Reviews

Although I was intrigued with the series and there were some nice psychological thriller / supernatural stirrings in the first episode, I quickly got bored of Christina Ricci's one dimensional acting. She seems to have only one setting: unreflective sociopath mode. The script would have benefited greatly from a more complex and nuanced character. Clea DuVall, playing Lizzie's sister Emma, has far more depth and subtlety. Meanwhile, all the bad men are unremittingly bad, cardboard cut-out villains. Cole Hauser's Siringo is suffering from a serious charisma deficit.

Although I'm not adverse to gore, it is being used instead of better scriptwriting as a way to segue into new scenes. It quickly started feeling like an obvious device. I found a lot of the dialogue far too modern. Again, Ricci's very flat, clipped delivery pulls it out of period.

Meanwhile, the props department should have done a better job with their historical research. The flashlight, used by Hauser in his exploration of the schoolhouse, was not invented until 1899 - when the dry cell battery became available.

All of these flaws would not have rendered the series unbearable. It was the soundtrack that fundamentally ruined it for me. There have been series and films that pair historical settings with contemporary music to excellent effect. The Knick (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2937900/?ref_=nv_sr_1) is set in basically the same time period and uses very atmospheric, very modern abstract electronic music throughout the series and manages to make it work superbly well. The choice of music for this series - both the incidental music that was over-dramatic and bombastic as well as the bits and pieces of contemporary rock - became a real distraction that served to distance me emotionally from the episodes. Especially the indie rock with vocals.

It feels like a low budget, Baz Lurman series with more gore and fewer Hollywood stars.

Unbroken is undoubtedly an attempt to pay tribute to a man who underwent overwhelming struggles and suffered terrible abuse during WWII in the Pacific. In paying that tribute, the writers decided to stick very closely to both the character of the man and the events as he recalled them.

This might have made a compelling documentary and certainly an excellent biography, but that doesn't necessarily make it a good piece of dramatic narrative filmmaking without some dramatic embellishment.

Unbroken doesn't offer anything but a quotidian and rather superficial examination of Olympic runner Louis Zamperini as a person. Similarly, the lack of anything approximating revealing dialog or interpersonal relationships contributes to something very close to a pornographization of suffering.

Fully half of the movie consists of showing his appalling suffering - first during his 47 days of starvation and thirst on a life raft at sea, and then during his time in a Japanese prisoner of war camp where he is specifically targeted as a permanent punching bag.

History doesn't make good drama without good writing to bring out what reality only reveals in retrospect. This is the central problem with 'Unbroken'.

I found it both brutal and boring. And that combination is a rather obscene one. Considering the Coen brother's skills, I am quite sure they were aware of what they were creating, and to me, that makes the intentions behind the film inhumane and banally obscene.

I have to have watched a different series to all the other people who wrote glowing reviews of this miniseries. Either that or I'm missing a massive post-modernist joke.

I don't think I've ever sat through such a clunky script, such awful acting or such poor direction. It started off tolerable, but simply got worse and worse. It's fair to say that Molly Ringwald was never much of an actress anyway, and Rob Lowe does a truly idiosyncratic deaf-mute. But I pity poor Gary Sinise for having to live this one down. On the whole, the characters are just one risible stereotype after another.

I think I lost my ability to stomach it while watching a truly gut churning scene of adolescent foreplay between Corin Nemec and Laura San Giacomo that convinced me that the director must have never actually had sex.

But that was not as inexplicable as why a group of grown adults would send a mentally handicapped man out as a spy. Don't want to spoil it for you, but it boggles the mind.

Somehow, the book makes it all seem plausible but it does not survive the transition to the screen. No one should ever let Steven King script another screenplay. It's not what he's good at.

This was nicely shot with good atmosphere and very capable actors. It's a low budget film but, unlike a lot of horror films made in recent years, it doesn't rely on expensive special effects.

The script itself - the dialogue - could have been better and more naturalistic. There is a lack of depth to the backstory or the kind of casual banter that allows viewers to get comfortable with the characters.

However, I wish that, just for once, the unfolding of a horror story didn't depend on the characters making unforgivably stupid decisions and unfathomable choices.

This isn't a terrible film, and it is good to see Barker's stories getting onto the screen again.

I was interested to see what David Lynch's daughter would produce, considering her father's legacy as a director.

Early Lynch films reflect his lack of budget, his inexperience as a director but nonetheless had an authenticity and insight into certain aspects of American culture of the period that made them valuable pieces of cultural product for their time.

His daughter doesn't have the same insight or the same excuses. These are mediocre actors, badly directed and burdened with unnatural and stilted dialogue and a poor excuse for a plot. The lack of believable humanity in any of the characters only adds to the painfulness of watching this.

I'm really tired of having shabbily directed, badly written, poorly acted films presented to be as 'raw' and 'innovative'. They're not. They're just bad.