William Corden

I should read the reviews before I watch ANY movie but moreso as it relates to this one. Let's get the good stuff out of the way first. Matt Damon was really good as Groves and Robert Downey played a great Lewis Strauss, but as for the rest , well nothing to write home about. The plot? Well if you've read any history you'll know how it all unfolded. Maybe I should have sat down to watch it but I was busy faffing around and doing stuff, so I didn't get to concentrate the way I should. This is a movie where you have to pay strict attention. As many have said, the flashbacks came on too fast and it was as if the director was trying to tell a year's worth of story in a couple of minutes. These interruptions were very disconcerting and full of trite images with the "geniuses" walking along with weightless books under their arms, very cheap cinematography. Still, it's fairly convincing and true to the culture of the time but there's unnecessary sex scenes, some of which must have been cringingly embarrassing for the actors ( but embarrassment for actors is the cost of doing business I think.) What really spoiled the experience for me was the lousy, lousy sound quality, I thought it was just because of my advanced years but no, many have complained about it being indecipherable. Most of the dialogue is in the lowest register and comes across as inaudible mumbles. I tried to switch on the captions but I was too far in by the time I figured out how to do it. Nobody can fault the storyline and it shows that the USA was just as screwed up politically then, as it is now. It's a miracle it's survived as a country when you see the litany of characters who run it.

Don't hit this empty vessel with a gong- you'll end up deaf. So this is what all of the fuss is about? I'd give it zero stars if the template would allow me It's a swimming pool with no deep end or, as they say, a paddling pool. As a word of advice... find out where the fast forward button is on the screen and make sure it's well oiled, cos you're gonna use it a lot. Being a Netflix production, they've got all of the usual racist guests who just HATE white people. David Olusoga is one of the most vituperative (and paradoxically one of the most privileged) and it was no surprise to me to see him front and center. All of these mixed race personalities seem to be ashamed of any Caucasian heritage in their family genes, but I digress. If this show was a glass bottle and you tried to fill it, it would drain out faster through the hole in the bottom. I don't know if my title adequately describes the feel of this production, as there are absolutely NO thought provoking issues and no depth whatsoever to their selfish personalities. Pity, because I used to quite admire Prince Harry. The vacant twosome paint a completely unfair picture of the overwhelming majority of the non-black population who do their best to see beyond the ever widening fracture. And these days we're not given the opportunity to bring up any good that's been done. I never ever thought I'd say this but...I'd take the Kardashians any day.

Cruel , nasty ... and not funny Sometimes you can get away with parodies of third world countries. Monty Python did it very well in a couple of their films and sketches but they were never cruel in making dupes out of their own leaders or members of their own society. I've seen a few of Cohen's movies now, and apart from Talladega Nights they've been duds , to me he's just not funny. By setting up honest but naïve patsies for his jokes he is more of a predator than a comedian and I'm sorry, but it's hard to laugh at someone being just plain cruel to someone else. He knows what he's got to do to get shock value and doesn't have any restraint in using anything that comes into his head ..... it's not funny, its just cheap, kinda like Will Farrell uses severed arms and legs in his empty scenes. It's the same old story... have a lucky hit with the first one and you must be a genius. So you're given the keys to the store and allowed to do what you like on the next project, which is based on the formula of the first one. It doesn't really matter that the first one was only mildly funny scriptwise and depended upon those shock scenes, these geniuses that give the go ahead think that lightning can strike twice. We all know how easily the shock factor wears off and to me, in this version, it didn't even reach the level of parody. I really can't see anybody sitting through this piece of garbage for the full hour and a half or so. Negotiate a fifty percent reduction in price before you go in or ask for a discount on your prime membership.

Watch with Mother😫 I was put on to this series by a friend who can be 50/50 with his recommendations. This one, I'm sorry to say, is a dud. The cast is too English to be convincing and it comes off as repertory-like production. The actors have no menace about them whatsoever as Vikings and a couple of them could have easily played Mr Rogers🤣. The King-in- Waiting is like a wet sock and the whole storyline is like watching grass grow.He cries like a baby all the time, just like that understudy in Seinfeld. Then you have those abominable scriptwriters, god knows where they get them from or how they land the job, but as soon as I hear a Viking say " I've been tasked with organising the army" ....well it's hit the off switch for me. Tasked is a Harvard University word that wasn't used in Viking times you morons. Add to this the choppiness of a storyline where you can't tell who's on what's side and the fact that the actors all seem to have come from British Public schools and you're not too far away from Downton Abbey, All that's missing is the school uniforms. I have a natural aversion to young plummy English kids in the movies and this one's increased it to the point where they only get about 5 seconds to prove themselves to me... these kids were gone in four seconds. The only one who so far has passed the test is Mark Lester, who played "Oliver". He's now a Chiropractor, and a lot of these actors should be considering a career in the re-alignment business. There's much better ways to spend your time but in lockdown there's lots of time to waste anyways.

I DIDN'T LIKE IT If that's the best that someone with a name like Branagh can come up with, then we've got a lot more potato fields to plow. Yes, it's semi autobiographical and that limits the storyline but I saw it as a self indulgent exercise with no depth. Don't know why, but what comes to my mind is the skin on a rice pudding, most of the stuff that fills you up is below the surface. It's about the "Troubles " in Northern Ireland, you know, the ones that have been going on since Henry V111 dispossessed the Catholic Church of their land and dispossessed the Irish people of the right to have a say in anything... yeah, those Troubles. Most of our Generation X types wouldn't have a clue what it was all about and they're given no help in this movie either. Just because you're famous, Mr Branagh, doesn't mean that your growing up story is worth making into a movie, unless you explain the backdrop a bit more clearly. But if I cut him a bit of slack, I can say that the scenes from 1969 are nostalgic and bring back memories of simpler times (even though they were blowing each other up in the background). Peeling spuds on the front stoop and things like wee sweet shops and corner stores are markers of the exact time society went off the rails. Acting, not bad but not rivetting, the black and white filming had me thinking of "A Hard Day's Night" and I must say that it's a very effective way of setting the time of the 60's. We thought we had the world by the tail back then and yet look at us now. Locked down, no belief systems, no standards for behaviour, terror beyond measure behind every street corner and nobody being taught or showing a sense of civic responsibility.... Least of all our current Prime Minister As I like to say, if the people running things today managed the Seven Seas........ they'd run out of salt water Thank goodness somebody at that time was able to bring about a truce in that particular part of the world. Do we have the people to bring about safety in modern society, do we have the people to diffuse the growing anger between nations? Keep your fingers crossed and your stockpiles high.🌈

Get yourself in the right place before you settle down to watch it. First of all, "Bravo to Frances"..... to lay yourself out as brilliantly as she does takes some kinda courage for an established actress. She must have had as hard a time as I did in seeing herself portrayed in such stark plainness, some scenes are so poignantly real that you have to force yourself to keep on watching. Some of the rest of the cast make for hard viewing too, but this is a film that takes realism to another level. It's easy to see why she was cast in this role, some of the backdrops are very "Fargo-ish" and "Mississippi Burning-ish" and Frances just fits in like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle. When Directors get these shots right there's just nothing better. So why's it so hard to rate? Well you have to be in the mood for a slower paced story, you have to be in the mood to sink a couple of hours of your own life into an examination of the rolling life that is the path of the American Gypsy. There probably was a music score, but there's no music I can recall that helps you through. You just have to sit back and learn about the way people live their lives and get by in the itinerant world of RV/camper van/back- of- your car living. It's much the same way as roving cowboys did when the West was won. A temporary job here, a McJob there, just enough to get you through the next few weeks or months until you move on. Every character has a story and some of those stories will have you crying just a bit. Chloé Zhao, the Director, does a great job in portraying the workplace at the Amazon warehouse. She could have made it look like an exploitive sweatshop but no, she makes it into a place where sweet people work, people care for each other and take pride in what they do. Not many in the film industry would miss an opportunity to put the boots to the megacorp but she deals with it without judgement. I know that I could never work in such a vast, sterile environment, but then again, I have the luxury of choice. The premise for our heroine's transition from middle class America with a home and a comfortable life, is the failure of the Gypsum plant, the main employer in the town, and the subsequent collapse of the town's reason for being. Her husband dies and she is left with nothing but state subsidies to keep her going. Living in a van is not only the cheapest option but fulfills her introverted way of looking at existence. There is a great scene where she visits the abandoned Gypsum plant, and for all the world it comes across as an Amazon warehouse with inches of gypsum dust covering everything. I don't know, but maybe it's a forecast for the future of Amazon itself... nothing lasts forever. All in all a very good movie if, as I said, you get yourself in the right frame of mind for watching it.

ONCE YOU START, YOU CAN'T STOP 12 September 2021 I wish I could have grown up in Montana, it's such a beautiful state and seems to be unspoiled by the rest of American culture. Some scenes are just breathtaking in their panorama and even though I have equal vistas on my doorstep here in Vancouver, the feeling of unlimited space is very powerful. That unlimited space? Well the entire metropolis of Greater Vancouver is about 750,000 acres with 2½ Million people crammed in. A ranch of this importance in Montana would be about half this size (close to 300,000 acres) with only a couple of hundred residents ... so yeah I'm talking unlimited space. They mean it when they call it "Big Sky Country" So how did one man (and others of his ilk) get to own so much land in less than 150 years? Well of course, they stole it from the Indians and the Indians want it back. I would be mad too, if I was an Indian living in poverty while the white man makes billions off of my great grandfather's happy hunting grounds. Not only that, but other well heeled Americans want to escape the fetid swamps of the crime ridden cities. They want to live an urban cowboy life of luxury in their own log cabin.... and all you you need is a swimming pool and a country club to round things out. The only way for developers to carve out a piece of the desirable wilderness, and chop it up to lot sizes, is to bully their way through. But to do that, you have to get the political heavies on your side and they have many masters. And that my friends is the backdrop/plot for this superbly acted series. Costner is unassailable in his role as the Rancher John Dutton, a no- nonsense patriarch chiseled out of Montana Rock. His family is the usual mix of screw ups and heroes but each and every one of them comes across as realistic characters. I warn you that you'll be hooked if you start on episode one, and you might not see light of day for a week or two because you can't step away. The cowboy world still lives on in Montana and Wyoming, the town centers seem to thrive, unaffected by the woes of main street America. Tractors gotta be bought, cows gotta eat, fences gotta be built, animals gotta be slaughtered, it's all business and it's wonderfully portrayed in this series. There's a lot of violence, there's a lot of murder, but somehow it all seems to be a natural part of life in Montana, just like it was natural in "The Sopranos". Guns are a part of life in an area where Grizzlies, Wolves and Mountain lions roam so it's no surprise that they're used to eliminate human problems too. Almost nothing in the way of "wokeness" but I don't know if they can avoid it to the series end. We'll see Enjoy it because it's a very rare classic from the streaming trash factories.

HE REALLY WAS "THE GREATEST", IN HIS PRIME We all know how fantastic his life was and yet it's like a kid begging a parent to re-read the bedtime story over and over. The kid never gets tired of it .... and I will never tire of the Muhammad Ali story Could there be a more perfect athletic specimen than Ali at his blazing best? He was witty, he was smart and he was genuinely likeable even as a braggart because you half knew he was doing it to sell tickets. Remember, we used to watch his fights on 21 inch screens and be mesmerized? Now we get to watch this documentary on giant screens with HDTV and it is even more amazing. The speed with which he threw combinations and uppercuts, the way he dodged backwards to avoid haymakers by a fraction of a fraction, still has me gasping at the sheer impossibility of what he did. A heavyweight who fought like a welterweight, who was as fast as if not faster than, Sugar Ray Leonard, while weighing in 80lbs heavier. Inside of this faster than light person was a flawed but honest individual, truly dedicated to his religious beliefs but giving in to the relentless adoration he received from females everywhere he went. Who else in his position wouldn't? Ken Burns once again produces a masterpiece, even though there's not much new we find out about our hero. I especially like the words from a poet in the final episode that describes Ali as a sorcerer, 'cos that's what he was; A skipping, shuffling sorcerer who could conjure up magic in the ring. He could destroy challengers and have us all laughing about the brutality afterwards. But sadly, like all boxers..... he stayed at it too long. I don't care what they want to call it medically but in the end he was a punch drunk fighter. So hard to look at and so tragic a figure. There will never be anyone who comes close to Muhammad Ali as an athlete or a personality and I am thankful that Ken Burns treated this story so well. The ecstasy and the agony flow together like two rivers and if you're a fan of the person himself you'll find yourself tearing up on more than few occasions. Well done Ken.

Yawn. Don't know what I would have done in the old days when you couldn't fast forward but I was very thankful for the feature while I was watching this pedestrian crossing of a movie. The only thing that stirred any feelings in me was the portrayal of the class system that I ran away from all those years ago. How they treated their servants and staff just like they were only one step above beasts of burden still gets me angry. How they got away with it for so long is beyond me. The storyline is so-so interestwise, the discovery of an Anglo-Saxon burial ship that was thought at first to be a Viking ship... Because it's Anglo-Saxon it moves back the dates of human occupation at the site and apparently that's very important to "arcteryx"...... oops! sorry, that's the stuff they wear ... the stuff they do is "archeology"... intelligentsia. Big deal! They found a Viking ship in a pub's car park close to where I used to live and they didn't make a movie about that. In fact the first time they discovered it they covered it over with blacktop and put some tables and chairs out there.😏 Of course the discovery in this plot only catches the interest of the upper crust, the poor peasants are too busy working the fields and tugging their forelocks to be interested. So they have to fatten the story with a tragic illness, a backdrop of the second world war breaking out and a tiny bit of gratuitous nudity... don't blink , you'll miss it. There is some good acting in it though and some good exploration of the counterplay between the educated professor and the gifted amateur archeologist but it's not enough to turn it into a great movie. I like Ralph Fiennes and I like Carey Mulligan but they didn't have a lot to work with. Ralph giving some kid his views on the universe and human existence belongs on Nova not in a big screen movie.

Prepare yourself to be conned! This movie is about a conman who takes in gullible investors and then spreads his net to try and take in an elderly, well off widow, who he sucks in on the internet. It has a fairly good plot throughout, with a lot of red herrings thrown in. Ian McKellen plays the part of the Conman while Helen Mirren is his dupe. Boy, they don't shy away from showing their ages in this movie and some of the close ups have you cringing, knowing that you'll likely look like that yourself someday soon. It's very well acted but the weakness is in the ending itself where we are expected to believe a wealth of complicit actions by the various players. In fact it falls apart so badly that you wonder how lowly the producers rate the intellect of viewers. I mean it's really, really bad! It manages to get through almost all of the movie without wokeness and box ticking and then, about 5 minutes from the end we have the completely unnecessary but compulsory gay characters who tick two boxes by being a bi-racial homosexual duo. Why do they have to do that? We all know that being gay isn't a big deal these days so why push it to places where it's not needed? A well acted movie ruined by a totally unbelievable plot ending. It's worth watching, but go in expecting the fantasy world of movies to stretch your credibility to the limit.