Change Your Image
elvisleeboy
Reviews
The Reckoning (2023)
BBC's Obsession With Wokeness Strikes Again
Claire McAlpine was a fifteen year old girl who committed suicide. It was later discovered that she had recorded in her diaries that she had experienced sexual encounters with two DJs (Though neither were specifically named).
Surely it goes without saying that this girl deserves to have her story told, and told truthfully.
Not content with their part in enabling the abuse that Savile was regularly dishing out, they add insult to injury by appropriating this girl's tragic story and using her to further push their own ideology - While of course forcing the licence payer to fund it.
The fact is, Claire McAlpine was a white girl with blonde hair. She was not Asian and she did not have dark skin.
The BBC apparently deem the telling of HER story and representing who SHE really was, to be less important than their own obsession with pushing diversity.
This is no reflection on Tia Dutt who performed admirably and bravely, and the acting overall is superb, particularly that of Coogan. Fenella Woolgar as Margaret Thatcher too is excellent.
But Claire McAlpine was a real person. She was not a fictional Disney character. It is inexcusable that she should be portrayed as something she was not.
If indeed Savile did abuse Asian children, they too deserve to have their stories told, and portrayed accurately.
Unfortunately the BBC is less interested in telling us how things really were, and more concerned with their arrogant and sanctimonious need to tell us how they think things should have been - Hypocritical, considering that they were part of the reason they were how they really were.
Birth of the Beatles (1979)
Endless Inaccuracies, But Who Cares?
Those picking out the historical inaccuracies the film is undoubtedly littered with, seem to be missing the point. You will not pass a Beatles exam if you use this film as your primary source of information. But what you will be, is entertained by a film that manages to capture the essence of what made The Beatles so captivating. As well as their music, the public were mesmerized by the interaction between them, almost as though they had created their very own language. They invented and shared a sense of humour that no outsider could penetrate. The film manages to get this across, this to the point where the many factual errors no longer matter.
It is rather a giveaway when a reviewer is from the US, when they describe the accents in the film as 'spot on'. Those from the UK will notice straight away that Stephen MacKenna sports a broad Yorkshire accent, making no attempt at emulating John's distinctive Liverpool accent - Yet, despite this, Mackenna gives us the best portrayal of John Lennon ever committed to screen; His mannerisms, his demeanor, are uncanny and it is a travesty that he has not been recognised for the brilliant job he did.
The rest of the cast are brilliant too, and it is they who lift the film from being an error-ridden waste of time, to a joyous ride.
David Wilkinson as Sutcliffe and Ryan Michael as Pete Best, are two good looking actors, the latter of whom was rather a flattering choice for the average looking drummer.
The Following Events Are Based on a Pack of Lies (2023)
Good Story, But Five Episodes Over-Stretched
A good story, brilliantly acted by an excellent cast, but tediously slow at times, and unworthy of five hours of investment.
Another reviewer made a point about how blatantly implausible Rob's lies were and how unlikely it is that an intelligent woman would fall for them. This reviewer neglects to mention that this very point is made in the show, and by the lady in question, who is exasperated retrospectively by her gullibility and voluntary blindness in the face of an obvious liar.
This show would have benefited from being a little leaner. Three hours would have been quite sufficient to tell the story, enabling it to move along more quickly and efficiently. On this occasion, it is not a case of having time to flesh out the characters, who are well enough established within the first hour, and, rather than tension, tedium is the result of the unnecessarily long time taken to reach the end.
The difference between three hours and five hours, is the amount of people I would happily recommend this show to, with fewer likely to take a chance and commit to the latter.
Gavin & Stacey: Episode #2.7 (2008)
Stacey's Brattishness Reaches New Heights
Another excellent episode. Brilliantly funny, and emotionally affecting. Thank God that Stacey was played by the endearing Joanna Page, otherwise her fickle character could have been irredeemably unlikable. In this episode, Stacey behaves towards Gavin in such a heartless, hurtful and bratty way, (as she does whenever she isn't getting her own way), that it could put men off wanting to get involved with women ever again, with their 'I want what I want until I get it' mentality. Matthew Horne brilliantly portrays the pain such immature behaviour can inflict on a person; particularly a person who loves you. Thankfully the episode ends on a high note with Stacey coming to her senses, but it may lead you to question whether or not Gavin is a mug for putting up with it, but then, he is in love, as well as married to her, and unlike the female in question, is prepared to do anything for their relationship.
Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)
More Of This!
Completely unsurprising to see so many giving this film full marks. Tom Cruise again stars in a film that dares to entertain without the preaching and messages that have been ruining cinema and entertainment in general for years now.
The female characters in this film, are by-no-means helpless 'damsels in distress', but unbelievably for this era, they are allowed to be seen to be vulnerable. There are even moments when the character Grace drops her defenses and puts her trust in the competence of a man - an audacious move in 2023, but thankfully the makers of this film have performed the bold act of conveying plausibility and it is all the better for it.
The story moves along relentlessly and the film is gripping from start to finish. The plot is a perfect balance of being simple enough to follow, but complex enough not to be banal.
The entire cast are excellent. The interplay between Ethan and Grace is a joy.
Highly recommended, and frankly, the moment the credits rolled, I was ready for part two.
This film needs to be a huge success, to send out the message that this is what we want - A message that is already being delivered via the trouncing the latest Indiana Jones film is currently enduring.
Blindspot (2023)
Amateur Hour
It is quite clear that Ross Kemp has the presence to be in a hard-hitting police drama of quality. It is not difficult to imagine him as a short-tempered, rough-handed detective, and, unlike many actors who play such roles, he would actually be plausible as a character who can hold his own when it comes to dealing with violent criminals.
This makes it all the more disappointing then that he is wasted in this amateurish attempt at a drama. The dialogue is bad
and riddled with cliché to the point of being insulting, and sounds like it was written by school kids, and not particularly well-read ones.
The show looks cheap, and a tree could act the cast off the screen. So wooden are the actors, they could be used to make the coffins their acting careers are surely to be buried in.
The main character is a box-ticking irritant who garners no empathy from the viewer, due to her obnoxious personality and because of the narcissistic and heartless way she treats her friends. That she is motivated only by self-interest, is epitomised by her threatening to kill an innocent dog in order to extract information from a terrified woman. How are we supposed to like this person? Were the writers banking solely on the fact that she is a wheelchair user for the audience to warm to her?
This of course removes any potential tension, because you really don't care whether or not she survives
A character needs to be likeable in order for the audience to care about their plight. Instead they go with an insufferable busy-body who makes you wish the killer had done us all a favour while he had the chance, and spared us everything that followed.
Of course, it is 2023, so Ross Kemp, on the rare occasions he appears on-screen (despite him being the reason most of us bothered to tune in in the first place) portrays an incompetent man, who has to be told how to do his job by a woman - a wheelchair-using one at that.
Incidentally, it is rather telling that the only positive reviews here mention superficial things about the showcasing of disabilities, which are irrelevant as to whether or not this is a compelling and worthy story.
The 10 star reviews are very suspicious, almost as though they were written by Beth Alsbury's friends, or by those more interested in virtue-signalling than the quality so blatantly lacking in this show - and of course we get the obligatory accusations of bigotry for daring to point out how poor Beth Alsbury's acting was in this show - She would fit perfectly into Hollyoaks.
But then she was not helped by just how insufferable her character was, or by the appallingly bad dialogue, and perhaps she would fare better with a likeable character and with a script written by adults.
Pool Boy Nightmare (2020)
Mind-Numbing
Dim females will undoubtedly enjoy this and remain unfazed at the appalling dialogue, the mind-numbingly predictable storyline and the insufferable idiot characters
Those who possess the brain power to operate a light-switch however, would be better advised to make more constructive use of that time, like counting the blades of grass on their lawn for example.
On the plus side, those homeless people whose circumstances render them with no access to a television screen, can console themselves on those long, cold nights with the knowledge that they will at least be spared this monumental assault upon humanity.
A Man Called Otto (2022)
A Familiar Premise
After Ricky Gervais' now legendary performance as host of The Golden Globes in 2020, images of Tom Hanks' less-than-impressed expressions in response to several of his jokes, were seen by millions around the world. How ironic it is then that Hanks should now play a miserable, suicidal widow who desperately misses his wife.
Does this sound familiar?
To make it more clear, he also regularly sits by his wife's grave, does not want to be bothered by people - at whom he frequently lashes out... He even acquires a pet, who quickly becomes one of the few threads by which he clings onto his existence.
This however is a remake of a film which precedes Afterlife, and let us face it, this is a path which has been taken many times; A self-pitying, mean and grumpy person learns slowly and reluctantly to become more kind and to stop feeling sorry for themselves. There is a reason for this; If done well, it can be entertaining, life-affirming, and can leave the viewer with a warmed heart. This film has the ability to achieve this.
The film really showcases why Tom Hanks is so popular. He carries this film and it really all hangs on his performance.
The younger Otto is played by Hanks' son Truman, who exudes the same charm and likeability as his father. So enchanting is the innocence and warmth he conveys, that rather than seeming ludicrously implausible and unbelievable, the scene in which his future wife falls for him, immediately after discovering that he has been lying to her, is not only entirely convincing, but also subtly moving.
Just as important though, is the character of the well-meaning but overbearing neighbour. She insists on imposing herself onto the bereaved Otto. She then becomes upset, as though it were unreasonable, when she is told to refrain from her unsolicited interfering with the life of a man who wants desperately to be left alone. Having overstepped the mark by telling a man she barely knows to get rid of his dead wife's clothes, she is somehow mystified by his telling her angrily to back-off. This still hasn't dawned on her later on when she treats him to the self-pitying cliché "I was only trying to help" - Help he never asked for. This is in response to his request to use her phone, to which, in a fit of accurately portrayed female pettiness and ingratitude, she refuses a man who had very recently taken the time to give her free driving lessons. The actress here deserves praise for her astonishingly precise portrayal of this kind of selfish woman.
Of course this is 2023, so we must also be subjected to the obligatory 'poor-me' transgender 'victim' character, which despite being mercifully minimal, sticks-out like a sore-thumb, due to its complete irrelevance to the story, and it blatantly being crow-barred into the film in order to serve not the storyline, but the self-interests of those who insisted that it be included.
The other characters, particularly the lunatic who is seen constantly stretching his limbs, as well as everyone's patience, are every bit as irritating as Otto finds them to be. But this is the point, as we see all of these characters through Otto's eyes.
In summary: Both Tom and Truman Hanks make it worth the couple of hours it takes to sit through it all.
Ticket to Paradise (2022)
Achieves Its Intended Purpose
Many people will criticise this film for being a by-the-numbers romantic comedy, when in fact that is precisely what it is intended to be. In doing so, they reflect only their own inability to appreciate something that exists merely to entertain, rather than to preach or impart some unsolicited moral lesson.
The film is pleasant enough. It passes by in a rather non-challenging and enjoyable way. The humour is warm and mild throughout, and not for those who require more bite in their comedy.
The performances are very good, particularly that, unsurprisingly, of Clooney and Roberts.
I saw this in a cinema and there were a couple of nearby women who were rolling around as though this was the most hilarious thing they had ever witnessed, so if you happen to be an inane female or new to comedy, this could well be the highlight of your existence.
For everyone else, minus those with sticks up their backsides about such things, it is a pleasant enough ride.
Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022)
Yet Another Victim To Modern Wokeness
I believe that many reviewers would think more of this film, had its story ended in Turkey. Unfortunately, the film is marred by having the obligatory moral lesson, featuring a couple of unconvincing two-dimensional stereotypes in the form of elderly female bigots, tacked on at the end.
Were it not for this unsolicited preaching, more viewers may well be praising the film's original approach to its telling of an adult fairy-tale.
Were it not for this finger-wagging having been ham-fistedly included, viewers may well be applauding the pacing of the film and the rather brave decision to trust the intelligence and the attention span of the audience to stay with it.
Were it not for this out-of-place condescension, viewers may well be remarking upon the originality of having such an understated and rational woman as the central character - The inclusion of the foolish and pointless interactions with her cartoon-character neighbours unfortunately unmasks her and reveals her to be yet another stereotype, this time of a modern, resentful and bitter woman taking out her inadequacies on the rest of society (although she tries to extend the olive branch to her neighbours, unsurprisingly in the form of vegan food), with the standard hairstyle of such a person.
Everything that followed the trip to London, spoilt everything that had gone before, but it seems that they just could not let the audience get away with just being purely entertained in a thoughtful and visually beautiful way.
The Orville: Electric Sheep (2022)
Frustrating
The frustration is derived from the fact that, despite supposedly being set long into the future, humans, particularly female ones, have still yet to evolve beyond the infantile stupidity of emotional and angry outbursts towards a machine, as well as the inability to refrain from becoming upset when an emotionless non-human fails to behave in a human manner, governed by human emotions - What does remain though, is the human arrogance of expecting him to.
One can just about forgive the youngest child this behaviour, but the childish petulance, particularly that displayed by the newest member of the team, is inexcusable from a supposedly advanced adult, who instead comes across as an obnoxious spoilt brat.
As an adult, it is frustrating and implausible to watch adults who, despite being capable of performing the most complex tasks imaginable, are unable to perform the basic one of getting it into their heads that Isaac is a machine, and how futile and profoundly moronic it is to subject him to hatred and attempt to hurt feelings he does not have.
This the equivalent of despising a drill for making holes - The specific purpose it was designed for.
One can only wonder if the actresses involved in these scenes at least possess the self-awareness to feel foolish when reciting this embarrassing and childish dialogue, which frankly makes women look like irrational idiots.
This series is, at its best, fantastic, but it is let down by these melodramatic and insipid soap opera elements.
The scenes involving the newest recruit would be more appropriately suited to a Disney drama aimed at non-too-bright teenage girls.
The King's Man (2021)
Yawn
The First World War and its accompanying history are appropriated in order to inflict upon us yet another tedious insult in which the men, particularly the white ones, are incompetent meandering buffoons and the obligatory kick-ass, brains-behind-it-all woman turns up to save the day and show those silly men how it is done. We even get to pretend that it was in fact a woman who finished off Rasputin, in the manner of a female Dirty Harry.
Perhaps future editions of the franchise will allow us to pretend a black woman cracked the Enigma Code and that a trans person invented the bouncing bomb.
The the story of a man's desperate desire and inevitable failure not to lose his only son to the war machine, could potentially have been an a very moving one, had more integrity been committed to portraying this hugely significant historical event as it really was and the truth that it was in fact predominantly vast numbers of white men who saved us all.
Of course this is far from the first film to use the World Wars as the setting for a fictional story, but the notion that the presence of a woman was vital to any victory in armed conflict in any of it, is a stretch too far and it is typical of those who push woke culture to think nothing of insulting all of those men who sacrificed their lives to preserve their freedom to convey such self-interest and ingratitude towards them.
No Time to Die (2021)
Action-Packed Bond Parody
This film is entertaining enough with Craig his usual superb self, some excellent action scenes and a brilliant villain, but it cannot really be called a Bond film. The scriptwriters merely used the Bond film as a template and vehicle for their own ideas. This would not be such a problem were it not for the fact that they, with staggering arrogance, replaced everything a Bond film should be with those ideas.
Was this a deliberate attempt to annoy fans, or were they simply incapable of writing a real Bond film?
Yes, all the classic Bond tropes are cliche, but they are easily pulled off with good writing and acting - Where present in this film, they are invariably the highlights. Instead, they replace these entertaining clichés with tedious clichés.
So, rather than the ultra confident Bond we all know he should be, who saves the world without disturbing his tie, we instead get the obligatory 'Bond shows his vulnerable side' yawn. We can't even have the feel-good humorously victorious ending so characteristic of Bond films, and instead we are treated to the ultimate liberty - the film ends with Bond being presumed dead.
No doubt the writers will be patting themselves on the back, and of course receiving plaudits from others who should not be allowed anywhere near the Bond franchise, telling us how 'brave' they were to dare to inflict these clichés onto a beloved institution and its loyal audience, but in reality they have failed to give us a real Bond film.
Let us hope that the next actor to play James Bond is afforded scriptwriters who can actually write a Bond film.
Love, Death & Robots: The Drowned Giant (2021)
A Metaphor For Now
If this episode can be seen as an analogy for the treatment of whales, several of the poor reviews can serve as a metaphor for a spoilt and spoon-fed generation who consequently need everything explained to them, incapable of appreciating the joy of unanswered questions.
Both art and entertainment are like a mirror - If an idiot looks in, you cannot expect a sage to look out.
What you get out of a piece such as this, will largely depend on what you yourself have to bring to the table. The more open the mind is, the wider the capacity enabling the enjoyment of a subtle and thoughtful effort like this.
The 'I don't get it' reviews and complaints about the verbosity and supposed pseudo-intellectualism of the episode, presumably from those who prefer the relatively mindless-but-entertaining stylised gratuity of other episodes, is indicative of a generation of people who have not only never read a book in full, but are unashamed of that fact and balk at anything that does not do all the work for them.
There are plenty of works that tie everything up in a nice little bundle, in which all the thinking has been done for the audience, epitomised by Spielberg and which certainly has its place, but to repel anything that even attempts to try something different and commits the heinous crime of asking questions the audience is required to answer themselves, speaks of a lazy anti-intellectual attitude from a generation interested only in easy short-cuts that allow them to appear intelligent on a surface level, rather than putting in the hard work required in order to gain genuine intellect.
The very fact that, rather than applaud the effort to do something different, whether it has hit the mark or not, shows a demographic of people who are determined to condemn us all to an endless stream of predictable cliché and things we have already seen a thousand times before.
In the same way popular music has become inconsequential background noise, consisting of little more than the copy & paste ransacking of songs already written and then presented to an intellectually undemanding public to whom integrity, originality and depth are are simply not required, so it will be with visual art.
There will no longer be room for artists with something original to say or anything new to try, because the continual dumbing down that has now been going on for decades, will render it completely unnecessary, and the only people who will benefit are opportunists interested solely in making money, who will keep exploiting the all-too-easy route of pursuing the endlessly fruitful cash-cow that is pandering to the unthinking, who in turn will continue unwittingly to provide the rest of us with proof that being stupid is like being dead - It is only painful for others.
Angela Anaconda (1999)
Unique and Quirky
Often the greatest gifts to people with intellect and depth, are those gifts that alienate the simple and shallow who immediately repel and dismiss anything original and challenging that requires a little thought.
Art is not complete until there are eyes there to meet it and the right eyes in the case of Angela Anaconda was a niche audience of children who had the depth to appreciate something a little darker with a different approach, alienating the sort of people who describes anything they do not understand as 'weird', which, let us face it, is frankly most things.
Seeing so many people describe the show with words like 'creepy' and that they 'hated' it, is a delightful sight, because then the show feels more personal to those who got it and it is proof that the show was original and unique enough to require more than those who dislike it have to offer.
With any piece of art, you get out of it what you put in and the fact that so many are unable to appreciate Angela Anaconda, shows that they themselves do not have much to bring to the table, whether it be through laziness or lack of intellect.
So in summary, the common dislike of Angela Anaconda is proof of just how good it is.
Carry on Emmannuelle (1978)
Appalling
This dreadful film seems like an attempt to see just how far they could go with degrading Kenneth Williams and his talents. The film is an insult to him, as well as to Joan Sims, Kenneth Connor, Jack Douglas and Peter Butterworth. To add insult to injury, this is the last film in which they would appear together, providing a rather shameful and pathetic epilogue to these icons of British culture who deserved far better.
The Carry On team should really have called it a day following Talbot Rothwell's retirement from script writing duties. The drop in quality following Carry On Dick, Rothwell's last, is palpable and his successors seemed oblivious to what the Carry Ons were about. Lance Peters replaces the classic innuendo and warmth they are known for, with a charmless, crass and witless script, so far removed from the classic films in the series.
The only positive to take from this film, is that its existence illustrates that, while the Norman Hudis and the Talbot Rothwell Carry Ons were never high art, they were certainly not low-brow either - A term that applies perfectly to Carry On Emmannuelle.
Carry on Dick (1974)
The Last Gasp
Carry On Dick may be a rehash of Don't Lose Your Head - and like that film, this one drags a little towards the end, it is still an enjoyable romp nevertheless. It is vastly superior to the films that came afterwards, which were really Carry Ons in name only. This film ended the golden period of the series of films which had begun in 1964 with Carry On Cleo, when Talbot Rothwell took over script writing duties, introducing the bawdy innuendo-driven comedy the Carry Ons are now predominantly known for, and moving them on from the early innocence of the Norman Hudis entries. That Rothwell did not return after Carry On Dick shows immediately in the steep drop in quality, starting with Carry On Behind. The Carry Ons were never high art, but Rothwell managed to stay on the right side of suggestive, whereas his successors, whether by design or not, failed to emulate this subtlety and the Carry Ons were never to again regain the balance of the best films in the series. From then on, the Carry Ons moved into the territory of crassness, occupied by the Confessions Of A... films of the 1970s.
So, even if this a hit and miss entry - Rothwell was suffering from mental exhaustion at the time, so perhaps this is understandable - It still contains enough of the classic ingredients and cast members to make it an entertaining eighty minutes and essentially this is the last genuine Carry On, so, if nothing else, it is significant in that sense.