to make a film. This not-ready-for-even-the-wee-hours-of-the-History-Channel doc is a cavalcade of era and location inappropriate public domain footage, I'll-pay-you-in-beer quality re-enactments, and PS1 era Castle Wolfenstein background animation. If you even vaguely try to accurately relate the video being shown to the narration you may pull a muscle cringing, so be warned. The guilt you feel for having interest in the exploits of a serial killer will be eclipsed by the feelings of shame-by-association you'll experience after viewing something with such poor production values. The uninspiring narration and vague narrative point of view is the relative standout (this feels like an abuse of the word) element of this production and would have been better served being delivered over video of random screensavers. 10/10 would not recommend unless you're into self-punishment or enjoy non-ironic catastrophe.

I didn't doubt Nathan Lane was a good actor, and I can't say I remember seeing him in a dramatic role before this, however, he was EXCELLENT in Penny Dreadful: City of Angels. A true standout performance, IMHO, made all the more noticeable by the generally uninspiring and muddled overall story. Too many characters that would be the primary or secondary focus of an episode then largely forgotten other than popping up periodically w/o further development. It's set at an interesting time and place in history, but character motivation(s) and clarity of the stakes at hand were generally fuzzy and underdeveloped. Not sure that I'd bother w/ a second season.

Really digging it so far. Don't know where the poor ratings/reviews are coming from. Next-level mockumentary. Nothing is sacred. Love the realistically painful, awkward dialogue bits.

I mean, honestly about as good as tv can get. Top notch drama, yet no big action scenes, over-wrought romance/interpersonal intrigue, nor fantasy/sci-fi shenanigans.

Writing, acting, and production values all top-notch.

Honestly, about the lamest zombie apocalypse show I can remember. It's neither intimate, taught, and suspenseful, nor grand, epic, and action-packed. You don't really get to know or care about the characters and they act pretty foolishly most of the time. It's as if they retain only about 10% of the survival skills, knowledge, and instincts they should have acquired over the time (I think at one point one of them indicates it's been 6 weeks) that zombies have been running amuck.

The production values are reasonably good, considering, but there's really not a lot of story. Character motivations, even to survive, are vague. Dialogue is sparse, but not particularly meaningful.

It's all just very, very bland.

Production values are good aside from the English voice-acting, which (especially the main character) is quite bad. Story is pretty light-weight considering the subject matter. I consider it anime-light at best.

Season 2 should forever be considered among the measuring sticks of how good TV can truly be. Acting, writing, directing all converge to make a superlative story. Powerful and quirky, yet grounded.

Not a good movie. Premise had promise. Production values were reasonably good. Pretty much all else is not good.

If you liked or loved Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (hereafter: FOTR) you'll most likely be very satisfied with The Two Towers (hereafter: TTT). I was able to catch an advanced screening and I must say that I was quite impressed with the second installment of this trilogy. I must confess that while I've read the books (once in elementary school and again about a year ago), I'm not a devote to the written version. The tone and pacing of TTT is much different than that of FOTR, it's faster, darker, and a bit more confusing. Now by confusing, it's not as if you ever lose track of what's going on, but rather, since it is told by inter-cutting the 3 main story lines it's harder to relate the story lines to one another than I remember it being in the book. It helps keep the momentum of the movie moving along, but I felt as if it hindered the momentum of the individual storylines. Mostlikely a catch-22, so I suppose there's no getting around it.

The movie does not stand alone, if you're going to see it, but haven't seen the 1st one or read the books, do yourself a favor and spend the $4 to rent the movie or $7 to buy the book. Without this prior info you'll struggle to figure out who these people are and/or what their motivations are.

Ok, to the stuff you want to know. The battle at Helms Deep is massive and amazing. Gollum is everything you could hope to get from a CGI character and more, not perfect, but probably as perfect as can be at this point. The Ents, to me at least were a bit disappointing, both in their rendering on screen and how their story was developed. If anything is slighted in the movie it's the development of the Ent characters.

Bottom line, a very good movie, probably in line with FOTR (although having just seen the extended version, which I see as a significant improvement of FOTR, I might be overvaluing it somewhat). TTT will also, no doubt, benefit greatly from an extended treatment. The doom and danger in TTT is palpable and the movie rarely disappoints. I'm sure that repeated viewings will only serve to improve the movie, as it is a lot of visual and informational material to ingest in one sitting. I'd rate it at 8.5 (I'd rate FOTR a 9.0 and FOTR extended version a 9.5 or higher), but again with another viewing or two, I'd probably like the movie even more. Go see it now, er...as soon as you can, despite my soft-selling it, you won't be disappointed! After all, if I can enjoy it sitting in a cramped screening room with a head and chest cold and little sleep, I can only imagine that in a real theater in good health you'll enjoy it that much more. I don't want to add to the hype, but this is a damn nice movie.