kluismans

Sometimes that is all there is to say, wow!

This is an incredible, beautiful, heartbreaking, extraordinary series! Just wow! And funny!

Because i cannot just leave it at that here is why. This is the first time that I have seen a series that is brave enough to explore chaos. It gives us a mess. Characters talk over each other, scenes do not follow each other, the linear narrative we expect isn't there. And what is left is incredible moments of heart stopping beautiful intensity. Its an extraordinary show. Quite frankly it is stressful watching it, because the experience is visceral. I am there. I am in that confused mess and I love those people and that world. Remarkable. Please watch this. It is TV at its finest.

I laboured my way through all six episodes, waiting for some sparkle, some hint of life in this dead horse. It didn't come.

I suppose the story could have been interesting, and there were some good ideas, for instance we see Bobby the female director and lead in the story abuse her own power much in the way we are told Cameron does. Being a bully and unpleasant isn't just reserved for the males in the story! But this has the effect of making Bobby unlikeable, and its hard to care or follow a series if we can't root for at least one character.

Even worse than that was I just didn't get the story, what was the plot? Every glimpse of a story line melted, was this about Bobby struggling to get recognition in a male dominated work space? No! She appears to glide into work without much difficulty. Was this about Bobby struggle to make art? No again. Is this an improbable love story between two opposites, Bobby and Cameron? Ridiculously, the ending did kind of push this idea though fortunately swerved away from that silliness. I just wasn't sure.

I was not just underwhelmed by this, I was amazed that it could have been made.

I was interested in this documentary, because I do think that men's issues are trivialised or simply ignored by our media at the moment.

Simply living and accepting society's norms whether you are a woman or a man is difficult at the moment. But this film for me failed to grapple with the real issues faced by men in our society. The fact that a movement has arisen highlighting the difficulties that men face isn't surprising. But the MRA movement is rather an underwhelming presence and I dont know how relevant they are to the actual issue. Beside that their voice isn't really heard and i didn't learn anything that much about it from this documentary. It is interesting that this voice isn't seen as important or is dismissed as misogynistic by our media. It isn't at all concerned with giving them any credibility. This film does highlighted this, but I wanted a tougher discussion about it. I wanted to find out why these concerns dont interest us. It is sad that men lose custody or rights over their children. As the film states it is sad that men take on the majority of dangerous jobs and risk their lives. It is also sad that male victims of terrorist groups dont get the same coverage that female victims do. But this doesn't examine the average male life that is lived. And i think that it is the average man on the street that is affected by our new cultural norms. I wanted to find out how? How do men feel in a world which is so compelled to 'believe all women'. How does that make them feel?

I just watched this and wanted a much more thought provoking take on this subject. Erin Pizzy was very challenging but her bomb shell stating that domestic violence is reciprocal ie women are perpetrators of violence as well as victims was rather left there and not examined. Pizza must know more than me, she has worked in women's refuges for decades, but it was surprising and I would have liked to hear more about this.

So I was interested in this documentary but I would like a more thorough examination of the topic. We do need to hear more men's voices about their feelings within the debate about gender. They belong in this world and we shouldn't be frightened of giving them a voice. I just wish that the documentary had explored more of them.

This was definitely worth watching. Its dark humour chills at times but it is genuinely funny. However, I found the story rather laboured and unconvincing. Tonally it felt slightly off. The humour run at a different direction from the story which became over convoluted and yes unreasonable!

Many structural issues annoyed me. Why did we suddenly change point of view to discover Jen's? Jen's story wasn't fully developed and didn't really go anywhere. There were too many questions unanswered. It was confusing because I expected her to have a more significant role. So she meets Dan, Nic's husband on a tinder date? It wasn't enough. The unravelling of her antics felt too quick and convenient. And then why did she buy the same coat as Nic?

For me the whole story was too large, without room to develop. For instance Alex, the brother, doesn't ever really appear that interesting. Why would Nic be so captivated by him?

It felt as if the story was hemmed in, conscious that it was a comedy and not really able to lift itself into the dark realms of the thriller it was trying to be. I think that had the series had an hour for each episode to play with rather than the paltry 30 mins it might well have been better.

This is the true story of three women who are born into the 'Ndrangheta, a Calabrian criminal organisation . They live within the confines of these groups, brutalised by its code which limits women to a life of total subjugation. Denise is 18. Her mother Lea has testified against her husband in order to give her daughter a chance at life. She is killed by Denise's father. Denise must decide whether to testify against her father. Giesy has known nothing more than a life within her criminal family. Like most women in her community, she was married off at 16, her husband has left her with three children when he is imprisoned. Now 30, she is an active participant in crime, collecting the dues for the family and organising its operations. But she is bound into its system which are oppressive. She has an elicit affair despite knowing that the consequences of this risk her life. She too must decide whether to testify against her family. And then there is Maria. Maria like Giesy was married very young. Her husband is also in prison. Still a young woman, Maria lives with her parents and three children a prisoner in her home. Any whiff of freedom is quenched by her family. She is beaten for the slightest hint of rebellion. She too must decide whether to remain in this abusive set up.

Essentially this story does not dwell particularly on the 'Ndrangheta's crimes, nor their reach. It focuses upon the real struggle these women face as they turn their back on their families and all that they know to reach out for some glimpse of freedom. It's an astonishing watch as you feel their dilemmas. They will lose everything that they know, their families, their homes their livelihoods. They will be hunted and live in fear of their lives, watching at every turn for what they feel is inevitable the avenging bullet. Their love for their children is both an impulse to break free, in order to give them a better life, but also an anchor to keep them from breaking free, as their children desperately crave to return to their normality. The series is an astonishing achievement as it reveals quite how these remarkable women did indeed challenge their system and face the consequences of doing so.

I do hope everyone watches this, because it certainly brought home to me quite how difficult living within this community would be.

The acting in this series is flawless. Everyone is believable and there is an extraordinary heartfelt performance from Andrew Garfield and a beautifully nuanced performance by Billy Howle indeed everyone including the children are wonderful in this.

The story is true and also engaging. A Mormon woman and her child are murdered and we follow the trail of their Mormon detective to discover whether their husband or members of their community are responsible. It is a fascinating story but I felt the story became clogged with redundant forays into Mormon history. It became quite turgid as we flipped between three time lines, the nineteenth century, the distant past and the present of the show 1984.

It was a contemplative series, and that was interesting. It asked much from its lead character as he had to delve into the truths of his religion. But it failed to keep up the momentum whilst doing so with the other aspects of the story.

It is worth watching, but be prepared to be patient for the action .

I rarely laugh and honestly I am a 58 year old woman. Life just doesn't have that many laughs in it at the moment. This was funny. Okay, its very very silly, but this is funny. I did laugh. Do watch this and dont expect anything but true farce. This isn't a piss take on Cornwall, if anything it reminded me that Cornwall has a rather difficult present, worse than most. It relies on tourism rather than its traditional industries just to put food on the plate and their homes are snapped up for inflated prices to provide exquisite homes for the Marie Antoinettes of our city. I think this is worth watching, just give yourself in to a bit of silliness and laugh, God knows we need to do so in this present climate!

This is simply a wonderful series. It is slow and in a way uneventful, but through watching very small moments you the viewer change and.become more alert to these moments which reveal themselves as beautiful. These lives that we see on the screen are made real and when something does happen that drama though not intense on screen, is such a shock and so incredible that we feel it as profoundly as if it were happening to ourselves. This is a remarkable achievement. Stefan Golaszewski has thrown away the rule book writing this series and he has created something so much more profound. I dont think that this series is attempting to inform us about what marriage or relationships are. That would be too simplistic. It is sensitive to the mystery that makes as all and respectful of it, knowing that when once we step into a connection with another person we cannot seamlessly evolve together as one, which makes matters fraught. What Ian and Emma show is that bumping up against each other in a marriage, living with each other, not entirely understanding each other, but accepting each other gives them value. I feel what I learnt watching this is what it means to love someone and that is such a precious revelation. Thank you, Stefan and Sean and Natalie for this amazing show.

This is just such a wonderful show. Its heartbreaking, honest and funny. Utterly astonishing that what could be depressing subject matter could be both honest but also laugh until you fall to floor funny! Please, please Sophie Willan write more and more and more. You will always give us something that makes us think whilst making us laugh! You are a genius!

I remember living through the 80s, most if not all my male friends were gay and we lived through the decade with the shadow of aids looming over us, but like this show tells us, we were still having fun, mostly because of the amazing music of that time but there was also this sense of a brave, very new world opening up to us all! And this show shows us this. I found this story so evocative of those times, but also it was so poignant. Several of my friends did succumb to the virus, aids was a death sentence then, and I remember how terrified we all were, gay and heterosexual alike. So thank you, you incredibly brilliant man, Russell T Davies. How you can write something so heart warming and profound, so moving and yet also so uplifting I just don't know. Everyone should watch this, prepare themselves to cry but also prepare themselves to celebrate friendship and the warmth that humans give each other at times of need.

I found this film blew me away on so many levels. Firstly how astonishingly brave! To write your true story like this, to explore its depths and reveal its bleak realities without flinching, how astonishing! This is the story of Shia's father, more than of Shia himself. Shias Dad was a flawed man, failing in his relationships and in his life, but mostly failing as a father. But throughout, though we witness this we also feel an intense sense of his tragedy. I was doubly moved because Shia himself played his father, and it is a wondrous performance. Its ironies are not lost, because Shia was the victim of his father's irrationalities, but one feels throughout the film a desire to reconcile the child to the man. Its beautiful. I cannot imagine how difficult it must have been for Shia to put himself in his father's shoes. But he does it, and does so with heart. He doesn't make his father a monster, he renders him as a man who longs for something more in his life and this performance must be a gift that shia gives to his father because he shows him that he understands. I would love for Shia to write more. he is a sensitive man, we need such courageous artists now and I wonder what else he can bring to enthrall us.

a missed opportunity for a film. the true story is that a 57 year old man takes a 17 year old boy to bed, takes him into his home, well his mansion, no less, introduces him to drugs, bullies him into plastic surgery to make him look like himself, and soderbergh decides to give us this piece of fluffy nonsense! its extraordinary. the material is the stuff of horror and this light hearted puff of hum dee hah is the result. is no one else more outraged by the abuse of a 17 year old boy? has the world truly lost its moral compass to such an extent? the idea that a 42 year matt damon should play scott as a 17 year old and fail to tell the real story is wrong. am i really the only person amazed by this? i give this 4 because the film carries a story and it is well acted, it just isn't the film that it should be.

wow, this did surprise me, not the story or really its enactment - but the ending. it was so thoroughly unexpected to find that the best most profound words should be given to the least developed character. it is difficult to say anything about this movie without giving everything away suffice to say it was so wonderful to receive such insight at the end from such an unexpected source. and that i think is what pushes this film above its peers. here is a story that we have all heard before, all experienced. the internet is a treacherous beast and frankly we believe our virtual friends at our peril. but the story doesn't end there. firstly we see who these people are who decide to invade our world with their make believe. and we find that perhaps they are also special as we learn just what might make them behave in this way, and then we find that really the people who are the losers are not the people who make the stuff up, but us for never believing in them face to face in the first place. oh this is a wonderful film, and i hope that everyone can watch it.

this movie was a huge disappointment. the red shoes is one of my favourite films and a good film about the ballet is well over due. i loved 'the wrestler' again an extraordinary and tense movie, and so i had high hopes of 'black swan'.

i could not have been more let down. the first and i suppose forgivable failure in the film was the poor dancing of natalie portman. the red shoes was fortunate in that it could rely upon the prima ballerina skills of moira shearer. natalie portman is no prima ballerina, no ballerina at all in fact and this spoilt much that could have been wondrous.

but natalie portman can act, and she acts her socks off in this, however, with what material. the character is meant to lose her sanity gradually and sink into a hallucinatory and dark world of her own imagining. and that's just it, i found the world described in her thoughts totally uninteresting as dreams actually are for the most part. i found it difficult to care about the narrative which followed so much of what happened inside someone's head. so what that nina stabs to death, lilly, her fellow dancer, when a few minutes later the colleague knocks on her door fit as a fiddle. yeah this proves that nina is nuts but it also dilutes the story. anything can happen, king kong can appear, he can destroy the whole damn lot of them, but so what. its all just a dream and when we wake up, its gone - puff.

there is much else to criticise. it was a film of ideas, but these ideas were not particularly intelligently explored. consider the rather lame and clichéd analysis of a young woman's sexuality, the very deliberate contrast between the virgin and the whore and the absurd finale of the young dancer's perfect performance and her insistence on her own death to complete it. i ask you.

anyway in sum this film doesn't deserve to air the same breath as the red shoes or the wrestler.

this is an enjoyable and thought provoking movie about a world that is alien to most of us, wall street. it was well played throughout, by shia, carey and michael douglas. i particularly liked the way that the story wove its layers so well, we had the outer crust a story of greed and its downfall and the love story running current. this was very clever. the kernel of the story, ie, its heart was geco and his analysis of engine of our world the economy, the irony of having a criminal and a reputed bad man moralising accurately on the faults of modern culture was very compelling.

i enjoyed this movie and thought it dealt with its difficult subject matter very well.

and in response to some of the threads on this site i will say i disagree that carey was not an attractive character in this movie, she was superb, as was shia.

maybe its because i just don't find teenagers that interesting. well actually someone like Ree in winter's bone is interesting, but Juno? no. Yep she is faced with a dilemma, pregnant at sixteen, and yep she deals with it, with a certain amount of chutzpah, that might impress her neighbours and the like. but the big screen? for one and a half hours? is this really such a subtle, original piece, worthy of an Oscar nod? I find Juno's precocity irritating, as indeed most teenagers are. she likes music, has eclectic tastes, yeah and....!! she is oh so world weary, and cynical .... yeah,at sixteen! and for some reason we are meant to see this as unusual fora sixteen year old girl. well i don't know about you, but this pretty much described half my rather conventional school friends of my own teenage years -

struggling with a teenage pregnancy and exploring a wholesome ending might be worthwhile viewing, but i found everything about the exploration dishonest. the film was intent in provoking the audiences respect for this putatively spiky sixteen year old, and did not delve into any deeper issues. It was so superficial, and to my mind frustrating for a more challenging and honest story is there to be had with pretty much the same story line, just not in this film.

the most moving moments, well to me the only moving moments, were Jennifer garner, playing a prickly middle aged woman desperate for a child, stripped of her shell as she holds her adopted baby for the first time. and Michale Cara as always is an extraordinary presence but as the for the rest no, i would rather watch the Brady bunch which at least has an awareness of its own superficiality.

i saw this film by chance. it was shown at the Spanish institute for free and i had no expectations. i was totally blown away by it. it was such a subtle and beautiful story told without judgement or bitterness of a wealthy couples struggle to foster a child. the boy has come from many homes and cannot settle. he wills this new family away and they comply. the boy is too difficult, he cannot adjust to a new life and the couple decide that the cost to their relationship and their own well being is too high. and the film follows their day as they struggle to defend this decision to each other and then the social worker that comes to vet them for adoption. i shan't describe all the plot twists for fear of spoiling some of the extraordinary effect of this film but everything is so beautifully realised.

it is a beautiful and painful film, deserving a wider audience and i hope at least that the director, a new one to film i believe, will continue to produce such fine work.

i did not expect to enjoy this. in truth i watched it because a friend knew a friend knew a friend who wrote the script but wasn't credited. knowing Dylan thomas, and really being appreciative of his poetry but aware and rather disconcerted by the man, i didn't feel i needed to see a twee adaption of his lame bohemian life laid bare. and this was not it. critical and yet appreciative it was. it made me cry. kiera knightley was superb, even with that slightly strained welsh accent,and it is a sad tale that they tell. Dylan thomas is not the hero as sadly he was not throughout his life and neither really are the so called 'feisty woman' of the pr spiel. it is cillian the william of the movie. a man that leaves the woman he loves to fight a war that they ignore. his challenge to reoonnect with that indifference is what is of real interest to this film and what a beautiful performance from that actor. i thiink this film is underrated because it was marketed so badly. Dylan thomas fans will expect something more from their so very flawed hero and get less, and well that is how it was marketed. it is not a film about Dylan thomas and it is much more interesting for it.

everything about this movie annoys me, and i mean everything, especially people's irritating affection for it. it has 'cult' status! well what has happened to the moonies, i ask.

its main crime for me is that it isn't funny - the joke is that silly bumbly but really quite lovable Sean finds his very 'normal' life turned upside down when zombies come to town. well there we are, to me that story is worth perhaps five minutes as a sketch or maybe an advert selling spare parts but a full length feature film?!! no.

in fact the fact that the story lagged and was predictable and dull wasn't what did it for me. i just cant stand sean penn. he reminds me of jerry lewis in the king of comedy. his portrayal of a charming buffoon is rather like being forced fed chocolate muffins, he is the adult equivalent of a child star, pushing the all the buttons so efficiently but with absolutely no conviction or sincerity.

this movie is so difficult to comment on. in many ways it is deeply flawed. the music is simply awful, absolutely wrong, the performances at times feel staged, and the direction too loose. and yet despite this - this is a wonderful film.

i think it is simply the quality of natalie wood, not her performance which again is actually quite week. sometimes she seems to lose concentration and flits in and out of character - but this is a challenging role and one that i cannot believe another actress could play better. wow she takes your breath away - filling you with such strange sensations of warmth, pity and anger. i cant think of a performance that has moved me so much.

she of course lived pretty much a tennessee Williams' story in her own right - except williams would have eschewed the melodrama and the intrigue of her death. and i think that is why she is so compelling in this, because she is simply revealing herself - and what we see is beautiful.

with a cast of four Hollywood heavy weights, the director of 'the graduate' and the writer of 'alan partridge, i expected a lot from this film. the synopsis was interesting, relationships going awry, sounds great - what could put me off? well - just about everything.

my main quibble was the dialogue. it was so heavy and rang so untrue. nothing that any of the characters said was believable. and that meant that the acting, strangely enough with a cast that included jude law clive owen natalie portman and julia roberts, was stilted and dull. i have never seen jude law flounder so much with his lines before. I cringe even just thinking about how awful he was in this role.

many comments criticise the unpleasantness of the characters. there was no one to warm to. and i agree that i didn't warm to any of them, but i don't think that is particularly a fault. what is a fault is that this film was meant to give an insight into relationships in the raw but i was not convinced by any of the relationships. there was a lot of sex, and discussion about sex, which is fine, great, but there was no passion or love or connection between two people and relationships are not just about sex. i needed to believe that jude law felt incandescent love for julia, so much so that he would be prepared to throw his actual relationship away. instead i saw them both eye each other meaningfully and say clever things to each other without making any connection.

In fairness, i did think that clive owen was incredible. his anger and his aggression was powerful and intriguing, however, his part simply didn't go anywhere. again natalie portman's character appeared more interesting and certainly the theme of her naming herself pondered many interesting thoughts, but again this idea wasn't developed and became a curiosity rather than the profound insight that was intended.

china at its most gloriously beautiful and strange, a raging epidemic and a warring husband and wife make this film one of the most compelling that i have seen. Walter and Kitty's marriage appears doomed from the start. they have married for the wrong reasons. she to get away from her mother and the anxiety of ending up a spinster, and he, because he has fallen in love with her and needs a wife and sees no need to win the love of his bride beforehand. Kitty's faithlessness seems a foregone conclusion. Walter's response to her faithlessness is not. It is a shocking suicide pact which he forces Kitty into. they make their hazardous journey into the centre of a cholera epidemic to find their fate. What they find is so much more unexpected than Walter's bleak vision of an agonising death by plague. They are both fractured and flawed people but when they play their domestic drama on this epic field they are made whole. Forgiveness and redemption is at the stories heart and it is a tribute to the acting skills of both Naomi watts and Edward Norton that the conflict between the two of them can be resolved so convincingly. they both from appearing unattractive people at the start become worthy of the love that they share for each other. I do not know of another film that has been able to follow this trajectory between two people - and i am so grateful to have found one that does.

it is great to see jamie bell develop into such a fine actor. his performance in this lacklustre film really saved it from being completely unwatchable. it is a pity that his touching performance which was so subtle was not better used.

the film doesn't know what it is, is it a peeping tom movie, are we going to discover the murky habitat of a teenage prowler. or is it a coming of age story as a young adolescent learns to deal with his mothers death. the film could neither play up to the sinister suggestions of the beginning or play it down. i kept waiting for something dangerous to happen, feeling that the story was stuck in a boring interlude, until i realised that was the story. a boy falls in love with a girl who looks like his mother - and the imagined murder of her mother was the interlude.

well i still rate this film as watchable purely because of jamie bell's beautiful nuanced performance but for nothing else

i couldn't decide what to score for this movie, for there are definitely faults, however, because it has such an extraordinary effect and is so original - i felt that i should give it a ten.

the performance that really captured my imagination was Elsa ziebelsteins. it was her reaction to her sisters return that was so moving. she tenderly wills her sister back into her life, respectful of all that makes that journey so difficult for her.

the story focuses on the reclamation of the relationship between two sisters who have had vastly different lives. the one has spent fifteen years in prison and the other has a family and an academic career.

very gradually the awkwardness and diffidence that appears between the sisters, despite Lea's good will dissolves. juliette's natural reserve and frustration diminishes as she learns to trust this sister who has loved her so long.

nothing about this movie is clichéd. all of it is surprising, especially the ending, and i would agree with others that in some respect it is not completely convincing. however, i think that the two actresses in their final scene render it one of the most powerful denouements i have ever watched and the emotions completely believable.

so in short what a wonderful film, i will watched with baited breath for claudels next -

This film blows me away whenever i watch it. so i am always struck when i read the site how many people do not like this film. It is a challenge for me to understand what it is that so works for me yet fails to engage most people.

this is not a thriller that looks into the heart of evil, and the murderer has a limited role. it is also not a movie about catching the murderer. and as such it is not comfortable viewing. what the film does is explores the effect of the proximity of evil upon its main character, frannie, and as she is hemmed in, we see her powerless in this unfamiliar world. she can no longer read the men in her life, her student, her past lover, and the investigating cop. They all appear ambivalent and violent. her world is no longer safe and the film beautifully captures frannie's loss of certainty. we feel the same adrenaline rush and heat of fear that she does. and we sense her own mistrust of the investigating detective. this mistrust evolves into desire not despite the fact that she suspects him of the murders but because she does. the sense that she wants the very man who could destroy her is unnerving but also compelling. Malloy is darkly seductive, and as frannie allows herself to fall we sense her own anxiety that the real danger comes when you allow someone in.

And this is the power of the movie, frannie is a disillusioned woman who cannot believe in the romantic script. she seems to believe that women are in peril when they believe in the men they love and this keeps her on edge of experience. it is when she is thrust into murderous events that she relives these fears and realigns herself to a different script. the hardened and cold woman appears vulnerable and unsure. watching frannie do so we do not know whether she has made a huge mistake or is finding her salvation.

there much to say about this movie, to talk about the wonderful performances so perfectly nuanced from both meg ryan and mark raffaelo. the extraordinary visual imagery, the films wonderful sounds and the sense of this mirky unfathomable place. it works on so many differently levels and i know that i can return to it again and again and find yet something more.