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Reviews
The Borderlands (2013)
HIDDEN GEM
A film where I knew nothing about it beforehand and found it easily one of the most disturbing things I'd seen in a long time. It isn't often a film makes you question WTF is going on with, well, everything. Beyond the boundaries of a normal film within the confines of a film. Excellent. The ending is up there with the end of Blair Witch for OMGness.
Like Minds (2006)
Cathar Come Home
Really bad. Pretentious. Clunky. Nonsensical. Poorly scripted. Felt sorry for the actors (most of them anyway). This is the kind of thing they did well in the 1960s - films full of brooding menace and sexual tension that used to air on BBC2 on Sunday nights. This was just a mash-up of bad psychoanalytical babble that made you wish you were thirty years younger and had you yearning for the first time you saw something like this that wasn't a pile of badly highly strung jibber jabber. Toni Collette - why! Patrick Malahide - why! David Threlfall - why! Eddie Redmayne - well, maybe not Eddie Redmayne. I knew it was going to stiff after the first major scene when our Ed goes on about the Cathars. Coincidentally (or not... spooky...) the last film I saw with Ed in when I made the mistake of staying up late to watch it on TV (you never know, the next Unman, Wittering & Zigo may just be around the corner, you have to kiss a lot of frogs...)was about...the Cathars. Are all his films about the Cathars?
Blow Dry (2001)
Accent on bad accents
Josh Hartnett's accent really awful but not quite as bad as Natasha's. Whatever possessed them to put the poor lad into this bag of nothingness. Oh Natasha! I can't remember seeing her in anything noteworthy. One of the most unoriginal ideas for a film. Was it a comedy? Why wasn't it funny? Was it a drama? Why did they fill it with actors who couldn't get work on a daytime soap? A waste of everyone's time and, in some cases, talent. One that Peter Kay seems to keep quiet about which is unusual. To confess I only watched it to see if I could recognize any of the locations and they were pretty much the most noteworthy things in there.
North Square (2000)
Why do the good die young?
North Square was an excellent one-hour drama series with a great cast and great characters. The scripts were plausible and funny and it looked like a sure-fire hit. What happened? We only get one series of this and yet we're on the third series of the lame 'Teachers'. North Square was a sharp as The West Wing in places. Sometimes I really don't understand how television works.
Resurrection (1999)
Gore Blimey
OK, it's late, there's nothing else worth watching on the box let's give this a go. Completely formulaic with very averagely bad acting and dialogue but at the end of it all surprisingly entertaining. Good visuals, especially the tableau at the end - I won't ruin it for you - and a pacey enough little treat. I like Christophe Lambert, he seems like a nice guy if his appearance on Graham Norton's chat show was anything to go by. Good luck to him. This wasn't art by any means but low budget dross beats over-hyped dross for kudos any day.
The Sixth Sense (1999)
He's behind you!!!
I'm sorry, but this has to stop. If the earth-shattering revelation was so well buried that you couldn't guess what was coming up then you didn't see the trailer. Or the first five minutes of the film. Giant waste of time. What were we supposed to be afraid of? All the ghosts didn't help, blessed with the calibre of make-up and costume that would disgrace a straight-to-video slasher flick. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. NEWPDQ
Rocinante (1986)
A long-time favourite awful movie
The first time I saw this film, at Leeds Film Festival, not so long after its release I was knocked out at its awfulness. Having managed to stay pretty much awake until the credits I was able to reflect on its sheer badness. Every cliche of the road movie intertwined with every cliche of the picaresque to create a very colourful olio of garbage. Any suspicions I had during the film that it was so bad it must be brilliant dispersed on the appearance of Jimmy Jewel who, though an excellent comic performer, is usually introduced into dramas to add a pathos which just serves to revoke any such intention. I look forward to seeing it again on t.v. in the wee small hours. My partner and I think it's a cracker. NEWPDQ.