luca-103

Lots of features, one big bugbear. The main character feels unbelievable, too glib and insufficiently nuanced and grounded.

Bottom line, a great cast, with an excellent Harrison Ford and a luminous introduction to Lukita Maxwell as the daughter (who RottonTomatoes do not even LIST on their page! Shame!) is led by an undewhelming Jason Seiegel.

The writing is certainly patchy, but it does veer towards excellence come of the time and the relationships are by and large solid and rewarding. Lots of good vignettes between with particular highlights by Ford. Tennie, Williams and Maxwell.

But when I ask myself why some parts of the meal feel undercooked, it is to the wooden leading man that I turn to. Siegel is plenty willing but I simply find him unbelievable both as a professional therapist and a father. Yes. His character SHOULD be failing at both these roles, but not in the gawkish, childish way that he does. I can think of too many actors who I would trust more in this role.

If the show does not mature through the length of the Series 1, and the other characters are not given far more authorityI could not possibly greenlight a second season.

People who dismiss this effort must be getting their laughs somewhere other than either film or tv because ... where are they? Where HAVE all the comedies gone?

But I suspect those folks don't laugh a lot -- in general.

This is a good-natured buddy movie without major surprises and some cheeful cameos by a friendly ensemble.

To be fair, there is a "best friend" so lacking in charm it made spotting the gender of the author a bit too easy.

But other than that, it's may not be cinema fare, but it is a streaming snack well worth enjoying.

She is just as delightful as in the Brooklyn Nine-Nine character that made her such a broadcast favourite. He is a litte too low-energy at times, and his character could have benefited from a few more actual zingers.

But hey. I was starving and this briefly fed me. So I give thanks and laughter in return.

It is slow, overly self-important and features a supremely average lead actor.

I just don't get it.

It is getting scores to match the likes of Reacher and The Old Man but has neither the wit of the former or the acting/writing chops of the latter.

It is a perfectly serviceable military drama. Good, but not cigar-worthy.

If you have been a long time fan of Seal Team it will be clear that Chris Pratt is no particular advance on David Boreanaz. In fact, he might be cuter, but decidedly less credible.

So enjoy it. By all means. It's plenty OK. But to give it an average over 8 is lunacy.

Nowhere near enough heart and nowhere near enough laughs.

The third act is a trifle. Practically an obligation.

In fact, it took so long to land the resolution I began thinking I was actually watching a very long sitcom pilot and I might have to wait until the end of the season for my payoff.

Thankfully it did not take quite that long. But as bad as I felt about myself for sticking with this till the end I feel worse now after seeing so many glowing reviews here.

What is wrong with you people?!

It took the director three attempts to deliver an intro. Never a good sign.

But it is when it came to offering the Benedict some sound advice to bring it down a notch - of three - that this director lost so much needed nerve.

I could not last more than half an hour of the most egregious performance of Cumberbacting I have ever seen.

He truly left nothing in the tank. A clownish embarrassment.

If you admire the guy - and this will not put me off seeing how he behaved under the tutelage of the great Jane Campion - give this one a wide bearth and save your silver.

But if you are in a mind to spend time with a truly charming, naif creative soul, choose the luminous Sally Hawkins in Maudie.

All my stars are for the hard-working costume and prop wizards who bring to live this lively slice of Victoriana.

I am enjoying this series a great deal. But this is less a full review than a shout-out for the lead, Carole Bouquet, who has surprised me in this role. I had not expected her to be so believable and influential. Her beauty is a powerful shield indeed, through which you feel as she chooses, flashes of power, menace, love or radiance. The pacing is great and the cast as a whole well chosen. A thoroughly enjoyable and genuinely disturbing thriller. Just one down-tick: I am not sure there is a role in which Pascal Demolon will ever convince me.

Goes to show just how large the market for Turkish tosh is that four seasons of this drivel have been produced. But if you are in the market for the world's single dimmest and most immature super hero you have certainly come to the right place. Decent turns by the support cast cannot shield you from the vapid blankness of the title character. Dumb as an ocean. Slow as a tree. I will eventually forgive myself for wasting the time I did on this. Spare yourself.

It starts promisingly enough, with Bruce Springsteen stating how the Band was unique in the history of popular rock 'n roll for being in every sense greater than the sum of its parts. A band. Then it went on to investigate one part. Imagine if the documentary of the season, The Last Dance, about the record sixth title of the Chicago Bulls had been both written and narrated by Michael Jordan. I imagine the story might have paled quickly enough. This is not hagiography. This is full on narcissistic autobiography. It takes 50 minutes to get to the beginning of the creation of Big Pink. Until then Robertson has said enough about his "brother" Levon Helms to make sure you knew Helms had left the group in the lurch before the end of the Dylan tour. The footage is seldom unique. The voices of the other "brothers" is barely heard. I found it almost impossible to watch to the end. Robertson prattles on as if it is not only the other members of the band who are little more than props to his life story, but you too, the audience, are only of incidental value, just an ear to hear. Even by music documentary standards this is unusually self-indulgent nonsense.

The Lockdown was simply brilliant timing for this hypnotic journey inward. Beautiful to look at and spellbinding to watch. Mr Garland should be very proud. I was very happy. If you feel as if you are losing your moorings at any point, just stay with it. Have faith. You are in safe hands. And if you are struck by the poem read by Stewart in Episode #7, search for Philip Larkin's Aubade.

I adore Lucy Hale. She is unfeasably pretty and as cute as the morning dew. But why oh why are her clothes so ... meh?!

Everything about this effort is mixed. Bipolar in the geography of the narrative, in the nature of the main character, in effectiveness of execution. I cannot forgive the bad, patronising humour that opens the show, the over-long introduction and the absurd cameos by a host of what the main character accurately describes as "gnats". But survive that and the vista opens up into an electifying ride of discovery. Blanchette is fabulous at playing brilliant and awkward at pretending semi-normality. Her luminous energy well befits the over-achiever but tends to feel like over-eating the scenery otherwise. I still loved the spirit of the film so, if you struggle at the start, your perseverence will be rewarded. It's beautiful to look. That's for sure.

The only thing that could spoil my evening more is watching another confusing episode of this mess. Because I do not find anything about the show particularly clear and I cannot, in all good conscience, take more time out of my life to try to understand it. Pace, characters, storyline ... Nothing sticks. I am amazed that in a television environment as thick with content as ours, this would have seen the light of day. Somebody out there thought that producing a batch low-rent interweaving Bourne short stories was a good idea and that somebody was wrong.

The folks who imagined this are clearly as wrong-headed as the story they have delivered: in which a crew of morally disabled emotional basket cases are hand-picked by a stylish elderly matron for a mission that aims at no less than safeguarding the future of the planet. What could possibly go wrong? Sorry. Too dumb.

Dark, subversive and unreasonably gripping. Karl Urban delivers the only false notes in any one of a host of butchered accents. The soundtrack too can be too noticeable and try-hard at times. But thankfully, the rest of the cast are all crackers and the tempo and visuals are great. All in all, near perfect grown-up escapism. Loved it.

I was never a great one for writing compositions as a schoolboy. I would enjoy my flights of fancy but then, inevitably, arrive at the narrative's cliff edge. And at this point I would shamelessly resort to cliched plug-ins like "it was all a dream". Well, Paul Schrader has done a grown-up version of this here.. He began writing a tight, bleak tale of the lost horizons of both the main characters and our contemporary capitalist culture. Then he clearly ran out of both intellectual and emotional juice and thus resorted to his plug-in. And so it is that after about three quarters of the running time, he switches from prose to poetry and finally to ecstatic imagination. In brief, he bottles it and cocks up the ending with the most ludicrous, arbitrary and finally unjustified plot points. Had I known I would not have bothered watching. As disappointed as I am in Schrader and his film, I am really annoyed with those film reviewers who conned me into making the effort. Not good enough

Not even the radiant Jacoba Francisca Maria Smulders can carry this ailing puppy all the way home. She was the one moving part that made even a little sense before I fell of this creaky wagon before even her plot line went South. I confess. I could not get to the end of the show. The clunky writing, the hammy over-acting, the scarcely believable plot-lines coupled with a crew of trite, unlikable and clearly bad friends all became too much. I suspect that only those still too young to know none of this is real enough to be funny will enjoy this one to the end.

My rating would have been higher but for the fact the film lacked the visual surprise and narrative depth the idea required. But it remains an enjoyable, tense drama about the challenges of AI.

The principals, Kate Mara and Anya Taylor-Joy are strong but some of the minor characters are poorly scripted and not wholly convincing, particularly a miscast Toby Jones with an unnecessarily poor accent.

The number of players, too, would have been more fitting of a TV pilot for a running series rather than a single set piece that might well have been a stage-play, with a stronger script.

A lot of people have found this film "cold" and difficult to emote with. I am surprised. I suspect you just fell for the wrong Danish Girl! The impact I felt was strong, deep and lasting. On the one hand, I did not like one of the Danish gals one bit and could not care a jot about his/her gender struggles. Eddie Redmayne's Einar Wegener is quite the most egocentric, demanding and selfish person whose disregard for the true affection of his partner has a truly chilling effect on both the film and the viewer. Visually, the project is gorgeous and lyrical and the costuming simply brilliant. Redmayne, too, offers a strained, stylized performance that persuades me of his determination to get what he/she wants. It is Vikander, however, who holds the heart of the film firmly in her grasp and without whom the story would probably collapse. This is a love story, alright, Gerda's with Einar and Einar's with both his selves.

The Hateful One ... the man depicted in "Jobs" the movie is definitely dark enough for a Tarantino's schlock fest but with vastly better dialogue. I would re- title this one "Steve Shrugged".

"You are a good musician, but I play the orchestra," the character boasts at one point. His genius , after all was for envisioning and bringing into life new high-value closed systems -- Apple vs MS-DOS, i-Tunes vs RealAudio -- within which he could play consumers and content providers alike like a fiddle.

In internet terms, Jobs' ideal of an end-to-end closed system is the "Cain" to Tim Berners-Lee's "Abel", the infinitely open and enabling World Wide Web. So it feels absolutely right that Danny Boyle, the director who made Berners-Lee a star of his London Olympics presentation was the one to finish (and pass) the sentence.

Comic Jake Whitehall recently quipped that hoped this would be the last Steve Jobs movie for some time: "they keep bringing out another one, a bit better but far more expensive than the previous one ... but I guess that is the way Steve liked it".

The cast is uniformly excellent, the Sorkin dialogue does not disappoint and the narrative is well handled by Boyle. It is not an easy watch, and it will not be a popular watch, given the absurd scale of the Steve Jobs myth. But it is a compelling, uncompromising and beautifully crafted product ... "just the way Steve would have liked it".

It took me approximately an hour to realise I had not yet enjoyed eight hateful minutes of this indulgent dirge. The writing lacks wit, the direction was tired and the editors ... where were the editors?

Definitely the most disappointing film I have watched of the year. Of course I have seen worse, but not by directors with such pedigree and ambition.

I might not have bothered to add my two-bits but I do so out of concern for those of you who must measure their film spend with care. Keep your wallets firmly shut.

Samuel Jackson plays Samuel Jackson reasonably well, I guess, but the only true acting highlight is the facial hair grown especially for the part by Kurt Russell. A gong-worthy moustache in a pastiche of cliché and caricature.