Reviews

I loved this movie. It is visually stunning. The sets and costumes are just over the top as far as design. But so is the choreography, for want of a better word, that is employed in scene after scene. This is such a tightly filmed and staged piece of work that it is breathtaking. But I am beginning with the very least of the praise so that I can move up as I continue.

The acting was all 100 per cent top notch, with many of the minor rolls filled by some excellent veteran actors (Barbara Sukowa, Francis Jue, Jodie Turner Smith). This type of dark humor often relies on dead pan delivery, and IMO the execution was flawless. The adults seemed so detached even passionate moments, and this just made it all the more ludicrous. Of course, this is precisely the point regarding middle America during this period as we all numbed ourselves into oblivion with pharmaceuticals and hyper consumerism.

My highest praise has to go to the writing and directing though. The more I think about this film, the more I feel that I need to see it again. I just have the sense that there are so many scenes that were so visually packed that there was a lot that I missed the first time around. Like the first scene with the family in the kitchen. It was chaotic, everyone speaking over each other, weaving around one another, grabbing things......and it was totally hyper realistic! I felt like: Yeah ! When you have 4 kids this is what it's like. It's not neat and orderly with everyone taking turns to talk. ...... Well the whole movie was kind of like that. Instead of being all cinematic and pretending that the world stops when something important happens, there are lots of parts of the movie where the chaos of life just keeps going on around the so called main action.

Until about the last 20 minutes. Then there is this abrupt change in the pacing. That was very jarring. Maybe I should change my rating to a 9? Nah. It was still pretty damn funny after that anyway. And the final scene in the A+P was just so awesome.

This series is a science fiction climate change dystopian story that happens to begin with a murder. Any review that that calls this a crime/detective show was just not paying attention.......to either the show or the movie. This series is about the last remnant of humanity trying to survive together after all life on the planet has been frozen to death and the entire earth never gets above minus 100 farenheit.

3000 human beings are riding a train that continuously circles the globe. The society on the train is divided into classes that are so widely divided that some people have entire train cars to live in, while others live like they are in a concentration camp.

Such wide disparities have consequences. And this is really one of the three major threads running through the whole series. The other threads, naturally have to do with the issue of their fight for basic survival, and with the other conflicts that occur between humans living together in close quarters over long periods of time.

Every performance is stellar in the cast. The sets and costuming are just amazing. And the script/plotlines are edge of your seat level stuff. The drama is high, thought provoking stuff. Sometimes poignant, sometimes fantastic. Always artful.

This is not an action flick. This film is not about surprise endings. And all of the low ratings on here are because the kids wanted to have those two things.

This film is primarily a character study. It moves slowly, and goes into the thoughts of one person over the course of a few days. That's it. And that's why I think it's a terrific movie. The acting from everyone is amazing.

This is a film about a man who has a lot of growing up to do. He is a self centered, short sighted, materialistic person who is given a gift of immense power. And he has very little understanding of how to use this gift in a way that will be of benefit to anyone, including himself. As we observe him use his gift over and over again, we see that this is largely because his understanding of life is deeply lacking. The things he seems to value quickly turn out to have negative consequences that he did not foresee. In real life, learning this lesson is what marks the transition from adolescence to adulthood. In this film, well you will have to decide this for yourself.

On one hand this is a sci fi murder mystery. On the other hand there are some other serious issues raised.........Is the Tangle a good thing? What do we give up when we give up pain, violence and hurt? Do we need these seemingly negative aspects in order to create things like poetry and art?

This is science fiction at its best.

I am loving this show. Just watched episode 10.

The production values are very high on this new science fiction show: special effects are used when needed, and they are very well done, but not over the top.

I think the writing is superb.......a perfect tension in trying to balance opposite issues such as how to keep the lid on the investigation even while events affect more and more people, how to trust your partner when you're being instructed to lie to them, how to hold on to your sense of reality when you keep discovering that reality is so fragile and mutable, etc. These existential questions (and others too) are at the core of the plot, as is the case with most good science fiction.

Both the casting and the directing are really spot on. The low key characters help us to focus on the concrete struggles that the alien tech keeps dragging us into. Just like real agents in this type of situation, the leads take everything with a professional attitude. Don't panic, and you won't create panic in the public. Encounter new situations with a problem solving perspective not a this-is-a-problem attitude. . . . This mature determination makes their actions, choices, interactions believable.

The relationship between the two leads is really beginning to have some depth to it. We learn more about each of them just as they learn about each other. I feel that it is unfolding very naturally.

I am always impatient to see the next episode. I really hope that this show gets renewed.

This is a terrific movie. Clearly NOT low budget, as so many reviewers seem to bizarrely state. I thought the acting was quite fine--perhaps those who didn't like it are not so accustomed to the cultural differences that deliver different styles of acting and filmmaking (even in the English speaking world). This is a time travel movie, and so it deals with the conundrums of this issue. Although some elements of the plot were a little simplistic, there was definitely imagination and originality brought to bear in regard to the central questions that the plot turned on. The sets were all very detailed, and the film quality was like a typical feature film. It was a pleasure to watch. I wish more science fiction movies were this good.

I love this show. I am currently watching the whole thing for the third time through as I write up this review. The Last Ship is a wonderful modern mythic adventure about the crew of a ship who are called on to perform the mission of keeping the various forces of evil and chaos from destroying the world.........over and over again. Because they have a true hero as their captain--a man of noble moral fiber, courage, and intelligence--the crew rises to the occasion and answers the needs of a humanity tossed from one extinction level crisis to another. Perhaps it is the unshakeable faith and loyalty of the crew to their captain......or maybe it is the ease with which we are able to distinguish the good from the bad.......or maybe it is the amount of mayhem in the plot..........yes, these could all be reasons to call "cheese" on this show. Especially regarding the increasingly outlandish crises faced by this ship full of good souls. But somewhere in all the cheese, there are the echoes of our common human condition: life is often dangerous to navigate through, and in the midst of the danger and confusion there is a yearning within many of us to find the clear path, to be joined with others who fight the good fight, and to know that the cause of justice and goodness can triumph. At least, that is why I love this show.

If you think Science fiction is all about explosions and fast paced ships chasing each other, then this is not the movie for you. This is a good movie about one person being unexpectedly thrust into a cosmic journey. By time and fate, thousands of years before their birth. It raises questions about how we know the difference between different states of consciousness, between what occurs in our dreams and what occurs in our waking life. . . . . And which is a more trustworthy measure of reality. It also introduces some interesting ideas about human history on earth. Although the production values are not high budget, I found them acceptable. And the acting was generally strong.

This is exactly the kind of movie that we need so much more of these days. What happened to movies about plain old normal people being in love and living their lives? Well, this is a movie like that, except that, of course, it is filled with the very best rock and roll music ever written!! This is a terrific movie about the kind of questions most people face during their normal lives--even if the circumstances in the movie are somewhat magical--and that makes it something we can all relate to. For this reason, it is a great family film, a terrific date movie, and an all around feel good film!

This is not a movie about crime in New York. It is not a romance, nor an action picture. It is a slow-paced film that carefully examines the ways in which our anxiety about personal survival corrupts our values, our dreams and goals, and our intimate relationships.

Through the four central characters, the audience is shown various human subjects at different stages of moral corruption and psychic emptiness. There are clear correlations drawn between their existential vacuity and the actions that they willingly sign on to again and again, as the film progresses. . . . . and yet we are treated to a superb film here because three of these four central characters do seem to struggle with their decisions, with the choices that embroil them more deeply in tragic "destinies" that they construct for themselves.

What a moving portrayal of the human struggle, and the very real costs of that struggle, that occurs for so many today as the result of the cultural schizophrenia in places like Algiers and throughout the Muslim world. Just as so many of the economic and technological benefits of Western culture have begun to penetrate these countries enough to affect the daily lives of most people, radical Islamists enter the scene en force as a reaction against the political ideas and social freedoms that so many also wish to participate in. And much of the ordinary population is caught up in the confusing and dangerous middle ground.

Each of the four primary female characters in this film embody the split personality that *is* the Muslim world today. Each one navigating between desires and ambitions born from her sense that it is permissible to dream of freedom and happiness--however that is symbolically represented for her in her visions of a self-defined destiny...............yet each also struggles against the curbs placed on that freedom and self-determination by the culturally-shrinking society that surrounds her.

In the film this is wonderfully portrayed in the stark difference between the public and the private spaces in which the characters function. This is most obvious in the costuming, as the women cover themselves completely whenever they go "out" (ironically, making them anything but "out") and uncover when they are inside. But this difference is also portrayed in the interaction between the main characters themselves, as though the traditional clothing in which they are hidden also creates a wall between them--and it is only inside, when they have taken off those coverings, that they can relate on an intimate level.

There are crucial - and painful - moments of crisis in the film when these separations break down: bringing the psychic walls of coveredness into the private realm, or being exposed and uncovered in the public realm. And in these moments, we see that things start to break down in the lives of the characters. This also is a continuation of the metaphor: for those living in the schizophrenia of the Muslim world today, who attempt individually and societally to simply put the modern Western world in one compartment and the tug of Islamist fundamentalism in another, who attempt to simply switch costumes while going from one to the other -- such a way of living, such a way of being eventually has to break down.

The film does not attempt to resolve this problem, but merely to set it before us. On the way to its conclusion there is great tragedy, minor redemption, and a possibility of some vague hope. Let us also, as the audience, dare to posses some hope for a future resolution in the Muslim world.....one that does not take such a toll on the women who live their lives within it.