Bob Sanders

They may have saved money by not hiring top tier talent. While the pretty leads (Gabriel Basso, who curls hs lip into meditative sneers when crossed, and Rose Larkin, sadly one-note) are capable, the supporting cast is wildly uneven, ranging from maladroit scenery chewing (the young woman assassin: entertaining if unintentionally campy), to stiff (FBI agent Arrington) to just outright bland (Chief of Staff Farr, whose face never cracks and whose vocal delivery lacks all authority).... the one great performance is offered by Gabrielle Rose, who's on and off all too briefly as a doomed former colleague of a murdered Special Ops couple investigating oh something or other having to do with the subway terror attack that kicks off the whole shebang. With our nation currently under siege by the greatest criminal our misbegotten electorate has ever stupidly entrusted with the palace keys and nuclear codes, the whole thing feels less real than an MGM musical from the 1940s. And it's padded to drone on for HOURS.....is it worth it? Well, it beats the horrifying headlines for a few hours. That's about it. The Recruit is far better, and far nastier, with a cast that shows some flair. The whole enterprise feels like a Hallmark movie gone slightly dark, with one beloved or sympathetic character doomed per hour. Better actors might have helped.

Intelligent and discerning viewers will be rewarded.

Brilliant, simple, complex, evocative - all that British television series are that US series so rarely (outside of Vince Gilligan and David Chase and classic Norman Lear) are....

Terrible, hyper-violent, unfunny slapstick. For the undemanding, and that's being kind. Only the great unwashed masses could ever find this awful, mean-spirited movie "funny."

Unsettling indeed. Extraordinarily well acted. Bring your brain and your own moral compass. Not for the ethically squeamish; as satisfying as the climatic comeuppance is, it nevertheless feels as if the story is still only 1/3 told. Smart and appalling, all at once, with only our nativist love for Dianne Weist's past work to keep us warm, but still, an ugly tale worth the watch for smart viewers.

The biggest big-release disappointment I can remember, but then, I'm neither a DC nor a Marvel fan, I don't waste my time with Star Wars films, and .....Jurassic Which was it by now? In any event, 'Elvis' is a deeply frustrating show: a good movie packed in oil wants to burst out, but the slick oh-so-slick editing, title cards, smash cuts, and banal dialogue swamps the whole show: it's for Elvis fans and the deeply uncritical: it's as if the movie is waging war on its audience to demand they look up from their phones. Austin Butler might well have made a brilliant Elvis, but who can say? is there a scene where the camera holds steady, without tracking all over creation, where we might study his performance and be taken in by his mystery? What made this man tick? We'll certainly never know from this boring, bloated show. By the way, MIA: Love Me Tender, Jailhouse Rock, Ann-Margaret, and - just as incredibly - Ed Sullivan; we get the Steve Allen Show debacle, but why not Ed Sullivan? We see Little Richard, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and B.B. King, but nothing of what they had to endure; we're guided into a 1940s revivalist tent, where suddenly young Elvis is seized by Evangelical fervor, shaking and exulting, but see nothing further of why this happens: why this particular kid? His later life bloat is reserved for the final moments of the film as the real Elvis sings Unchained Melody; what of the years preceding? And by the way, nothing is made of the fact that Priscilla was 14 years old when Elvis courted her in Germany: gee, I wonder why? Gotta keep the audience on your side, I guess. Tom Hanks wears admirable prosthetics and gives as good as he can as a deliberately Machiavellian, passive-aggressive Colonel Tom Parker, but while we see all the chicanery behind the action, there's never a credible moment as to why Elvis stuck with him: was Elvis complicit in his own downfall? Note: the audience around us was as deeply bored and disappointed as we were. Shallow, loud, lavish, and hyperactive: the perfect movie for an undemanding movie audience weaned on cinematic explosions and battles in space and on soulless city streets. Smart viewers will skip this over-designed, wandering mess. We don't count ourselves among those who heeded the warning: it might be added, in this movie, Elvis lives 15 minutes too long.

Unfunny Disney classic,, mean-spirited and misguided and considered absolutely HI-LARIOUS by 1961 standards. Clearly on the spectrum and somewhat sociopathic Fred MacMurray's professor is unmindful of his students' safety, is selfish beyond words, and given to dangerous pranks. One of those deadly family "comedies" of a hopefully gone-forever era. The two stars are for the interesting special effects, the skillful supporting cast, and the beautiful black and white photography: color would have swamped it unbearably. MacMurray is just terrible: you want to get away from him throughout. Weve come a long way, and now we see that personalities like his, far from being amusing, actually require serious medical intervention. See for yourself. Dreadful, but the basketball game still works, kinda, sorta, if you squint your eyes, or watch in a mirror while ironing. This megahit probably paid for Adventureland for the next two years. Oh, and it was the Sherman's first Disney show. Keenan Wynn provides some measure of integrity, and hes supposed to be The Bad Guy. Bring it on. WARNING to 21st century parents: dont let your kids watch this. It has all the wrong lessons; theyll grow up to storm the Capital.

Frankly libertarian, with for me an insanely dull, emotionally constipated character dead center: its impossible to care about this guy since he methodically seems to hold everyone in contempt unless they echo his brand of narcissistic toughness. It all feel vaguely 1980s to me, but its interesting how the script labors to avoid racial epithets thrown at the besieged second lead cop, but has no problem with its ninepin "Bad Hombres" villain lackeys who mill about the edges in hazmat suits and carrying bombs and machetes. Trump supporters should love it. All others be advised. In any event, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel it's not, though I acknowledge that's not entirely a bad thing. A lot would be fixed by giving the snarling, buff lead something like a personality, but I gather that was never the intent of the author. Slow going for those who prefer some intellectual heft in their actioners.

A tough watch for an American audience, but only for the simple reason that, other than the home health care nurse who becomes an unwilling surgeon in episode 5, they're all of them absolutely dreadful people. If you can stand spending almost 6 hours of your life with characters you'd barely want to share an elevator ride with, it's all yours. I admit it: as an American, there has to be at least two people on board whose stories I cared about. They're all awful, but my least favorite is the self-absorbed, selfish, contemptuous (and contemptible) young DJ and self-described YouTube influencer: she's everything that's wrong with Gen Z. No doubt the writers knew it, but for a US watching audience, forget it. The so-called suspense of the final episode - will they make it to safety in time, or not - becomes moot: with this repellent crew, it's impossible to care whether they live or die. Pass.

Binge-worthy, yes, and slickly produced and impressively cast, this superduper HBO high-end concept soaper certainly aims for the stars: its problem is an uncertainty of tone and style which, by the end of the second season, murders the whole tale just as it crosses the finish line. And what is the point? Is it all a sly comment on the abrasive helicopter parenting campaigns waged by the fabulously dotcom rich of Pacific Coast Highway California? (By the way: why Monterey, and why not Santa Barbara? Why not Woodside, for that matter, or Menlo Park, or Palo Alto? Perhaps I'm ignorant of the California Lifestyles of the Rich, Self-Pampered and Megamaniacal). Is it all an examination of the ripple effects of sexual and emotional abuse? Is it a study of white privilege marriage at the turning point? Or is it all simply an item-list display of why red state deplorables despise blue state elites? I suppose it works on all these levels. And yet one is left wondering, even so, at the tone. Is it a satire? A black comedy? A domestic drama? A social take-down? WHAT IS IT? I don't think even exec producers Witherspoon and Kidman know, for overall the biggest giveaway lies in the performance of the magnetic, hypnotic, and yet all-wrong for this circus Ms. Laura Dern. Everything about her Renata Klein is a carefully conceived misfire: she's the abusive Mommie Dearest unchained, no matter that here she aims her rage at all except her own particular little Christina. In one take-down scene after another where her selfishness, screaming, scrambling and in particular her brand of blind rage scores shock laugh points (she ever but slenderly hath known herself), Ms. Dern's off-the-charts performance may be brave, but it destroys the central point, for she is, by far, the most extreme of the emotional abusers on this particular lot. She wins the Faye Dunaway Award here, with no other competition in range. Watch it for Meryl Streep's sly performance, only slightly undone by a shift of tone, and for Nicole Kidman's rainbow of psychological wounds suffered at the hands of lunactic husband Alexander Skarsgård; you can give Reese Witherspoon's annoying performance a driveby view. But for me, the best element of the show is the one-and-only warmly sympathetic performance I know from the usual dragon-lady Robin Weigert, as the sometimes maligned shrink who actually has a handle on the particular maladies of these self-indulgent people. And still, the lingering question remains: did the producers really not see that Laura Dern's Renata Klein is perhaps the biggest abuser of all? Watch her scene at the counter, ordering an Americana espresso, in one of the final scenes of Season 2 if you have any lingering doubt. Forget all about the troubled men (only the sensitive white-wine wimps score female approbation here) and zone in on Kidman's witchery, Streep's passive aggressive takedowns, Witherspoon's unending kvetching, and you may wind up wondering what it was all about. I certainly did. I for one hope they're done, have said what they meant to say, and won't be returning for a Season 3 which cements for yet another 7 performances how little they've learned. And by the way, a final question: whatever happened to Max's bullying? Did he just, uh, suddenly stop? Could it have been all those excruciating intimacy scenes with Kidman, meant to convey that she really really really IS a good mother, after all? He was so terrified of another close-range bout of her tearful, moist-mother sloppiness that he just left his bullying behind?