Reviews

I absolutely adore this. I'm white, but catch more of maybe the inside jokes like the Warrior Spirit drops and the fake owls still having their eyes blurred out, ahaha, I love that bit the best of the series, because my late partner was Oglala-Miniconjou from the CRIR.

And just by chance my favourite character (or maybe tied with Willy Jack) is played by Jana Schmieding, and I swear a few of my wife's friends were just like her, a Indigenous Roseanne for the best shorthand I can think of, world weary and disillusioned but plowing ahead without despair because she realizes she has. No. Other. Choice.

So I'm late to the game having watched all of this season so far even and just finding out today, August 31, 2023. That this is the last season, nooooo!!!!

Though there is something to be said to going out on top, and many British series are only a few at most by design, to let new ideas and creators percolate up, but I've grown to really love these characters in a way (I'm dating myself here) that I haven't in a comedy since Seinfeld, or maybe better even back to Cheers, or classics like Taxi or WKRP, characters that are right on that edge between not possibly ever existing in reality, and being rare birds but easily could be real life people, too. The Office comes to mind for that as well.

Ohhh, I wish I had one hour in a room with the producers to sell them on the idea of spin-off show centred around Jana Schmieding's character and the older group of female friends sans the kids. I think they could write a kiss-ass funny show based on this premise, especially if they could keep the 1491 troupe involved.

There are so many issues that related to Indigenous moms that aren't even a thought for Indigenous men even, with all the societal problems that weren't of their making affecting both moms and dads. The break in the generational teaching of parenting caused by those evil residential schools, and how to try to learn to parent when you haven't been parented yourself, the way most people learn. And that's just one issue, and getting into some of the more adult issues on Rez as well.

Yep, that's a show I would watch, and I think would catch on huge with that female age group demographic regardless of ethnicity... oh, to dream!!

I'm surprised how many low rating comments missed this being a great idea to show many of the aspects of colonialism that Indigenous people still must struggle with and against. Wanting to share the land, but to those who think they can own Grandmother Earth how it's a near-inpossibility. I saw a lot of the recommendations from the Truth & Reconcillation Commision very elegantly and subtlety reflected and weaved throughout, and that is no small feat for a zombie flick especially, and that's part of the brilliance.

Lots of technical complaints as well that I didn't find a problem at all, my suspension of disbelief was never broken once. Truly amazing work on a small budget.

I don't know if I've ever reviewed a show, I don't think I have (my late wife and I shared this account). I've watched this show sporadically but as I've become both more culturally and politically aware I've grown to adore this show, the highlight with delight was his just skewering of Alex Jones, a pure parasite not caring what he hath wrought with his hate-filled speech, not even believing his own rhetoric. I'm seeing the potential, both for ill like Tucker Carlson (who God-forbid but I fear may be POTUS someday), and a brilliantly intelligent and insightful presenter and writer like Mr. Oliver is such a deep contrast, and to someone who doesn't follow the news much I'm awake now to the possibilities and incredible power one media star holds. This show gets a 10/10 for me, we need many more like it. <3.

... bit I ended up liking it quite a but. It revealed a pleasantly nuanced version of medieval early-aged Levant and Arabian peninsula not seen easily elsewhere.

I really wanted to hate this, and it was only when I didn't hate it, but loved it, was when I realized I wanted to hate it. Lol.

Seriously though, I'm a big fan of the Foundation series of books, so much so that unlike many fans I really do have a strange attachment to books written in a way to be compelling without maybe having more shallow and transitory characters as a necessary lever to make that happen, I love all the characters in War & Peace in the same way, where sometimes there isn't any more to learn but a name and the connection to any other characters.

I thought translating this onto film or the small screen was just patently impossible, but, to my surprise it wasn't, and this is a knock-outta-the-park like Villeneuve's Dune for which it's going to be inevitably compared as space operas no matter how diverse always get battered together for some reason, but they both did everything right, a rarity in adaptations that by their very nature need to spend a lot of money pushing the boundaries of the human visual imagination which taking a lot of risks at the same time. Which makes the combination of the two meeting all the more exciting.

Besides capturing that key undercurrent, most important subtext just in my opinion, there are lots of different ones out there, but mine of that de-emphasization of the characters to show that we are all slaves to history in a way as the scale of time gets bigger, and Asimov really had to get across that long-term timescale by emphasizing story over dialogue or exposition or backstory development in characters, and that's not to say there isn't any, but rather to say it is sparingly done, alway just enough, and I really got that feel from this series.

This is probably a strange reason to really love just one aspect, however key, of a great novels' adaptation as reason to already by far this be my very favourite novel-adaptation (and, yes, I have considered just what a long list that really is), and the first time I've given a very ridiculously-seeming 8 to this, but I have really loved it all. The first two episodes were almost painfully slow but by design in spots, but that has been how playing around with time is almost weaved into the tapestry of the series, dozens of small emotional or intellectual references that fit too well to be mere happenstance.

If you're a true fan or brand new to the Foundation universe, the series can be confusing for the first two, even three episodes for the major themes to be emerging, and all the characters to be immediate to reference, etc. There are so many instances of dualist ideas I found in Foundation that I never read or hear referenced to, maybe it's just such a pleasantly & satisfyingly dense work (also like Dune in that way) that we find in them whatever we're looking for, but I find by far my favourite single storyline or arc so far was when Daytime made a pilgrimage to the Mother, with that last scene of that arc being Primetime-Emmy worthy.

NOTE: English is not my first language, so I apologize now for any grammatical errors or mispelled of misused words.

The plot was weak, some plot points felt very forced as well, shoehorned in to move the story in a certain direction but not really making sense. The death and/or other serious events that occurred to end certain characters lacked emotional gravitas.

It could be argued fairly that that's hard to muster when we know which characters would die ahead of time from the series, but there was a noticeable dearth of character development (everything in this film felt sooo rushed) that when someone died it was hard to feel anything other than *meh* about it.

I've read a lot of praise about it, but Tony being played by the late actor's son feels like stunt casting to me, and just not worth it for the resemblance factor. Although you can tell Gandolfini the Younger gave it his best, and despite the many critics praising his performance to me it felt very stilted, stiff, and unsure. Looks aside I think it was a poor choice, he just didn't have the acting chops needed for what I thought was going to be the lead character in this film, but turned out to be just one of many, many different little subplots going on (half of them feeling like blatant fanservice).

Generally the highlight of the film was the acting, which was pretty superb across the board. Though at times the imitation of original cast actors went from flattery to something boarding on the impressions done on a comedy variety show (the performance of the actor that played Silvio was particular bad for that... it was like an intentionally over-the-top SNL sketch; having the same mannerisms is one thing, but the Sil character was hammy AF, just way too much in the way of trying to be a Steven Van Zandt character).

This was advertised as being something it just wasn't. One of the officially bylines for "The Many Saints of Newark" (a clever title, a reference to all the spirits lurking around the graves of the people who have passed on from whence Chris narrates... and the sparse narration was well-done, not overly expository) was something along the lines that it centered around "a vicious gang war"...um, what?!? One hit each constitutes a vicious gang war??? For a major synopsis of what the film was to be about how could they have had something so misrepresentative? Was there a lot more gangland "action" left on the editing-room floor?

That could be another overall criticism of the film; it was wayyy too light on the peek-behind-the-curtain feel of seeing the inner workings of a Mafia family, a hallmark of every episode of the original series...it showed much more of how an organization like that operates. There was barely *any* of that, and historical impossibilities, like Bumpy Johnson wanting to take on a mafia family without any backing from any of the other 5 NYC Families? I think I get it, that this was all focused much more on the character interaction than that peek behind the curtain that was not to be with this one, but again, it feels like the film's promotion misrepresented what the focus would be, so if I'm feeling disappointed it was only because I was so very much set up with false expectations.

There were characters that I would have loved to seen more of, Johnny Soprano especially... this would maybe have worked well as an opening film for a new series perhaps... a non-linear format that shows the watchers what this one-off promised to be and really didn't deliver on, that of being the "origin story" of Tony Soprano: how a bright if uninspired teenage boy who doesn't at all want to be part of the "family business" becomes the crime lord we saw in "The Sopranos".

I can't give this more than a 5 all things considered, even with some truly stellar performances. Yes, the high quality of the series maybe gave me unrealistic expectations, and I'll give this another watch in maybe a year from now. To zoom in on the main overarching problem with this film, the pacing was wayyy too fast, which didn't allow for any character development, and hence no empathy for the characters. "The Sopranos" main hook was showing a man who was by all rights a complete sociopathic monster, but having seen what created him still allowing for the audience to empathize and even cheer for this character. That just didn't happen with the lead character this film followed the most...it felt like the writing tried to fit half a season's worth of the TV shows plotting into one standard-length film, which just didn't work very well. Maybe the switch from TV writing to film writing was just much too far a leap, they really are like apples and oranges vis-as-vis plot & pacing.

Tl;dr

5/10

If the purpose of the film was to dip a toe in the water to feel if there would be enough interest in a new series based on this format I'd have ranked it higher, but as a fully stand-alone piece, despite stellar acting for the most part, (i) the plot was much too contrived, too rushed, and too thin, (iii) the advertising leading up to the release promised the audience thing it just didn't deliver (e.g. A brutal gang war, Tony's "origin story"), and (iii) the impersonations of the original cast bordered on over-the-top parody at times which reinforced rather than helping to break down the fourth wall (eg.the Steven Van Zandt impersonation by the actor playing Silvio was way, wayyyyy over the top!).

I grew up reading European comics, and the ones from Spain, Italy and France especially had a whole genre that were just like 30 Monedas, revolving around some dark mystery heavily steeped in make-believe Catholicism, often with a quest element, so I was really predisposed to love this series, and love it I did.

To explain to a friend with American sensibilities and frame-of-reference I described this as Dirk Pitt dropped into Dan Brown novel with two leads that look like they stepped off a romance novel cover with just the perfect amount of trashiness. If that's a turn-off on its face, this probably isn't the right show for you, haha.

This episode was a really satisfying conclusion (or not, it leaves a door open for a second season, though as much as I love this show, *love* it, in a way I hope that it's finished as the story really ended in a way that shows that some things are eternal, that battle between good and evil in a good old Lovecraft way, and the seduction that can cause people to do really bad things for the right reason.

This was pretty dense in it's pacing, maybe too dense if you aren't paying close attention...on my 2nd watching I noticed some sly almost-Easter Eggs in this one that makes me want to rewatch the entire series again after a bit of time has passed. But every series finale that's a action-mystery should leave you on the edge of your seat. That's another quality I felt, loving the main story-line but how it interweaved with more stand-alone stories within the main a la X-Files, that feel of the old movie serials I watched Saturday mornings as a kid before we got American cartoons here (Blackhawk, Superman, and Tarzan were favourites), and the end of each story arc in those serials was very much like this, as Indiana Jones tried (and of course) succeeded at emulating or as homage.

Rather than dig too deep I'll just write that some truly outstanding performances couldn't save this film from stunt-scripting to cover up a really weak idea, just not plot-wise (though a film doesn't need a strong narrative to be good), but nothing worked *but* the acting (this film really was under-edited as well as another really weak point that jumped out. This film had enough juice for a good short, but was even as a feature way too long for whatever pay-off it gives.

The whole thing struck me as really pretentious and derivative. I didn't see anything here original or that I haven't seen done before and much better. Worth a watch if you aren't expecting more than some really great acting and none of the structure required around that to make a decent film.

I'm definitely a Christopher Nolan fanboy, "The Prestige" is my 2nd favourite film of all time (after "Brazil"), and I've loved all his films on multiple levels, that is, until this one.

It has all the makings of a great Nolan film, all the ingredients, but the story is so narratively ambitious that it forces way too much of the dialogue in exposition trying to explain itself. Any movie I've seen that falls into this trap messes with my suspension of disbelief because a story that is mainly about explaining itself is the very opposite of realism.

Along with this, the characters become more like the chorus of a Greek play and much harder to be engaged by emotionally, and if that doesn't happen it's darn near impossible to care about the characters or what happens to them, leading to disengagement from the film altogether.

I would still call this a brilliant and exceptional film, and I love undoing the straps of puzzles Nolan builds around his big reveal of his films generally, but again this story was just too ambitious for my mind to keep up with, or maybe I wasn't compelled or persuaded enough to bother. Again, overly-talky pictures that spend out of necessity not just a large portion, but the majority of the dialogue explaining what is going on is very 1980s primetime soap-opera-ish.

I can see where a very good idea for a story, just a kernel, could be build upon and only when so much time and craft have been invested does a fatal flaw emerge, and dialogue is a handy tool for trying to paper over those fatal flaws, but we sacrifice getting to know characters as a result.

One thing "Tenet" did for me was show me how quickly and organically I made emotional attachments to characters in other Nolan films, all without much set up as far as personal history or background or the other tools used to draw a viewer to being invested what happens to them. In the aforementioned "The Prestige" I felt bonds and understands with each of the characters very quickly in a way I just try as I might could not with the characters in this film.

And as another point of comparison, "The Prestige" held a great mystery with all the clues available right to the end as to whether it was primarily a period piece about rivalry and envy, or a fantasy film. With that film Nolan trusted the audience enough to be able to follow along through some pretty quick twists, as he does in all his previous films, and by ratcheting up the abstract nature of the plot while simultaneously dumbing down the narrative by having that excess of exposition, as if to try spoon feeding the audience the philosophical subtleties of a Dostoyevsky novel, the complexity literally doesn't translate into language well in the setting of a film.

I'd actually loved to have read "Tenet" as a novel as it's just one of those rare ideas that may just be too big to be effective in the relatively small bounds of a movie. I feel a bit the traitor for not enjoying too much one of those directors whose upcoming work I wait on anxiously, but despite having all the right ingredients this was just more ambitious than cinema or the cinema goer can handle.

My favourite part of this film is that it reserved judgment one way or another about the subject that they were covering so intimately, which must have been quite a tight-rope to walk, but they succeeding in this perfectly.

I don't usually comment on others' reviews, but I have to add that I suspect the vast majority of people giving this a 1/10 (a 1? Those aren't serious votes or Leni Riefenstahl's films would all get 1/10 if the only merit measured is the popularity of the subject matter, come on now) I would bet my left arm never watched this film at all, at most they have read synopses of parts some alt-right website found a hair to split with on Facebook or 8chan or wherever, and are basing their votes purely based on what their particular political cult tells them is bad or good.

So don't heed the low rating this gets on IMDb, this really is an emotionally engaging and insight film no matter whether you are someone who even doesn't believe man-made climate change is real. I watched this with one guy, an Engineer, who thinks climate change is actually due to environmental encroachment. the other one a QAnon-believing III%er, and we talked about the film for a good two hours afterward, which I think is a sign of a successful film in my books.

This show says a whole lot about class and privilege in a liberal democracy, and says it with all cylinders firing.

I grew up decidedly on the wrong side of the tracks, but I was gifted and managed to rise above my financial beginnings to something much better (no electricity cut off in the middle of the summer, no skipped meals because we had no food, etc.).

But I'm still haunted, like when I get upset my carefully constructed accent falls apart and I sound like the kid from the hood I am. I'm still haunted often by feelings that I'm a fraud, that I'm not good enough, etc., even after a successful career full of achievement and leadership positions on more boards and committees than I can remember, yet I've known in some folks' minds I'll never be good enough, just trash from the wrong side of the tracks regardless of what I accomplish and the change for good I make on this planet.

This show not only stirred all that stuff back up, but really made me look at it all through fresh eyes somehow, and helped answer some long nagging questions about identity, social mobility, and sometimes having so many strikes against you right from birth that if you aren't extremely lucky and smart, you aren't going anywhere. It wasn't explicitly a social critique, but that's what made the message even more effective.

I love shows, I hate shows, but rarely do I feel indebted in some way to art, but I feel a genuine debt of gratitude to "Wayne". I couldn't recommend it enough.

For a season finale this was pretty anti-climactic, and didn't end any subplots (or main plots for that matter). And I really loved this series, one of the best I watched, if not *the* best, through the late summer/early autumn. I don't really know what the writers could have been thinking, or if they just wanted a cliff-hanger ending to season one so badly that they sacrificed any sort of satisfying climax.

As an unimportant side-note, those are not Lightning IIs in the shots of the fighter-bombers, but F-15Is (the Israeli version of the famous US Strike Eagle, the ground attack version of the F-15 which was originally designed primarily in an air superiority role that has served in the IAF since 1976. So not an F-35, but still a pretty cool plane to use in shots that don't look CGI'd (to my eye at least).

I'm admittedly a very big Bruce Campbell fan, I love both his books (which are surprisingly touching in places), all his terrible B movies even.

I can't really say too much more than other fans of this show said so well 20 years ago now (20 years???), most reviews being contemporary to when this was airing.

I love the historical inaccuracies that place this series on a different Earth than our own, one where Wolfe was beaten on the Plains of Abraham and Canada remained/become more fully French, being ruled by Napoleon; it leads so much more room for the writers to take things in completely unexpected directions with history completely fluid and mostly unknown. Things like that, other little things like the peg-legged pirate dancing a jig on top of a pub table in the opening credits even (such a little touch, but there are soooo many little touches like that) have made this a show I've never forgotten and watch every few years or so from beginning to end still (on DVD, I'd so love a Bluray release).

This is one of those series that I cherish as almost "all mine" because it's so unknown to the average TV watcher, or maybe even fan of the Sam Raimi films Mr. Campbell starred in. Another side of me just thinks about what an absolute pity that this didn't catch on the way I think it could have if, say, it came out today with audiences having an increased tolerance if not even penchant for quirky settings and scripts.

For a historical comedy-action series, this way so very much ahead of its time, and I really believe it would have done fantastically ratings wise if it were to come out as a new series on Netflix in 2020, it would be a smash hit. It was worthy of a good 5 or 6 seasons I think before it could get stale because of such a wide breadth of directions the writers could have taken this, and a very real seeming emotional rapport between the two leads. But, alas, not to be and all that, but for the episodes that were produced, they are just that much more precious to me by how relatively few there are.

If you are a fan of 60s screwball action-adventure-comedy series or films (I was reminded a bit in very good ways of the "Our Man Flint" series, or even "Get Smart"), I'm quite sure you'd like this, but it isn't a prerequisite by any means. If you enjoy light historical set-pieces, you'll like this as well I figure. If you can see past the old aspect ratio, the video quality for it's time and on DVD only is excellent, as is the sound, and there are even some ultra-creative shots that I don't remember seeing anywhere else, either in film or TV, ever, and I have an eye on cinematography almost instinctually, I'm almost always on the lookout for innovative shots or lighting (even at the expense of blowing up my suspension of disbelief).

I missed this myself when it was first out until a good year at least after it was cancelled, and I was already somewhat of a Bruce Campbell fan, which says a lot about the lack of promotion that kind of doomed the series. If I had known it even existed during its run I wouldn't have missed an episode for anything. It's a real shame series aren't given time to develop (there was a series on Fox a few years ago that was announced as cancelled before the pilot episode had even finished it's airing!). MASH, Cheers, etc., were huge ratings bombs for several seasons before they got their footing and went out to be these huge iconic series that make imagining TV history difficult without them in the picture. I wonder how many other series that could have become just as iconic were strangled in the crib?

For a nice light, funny, sometimes sexy in an innocent way, with good action sequences, and a very distracting binge-watch through what is shaping up to be a very long winter with COVID-19 infections spiking in Europe and the US, this is just the kind of engaging, but easy to watch, mindless fun that maybe all of us could use a bit more of.

(1) Wholly untalented performers that trade in on a parent or sibling or child's fame by dint of sharing a surname and not much else

(2) Poorly scripted one-take-only scenes intended to pass as spontaneous reality-based television... I thought Jim Belushi was a wooden actor with no discernible talent nor craft in conventional TV and film production, yet he is 10x worse in this programme that is at least supposed to appear un-scripted. It's just horrible and needs to be watched at least once to really be understood what a swing and a miss this was on an idea that had real potential.

(3) My cousin is the 2nd biggest grower in Western Canada (operating out of BC), growing bud for almost all the medical dispensaries and now gov't licensed retail sellers I know of here. Her son travels all around the world consulting on set up and operation of commercial grow operations, so while not in the business myself I've seen how it operates up close, and there is nothing in this show that seems the least bit realistic to how growers operate in the real world. It does a disservice in a way as it seems to push the idea that this is some sort of business you can just bumble your way through when it's anything but.

(4) The 10/10 reviews on this are so obviously from muppets, with nondescript superlatives that a person could literally write about any title listed on IMDb. I feel secure in assuming some money or other incentive passed hands for these reviews, or were written those with some sort of personal interest in the success of this show.

(5) Dan Aykroyd hasn't been funny since the 1980s, he really hasn't, not in acting or writing... I love The Second City alums generally, some of the funniest people around (and many that aren't known for these roots e.g. Stephen Colbert), but let's face it, some of them in the late 60s and 70s got any comic ability or performances snorted straight up their nose, and Aykroyd is the prime example of that. Eugene Levy he is not.

Absolutely loved it! I never missed a single episode of the original series when I was 14 to 26 years old, and now at 50 this is like the greatest birthday gift ever. It is true to the incisive satire and biting wit (see what I did there?) of the original in every sense of the word.

I suspect the "1" votes (c'mon, really, a 1??) are butt-hurt Brexit Tories and Trumpists that are wondering how this new show can just be so horrible compared to the first series they so love back in uni in the late 80s... wll guess what?? Neither the show or the humour or the puppets have changed, YOU have!

And some reviews I've run online are such obvious Russian FSB/GRU troll puppet accounts that it adds just an extra surreal element to puppets falsely critiquing puppets! You can't write stuff that good!

When I was a youngster my best friend/next door neighbour's father who flew Canadian Forces cargo jets would take us along on 48 hr trips (often down to the States). This was I'm sure was highly against regulations and could have gotten him, who knows, maybe even thrown in jail, but he was half-pissed all the time so he had a few issues going on.

But to the point, I got to see a lot of films at an earlier age than I should have because once we got to the destination base he needed to go to the bar so my friend and I got dropped off to the base movie theaters that seemed no matter the base to run a 5 movie loop round-the-clock, and the movies were all classic grindhouse fare, Melvin Van Peebles and all the blaxploitation to follow after, Italian horror, Australian genre flicks, etc.

Being a big film buff probably because I got exposed to so much independent film as well so relatively young, I have one heck of a back catalogue to pick from, but "Nunzio" really stands out. I read in one of the reviews that it had some schlock in it, but from what I remember from that day when I lucked into seeing this fantastic film in a corrugated metal shed theatre in the NWT in Canada.

Something about the way the characters are written and in the dialogue, and of course the acting as well, but that dialogue, it really was incredibly engaging and sucked me into being so emotionally invested in the characters' lives, and even through some for-one-reason-or-another quite uncomfortable scenes to watch that out of all the similar-type movies I watched at those military bases only "Nunzio" stands out.

And it stands out even though beyond the general plotline I can't recall much detail other than 2 scenes, but how strongly I felt the emotions the screenwriter and director wanted me to feel, wow, I felt like a puppet on a string and this tugged at my heartstrings so very hard that just the thought of the movie finds those heartstrings reverberating over the years even still. I would be so happy to find a way to watch this in any format, I think I'd even buy an ancient VCR to be able to watch it, I loved it that much.

I've had never liked Michael Jordan (the hazards of being a Pistons fan I guess, you grab onto anything the slightest bit negative about someone you're predisposed to not like, that confirmation bias), just like as a Tigers, Wings and Lions fan I dislike all the icons over the years with the Sox and Cubs, 'Hawks, or Bears either. The rivalries between Detroit and Chicago with all our rival teams for so many years being in the same conferences and divisions, you are almost expected to loathe each others' teams and fans.

But even 25 years past it's still a real thing, whether justified or not, and I will always consider Jordan a suck for forcing Isiah Thomas off the Dream Team. Other people may be taking flak e.g. Magic Johnson now after so long to get some of it off Jordan, but at the time the sole thing stopping Thomas from (rightfully, it was a real unwarranted slap in the face to him) being on the team was Jordan, and everyone knows it.

It came close to a real abuse of power, in this case star power to interject himself into a decision he should have had zero influence in. That makes it doubly ironic that he didn't help his biggest asset, Scottie Pippen, out by using the undeniable star-power franchise-making influence he had over the entire Bulls organization from bottom to top to force the GM and/or owner to offer Pippen a wage reopener on his contract. Other athletes did this all the time to help out a teammate who got a particularly horrible contract, ones with much less power than Jordan I might add. When Pippen was traded Shaq immediately gave up 2 million dollars a year of his own salary to give directly to Pippen, and they were brand new teammates with no existing relationship of any kind.

That's what a classy player does, or one with the slightest lack of pervasive self regard. At the time I'd hoped it shamed Jordan a bit for Shaq to have done what he did without a second's thought, again, what a class act in comparison, but Jordan has always struck me as an Ayn Rand-type, with that "I at least partially lucked into this lifeboat so I hope the rest of you suckers can swim" attitude, and him never lifting a finger when he could have with absolutely no detriment to himself to make sure one way or another than the league-wide disgrace over the pittance Pippen was paid was rectified. There was no downside to Jordan to help out someone who's supposed to be not just your most needed teammate to help you do the magic, like Messier to Gretzky, but also a friend.

But maybe that really ruthless way of looking at every opportunity or situation on or off the court as toward one single goal, winning, blinded Jordan to this really easy opportunity to do something truly righteous and with the kind of fortune Jordan amassed through sponsorships he could well afford to shave a couple of mil off his Bulls salary to help out Pippen who had arguably earned that money right off Jordan for how they had eyes in the back of their heads knowing every second where the other one was on the court, it was uncanny.

And I haven't even mentioned the series yet I know, but I wanted to give the full context about how many different things I don't like about Michael Jordan before saying how much I loved this documentary series. I'm a big fan of documentaries, but especially longer series versus a feature-length, where the director and writer(s) can really dig into a subject. I watch the classic older docs like "Victory At Sea" or "The World At War" that Laurence Olivier narrated so well, and I try to watch every decent documentary series from all over the world as much as I can (other than cheesy ones with inaccuracies that don't dig very deep into the subject matter, like those churned out by "history-themed" cable channels).

I came into this wanting it to be a total hatefest on my part while watching, about this documentary was so riveting in that way that it makes you forget yourself as well as any preconceived notions one has about Jordan; maybe that is why this has really proved popular beyond all expectation in this weird time we are in. It is the ultimate escapism for a sports fan particularly, and even more particularly when sports of any type are in short supply. And I found something so very unexpected happening inside me, deeply in a way, as a person, seeing Jordan's humanity so fully exposed as it was bound to be with so many thousands of hours of film to go through, it changed the way I feel about Jordan completely just through the reaction of my own basic compassion I develop for anyone I get to know, and I feel like through watching this I really got to know Michael Jordan, the person, not just Michael Jordan, the player.

Beyond reliving something in a way that makes you feel you're right back to all those times if you'd been a basketball fan that long, and feel like you're back there still even if you hadn't been born yet maybe. The series really uses framing of the different time periods very subtly, but while still shifting the mood seamlessly in a second flat... I don't think I've ever quite seen that before. I just turn 50 and this series brought me back with such potent nostalgia to my 20s that I felt like I did watching some of those games for the first time ever, a virtual time machine, and though I still don't like some of his actions and choices back then, "The Last Dance" made me like Michael Jordan, the man. Maybe even love him. And considering my starting point, that is something.

A recurring complaint I've read about this movie (I'm more of a movie girl than a film girl, which made it even stranger I'd enjoy a documentary so much) is that it doesn't spend near enough time of Salinger's work itself. Yet that would defeat a lot of the film's unwavering purpose.

A veritable sea of interpretations and impressions of Salinger's published works exist, it is the enigma of the man that is the question, and some of his writing has taken on such an epic and larger-than-the-author stature that even delving in a little would give this film a much different feel, and not in a good way.

I wonder if even a portion of the reasons that Salinger kept so much so to himself and guarded his privacy so very jealousy had to do with that larger-than-the-author reaction, where so much of one's self could be open to misinterpretation based on your art, just as we see in tabloid press about very famous actors, musicians, aristocrats, the extremely wealthy, and whose persona rather than personalities are what are worshipped or disdained.

Salinger is one of those exceedingly rare artists (Kubrick and Bardot are the only ones that come to mind) that basically said, nah, I'm not playing the game. You get some of my art, the rest is for myself or my descendents to choose what to do with, but you don't get me.

8/10

I love all the director's other work, love the cast, the film was very competently shot and edited, but the dialogue is absolutely terrible, it watches like something written by a 2nd year film student (and that's generous!).

I'm mystified by how well liked this is with critics and other reviewers. I've watched it twice over the years after the initial viewing, and enjoyed it in a "so bad it's good" sort of way, especially Hoffman absolutely chewing up his scenes beyond even what the unrealistic dialogue would normally allow for, he enters Joan Crawford territory, lol, especially in scenes where he needs to come across like an action hero type of person.

I swear a lot of the scenes had to be 1st or 2nd takes as well, the direction seems to be nonexistant in some of them. Again, shocked at the positive reviews this received when it was first released from a wide swathe of critics, the unintended humour in Hoffman's is I guess a reason to watch (in his defense with the lines he had to work with, chewing up every scene was his least worst option).

I don't like Hillary Clinton. I don't like how she felt entitled for some reason to break a long held unwritten-rule of not criticizing your opponent(s) of the same party while they are in office (President Obama in 2008) or in future primary contests in which you are not even running (Sen. Sanders in 2019); I think it's opportunistic and selfish, and she's done it twice, once criticizing her way right into a cabinet position, so bad behaviour rewarded as well.

There are many other things not to like about Sec. Clinton, including an abrasive seeming personality, and a seemingly extreme self-centeredness, but that doesn't mean this isn't a fascinating (if at times fawning) character study. It even gives her an opportunity to display some of her worst instincts that only hurt the Democratic Party generally (again, saying without references or sources that people "don't like" Sen. Sanders; I'm no socialist but this is an example of being very counterproductive to her party's main goal of defeating President Trump in 2020).

But these 1/10 reviews based on how the reviewer feels about the subject are downright bizarre. Maybe it's an American thing, I'm not sure, but reviewing a film is about the merits on the film, not a popularity contest on the subject matter. This isn't rocket surgery people.

I think a lot of reviewers are being hung up on pronunciations and such as an overall reflection on the production, and that is very close-minded. Maybe living in Canada has given me enough exposure that those are just people speaking English with a heavy French accent, and is no way a reflection on their intelligence or expertise. If you want to watch a show that involves international crimes of this nature you need to temper your expectations over minutiae like that as it's unlikely an American production team would ever be outward looking enough to report of the crimes this series does.

I'd say the production values were par for the course or a bit worse, and they pulled off the premise of showing crimes with some sort of occult angle, and this is where people are being unnecessarily offended almost it seems, as the series' use of the term occult reflects where the average person off the street would hear the word and the first thing that would pop into their thought is "occult". The series didn't seem to me to be making any moral judgments at all, so those complaining about this are setting up straw men to attack.

And with things like D&D, when you play it it does put you in a mindset where you collaborate closely in a highly calculated way, it's how you play effectively, where that vast majority of people wouldn't be affected negatively at all by that. But the person with antisocial personality disorder (and any highly suggestible people around them) could be very negatively affected by learning to plot out killing something and the rush that comes with that in-game, being a hunter could trigger someone in the same way, and it's a sad statement that D&D carries a stigma of "occult" in the public imagination and hunting doesn't, but blaming the producers for this seems very odd to me.

I'm usually a fan of any historical series, if not completely overlooking the mistakes, myth, and misconceptions, allowing for, well, allowances. But this series was just so wildly inaccurate and clearly had an agenda to heighten Washington as an icon rather than imparting any historical information.

Other commenters have already pointed out the glaring historical fabrications and the incredibly important things that were inexplicably just left out, so I won't belabour those points e.g. where was any mention of both the French army and navy, such as them basically winning the Battle of Yorkton on behalf of America, not to take away from the valiant Continental Army's role in that battle as well, but leaving out the French is like leaving America out of the story of D-Day completely and only mentioning the British and Canadians, as a rough historical equivalence.

And even leaving aside the really terrible history, ironic for a series on the History Channel, but not alone as an allegedly historically accurate series, but that's a whole other discussion, but, yes, leaving all that aside, the acting seems wooden, the dialogue unrealistic, the commentators throughout being or feeling artificially excited and hyperbolic, which felt incredibly annoying. It felt like something more common back in the 70s in similar formats, but all the arm waving and strained vocal chords didn't add any drama, it just felt weird.

If you are a hardcore fan of the American Revolution or George Washington I supposed it might be of interest if you can get past the historical omissions and inaccuracies (the costume design was well done) and bad acting and dialogue, I guess there could be some enjoyment to be found, but just temper your expectations heavily going in. With a nice budget to work with I can't help but feel disappointed with the very big missed opportunity this series is.

And I was pretty shocked at the really high ratings here on IMDb. I can't help but thing those ratings are setting up folks for a lot of disappointment, and I expect over time those ratings are going to plummet.

I know it's daft to write a review of a series one hasn't watched, so this isn't a review but a reaction:

"The Pale Horse" is a new miniseries, yesss!!!!!!

*Checks writing credits, weeps* :-(

That is all.