Reviews

This is only my opinion, I'm merely speculating about what may be happening in a situation such as this one.

I remember when that Jenner woman would allegedly ring up the tabloids anytime Paris let her daughter tag along on the Y2K LA club scene in exchange for post-dance foot massages so she, too, could steal a bit of spotlight. This is, of course, after Kris was supposedly milking her ex's Olympic fame by pushing those absurd fitness infomercials and way before she allegedly created a scheme of a "church" which I'm pretty sure no one except the IRS will be attending anytime soon.

Let's boomerang back to when Kris allegedly released an...um, "intimate tape" starring her own daughter and, somehow convinced Ryan Seacrest to have TV camera operators follow her and her family around and make a show about it. Dear Lord, WHY? So, I am speculating that... Everything. Everything. That family does is a publicity stunt orchestrated by Kris. Even the unflattering things they end up getting more free press from equates to free attention. Makes sense. Everyone loves to hate the Kardashians and even that is attention which equates to dollars, right?

With that said, this is no different. It's only more attention-seeking. Due to the fact that narcissism awareness is having a moment, I am only guessing here that this could be why I and so many others are disgusted when we even hear the name "Kardashian." Perhaps this may play a role in why so many Hulu subscribers canceled their subscription? Perhaps in protest?

With that said, let's ask WHY it wasn't called "Keeping Up With The Jenners?" There were WAY MORE Jenners in that household than Kardashians if I remember correctly. Oh, yeah. This was right around the time Mom allegedly had a hand in releasing that aforementioned tape starring her daughter, a Kardashian.

If milking others' attention isn't enough, consider the victims in this debacle. The maltreated employees. The innocent kids who are used in a way far exceeding the evil of Mommy Vloggers. And, the assignation of one's own child to commit lewd acts with (Ray Jay, was it?) for the entire WORLD to consume. This is, of course, only my own opinion and speculation.

I hope the reign of the K family is over.

This should not be called a film, nor a biopic. While it's based on JCO's completely fabricated story book, this was unreasonably painful to watch and nearly impossible to get through. "This" Marilyn has a Cuban accent and so-called life events that are far from factual. Absolutely nothing about this was remotely accurate, nor was it intended to be. It's imagined events portrayed in a way to give light on what her psyche may have experienced which makes it about as interesting as watching a movie about my life. Do you want to see a made up movie about my life? Of course not; you don't know me, and I'm not interesting to you. It's as though they took a story about someone's life and stuck a shell of a depiction of Monroe as the main character. It's absolutely ridiculous. Not to mention the fact that it's a very student like film. Dialogue makes no sense coupled with distracting transitions between color and black and white film. People in the 1950s and 60s didn't live in black and white film. It would've been one thing to transition to color when this pretend version of Monroe was happy or something, but this was just absurd. The real Norma Jean was incredibly smart, did not speak in a breathy Cuban accent and when she did speak, she sounded perfectly normal. I don't know what this was, but it was insulting to Monroe on every possible level. I'm disgusted with Ana de Armas (spelling?) because she read this script and agreed to do this. It's revolting. I'll never watch her in anything ever again. Shame on Netflix for ever putting such a horrid, disrespectful, fake as hell image of Marilyn Monroe. My god, I nearly vomited. The whole mess is like a slap to her face.

I'll preface this by explaining that I've seen every piece of media ever even mentioning Ted Bundy, not to mention having seen every related movie, and listened to every interview. My initial thought was that after having done so, there would be nothing much new to learn or experience as a result of yet another Bundy movie. I was wrong.

Luke Kirby captured Bundy's soul in a manner that is indescribable and in a way for which no words can do this portrayal justice - pun intended. His ability to convey every mannerism, every inflection, every aspect of Ted Bundy in a way that could only come second to Bundy, himself, shocked me. I was absolutely floored.

While we all know the outcome of the "storyline," and although we have all likely seen the exclusive Ted interviews and court drama over the years, this film felt as though I was sitting in the room with Ted Bundy. It was an experience I've never had before and will likely never experience again. I can't speak for Kirby as an actor or how he prepared for this role, but it's as though he channeled Bundy in a way that the other movies of the same premise lacked. Actually, he seemed to channel his character in a way most movies tend to fall short of. Just amazing. He looks/feels more like Bundy than any previous portrayal and probably will, any subsequent.

Apart from the incredible casting, this film is one that transports you to another time and place. They got the late 70s / early 80s down perfectly. That isn't usually an easy thing to master based on what I've seen in previous films that have tried.

This film tells the experience of the investigator who interviewed Bundy - from his perspective - and you get a real glimpse into the mind of the investigator tasked with dealing with one of the world's worst (and first) serial killers.

I like Stewart's acting so I was excited to see this but my god, who approved this useless film? There's no subplot and I'm pretty sure there was no main plot, either. A drilling group underwater experiences an earthquake which results in lack of oxygen, there's supposedly a creepy sea creature. That's it. It's so boring I lost interest and started to do other things on the computer and I actually paid for this thing. It's truly horrible on every possible level.

A couple in a bad marriage who hate each other travel somewhere to be around a jerk, and are equally obsessed with some guy named Dick. This was really difficult to stomach, believe or even remotely follow. Every single character is selfish, egocentric and frankly kind of narcissistic. Between Transparent and I Love Dick the narcissism is too much to handle. Those are Amazon's supposedly greatest shows and are written by the same people. There's no interesting plot, though. The acting is decent and the cast is good, but watching this makes me think these people needed jobs and had no other prospects to they took on I Love Dick. It's just bad.

FINALLY! This is the 1st version of Betty's story that actually shows a perspective that isn't one-sided. I think the world was jaded by the other two versions which painted Betty as some jealous freeloader who killed her husband out of spite, and while there's never an excuse for murder, that just wasn't true. Betty had her reasons; decades of mental and emotional and even physical control, abuse, control of her children, blatant head games, a court that failed her and a justice system that ultimately failed her. She gave up her whole existence of a life to play "Tom The Builder" for a husband, shaping and molding him into what he ultimately became, investing in the machine she herself built that ultimately turned on her and destroyed her. By seeing this, everyone will now have a more accurate understanding of events that made Betty feel she had no other choice. I think the ONLY thing she has left to do is just to (admit she was wrong and admit remorse) in her next parole hearing which is the only thing that will free her. From there, maybe she can finally have a life if freed. I am not taking her side or condoning her behavior or saying murder is ever an okay thing, I'm saying I understand WHY she felt like she did and I understand WHY she made her choices.

Casting is awesome, Christian Slater plays an excellent Dan. The casting of Betty's character though, she looked nothing like Betty who is not only a blonde, but she's got a completely different figure and face so it was difficult to place as pretty as Amanda Peet is. The friend who plays Betty though, the blonde who's only in a few scenes, looks exactly as I know Betty looked. We even stopped the show to look at photos of Betty and compare her look to the friend in the show. The acting is top and the story line, though differing from actual events in certain ways, really shows how the emotion in the heated situations.

For decades, the court of public opinion hasn't been on Betty's side about much of anything. Dan was painted as some kind of kind savior in every possible situation in the previous movies and television shows about this story. Even Linda's character in this show looks at Dan and asks "how will she pay her bills?" I won't give spoilers but it's clear Dan's behavior toward her shocked everyone but he was able to keep it well-hidden, even from his kids.

This was very well done. Of course there's the obvious errors, like back then it was called Sears & Roebuck. A person in their 20's or 30's must have made this. And, back then segregation sadly still existed. But I grew up in the south in a neighborhood that had more than one ethnicity and no one ever behaved that way. Black men (and women) and many other ethnicities held top careers back then and lived in MY upper middle class neighborhood. With their kids. Kids I was best friends with and played with every day of my life until we had to move when Dad was transferred. If stuff like this keeps being churned out, the youth will actually BELIEVE this was how it was, the only way it was. And that just isn't true. I'm not saying it was impossible, and I'm not saying segregation didn't exist, but I never saw anything like this happen. Not even close. The series itself is well done though and very pleasing to watch with the vintage style. That's about the only thing though because I frankly don't like history being twisted and I don't like to see people being attacked for their skin. It isn't pleasing to see an innocent family being harassed and attacked.

The acting is excellent but it's only the first story that's remotely interesting. The 2nd is ridiculous, and the third is downright absurd. They throw in the token equality stuff for Netflix in your face. But the first one, part 1 is the best. The 2nd two are only sub-par.

As you likely already understand, this storyline follows an entitled, narcissistic albeit creative middle aged woman who doesn't understand love in the same way that the rest of the world does so she realizes mid-life that she's bounced from relationship to relationship ("either with a guy or breaking up with a guy") for the whole of her existence in a subconscious attempt to experience true love. Loneliness seems to be her greatest fear so she makes the decision to travel the world to take time to herself to try and discover who she really is. I agree with the previous reviews that she definitely has a warped sense of love. If you're looking to better understand the views of someone from this perspective, I suppose this might be helpful. In fact the only thing this film accomplished for me was to create a hankering for spaghetti. The character is completely devoid of empathy and tends to make absolutely everything all about herself, takes zero responsibility for her actions but that's what makes this character so intriguing!! We're left wondering "how can someone actually think like that" but Roberts is somehow able to carry it off! A far cry from her deeply emotional roles of the past, this really took her talent to a new level! It was truly well done so I give it a watch value of 5 because it is really kind of interesting.

Historically there were many inaccuracies. They touched on a few points of the Communist Scare, but back then life was very different than conveyed in the film. The wardrobe and dialogue was more along the lines of "inspired by" if that helps. Plus, in one shot Bessie wore a finger wave while in other shots she's in a bob. (Was that intended to separate the events and storyline by the week?) Women had their hair done once weekly back then, was that what that was intended to do? Also, as much as I hate to remember it because it truly was terrible, segregation was a thing back then, back then it was not out of the norm. It was a real thing. It was literally taught that it was a bad thing to mix, at parties or anywhere else. I felt that those scenes when they threw in the tokens was a bit insulting. Either make the film legitimately accurate or not, but don't throw a black woman and man in there for good measure, it's mean. It's as though the film said, "We're required to have a couple of black actors...and so there they are even though this is totally inaccurate of the timeline." It's plain rude and plain weird. Then again, there's a lot of new (weird) politics going on so... This is a story about a poor family, the two daughters were the family support. But they managed to get a radio when only 30% of America had one then. Radios were a great luxury back then and very expensive at this point in time. By the 30's about 60% of America had one. A family couldn't survive on a woman's wage but they had 2 woman's wages coming in which was almost what a man earned. But they could afford a radio? Just saying. But maybe it was for atmosphere, who knows..

If you actually watch the film, you'll see that the acting isn't half bad. It's the cheesy "Lifetime Movie Network-style" production that irritates people to the core, that's all. Like with (all) LMNs you're going to notice that it's basically geared toward someone who's about 14 years-old. If you can look past that whole low-intelligence LMN thing, it really isn't a bad film. It shows how Britney was a victim; victimized by a lot of different people and situations HOWEVER she's a strong girl who became a strong woman and a great mom. The one thing she truly loves in her life is her children. It allows you to imagine if you were her, thrown into entertainment from a young age and you suddenly become the world's biggest musical icon and then everyone wants a piece of you. She's definitely a strong survivor. She's smart, she's strong and she is highly talented.

Yes, you'll be on the edge of your chair, especially at the wrap-up ending. This was excellent. It has a lot of metaphor and zero sub plot, so just understand this from the beginning. They could have added a sub plot or few and less metaphor but it would have made the film longer. While you're sitting there thinking how slow-moving it is in the beginning, you'll end up seeing how everything was wrapped up together so you'll want to see it twice to catch all the metaphor contained within. Watch and understand. Like with most of his work you'll be seeing it twice to catch all aspects of these strategically placed metaphors.

It's like opening a can of every single possible social issue; obesity, depression, pregnancy, drug use, objectification, abortion, abandonment, bullying, sexual identity, religion, you name it. That causes young, impressionable viewers to potentially believe that this is the way life actually is. Most people don't go through one 100th of the amount of drama in this program. But overall it's pretty good. People who are overweight who were offended by this, it isn't a program that pushes objectification and being skinny. It pushes being HEALTHY. Being overweight is dangerously unhealthy. The main character loses 70 pounds and becomes a healthy body weight and enters the pageant circuit to gain confidence as "revenge" (living her own life well) which isn't unhealthy. Being overweight isn't healthy. Being a healthy body weight is. Overall it's a decent show, but probably best for viewers over the age of high school.

...this shows up. This one features an all black cast with the ironic killing off of the token white guy with only one line in the very beginning (the reversal of 80's and 90's typical horror flicks) in a scene that can only be described as the aforementioned "cheese." This struck me funny so I decided to continue watching. Unfortunately, it just didn't improve.

First of all, it's dumbed down to the point that it's just plain painful to watch. No one over the age of 14 is going to be able to tolerate this poorly executed overt, animated acting or the bland "in your face" dialogue. I felt like I was watching reruns of a TV sitcom geared toward teenagers, this was so severely dumbed down. The corny ongoing Muzak in the background.

The story is extremely predictable. It contains a few twists, however when you couple predictable with badly acted dumbed down Lifetime Movie Network nightmare stuff and throw in Muzak, you really become nauseated fast. I'd skip this one.

It's a cute premise however, it's basically a neurotic, loudmouthed narcissistic woman absent of any semblance of a filter with one child who feels he requires an SUV that seats 24 comfortably who spews forth constantly, whatever pops into her brain at any given time. She completely emasculates her mild-mannered husband who makes the occasional appearance yet she's constantly intruding on his life, including his poker parties. She manages to somehow insult everyone she comes in contact with and or ruin everyone else's experience whether it's a party, a bar, a dinner out or reading a book. I do hope that no women actually ever learn anything from this character, or I should say lack thereof. It is however only 20 minutes per show. I compare it to Mr. Mom in the sense that it's remotely humorous, very short and easy to listen to as background noise. Overall it's okay but the language and mindless banter these characters spew forth is just...a headache waiting to happen. The humor is there, albeit buries well under said banter and absurd dialogue.

This is a heartwarming fantasy tale about "what if" Hollywood was, as the kids call it, more "woke" way back in the day in the late 1940's. It's a fun story. The casting is excellent, the storytelling is great and the atmosphere and wardrobe are definitely a cool aspects. It takes roughly 30% of actual history and combines that history with 70% of "what if everything actually happened this way instead" to create an eye-opening what if idea look at Hollywood. It's definitely worth a watch. If you're not into documentary-style accuracy, then you'll enjoy this a lot.

It is a bit too "woke," as in "in your face so much that it's almost too much." In other words, there's some things that are best left implied versus screamed. In fact, this series is SO far left even by today's standards that I'm surprised this series didn't fall off the Hollywood sign itself. This series is to streaming series, what the blood red "Me Too" graffiti was on the statue, 'Unconditional Surrender.' That said, I think it would have been better to handle the story in a little more in the line of reality.

It's definitely something that was created in the decade of over-political-correctness. There's a difference between tolerance and acceptance and screaming about it ad nauseam. But, it's 2020 and people don't imply anymore, nothing's subtle or demure, it's all SCREECHED at the top of one's lungs nowadays. So, if you like stories that take a "what if" view to the past you'll enjoy this.

It's slow moving. As in, a snail could move faster. My step daughter's turtle could crawl her tank 1000 times and this show would still be in the initial introduction phase. Then again, the demographic seems to be for those around 12 or 14 years-old so perhaps the redundancy and slow pace is warranted for this reason. Basically, it's always 3 couples. They're matched and in an excruciatingly predictable manner. One couple will be extremely traditional, the next will be one or both partners being either blooming idiots or narcissists (depends upon the given season) and the last is always an ethnic token. One or two couples will almost always "work out," at least for a time and the failing couple is meant to be a surprise as they try to lead the viewer to believe they'll be the ones with the lasting commitment but is not the case. It's basically what would happen if someone went on a matchmaking dating site that claims to use "expert opinion and technique" and married on the 1st date. Frankly, it appears to be toying with one's life however, if one decides to make such a choice then by all means hopefully it works out for them. It would be wonderful if the producer would remove the redundancy because this "series" could reasonably be condensed into a series of 3 episodes: matchmaking, weddings (absent of repeating scenes, please) and the final breakup / wrap episode.

The idea of this storytelling is awesome. It's a great story line and the acting is good. However, it's extremely difficult to follow. It seems to skip and jump in strange ways. It's excruciatingly linear and then jumps to another side plot which never quite gets more than introduced. Maybe I've not watched it closely enough? It's just too confusing.

Octavia Spencer breathes life into characters like Poe created atmospheric foreshadowing or a story authored by Faulkner or Tennessee Williams could literally transport a reader, so she was an excellent choice and the casting in general was impeccable. This storytelling is about 98% accurate historically and 100% accurate and spot-on in overall presentation. My only criticism is the choices of modern background music in the score and the fact that they made her daughter out to be a lesbian playgirl. While she may have been bisexual, this is still speculation and it's known that she was more of a patron of the arts and "hostess with the mostess," versus the portrayal in this serial series. It's my take that this was added to appeal to a certain liberal and more modern audience. While it's good to incorporate and acknowledge the LGBT community, it's not right, at least in my personal opinion, to speculate and "add on" to a story just for posterity sake. Unless one has absolute confirmed firsthand knowledge of something, it's always best to stick with the truth. Additionally, Annie Malone was actually the 1st self-made black female millionaire, which was portrayed by the character called Addie Monroe. Also, the (real) Annie aka Addie for this Netflix series wasn't white. She was a black woman. She also hired Walker as a sales agent and they worked together for some time before a disagreement lead Walker to branch out on her own, taking the original "hair grower" formula with her. This incident lead Annie to trademark her product and ingredients for her formula. So, Walker was not actually a perpetual victim. She was a victim in many ways, but we should not add to her story things that are untrue. She was a strong woman who knew she could do better independently. There's nothing wrong with the truthful version of the Madam C.J. Walker story, however in order to make it more "watch-worthy," they again changed it for the sake of viewers. For entertainment value, this is a total 10 but it does lack much accuracy, so this is why it lost 2 stars. I added one back though because Octavia Spencer's acting was just stellar and over-the-top so I gave it a 9.

Ashley is awesome in everything she does, and while she looked young enough to play an 18 year-old, everyone kind of already knows she was about 25 when this was filmed. Then we have the woman who played the mom and she was 35 per the actress's actual age upon filming, so what, she had this boy at 16 or 17 and then somehow finished high school and college and became a famous author? Ashley Rickards is only 9 or 10 years younger than Nicky Whelan. So they looked like a very odd group in this movie. All the actors were pretty unknown - except Rickards - which leads me to believe that they cast it then decided to try and get an actual star for this. The acting was not horrible, it's the way it was shot and produced that makes it Lifetime Movie Nightmare. It's also after all is said and done after a showdown...with everyone giggling? I don't want to give any spoilers but it's the worst writing ever because it's absurdly predictable - unless you're 12. I really hope they paid Rickards a lot to put herself into this movie because this is the kind of stuff that ruins careers. She's way better than this.

First, the journalist has a very annoying cockney accent and is difficult to understand, and they tend to mispronounce and also misrepresent an awful lot of really well-known information. Ted Bundy's name was the first thing they get wrong but it doesn't end there. While they do visit some interesting locations, said interesting locations are shot in black and white using an unsteady handy cam making it nearly impossible to watch. It's sort of pieced together and there's all these DISGUSTING UPSHOTS OF THAT WOMAN'S NOSE AND EYEBALLS in every single episode. Every 5 minutes, I find myself with a screen full of sepia tone negative rolling eyeball for absolutely way under zero reason. I'd LOVE to know the propensity for that to happen in the first place. All the fun places I'd want to visit which I watched this series to see ended up being filmed in "impossible to see unsteady hand cam Go Pro" kind of filming with weird, random closeups of the journalist's nose and eyeballs. WHO FILMED THAT MESS, ANYWAY? And I'd also like to know WHY those eyeball and nose shots didn't end up on the cutting room floor? I mean, really bad filming. You do get to see some interesting people, some interesting places (when you can actually view them) and it's good for background noise. The ex-cop medium was a nice touch and reasonably talented. If you like serial killers and can handle weird eyeball close ups and nasal upshots via Go Pro, then you might enjoy this.

This is actually an excellent show. The narration has a sometimes difficult to understand cockney accent, so put on the subtitles. There are some really great visual color shots of places one would want to visit if you're a historian or ghost hunter. There are even some excellent photos and a few re-created historical scenes. The channeling and seances are a fun touch, talented and accurate. My only complaint is the film and production. There are so many difficult-to-see, over-lighted black and white shots of the reportedly haunted locations which are nearly impossible to see. Makes you feel like you're watching Ghost Hunters back in 2005 and it's hard to watch and hard to look at. Those close-up black and white reverse shots of the woman's nose and eyeballs made me feel like I was looking at the negatives of a badly processed 8 MM reel. It got to the point where my friend said, "If I see one more upshot of that woman's nose, we're turning this off." It really WAS badly put together regarding all those black and white shots. Those really took away from the ability to watch the show at all and see what we wanted to see. Had they left it all color, absent of nose upshots and useless facial and eyeball close-ups I think this might have been a perfect ten stars. The ex-cop / medium was interesting and pretty talented but that journalist, while very pretty, way too many distracting close-ups and difficult to understand. Had to re-watch a few episodes to ensure I understood all the details. Overall though, if you're choosing a ghost hunting show and like serial killer history this is definitely an excellent choice.

I don't think anyone could possibly top Kubrick's 'The Shining,' however this is entertaining. This is the sequel to the film, not the book, just so you're aware. I read the sequel and this is similar, but definitely not exactly like the written sequel itself. The only aspect that I did not like was that there was much of the book story line left out in this movie, which would have helped it make more sense, had it been added. And that "Rose The Hat" character was just plain annoying the way it was portrayed. Toward the end of the film it becomes irritatingly predictable. However, if you loved The Shining, you'll love this too. There was this overhanging aura of "horror cheese" that one would expect in 80's campy horror films or the likes of 'Ouija' and 1987's 'Dolls' which were just plain stupid. I'm not knocking the director, because I loved 'Hush,' 'Oculus' and Flanagan's other work but this did have an overhanging aura of "campy cheese." I'm not sure this cheese had anything to do with him because Flanagan is great. I think it had to do with the musical score (or lack thereof) and a lack of atmospheric presence. The atmosphere in this film changes like the wind. In other words, 'The Shining' was dated yet timeless and atmospheric (think: The USA's versions of 'The Ring' and 'The Ring Two' as compared with 'Rings,' the third, extremely lacking installment. Two were atmospheric and stayed with the original characters and story line with a top notch score and the third installment was like a let down. Anyway, this is a decent film but it seemed to leave a lot out.

This is a cute family show. I don't usually like TV series, but it's cute. It's not crude and it seems absent of any bad stuff so I think it's pretty family-friendly.