Reviews

I loved this show. It had mystery, depth and breadth of character, phenomenal acting, great cinematography and world building... I could go on for a while. It also held a soft spot in my heart for being partly set in Appalachia, and also not hewing to typical stereotypes of what folks think of with Appalachia.

I just rewatched it a couple weeks ago actually. I was very much looking forward to season 2, which originally was supposed to happen.

Now I find out that Amazon apparently thinks it's too risky to have a massive gap between seasons 1 and 2....? We survived delays from the pandemic, so I don't know what I'm paying for at this point with Prime Video, especially since it has ads now.

If you are expecting an adaptation of the Billy Milligan story, this is not that - it is not based on the story, it is merely inspired by it. So I would recommend going in with an open mind.

I went into watching this with some knowledge as to what the psychological issues might be, so that might have informed my patience with the pacing of the episodes. But, also, I didn't find the early episodes to be boring - I thought that the earlier episodes placed enough hooks and mysteries in them for me to want to keep watching to figure out what happened and what was happening.

Tom Holland gives an incredible performance - I would love to say more, but I am trying to avoid spoilers. He truly gave this role everything, and I hope he gets some award or better recognition for it because he made the issues and character come alive. Amanda Seyfried, Sasha Lane, and other key characters also did amazing work - it truly felt like everyone was on their A game in this.

The storytelling is somewhat circular - meaning, it circles back on itself at times to place into context a scene that may have been shown earlier. But, it works in my view, considering how trauma (particularly as a child) causes disorganized memories and other impacts. It also is important to understanding the difference between reality, and how Danny experiences it. Plus, the story is not just about Danny Sullivan. It is also focused on the mental health and life issues that key characters (Rya included) struggle with and that speak to the failures of our society and lack of supportive community, which are sharply highlighted via Danny. So when a scene is "repeated" it is usually within the context of another character or aspect to the story. The story also highlights the disparities in how we treat people struggling in life, and the choice of Tom Holland to play the main character makes Danny probably more able to be sympathized with (but also Holland does a masterful job at this as well). (again, trying to avoid spoilers here).

The show's creator apparently is a trauma survivor himself, and I personally credit his background with the show's sensitivity to how to depict trauma and abuse, its well-placed content warnings. As a trauma survivor myself, I greatly appreciated: (1) the warnings; and (2) not showing graphic scenes simply to reinforce that trauma or abuse happened - that is, you know something happened, and what it is, without having to be shown the whole thing (in contrast to, say, Euphoria). Personally, this allowed me to focus on the story, the impact of the trauma, and helped me stay in the story instead of seizing up because of what was on the screen. And, ultimately, there were many moments where I felt seen as a trauma survivor who has been trying to find their own way and who they are after a long time. This story has stuck with me for that reason, and I thank everyone involved with this project for helping me to feel seen and understood.

My main criticism is that the ending episodes felt rushed - maybe some of this was on purpose given the timing constraints in the story of the trial. However, there is at least one major revelation within the last 15 or so minutes that is almost brushed over entirely, but explains a lot more of Danny's situation. Also, there were a few loose ends that still are bothering me involving Danny's biological father and the London travel agency. Some of this may simply be I missed a clue earlier - or it speaks to how children rationalize or create their own story to deal with trauma -- but it still bothers me.

Overall, it is very much worth a watch, and I am honestly amazed at the number of critics who panned this series. Not sure if folks don't know how to watch with an open mind and curiosity, or if they expected an adaptation of the Billy Milligan story. Again, this is not an adaptation, and the creator was very clear on that.

Again, a big thank you to all involved for your work in making this story and being sensitive and caring in the portrayal of trauma and abuse and how it impacts us, particularly as children.

I originally rated this as 5. It seemed slightly boring in terms of relationship development, a bit eye-ball rolling in parts, and Connie was a bit irritating at times, but it wasn't overly awful. Unfortunately, the actors, especially the one who plays Mellors, wasn't given much to work with.

I had never read the book upon which this is based, and so I took some time to research it. I now know why the film is so lacking in substance especially as to Mellors.

Had the book been followed, Mellors would have seemed like a horrid person and quite frankly this film would have been slammed for its patriarchal and stilted views on sex, which honestly the book probably should be. (Somewhat ironic that the book was banned for talking about sex at all, and that controversy apparently still overshadows the actual problems with the thematic substance of what Lawrence wrote). There are other aspects of the story in the film that aren't explained because, if they were as they were described in the book, they would be laughable.

I dropped it down to 4 upon researching the actual story written by DH Lawrence because quite frankly, upon comparing the book material to the film, it seems just like an attempt by Netflix to get views for their lagging revenue through advertising the sexual content. To be clear, I have no problem with sexual content in what I watch, but it's clear this was Netflix's selling point for this remake/adaptation under the guise of "great literature previously banned" and I thoroughly question the "great literature" part.

I should also note that I am tired of these period films and remakes and such, especially from an entity like Netflix that continues to cancel good, original content and then wonders why it cannot sustain its business.

EDIT: I've now dropped it down to a three.

This series was great from start to finish, although I found the last season a little lacking and not quite up to par with the first two. Fantastic action, great story. Well worth watching. You can easily find yourself hitting "next episode" a lot.

Overall, my rating break-down by season is:

Season 1: 9/10 -- definitely the best of the three, although also the most heartwrenching. Felt like a rocket ship, you are strapped in from the get-go action-wise and I am still haunted by the lullaby (which is a musical theme throughout the series but you find out its heartbreaking origins in this season). Joel Kinnaman is stellar as Hanna's father.

Season 2: 8/10 - the general premise in season 2 of the training facility is not original, but was still well done as was the development of the other girls being trained, and the impact of the methods on the government individuals also.

Season 3: 6.5/10 - this was the weakest of the three unfortunately. Some of the choices in story line (and also the marketing images...) were just odd (trying not to give anything away here) or otherwise seemed kind of off.

Still, one of the best series I've watched and well-worth the time. Action sequences were well-executed and very satisfying to watch. I do hope we see more of Esme Creed-Miles in the future.

Some folks are probably going to hate on this film because it has a woman protagonist. This is not one of those reviews. In fact, I was very happy to see an attempt at flipping the usual action roles and even though the film seemed flat from the trailer, I gave it a shot. Unfortunately, this movie just wasn't that great for an action film. What you see in the trailer is pretty much what you get, and the trailer honestly gives away even too much.

The plot is really flat, there is almost no character dimensionality and yeah, I know it's an action film, but the dialogue is really trite...even for an action film. The premise had promise but it just fell flat. Also, Hemsworth's cameo honestly didn't help because he looks like Bro Thor and so it threw off the tone at important moments and drew attention away from the actual story.

Also, and maybe this was the point, but the villain was just absolutely insufferable and irritating. I like my action film villains a little more complex and less, honestly, like spoiled rich bros, which the guy gives off.

They didn't give Pataky much to work with on the acting side. The fights were ok, but I wanted a bit more -- like, with Black Widow and other women characters out there in the movie world kicking butt, I felt they could have made this better. The story elements including the backstory on Pataky's character were handled very clunky-ly. The better parts were the interaction with the missile tech with the turtle and between Pataky's character and the character's father.

If you have to pick one action movie and you're stuck on Netflix, I'd say go with Lou over this one.

I was disappointed, honestly. I get that it was supposed to be more comical - I can roll with that. It just was....uneven and kind of choppy in the pacing. I cringed at some of the eps, probably because it made me uncomfortable because I experience the same things in the real world as Jen does. Some of the law stuff was spot on, so I did get a laugh from that. The finale was great. Enjoyed the dynamic with Daredevil, as well as Jen and her friends/coworkers.

But overall it was kind of messy. The whole Sakaar thing felt like a distraction ultimately. And most of all, I felt like it severely underused Tatiana Maslany's immense talent. This is the actor from Orphan Black! Like, ??!!!

Also, they changed Jen Walter's body type to be slimmer, which was annoying. One would think that after Encanto, that kind of thing wouldn't be an issue, and yet, there it was.

Hoping for major improvement in the future.

Finally - something that gets back to the heart and soul of what Marvel has been, but seems to have lost more recently. It also, to me, feels like one of the most real and grounded shows and much more of reflection of our real world.

I've seen people trashing this as a "kids show." If it's not for you, then it's not for you, but I would ask why Spiderman is not considered a "kids show" and this is, even though the ages are roughly the same. Something to consider there.

In any event, I am definitely not a kid or a teenager, and I found this show to be highly relatable - on a family dynamic level, on a personal identity level, and on a trying-to-understand-your-background level. In contrast, Hawkeye left me out in the cold for the first few episodes. This show captured me from the first episode.

Some of that also has to do with the really creative presentation in the first few episodes that captured a comics vibe and also Kamala Khan's energy and imagination on the screen. I loved it. It was fresh and something we have not seen before. I'm glad the writers fought to get it in when Marvel pushed against it being in. I do wish, however, that it got brought back more than it did in the last episode to kind of merge where Kamala was at the beginning of the story and her growth.

And this gets to why I so very much wish I could give this 10/10, but can't. The Clandestines storyline was not fully developed, and there are major questions that remained for us to guess, including as to Aisha and Najma, and Najma and Kamran. This does not appear to be the writers' fault, as apparently they had written a lot on the Clandestines, but then were shoved into what appears to now be the standard 6 episode format. This show is one that really could have used one more episode or a longer fifth and sixth episode to address that.

And here is where I have a message for Marvel and Disney -- if you're going to take time and money to tell a story, let the story be told. Stop forcing it into some arbitrary time box. Otherwise, what is the point? You leave plot gaps and questions hanging for the viewer that leave unsatisfaction and uncertainty, especially when it's not clear that the questions are going to be answered in a future installment.

If you're tired of seeing the same stories over and over on screen, this show is more than a welcome break from that. Creative, colorful, funny, but also very meaningful and deep at points. I also loved getting to see a culture different than mine on screen, and learning about it, including the historical events that affect many families today.

Thank you to those who made this show not just to make a story, but to have it be a labor of love. It shows.

If you need a decent, not-super-high-stakes, but also heart-cockles-warming film, this works. It's not super original - there are a few scenes in this that literally come straight out of some Marvel films, and the general premise isn't that original either. But it's not a bad way to spend a hour and some. Also, Walker Scobell is amazing as a small Ryan Reynolds. Err, well, Ryan Reynolds' character.

I needed a comedy to watch and Jamie Dornan dancing around and singing was not what I expected, but it was hilarious. I love the Barb and Star characters and ultimately the whole story with them. Normally I am not the biggest Kristen Wiig fan, but her as Star was enjoyable. The movie makes fun of so much resort vacation stuff so if you are really into going to resorts I guess maybe this movie isn't for you? But anyway - I laughed a lot.

I knocked this movie down from a seven though because I am really tired of the disabled villain trope. Like - c'mon, it's 2022. Come up with something different.

.....so I sat down with about zero familiarity of the series, aside from the romance and historical aspects, and honestly, when the "sexual violence" warning on Netflix showed, I should have probably chosen another show. I think my brain went - well, maybe it's just here or there.

Oops. Nope. It's very frequent. And this isn't meant to be a moralizing thing, it's just - it's very very frequent and it wasn't until I was a number of episodes into season 1 that it became apparent that this was part of the story writing, and that it was very much adversely affecting me. I love the actors and I think they're great, but the story and how it's written just - it's too much for me.

Also, as someone who had to give up alcohol, (again, this isn't moralizing, it's just a warning for folks considering sitting down to watch this), I could not help but notice that alcohol features a lot - again, this is a story and history and what-not, but it could be an issue for some folks.

There is no question that the fast-paced driving sequences with the music are the highlight of this film.

Unfortunately, I struggled very much with trope-y characters and related casting in this film.

Debora is basically just a plot device for Baby's character arc, and has no real character development of her own. The most ruthless, reckless, and cruel of the heist crew members is the only Black person (played by Jamie Foxx) out of all the heist members. Predominantly non-white heist members don't hang around long - not gonna spoil that, but if you watch it, you'll understand.

Folks really seem to like Edgar Wright, but I cannot overlook this. And this isn't the first Wright film to basically just have women as objects (*cough* Scott Pilgrim *cough*).

I think this would have been stronger had it chosen one format, instead of embedding a fictional story inside of a documentary. This made it mentally a bit challenging to navigate. Ultimately, I felt like the fictional component was awkward and tried to do too much with too little space. It gave short shrift to the story of Danny Ramirez's character and his relationship to Will, and the semi-awkward connection between Will and Isabelle focused almost exclusively on Isabelle.

That said, Danny Ramirez's acting was stellar.

I know there are folks who really like Nolan, and that's fine. Inception was great, and his Dark Knight trilogy is fantastic also.

This movie, however, was not. It was extremely hard to follow, and thank God I watch movies with subtitles because I probably would have been even more confused.

Sometimes concepts just don't work out when you put them to a story. Unfortunately, this is one of those movies. It's hard to enjoy a movie when you are spending so much time trying to figure out what is even going on.

I avoided watching this for a bit because it was, inevitably, very Jesus-y and that's just not my thing. However, watching the passion and energy that Jessica Chastain put into this film made me sit down and watch it, and I'm glad I did.

Chastain is fantastic and shines as Tammy Faye in every aspect. I was not that familiar with the story, and I read up more after the movie, but in any event, the pacing was good. It was interesting to see Tammy Faye try to navigate the very rigid gender roles in the fundamentalist world that her husband was trying to gain favor with, and how she really just was going to do what she thought was right regardless.

For those who have said this film doesn't touch the surface of Jim Bakker's awfulness -- that wasn't the point of the film - I mean, it's literally titled the Eyes of Tammy Faye. It's about her, not him. And I don't really think it's intended to be fully objective either. So as a viewer, you have to wrestle with hard questions like why did she trust Jim so much, or did he hide so much from her, or the like.

Anyway, it's intriguing and Chastain's passion for the character and person are definitely the biggest enjoyable part of this film.

Like it really really hurts my heart. I thought we were finally getting a movie about Natasha Romanoff. Maybe finally we get a proper send-off for her.

We weren't and didn't, not in this film. I don't really know what the hell we got, aside from the introduction to Yelena Belova (who, is amazing and kick-ass and Florence Pugh is perfect as her, but my point still stands). The story is convoluted, to the extent there really is one, and I don't know, I guess if this had come out several years ago, maybe it would have been easier to forgive. But not at this point.

Watching the Assembled episode for the film, it became even more apparent that there wasn't a coherent story in this film. It's fine to have a film be character-driven, but there still has to be a direction to go in. This was all over the place.

Lastly, the CGI/VFX were so visible (and thus terrible) at one point I was shocked. This was not up to Marvel caliber.

Black Widow deserved so much better. I was so sad that this movie turned out the way it did.

I guess I was hoping for something better with the folks involved, but there was way too many over-the-top bloodbath shootouts and the story really held too strong to a white savior undertone.

I loved this movie. It's very original, I love the different characters and personalities, and although I'm really not a musical movie person, I enjoyed the songs quite a bit. The animation and the colors are gorgeous.

The people who are complaining that there wasn't a good enough villain missed the point of this story.

An English teacher of mine once told us to "show, not tell" when writing. This movie tells, but doesn't show, quite a bit, and that makes it difficult to relate to quite a few of the characters. The movie tries to cover so much ground that, on a first pass, it felt like I couldn't keep up, but then on a rewatch, it was hard to get through. Honestly, it felt more like a DC movie.

I think this would have been better as a Disney plus series because there are so many in the group to get to know, and the Eternals, unlike the Avengers, come as a unit. With the Avengers, you could deal with each character's backstory (except for Black Widow and Hawkeye.................) before the ensemble film and so you had some connection to the characters and could be more invested in the movie, plus the movie didn't have to introduce you to the characters AND tell a story at the same time. The Eternals though, you can't really separate them and have a movie about Sersi, for example. But then the movie is trying to accomplish intro'g the characters and telling a story and it's too much in a short span of time.

The way the movie goes, you barely get to know some of them before certain things happen. And then I honestly had so many questions like - why did so-and-so act like that, or care about that, or whatever? There was so much on the motivations of the characters that was missing.

The richest parts of the film were usually interactions between some of the Eternals (Makkari and Druig! Gilgamesh and Thena! Sersi and Thena!) and also the visuals, as well as parts of the final fight.

We'll see where this leads in the future.

I was worried that this film wouldn't deliver. I was pleasantly surprised. It's a decent action/spy movie. It's not the greatest, but it's a good watch. Way better than the Charlie's Angels reboot (the Cameron Diaz/Lucy Liu/Drew Barrymore one).

If male characters had been the frontrunners and this was a shoot-em-up, yay America movie (which there are a dime a dozen), the rating on this would be higher.

The premise is creative, and honestly, it was refreshing to finally want to watch an action/spy movie because it was different, and featured women at the forefront. It's not in-your-face as some people claim. The only time it kinda gets that way is at the end, and honestly, it makes sense then. This movie is really only in your face if you don't like movies that are from a woman's perspective and you don't like women in action movies unless they're eye candy, getting shot and dying, or a "sidekick".

Folks saying "oh this isn't realistic" - uh, right, it's a movie, and I'm pretty sure Jason Bourne taking people out with a broken leg and bullet through the shoulder is realistic too. C'mon. I don't watch these movies for realism. That being said, for me, the themes and what the main characters have to go up against hit a bit too close to home for me.

Lupita Nyong'o, Fan Bingbing, and Penélope Cruz's characters were my favorites and the arc of Cruz's character was particularly good. Jessica Chastain's character was a little weakly drawn in my opinion.

That all said -- the plot is a little lurchy at times, and I agree there's some camera shakiness a la the Bourne movies that is a bit annoying at times. I feel like this could have been better as a TV series because I felt like there were gaps that could have been filled in more. There are some odd shots/line deliveries at times that either were just a bit corny or seemed off.

Overall, if you want to be entertained, this is a good movie.

This movie was fantastic. Of course, the source material from Greg Rucka plays a big part in that, but I can't tell you how many times I've watched this film. I love it. Nicky and Joe - for the first time in...maybe ever? I've seen a queer couple on screen in a film that isn't centered on their relationship. Just everything, minus the music at times, was great. I loved Nile - Kiki Layne hit it out of the park. And duh, Charlize Theron.

Highly highly recommend!!!!