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It looked promising at the outset.

Arnie looks just right for the part, macho aged killer/spy, perfect makeup and hair groomed just right for a 65 year old, virile hero.

(In real life Arnie is 75 years old but he pulls it off quite well)

Of course, being a 65 year old virile hero he has to have a stunning 50'ish wife, the absolutely gorgeous Fabiana Udenio.

What can go wrong?

Well, you give it to the Netflix diversity crew and the 12 year old Netflix scriptwriters, and allow them to take over the reins, that's what can go wrong!

And what we've got is a perfectly diversity balanced piece o' trash

The leaders of the cast come with a stereotyped lesbian, properly overweight and smart-assed as she should be. The brilliant black ops guy who looks like he just graduated from MIT but remains one of the "brothers".

The rest are a collage of caricatures which demand that even the wokest on the project should be squirming with embarrassment.

And that's before we even get to the plot, which is so over the top stupid in extoling the virtues of the CIA that you want to lobby for that concupiscent General Petraeus to be reinstated.

We're expected to believe that the father (Arnie himself) and his daughter are both working for the CIA and didn't know each other's occupation. (Mind you, with the stories in the media about the running of the CIA, it could not only be possible but more likely probable) They don't find out until they end up on a mission together and the mission is a contrived, poor man's James Bond escapade with no believability whatsoever.

I like Arnie, and for a few minutes there it looked as though it might be a good show but it quickly fell off the edge and drowned in its own spectral sea.

I wish I could run Netflix, I'd fire ninety percent of the staff and send them back to their jobs at the 7/11 or Amazon fulfillment centers. Nobody in the organization would be the worse off for it but we'd end up seeing better shows that's for sure.

Guy Ritchie's formulaic approach to movie making has given us some crackers in the past, but this one just doesn't have the spark.

It's a tale of international intrigue where some nutcase has developed an AI program that can hack any computer system in the entire world and wants to sell it to the bad guys. And the bad guys of course are Slavic brutes/idiots

Too many characters, over the top parodies and, worst of all, too much expectation of the audience to believe that the secret services could be so flawless.

The scripting is trite apart from one or two good lines, the storyline is all over the place as are the backdrops. The travel budget alone must have cost a fortune.

If you try hard and stretch your suspension of reality then I guess it's an enjoyable romp with Hugh Grant convincing as a lecherous international deal maker and Jason Statham with his UFC type abilities.

But even with that stretch the movie isn't a patch on some of his previous gems. The supporting cast is pretty anonymous with the exception of one.

He only has a small part and plays a movie producer type who is made to look and act like Harvey Weinstein . Boy is he on the money.

It's watchable but not memorable.

Sorry but I couldn't get hooked on this movie and I could tell from the start that things wouldn't be improving as the story unfolded.

In fact I didn't have the fortitude to get through to the end as I got mired in the trite Irishness of the opening scenes.

I mean how many Irish movies have we seen with the wife at the kitchen sink peeling spuds .

There she is, apron and headscarf over a St Vincent de Paul frock, crying and moaning at her husband who's either in the pub, going to the pub or just returning from the pub.

All Irish husbands and Grandfathers have flat caps , work the fields or are fishermen..... and all, without exception, are flat broke, penniless.

But, because they are Irish, they are happy, they can sing and they can tell stories about leprechauns and Banshees while they knock back pint after pint of Guinness.

That's the substructure of every shamrock movie that I've ever seen and I guess the story that they layered on top of it was about some mysterious superstitious happening that affected a friendship.

Don't know... never could get past the opening to see what was what and I don't think I missed much in the passing.

Not my cup of four leaf clover I have to say.

Kinda like a Jewish version of Kenneth Branagh's Belfast, that was bad movie in my opinion and this one's worse.

The acting is very very flat and comes across as an episode of "Days of our Lives" in its texture and script. I had a twitching hard time just keeping my finger off the exit button as the story inched along.

In fact it took a great effort to get through the first few minutes of the opening scenes.

I persevered, but to no avail as the plodding pace made each minute seem like an hour.

It just goes to show you that even the most successful directors can get lost when they make movies about their own life stories.

There's no one with the balls to tell them that they're turning out dryer lint and so the project gets completed and is released with the fanfare that a famous director expects.

That this movie even made the cut for any Oscar awards is beyond me, you can only attribute it to the media's fawning for Mr. Spielberg.

To be fair, he has made some brilliant movies but this isn't one of them.

How does this stuff get past the review process before it's allowed to go on the air?

It's painfully UNfunny and the sketches go from embarrassingly bad to just plain pathetic.

It only comes on in our house by accident as I'm flicking through the channels but even a fleeting look sets it off to the next channel almost automatically. You simply can't watch it.

As I've said before, New York/ American humor has a nasty streak to it but it also has some brilliant comedy like Seinfeld , Curb your enthusiasm and Cheers.

These were clever satires and had quite intelligent scripts to keep you amused but these SNL skits are just shallow insults to politicians and society, No amount of script doctoring can fix this thing and only very rarely does a musical act make it worth watching.

Do us all a favor and give it a decent burial wontcha?

But, it's impossible.

This has to be THE most unwatchable crap in an ocean of it on the networks.

It's embarrassingly bad, moreso because it is compelled to have a fully diversified cast , many of whom got the part because they are , well, diversified.

If I were Brendan Gleeson or Colin Farrell I would be ashamed to show my face in New York after such a pathetic series of sketches, it's a good job that city is so big that they can easily hide away.

As if that wasn't bad enough the sketches featuring the new players were puerile garbage and I couldn't even summon up a chuckle before I gave it the hook.( Mind you, I've never understood New York's nasty style of humour) The mainstream media critics , for some reason, don't want to pan it as badly it should be panned, Lord knows why. Maybe somebody's got some compromising photos or juicy stories that they use for ransom purposes.

If they have, I say "USE THEM"

It's time to put this sick puppy down. Even when I see it scheduled on the cable guide I try unsuccessfully to delete it. There's no way I'm going to put myself through the torture of trying to get through another vacant episode.

I'm getting lousy vibes from this.

From a poor script to poor acting , especially the part played by Patrick Gibson.

Such trite scenes and contrived plot developments that a five year old could have picked up on them.

So disappointing 'cos Lesley Sharpe is usually in such good projects.

I lost interest after episode two.

I don't know what some of the critics who raved were watching. They need some serious mental help.

Maybe there was another show on in a parallel universe streaming on the ET network but what I saw and heard was some big ass ole mama and has-been trash peddlers screeching out tuneless garbage.

I'll take the Judds ANY day over this crap.

WTF do I know ? You'll be asking.

Well I know what's good and wholesome , I know what a good melody is and I know how music is supposed to take you to a soothing place. This is like an open razor crossing your skin.

When you see the aggressive snarls on the dancers and the females sliding all over the male acts, you suddenly realize that all that is wrong with America at the moment is packed into this show.

No community standards, no artistic appreciation and absolutely no regard for what might offend the senses. Worst of all, there's no sense of shame!😎

If it ever gets shown again (which it surely will) make sure you've got PBS's "The King and I" on your PVR and click it on the moment you get wind that this dreadful dross is coming your way.

"The King and I" will soothe the savage breast.

The only thing that got a reaction from me was the rigid hierarchy in the upper echelons of British power.

There was still a legacy of the privileged aristocracy, despite the slaughter in WW1, for which most of them were to blame, and they continued to do whatever they wanted to. (As, of course, the current incumbents do today).

A good performance by Irony Jerems 🙄 as Chamberlain but otherwise another piece of Netflix lint. It's like running down a high street and trying to remember the names of the stores.

It's a spy movie where the spies are pretty useless and, as usual, the girls are smarter than the men.

There's only one other piece of woke content.

See if you can spot it, it's quite easy.

I was half expecting it would be those two male spies ending up falling in love and banging each other, but the writers shied away from it in the end (although they came damn close I think). It's not too far a stretch either; Cold War spies Philby, Maclean and Burgess all practiced the "alternative lifestyle" with gusto!😎

But no , it was another piece of wokery that wedged its way in. You'll know what it is the moment you see it.

I suppose I could be charitable and say it was a good story but I won't, because the story is very poorly laid out.

All I can say is that once a man like Chamberlain gets into such a powerful position, he should already know that the people he deals with, the people who run other nations, can't be trusted.

But, that's the trouble with democracies, anyone can end up in a job they're not qualified for. We, as the voters, pay the price for not picking up on this incompetence.

Mind you, the power of oratory can mask many other deficiencies and fool the people quite easily.

Still, it doesn't mean that good decisions can't be made, and at that level all decisions are very, very difficult.

It all boils down to the influence of the advisers and quite often they are as inept as the leaders. They don't usually get the job because of their abilities but more likely because of their connections.

Advice follows this pattern; Do this and you'll make them mad , do that and you'll make the others furious... you get the picture I'm sure.

So it was a couple of hours or more that things dragged on and I know nothing more about the War than I did before.

Flat acting, apart from Irony himself, and very shallow waters. I've seen much better you tube documentaries.

Very amusing , gorgeous girls , great costuming and a great , if very confusing, plot line.

Confusing because the English subtitles bear very little relationship to what's being said and the translators keep giving the characters different versions of their names.

Sometimes it's more like studying for an exam than it is watching entertainment but fortunately the entertainment factor just edges out a victory. Be warned though, you have to put in the work to keep up.

Basically its a time travel story where a young, hip, successful Chinese, current day metrosexual somehow gets to inhabit the body of a person back in the Imperial China age.

It shows how his modern ideas management and marketing ideas seem like magic to the ancient culture and it is really well done in the way things are allowed to play out. Funny, poignant and ruthless all at the same time

There's some great roles, with actors perfectly cast, and some of the lines are ones you would never expect to come out in the way of Chinese comedy.

I have to confess to bias in that I think that all of the actresses were just achingly beautiful and I'm totally enamored with the polite nature of personal interactions in that country.

Quite a few episodes and I don't know if there'll be another season but I enjoyed binge watching it over the past few nights.🥇🥇

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.

So, 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 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 a sense of civic responsibility.

Thank goodness somebody was able to bring about a truce in that 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.

At least the writers did me a favour and got rid of one of the more annoying characters👍. I won't spoil it for you, but if you're a follower you'll be as pleased as I was.

I was thinking that they might have thrown in the towel for this season ending episode but no, they set us up for an interesting follow up storyline and, although it's slow, it held my interest for most of the time.

If you ask me (which you won't) there's just too much going on in too many directions and we're getting vignettes instead of solid storylines.

Somehow they get away with it because the acting is so damn good.

I still can't handle the UXB that is Beth, and can't work out why a hard-nosed cowhand like Rip would be so tender towards her. She's an absolute EF5 tornado with destruction in front of and devastation behind her and it's all in the name of love for her Dad and not Rip ... go figure.

There's a lot of time spent on the purging ceremony that Kayce goes through but really his emergence after it leaves us with more questions than answers. There's a great scene where that stunningly beautiful wife of his, (Monica) comes and comforts him in a dream.. wish I coulda been Kayce 🦄

More questions than answers is a good thing for a TV series, it makes you want the next season come along that much faster.

So what happens next? That's the secret held by Mr Sheridan and he's kept it hidden so well that I have no choice but to saddle up and ride with them into the next few fabulous sunsets.

Sheridan plays a great part in the series too, by the way, and there's no doubt that he's a gifted individual.

This ain't my last rodeo .🐺

Look guys, I've been to China quite a few times now, I've come to learn that the Chinese people don't give two aerial acts of sexual intercourse about proper translation of things like instructions, ingredients or contents on ANY of the things they export.

It's usually because they are too cheap to pay a professional to do it right and what you get is nothing like what's supposed to be inside.

When they're done, it seems like they just hire a Chinese speaking student who's been at a U. S. college for a couple of years. They assume that , because they now speak English, they are qualified to translate complex and subtle phrases.

You would think, wouldn't you, that after all of the money that's been sunk into a production like this, with all of its fabulous costumes, set design and wonderful actors. You would think that someone would take the care to make the subtitles reflect the ethos of the scenes and put some feeling and subtlety into them? Not a chance!

As it is, you get lines that say, "got it" instead of the more grave "I understand" or "I'm on it" instead of " I will obey your command" or, worse still, "He's pissed" instead of "he's angry"

These high school Americanisms happen all the way through and it ruins the value.

It's like translating Shakespeare's "To be, or not to be" into ..... "Is you is, or is you ain't?" Not only that, but if you're a slow reader, the captions are gone in a split second, it's just pathetic.

So I hope someone from Netflix or PBS or whoever buys these foreign language productions will listen and insist on quality for future airings. If they do, and they pony up the money for professionals to do the job, then we'll all enjoy it more

Apart from that, the series is just captivating with its beautiful actresses and handsome actors who give stellar, riveting performances. The costumes and the portrayal of Imperial China are just about as perfect as you can get and the set design is without equal.

The opening and closing music is just hauntingly beautiful and there's nothing better than going to bed with those songs and harmonies folding you into sleep.

It's a long series and takes quite a bit of patience to understand who's who but so far it's been worth the minor setbacks.

Enjoy yourself.

Thank goodness they have the cowboy scenes 'cos the rest of it is getting treacly slow.

It still draws you in and you can't even take a toilet break, but the life is ebbing out of this series.

For some unfathomable reason they have played up the roles of Jamie's father, who I think is a very poor casting choice, and the kid, Carter

The father seems too smug and self righteous for his murderous background and the kid, well, he's just the motherlode they mine for every trite emotion possible.

We finally get to see some balls from Mr D in his relationship with his daughter Beth, but there was simply no direction at all in this episode.

Jamie himself is such a wuss, pussy whipped by his girlfriend and so sandbagged by his real Dad that you lose any sympathy for the character.

The side story about Jimmy at the 6666 ranch in Texas is well put together and there's some outstanding displays of horsemanship that have you gasping in admiration.

I enjoyed it and the hour went quick but I had to fast forward on a few scenes.... which is never a good sign.

You have to say that Costner himself carries the load, he's just brilliant in every scene, especially the one where he faces off against the new Sheriff.

I still love the show.

I think they're all jockeying for a writer's job on the next project, be it the 6666 ranch or the "prequel" ,1883.

Little clues let you know what's happening.

Things like stretching out an episode with ever thinner plots, caricatures of New York type financiers and milking the father/son dynamic to the point of making it annoying.

There's also a couple of roles that they've made too difficult to watch, the orphan kid and Beth to name but two.

In this episode Beth continues her blunderbuss ways as a big shot in the Equities firm she is trying to decimate. There's a scene with Dutton and Rip later on that's right out of "Pulp Fiction" which is just the best, as far as action is concerned.

Not much development on Dutton's run for Governor or Jamie's run for the same job but there's a very irritating scene with Jamie and his real father that has you cringing.

Don't get me wrong, it's still gripping stuff but they are lost on character development and there's only so much you can do either on a ranch or in politics in Montana.

Once it's done we'll know it ( the series creator already knows it). We'll all stick with it to the final episode and look back on the show as one of the best .

While the series maintains its absolute top quality entertainment value there's signs that the writers are getting tired.

This is especially so with their portrayal of Beth, John Dutton's psycho daughter.

Up to now she's been just a straight up nasty piece of work. A character that no one could have any affection for, not even the father, but we all set aside our dislike in the name of cinematic license.

I think the writers have tried to make her more of a dual personality but they have failed in trying to convince us that this type of character has some inner soft heart. The reality is that she is a wrecking ball with no redeeming qualities.

The exaggeration of her wrecking ball tendencies in the corporate world takes the scenes to the wrong side of believability and the show suffers from it a bit. I mean, nobody could get away with behaviour like that in today's world.

Of course this may be seen by others as an asset in her make up.... WTF do I know?

Apart from that minor niggle I am completely engrossed in the unfolding story. The acting, the displays of horse handling and cowboy expertise makes you want to sell your house and move there.

Maybe I could exchange my 33ft lot for a couple of thousand acres there and set up shop. (Yeah right!😏)...

UPDATE 11th Jan 2022 .. you could actually sell your tiny, cramped home in Vancouver B. C. and buy a big chunk of land with a ranchhouse on it close to Bozeman, and have money left over.. I just looked it up on the internet. What a crazy world.🙄

Costner and the main crew are just the best ensemble cast I've seen since the Fargo TV series , can't wait 'til the next episode.

Enjoy.

There we were, thinking that John and Paul just sat down together and wrote the lyrics to their songs and now we find out that the most memorable words fell from the sky as if sent by the Cosmos.

You're reading the review of a besotted Beatle fan, I followed every word they said, I bought clothes and let "me 'air grow" to be like them and believed every story that was written about them.

Basking in their reflected glory was sublime because I too came from Liverpool, it was THE most wonderful time.

I remember the exact place I was at when I first heard "Love me do" and amazingly I can remember where I was when I first heard all of their subsequent songs . Playing any one of their tunes today instantly takes me back to that same spot, like a salmon swimming up its home river to spawn.

This documentary shows the synchronicity of it all, they weren't particularly good musicians but that didn't matter. They didn't have a clue about recording songs at the beginning but that didn't matter either because George Martin was part of their fate.

They didn't have the foggiest notion of the ruthlessness of the music business but that too didn't matter, because God provided them with Brian Epstein.

What they did have was an incredible charisma, an incredible streak of creativity and an appeal, an appeal that defies description, to the entire world.

Almost overnight, even the teachers in our "stiff upper lip" school started sporting Beatle haircuts , the glitterati started wearing Beatle suits and it was like a worldwide furnace had been lit.

Now we have the chance to look back again and see what lit that fire... and it's beautifully obvious in the way Peter Jackson has put it together.

They are/were, each one of them, quintessential working class heroes who come across as completely unaffected by their "godlike" status.

Polite with the crew, happy with toast and marmalade for brekkie and ready to knuckle down to work when the going gets tough.

No sign of the drug excesses that blared from the headlines of the day, just a group of lads who smoked and drank like the rest of us did in that time. No rock-star like behaviour, always saying "please and thank you" and all having utterly engaging personalities

If there's one theme that emerges from the entire documentary it's that they were all thoroughly fed up , not with each other but with the personal toll the price of fame exacted from them and the restrictions it placed on everything they did.

We used to look at them and envy the adoration they received but the reality is that they came to detest that unremitting spotlight and wanted out of it in one way or another.

How they still managed to produce such fabulous tunes on this platform shows how ineffably talented the entire team was.

The magnetism still holds after all these years.

Very "Coen Bros" in its style, which is not surprising since Billy Bob has worked for them in the past.

It's about an alcoholic lawyer who's supposedly brilliant but who's deeply flawed in his personal life.

He's somehow dragged in to be the lead man on major civil cases, cases which end up as multi million ( or even multibillion ) deals and the plots in the first two seasons are very well acted and scripted.

Billy Bob puts on great performances in the beginning, as do the rest of the cast and it keeps you glued to the tv until the wee small hours.

Over the four seasons, he takes on arms manufacturers, he takes on corrupt politicians, they deal with water distribution problems in Southern California and in the final season they put the boots to big pharma and put the world back to rights.

The problem is that the script writers couldn't keep up the quality of the first two seasons and what we get for seasons three and four are very trite story lines and coincidences. To cover script shortcomings they layer in those Coen Brother's tricks of LSD type trips and weird flashbacks that are very hard to follow.

Billy Bob's acting loses its edge, to the point that he only had a couple of expressions throughout the final two seasons. The rest of the cast seem bored with the project too and the writers seem to think that they can flesh the characters out cheaply by highlighting their frailties.

Too much smoking, too much drinking, too much greed and too much swearing .

I love to see human weaknesses portrayed on screen like this (especially the swearing part) but it's a fine line that's easily crossed.

It goes downhill so badly that in one of the courtroom scenes in season four, I was reminded of Newman cross examining Kramer in that hilarious Seinfeld episode.

There ain't gonna be a season 5 and I'm not surprised. If you're going to watch it , make sure you start at season 1 and I'm pretty sure you'll come to the same conclusion as I did by the time you get to the later seasons.

You can only milk so much out of a great idea😥

I love Harvey Keitel's acting chops but this is like an outtake from "The Irishman" where aging actors get one more shot at what they used to be brilliant at. He's still quite engaging but that energy is missing.

You couldn't have more of a wimp/wet blanket than the character portrayed by Sam Worthington, who is a hack writer hired by Lansky to tell his version of his life story.

It's either real bad acting or it's a case of a person just being himself, but it's vary hard to connect with him in this part.

The story shows the rise of Lansky through his combined gifts of ruthlessness and numbers talent ..... and the cast in these flashback scenes does a pretty good job. They have no problem offing people who get out of line.

Lansky is being chased by the FBI who are on a mission to recover some mythical 300 million dollars that he's supposed to have stashed away.

It's not a very successful mission and the way they go about it is very poorly presented, to the extent that they are made to look like caricatures of real FBI agents.

There's a love angle of course but even that is emotionless and shallow, as is most of the movie to be honest.

It's OK for a Saturday night if you're fed up watching "The Antiques Roadshow" but I wouldn't recommend that you spend real money to go and see it.

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 neither do I.

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.

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 and live an urban cowboy life of luxury in their own log cabin, with 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.

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 don't know who chose it, but the music is just brilliant with a few tracks from Jason Isbell that will knock your socks off.

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.

First things first, there's no way I could live in a city like London. All of the historic buildings and famous haunts that we see on the TV every day are but an exotic overlay to a wretched urban ghetto.

All of the council housing estates are fetid swamps of unemployment, hand to mouth existence , drugs and welfare. Its fractured and warring communities are managed by levels of government whose hallmarks are lofty speech and the absolute absence of initiative or compassion.

My hometown of Vancouver is bad in its own way but these megacities like London, New York, Chicago etc are Olympic Level open sewers.

Now we turn to the movie, which I see has received a lot of praise but let me tell you it won't get a lot from me.

It's a paper thin story of how a druggie adopts a cat and how the cat teaches him love and responsibility. From this, his life changes for the better.

Fair enough, but we all know that cats are the absolute opposite of love and responsibility; they don't care who their owners are as long as they get fed and they take off whenever they want to ... in other words the animal equivalent of Junkies.

This Junkie meets up with a girl who's just got the most fabulous set of gnashers that I've ever seen,( they're like a set of LED lights in Times Square) but sadly she's got no screen presence whatsoever.

Joanne Froggatt isn't too far removed from her part in Downton Abbey, as she plays the most unusual of parts... a social worker who actually gives a damn.

There's no real examination of his squalid addiction and so it just turns into The International Cat show.. As I said, I'm not that keen on cats.

There's too many trite scenes with moon faced sympathizers dropping five pound notes in his hat while he's singing, and there's one absolutely ridiculous Christmas scene where you know what's going to happen 10 minutes before it starts.

Luke Treadaway comes across as a trained actor trying to be a Junkie and doesn't quite pull it off. Ruta Gedmintas is probably a much better actress than this part allows for but let's be kind and say it didn't work this time.

Cat lovers will be furious with me but cats don't like me so this is my chance to give them the gears.

Not my kind of movie.

Clive Owen is a very good actor, Denzel Washington has all of the right star material and they do not a bad job in this movie made back in 2006. It's about a bank robbery in New York where nothing is robbed and no one is shot.

Yeah I'm serious ..

No one is shot in a New York cop movie.... say it ain't so😃

You'll get it when you watch the picture

I'm always mystified when they bring in a "fixer" in these sort of heist- come political intrigue thrillers ... Are there really people like that out there?

What's 'er face Foster does a good job as the fixer and to tell the truth, from my dealings with the New York, Political and Justice system, she's probably drawn from a real life character .....so there must be fixers in the system.

She doesn't have to do much though, either acting or in her role but she's pretty convincing with her business suits and elegant style.

It's a movie that you have to concentrate on or you'll lose the plot because it's one of those flashback set ups where you jump from one scene to another.

A pretty dreary performance from Christopher Plummer but let's not speak ill of those who have passed away.

It has a few clichéd moments in the script to keep it politically correct and it has an unnecessary side story involving the voluptuous girlfriend of Washington. But you need these things to keep it real, to raise the money and get people in to see it.

The ending's a bit confusing if you don't keep your wits about you but overall it was a good way to spend 2 hours or so even though it's back from 2006.

There's certain movies, like "Lock, stock and two smoking barrels", like The Crying Game." like "Snatch", that get you from the moment they start and this is one of those movies.

It features my favourite theme, that of an immigrant family facing the forces of the new culture now that their kids are assimilating.

In this case it's a Pakistani family steeped in the religious and, more importantly, the cultural values of their old country.

The son and the daughter are expected to do exactly what their father tells them to do and of course this clashes with the freedoms their English friends experience as a matter of right.

The son, Javed , is played wonderfully by Viveik Kalra . He wants to be a writer and he has a writer's gift, but this choice of career has no place in the father's mind, so there is heated conflict.

The conflict is worsened by Javed's adoration of the words and persona of Bruce Springsteen, who the father thinks is an American Jewish singer (Springsteen?) get it?

The casting is perfect and each and every one comes across as just right for the part... don't know how they do it but it is just so.

It is a marvelous portrayal of the entrenchment of the cultural values of one country and the difficulties of retaining them or adapting them in a new and completely different life.

I found myself biting my lip in a few of the family scenes as they were so emotional. I loved the level of respect the kids showed their parents even though they were resentful of the control the father had.

It moves along at a pleasant pace, it captures the mood of the Brits towards immigration in the Thatcher years and the emptiness of the employment picture at the time.

So it's got hopelessness, love, triumph and the rebirth of hope all in one storyline, done in great British style.

I loved it.

Couldn't watch more than first 5 minutes! It's like a sketch from SNL that tries to be funny when it's got nothing funny to work with.

It's a cross between one of those educational training films from the 70's and a pinterest collage, absolute garbage.

Where they get the money from or how they convince supposedly reputable historians to take part, is a problem that no algorithm could give us the answer to, even with quantum computers.

Another piece of Netflix sludge that is the inevitable result of having so much money to spend, and the voracious appetite of content.

I look forward to the day when I open the Wall Street Journal and see the stock price of Netflix ( and the other crap peddling streamers) .... at zero.

Then all of the current producers, directors, all of their hangers on and all of their content buyers will have to go back to their jobs at the 7-11 or Amazon fulfillment centers.

We would then at least have reached one target of the Paris agreement on reduction of pollutants into society.

Don't bother even wasting the 5 minutes I did on this , re-read an old Superman comic instead.