Alexandra Atkins

I love mob movies. I love dark, gritty film. I love intense character performance, particularly if it makes you uncomfortable because that’s when you know they’re really doing their job. (Joaquin Phoenix in Joker comes to mind - most deserving Oscar since Daniel Day Lewis in Gangs of New York but dear god I never want to watch that movie again). I love weird plot and creative adaptations. This is ABSOLUTELY NONE of those things. I couldn’t make it past half an hour. There was NO discernible purpose to this movie, apart from a name to catch attention for someone to showcase their stark cinematographic style and an annoying-wind-in-a-microphone attempt at “intensity”. You can break away from the Goodfellas vibe, and I was interested in an in-depth profile of the man instead of the deeds. But you get neither plot nor profile; you are stuck watching first person nightmares (NOT flashbacks, bizarre nightmares) of someone who may as well be an anonymous old man because without the title you’d never know it was about Al Capone. “Artistic” definitely isn’t always synonymous with “good”. What a waste of half an hour.

Enormous fantasy genre fan and equally enormous fantasy genre snob. Harshly judgemental of poorly researched lore. But THIS is GREAT. Such a good mix of myth-and-magic meets police-procedural meets colonial-London. Honestly it had a bit of all my favourite things mixed together in a cocktail that I could drink all night. My only complaint is that they had a lot of ground to cover in a short amount of episodes. I’d like to see them drop a slightly longer season - maybe by 2 episodes - and fill in some more screen time for a few peeps who you know are really important but they just can’t cram in. Two thumbs way up. Finally something Orlando Bloom is a rockstar in. Great role for him!