Reviews

I see so many reviews talking about how clever this series is as pure entertainment. The comparison is to Breaking Bad which was a more serious story about a dying man's attempt to provide for his family that turned into a mega maniacal drama of drug lord driven by power. The Gentlemen is a well made series about the fall of western civilization where there estates of the British aristocracy are overtaken by lowlife drug lords making the aristocrats look like foolish clowns or court jesters in their own homes. It will be programs like this that future historians will look back on to point out some of the contributing factors in how the West fell. The series is really well cast and the production values are high. When you combine the British and American stories, you get the Western Empire which is no less than the Roman Empire in its scope and duration which will sadly meet the same end.

I only made it through the first half hour because the idea of an adult man having sex with a mechanical voice is nauseating. I can't even assign this with a rating. It is inhuman and so creepy that I may have nightmares. God help us all if people start having a relationship with an AI voice. It would be incapable of any real emotion and you'd want to give it some sort of right to exist. You'd say it was for your right to have it but at some point you'd want it to have its own right to exist. Are we that set on our own destruction that we will give away our humanity because we don't want to do the work involved in maintaining human relationships? We should call it a day if we ever close to that. Do the work and find a human connection. This wasn't interesting to contemplate.

There were many absurdities about this storyline but it was still a lot of fun to watch. It was the same kind of absurd fun as watching 24 back in the day. I thought the show was well cast in every key role and the production values were good too. My favorite part was the ending and I won't even hint at it because it took me by surprise and it made all the time I spent watching it worthwhile. The sad part was how humanity reacted to the impending disaster and there were so many bad guys it was hard to keep up with them. The main theme though was of hope and never giving up even when it seems there is no more hope to be had.

First, I want to say god bless Netflix for having the courage to make this important documentary. As our citizenry becomes more and more dependent on the vast systems our government has developed people can and are being victimized by a the very institutions that are supposed to protect them. This documentary is one example of how off the tracks our institutions can go. Maya's family has not received Justice nor have the other families who suffered the same fate. The physicians, hospitals, government agency workers, attorneys and judges who collaborated to destroy these families will someday meet their maker and have to explain themselves. I'd also add that Maya's mother was an immigrant from one of the most oppressive regimes the world ever knew and she jumped out of the fire and into the frying pan by moving to America when she did. During another era she probably would have been proud of her decision. Maya's mother was Catholic and she took the ultimate risk to save her daughter by placing her soul in jeopardy.

I was there in the 1970's when this was going on. I spent my weekends at Moro Beach which was a cove or two away from where these massive baptisms were being performed. You couldn't live in Southern California and not know about the movement. But we didn't call it the Jesus movement nor did we call these people Jesus freaks. At the time we called this the Born Again movement and the people were just called Christians. Maybe the wider world called it the Jesus movement but we were teenagers so maybe that's why our words were different. I liked the movie a lot and my favorite line was about how the hippies were 'looking for all the right things in all the wrong places'. It seems really relevant today and probably always.

I've only seen the first season and think this program is well made. The acting and production values are good enough to make the leap in imagination needed for this sort of story. Most people probably compare this show to Lost because of the big cast and multi-angle storylines but I cannot stop thinking of the movie The Signal with Laurence Fishburne. I wasn't able to guess the ending in that movie but once I saw it I was floored. The setting used a bunch of old technology and tech that didn't work like the clocks. This show has similarities but with monsters added. I've wondered why the people have never tried to capture a monster and dissect it to see what it is. Maybe that's season 2. Really worth the watch and you'll be wondering what's going on the whole time. They throw out ideas that you've already thought of and that is somehow helpful in keep you engaged.

This is a really messy time travel story that has so many flaws it isn't worth listing them. It took me several tries to get through all the episodes and the way it ended was as bad as it could be. It leaves everything hanging with no resolution and there will be no follow up season to resolve any of it. I was a young adult in 1988 when the program starts and while we did get our paper delivered by a kid on a bike, there were never any girls doing it. It was a boys job. We girls were babysitters. So the story starts out all wrong and goes on from there. Much of the time I had to focus so as not to doze off. The casting was wrong too. The girl who was obviously gay didn't play that role. The girl who was obviously the smartest didn't play that role. Maybe they just wanted to break stereotypes but it took away from he story rather than adding to it.

This is a deep dive into self indulgence. The couple takes no responsibility for anything they've done since the day they stepped out as a couple. They've only been victimized because someone hurt their feelings. They believe that Diana, Harry's mother, died because of a psycho paparazzi photographer rather than getting into a car with a drunk driver. The series starts by honoring the couple's courtship but quickly veers into how these ultra rich and pampered young people suffered bad press. What is most creepy is that they spend their days scrolling through online comments reading anything and everything that's ever been printed about them. They cry racism when they are called out for their silly tantrums. Harry will never be on the throne and will probably not even be invited home for his father's coronation. They burned their bridge back to the UK so sadly we are stuck with them. Hopefully they will crawl into a hole now since they hate the press coverage. If you see them again it is because this entire sad tale was a fraud.

Studying the long term affects of benzodiazepines is a really important topic and this documentary started out with a focus on this. Sadly though the movie devolves into looking at a few neurotic people who have issues much bigger than Xanax could ever address. Sadly too many of the people who they spoke to ended up saying they still take it and it works for them. Very little time was spent on the idea that being human has always required juggling stressful situations and that we as a species need to figure out how to get back to where we do that without pharmaceuticals. Instead we have been medicating children with Adderall and other behavior drugs so kids never have to learn how to cope with stressful situations. We're making it worse, not better and this movie is part of the problem not the solution.

I started watching this series three different times and never got past the first season. That's because I could see how complex the timelines and characters were to keep track of. I made a commitment on my third try though and was glad I stuck with it. I used Wikipedia's Dark page to keep track of the characters and their relationship to each other. I also used a Wiki fan page to get the deep dive explanation about any scene that didn't make sense to me. By doing that I was able to follow along to the entire series. Without it I would have given up thinking it was too complicated to keep track of. It was a very interesting concept series that makes you think about our place in the greater world. The production values were good and very consistent. The casting was also good and you could tell they had the actors study mannerisms of their counterparts. Very well done all around.

I've spent a lot of time in India and I've even been to Nagpur where this situation took place. I've always wondered what would happen if the Indian people stood together against their institutions because they have so many people and such a rigid socioeconomic hierarchy. The caste system has kept the poor of India in their place. They don't complain about social issues the way we do and they are the kindest people on the planet. The action taken by these women was brave and progressive and I hope they can replicate it elsewhere in the country. The documentary was well done but they should have used an English speaker to do some of the translation but I was able to follow what they were saying for the most part. Namaste.

While watching the movie I had the sense something was off about the movie. At first I thought it was Ray Stevenson's imitation of a Texas cop. Stevenson was great in Rome but all the actors were Brits playing Romans so it wasn't a bad performance. Then I realized every single actor who was supposed to be American in this movie was actually a European. I was impressed that they are better playing us than we are playing them but when the entire cast is acting like an American it became obvious that they were imitating us and that made the film weird. The story was thin but I always like Liam, even in his B movies so I'm glad I watched.

It is really uncomfortable watching mental illness unfolding and Tobey McGuire does a great job portraying it. I've wondered why Bobby Fischer never defended his title as world chess champion and now we know why. America's only chess champion was not well and he made every game a torture to those who tried to guide him and keep him on track. Good movie but hard to watch.

In the first few episodes they talk about Andy's rise an artist and how people paid him upwards of $50,000 for a portrait using his distinct style. In episode 3 Warhol starts taking pictures of trans women and pays these unknowns $100 for the shots. They go on to say this was exploitative because the trans women were powerless. Warhol immortalized these people but today some elitist thinks he exploited these people because they only received $100 for their time. I liked this documentary until this silly issue about exploiting trans women and I also realized none of it was new. This was released on Netflix this year but none of the footage is new. If you've seen a Warhol documentary before, there is nothing new here. Also they only cover Warhol from the 1960's forward and everyone who has any appreciation of Warhol already knows this part of his life. What we've never seen is Warhol in the late 1930's, 40's or 50's. How did he become the artist we started seeing in the 1960's? Everyone knows Warhol hailed from Pittsburg and was raised in a conservative Catholic community but that is all we know. So, overall this was a disappointment. I would have rated it highly if not for the business of Warhol exploiting trans women.

I learned a lot by watching this documentary. It covers the ufo phenomenon from the beginning and there was a lot of footage that I hadn't heard about before. There were no great revelations but it covers all eras and brings you up to the present.

When the film started the Weinstein logo flashed across the screen and then I remembered that company is gone now. They made such amazing serious dramas that their absence has created a huge creative hole in what we call entertainment today. If not for Harvey's monstrous behavior there would be good movies being made. Sadly nobody has risen up to fill that gaping hole in film making yet. This was my second time watching this movie and it was amazing and told the story of a very important person in world history, Alan Turing.

In order to write a cohesive story the writers imagined a history that didn't actually happen. Some of the happenings were true inasmuch there was an Alfred the Great followed by his son Edward. The Danes did invade England for hundreds of years creating a friction between the Anglo Saxons and the Vikings. Ironically both the Saxons and the Vikings hailed from the same place, Northern Europe, and they were separated by religion rather some ethnic or racial differences. As the Danes converted to Christianity the divide melted away. This TV programs borrowed a figure from the the future, Uhtred, in order to create a narrative that would flow. People who don't take the time to know the real history will fall for this one. Facts aside, this program was well written and acted. Great production values too. The producers didn't age any of the actors though and the story covers at the very least 30 years but Uhtred looks the same throughout. In fact his hair becomes thicker as he ages. Aethylwith should be very old by the end but she hasn't even one gray hair. The only other slight criticism I have is that Uhtred's accent thickens in the last season and that seemed unnecessary and strange.

If Morgan Freeman is a president, Vice President, Secretary of State, general or any other leadership position, I'm going to watch that movie. No matter whether the plot is mediocre, Morgan Freeman always make the film great just by being in it. This was a decently complicated movie so it holds your interest. There was an amazing cast including some really classic people. The only performance I didn't really like was Tea Leoni. She was depressed and never smiled or laughed. That personality type would never be a TV journalist either. She delivered dramatic lines with ho-hum interest. Robert Duvall is always great as are Redgrave and Schell.

At first I thought the film was too narrow but then I found it very tense and so the narrowness came into focus. This is a Swedish film so, to me, it was a plus. There's no hype about it or in it. Six people have been commanded to deliver a secret item to their comrades on an island. They need to skate 100 miles to get their destination because the ice is so thin. There is no mention why the item couldn't be flown to the destination so that part was just the drama that binds you to watching the film. You want to know what is going to happen because of the ice skating. The film has a moral dilemma to it and that's the best part. We learn that in that world there really are no good guys. That idea hit home for me because it reflects our world today.

Have you ever watched something where the producer tried to mock something they have contempt for but turns out to be the world the producers actually live in? This program is about a European grifter who pretends to be an heiress and she proceeds to fool all manner of Americans into giving her money and letting her rack up debts she can never pay. All of the characters cry about their victimhood rich and poor. It is a statement about how shallow and phony people have become. In this day and age this type of wealth, pretend or real, is distasteful and ugly. The script is full of contradictions. A journalist who wrote fake news wants people to believe it wasn't her fault. Working class people want you to believe they have already made it and the rich want you to believe they have scruples. Everyone is fake just like the story. Shonda should know that you need at least one redeeming character to hold the audience's attention. I got through episode 5 and couldn't think of one reason to continue watching.