Can we just give Vera Farmiga all the awards already?

Everyone involved with Five Days at Memorial deserves all the awards. Both in front of and behind the camera

Many Saints of Newark was a thoroughly enjoyable film. I don't know how much people who have never watched The Sopranos would enjoy it tbh, there were a lot of awesome callbacks (from moments talked about during the shows run to certain phrases that certain characters used in the show) that made me giddy with delight when they happened.

Almost all of the acting was A+. Alessandro Nivola was great as Dickie, even if the character himself was slightly dull imo. Leslie Odom Jr was fantastic as Harold and I would have liked to have seen more of his story. Michaela De Rossi was excellent. All of the Soprano family were wonderful, Michael Gandofini as Tony made me very emotional, Jon Bernthal was great as Johnny and again, I wish we could have seen more of him (fingers crossed that there's a next time), we didn't see nearly enough of Janice either. Corey Stoll was amazing as Corado 'Junior' Soprano and well, what can I say, Vera Farmiga was incredible as Livia (something I'm not even slightly surprised about, she's always incredible) and has one of the most emotional moments of the whole film (of course she does). We didn't really see enough of Paulie to see if Billy Magnussen did a great job or not tbh, Samson Moeakiola was great as Pussy and Ray Liotta was also fantastic. John Magaro sadly was the weakest link of the cast for me, that's not to say he did a terrible job, there was a moment when he was uncanny as Silvio, unfortunately, for the most part, he got the voice all wrong. Silvio is one of my favourite characters from the show and given how perfect the rest of the cast were at portraying existing characters, it was just a little jarring. Sorry John, like I said, there was one moment where it genuinely looked and sounded like they had de-aged Steven Van Zandt.

There has already been talk of a sequel to this prequel and imo, not only should there be a follow up to this film but I honestly think that there should be two more films as this one absolutely feels like the first part of a trilogy to me, there feels like there is a lot more to be explored.

There have been a few negative reviews and imo, I feel like the people who have criticised it were expecting either a film all about Tony's rise to being a mob boss or they were expecting something that was like non stop action. This film, much like the show has slower moments in it, it's about the characters, not big explosive set pieces, maybe if people went in realising that, they wouldn't feel so disappointed. I do however understand the criticism that says that it could and probably would have worked better as a mini series so that all the story lines could have been explored better but that's not really criticism as it just means that people loved what was done but wanted more.

Loved the film and can't wait to see it again.