Kudos to Cranston, HBO, Schenkkan for All The Way

I just had a chance to watch "All The Way" and it is a very fine, fine and moving adaptation of the play. Superior production, acting...HBO can start counting the Emmys. Especially amazing are Melissa Leo, Todd Weeks and of course Bradley and Bryan. The adaptation also is incredibly complex and complete, almost shocking at times. People...learn our history.

It was okay -- it felt rather by the numbers, frankly. I did find the moments of LBJ's increasing paranoia and that final scary speech to be by far the most interesting things in the film, the rest of which felt very sanitized and tidied up for mass consumption in that Spielberg/HBO way. I'd have liked it to be faster and tighter and meaner, somehow. There's got to be a way to depict the struggle for civil rights that doesn't always devolve into emo-wanking strings on the soundtrack signalling the audience to start tearing up.

The fight is still going on today...

It is amazing he got those civil rights laws passed considering today they cannot pass anything to save their lives. I enjoyed it as well and Cranston inhabited the role. I felt the protagonist's journey could have used a bit more urgency and the script was a bit talky but that is a minor quibble. It did feel very relevant to today and that is to the credit of the writers and the director. As portrayed in the film Johnson was quite colorful and had a lot more personality than I remembered as a child growing up during his administration. I had no awareness about the Jenkins situation and it was cool how Lady Bird came to his defense. I guess the YMCA was quite the tearoom.