Reviews

I am shocked that this show is rated so badly. TMany of the bad reviews didn't even finish the first episode. This series is not for those who are reluctant to pay attention and simply take in what they're viewing. There are plenty of other series you can watch passively if that's your taste. So, my review is for those temped to watch and engage.

My advice is to simply focus on Rene and Mira as they are the heart of the series. It's perhaps a failing of Assayas to start by simply dropping the character of Mira into the first week of film production. There's little context here to ease the viewer in following the story to be revealed, but please be patient and you will be rewarded with Assaya's valentine to Cinema as he explores here remaking the 1999 film that changed his life.

If you get to Gottried's scenes and still want to bail, at least you gave it a fair chance, but please don't attack the production simply becuase the show wasn't to your taste. . .

My first chance at viewing this via HBO Max and am quite horrified that the English overdubs are so bad. I gave up in horror after 20 minutes with the awful translations and unintelligible Latvian characters. Then the soundtrack while often beautifully done is often intrusive and completely off in tone compared to what we're watching.

UPDATE: So I did find an Italian language version to watch that unfortunately had the exact same translation only as subtitles but somehow I could deal with that better than hearing badly accented english not in sync with their lips. I did get thru the movie and so for that at least moved my rating up to 6 stars from 4.

I ended up being very impressed with Marco D'Amore who played Ciro and also directed himself. But perhaps if another director was looking over his shoulder he might have persuaded Marco that more than 3 scenes where Ciro does nothing but glower dramatically and smoke a cigarette is far too many . . .

This series starts with the end of WWII in Sweden, We meet a family of two brothers, a sister and mother who run the formal restaurant and follow them and others thru divorces, betrayals, triumphs and scandals involving a cast of characters not quite as large as "Downton Abbey" but equally as engaging.

The cinematography beautifullly captures the vintage post WWII era similar to "The Godfather II" with very careful framing, lighting and camera movement. The production quality as well as acting is on par with any top notch Masterpiece Theatre production. It's plotting isn't as crass as "Dallas" but it's very much a family drama with triangulation conflicts every which way you can imagine. The pacing is a tad slow and languid but that gives you time to admire the sets, costumes and lighting as well as marvel at where they got all the 1950's era cars they pack the streets with during outdoor scenes.

I'm astonished I'm writing the first review of this show on this site. One month of Sundance Now is only 5 bucks and it's the best money you'll spend to watch this series. This is a very high quality show I'm going to regret finishing. I pray it goes to season 3.

I had to review just to skew the average up if I could.

I can well understand the outrage from loyal Christie fans, but since I didn't read the book and am not an avid fan of her work I took in the series at face value and enjoyed it.

First off, the production values were impeccable - photography, lighting, sets costumes. All were cast well and performed nicely save for Malcovich who's minimalist acting style I found boring. Perhaps the director's fault.

I really would recommend this to those who like the genre, but more to those who appreciate Masterpiece Theater type productions. Given that this was stretched out a bit with some odd plot choices it's really a 7/10

It really wasn't until the 7th episode that I really got what the show was going for. The initial episodes were a lot of amusing girl power and guy locker room mirror image stuff which seemed to try too hard at times. On the plus side, Paquin really caries the heart of the show extremely well with her character. She's fun to watch which is how I got this far.

The 7th episode with Bradley Whitfield was genius and while not one line of dialogue addressed it, Paquin nailed the seeds of doubt about her life's direction perfectly.

I'm looking forward to the finale but more, would like to see another season for this production team to get some of their shaky freshman choices out of the way. This show could be another "Halt and Catch Fire"

I haven't watched a TV cop series since Hill Street Blues, but I made a point of watching the premier of NYC 22 when I saw that Richard Price was writer/producer. I think highly of his writing and have enjoyed his novels very much.

The series has a wide variety of rookie cops which keeps the pace of action interesting. I appreciate the lack of shaky cam and the fact that every street they show in the series hasn't been recently wet down. (Not a cloud in the sky and it just rained? A pet peeve of mine.)

Yes, there were a few scenes that were groaners. Plus some obvious paint by numbers plot points and character choices that must have looked good on paper, but you do what you have to to get a series on the air I guess.

There's some good humor in the writing and the show has a good balance between character and action which is why I went on to watch the second episode and will keep watching the remaining 10 and hope it gets renewed. So far I think it's definitely worth a look.

I was really surprised how much I disliked this movie. As remarkably good an acting performance Theron gave, I still wish I hadn't seen it.

As others have written, I feel like they couldn't decide to make this a straight comedy or character study so they tried to do both. It didn't work for me.

The reason is that Theron simply isn't a comedic actor. Comedy is more on the performance side of the acting spectrum than I think Theron is comfortable with. Theron's forte is realism. It was hard to know it was OK to take her lines as humor since her character never let us in on the joke. Had Portia de Rossi been cast instead and done her "Arrested Development" character I think the film would have been much more successful.

In "Monster" Theron played a character at least as unsympathetic, but it was a fully fleshed out character and in the course of the film we learned how she got that way. In "Young Adult" we were never able to gain any necessary sympathy for her character because she was so consistently repellent. Even the back-story blurted out in its rushed and awfully directed baby naming scene still couldn't gain my sympathy for her. She was far more of a monster in "Young Adult" than she ever was as Aileen Wuornos.

I'm always happy when a director makes the effort to craft an homage to Film Noir, but in this case De Palma drifts too far from his own style to make a decent effort of it.

Using James Ellroy's great pulp novel as a springboard, the film paints an often confusing story. The narrative seems to merely drift far past the half way point without much peril or suspense until the very end when we discover that almost nothing we've seen was without significance to it's final resolution.

All that would have been tolerable were it not for the poor casting choices here. Josh Hartnett was badly miscast. A noir protagonist should have a dark gravitas about him that Hartnett appears too boyish to pull off. Scarlett Johansson didn't have much to do here but fill out a sweater. The film's best, Hilary Swank, was the only one in the cast who "got" the fact that she was in a film noir and shaded her performance perfectly for it.

Still, the look of the film was wonderful and the luscious musical score tries hard to set the perfect noir tone. It's always fun to pick out the De Palma signatures; the paralyzed protagonist, the Hitchcockian Blond, the nightmare coda, etc. However in a true noir, the guy never gets the girl. . .

I really enjoyed this one. There were several times during the film where I was just transfixed and enrapt by what I was watching on screen.

This is the second biopic I've seen this year, the other was "Ray." Picking and choosing what part of a life you want to present in order to make a statement was done far more artfully in this than in "Ray". Howard Hughes's life was depicted from the time he started his first film until just after his Senate hearing and Scorsese used it to show how genius, vision and madness can all spring from the same source.

I left the theater surprised that the movie hadn't received better reviews than the one I glanced at, because not only is this Scorsese's best direction, but De Caprio, Kate Blanchett and Alan Alda all turned in Oscar worthy performances. This is, finally, my best film pick of 2004.

If you're on the fence about seeing this one due to it's 3 hour length, the only time I thought about looking at my watch was to assure myself that it wasn't ending too soon. . .