Didn’t grab me. Couldn’t get into this.

I love that this was filmed in Dublin’s unmistakable Kilmainham Gaol.

The split timeline thing threw me at first but once I caught on I really enjoyed it. Hope that’s not a spoiler.

It’s about 3 hours too long

Wish fulfillment or something, the thing where hindsight allows the viewer 20/20, in forced situations that involve the characters being painfully blind yet making sweeping gestures, and all the various europeans speak english with american accents.

“Really, extremely understated” or some other polite way of saying I was bored out of my mind and couldn’t finish this.

Disturbing.

But… Impressive?

It was indeed mostly a portrait of a history professor on her travels with her young (but not too young to behave) daughter.

So I waited for John Malkovich’s character to arrive. Then there was still more talking with less history. For those of you wary of subtitles, yes the foreign languages continued at that point, except with a smattering of English (Malkovitch sticks mostly but not entirely to his native tongue).

The sickle cell joke cracked me up.

The hair battle was too long.

I never saw this as a kid, and I’m glad. It was tense for me as an adult and would have been scary/terrifying for me back then. So much struggle, pain, and loss – and when the inevitable reunion occurs, we’re not even given time to savor it before the credits roll.

Everyone should read this