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It could have been so good... Between quantum entanglement, multiple universes... yin and yang timeline possibilities... wow, this could have been a great series (that's why I waited till the end to write this).

Never a good sign when in the last episode the audience starts wondering how the writers and editors will untangle the tangled web they weaved in the increasingly shorter time remaining before the final end credits. The producer(s) and writer(s) just didn't have it. Their vehicle exploded on launch like a pre-Mercury NASA rocket, but they didn't tell us 'till after we had watched all 8 hours...

I even didn't mind the whiff of horror genre; I found it cute, so long as it led to something. It didn't lead to anything that an adult and thinking audience, even a scientifically knowledgeable audience could accept as deserving of their investment in hours of their lives.

Great production values, great ISS, good northern Sweden feel... Good acting, good actors... The few explanations given in the final minutes were lame and incomplete. The last second just makes you angry at the producers and endangers the structural integrity of your TV screen depending on heavy objects within your reach.

I waited until I watched the last episode before adding my review, in an attempt to be ..."helpful". Masters of the Air should not be compared to band of Brothers or to The Pacific as each of the three series has completely different historical context and dynamics. Band of Brothers follows the entirety of the US involvement in WWII-Europe from training to D-Day to the Eagle's Nest through the eyes and relationships of one group. The Pacific theater was entirely different with no single group going together form beginning to end. And the war over Europe involved thousands and thousands of crews, flying a time-span limited 25 missions unless they were killed or bailed out into POW land before they reached #25. It is a mistake to compare the three series.

The difference between experiencing the war as a bomber crew or as paratroopers on the ground, is huge. When Dick Winters is warned that walking into Baston they'll be surrounded, he replies "we're paratroopers; we' re supposed to be surrounded". But the bomber air crews had no experience of the concept of ground war. They could not see the enemy in front of them, live. They could not experience their victories or defeats, they could not advance and take territory. They sat in a flying tube and dropped bombs from altitude, and shot at planes visible to them for one or two seconds as they approached at 350 mph to kill them. If the crews were very, very lucky they made it into the group of the few who survived.

The experience of the series is true to that simple fact: you just know that you fly, you die, or you are a POW, or you survive to do it again. It does not make for getting attached to crews and group dynamics, and that is what they audience missed. But the audience got the accurate truth of flying bombers.

Kudos to the series for dedicating almost half the running time to the POW's. Those boys deserved it and they were given their dues by the producers and writers of Masters of the Air.

Kudos to the series for including the Tuskegee Airmen! No telling of the late 1944 and 1945 war over Europe would be complete, or accurate, without the inclusion of our black pilots with the red tails. The best.

But, disappointment that there was no mention that the Tuskegee Airmen were reputed to have never lost a single bomber to enemy fire, and it took decades of frantic searching by certain researchers after 1945 to finally find that they did in fact loose a few bombers. Just a very few.

Also, disappointment that the writers did not invest the three minutes or less of episode time it would have taken to mention and to show that the Tuskegee Airmen shot down the first German Me 262 jet fighters of the war.

Kudos for mentioning the truth of the 1943 The Great Escape (1963) in Stalag Luft 3.

Kudos for the extremely well done and simply realistic portrayal of life aboard B17's during a mission.

Shame about totally and unrealistically underplaying the involvement, skill and heroism of the RAF and its Lancasters. Even before the RAF bombing runs, it was the RAF who served a major blow to Goering's Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain, with its Spitfires and Hurricanes two years before the Americans arrived. And it's all well to praise the mighty P-51, but let's not forget that it arrived only after Spitfires had patrolled the skies for almost 4 years.

I repeat myself that it would be a mistake to compare Masters of the Air, The Pacific and Band of Brothers between them. And it would be a mistake to watch with the expectation of entertainment and "action", or one continuous storyline between crews. This is History, and, after all nine episodes, my opinion is that it was produced and photographed and acted very well, very accurately and constituted a respectful salute to the real crews it portrayed, lest we forget.

Color me ignorant but I had no idea what Prometheus the movie was when it popped up on my radar as a space movie to watch, 12 years after it was released. I did know that Prometheus was the Greek mythical person who gave the gift of fire to humanity and was punished for it by the gods, so I said, all right, this might be interesting.

As the titles came up at the very beginning I saw Ridley Scott's name, so I said, wow! This will be good.

Towards the end, and especially in the last couple of minutes I was sure this thing was very connected to Alien, the original Alien which I had watched in its premier in London while I was in Film School, many, many years ago. And then it struck me. This was Alien's prequel, or pre-prequel.

So what lies between Riddley Scott's name in the opening titles and the last scene, a couple of Earth-hours later? The most unbelievably underdeveloped story line, dialog and characters, glossed over by an amazingly good production. A complete waste of space. It's like being served a can of tuna fish and a can opener in a luxurious restaurant.

Fifteen of the best minutes on a movie reel ever, is timestamps 1:33' to 1:48' in Pollack's Absence of Malice. I sometimes watch those 15 minutes at the end of a long day. It's the "...this ...what the hell is this? ...this inquiry", conducted by Wilford Brimley's Assistant Attorney General for the Organized Crime division of the United States Department of Justice, James J. Wells. In the room among others are Paul Newman, Sally Field and Bob Balaban.

I don't know why I keep watching those 15 minutes but hardly ever re-watch any other footage from this movie. All of it is a good, interesting, well-timed movie, but after you know what happens in so many important moments in the film, re-watching seems redundant, for this movie. That inquiry, though, priceless! It's probably everyone's daydream, to have an inquiry like this, conducted by Wilford Brimley, in their lives, and, in it, be Paul Newman's Michael Gallagher.

Mellinda Dillon gives an excellent performance, Paul Newman is the perfect stoic and innocent figure with relatives in organized crime, Bob Balaban is compelling as the a-hole with power and Sally Field does her job badly as a journalist, and must live with it in the end.

It's a good movie. No popcorn but possibly hot dogs and a beer.

A great idea very well executed but sank by the choice of Viola Davis as Michelle Obama. The problems with casting Ms. Davis are so many and glaring, her age, stature, expressions and of course the lip thing.

Anderson does a great job as Eleanor, even if she looks nothing like Mrs. Roosevelt and the Mrs. Thatcher accent from The Crown was a puzzling choice of delivery.

Michelle Pfeiffer who "becomes" Betty Ford onscreen, through flawless acting steels the show and saves it. Frankly, this could have been a 4-episode show about Betty Ford with the timeline kept linear.

This is a high values production, great script, well-produced. An excellent show that could have benefited greatly with somebody else as Michelle Obama.

History is, of course felt in the eye of the beholder. A last chapter can close an era but can also hint at the future and the past beyond any particular era. The last scenes of The Crown succeed in establishing a new high bar for how to embed all that in our hearts and minds.

The choice of showing the older Queen, Imelda Staunton, converse with her younger selves, Olivia Colman and Claire Foy is a beautiful device by which to add further depth to her character. Each one of us, a monarch included, consists of all the people we've each been, evolving through our lives.

The last scene with Prince Philip and the Queen discussing their funerals and their place in life, and death, is insightfully done.

But the scene, set in 2005, where the Queen walks past her own future coffin, laid out in the Cathedral, which only she can see, and then from behind the coffin she sees her 1945 young 19-year-old self in her Auxiliary Territorial Service uniform is a showstopper, and a heart stopper that brings a tear to the eye. Then the young Princess, in uniform, gives a military salute to the 80-year-old Queen and then smiles at her with approval. That was a brilliant decision by Peter Morgan.

Then, the Queen walks away from us, the full length of the 17 years to come, to the exit of the Cathedral, into the light, with the door closing behind her.

The last scenes of this six-season series are, I think, a perfect testament to the soul of the entire series and of the British Crown, and it will be seen again and again by those who rewatch parts or snippets of it in the future. Well done.

In your beloved Balmoral, to the sound of the Highland Pipes, Sleep, Dearie Sleep.

We finally watched Oppenheimer with my wife. We could have done so for a few days but she begged to wait until she had readied herself psychologically to endure Christopher Nolan's unrelenting Wall of Sound and plethora of travelling back and forth in time. I guess anyone who ever made it in Hollywood never shied away from having a personal signature. Like, for example, an unrelenting Wall of Sound at a level much higher than the level of the sound of dialog that we are supposed to hear in order for us to understand what the characters are saying, and a plethora of cuts travelling back and forth in time to test our ability to know where in time and at which point in the storyline we find ourselves in, loud bang-bang-boom after loud bang-bang-boom. At least in this outing he helped us with Black & White for the present vs. Color for all of the several points in the past.

After watching it I feel a bit like J. Robert Oppenheimer myself, at the point in his life when he was trying to convince the world that the H Bomb was bad. I stand the same chances of convincing the world that their golden boy, Christopher, is wearing the King's new clothes.

If you straighten out the timeline a bit, add a tiny bit more information about the science at Los Alamos, and slide down the constant-music sound level by 70%, with the dialog level up by some 20%, the movie is not half-bad. In fact, it is quite good.

Casting was really good and Matt Damon as General Groves was one of the very few actors who did stand a chance standing next to Paul Newman's General Groves, from Fat Man and Little Boy (1989). Emily Blunt worried me throughout the movie because her part, as Oppie's wife, was, I thought, very badly written, but she made-up for it in her scene testifying towards the end of the movie. Cillian Murphy was an excellent, excellent Oppenheimer and Robert Downey Jr.'s Lewis Strauss delivered the perfect tragic figure of a mediocre man turned pathetic lunatic by his hatred of J. Robert Oppenheimer.

I really don't understand how Nolan's choice of standing out from the pack by torturing the ears and brains of his audience has caused said audience such Stockholm Syndrome. It's not personal, dear Christopher; it's only business, and how you duped so many to give it to you. And I only speak as an older man with an excellent stereo system and sensitive hearing.

Given the choice of re-watching the story of the Manhattan project, I, myself, would opt for Fat Man and Little Boy (1989). But don't let me stop you :-) Go ahead. Watch Nolan's Oppenheimer and praise it. Praising Nolan makes one sound cool. "Intelligent filmmaking", some call it. I am not cool by any stretch of the imagination.

I 've been trying to figure out what's wrong with the Haunting. A perfect cast delivered on target. Good script of a good book, well-timed. I could go on singing the praises of a movie that nevertheless left me disappointed.

So, what was wrong with it? Ultra-wide-angle lenses and camera movement. Elementary, mon cher Hercule.

Cinematography went over the top trying to impress and failed. Too much effort. Let the Panavision Ultra Panatar Lenses do their job, don't feed them steroids. Don't have monsieur Hercule move around with a camera attached to his chest, or belt, or wherever it was attached. It looks like a selfie on drugs.

Not that the smartphone generation noticed. But Kenneth and Haris Zambarloukos should have.

At times, nausea-city. At times sad, if you are a photographer in your golden years which means you were around when David was photographing Peter in the desert.

In 1982, A Woman Called Golda featured Ingrid Bergman as Golda Meir. Surprisingly, Ingrid Bergman was nowhere to be seen in that TV movie as it was Golda Meir herself who showed-up in every scene. In 2023, Helen Mirren was tasked with the portrayal of the Mother of Israel and even though filming has been over for some time now I bet Dame Helen must still be seething at the Director, the Writer and the Cinematographer, to the extent, perhaps, of asking herself what possessed her to accept the part, well as she did under the circumstances.

Plus... this movie is about the Yom Kippur war in the Fall of 1973. Nobody in their right mind would think this movie could even pretend to be about Golda Meir and her decades of contribution to the birth of Israel, from the 1920ies to her passing in 1978. It should be called The Yom Kippur War and not Golda.

Other than that, why is Moshe Dayan portrayed as Frankenstein's monster (from Young Frankenstein, 1974, at that, not even the originals)? Was he really a hysterical lunatic or have the filmmakers taken some poetic license?

The angles, lenses and lighting, at times are reminiscent of efforts by film school dropouts. Cinematography is supposed to tell a story. Not, as was done here, attempt to impress by visual weirdness at the absence of any ability to tell a story. One example that is now regrettably etched in my memory is the vertical looking down shot of Golda in her bed smoking, with the smoke she blows from her mouth rising and augmenting like a nuclear mushroom to envelop the camera lens. Woah! Art! Important point being made! Please spare me.

One laughable/infuriating moment is when Golda is shown in the beginning of the movie getting off an airliner that does not exist. A747 Jumbo with one instead of two engine pilons on each wing, each holding two small side-by-side turbines like those of the B-52 bomber. That imaginary design plane was constructed as a movie prop and still sits in some airfield in England. It was used in at least one James Bond movie. Golda towards the end of the movie, watches coffins coming out of that plane, parked on the same spot but this time at night. Hilarious.

Thankfully we had watched A Woman Called Golda (1982) in September, in anticipation of Golda (2023). That was wise on our part, my wife confirms.

I won't bother with further specifics except to lament that we can't expect any better from filmmakers who either have no clue about History or intentionally shelve it.

The first 21 minutes is a video game about WWII Nazis hauling archeological treasure for the Fuhrer. They were hoping for the lance that drew Jesus' blood on the cross, but they got a fake instead of the real one, yet, they had no idea that another of the artifacts in their possession could find holes in time and do the time travel thing. It's the Antikythera mechanism! An AI de-aged-for-1945 Indy keeps the breakneck pace of the video game going.

The next 25 minutes are also a video game gone awry, that's trying to bring the funny, but Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins would find nothing funny in this mess.

The minutes roll on relentlessly and, now, we are chasing the Antikythera mechanism. The real one was discovered in 1901-2 in a Roman shipwreck 130 feet underwater near the island of Antikythera estimated at approximately 70-130 Before Common Era, and all of it was found in one lump -and nobody knows when it was constructed or by whom. The movie artifact is supposed to be a perfectly preserved half part of the mechanism, constructed by ancient mathematician Archimedes in 260 BCE, discovered in 1905 at 130 and at 260 feet, with the Indy-travel-map showing our heroes searching off Athens instead of at the real discovery location... Indy must find the other half of the machine but a Nazi wants to travel back to 1939, change history and have Nazi Germany win WWII. Indy has a Greek diver friend with a boat off Athens but his friend with a boat off Athens turns out to be Spanish. And, the Aegean Sea is referred to as an ocean.

They find the thing in an underwater cave full of eels instead of the usual snakes, fly through time in a Nazi plane, land in 260 BCE instead of 1939 CE, they meet Archimedes during a Roman siege of Syracuse speak perfect modern Greek to him, he responds in perfect modern Greek, Indy wants to stay but his goddaughter punches him unconscious and flies him back to Manhattan, circa 1969 where Marion stops the divorce proceedings and brings the groceries.

Are there any questions as to why Steven did not direct this one?

I was 23 when I saw Raiders. I'm 65 now. If I live another 23 years to 88 it will be a nice book ends for a life lived with Indy. I have too much respect for what Harrison Ford, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas brought to us with Indy's adventures so I can't bring myself to cry out WTF about this last Indy we'll ever see... (but, hey... WTF)

The question, finally answered.

Red calls Agnes, one last time and gives her good advice on how to deal with a boy she likes. Agnes says "Thank you for being such a mom...".

"yeah... I guess I just can't help it..." responds Raymond Reddington.

Any questions? Watch Season 8, Episode 21, again, carefully this time. Thirty-five minutes into the episode.

Just one of the many hints over the years.

Raymond Reddington could not possibly be taken, by the FBI, his enemies, life, or death Himself. He chose the most amazingly brave, yet truly natural and fitting way to end the chapter that ended all chapters. I cannot imagine a more fitting way for him to say Goodnight.

So, what's on TV now?

I loved the return to TOS standards and principles in Season 1. This first Episode of Season 2 brought tears of despair to my eyes.

So, the show starts with Pike getting out of town to go to an important something or other at the edge of Federation space, which, in a shuttle, will take him two and a half days. The Delta quadrant is 80 years away at top warp, but a shuttle can make the edge of the Alpha quadrant in two and a half days, see?

Then, Spock steals the Enterprise, just like Picard and Riker stole the Titan a few months ago, 100 years in the future.

They arrive at a planet that looks quite a bit like Avatar's Pandora moon and the action is an ...homage to Star Wars, I suppose. Keep those explosions coming and keep the kids interested. You gotta love how when a space ship is hit it goes "down" nose first like a ship at sea. And all this fire in space... where des it find the oxygen?

The dialog is so 21st century street slang, it's entertaining.

The Klingons would have Warf foaming at the mouth and our favorite Vulcan has emotional issues.

Carol Kane was laughing a lot, but I think she was laughing at the show rather than whatever the character was supposed to be laughing at.

Why are these guys today trying to reimagine Star Trek as something that it isn't?

The only reason to watch this episode is after the end of it and before the end credits, for the beautiful dedication to Nichelle Nichols.

The ten seasons of the Blacklist have provided a decent escape for around 22 evenings a year, in a TV show that is not a masterpiece by any stretch of the term, but not bad either. How will it end on the July 13, 2023 final double episode?

The Morgana Logistics Corporation episode on June 8, 2023 has confirmed that not only Red is winding down and closing-up everything to do with his professional life of crime and his life's work, but he is doing so by offering himself as a blacklister for the Task Force to go after without them knowing the crime organization(s) they are taking down is actually his this time, not one of an enemy or competitor of his.

But the real answer The Blacklist owes to its viewers of ten years is the one it's always been: Who is Red? Elizabeth Keen's departure from the show two seasons ago threw a monkey wrench into the narrative that was leading to that answer. The showrunners may have hoped that the last two seasons changed direction enough for the viewers to have forgotten that question. But we haven't.

If Red disappears, retires, dies or whatever without answering the question of who and what Elizabeth Keen was to him, and who is he, where did he come from? Not revealing why did he do anything and all that he did in the first eight seasons will be a great disappointment if not an insult to the viewers.

Who was Red to Elisabeth Keene? Who was Elizabeth Keen for Red? That's the only reason I am watching the last episodes and I fear we will not get that answer. I don't know that the showrunners have even come up with an answer!

Season 3's first 4-or so-episodes had me in tears of despair but they righted this ship, and by episode 9 I was young again, roaming the galaxy with my favorite crew in the Galaxy class Enterprise D.

Episode 10, The Last Generation (of the Borg) left me in tears of joy. Well done, Terry Matalas! We now know what the Enterprise G looks like and who is in command for what absolutely needs to become the next Star Trek series.

The "D" crew, together again, evolved, wiser, beautiful together in well-earned retirement at a poker table. Data finally got his greatest wish only to discover... well...

You thought Q died? How linear of you! Plus there's a young Picard to continue as the defendant in the Trial of Humanity.

But what's Guinan's Ten Forward Bar in LA without Guinan? Where was Whoopi? Where was Janeway for that matter?

And ...wait. Didn't Borg Queen Agnes request provisional membership to the Federation in Season 2's finale, for the Borg to stand the Guardians at the Gate watching out for the new "unclear" threat? What happened to that? Plot Black Hole? Different Borg faction? Alice Krige's Season 3 Queen though was phenomenally evil, even Shakespearean.

Fan Service requires fans. And something worthy of fans need not break the formula, or forget what got the fans in the first place, therefore even calling the wonderful last episodes "fan service" is kinda dumb imho. I'm a fan and I loved it!

Whether or not this is about behavior, due to some degree of mental illness, both parents and step-mother, especially the father, seem completely out of touch with their son's very real and obvious psychiatric and emotional problems to the degree of appearing themselves part of the problem, if not even the trigger of the escalation.

But I am not sure what the movie was telling us? Somewhere between script, direction and editing the whole thing got either diluted to indecisiveness of message, or confusion about the moral we were supposed to walk away with.

Even the actors seemed confused as to how they were supposed to deliver their parts.

It could be argued that real life is like that, but I've had 64 years of it and I would disagree.

The kid had real psychiatric issues and he was even explaining them to his parents, who were competitive go-getters by nature and they seemed to be in total denial of their son's reality.

I think the movie was a good idea badly executed.

Dear Cinematographer, Mr. Crescenzo G. P. Notarile, sir, respectfully: What the (!) is going on with the light? Can YOU see anything when you view what you've done? How is it possible that everybody on post-production was OK with what they were seeing on their monitors? Or, what they were not seeing to be more accurate.

Is this cinematography a joke? Do you hear anyone laughing? You have another 6 episodes to air. Quick, push them through a software that increases brightness, seeing you cannot fire Mr. Crescenzo G. P. Notarile to shoot it all again with an actual cinematographer.

As for Episode 4 itself, somewhere between heavy action, and scenes languishing down memory lane and scenes that take their leisurely time to do some philosophical self-exploration, let's all remember, in case we are ever called to be starship captains, that when you have to divert all power from everywhere to life support to gain a few more hours of breathing, you must still, nevertheless, supply power to the Holodeck in case anyone wants to reconnect with family members they didn't know they had.

This is how and why to make movies.

I wanted the above line to be my review but I still need 507 characters to go, so I have to keep typing. The Metacritics average rating seems ridiculous but predictable. The imdb rating, much better.

Still 358 characters to go, so here goes. This movie is not about a "grumpy" man. It is about a misfit kid who found each other with the love of his life and never wavered, never faltered till she passed away first and left him alone. What point was there for him to go on? He may have been ready to go, but life wasn't ready to let go of him. Otto had a big heart.

The Consultant holds up a mirror to you that speaks and says: It does not matter if you liked the show or not. You watched it, I got your money, our transaction is concluded. And that is what businesses do today. Everything is dystopian from the scripted responses the non-good-English-speaking far eastern tech support reads to you, to products guided by focus groups and are only meant to last for a very short time till you move on to the next product, and, very importantly, there is no longer any interest to the quality of products because the consumers have lost the ability to evaluate quality, or purpose of the product for that matter.

Administrative assistants can rise to CEO's overnight for doing as they are told, whatever they are told to do. Bosses have the power of gods over the lives of employees who have descended to the level of ants. Employees don't know who the boss is, what the boss is, and they cannot piece together the clues.

In The Consultant, the central question of who or what is REG. US. PAT. OFF is constantly raised and never answered: Is he the Devil, is he a spirit, does he even exist at all, or is he an extremely devious manager of situations, capable of getting people around him to achieve any result he wants? The only thing that is proven as fact, after watching this series, is that his skeleton is not made of organic bone but of pure gold. Allegory? Metaphor? Or just another meaningless device for a product that is meant to excite, momentarily, and then we move on, but the production company has thrived already by our meaningless excitement?

I have serious issues with where viewership demand for shows and consequent stories and script-writing are going. Beyond that, Christoph Waltz's performance holds it all together because he is the perfect actor to use in the product that this short series was.

Now, we can all resume regular programming waking-hours gaming application of thumbs-on-smartphone-screen.

They are zero for two, at the end of the second episode. Star Trek was about exploration and bettering ourselves. It was never about personal vendettas, vengeance, and getting from Earth to the end of Federation space overnight at Ultra-Warp I-don't-know-what...

And what's with the total darkness. How can they see each other on the bridge? Are they economizing on studio lights? It's not arty-dark with highlights. It's just ridiculous.

It is a great pity because this is the last season. Where are they going with it? So far, Jean-Luc is missing his walker, or wheelchair, Riker is a sidekick, Beverly is from Madam Tussauds Wax Museum and unconscious, the new captain is a moron, Seven is totally out of character from seasons one and two, the crew are like scared cadets, and the new addition, Beverly's son, is a far cry from his much older half-brother.

The only actor anywhere near the level of Sir Patrick Stewart is Amanda Plummer, but the script writers are fully utilizing neither of them.

Looking at Star Trek TOS, TNG, DS9 and VGR I cannot help but ask are they writing to a much dumber audience these days or are the creators also dumbed-down in the 21st century?

They got another 8 episodes to leave us older Federation citizens with a better taste in our mouths than what we are getting so far.

A great deal was promised for season 3. After one episode, I am no closer to the feel of whether the promises will be delivered. A great deal is still to be put in place. I just hope we are not looking at another 5-episode season stretched to 10 episodes...

One genuine complaint I have is that the TOS, TNG, DS9 and VGR bridges were lit with actual light. It seems that 30 years later Starfleet starship designers opted for the dark look. Someone please turn the lights on. And since when is phaser fire making the sound of repeating rifles?

I think that if humankind is still around two or three thousand years from now, History will look at Star Trek like we look today at Gilgamesh or the Iliad and the Odyssey. I'm glad I was around on this Earth for Star Trek and the dream of what we could become. But someone please pay some respect to what got the franchise to the 21st century... Don't dumb it down... Please! It's supposed to be about exploration, new life and new civilizations; not arch-villains and cop-mysteries...

I also think that when they told us, in the 20th century, that we would get there by the 23d and the 24th centuries they were only a couple of thousand years off. At the very least.

Back to this first episode, remembering the Enterprise 1701-D, they used to pay attention to the time it takes to travel specific distances at different rates of Warp. Now, the Titan ("neo-Constitution Class" (TOS Enterprise on steroids!)) reached the edge of the Federation overnight while folks were sleeping. But who will notice trivial stuff like this? Where are the explosions, they will ask.

Complete with an Ancient Greek Tragedy chorus of one, who is presumably the main Banshee, with Kerry Condon, Colin Farrell's "sister" groomed by happenstance to possibly become her successor if she does not get away, The Banshees of Inisherin feels, in fact, closer to a Greek Tragedy than a Shakespearean one. In either case, the movie, a community isolated in more ways than one across from a civil-war-ridden mainland, is to be taken as a metaphor. Taking it literally would simply raise the question of why not commit Gleeson's character to a mental institution and ultimately would ask whether this experience of just under two hours is the purpose of Cinema? So, I will see the whole thing as metaphor.

The performances genuinely showcase the craft of these actors and are worth the viewing just to watch them, especially Barry Keoghan. The photography, the sets and overall look and feel are truly inspired and without a blemish.

This movie is truly an experience and if one refrains from asking "so what?" or pointing out that in two hours the audience deserves at least one moment of feeling good, and if one simply accepts that life is hard and then you die, then, this is a masterpiece in explaining drifting apart, alienation and the frequent inability to find anything positive to hold on to and overcome one's own demons as well as the inevitable.

In 1968 the movie was revolutionary for the idea of electing a Russian Pope from behind the iron curtain, freed from a Soviet Gulag in Siberia, yet, only ten years later, in 1978, they really did elect a Pope from behind the iron curtain, from Poland, who became John Paul II. But Anthony Quin, the Pope from the Soviet Gulag was not the only big coup of the book and of this epic movie. It got bigger: In this movie, the Pope gives away the wealth of the Church to feed starving China and avert nuclear war. It is revealed in one phrase during the Pope's coronation speech, a minute before the end of the movie, so... most of the audience missed it, as is obvious by most critiques here.

The Shoes of the Fisherman is a truly epic movie in every sense of the expression. Yet, its ambitious message is all-but lost in the shuffle: Christian theology is questionable, as explained by Oscar Werner's Fr. David Telmond during his inquisition-like hearings about his controversial views, the Roman-Catholic Church has too much wealth, pomp and circumstance and royal-like structure antithetical to the teachings of Christ, as demonstrated by every scene, palaces, traditions and rites meticulously depicted, God is life and has no denomination and is represented by no single religion, as demonstrated by the Pope himself who, incognito as a simple priest, gives the dying rites to a Jewish man in Hebrew as a Rabbi would, Life is love, as demonstrated by the problematic marriage between news anchor and his doctor-wife, saved by the Pope, still incognito as a simple priest, who in conversation helps them rediscover that it's all about love... and, finally... to feed starving millions and avert war this infamously rich Church gives away its treasure to buy food and restore world economies.

A very ambitious and complicated message, in the middle of the Cold War, just after real Pope Paul VI had instigated great reform and change, a message lost by audiences who did not see it when they watched the movie, or saw it but looked away.

It is all-but-obvious from the beginning that John Gielgud playing the elder dying Pope, two of his cardinals and the Soviet Premier himself, Sir Lawrence Olivier with an accent, were moving the pieces on the chessboard, freeing Archbishop Anthony Quin from the Gulag, only to usher him through a quick path to the Papacy. The world was in serious trouble and only the Church could save it, not with its thoughts-and-prayers but with its money. And only a simple Gulag convict from an oppressive communist dictatorship who never lost his faith, the faith which Jesus first gifted to the simple fishermen of Galilee, could fathom it and accomplish it.

In what is touted as the "half-season finale" with the 8th of 14 episodes and no air date set for the other 6 episodes, other than talking about maybe next summer (six months or more from episode 8) main characters assume their positions for a show-down to someone's death. Who will kill who or will they all kill each other?

Frankly, it looks like Mr. Sheridan is running out of ideas and treading water. The pace has slowed to a torturous crawl, and that includes a reminder that the 6666 ranch in Texas is still owned by Sheridan.

Why not call this the end of a very short season five and tell us to wait until an even shorter season 6? It would sound more honest. Cowboying is all about honesty, isn't it?

Sometimes a movie is a record of events, a record of the truth, which lifts its importance higher than mere entertainment. There have been some notable films about real events, history changing events, and beyond the independently high value of each film, none have come close to All the President's Men (1976).

There comes a moment in every film about journalism, that the size of the shark is revealed. In All the President's Men it is towards the end: "everyone is involved (...) your lives are in danger". In Spotlight (2015) it's when they realize the number of abusive priests, in Boston alone, is not five or six but over ninety. In She Said (2022) the size of the shark is revealed at the historical notes just before the end credits.

She Said, may not be about a crook of a US President or the systemic cover-up of abuse by the Catholic church, but it is about something that reaches far and wide in every corner of life and of the workplace: the abuse of women and the abusers' standard defense that the victims are making it up, and then paying them off for their silence.

Although the pace of the movie is slow and low key, like any investigative journalism is in real life, I would have wanted a few points of punctuation where we instantly realize we are going to need a bigger boat. Yes, such real-life points have been accurately transferred to the screen in She Said, but you have to look for them, they don't jump out at you, and if you are already sleeping you might miss them. This admittedly very well-made movie could do with a little more catering to audiences that need to be pinched awake once in a reel or so.

For years now I have stopped re-watching Weinstein's excellent movies because they were made by a despicable creature who hurt human beings while making these excellent movies. No Weinstein re-runs for me. And kudos to the New York Times investigative reporters and to the New York Times for going after a world-renowned film producer and, in the beginning of the movie, going after a presidential candidate. The producer is now serving 23 years and the candidate got elected. I wonder how much of this movie was also about our society itself, that harbors such people and promotes them. And, speaking of society depicted on film, I wonder how many negative "helpful's" I'll get as punishment for my previous phrase.

If movie making were explained as a recipe to make cake, the ones who made this mess forgot the baking powder and the eggs. Well, maybe it's not a mess, as "mess" would require some kind of action to be taken, in order for "mess" to be achieved. With the director asleep at the wheel and the actors run over by a tractor that careened into a soap opera set, this movie is not so much a mess as it is a non-event and you can snooze right through it.

Can it be that movie makers have become dumb, or are they making movies for dumb audiences?

My wife agrees that everything I wrote so far about Lamborghini: The Man Behind the Legend (2022) is fact. But she wonders whether we should even write this stuff. What's the alternative? Write nothing? I asked. She is still thinking about it so I'm just going to go ahead and publish what I got so far, wondering whether its box office would improve were the drivers very tall, blue-skinned with tails and the factory and racetracks located on a lush moon somewhere far away. The poster and the car could still be yellow, though.

PS. If I say that this movie was structured on a formula that nobody bothered to even read at the cookie-cutter dot com link the studio memo'd, should I mark it as containing spoilers?