Protraph
Lack of good storyline.
Breakinger
A Brilliant Conflict
ChicDragon
It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.
Juana
what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.
Mark Heiliger
I do like a good horror anthology series (Tales From the Crypt is coming soon
), but this series is only half horror. The other half is not that good (thriller, action, crime, etc). All the episodes are based off of Stephen King's short stories, and the guy is not strictly a horror writer, I admit. I just wanted a show with the word "nightmares" in its title to scare me, not make me chuckle at a goofy William H. Macy performance. Only a couple episodes really stand out, one of which is the Lovecraft-inspired "Crouch End." I know
Me? Like Lovecraft? Don't act so surprised! The episode starring William Hurt as an assassin besieged by green army soldiers come to life is different because of the lack of dialogue. It's an interesting choice, and cool at first, but after a while I just wanted Hurt to at least scream an obscenity at the toys instead of grunting like a cave man. Other episodes have their own methods of storytelling that work better, like in "The End of the Whole Mess," which has the main character telling much of the story into a video camera.Since I'm not an avid reader of King's, I don't know if there are better shorts of his that remain untapped. All I know is that half of these stories probably shouldn't have been made into a TV show. Interviews on the discs indicate that some of the original short stories were less than 10 pages long. Turning that into a 50-minute show means an awful lot of pointless filler. Most of the draw lies in the fact that each episode has some recognizable star power. That doesn't mean Jeremy Sisto, Claire Forlani, Ron Livingston, and Steven Weber never act in crap. Still, I feel safe recommending this series to King fans. They can watch "Umney's Last Case"in flesh and blood at last instead of a "Dark Tower" movie.http://www.movieswithmark.com
5h4d0w
i usually don't write reviews but i can't understand why this is rated so high and wanted to give a warning to horror lovers since i can only assume that all those high ratings were given by average TV watchers.i have only watched the first two episodes but those two were so cliché, it wasn't even funny any more. the same old stories you've probably seen/read a couple of times already - living toys, evil things from other dimensions... and it's not just that these stories aren't innovative, they are also pretty bad versions of those clichés. i'd prefer e.g. "chucky" and "silent hill" over those two episodes anytime. and don't even ask about the visual effects... the ones in the first episode are alright but the ones in the second... awful. looks like some film student's project gone wrong. blood... or gore... erm... nothing worth mentioning.it might be interesting for some ten year old kid who probably hasn't seen/read that many scary stories yet (although i'd rather recommend "beyond belief" - now that's what i call a decent mystery TV show). but for an adult horror fan this is worthless. i only gave the 3 points because there is in fact some beautiful cinematography (especially in the second episode) and some nice acting.
LindaM72
/1/ Battleground had great production values and excellent cast in William Hurt. The first half was slow but it made up for when the doo-doo hit the fan later in the movie./2/ Crouch End is one of the few attempts at interpreting King's Lovecraftian inspired tales into a movie, and it mostly excelled at that. Great cinematography, good cast, imaginative directing and creepy special effects make this episode a perfect compliment to Battleground during the first week./3/ Umney's Last Case is unfortunately a victim of an over zealous writer intent on changing a lot of Stephen King's work in the original short story. Macy does a good job of trying to salvage this movie, but I would skip this story when renting the DVD./4/ End Of the Whole Mess will come across as slow, talky and a bit conventional to many, the writing is probably the deepest of the four aired so far, but that can't help the slow pace and melodramatic performances.
jim47-1
Umney's Last Case: I'm not a big fan of Stephen King: that would be my wife. But I've read enough of his shorter fiction to have a feel for his work, and I really enjoyed this segment; it worked very well. William H. Macy was perfectly cast and Jacqueline McKenzie was very good, as well. Yeah, it's a silly premise, but once you suspend disbelief, it was very well-crafted. The ending was exactly right: no real conclusion, just the realization by both principles that the tables had turned. If only they had done The Stand, or Firestarter as well as this. If I have a quibble, it would be with some of Mrs. Landry's actions, which seemed a bit weird even for a King story. Overall, this is a 9 out of 10.The End of the Whole Mess: As for the second story of the second evening, this was not as engaging, but it still worked fairly well. I liked the idea of doing it as a documentary, but this also meant that some time that could have been used in developing the ideas in it was wasted on showing Ron Livingston's character, Howie, telling the story. I'm sure that this is how King wrote it (I've not read the story), but I think they could have just set it up and run with it, cutting back to seeing Howie talking maybe half as much as they did. But this is a small complaint. The story isn't as creative as the first one of the evening, but it worked well, as far as it went. There are some internal inconsistencies as well, which made it harder to like it. Perhaps the fact that it was grimmer than the first one made it easier to be critical of it. I'll give this a 7 out of 10.
