Reviews

To oblige artistic expression to insert certain directives is to restrain it. Never liked it.

There was a moral time, now it's a woke time, it's LGBT time, it's anti-racism time.

So, you have to have all of these things packed and impressed in what is considered present art, either in writing, cinema, you name it, it's imperative. That was a thing you shouldn't have to expect in a series of this kind, in HBO, in the expression of George Martin. Instead you have baroque wigs, pretentious false wigs, a prominence of African ethnicity, LGBT actors that want to be called by plural and a sensation of something being forced and artificiality.

You have great costumes and scenarios but they should be represented as 200 years more archaic than Game of Thrones. Not to mention the dialogues and the characterization. Again, false wigs, bland acting, out-of-place sensation, plastic. There's no real tension, theater, drama, realism as in the first 5 seasons of Game of Thrones, there's this beautiful politically (woke) correct package perfectly hollow with pivots that are pretending to act... for a very specific audience.

I had to stop viewing each episode at some point not because I was astonished but because I was bored, frustrated and disappointed! This is literally, a «travesti» of the first seasons of Game of Thrones.

I cannot accept Star Wars has become politicized... It's too much this nonsense of having to push something just for the sake of political correctness. I couldn't care less about the role of Moses Ingram as Reva. It's plain, it's bad. It does not carry any kind of weight, of personal story, it's boring. I couldn't care less about O'Shea Jackson Jr. Gangsta mannerisms as I couldn't care less about his fathers. Both of them aren't the representation of Black Power if one accepts both of them are there for political correctness only and exclusive for its sake. Darth Vader on the other side is. James Earl Jones unequivocally is! James Earl Jones is a Shakespearean actor in the true sense. He labored his career with hard work, served the army in the war, he battled his stuttering, he battled his color, his passion of keep acting. He's one of my heroes, he's BLACK and he's one of the strongest souls of STAR WARS if not the strongest. James Earl Jones is not simply a great actor, he's one of the greatest actors in American history. The first two, are merely two spoiled brats, two mockeries of a great culture. This show is a disappointment.

I am Portuguese and I live in Portugal. I love my culture and I love my dear fellow Portuguese emmigrants. I couldn't care less about this cancel culture or the woke movement. I'm African, Jewish, Celtish, Scandinavian, Luso, Iberian, Roman, Arab, Greek, Chinese... I'm Portuguese, and I'm a mixture of all these cultures and thousands more and I'm sick of this cynical inquisition where comedy is censored, sick of these inquisitors which only see bad things everywhere, stereotypes, racism, hate, who generate the real gaps between different cultures.

This movie does not have outdated racist stereotypes... it simply shows some of our traces, perhaps some of the most evident and obvious. Yes, we work hard, yes we love bacalhau, yes we love Ronaldo and are obsessed with football, yes we love to sing our hymn, yes we love our familly, yes we go to the church, yes we love barbecues and love chouriço, morcela, queijo, salpicão, presunto, yes we hide our money in bags, closets, below our bed, yes we love to dance Pimba music and hear Fado, yes we love to sing "Portugal Olé!" And yes, we love to make fun of ourselves and criticize everything.

The purpose of this movie is exactly the opposite of what is said in the past 2 reviews: it's to show that Portuguese have very big hearts and souls and that different cultures and religions don't necessarily have to clash. The undercover police went to this voyage of discovering how amazing our culture is, giving the insight to the French that we as emigrants are not some kind of weird species. At the end we all got together by the force of friendship and humour, Arabs, Portuguese, French.

Grow up and thumbs up to this light comedy, I certainly did enjoy it.

Gotham's ratings are hollow as money speculation, histerically inflated like intestinal gases inside colourful balloons.Tim Burton's two Batman movies deserve those kind of scores, Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight" deserve it too. The kitsch series stands up for high rankings also. Because there's a solid, strong writing behind all of them, and hugely talented actors. Frank Miller and Alan Moore are two of those writers.

The series starts kind of okay with its ups and downs, great episodes, not so good ones, some really good and faithful to the comics noir essence. Then it gets caught on a vertigo of improbable situations, the string of the narrative becomes chaotic, the characters become erratic and look like puppets on a child's stage. It starts to sound ridiculous. There's no concept of death anymore, the basis of Batman's world.

But it gets worse when the series starts to look like a cheap soap opera, the quality of the acting decreases, the comedy becomes a desperate attempt to catch the audiences. It's really painful to see DC ruining it's world while the blind fans are applauding it.

I am one of those people that watched the series from the beginning and I'm always comparing the excellency of the first 4 seasons with every episode. The next seasons are at best average (in GoT standards) and have many mediocre episodes as also as excellent ones. But the decline is visible from season to season with the balance pointing to the loosing of quality, in the script, in the characters development, essentially. Basically after George Martin stopped participating in the series.

It's incorrect of IMDb to allow people to review anything without seeing it first, or at least, before giving the logical time to people to review something. It's wrong because this policy foments the extremism and a false speculation of ratings, which stops to indicate the real quality of something and feeds a dichotomy of fanaticism, the ones against, the ones in favor.

IMDb should not allow every profile to rate something. There should be a criteria for the profiles allowed to do rankings, to prevent bot ratings, or marketing ratings or even counter-publicity ratings made by false profiles.

Resuming, despite the fact that the authors of the series have done real damage to the scripting and dangerously decreased the quality of the series, as a stand alone episode this is a good one, if not, by comparison with the previous of this season.

Surely this is not a master piece, and surely it's not a complete trash either. Prepare yourself for silly humor, don't contain your laughs no matter how silly they look like. Forget these hysterical haters and their exaggerated low ratings. Simply, have fun and let it flow.

A simple story centred in a Freudian thematic (Oedipus complex) with a strong sense of justice. A visually astonishing picture with textures of decadence and hope in a dreamlike Lynchian ambience.

The major number of reviewers here simply don't have the cinematographic skills to properly appreciate a good film as a piece of art and not just entertaining. The substantiation of their ratings is hollow as stock exchange shares, although it weights unjustly on the ranking of a film.

It's because of the quality standards of this kind of episodes, "Game of Thrones" deserves to be criticized when somehow it deviates itself to a Hollywoodesque pretension of becoming a money apparatus for the audiences. Because it indeed damages its quality when this nonsense gets stuck in the heads of the economic maestros. Not only is unnecessary but also detrimental.

This season has been generally like that with its ups and downs being the best of it plainly average because it gets banal when compared with other existent series made to be watched and thrown in the recycle bin.

But this episode stroke me with a exhalation of hope. Truly... (or is it just me hungering for old GOT's primordial quality?) It proved me that the artistic sense of representation, an excellent script, the great dramatizations of great actors leaded by great directors orchestrating great "musicians" surpasses by far the hysteric need of special effects or everything having to be "BIG". Of course special effects are welcome, but they shouldn't be at the top of the pyramid of priorities. They are extras.

Anyway, trash with that big. Big were the majestic dramatizations of Liam Cunningham (Ser Davos), Clive Russell (Brynden 'Blackfish' Tully), Diana Rigg (Olenna Tyrell) and most specially, the incredible Bella Ramsey (Lyanna Mormont). With honourable mentions to Natalie Dormer (Margaery Tyrell), Rory McCann, Ian McShane (Brother Ray) and Tim McInnerny (Robett Glover).

And also BIG were the photography, the wardrobe, the landscapes, the characters developments, this episode.

If you want an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's "Ripley's Game" in terms of fantasy and fictional characters, very romanticized and unlikely to be true with a photocopied Malkovich's acting already present in his last 100 movies, go see this film with a bourgeois popcorn in one hand and a pompous pseudo-intellectual hollywoodesque far-fetched compliment on the other.

If you want the opposite, check out Wim Wender's 1977s masterpiece "Der Amerikanische Freund" (aka. "The American Friend") and delight yourself with the dramatic triangular acting of these extraordinary actors and one of Wim Wender's mentors: the young Bruno Ganz and Dennis Hopper plus a still ferocious Nicholas Ray. Sadly Nicholas Ray dies almost 2 years after but not before co-directing his last film "Lightning Over Water" with his friend Wim Wenders.

If you haven't seen it, after you've done it and unless you are in denial, you'll seriously reconsider "Ripley's game".

I couldn't care less if the Series is diverging from the Literature: the books are not canonical texts (neither I would bother if they were); I couldn't care less about disputing which one is the chosen one: the source will always be the "best" because it was the first and it's the basis for the inspiration... well, that's subjective, but hey... I couldn't care less!

We readers and viewers have to understand that one thing is a book, another thing is an audiovisual work. Both have merits on their own and both use different languages to speak for themselves. What comes first comes first, but I couldn't care less. After all the author is blessing the series, even directing some episodes, and he is all smiles about its route, so... why whining?

What matters for me is quality, its juice - narrative with excellence. A story with layers and layers of reviving itself from the ashes, the mighty test of enduring when being hammered in flames, the plausibility of a character's metamorphosis (our own in life), the prevailing string of a persona's charisma: Shakespearean political plots vs. Humanism.

That's what you will find in this episode. Forget about hysterical plot turmoils, Hollywood agendas and frantic compasses. You'll only find a solid narrative with delightful clues for the "Wars to Come". When you reaffirm the protocols of seeing good old "Game of Thrones" again and for the 5th time the episode has already finished leaving you with a watery eye. Son of a...!

Characters, British accent, plot, the dark side, Ralph McQuarrie's embryonic Chewbacca, Han's Solo clone whatever his name is, totally outdated non physic 3D movements... predictable, boring, annoying, cloying.

Sincerely, I started to fell impatient since the 3rd episode, not enjoying or having a pleasant experience watching the series.

I give it 4, because Disney had the obligation to surpass Luca's mess. Disney had the time and the bad examples to make a good work, nothing good except for Ralph McQuarrie's aesthetics.

Now let's see what happens to the Episode VII, let's pray together.

May the force be brought from the 70s.

This episode belongs to a kind of group that I call the "elegant bridges", meaning that the subtle lines connecting the plot and the characters themselves, are allowed to be shown in a rare and precious light of the day; a privilege shown in a manner that even for both tough spoiled spectators or enlighten readers, it continues to endure in its full richness and complexity. It's still elegant, either you see it for the first time knowing nothing or as a repetition.

Like taking your armor off showing the soft parts and their inner defensive reasons, you have an intimate approach of the narrative and the characters, a human-contact literature quality experience.

Simply put, I felt watching this episode, as if I was absorbed in a visual reading session: myself, the bed or the toilet, the book, and the private voyeuristic relation around the story and the characters. The attachment, the connection, the confided secret. Excellence in cinematic narrative with each piece of the stories completed in its cycle with its own essential elements. Two adjectives: very rich, very elegant.

Most people are used to be guided by other's ratings or previous existent movie rankings. Those people are used to be guided by acclaimed critics and those critics are guided by economical waves made in Hollywood. It's only media that matters as a global sociological phenomena and That's the only reason it occurs to me to explain the fact that everywhere this movie is being so low rated. In IMDb, Metacritics, Rotten Tomatoes. That and the power of denial.

Like in Hannanh Arendt sociological and political philosophy, this is not an easy black and white bad and evil piece of crap made in Hollywood, nor the spectator is in his sofa's comfort watching different twilight zone wolds assuming they have fictional characters with totally alien behaviors from his own human moral and ethical patterns. As in Hannanh's true philosophy, evil is not an extraordinary thing made by extraordinary people, in contrary is made by common people like you and I and it's the regurgitation of a cultural sociological mechanism called society. Adding the fact that you are an animal untied of moral directives when living with others in adversary and limited conditions, if, you don't follow strict rules common to all. Imagine an astronaut being anarchic in a shared space capsule!

That's the way our societies are driving in, putting the ego in first place, the money, the subtraction of the other for your own survival. That's the message you get if you see yourself mirrored in the possibilities of acting in such a desperate context. That's the way you behave if you are unable to reflect yourself as a possible selfish character of this movie. And that's the way thing's will always be if you keep insisting you are above bad actions or consequence of behavior: If you consider yourself exempt of possibly acting "devilish" either in reality, hypothesis or fiction, past present or future.

Great acting, script, photography. Like mules, spectators are not admitting that even if a movie bothers you deeply, it does not imply like a straight binary arrow it's a bad movie. Pay attention: Cinema is not made exclusively to please you or to throw popcorn!

Every essential debunking is already made not extraordinary but very satisfactory in the contra documentary "Ancient Aliens Debunked". Although you can corroborate everything in Science documentaries or accessible data online, everywhere, if indeed you are respecting at least in a minuscule way the scientific world you use everyday... if not only by the simple fact you're using the internet as a scientific tool, it's indeed your choice to be either rational or irrational upon verified corroborated data.

As also as it's impressive to notice many reviews pointing to a final decision of the spectator about to choose or not to choose the validation of the arguments stated on the series...

But THIS is NOT a question of choice! You cannot choose some point of view in scientific terms when it's not validated in that terms, or worst, it's already proved only valid in the realms of fiction, and even worst when you supplant this fiction upon Science and then label it as the "truthful wisdom" attributing and reflecting that biased pseudo-posture to the long term validated facts discovered by Science.

It's absurd and it shows that the absurd high ratings of this series reflect the astonishing ignorance and the self centred premisses of the exploiting media and the fanaticism of its blinded acolytes. If taking into account many comments stating the world's societies are hiding fundamental secrets from citizens, indeed these "Ancient Aliens" series pivots aren't at all, paradoxically, the "illuminators" of that hidden truth, and indeed the statements they're asserting as true are completely and boldly FALSE:

Indeed they're filling their pockets by and also because of YOU ignorant one, who will continue to be progressively manipulated while seeing them as the lighthouses of your own doubts WHO progressively feed the world with obscurantism, as the governments you contest. Pure TRUTH.

It's modern, it's fresh, it doesn't have boring moments, but... it's too much assertive and does not take into account fresh and relevant possibilities.

This documentary was made in 2009, new data was available in 2010. Neanderthals interbred after all with homo sapiens (conclusion by Neanderthal genome Project), and even so if the Chinese Homo Erectus indeed is not a direct ancestor of Chinese people, indeed as modern humans have in their genome traces of Neanderthal's, Asian people have also Denisovans' ancestry who share some similarities (teeth) with Homo Erectus.

It's too focused and emphasized only on available data (at the time the documentary was made) and does not focus on other reasonable hypothesis. Not to say is self-centered on Alice Roberts's point of view. It abuses on a linear logic when the result of that logic excludes possibilities outside its own realm. The result could not be scientific, like it wasn't when Neanderthal-Sapiens interbreed hypothesis was excluded just because the majority didn't thought so.

Although it's a fresh light palaeoanthropology documentary it has a biased point of view.

Wannabe, wanna be, therefore it is. Let's face it: Dark Knight was good, a very good film, but frankly it was almost exclusively that good, because it was a sort of adaptation of Alan Moore's "Killing Joke" and because, despite the hysteria of Heath Ledger's dramatic and unfortunate death, The Joker was a great one, a master villain. I will not compare it with Jack Nicholson's because that one was exceptional. Ledger's was very good, almost excellent. The residual memory emerges from this point; people want "The Dark Knight Rises" to be a sequel of that excellency, as I did, as Nolan forced us to believe so... as some kind of religious belief keeping us blindly seeing the way it was supposed to be, but it wasn't. It wasn't indeed, as the first of Nolan's trilogy it was a disbelief and a mime of the second. Without a matured anti-hero, this Batman collapses.

Somewhere somehow if not already at the plane, I started to feel I was being fooled by the Hollywood machine, again and again; my "want it to be as so" was there no more, vanishing, while I gradually started to notice the annoying, repeating and exaggerated soundtrack pushing me for a critical pause. Hans Zimmer made me seriously question about everything in this movie, existentially, if indeed I was facing the terrifying possibility of seeing another 2 hours of hollowed clichés noised by a syrupy music... another disappointment to add. You name it, Star Wars, Prometheus, Conan... I tried, I really did, I even said to myself to take it easy at my criticism and expectation, but there was no emotion to attach with, instead the music was continuously persisting in forcing the spectator to delude himself that indeed there was, like a crazy frantic miraged dance going to nowhere subliming the emptiness.

Simply put, the narrative didn't allow me to empathize with the characters, all of it was forced like an hyperactive quest to push the audience for an illusion of a final master piece, an idea that would be preferable not to be discarded, like a comfortable thought as nice as a wall separating the movie from the spectator. We were comfortably eating popcorns nicely throwing the bags to the floor.

I didn't like Bate's Bat forced voice, I don't like his costume, I haven't felt jubilated when he arose from the ashes, I kept wondering about Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns": what a pale reflex this film was revealing itself, bad omen I was getting bored, I wondered about the time of the intermezzo that would never come. I felt myself observing a hysterical sequence of forced dramatic situations, not realism, not Bat's Gothic existentialism. There was no voyeurism, there was no personal attachment, there was no time to feel emotionally connected... there was right in front of your nose... another banal Hollywood film using a Batman's stamp, a "Bruce Wayne's" costume fairy tail.

You have to be given compassed storyline hidden behind a door's hole, like preparing for the battle tasting a good cup of old wine expecting the confronting dilemma of mirroring yourself, like Alan Moore's and Frank Miller's Batman art of questioning... not this artificial and plastic speaking dolls acting for a spoiled audience, for statistics and budget and major gross openings! Michael Caine, I would punch your nose, how could you let this happen?.

Everyone speaks about Bale's voice... heck with it! But of course it's strange, but of course, you just have to wonder you are a human being deprived from your childhood, although a noble guardian of a child's innocence... his own lost one... no? Great potential, great inner thought, great professional and passionate commitment and study, Tom Hardy's personification... but not properly explored by his director. You weren't given time or you weren't properly presented to his drama simply put. It was illustrated as just another sketched brute villain, with an Ah...! here he is, surpassed by the next one, Ah... he is no more... and after a Oh...! a magical ethereal Batman is again, with his darn forced bad ass voice, right from the canonic pit of the survivors to smack the forces of evil... (Joel Schumacker... no?)

I won't spoil the storytelling although I was spoiled by this film's lack of depth rich of busted expectations. Like every popcorn movie, this one innovates itself... it's Gothic an it has wings; obviously satisfies one's expectation behaving as just as commonly as a epidermic chain of pretentious tragic sensations, clichés, totally predicted and totally comfortable. And don't tell me this is just a comic movie, don't be so intellectual you say... Oh yes? Don't throw me that load of crap, because Nolan wanted this trilogy to surpass the previous ones using as trump two of the most darker comic book authors: Alan Moore and Frank Miller. If anything was to be expected, it was fulfilling expectations!

At the end, nothing new is added only sustained by its historicity and by the programmed acting of it as a frantic piece of firework conquering claps and tears from the crowd. This is not for a Batman apologist. This is equal to what was pretentiously challenged except for now the difference is merely dressed in kinky black and pompous tricks of magic.

Well, people justify a positive review of this piece of... by comparing it with common movies being made in Hollywood, also the recently baked ones. Exactly, presently made in Hollywood. Except the universe is not Hollywood neither cinema was born today.

If you still believe cinema was created a few years ago and you think the film industry gravitates Hollywood, well, you're wrong and probably you're having issues about transforming yourself into a gasified brainless popcorn. You'll love this one if that's the case, I mean, if you already are indeed a newborn popcorn. Not the case, you'll only taste a synthetic audience statistical bombastic and orgasmic glutton load of b.... of a movie fully packed with good actors.

That's all, you'll be hungry a few minutes after, after you've seen this rubbish as if you ate a junky non deteriorating cheeseburger, and in the comfort of your home without noises to interfere your thoughts you'll be quite upset for wasting your money understanding you've made a major mistake: believing in money gluttons disguised in fairy promotional cultural religious tales. But as people say... it's Hollywood!

Hello, I am an original spectator of Star Wars theatrical début in Portugal, having 4 years old, raining heavily in December it was close to my birthday, it was Christmas. Neither I have seen anything that spectacular nor the world, or my father the one that lead me to this memorial day... In terms of space fantasy of course. I saw it at least 20 times at cinemas. I'm mentioning it because I had severe asthma attacks and had to leave the theatre at some point, by the excitement and emotional attachment. Well, ultimately my parents pushed me into it. They were feeling also as kids and they were establishing a bridge of communication with their son compensating the gap between us, perhaps the world was finally taking a break, a deep breath from previous political disasters which like a wave reached all corners of the world. I deeply felt the 70s and the beginning of 80s were the best times of my life. There was hope, I felt it.

No. This is not a parents guide, neither vanity, neither morality, it's just to simply state that I never got tired of seeing Star Wars despite all, not even by now, all the genuine three. And I have an eye for films, don't ask me specifically why or in what, but boy I can tell if a film is a hoax or not.

By now I don't have any problems confessing my fan crimes, transformed myself as a Star Wars atheist. They begun with "Empire Strikes Back", somehow with its special effects. Neither the tauntauns or the AT-AT walkers frame to frame animation caught my interest... something was changing, perhaps an excessive preoccupation to exceed everything, a megalomania quest... but Master Yoda did it, the psychological cave did and Freudian Vader did also. I forget my inner thoughts, the hope persisted and I sincerely cried when the Jedi returned, sacrificing himself for his son. I still do considering the ascension to Vader's redemption one of the best scenes in Star Wars universe. I was being taught to never lost hope for Darth Vader, my anti-hero, the revolted anger the one that suffered in silence, myself as a child. Somehow I always knew Vader wasn't bad but a victim and a pawn of circumstances, I was being Luke Skywalker in heart, excusing my family scars giving pause to guilt. Perhaps Star Wars compensated my lacking of a familiar functional structure. I saw "THX 1138" definitely acknowledging that Star Wars saga was encrypted with philosophy, mythology and psychology, it was juicy and complex, my inner attachment wasn't in vain. I was delirious. Lucas was indeed my mentor. When I was lost, Star Wars was my anchor, I think it was also Luca's.

The "Ewok Adventure" was released after "Return of the Jedi", making me suspecting at that time that something wasn't going right, something disturbing the force, something paradoxical. The same director created both the trilogy and this... nonsense. How could it be? I understood by then that a film was composed by many pieces, Lucas only directed Star Wars IV in Star Wars first trilogy. If there weren't many key factors as its perfect edition (Lucas's wife included) Star Wars would be a flop. Lucas didn't compose the music, neither illustrated his imagination, nor put to effort the realistic special effects, or voiced Darth Vader, created the laser sound effects, C3-P0's soul, R2D2's bips and independent personality, Chewbaka's corporal expression, Yoda's puppeteering, Vader's breeding, Han Solo's acting, Luke's commitment, Ben Kenobi's humongous acting posture... and so forth. After that "Return of the Jedi" was re-released in theatres. I thought good, perhaps Lucas is creating the first 3. I noticed the credits were slightly modified, I didn't understand why.

When I picked a look at some samples of the new remastered trilogy in 1997, I felt the same strange feeling when facing "The Ewok Adventure", something wasn't right again. Something wasn't definitely right when the originals were shadowed from the market. My stomach got funny just by thinking Lucas was erasing and changing history, just by wondering Lucas was acting as the emperor of his appropriated empire. I couldn't believe Lucas was spoiling his own work... or indeed it was exclusively the fruits of his only own work? There was a disturbance in my force when I started to understand there were many many people involved allowing Star Wars to be a success as I discovered the beautiful art of Ralph McQuarrie. I started my own quest in search of the hidden crucial elements. But I couldn't betray my master, not in a Sith way. I kept the hope... until I sceptically saw "The Phantom's Menace". Coincidentally cutting relations with my father at a contemporary time. Wished he was at this début as he was in the first time.

For 30 years I expected to see a complex intricate dark transformation of Darth Vader, to understand why there were so many parallels in this Father and Son Freudian story, reflected on my own family relation. Why one should follow the Jedi way expressed on the artist's work, the sequel of his philosophical pursuit of a better world, a better democracy, a recycled expression of Luca's principles? All of it has been betrayed for economical interests, antagonizing the code of the good ones, effectively extinguishing the Jedi order, showing that indeed Society has a Sith partnership and the empire hides in pseudo principles absorbing everything to itself. Perhaps he'll return as a Jedi, but I already lost my hope. Jedi fans as myself became orphans of a pseudo world antagonistic to a raw cruel reality. The Jedi order was betrayed and slaughtered by its innocence and naivety, Lucas abandoned his own therapy, his own parallels to the world he'd created, his idealism now transformed into cynicism, the tool of the survivors, the preachers.