Lovesusti The Worst Film Ever

Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

jmvscotland A Peugeot that failed consistently to start. That was just about the only part of this absolutely dire hash of a TV Series that was believable. The USA supporting the establishment of A Palestinian State? Not while by bottom points to the ground.I am Australian and grew up on a steady diet of mostly high quality TV drama. The list of great BBC, ITV, Granada, Yortkshire, Film Four etc TV dramas is long and impressive but boy did the BBC fail with this one. I feel like I've wasted eight otherwise useful hours of my life sitting through this load of tripe, at first in the hope that something exciting and credible might just happen and, after about the second episode, just wanting it to end so that I'd have an opportunity to express my extreme disappointment here in IMDb.I realize now that I should have read at least some of the negative reviews of this series rather than simply looking at the 8.2 on IMDb that it inexplicably rates. Had I taken that little bit of time, I could have saved myself eight hours of mostly mind-numbing boredom and seven or eight quid into the bargain.I used to think that Maggie Gyllenhaal was a great actress after first seeing her fabulous performance in "Secretary" with James Spader. But, I quite agree with what one or two others have said here about her performance as Nessa Stein. If you want someone who can play a rich little British girl, then for God's sake why not cast a British actress; there are any number of them out there who I'm sure would have done a much better job of Nessa Stein and who would probably have been much cheaper to hire than Maggie G.Maggie's dialogue coach it seems must bear most of the blame for her hokey British accent. Not too bad overall but always with such deliberate and painful enunciation of every single syllable that I found it painful whenever she said anything at all. I kept wanting to grab her by the shoulders and tell her to bloody well get on with it and not make such a meal of every single line. And the crying!!! As others have mentioned, just about every one of Maggie's scenes involved the water works to a greater or lesser extent. She gets upset thinking about her poor, dead, evil old Dad. She cries. She sees a child. She cries. She has a fight with her brother. She cries. She's taken prisoner in Gaza after a particularly stupid venture into that place. She cries.Ridiculous jumped up, self-important rubbish is this series from start to finish. Poorly written, hopelessly and turgidly directed, appallingly acted by just about everyone in it and way, way, way too long and there you have it. Dull and unutterably boring. I'm just glad it's over.JMV

SnoopyStyle Nessa Stein (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is trying to use her family's business to construct a telecommunication connection to the Palestinian territories. She has high ideals promoting a policy of reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. Part of that is to seek out a Palestinian partner for the venture. Her father's killing in front of her is still a major pain for her and her brother. However, she is hiding a secret from 8 years ago when she ventured into the Gaza Strip. It is secrets upon secrets as world politics and personal struggles collide.The first thing about this series is that it is well written. It is not just what's on the surface. Everybody has a secret. It is an intricate web of lies and double-cross. There is no need to spoil anything. Gyllenhaal gives a very solid performance as do so many of the actors. This is simply smart television. I'm fine with a limited series because it allows for more intense storytelling.

asc85 After the first couple of episodes, I thought about stopping, as it was difficult to follow what the heck was going on. But I hung in there, and boy was I glad. Basically, in the first episode, all these things happen, all these characters are introduced, and you have no idea why. The story then continues in episodes 2-6 basically giving the back story of why episode #1 happened. This all leads up to a shocking climax in episode #7, with a nearly-as-shocking episode #8. I've never been a huge Maggie G. fan, and I think she's OK in this, but nothing great. Since I'm American, I have no way of critiquing the authenticity of her English accent, but it seemed fine to me. Alternatively, Stephen Rea is great, and I will echo another reviewer and say that he pretty much steals every scene that he's in.If you're reading this and feel that the first couple of episodes are difficult to slog through, I'd say hang in there, and you will be rewarded at the end.

jc-osms I finally got to the end of this tortuous eight-part BBC series with my head spinning and my sympathies unengaged. An obviously highly topical storyline centring on the Israel/Palestine conflict, for me it was a dissatisfying mix of convoluted plotting, unsettling situations, periodic bursts of unsavoury actions, grisly killings and right-on politics, at one point having us believe that the US government under any circumstances would drop its support of Israel's right to exist in the United Nations.I see Maggie Gylenhaal getting praised to the skies in the press for her part but I found her would-be martyrdom unconvincing. She doesn't even report her second rapist to the authorities, instead supposedly gratifying herself with telling the offender's wife instead. That's taking self sacrifice too far. Apart from delivering a spot-on English accent, she gets to run a lot, cry a lot, be silent a lot and undress a lot, especially to enter her sci-fi type special toilet, the purpose of which escaped me. None of the rest of the cast really convinced me in their roles either, none less so than Stephen Rea in a very mannered style of acting, playing the Smiley-esque spymaster always one step behind the action while at the same time pursuing his ex-wife like a lovesick teenager.For some episodes I thought I was actually getting somewhere with the plot only to be thrown into confusion by the next one. I do get that Middle-east politics are at times impenetrably dense and complicated but with no liking or sympathy for Gylenhaal's Nessa Stein character or her elder brother, I have to say it took a lot of effort to watch it all the way through to the end.Maybe it's just that I don't like or condone depictions of terrorism whether small or large-scale, or attempts to get inside the heads of ruthless political terrorists, but with no one figure commanding my attention never mind my sympathy, I was quite pleased just to make it to the end. Frankly, it just never felt real at any point and as the plot moved into ever-increasing circles failed to take me with it along the way.