Reviews

To start, my ONLY complaint.. without close-captioning I would have missed 50% of the dialogue. Which is unfortunate because the very intelligent dialogue is at the very heart of this. To offer a cliche, you have to "lean in" to get it all, but in this case in the best sense.

The dialogue of international diplomacy, where every word, every nuance can be the difference in causing, or averting, the world's next disaster. Of course, what makes this work is the superb and very attractive cast, which elevates the great writing to another level. The rocky marriage of Kate and Hal is milked for all its painful complexity and occasional hilarity. David Gyasi as British Secretary Dennison is just wow. Somehow Keri Russell manages to pull off a very palpable chemistry with both men.

The secondary cast is great, and carries the story along. Smart people saying smart things, and holding the fate of the world in a tenuous detente.

This is intelligent and compelling television.

I'm glad I made it to the last episode, it is riveting, and I can't wait til next season!

Took me a couple of episodes to appreciate the comedic take on a dark moment in history. When I got past that I just settled back and enjoyed it, and the pairing of Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux was just perfect to capture the buffoonery, but wannabe badassery, of Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy.

The soundtrack was particularly good. Especially the brilliant scene in episode 4 that segues from the Nixon rally (Mike Curb Congregation singing 'Nixon Now') to Dorothy Hunt becoming the unwilling but cool operator to clean up Howard's mess (Eddie Kendrick's 'Go on With Your Bad Self').

Just sit back and enjoy it!

Imagine a world where people ignore the dire warnings of serious scientists, even when their lives are in peril. Imagine a world where the worship of celebrity takes precedence over any other issue. Where science-deniers are not just a fringe element, but instead governments are controlled and run by them. Where no amount of evidence, including actual photographs, can change their minds.

Well, OK, there's really no alternative except to make a movie about it, and skewer it unmercifully. And in this case, make it both serious and entertaining, and throw enough high octane Streep/Blanchett/DiCaprio/ Lawrence firepower at it to make it impossible to be uninteresting. I was surprised that such care was taken to treat the 'implausible scenario' with the seriousness it deserved, while serving up the satire with such surgical and hilarious precision.

It's not perfect; as mentioned some nuance might have helped. Nitpick all you want. But in a world so lacking in nuance, so irretrievably dumbed-down, this was a most welcome escape.

Woke? Artsy? UTOPIAN?? REALLY??

Ok, I did read the book recently, but before I became aware that HBO would re-imagine it as a series. My initial reaction was how the mood of this story could be conveyed on film. Because the success, or failure, of the story is how it makes you feel. It was a slow, disjointed read that ever so slowly gets under your skin. It is the aftermath of a devastating pandemic that brings about the 'End of Times' as we know it.

(Is that what's triggering the Woke police? This was written in 2014). And more importantly how 5 or 6 unrelated survivors are connected by a common thread.

The prevailing mood is elegiac. The devastation is real. What does it mean to be human under these conditions? There are no roving bands of zombies- would that have made it less boring? No mutant assassins? Whaaaatt?

Some of the characters are actor/musicians in a roaming theatrical troupe, because that's what gives their lives at least some meaning. I guess that's artsy.

As to the series itself, I have only watched the first episode. Plan to continue after the holidays. I'm actually pleased with one of the main departures from the book; The relationship between Kirsten and Jeevan is much more developed. It is also a beautifully-shot film to look at. The other characters actually look and sound like what I imagined. I look forward to seeing the rest of this great story.

First, I'll get out of the way my one and only criticism. Could they not find ONE German and ONE Danish actor to at least affect the accents, instead of two Brits? I love both of these guys, but come on... ok done.

For the first one-third of the movie, I had the feeling I was watching an ambitious after-school special, written to introduce high school AP physics students to this pivotal moment in 20th century quantum mechanics. And two of its major creators, Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. As a practicing physicist, I knew the topics they discussed well, but I was not aware of this meeting between the two. So it seemed like a clever way to introduce a bunch of actual physics principles, using the 3 (and only 3) characters, to avoid the clutter of unrelated melodrama.

After I let myself sink into the story, I realized it was much more - a quietly poetic take on the tremendous political upheaval of that awful time, the ethical choices that brilliant people had to make in weighing moral, national, and family priorities. And the tantalizing pull of one of the towering achievements in modern science, which united the 'good guys' and the 'bad guys'.

The unsettling realization that had the Nazis not looked down their noses at 'Jewish science', this all might have very easily, and very nearly did, go the other way.

A sobering thought.