Blitz: A Review - Bombs Away!

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: ½ out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. An ill-conceived, poorly executed and outrageously awful movie.

If you’re yearning for a story about Nazi Germany’s brutal blitzkrieg bombing assault on London during World War II that is so pretentious and preposterous that it will have you rooting for the bad guys to go full on Enola Gay and Hiroshima the Brits into oblivion…have I got the movie for you.

Blitz, written and directed by acclaimed auteur Steve McQueen, tells the story of George, a young mixed-race boy, and his single white mother, Rita, who try to survive the chaos and calamity of the Blitz.

My wee Scottish grandmother, one of my all-time favorite people, lived in London during the Blitz and when I was a child would tell me stories of frantically running to the underground with her two horrified toddlers and one wailing infant (my uncles) in tow in order to survive the German bombing raids.

Her harrowing experience had me deeply interested in watching Blitz. As did the fact that one of my favorite actresses, Saoirse Ronan, stars in it, and that the film’s writer/director, Steve McQueen, was a once upon a time a filmmaker I revered for his artistic courage and vision.

Then I sat down and watched Blitz – which is streaming on Apple TV+…and holy shit balls is it egregiously, atrociously bad.

This movie is so ill-conceived, poorly designed, erroneously executed, didactic, patronizing, pedantic and pedestrian that it left me frustrated to the point of being furious. It is difficult to put into words how much I hated this movie…but I’ll try because I truly and absolutely despised it.

The film, which runs two-hours, makes the ludicrous decision to make the story of the Blitz, a terror bombing which killed 40,000 Brits – the overwhelming majority (literally 99%) of whom were white, about a little black-skinned boy suffering a bevy of racist micro-aggressions while on an odyssey through London. I shit you not.

It would be hard to misunderstand and misrepresent the meaning of the Blitz more than to use it as a weapon to bash the very people it brutalized. This movie is the equivalent of telling a story about the Holocaust and having it focus on a mixed-race Polish kid in Krakow bemoaning the Jewish racism he endured at the hands of the Jews being forced into the ghetto and onto the trains headed to Auschwitz.

The film’s pretentiousness and its patronizing tone are astonishing, and seemed designed to please a particularly putrid audience from our recent past.

This is one of those films that vacuous liberal white people would’ve exalted in the most glowing terms back in 2019, no doubt during breaks at their book club meetings where they self-righteously discussed the brilliance of Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility and Ibram X. Kendi’s How to be an Anti-Racist and lamented how everyone else besides them is so racist.

This is the type of movie where the white people are almost unanimously atrocious and despicable villains, and minorities, be they Indian, Jewish or African, are noble saints with hearts of gold.

The heart of gold lineup includes but is not limited to…the Jew with a heart of gold who stands up to defend an Indian family – who also have hearts of gold. There’s a Nigerian nightwatchman with a heart so golden he is essentially Jesus Christ. Then there’s a communist midget…again I shit you not…with a heart of gold considerably bigger than his tiny little body. There’s also a black woman who is a criminal but she too ends up having, you guessed it…a heart of gold!

The Anglo-Saxon/white Brits on the other hand…well, they are, with the exception of Rita and her father, a vile, vindictive, violent, vicious and venomous bunch. Whether it’s the street criminal Albert, who seems like something out of a second-rate Dickens novel, or the bevy of pale civil servants tasked with public safety, or the white men in various positions of power, the white characters are a cruel and heartless bunch, that lie easily and incessantly. They are all filled to the brim with a savage and irrational hate for anyone not white that burns brighter and hotter than any Nazi fire bombing.

On top of the incomparably trite and passe agenda fueling the film, there’s the issue of the plot being so ludicrous and preposterous as to be incandescently stupid.

George’s odyssey is essentially like Pinocchio’s, as he goes from one inanity to the next, making awful, idiotic decisions every chance he gets. But, of course, because George is of mixed-race, he has a heart of gold and is outlandishly courageous and brave, while the white kids are just cruel and mean-spirited.

George’s odyssey is the main narrative in the film, and it is incessantly nonsensical and moronic. Elliot Heffernan, who plays George, is a stone-faced dullard who does nothing but grate and irritate viewers every second he’s on-screen. I’ve never wished for a child to be killed in a movie before…but this dope had me rooting for it.

The more interesting, but equally inane, narrative, is that of George’s mom, Rita. I love Saoirse Ronan, and she does the best she can with what’s she’s given, but Rita’s story, which is filled with a bevy of lifeless flashbacks, is so vapid it made my teeth hurt.  And, of course, it is filled with a cavalcade of loathsome white men and their unending racism and sexism and the like. Yawn.

Steve McQueen was once a filmmaker I deeply respected and admired. His first feature, Hunger (2008), which chronicles the struggle of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands, is a masterful, exquisitely executed, immensely moving film. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

His next film, Shame (2011), is a shocking, vivid depiction of the chaotic life of a sex addict that is also well-crafted.  

His third film, 12 Years a Slave (2013), won Best Picture at the Academy Awards. It is a bit of a controversial pick in hindsight because apparently making slave movies is a no-no among the DEI sect nowadays. But back then, it was an impressive film that was very deftly put together, and I loved it then…and still do today.

Then things started to go off the rails for McQueen. His next movie, Widows (2018), was, frankly, a mess of a movie. It tried, and failed, to say a lot of things about a lot of subjects, and generally ended up being politically flaccid, dramatically incoherent and cinematically impotent.

Which brings us to Blitz. Blitz is proof of something that makes me quite unhappy, namely that Steve McQueen is not the noteworthy filmmaker I wished him to be, but rather a painfully pedestrian and banal artistic poseur devoid of any truly compelling or original vision.

The reality is that the brilliant Steve McQueen of Hunger is dead and buried, and all we have left is the man who made Blitz, a cloying, trite and treacly film that feels like a sub-par parody of one of those racially-motivated and quickly forgotten BBC movies of the week.

The bottom line is that Blitz is an embarrassingly bad, painfully pretentious and preposterous film that I cannot recommend to anyone at any time. This movie is an abject failure in every way and, like the vast majority of the films of Apple TV+, is a complete and total waste of time. Skip it…I know I wish I had.

©2024

Mary, Queen of Scots: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. You would be better served getting your head chopped off than ever seeing this movie.

Mary, Queen of Scots, written by Beau Willimon and directed by Josie Rourke, is the story of Mary, the young Catholic Queen of Scotland in the 1500’s, and her struggle for power in her native land amidst her rivalry with England’s Queen Elizabeth. The film stars Saoirse Ronan as Mary and Margot Robbie as Elizabeth.

Recently, in the midst of a magnificent hurricane of my own cleverness, I came up with a stunning new maxim that feels decidely old when, after weeks of fasting and meditation in a cold and windowless room, I declared to myself that “Wokeness Kills Art”. For proof of the veracity of my maxim, one need look no further than Mary, Queen of Scots.

As a first generation Scotsman (and an outspoken supporter of a Independent Scotland), a Catholic, and a classically trained actor, a period piece/historical drama about Mary, Queen of Scots starring Saiorse Ronan, who is one of my favorite actresses, and Margot Robbie, another top-notch actress, should be right up my alley. I was pretty excited to see Mary, Queen of Scots, so much so that I actually went and saw it the day the film opened in theatres. Once I actually saw the movie, my excitement was left dead-eyed, with its decapitated head rolling down the aisle of the theatre.

It is difficult to succinctly state how absurdly awful this movie is…but my best attempt would be to say that Mary, Queen of Scots is a narratively incoherent, cinematically obtuse and historically vapid piece of painfully progressive propaganda.

Director Josie Rourke, who comes from the London theatre world, is so cinematically illiterate I wouldn’t feel comfortable letting her watch a movie, nevermind make one. Ms. Rourke’s inability to even comprehend the most rudimentary aspects of storytelling in film is remarkable to behold.

Rourke’s take on Mary is that she is a symbol for social justice warriors everywhere due to her anti-patriarchy, pro-feminist, pro-gay, pro-trans and pro-diversity views. Ms. Rourke should have renamed the movie, Mary, Queen of Woke. This film has all the cinematic craftsmanship and political subtlety of a Dinesh D’Souza movie combined with the historical veracity of D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation.

Adding to the tsunami of historically inane things thrown into this film to fit a modern liberal agenda, Ms. Rourke uses some bizarre and frankly, distractingly ridiculous color blind casting. So viewers are supposed to be woke enough not to notice that Adrien Lester, who is Black, is playing Lord Thomas Randolph, who was so pasty white in real life he bordered on transparent. Ms. Rourke doesn’t stop there, as she casts Asian actress Gemma Chan as Bess of Hardwick, again, a very, very, very White woman who was decidedly NOT Asian.

Color blind casting in a historical drama is more complicated because “people of color” back then had their own history and back stories. Seeing a Black man as Lord Randolph begs the question…how did a man of African or Caribbean descent, who back then was more likely to be a slave or a servant, rise to the upper echelons of the aristrocracy? The same is true of an Asian women playing Bess of Hardwick. Asian women existed in the 1500’s, obviously, but not in the Royal Court or in the halls of power or among the blue blood families of England. So when audiences see an Asian women or a Black man in such a prominent role in English society in the 1500’s, they have questions, and when the film never addresses or answers those questions, audiences feel deceived and betrayed.

In addition, Bess of Hardwick and Lord Thomas Randolph are real people from history and they were very White…why is it ok for them to be played by non-White actors? Would it be alright for a White actor to play Jesse Jackson in a film about MLK or Louis Farrakhan in a film about Malcolm X? Of course that Whitewashing wouldn’t be acceptable, so why should it be ok for the opposite to occur here? It seems with the Woke Brigade, diversity and inclusivity top authenticity and the evil of cultural appropriation is something of which only “other” people are guilty.

The rest of the cast is also littered with token “people of color”, “token” being the operative word, no doubt to fulfill some wondrous “inclusivity rider”, but that doesn’t make it any less distracting or any more palatable or even remotely believable.

I understand that color blind casting is more acceptable in theatre where the threshold of believability is considerably lower, and while I find it and the reasons behind it distasteful there as well, I accept it as an unfortunate reality. But film is not theatre and the dynamics between film audiences and screen, and theatre audiences and stage, are very dramatically different. Film audiences are much less inclined than theatre audiences to suspend their disbelief over such things as colorblind casting, no matter how well intentioned it is, especially in a historical drama.

In film, audiences want to feel like they are watching the actual events as they take place, and they make a bargain with the movie maker, ‘you make it seem real and we’ll go along for the ride’. But when the Royal Courts of Scotland and England in 1500’s, which were obviously lily white, are populated with a cornucopia of minorities, then audiences just roll their eyes and tune out thinking the whole thing is little more than politically correct nonsense…which it is…because it doesn’t reflect the reality of the time.

Added to the absurdity of the film’s rainbow coalition in Royal Court, was the notion that Mary was a proud champion of gay and trans people. There is a scene where Mary forgives her gay/trans best friend for an act of stunning betrayal simply because she is so accepting of his homosexuality and thus excuses his awful act. This is so historically illiterate as to be absurd. The fact that Mary was a Catholic Queen in a Protestant land, and yet would not divorce or convert in order to save her skin or take the throne, is maybe a strong indicator that her religion IS PRETTY FUCKING IMPORTANT TO HER…and her religion at the time was quite clear in how they felt about “Sodomites”. But for Ms. Rourke, religion means nothing to Mary, it is her modern progressive values that really matter.

In keeping with the vacuous wokeness of the film, the overarching theme of the entire enterprise is that Mary and Elizabeth were feminist sisters, but it was those damn men who ruined everything. Of course, Ms. Rourke and her ilk are too ignorant to understand that taking the agency away from these two historically powerful women and reducing them to victims of the evil patriarchy doesn’t make them iconic, it makes them unconscionably weak…not exactly the girl power message the filmmaker intended.

Ms. Rourke, and her equally abysmal screenwriting accomplice, Beau Willimon of the execrable House of Cards fame, go so far as to have Elizabeth claim that she is “now a man and not a woman”, therefore making sure that when Elizabeth does something bad…and anyone who knows history knows she does something bad to Mary…masculinity is to blame! See…even when women do something terrible to another women it isn’t their fault! Damn you patriarchy because women have no agency!

I went to the film with a decidedly bleeding heart social progressive, the Honourable Rev. Dr. Lady Pumpernickle - Dusseldorf Esquire, and even she thought the cavalcade of suffocating political correctness in the form of colorblind casting, pro-LGBTQ and anti-maleness on-screen was way too much, and to an eye-rollingly ridiculous degree.

As for the actual making of the movie, Ms. Rourke is terribly ill-equipped as a visual artist. With the luscious green Scotland as a backdrop, Ms. Rourke somehow manages to make a visually dull, flat and stale film. Ms. Rourke’s inability to even do the most basic of blocking for the camera, as opposed to the stage, makes for some very stodgy sequences, not the least of which is a poorly executed battle scene that is staggering in its incompetence.

The aforementioned Beau Willimon’s script is equally inept. Willimon starts out trying to balance the Mary narrative with the Elizabeth narrative, but then just scraps that idea altogether and throws in a myriad of betrayals and counter-betrayals that end up only muddying the already murky historical waters. Willimon’s script is a key component in making the film such a garbled, incoherent mess, but it is Ms. Rourke’s weak direction that ultimately sinks the ship.

As for the acting, the majority of the cast is so poorly directed that they end up with lots of theatrical histrionics but very little genuine humanity. There is a lot of light but absolutely no heat from the cast that pushes too hard, too often to make something out of nothing.

Ms. Ronan is a compelling figure on-screen but her talents are entirely wasted on this disaster. It certainly would be a treat to see her play the role under the eye of a different, more competent, director though, as Ronan is very well equipped to play such a demanding and complicated character.

Margot Robbie is both out of place and under utilized as Queen Elizabeth. Robbie’s Elizabeth is such a listless and lifeless figure that she is no match for the dynamic Mary, which is maybe why they just, of the blue, stopped comparing and contrasting the two of them mid-way through the film.

The climactic scene of the film, which is at best historically dubious, has Mary and Elizabeth facing off. This sequence is so poorly shot, blocked and executed it was stunning to behold. Rourke uses fabric hanging from the ceiling to build a maze that the two actress…and the camera, must navigate until they finally come face to face. I get what Rourke was trying to do there, using the fabric to symbolically show the layers of barriers between the two women that they must wade through in order to actually see one another, but this is just another example of a theatre director trying to make a movie. This sequence is so visually ineffective and cinematically impotent that it boggles the mind. While Ms. Rourke intended this sequence to be a metaphor speaking volumes about the world Mary and Elizabeth inhabit, what it really does is perfectly highlight Ms. Rourke’s filmmaking ineptitude.

On the brightside, some of the costumes look nice.

In conclusion, Mary, Queen of Scots is a bitter disappointment because it tries to turn this historical drama into a piece of woke propaganda. As a historical drama it fails miserably both as history and as drama. As propaganda it also fails miserably because of the heavy handed incompetence of director Josie Rourke. If I could go back in time and had a choice between having my head chopped off or having to sit through this movie, I would gladly go under the executioners axe than suffer through this cinematic abomination.

If you want to see an exquisitely crafted and highly entertaining period piece and historical drama, do yourself a favor and go see the deliciously sublime The Favourite and skip the putrid cinematic detritus of Mary, Queen of Woke.

©2018

Lady Bird: A Review

****THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!! THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!!****

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT IN THEATRE - SEE IT ON NETFLIX OR CABLE

Lady Bird, written and directed by Greta Gerwig, is the story of Christine "Lady Bird" McPherson, a high school senior living in Sacramento, who struggles through a tumultuous relationship with her mother. Saoirse Ronan stars as "Lady Bird" and Laurie Metcalf plays her mother Marion. 

Lady Bird is a film of many contradictions. The film seems like it wants to be a quirky, independent, art house movie but in execution it ends up being a rather conventional, paint by numbers, pixie-dream girl coming of age story. 

Another contradiction is that the film boasts a truly superb performance from its luminous lead actress Saoirse Ronan, but because of a tepid script and weak direction, the movie never lives up to the great work Ronan does in it.

Lady Bird is actress Greta Gerwig's first feature film as a writer/director and her filmmaking inexperience definitely shows in her attempt to make a sort of backhanded homage to her hometown and her mother. The film suffers from a lack of cinematic and dramatic focus and very poor pacing, which made what should have been a very agreeable hour and a half running time seem considerably longer and much less agreeable. 

The movie is also riddled with too many cheap, easy and predictable laughs, so much so that at times it felt more like a network sitcom and less like a character study driven feature film. 

The heart and soul of Lady Bird is Saoirse Ronan, whose acting is flawless as she is totally absorbed into her role. Ronan perfectly embodies the frustration, isolation, and desperation of being a free spirit trapped in a city, Sacramento, and a family, that are suffocating her. Ronan effortlessly dances from one of her character's multiple incarnations to the next and never stops being completely comfortable with her adolescent discomfort. 

Saoirse Ronan is simply one of the best actresses working in film right now. While Lady Bird is not a great film, Ronan's performance in it certainly is, and it is a testament to her talent and skill that she is able to elevate her performance above such middling material and reach such transcendent acting heights. 

As for the rest of the cast, overall I actually found them lacking. Laurie Metcalf has a meaty role as Lady Bird's abrasive mother but I felt she just missed the mark because her performance lacked enough nuance for my liking. I think the major issue with Metcalf's performance was that her role was not very well written and left her in a bit of a box in terms of her acting choices. 

The other supporting actors are a mixed bag. Tracy Letts gives a solid performance as Lady Bird's down on his luck father. Letts brings a genuine humanity to all of his work and it played well in contrast to Lady Bird's chaotic teenage fervor. 

On the down side, Lucas Hedges gives a pretty stale and wooden performance as Lady Bird's boyfriend. Hedges, who was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar last year for his work in Manchester by the Sea, never fully commits to his role in Lady Bird and is overmatched and left in the dust by Ronan's searing performance.

To the film's credit, Lady Bird does a good job of revealing the often overlooked difficulty of middle class poverty on America. It also shows teenagers as being much less depraved and much more complicated, at least in Lady Bird's case, in regards to sex and sexuality, which was refreshing and heartening to see. 

I found Lady Bird to be a rather paper thin character study that gets bogged down by forced quirkiness and derivative and trite humor. With Lady Bird, director Greta Gerwig tried to make a somewhat edgy art house type of movie but instead ended up with a rather predictable and amateur piece of work that is only elevated beyond its banality by the sublime talents of its leading lady, Saoirse Ronan. While Lady Bird is an ultimately unsatisfying cinematic endeavor, Ms. Ronan's masterful work is worth seeing.

In the final analysis, my review of this film is just like the film itself, a glaring and seemingly irreconcilable contradiction. On one hand there is my admiration for Saoirse Ronan's acting work as Lady Bird and on the other is my rather sharp criticism for Ms. Gerwig's writing and directing of the film. In order to resolve this contradiction I will compromise and split the difference by telling you to skip Lady Bird in the theatre because it isn't worth the money or the hassle, but watch it when you can on Netflix or cable, because Saoirse Ronan's performance is something you should see.

©2017

Brooklyn : A Review

****THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SOME MINOR SPOILERS!! CONSIDER THIS YOUR OFFICIAL MINOR SPOILER ALERT!!****

MY RATING: SKIP IT IN THE THEATRE, SEE IT ON NETFLIX OR CABLE.

Brooklyn, written by Nick Hornby and directed by John Crowley, is the story of Eilis Lacey, a young woman from the small town of Enniscorthy, Ireland, who leaves her home and starts a new life in Brooklyn, New York in 1952. The film stars the luminous Saiorse Ronan as Eilis, with supporting turns from Domnhall Gleeson, Jim Broadbent, Julie Walters and Emory Cohen. The film has been nominated for three Academy Awards this year for Best Picture, Best Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay.

As the son of Irish and Scottish immigrants, and a native son of the beloved borough in the title, I was very excited to see Brooklyn, as Eilis Lacey's story is not dissimilar to my own mothers. The immigrant tale of Eilis Lacey is one that many, if not most of us, can relate to. As someone who has moved cross country from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, I related to Eilis story as well, not in setting, but in substance. Whether we have moved to another country, or moved to the big city from the suburbs, or vice versa, we all have to leave the nest and venture out on our own at some point in our lives. Brooklyn tells the story of how grueling, but imperative and ultimately rewarding that journey away from our home, and to our new home, can be. "You can never go home again" is a true statement not because "home" has changed, but because "you" have changed by leaving home. Eilis Lacey's circular odyssey in Brooklyn teaches us that the initial fear of leaving the security of home can transform into the exhilarating freedom of being away from the gossip, prying eyes and small minds of a place you have outgrown, if you only have the courage to embark on the adventure. At some point in the immigrant's journey, returning "home" no longer means going back to the place of your past, but rather returning to the place of your present and future, and Brooklyn makes that very clear.  

Another reason I was excited to see Brooklyn, is that it stars Saiorse Ronan, is one of the great actresses working today. Ronan certainly she proves her mettle and earns her OScar nomination in tackling the role of Eilis Lacey. Ronan imbues Eilis with such a vivid inner life that she is absolutely mesmerizing to watch. Director John Crowley, on occasion, wisely lets the camera linger on Ronan well after the action of the scene has ended, and there are stunningly effective moments of brilliance that he captures by doing little more than letting Saoirse Ronan be present and fill the screen.

Ronan's subtlety and mastery of craft are really something to behold. She has a deft touch and never imposes herself onto a scene, but rather inhabits her character so fully that you feel as if she isn't acting at all…which is the goal of all great actors. Ronan is not a showy actress, her strength lies in being genuine and grounded, and allowing the rooted humanity of her characters to shine through. Ronan envelops Eilis in a thick coat of melancholy when we first meet her, a young and awkward girl struggling to make her way in a strange new world. As the film progresses, Ronan adeptly allows Eilis to gradually bloom into a weary and a wary young woman, and then blossom into an adult woman who embraces her incandescent power.

Besides being remarkably talented, Saoirse Ronan also has the benefit of being a classic beauty. She is so beautiful that she would be right at home in any of the great museums of the world, but she is not the typical "Hollywood" beauty. Her beauty is an approachable one, making it a marvelous asset but never a distraction. While the camera loves her face, it is Ronan's immense skill and prodigious talent that fills the big screen. There is not a lone disingenuous moment from Ronan in the entirety of Brooklyn, which is a great credit to her commitment, as the script could have easily led her to moments of melodrama.

As great as Saoirse Ronan is, the film never fully lives up to the stellar work she does in it. The first half of the film is very compelling, buttressed by solid supporting work from Jim Broadbent and Julie Walters. But mid-way through the film, when a love story comes in to play, the wheels come off the wagon. The biggest reason for this is that the love interest, Tony Fiorello, is of no interest at all. He is a one dimensional, cardboard cutout of a character. The actor playing Fiorello, Emory Cohen, does the best he can, but his character is a weak spot in the script and Cohen seems an ill fit for the role. This mis-casting and under-writing is devastating to the rest of the film. The Tony Fiorello character is pivotal for the ensuing narrative of the film to be even remotely believable, and sadly, Cohen's Tony is not believable in the least. In fact, the entire Fiorello family is an albatross around the neck of the film. The characters in the Fiorello family would be more at home in an old Prince spaghetti commercial than they are in Brooklyn.  None of the characters in the Fiorello family are credible and neither is the relationship between Eilis and Tony, which is the death knell of Brooklyn.

In the last quarter of the film, Domnhall Gleeson shows up as local Irishman Jim Farrell, and does his usual quality work, but it is too little too late to save the film. Brooklyn would have been much better served with much more of Domnhall Gleeson's Jim and much less of Emory Cohen's Tony. But alas, 'Twas not to be.

Despite the love story mis-step, Brooklyn does get a lot of things right. It is a well made period piece with flawless costumes and set pieces. Brooklyn is also visually exquisite, as cinematographer Yves Belanger uses a delicate palette to paint a lush picture of 1950's Brooklyn and rural Ireland.

In conclusion, Brooklyn is a gorgeous looking film, highlighted by a wondrous performance from the magnificent Saoirse Ronan. Sadly, a fatal flaw in the script and the casting had a devastating impact on the film that undermines many of the positives it had going for it, rendering Brooklyn a mixed bag at best. In my opinion, Brooklyn is worth seeing on Netflix or on cable, but it is not worth your time and hard-earned money to make the punishing trek to go see it in the theatre.