Reviews

Taylor Camp was a strange moment at a strange time in history -- a place in a Kauai where, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a group of so-called hippies managed to create a small heaven on earth, a place where everyone who reminisces about it only has lovely thoughts to express, a place where everyone got along famously, a place where everyone who was there seems to have come away feeling they were extraordinarily lucky to have been there. Makes you wish you'd been there too.

Unfortunately, there's no story here, there's no thread, there's no through-line in the documentary. It's just one interview after another, giving the impression that these are the reels that the doc will be made from. As a result, because there are so many of these moments, you never get to know any one person, you never get to rest on any one particular story. It's just a dizzying array of interview after interview. A shame, because if there had been an attempt to build a narrative, this could have been great.

Sugar is certainly one of the more interesting tv shows to come around in a while -- even though the big plot twist is foreshadowed a little too much if you're paying attention, and even though the actual plot line is skimpy. What works is the acting and the direction. First, Colin Farrell is one of the few actors whose presence screams Movie Star. He takes up the entire screen when he's in it, and no matter what the scene is, and no matter how many people are in it, it all belongs to him. It's too bad he hasn't had great luck finding projects that allow him to shine like this show does. And the other actors are all excellent as well, especially the great James Cromwell. Who rarely seems to appear in a bad production. Even the dog is a terrific actor.

Also wonderfully done is the homage to the noir films of the 40s and 50s, interspliced in the film in a way that instead of seeming pretentions seems exactly like they belong there. Really fun to watch and try to identify each movie.

What's weakest is the plot. The twist (every noir film has to have at least one) is inventive and fun, but the actual story line that threads through the show is weak and feels as though it was added when someone said, Hey, we forgot a plot! But other than that, which isn't a small issue, this is a show worth watching mostly because the odds are great you haven't seen anything else like it.

James Clavell was one of the most remarkable writers of his time. Not only did he himself live an incredible life, he wrote extraordinary stories with an unbelievable range of topic and mood, everything from horror to adventure to crime. His screenplays included The Fly, The Great Escape, and To Sir with Love. (His politics, however, were unfortunate, being a rightwing libertarian. No one is perfect.)

The reason he could do all this is that the art of excellent narration was second nature to him; he was born a natural story teller. Unfortunately, this adaption of his best selling novel leaves the clear, lucid narration behind. Admittedly, Clavell had more room in his novel that this series has, but the people behind this show, rather than emulate Clavell's genius, have opted for a confusing script that is hard to follow and sometimes seems to meander off into oblivion. A shame, as everything else is here: great direction, superb acting, and above all, extraordinarily luscious sets filmed with precision and clarity: everything the script somehow avoids.

The story of Baby Reindeer is pretty well known by now, given its surprise success on Netflix. A powerful, raw, unflinching look at sexual predatory behavior, the issues surrounding trans-women, and most of all, squalid stalking: these are not the normal subjects of a popular series. But Richard Gadd somehow makes this journey one that it's both hard to watch and hard to stop watching: the emotions here are so deep and so overwhelming that you almost feel as though you were going through them yourself. And that's probably the best compliment you can give any entertainment: it makes you live the show, rather than watch it.

Richard Gadd gives a terrific performance, playing a fictional version of himself. But Jessica Gunning makes this show work -- her extraordinary effort to make what might be the least sympathetic role on tv more than just a pathetic one-note character; without that, this wouldn't have worked so well. And it does, all work well.

There are few shows on TV that have been willing to explore the raging masculinity of its two lead actors more than this one. The show veers back and forth between the men having sex, almost having sex, taking drugs, not taking drugs but wishing they were talking drugs, talking about having sex, and talking about taking drugs. And yes, there are women in the show, but they're portrayed exactly like the men: creatures of the raging id. In fact, the women might be the worst written female characters of all time (if you can understand their dialogue, as for some reason they both speak in occasionally indecipherable lower middle-class Australian accents).

What does work about this show is the raw, blunt honesty. Neither of these two leads, who also write the show, are in the least bit interested in making themselves seem like decent fellows. Or decent actors (which, actually, they both clearly are). You see them screw up, mess up, vomit, and even see them on the toilet -- this might be the first show to feature a scene with a guy wiping his butt on the john). There's something so frank about what this show is doing that despite its many flaws (lack of plot, lack of cohesiveness, and the weird fact that these two guys were the huge stars of a long running show but both are somehow broke, have no roles, and one of them lives in a hovel while the other only has a nice place because his wife pays the mortgage) the show is weirdly not just watchable but even slightly addicting.

If there had only been some editing and perhaps some others involved who could have helped give the show a more even path, this might have been excellent.

You have to admire the people who decided to take on this project -- the original books are not easy to collapse into a tv series, and the producers made a concerted effort to create a smart show. The special effects are excellent; the direction is snappy; the sets are beautiful.

However...

The not-so-smart decision the producers made was to abandon the books' original characters and instead recreate Friends. Yes, Friends, the basic middle-brow American tv show. Yet somehow the show runners seem to have decided to make all the major young characters part of a group of friends in England, all of them just as whiny and self-involved as in the actual show Friends. There's the beautiful one (aren't all the very smartest physicists in the world fashion models?), the faithful one, the self-involved one, etc etc, and then there's Will, who's a major character because he's dying, and they needed someone to be dying. That's his only characteristic except, of course, that he's in love with another of the Friends so he can whine about it. These people seem to spend most of their time, in the most dire moments in Earth's history, worried about who's sleeping with who, who loves who, and who is smarter.

The show is great when it focuses on issues. It's terrible when it's all about the soap opera drama between the world's smartest people (and it would be useful to see, if these young adults are all so smart, an example of their intelligence in their dialog, as instead they all talk like, well, the people on Friends.)

A shame this happened. Could have been a great show. Instead, it's a middling show with some excellent themes running through it.

Perhaps this series makes more sense to those in the UK who have heard of Crossroads, the long-running television soap opera that starred the main character of this show, Noele Gordon. Otherwise there really isn't much here, just a few hours of soap opera intrigue and a glimpse at a woman who was very well known in the UK many years ago.

What makes this actually work well is Helena Bonham Carter, who plays Noele (or Nolly). Carter has been miscast so often in her career that she has occasionally ended up the worst performer in some of her shows. But in this role her acting chops are real, evident, and powerful: she pretty much turns the series into something extremely watchable as she is able to give her character powerful grace, depth, and sympathy. Watching Carter here is almost like a lesson in acting: the gestures, the slight grimaces, the slow smiles; everything she does here is nothing short of perfection.

For Carter alone, this show is eminently worth watching, even if like most Americans, Noele Gordon is a non-entity.

Kristen Wiig is a marvelously talented comedian who can probably do drama just as well; there seem to be no limits to her talent. There are, however, innumerable limits to this particular show -- most of all, the show hasn't any idea what it is. Sometimes it's a drama, sometimes a comedy, sometimes it's sad, sometimes it's surreal, sometimes it's lifelike. There are shows that can pull off this multiple identity issue but unfortunately this one doesn't come close. It doesn't do any of them well.

In fact, Palm Royale doesn't even seem like a show. What it is is a collection of sketches about the lead character. There's no through line, however. Just sketches. The characters all seem to have been told nothing about their last appearance; the show feels as if it was shot in random order. Nothing makes sense. Wiig is supposed to be a climber (literally, as in the first scene) but then it's later revealed that she's possibly the heiress to the most important person in Palm Beach (played by Carol Burnett, who manages to make a comatose patient funny). Sometimes she seems flush with money, but then she's broke. Then rich. Then broke. And if she really thinks she's going to inherit a fortune any moment, why make herself a fool in from of the people she most wants to impress instead of waiting a bit longer? The show is rife with problems like this.

Also, Palm Royale is set around 1969 but the characters all talk like it's 2024 -- they use slang that didn't exist then (especially the currently ever present "like," which didn't appear for many decades to come). Worse, the amazingly talented Laura Dern is playing a feminist who doesn't seem to grasp what feminism is; in fact, all the chatter among the feminist group is far too modern. No one on the show seems to have done any research into what women at the time actually were saying or doing -- there are silly anachronisms throughout, such as the women's bookstore being called Our Bodies, Our Shelves, a riff on the Our Bodies, Our Selves group that started later in 1969, and didn't become well known until well after the famous book was published in 1970. Or, people saying "Thank you for your service," a phrase that wasn't popular until decades later. A carefully thought-out show like Madmen would never have made such a mistake.

The show is just too sloppy and incoherent to really work, which is truly a shame as the amount of talent in the cast is phenomenal. But unless the writers can start telling a coherent story, this is a sad muddle of a mess with just a few funny moments.

It's almost impossible to believe that a human wrote this script -- the dialog is so flat, the action so predictable, the story so maudlin -- that you begin to think that some AI program churned out these insanely bad lines. The direction is equally off-kilter: instead of creating interest, it creates banality with its total lack of imagination and creatively,

What does work, and what makes this show worth watching, are the actors: both Galitzine and Zachary Perez do an outstanding job taking insipid lines and somehow making them work, because both men have so much charm that the screen practically drips with it. Without the inspired casting, this would have ranked as a low-level Hallmark film. With the casting, it works very well. (Except that poor Uma Thurman can no more pull off a Texas accent than the queen of England could.)

Death and Other Details might have made a very good 5 episode program. The plot is pretty thin and can be summed up in a paragraph. The action is surprisingly minimal. But the show seems to have decided that it was too good for such a short span, so instead we have just about every program-lengthening trick in the book -- endless flashbacks cleverly shot to include the present, red herrings that go nowhere and are just boring, long interludes supposedly to build character but are actually extremely dull.

The result is not only a dull show, but actors who just don't seem able to keep up their energy. Violett Beane is very attractive but she only seems capable to two emotions: flirtatious and angry; unfortunately, the length of the show forces her to do more than she's yet capable of doing. Mandy Patinkin, usually excellent, plays a lumbering, dull middle aged man and that's pretty much describes his performance. The others seem at times bored with their roles; the only stand-out is, oddly, is the english actor James Cutmore-Scott, whose spoiled American trust fund kid is spot on.

All in all, it's just hard not to leave this show wishing they had halved it, in which case it might have been excellent. Instead, it'll be hard to find too many people who lasted the entire seemingly 10,000 hours.

Why Maya Rudolph isn't a bigger star is baffling -- there's little she can't do, her talents extend fully from drama to comedy. In this show she does both: somehow she manages to make a woman who, after a divorce from a cheating husband, receives about $90 billion in a settlement -- and yet she still come across as totally sympathetic despite her enormous wealth.

It's a hard task to pull off, making one of these ultra-rich elites someone you root for, but Rudolph not only pulls it off, she pulls it off spectacularly. The others in the cast are all adequate, the writing is pretty good, the direction sharp enough, but it's all about Maya. And it's really good. Maya Rudolph is always amazing.

It's almost impossible to review this travesty without frothing at the mouth. Absolutely nothing about it works. Refiguring Agatha Christie isn't necessarily a bad thing, but only when there's an intelligent script. This script feels as though it were written by a 10 year old. Then there's the acting, or more precisely, the lack thereof -- then again, possibly all the actors were given the script a couple of moments before the filming started as they all seem incapable of understanding their own characters, no less who other people are. The direction is completely non-existent: sometimes the actors are cut off just before a scene ends, and in a few cases, the scene starts while the actors are clearly waiting for the scene to start. The sets are just weird: someone's idea of the early 1950s without any real sense of what it looked like; likewise the costumes are all way too bright and colorful.

If I were Agatha Christie, I'd come back from the dead and haunt these people for the rest of their lives.

If all you want is to see beautiful rural images of France, this is the show for you. But if you want a script that makes sense, then steer clear. The show has no idea of what it wants to be: sometimes it's a pastiche of noir film, sometimes it's a talky who-done-it, sometimes it's a romance, sometimes it's a spy thriller, but most of all, its parts are far less than any whole. Nothing works well, thanks to the hackneyed script. The dialogue is so trite it sounds as though it comes from a high school student told to read Dashiell Hammett and then give it a go. But it's no go. Worst of all, the ending is unpleasantly ridiculous, probably because given all the confusing plot threads and red herrings and weird turns, there was no way this could end well.

Finally, Clive Owen is a very good actor but clearly he was told here to pretend that every line he delivers must sound exactly like every other line. That's not the way it was played in the best noir movies of the past, when actors were allowed to act. Here it feels like Owen is in some kind of actor's prison, and if he raises an uncalled for eyebrow or flashes an occasional facial expression, he'd be shot by one of the many strange dark fellows who wonder in and out of this perhaps well-intentioned but total mess.

There's so much wrong with this show it's hard to know where to begin. The worst part might be that the two leads are actually excellent actors, but you wouldn't know it if you judged them solely on this show, because they are forced to play possibly the two dullest human beings who have ever existed. The entire first episode, with a small exception for one moment of inane drama, is like watching paint dry, but without the excitement. It's almost as if the two are having a boring contest: who can be the dullest person. They both win. And they continue to win throughout this extremely poorly written, poorly plotted show. How Donald Glover, one of the most talented young actors, got roped into this is the only mystery this show presents.

The Tourist is one of those rare shows that provides exactly what you want it to: it's a taught thriller with some old tropes -- amnesia, vicious drug lords, femme fatales, the woman with the heart of gold who wants to save the hero -- that are presented in way that manage to make them feel fresh and original due to the excellent direction and script.

Most of all, however, the show's success is due to the two leads. Danielle MacDonald plays one of the unlikeliest heroines in a long time; she plays the ungainly, unglamorous part perfectly. But it's Jamie Dornan, the pretty boy, ex-model, former Shades of Gray guy who turns in a wildly riveting performance as the show's anti-hero. His acting is so perfectly on the mark it's hard to imagine anyone else in the role.

Update: The review above was for the first season. The second season is one of those very rare events: an equally good new act, accomplished with the same excellent writing, snappy direction, and perfect performances by MacDonald and Dornan, even though the plot takes on a completely new twist. In sum: The Tourist is one of the best shows of the last few years.

Yup bad. Really bad. This show may have gotten good ratings on Netflix but the reviews here on IMDB tell the real story. This is one of the worst scripted, directed, and scored shows to come along in a long time. Michele Keegan is either a terrible actress or her part is written so that, although she's the heart of the story, she's wildly unsympathetic -- she's a bad mother, a terrible friend, a creepy wife, and is angry at everyone she talks to -- and you end up rooting for her failure. The rest of the cast tries to make up for her incompetence but they really can't.

Then there's the plot, which is so horribly convoluted that Harry Houdini himself couldn't have twisted his way out of it. Plot holes, characters that make no sense, too many complications that lead nowhere -- all in all, it's a mess upon a mess.

And then the direction: unwieldy and downright ugly -- scenes shot from the floor, scenes shot from the ceiling, scenes that are shot from who knows where -- the director seems to think he is an auteur when in reality, he's just messing everything up.

The score is also over the top: instead of subtle clues to the action, the music practically hits you over the head with hints that SOMETHING MAJOR IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN. It has all the grace of an elephant trying to do ballet.

Please, do yourself a favor. Don't watch this. You will never get those 100 hours back (well, that's what it seemed like).

Like many people I never heard of Suits until Tiktok made it famous. The small clips were good so why not the real thing? And the real thing is also good. And the reason it's good is that Suits is exactly what it's supposed to be. It's hardly great acting (The Markle being one of the worst), but the show delivers a completely unpretentious, fun ride that makes it one of thee easiest shows to watch in the last decade. For a show to do exactly what it promises to do: that's what tv should be all about. Suits is all about that, no more, no less.

One other note: the real star of this show isn't the leads -- it's Rick Hoffman, playing one of the best characters on tv. He's there for comic relief, and he completes his task perfectly -- his timing, his expressions, his mannerisms. If you just watch this show to watch Hoffman, that in itself is a pleasant reward.

Dark City is one of those movies that, after you've watched it, you wonder why everyone hasn't watched it as well -- and loved it as well. It does everything right, from an imaginative script to brilliant settings to perfect acting to superb direction: it's like a ride at an amusement park that once you get on, you are completely engrossed until it's over. And Rufus Sewell, who is probably one of the most under-appreciated actors of the last few decades, turns in a magnificent performance. From start to finish, this is a great movie. Highly recommended not just for science fiction fans, but for anyone who enjoys excellent story telling.

The stills from this movie must be glorious -- the art, the setting, the clothes, the colors: the camera never seems to fail to manage a beautiful shot that would make a series of excellent still lifes.

And that's about it for this movie. The script is filled with cliches and builds boredom rather than tension. The acting is, well, odd. Tina Fey is not a dramatic actress and all of her lines come out as though she was unsure if they were supposed to get a laugh or not. The others struggle with what they've been given. The only two really great performances are those by Camille Cottin, who outshines the movie, and Jude Hill, who out acts the other far more experience and older cast members.

Branagh isn't a bad Poirot. But it almost seems as though the reason the actors come off so poorly is that he doesn't direct them well -- he allows them their worst tics and mistakes. Or maybe he was busy doing all of those insanely repetitious angled shots that he didn't have time to do much else. All in all, not the best Agatha Christie book by any means, but a much better movie could be made of the material.

The campaign behind this movie had to be one of the best in film history. No movie ever seemed to be talked about ahead of its arrival more than Barbie, and not just by one group of people (as in Marvel movies or Star Wars etc) but by segments all across society. The excitement for Barbie was almost palpable throughout the country -- a brilliant campaign.

The movie itself? Blah. It has some imagination and some fun scenes, but all in all it's a mush of preachiness and bland action. Some of it doesn't even make sense (like the fight between Alan and the construction workers, which was insanely weird and unnecessary). Margot Robbie is gorgeous and Ryan Gosling has a great body. That's probably the best you can say for a movie that if it had been just half as good as its marketing, would have been wonderful.

Take a bit of A Separate Peace, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Brideshead Revisited, Howards End and many more, mix them up into a rather incoherent story, and you get this over-the-top bit of fluff. The problems are too numerous to mention, but the most glaring is that there's not a tad of credibility in the set-up. Stories that involve someone of one class mixing it up with someone of another must show there's a connection between the two people: that part is completely skipped over here. There's no connection at all between the two major characters. The bond is never explained.

Then there's the issue of character: no one in the film is a real person: all of them are pawns to serve the grand plot which, when dissected, falls apart. These aren't people; they're vehicles for the screenwriter (director, producer, etc) to show off an interesting but ultimately flawed story.

So much else is wrong with this movie but to give them all away would be to contain spoilers, and the reviews that are most worthwhile here at IMDB are the ones that warn the reader off a show.

Consider yourself warned.

Near the beginning of this very, very long show, the main character leaves her loft to go on a long trip. When she does, she leaves her front door wide open -- the camera lingers a little too long so we can see that not only does she not shut it, she doesn't look back. Tiny detail but it's indicative of the whole show. The people who put this together just didn't care about making it work. There are sloppy moments throughout, continuity errors that by themselves don't mean much, but when they pile up, they reveal a team that just didn't care. And it shows.

On top of that, the writing is just abysmal. Every possible cliche, every possible awkward conversation: the writers don't miss a one. On top of that, when the characters talk to each other, they actually are talking to the viewer; they're constantly explaining their pasts and their motivations, not as a real convo but as a way for the viewer to understand the beleaguered plot.

The acting isn't much either, although given the bad dialog the actors gave to deal with, perhaps no one could have pulled these lines off.

All in all, with so many good shows out there, this one is just a prolonged waste of time.

Why Women Kill is a little like watching Desperate Housewives while on acid. The writing is bizarre and often non-linear. The characters swerve from realistic to surrealistic. The sets are often true to their era, and sometimes completely wrong. The actors are often performing well, and then sometimes they just seem to give up and recite their lines. The hair, the make-up, the clothes: often perfect for their time, and sometimes not.

However, if you're willing to sacrifice logic and just enter the strange funhouse that is Why Women Kill, you can actually have a truly wonderful ride. Ignore details. Luxuriate in the occasional, wonderful comic dialog. Revel in the performances of familiar actors taking on unfamiliar roles. Allow your eyes to feast on the colors of past decades. And above all, watch Jack Davenport give a masterful performance, tackling a role that could have been way, way over the top and making it the most worthwhile of the lot.

Btw, this is a review of season 1. Word on the street is that the followings seasons aren't up to this first season.

This is a review of season 1 because after watching it, I don't want to watch the next two seasons. The reason is simple: like so many tv shows today the producers made decision to take what could have been an excellent four part series and stretch it into eight parts. This means endless scenes that go nowhere, dialog that shouldn't have existed, arty shots of rivers and trees and such that are no more than filler, and far too many red herrings. Both Pullman and Biel do a fine job but no one could pull off so many extra hours of meaningless tv. A shame, because the basic story and characters could have worked well in four parts. But eight parts? Nope.

Broken, starring Sean Bean and directed and written by Jimmy McGovern, was one of the best shows out of the UK in quite a while. Time, also starring Bean with McGovern, is equally good. In a way, the two shows go together as Bean plays, in both, a introspective, gentle man struggling to do good in a world that is absolutely not good. In Time, the added complication is that Bean's character has a fatal flaw: alcoholism, making his efforts to survive almost impossible -- yet somehow, believably, he comes across as a decent man. In fact, both dramas deal with addiction and its terrible cost; in Time, that addiction leads to destruction and, possibly, redemption. All in all, Time is worth... yes... the time.