Sharp Objects - HBO miniseries

Amy Adams is fantastic so far as the messy drunk reporter also loving Patricia Clarkson's amazing performance as her eccentric mother . I'm not sure exactly how well the story will play out but the actors are nailing it in the first episode.

I haven't finished the first ep yet but the casting of (I assume) Young Amy Adams is fucking uncanny.

Yeah, I almost wondered if it wasn't just really good young age makeup or digital manipulation in the first couple shots.

Also, as much as I was into Big Little Lies, I will never not be suspicious of a JMV-directed offering, such is my deep hatred of Dallas Buyers Club.

oh this is Showtime, not HBO? ah, well now I don't even have to worry about skipping this since I don't even have access to it. hearing all this stuff about how "unrelentingly dark" it is was already pushing me towards a hard pass. I'll stick with GLOW, thanks.

it is HBO, not showtime

oh lol my bad

JMV-directed offering

oh, yeah, never mind, no thanks

big little lies was good despite how annoying the direction was imo but god this guy sucks, i wish i could unsee wild

Valee >>> Jean Marc Vallee

I was kind of enjoying this (90% for Amy Adams in zero-fucks mode) but honestly the last shot (and its scoring) was enough to convince me it wasn't worth the time investment. Fuck off with rendering self-harm as an "edgy" episode button for your prestige drama.

that girl in the window, how did she die??

I've appreciated the show so far, with the caveat that there are enough things that haven't been really addressed that could play out very poorly depending on how they're portrayed. The second episode doesn't really portray self-harm as "edgy" as much as compulsion, self-stimulation.

hmmmm

that was a Gillian Flynn plot alright

How so

TWIST ALERT

I enjoyed it, tbh. The quality of the acting / mise en scene was much better than the plot but the ending was good.

I agree about the acting and the setting, it's more that

SPOILER ALERT

I didn't think a marauding group of teenagers was a particularly convincing explanation for the murders

Why not? It’s not like we’re talking about logistically elaborate “Seven”-style killings. You don’t think a few teenage girls could gang up on a younger teenage girl to kill her?

And once it all clicks into place the motivation isn’t hard to grasp either: Amma was jealous of the attention Adora was giving Ann and Natalie (Adora was their tutor, remember).

Holy crap that ending. It was so abrupt. My wife and I had to watch it over and over, analyzing every frame in slow-mo.

xp I suppose it is possible and that there had been plot pointers in that direction, but it seemed to me that any resolution might have been better handled using one of the many dubious male characters that the town was full of (my money was on the dad FWIW). Thinking a bit more I can see how Camille internalised her anger whereas Amma externalised it. But I also thought that "it was the teenage girls DO YOU SEE" right at the end was just a bit... silly. It didn't spoil my enjoyment of a good series though!

This was absolute nonsense and not particularly enjoyable for that. It switches between gross and ridiculous for the most part but the final episodes weight more ridiculous and barely make sense.

I can't really make an involved case for this other than mention it but to follow up Big White Lies with this it seemed like a smack in the face to introduce some black characters in the last ten minutes and give them two lines each before violently executing one of them in the closing credits. In the previous two episodes we have a black "observer" character who watches the girls from outside the booze shop doesn't get to speak at all and I'm not sure what that is all about. The "Mexican" murder suspect isn't even in the show iirc (unless he's the one who's briefly seen giving Amma a pig).

Elizabeth Perkins is amazing in this but I don't think it's worth the slog to see her twenty or so minutes of screentime, great as they are.

Finished this last night. Liked most of the performances, loved Led Zeppelin and the Everlys, but overall found it a little too self-consciously gothic and weighty. And muffled--I was really straining to hear the dialogue at times (and didn't have the benefit of subtitles). The ending went right past me--I had to go online for an explanation. I mean, if I could have made out what Amy Adams was holding, I would have got it. I couldn't. Also, it never occurred to me to stick around past the first closing credit; if you make it to the final episode, make sure you do.

I read the book recently as it was £0.99 on Kindle and the ending is much more heavily trailed - to the point at which it is almost entirely obvious half way through who is guilty. The show was more skilfully controlled, I think.

I felt like the show pretty heavily hinted who was responsible

SPOILERS
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Actually I’m not sure if the show/story hinted it or it was just that I found the character/actor OTT creepy. She was just too much against the rest of the performances (the brother’s cheerleader gf was similarly OTT).

Amy Adams was spectacular in this.