All User Reviews

**Score: 9/10 — A Pioneering, Profound, and Perfectly Portrayed Sci-Fi Masterpiece** *Alien Nation* is that rare gem: a television sequel that not only honours its source film but deepens, enriches, and transcends it. Premiering in 1989, this series was decades ahead of its time, using the brilliant, high-concept premise of alien integration as a flawless lens to examine the most pressing and permanent human issues. It is a **grossly overlooked** classic that deserves to be ranked among the greats of socially conscious science fiction. **A Seamless, Superior Continuation:** …

**Score: 10/10 — A Masterpiece of Character, Chemistry, and Quiet Revolution** *Elementary* is not just a great adaptation; it is a perfect television series. What begins as a clever, modern-day New York reinvention of Sherlock Holmes evolves over seven seasons into one of the most profoundly human, intelligently written, and emotionally resonant dramas ever to grace the screen. A reconsideration reveals its true stature: this is a **10/10 show**, a landmark achievement where the mystery-of-the-week is merely the elegant framework for a breathtaking exploration of recovery, family, and …

I was thrilled with "Bosch," happy with "Bosch: Legacy," and disappointed by "Ballard." Any way, Michael Connelly undoubtedly knows how to write gripping crime novels. Hoping that "Lincoln Lawyer" would be entertaining, I gave the series a chance. The stories themselves have potential. The series, however, less so. I feel sorry for the actor, but I'll say it anyway: The character Mickey Haller has two strengths: wit and charm. Three episodes into the first season, I haven't seen the latter. At all. Aside from everything else: In a series like this, the main character has to be con…

55/100 A man goes to his childhood home in the wilderness and encounters the local wildlife. Big fan of Whannell (writer/director) but he relied on too many horror cliches: wrecking a car while looking away, dragging his family to the wilderness to bring them together, etc. Chris Abbott & Matilda Firth were great but Julia Garner's stone-faced expression rarely changed. Great transformation to wolf; unlike other films that do it quickly, this one had it occurring gradually over time making it intensely horrific and utterly tragic but beyond that, this was basic wolf man 101. -- DrNostro…

There is something quite unsentimentally touching about this story of the young “Alfred” (Pelle Falk Krusbæk). He is a perfectly lucid, but wheelchair bound, lad who is terminally ill in a Danish hospital and who sits in the garden daydreaming with his toy aeroplane. One afternoon he meets the handyman “Enzo” (Casper Crump) sitting on a bench, who imparts some of the fruits of his vivid imagination to the young lad leaving him enjoying some simple adventures in a land of helium-fuelled fantasy. There does appear to be an absence of parents here, and so “Enzo” begins to bond more emotionally wi…

An attractively tousled young typesetter (Matthew Needham) lives with his dad (Eric Richard) and has been having a six-month long online chat with "Ellie” (Chloe Pirrie). Why make a film about him? Well he stutters. Making himself verbally understood in an impatient world is nigh on impossible, and with the exception of his father he chats to nobody - preferring on occasion to pretend he is mute. Then “Ellie” announces that she is coming to London and wants to meet. Clearly their chat hasn’t revealed that he has difficulties with his speech and so he faces a crisis. Does he meet and risk disap…

This story of real characters is told via two timelines. The more menacing tells us that Hilde (Liv Lisa Fries) has been apprehended by the Nazis and imprisoned for assisting her husband Hans (Johannes Hegemann) as he worked for a free Germany in wartime Berlin. The second thread shows us their summer of love. We meet them, and their friends, and follow their love affair through to their wedding and their conceiving the child that she is now doomed to bear in custody. Luckily, despite a fairly terrifying start to her incarceration and the process of her childbirth, Hilde - hitherto a dental nu…

When some cricketing force majeure robs “Thelma” (Pauline Collins) of her overbearing husband, she can finally look forward to some years without bothering about his chrysanthemums or aversion to tuna. Unfortunately, her rather venal son “Derek” (Peter Capaldi) and wife “Veronica” (Anna Wilson-Jones) have other plans and before she knows it, “Thelma” has been bundled into a care home where she is expected to take her pills and behave herself. Her observations after a few days, though, lead her to believe that this cannot be what her future holds. Allying with nurse “Gina” (Angela Bruce) she be…

With many Canadians overseas fighting in WWII, this feature formed part of the “Canada Carries On” series, and depicts the migration patterns of birds in and around their country and across the Americas in general. The photography captures really quite well the geese and many other species that travel hundreds if not thousands of miles in remarkably short times - 1400 miles in 48 hours - and as the clue is in the title, the rest of this film illustrates that these elegant when airborne creatures care not about mankind’s borders on the ground. Along their journeys they are frequently shot at, o…

Using a combination on documentary style film making and some more theatrical re-enactments, this takes a candid approach to it’s telling of the story of troubled playwright Andrea Dunbar - probably most famous for her “Rita, Sue and Bob Too”. The arbor in question is a street on the 1950s Buttershaw housing estate in the Yorkshire city of Bradford, and it’s primarily through the eyes of those portraying her children that we get a glimpse of the booze and drug-fuelled lives of many who lived in this working class community. Lorraine (Manjinder Virk) and Lisa (Christine Bottomley) quite ably pr…