A welcome return to form by this exciting writer; this time he goes back to the Six Feet Under territory into another claustrophobic family dynamic, albeit much more ambitiously and literally bursting with great ideas. The show is so rooted in this moment in time that the name Here and Now could not be more apt. Great acting all around. You cannot fault this show for its scope and ambition, any criticisms must be stemming from the general dumbing down of the audiences who can't recognize a great thing when they see it. It's very sad the show got cancelled, we'll never know where it would have taken us had it had the time to develop. Loved every minute of it!
Reviews
4 Reviews
The Terror
(2018–2025)
Effective show spoiled by lousy creature CGI
10 May 2018
Jared Harris leads an extraordinary cast here; so much attention to detail and money was devoted to this series that when the creature is actually revealed, it is so awfully put together that it completely jeopardises the atmosphere everyone worked so hard to create, turning chilly terror into comedy. Harris is a revelation, no small feat as everyone around him is just fabulous, I hope he does more leading roles, the man deserves more exposure, his performance is so nuanced and drenched in emotion, it makes one wonder why we haven't seen more of him all these years. His old man would be proud!
Gerald's Game
(2017)
A missed opportunity
29 September 2017
A rare misstep for Netflix, this adaptation of Gerald's Game is nothing more than a cautionary drama about the silent suffering of a victim of paternal abuse. It feels like a TV movie and not in the vein of Desperation or Salem's Lot either, just a very mediocre TV movie devoid of any tension or creepiness of the source material. The acting is decent throughout but it alone is not enough to save the film of its general tediousness. Stephen King should like it, he seems to prefer blander adaptations of his work, rather than the more daring ones.
Mother!
(2017)
A timely film tackling one of the most important issues the mankind has ever faced
24 September 2017
I feel obliged to write in defense of Mother, Aronofsky's misunderstood minor masterpiece; three days after watching it, I still feel emotional tremors and deep uneasiness the film had caused in me. What causes movie-going public to so readily disregard a film that gives us something unexpected? Are we so lazy and complacent nowadays, to the point where the constant barrage of blandness from the mainstream media now causes us to recoil from the material that requires a bit of thought and emotional engagement? Mark Kermode's "diminished expectations" phrase comes to mind. For those expecting cheap scares of most recent horrors, I sympathize, the trailers were clearly trying to market this as a horror in order to put bums on seats. Of course it could be viewed as a horror, but just as Polanski's horror films are never just that, Mother! too offers so much more. Kathryn Bigelow recently said that it would be a shame not to use this medium to bring important issues to the front. Aronofsky is doing the same.
Rightly billed as the proper successor to An Inconvenient Truth, the movie has in it elements of Gaia, the theory invented by James Lovelock, the esteemed British scientist who warned us years ago that Earth, if pushed too far, will restore its natural balance by neutralizing the antagonizing agent, i.e. the human population. In fact, all of our negative traits are exposed in the third act: an insatiable appetite and propensity for violence and destruction, the hunger for the satisfaction of the ego, mindless celebrity and/or deity worship, an assumed right to claim ownership, readiness to bow to collective madness and, when given an opportunity, an utter disregard for others and the world we live in.
Jennifer Lawrence was perfectly cast for her role; her impotence to avert the oncoming disaster by rationality alone, was almost unbearable to watch; her innocence, honesty, emotional investment and trust she had placed in her relationship is continuously trampled on; she could almost be seen as a metaphor for powerlessness of the scientific community's consensus on global warming in the face of climate change deniers - no amount of reason or counting on the willingness to do what is right is enough, the loudest ones usually prevail.
Mother is a film for our times, it should be seen widely and I hope its magnificent heroine continues to contribute to its ticket sales, even if her fans might expect something a bit more "mainstream". It's not meant to be subtle, it wants to grab you by the shoulders, shake you and infuriate you. It perhaps wears its message on its shoulder a bit too strong, but that's not a criticism in my mind, it is a message that needs to be shouted out and this film certainly does just that.
Bravo!
Rightly billed as the proper successor to An Inconvenient Truth, the movie has in it elements of Gaia, the theory invented by James Lovelock, the esteemed British scientist who warned us years ago that Earth, if pushed too far, will restore its natural balance by neutralizing the antagonizing agent, i.e. the human population. In fact, all of our negative traits are exposed in the third act: an insatiable appetite and propensity for violence and destruction, the hunger for the satisfaction of the ego, mindless celebrity and/or deity worship, an assumed right to claim ownership, readiness to bow to collective madness and, when given an opportunity, an utter disregard for others and the world we live in.
Jennifer Lawrence was perfectly cast for her role; her impotence to avert the oncoming disaster by rationality alone, was almost unbearable to watch; her innocence, honesty, emotional investment and trust she had placed in her relationship is continuously trampled on; she could almost be seen as a metaphor for powerlessness of the scientific community's consensus on global warming in the face of climate change deniers - no amount of reason or counting on the willingness to do what is right is enough, the loudest ones usually prevail.
Mother is a film for our times, it should be seen widely and I hope its magnificent heroine continues to contribute to its ticket sales, even if her fans might expect something a bit more "mainstream". It's not meant to be subtle, it wants to grab you by the shoulders, shake you and infuriate you. It perhaps wears its message on its shoulder a bit too strong, but that's not a criticism in my mind, it is a message that needs to be shouted out and this film certainly does just that.
Bravo!
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