Reviews

Like many other people reviewing here, I found this so confusing to watch that I lost interest and really struggled to finish all eight episodes. At one point, a woman is standing up in a courtroom making a speech, and when I glanced away for a moment and then looked back, she was making the same speech but in different clothes, different hair and everyone in the courtroom had gone somewhere else. I think this was supposed to be a clever device to show time passing? But as these events spread over sixteen years and the show constantly jumped every few minutes to random moments in those years, it was totally impossible to follow what was happening. Some of what we were seeing was only supposition, and so the same scene got replayed and replayed differently.

Michael and Kathleen had five children, and it wasn't until about episode four that I worked out who was who and who was related to whom. I'm still not entirely sure I've got it right. I can only assume that the makers of the series assumed that everyone who'd watch it would know the story already. Not so. I came to this never having heard of the case and I really needed more explanation and linear storytelling.

Most people rate Colin Firth's performance highly in this series, but if he has captured the real Michael Peterson, then clearly I'm mising something. The man Firth portrays is a liar, a cheat, emotionally abusive and manipulative. Worst of all, he's a sponger and a user of women, happy to marry them for their money, but leave (or murder) them when they become inconvenient for him. He has no redeeming graces in this mini series portrayal of him. He cheats on his wife with men in sordid, disgusting sex shops, or with male prostitutes. He's alternately angry, or lecherous.

For the audience to really care how Kathleen died, she needed to be made a sympathetic character, but again the series failed to capture anything but a high-achiever, bitter woman trying to have it all. As her sister astutely pointed out to her: Kathleen has to be the best at everything. It doesn't make for a character we can root for.

I wasted many evenings watching this. It's depressing, drags, but mostly confuses.

The second season of this excellent show is even better than the first. Alan Ritchson totally embodies both the look and spirit of Jack Reacher. In fact, I'd go as far as to say he's better than the original Reacher in the books. He brings a sense of grace and humour to a brutal man, which explains the intense loyalty people feel towards him. In the books, Reacher is much colder, less attractive.

The supporting cast in this series is magnificent. Domenick Lombardozzi particularly killed as the New York detective Russo. Maria Sten owns the part of Neagley.

The filming is superb, with excellent sets, a wonderful soundtrack and perfect costuming.

This is a faultless series. I was gripped from start to finish. It's brutal, funny, heart-rending, exciting. What more can you want from a TV show?

I'll get the major cons out of the way first. This movie suffers from the usual problem Hollywood film always seem to have -- no money to afford electricity. Most of the movie is shot entirely in the dark, so goodness knows what happened in those scenes. Also, one or two key bits of dialogue that explain what's really happening are totally lost to mumbling.

However, overall, this film really did improve on second watching. Once you know what the story is, you spot all sorts of little bits of detail that make the whole thing make sense. But more than this, my empathy with Grace, the protagonist and victim, grew exponentially during this second watch. She comes over as an almost wholly sympathetic character. Little things like the carefully wrapped presents she brings and hides make her rather loveable. Her love for her dog and what he represents to her is very moving. She's a very damaged person, but unfortunately for her, she gets entangled with other very damaged people and hell hath no wrath like grieving children.

There's only one jump scare in this movie, but it's a good one. The rest of the film is a more slow psychological horror about the power of grief and early childhood trauma. And human fragility.

I highly recommend this to anyone who likes their horror thought-provoking and real rather than shock-horror jump scares. This clearly borrows from Hereditary: almost shamelessly copies much of the atmostphere of that film with the dark house, the dolls' house, the cult, the dolls, the camera work inside the dolls' house distorting our perceptions.

Pretty good movie with strong performances all round.

Yes, I've never seen Love Actually until today, twenty years after it was made. I did start it once when it first came out, got to the scene where Martine McC's character swears at Hugh Grant and he finds this so charming he falls instantly in love, and turned it off. This scene was so stupid on so many levels that I couldn't go further. However, browsing the 'best Xmas movies' lists, this kept popping up. Was I missing a treat? I decided to give it another go.

Oh.

Wow.

Is that what people enjoy in films?

Where do I start. Hugh Grant is always a good place to start. I quite like old Hugh, national treasure and all that. But my goodness, talk about one-dimensional. He literally plays the same hesitant, upper-crust, shy buffoon in every film. And you cannot seriously present someone who looks like Hugh Grant and tell us he'd fall for a chubby, plain-looking tea girl. It's so not credible it just takes you out of the movie.

I did quite enjoy Emma Thompson's character, although ironically her storyline is the most hated in all the negative reviews. Women seem outraged that she settles for staying with Alan Rickman even when he cheats on her. To my mind, she is the only one who gets the true meaning of love: love of a mother for her children. Yes, feminists are steaming that she didn't leave. But she stayed for love. To keep her children in their lives. She puts them before herself. The other woman who ends up alone is the sister caring for her brother. Again, a hated storyline by the film's detractors, but again, one of my favourite ones. Real love. Love actually. The rest of the characters didn't understand love at all. Getting over their dead wives in a few weeks. A child forgetting his mother to lust over another child (worst storyline).

So, bravo mature women who understand that putting others first is love. But for the rest of this film? The best things about it are the 1-star reviews on here. Highly entertaining.

I have just watched a YouTube video of trailers for coming movies in 2024 and realised I'd have to be paid quite a lot of money to sit through any of them. Then on the same site, I saw this full-length film I'd not heard of. Liking Gillian Anderson and UFOs, I gave it a go. This is what films should be but aren't anymore. So, if fast-paced, utterly ludicrous action and predictable girl-boss crap is your thing, you probably want to miss this one. If an intellectual puzzle fascinates you, then you'd probably enjoy this. The acting is good, particularly from the leads. The tension is maintained throughout. The moment when Anderson breaks the code is genuinely spine-chilling. You don't have to be a mathematician to enjoy this any more than you need to be a climber to enjoy a movie about Everest. It's fascinating, enthralling and entirely plausible.

Recommended.

Did someone let a toddler loose with the editing? I have no idea what I just watched. Back and forward, sidewards, back again, further forwards... key conversations, did they happen before or after another key event? I have no idea. Trials, testimony, conversations, more talk, jump to another time, back, forward. I could not identify with any of the people; they all seemed equally despicable, particularly Oppenheimer and his wife. It's not as if I didn't know the story. I watched the Oppenheimer documentary a few days ago. I still had absolutely no idea what was happening. Does the development of the A-bomb and the subsequent ending of WWII need non-linear editing to make it interesting? It's a pity Christopher Nolan didn't watch The Dambusters movie before making this and learn something about good storytelling.

I'm only thankful I watched this for free at home on my couch and didn't either pay for it or have to drag myself to a cinema to watch it. I'm not sure why I stuck with it to the end. I usually turn off stuff this boring and annoying. Don't waste your time.

I genuinely cannot fault this film. Not only is it trademark Equalizer, it's set in the most gorgeous Italian village, which lends the whole atmosphere an effective religious backdrop. The deep faith, kindness and joy of the local people gives an extra heart to this third in the franchise. The plot is 'Equalizer' formulaic, fortunately, because it's what we come to the series to see: Denzil reluctantly takes on some bad guys and it doesn't end well for them.

This one is a delightfully slow build, from an explosive and slightly confusing start. About five minutes in I was wondering if I'd come into the film halfway through. Fear not, all is revealed.

I cannot recommend this film too highly. It's absolutely perfect entertainment. It's got heart, beauty, grace, and courage. And lots of violence, gore and well-earned retribution for evil-doers. What more could anyone want?

There's nothing supernatural in this horror movie. There's no gore. There are no jump scares. And yet this is the most horrifying thing I've watched for a very long time. This really touched a nerve for me. If you have social anxiety in any shape or form then you might want to give this a miss. It's excruciating to watch these people being nice. There is a palpable sense of dread throughout this film, although (as with the couple and their daughter) it's hard for us the audience to work out why we feel like that. We are part of the horror of this film. There's no distancing yourself from it as you might with a supernatural or slasher-esque movie. I am truly disturbed by this one.

This is not a horror movie, despite the subject matter being horrific. There's no tension, no scares, nothing remotely more stressful than most people go through every time they go to the doctor: tests, injections, drawing blood. Yet here it's all done in artsy white and with meaningful looks and called a movie. The concept is interesting and original--that people are so obsessed with celebrity they will pay to share their viruses and fungi and other nasties, and that celebs will be quite happy to sell their blood to make these jabs. That I can believe. It's not that far removed from our current celebrity obsessions. But that's it. Good idea with very little payoff in terms of entertainment. I turned it off and read a synopsis instead and I'm pretty sure I missed nothing.

I found this movie utterly confusing. Who was anyone? The action starts with a woman getting murdered. Who is she? No idea. Why were these men in her house? No idea. Ex cult member volunteers to help the father find his daughter. She gets repeatedly beaten, kicked, slammed into concrete walls, stomped, smashed and she's always fine. She slashes a cult member across the face with a razor and in the very next scene there's not a mark on him. Every single member of this cult (motorbike gang more than cult) is so over the top that Satan himself would find them a bit rude. The dialogue is supposed to be so edgy that it's completely incomprehensible.

There is some cool music--acoustic guitar, which seems oddly anachronistic for this kind of film, but I did enjoy it.

So, violent, gory, awful dialogue, terrible editing, but abuse of a snake did it for me and I turned it off.

Occasionally a film comes along that makes you believe in the End Times theory. If this kind of thing can be made and called entertainment then perhaps its here already.

I have just rewatched this film, having seen it when it came out. I didn't enjoy it then either, but put that down to possibly not understanding it. Now I see all the plot twists, but still didn't enjoy it. It is slow, trite and pretentious. If we had not found the Rosetta Stone, we would still not understand hieroglyphs. You have to have some clue to be able to decipher pictorial language. Imagine if birds were communicating to us through the shape of their droppings, or cats through vomit, each coughed-up hairball a complex message about how they see the world. That's the whole premise of this movie. Some aliens come here, so advanced that they can control gravity and time, but can't learn to read, and they communicate by vomiting up hairballs (okay, giant squid and squirting ink, but same metaphor) and this silly woman, a famous linguist, can not only decipher each pile of vomit as an individual word but grasp the whole complex theory about space and time each one conveys? Give me a break.

And why does Forest Whittaker speak in a foreign language throughout this film? Is that part of the mystique or was it just his attempt to make something interesting out of his part...mumble, mumble...maybe his false teeth were loose. You know you're finding a movie boring as heck when your mind drifts to an actor's loose teeth.

Do not waste your time on this film. In theory it could have been good, but in reality it stretched far beyond its ability to pull off. Pretentious hardly begins to describe it.

This might have been quite good. It might have had great special effects and a cool monster. Who knows? I don't because it appears to have been filmed entirely in the dark. As one reviewer has already pointed out, who knew that US houses don't have electricity? So... they're told this creature only comes when it's dark. What would you do? Immediately wander around your totally dark house without switching on any lights? No. Me neither. Although I didn't particularly enjoy Midsommer, I give it kudos for attempting horror in bright sunlight. It was effective for that alone.

Besides the appalling lack of lighting for the sets, I take issue with American fathers being presented as quite this lame. Now they have their daughters needing to save them? So little girls are braver than grown men now in Hollywood. I really do fear some young women are going to get an awful shock when they grow up and have to face reality. I mean, seriously, does any man stay in bed when they hear a scary noise in the house and make his wife go see what the noise was? Or his seven-year-old daughter?

There are similar themes in this film as in The Babbadock, but that film rates a 10 whereas this is just dire from start to finish.

I loved this, not least for the performance of Ben O'Toole in the lead He plays himself and his alter ego only he can hear, and the other self has all the charisma and drive our poor lead hardly gets a chance to show, as he's either being shot at, strung up or eaten. And those are his good days. This is the kind of movie, a bit like John Wick (which it references) where everything goes terribly wrong for our hero ... until it doesn't. And there's a point in this movie (wait for a dinner table scene) when you'll be cheering and clapping as the table (literally) are turned.

When you think of many hillbilly cannibal movies, they could really do with a bit of comedic action, which this movie provides in spades. So, gritty action. A great revenge tale. Recommended for a great night's entertainment.

This mini-series is absolutely superb. Some Jane Austen adaptations attempt to keep so true to the times they don't appeal much to modern audiences. Some attempt to go the other way, and by making them fit the current zeitgeist, no true Austen fan would want to watch them. This adaptation is so delightful it's hard to describe just how good it is. The entire cast is spot-on. The costumes are to die for. The houses chosen to represent Hartfield, Donwell and Randals, as well as Highbury, are a delight. Mr Knightley is one of the most difficult heroes of Austen's novels for audiences to like, but Miller nails it, managing to be highly amusing as well as providing the commonsense foil to Emma's imagination.

Do not miss this treat. It literally cannot be faulted.

Jane Austen once said that in Emma she had created a heroine no one but herself would like. She was being entirely ironic, of course, as Emma is one of her most beloved characters. But the director and screenwriters of this film seem to have taken her to heart and made a film about a despicable snob who no one could care for. Emma here is all bizarre costume choices but no heart. The whole film is the same: bedazzling interiors and costumes, but no soul, no feeling, no nuance.

Mr Knightly is one of the most difficult of Austen's heroes to portray on screen and get right. He was sixteen when Emma was born, so if you think too much about his sexual attraction for adult Emma it can be a bit unsettling, but Johnny Flynn seems to have been an absolutely dreadful choice. He doesn't have the presence needed to balance Emma. Throwing himself on the floor in a fit of frustrated sexual need is so ludicrously un-Austen, that you wonder what the makers of this film were trying to do. His home, Donwell Abbey is presented more akin to Chatsworth than the house of a gentleman farmer, whose younger brother had to become a lawyer to support his family. Mr Knightly actually does farm for a living. You can't really blame an actor for being too short, but you can blame the casting director who put a man with no on-screen physical presence as the so-called hero.

Clearly this film is 'inspired' by Austen's novel rather than an actual adaptation of it. Mr Woodhouse is introduced to us bouncing down the stairs. Really? He's charming. He's sympathetic to Emma. None of this is right, and it really grates for those of us who love the book. Mr Woodhouse is one of the most chilling characters in all the novels. His selfishness, masquerading as pleasant, gentlemanly manners, would be quite willing to ruin everyone's life but his own.

Can anyone tell me why, during the great romantic moment between Knightly and Emma she suffers a nosebleed? She accepts his proposal with her nose and face smeared with blood? Seriously? This is supposed to be Jane Austen?

I would recommend anyone who really wants to enjoy an adaptation of this novel to watch the 2009 mini-series with Romola Garai as Emma. The more I watch it, the more it seems to me to be utterly perfect. The costumes are superb and completely realistic, unlike this 2020 nonsense.

Emotionally flat and cartoonish with no heart. Give it a miss unless you're a costume designer. Then you might enjoy it.

I'm not sure what this was trying to be. It is clever in that it's filmed in one take with clearly lots of improvisation. The acting is superb throughout. But it's as if a group of drama school students decided to make a film and they had no budget, just themselves. So the film is just an episode of Kitchen Nightmares without Gordon Ramsey to liven things up. It really doesn't make much of a movie because no one has a backstory so you can't invest in their characters. It would make a good episode of a TV series set in that resautrant with those characters, like a faux reality show, but as a movie? It left me completely flat. Well worth a watch if you like something a bit different, but it's not cinema (or actually pay for it) viewing.