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If you're thinking of watching this because you loved The Crown, don't. They have nothing in common. The Crown was written by people who understood the era into which Queen Elizabeth II was born. I'm afraid The Empress was created by people who have absolutely no historical sense whatever. It's like Kardashians Meet the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The acting is horrible. The writing is horrible. (We watched in English. Maybe the dialog is less banal in German.)

The 2016 Victoria with Jenna Coleman (about Queen Victoria and Prince Albert) has a similar kind of plot, takes place around the same time, and is MUCH better.

We watched two and a half episodes and had to quit.

I'm not sure why I gave it 2 stars. The actress who plays Elisabeth is pretty. And I guess I'm glad I watched it on Netflix. If I'd had to pay for it on Amazon, I'd have given it the lowest possible rating.

Worst movie I've seen in a while. I am fond of de Palma: Dressed to Kill, Body Double, Untouchables, I even like Bonfire of the Vanities. But this one is a stinker. I tend to rate movies on a sliding scale where I start by asking how ambitious the film is, and then I assess how well it reaches its goal. A small film that realizes its ambitions and then some (say, Office Space) can be a 10 for me. Black Dahlia seems like an ambitious film, like it wants to be great. It's got a great director, what I assume was a decent budget and some name-brand stars. But nothing gels. No chemistry between any of the characters. I stopped watching after an hour and a half because I didn't give a darn how it ended. I did go back and force myself to watch the last half hour. Things didn't improve.

I've watched the De Niro and Dreyfuss movies a couple of times each and like them. As entertainment, Dreyfuss is better, but both are well made films, well directed, well acted. They hit the right notes for movie buffs.

But both of those movies miss the point. The point isn't that Bernie Madoff was a swindler. That's a boring story. Madoff started out selling penny stocks and in the end he was never much more than a penny-stock putz. Sure he may have been chairman of NASDAQ at one point, but if you're under the impression that putzes aren't running the world, well, God bless you.

No the permanently interesting story of the Madoff scandal is the same as the story of the Elizabeth Holmes/Theranos scandal: how they got away with it, how the people who should have known better, didn't, in fact, the folks who should have known better actively enabled the fraudsters. This movie gets that part of the story right: It's a story about the SEC. It should be clear now that the people in Washington and elsewhere who are supposed to be protecting the American people, aren't. They aren't even trying hard. And when they fail, OTHER PEOPLE's lives are destroyed but they keep getting promoted, or they move to even better-paying jobs outside government.

Warning: Watch this film after watching The Big Short and you may be inclined to cash in your retirement funds and put the money into something safe and solid like Bitcoin. (Just kidding.)

I'm not a cynic. This is just how it is, and this movie certainly demonstrates that.

Now about the other aspects of this movie: It should have been a one-hour show. Too much about Markopolos' anxieties about the danger he might be in. I'm willing to say that he was not being unreasonable. But in retrospect, he was NOT killed or assaulted, and that part of the story -- the personal and emotional effect of being a Cassandra -- is real, but can't be appreciated by any of us.

Markopolos is right: He's NOT a hero. He was a Cassandra. And Cassandra wasn't a hero. She was a prophet that no one listened to.