Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

Twilightfa Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

Grimossfer Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Stephan Hammond It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

TheLittleSongbird If anything Henry VIII did have some promising things but it was also hugely problematic too. It is true that historians will despair, and already have done, when watching Henry VIII, because history is so distorted to the point that it feels like it'd been rewritten(speaking as a non-historian but as someone who always showed a great interest in the Tudors). And it doesn't fare a huge amount better as a standalone either. As said previously, it does have good things, the best thing being most of the performances. Of the six wives, Assumpta Serna, Clare Holman and particularly Helena Bonham Carter fared best; Serna's Catherine of Aragon is very dignified, Holman doesn't have a huge amount to do but is very touching as Katherine Parr and Bonham Carter, who has the most screen time of the six wives, makes for a witty, shrewish and sometimes moving Anne Boleyn. The supporting cast are even better, with powerful but too brief performances from Charles Dance and particularly Sean Bean, David Suchet playing Wolsey as if born to play him and Mark Strong as a menacing Duke of Norfolk. Henry VIII is well-made as well, it is photographed absolutely beautifully and the costumes and settings are colourful and elegant though the portrayal of the court didn't seem as luxurious as one would like. There are a few good lines, almost all of them from Henry VIII(you have got to love his insult of Anne of Cleves likening her to a horse) and there are some charming moments in the music score with a big shout out to the music for Henry and Anne(Boleyn)'s wedding dance.That's not all to say that all the music works because in the more dramatic moments it did get rather too intrusive. And I did have mixed feelings on Ray Winstone's Henry, him faring much better in the second half than in the first half. As the older Henry Winstone is excellent, in the later parts Henry is very tortured and complex and Winstone does a fine job with that. But for me he fails as the younger Henry, being more cockney Tony Soprano than Henry VIII.Coming onto the flaws, Henry VIII did feel really rushed, after so much time with Catherine and Anne it literally steamrolls through the other four wives, with the way Anne of Cleves was written here she may not as well existed. Most of the acting was fine, but there are roles that suffered from not being very well-written, of the remaining three wives Emilia Fox's Jane Seymour is rather wooden emotionally, Emily Blunt plays Katherine Howard as too much of a nymphomaniac and Pia Girard is completely wasted as Anne of Cleves. Duke of Norfolk and especially Thomas Cromwell seemed written as stock antagonistic caricatures, though it was much more noticeable in Danny Webb's Cromwell than with Strong; to me Strong showed more demeanour and charisma but Webb seemed out of sorts in one of the weaker portrayals of Cromwell. The story has some compelling moments but its fatal mistake is focusing so much on the relationships between Henry and his wives and not properly showing what made him so famous(at most any mention of his or his wives' contributions are explored barely) as well as making a lot of the characters one-dimensional. Another let-down was the script, which again had moments but showed soap-opera at its most melodramatic and the subtlety of an axe(pun intended), Henry and Anne's chemistry and dialogue were far wittier in Anne of the Thousand Days. Henry VIII is also needlessly violent, of course any executions unmistakably brutal but Henry VIII goes overkill on the gratuitous factor, particularly badly done were those of the inept executioner and that for Katherine Howard(how Katherine is written in this scene is embarrassing). It also shows Henry VIII as a wife-beater and a rapist which only succeeded in vilifying his character and possibly distorting history more.Overall, Henry VIII impressed in some areas but it frustrated in other areas as well, didn't hate it but didn't love it either. 5/10 Bethany Cox

fidolofido Henry VIII is a fantastic film. Granted, there are several mistakes in it, such as minor historical inaccuracies, some shoddy editing, and leaving the viewer slightly unsatisfied in the second half.However, the acting of Ray Winstone in the role of Henry VIII makes up for the mistakes. He delights the viewer in a Henry that loves, roars, kills, and cries, and his dimensions are limitless. Mr. Winstone plays a young, virile Henry equally as well as his dying, grotesque older Henry. His transition from young to old is gradual and delicate, and yet he shocks the viewer at the king's sudden decay. Each wife, all well cast and all well acted, are real women unstilted by their time period. Helena Bonham Carter's Anne Boleyn and Assumpta Serna's Catherine of Aragon are particular stand-outs, with powerful, multi-dimensional performances. The other wives are not given much spotlight in the film, and in the second half of the mini-series the remaining four wives are cycled through quickly and without as much care as Anne Boleyn's section of the film. At the film's end, we are still rooting for Mr. Winstone's Henry, even after the destruction he has caused in England and to his loved ones. The film's arc and journey give us a Henry VIII who learns from his mistakes, and acknowledges his faults.

wgkyle There is no doubt whatsoever that the producers of this work have taken extreme liberties in the telling of the story, and employed a few outright falsehoods. Nevertheless, if one is able to leave behind expectations for a true-to-the-books account, it is a fun show to watch.Bad Things: Some of the costumes were not great, but there were also some that were spot-on for the period; the armour was atrocious, and the jousting pretty hokey (coming from someone who's done it before). And I certainly don't think Henry was as pliable and weak-willed as he is made out to be. The dissolution of the monasteries wasn't nearly so bloody and violent (another reviewer correctly described it as looking like a scene out of a viking rape-and-pillage film).Good Things: I think the acting was superb, especially from the supporting cast: Cranmer, Cromwell, Wolsey, Gardiner, Robert Aske. And speaking of Aske, for all the inaccuracies in the movie it is the only one that has given the Pilgrimage of Grace the incredibly significant role it actually played during Henry's reign; the details of the Pilgrimage are far too complicated to go into here, but even though much of the details were abbreviated or changed, the very fact that the producers gave a nod to this important event went a long way with me. Suffice to say that Henry's rule could have been swamped and swept away by the Pilgrimage, something Henry and his contemporaries were well aware of and was a consideration which guided their domestic policies for many years afterwards. The movie was limited by the length it could be to go into details concerning the 36-year reign of the monarch, and understandably had to 'pick its battles'. As such, it did leave a lot out about the religious crisis and split with Rome, as well as the effects of religious turmoil on the political situation at home and abroad. If they'd had another 4 hours, they could have covered more things to a greater extent, but most folks have trouble sitting through a ninety-minute movie.Overall, a worth watching but don't expect a history lesson. Besides, we need to worry about anyone who DOES expect a history lesson from a movie...

ejj1955 I second most of the comments already made about the historical inaccuracy of this program, but want to add yet another quibble: the scenes that purport to show the dissolution of the monasteries. What a bunch of hooey! I thought I was watching a scene from some movie of the Vikings raiding and pillaging the English coast. What actually happened was that inspectors were sent around and anything of value was methodically stripped and either taken for the royal treasury or sold; the monasteries were then pulled down, bells were melted, etc.; the monks and nuns were given pensions. It's true that servants were turned off without work, causing hardship; it's also true that those who were especially obdurate were tried and executed, but the slashing swords and burning monks fleeing from buildings were complete inventions of the filmmakers. I just don't see the point--fiction is the name for this (not even historical fiction--just fiction).