paudman Reviews

The Invitation (II) (2022)

Racist, cliched, stereotypical.

[1/10 · 25 May 2024]

Imagine we're going to make a movie about a black African family. What do we know? Well, they live in mud huts, wear furs and grass skirts, have bones through their noses, eat missionaries and say "Ugga Ugga" all the time. Oh, and we all go on about how black they are. Would you SERIOUSLY stereotype anyone like that? Well, this movie does. We have two black girls, one almost a real caricature of herself, who go on and on and on about how WHITE some people are. Imagine! One then goes to England, where she finds that the British are all so stuck up and snobbishly boring, they talk in posh accents and drink champagne, they live in stately homes and treat their servants like rubbish, and they're all SO WHITE. Amazing. As a result they ostracised her ancestor years ago when she had an affair with a black footman, so they're all so racist. She, of course, loves the servants, stands up for the weak and underclass, and is determined to bring all this down. Obviously because they're all SO WHITE. In the middle of this we have a story where she finds out through a DNA test that she's related to old British money, flies over to England, and stays in a dark, forbidding, eerie stately home with dark walls, scary statues and candles for lighting - the way all old British families do, as we all know. They still use an ice house, for goodness sake. Amazingly the Lord of the Manor falls in love with her after literally 30 seconds meeting, tattoos, attitude and all, she is suspicious about a locked library with no reason whatsoever, breaks in, uncovers a vampire ring, destroys it, then goes after the survivor. Are you sure, I mean: he is SO WHITE. Have you ever seriously watched a movie where the main characters complain about someone being SO BLACK, apart from Blazing Saddles? You wouldn't, so why allow it here? A ridiculous, shallow parody of a movie, cliched with eerie wine cellars and suspicious bars on the windows, wooden-faced staff and Hooray-Henry guests, and written by someone who just had to get the race and feminist issue to the forefront; at times it was hard to hear anything over the sound of grinding axes. Unbelievable in this day and age. One to avoid, unless you want to waste two hours shaking your head in disbelief at the dialogue. "Are you SURE that's him? I mean, he is SOOOOO WHITE."

Gunpowder (2017)

I half expected William Wallace

[6/10 · 21 April 2024]

Sadly many aspects of this production do not sit well in 2024. King James... well, let's make him borderline homosexual, effeminate, foppish... just like Mel Gibson's Edward II, so we can mock and laugh at him as less than a 'real man'. Really? Let's have a persecuted minority (and for persecuted read: once a majority, who through their brutal suppression and unflinching religious laws, set by an unelected regime many miles and many countries away, who alienated a people into what was effectively a rising against the Catholic Church's inflexibility, and who agitated, disrupted and rebelled against the majority so many times that they had to be punished, but ooohhh that's soooo unfair) who are intent on bombing and murdering the country back into that same church and claiming that same punishment and repression not as the just rewards of their actions but as an unjust and undeserved state of affairs which comes to justify their actions. A real chicken and egg scenario - which came first, the Catholic agitation, or the penalty? We rise, we rebel, we get punished, then because we're punished, we rise again, and rebel again, and get punished more... and then suffer under the evil regime which insults women, invades privacy, and rides roughshod over their feelings so that we now clearly know which side to support and which to boo. Effectively we have the 18th century version of William Wallace, who really just wants a family life and to be left to worship in peace... but those evil English through their brutality make him a fanatic willing to die for his cause. Haven't we been here before? Poor Braveheart... I was waiting for the first instance of prima nocta. This was well-shot, good attention to period detail, but oh so cliched. The English were cruel but inept, unfeeling - did any of them even have wives? - and eventually had to rely on the Spanish to betray the Catholic cause, and it was all because Cecil wanted Catesby's land. I enjoyed it, but maybe some day we'll see a production where the terrorists are not all unwilling victims, but the product of their own actions, and who act out of hate - just as in the real world.

The Mist (2017)

Well, they used the title. Don't waste your time hoping.

[1/10 · 26 March 2024]

That's all they used - the title. Otherwise this has NOTHING to do with Stephen King's book; not the plot, nor the events. There's a mist, and that's as close as it gets. Don't expect anything like King's book - he's a writer; the people who stole his premiss and made a screenplay from it aren't, so they added things like toads, leeches and moths to make it seem mysterious, and left out the actual creatures from the book. It was so good they ran out of steam and couldn't make a second series. Enuff said. Too much about character's sex lives, too much about some weird woman in love with spiders, the priest tries to save everybody, and they all run about doing stupid things that kill others but amazingly not themselves. It's beyond bad.

Plague (2014)

So bad you don't want them to survive.

[1/10 · 24 March 2024]

I'll summarise this movie and so save some of your life that will otherwise be wasted. If I get this correct: five survivors are living in a tin barn miles from anywhere. Zombies - we think they are, anyway - run about at night, banging off the walls, then magically disappear next day to somewhere else. You never see any, not even in the distance. Everyone wants to leave and find somewhere more scenic bar the dippy, weepy, useless female who is waiting for her husband and whose entire contribution to things is to rub her arms and grimace. They leave her, he appears, and immediately you ask: Why? Where from? How does he find them? What does she see in him? The tough guy arrives, they fight, husband rolls about and cries - for a long long long long time, until you get bored with the shot - and presumably tough guy takes the wife as his conquest. Then here comes a soldier with a gun - husband not only disarms him but takes his clothes, and exit soldier presumably stark naked to Gawd only knows where, it's not shown - he shoots tough guy, tough guy shoots wife, but no transformation to zombie. Does he even die? Husband then bandages wifey OVER her clothes, off they go, run out of fuel, have no idea where they are (where did husband come from earlier, again, and how did he find them?) and lo and behold - we see ZOMBIES for the first time in the distance. Wifey shoots husband, leaves him injured, and goes off to dream in a field nearby, presumably about making a better movie next life. That's it. It's so amazingly BAD I cannot believe it. We never actually see zombies close up - cheaper that way, no doubt - and some of the shots are so drawn out it seems they were either killing time or trying to emulate Seven Samurai. Never mind 28 Days Later, this one was 28 Years Later waiting for something to happen. A complete waste of time.

Cell (I) (2016)

Incomplete bilge that runs out of steam

[2/10 · 4 March 2024]

This is a Stephen King adaptation and like many of his books / movies, the ending is ambiguous, almost as if the writer ran out of ideas and so ends it in a 'let the reader decide' kind of way. If you can get round the initial premis whereby a signal through mobile phones drives everyone mad - I mean more than usual - and they turn into bloodthirsty maniacs, which the usual small group of survivors has to evade in hope of some safe haven or solution, there are just too many convenient loopholes. The 'phonies' stop at night - convenient, lets all move about at night, round them, through them and even burn them to no reaction at all; they seem to ignore roads, so we can all walk about in full view in deserted countryside and along empty roads, unmolested; and they do the usual 'stand still and do nothing' until the camera reveals them, and then they start going mad as if suddenly switched off and on. We have the usual King 'eccentric madman' who lives in an icecream van and has access to tons of high explosive - very handy - and knows exactly what to do with it, even though he's as much in the dark as any of them as to how things are caused and how they are going to end. The survivors all share the same dream of Cusack's 'devil' creation, which is conveniently never explained, but by this time we're all wishing Cusack would use the explosives and destroy the obvious phone mast - except he parks so far away he may as well do it from the next county and of course it doesn't work... or does it? By the end his son is mad, he's mad, are they dead or not, who cares? It's as if someone took the book, used a few bits, made up others, left bits out and then came to a quick ending in order to try to recoup some of the costs and run away, very fast. Allegedly they rewrote the ending. Do it again, please, and actually have one. It just left me totally bemused.

Dune (2021)

Good CGI does not an epic make...

[6/10 · 2 February 2024]

Making a movie from a book should be like reading poetry. You must read the lines, and especially the rhymes; you can stamp your personality into the reading but leave anything out and it loses the metre, the beauty, the absolute sense. Such is Dune. Like Game of Thrones, the viewers will be divided into those who have read the book, and those who have not. For someone who has read the book, there are expectations. Characters must be THUS. They speak certain phrases which are key to the story, and their character. They act in a certain way. The plot must build, as in the book. It must develop in steps, it fleshes out the characters, and so, when something happens, you know WHY. If this does not happen the the book readers are disappointed, and if you watch it alongside those who never read it, you will sit through an endless barrage of questions: Who is he? What does he do? Why do they do that? What is that thing?

This is the problem with this kind of movie: read the book, the producers assume you know it all, so they can leave things out. No problem in an easy-to-follow plot, but not here.

This film is beautifully shot, but leaves out so much of the essentials. It jumps so quickly to the Atriedes destruction without ever fleshing them out first. There is no shock at Dr Yueh's betrayal, as we don't know anything of his conditioning. There is no interaction with the Fremen servants; Paul does not save the Shadout Mapes and so learns of a traitor. Duke Leto barely develops into a man loved by his men, or one who would be admired by the Fremen. There is no development of much at all, certainly not politics or intrigue. From where does Paul pluck the idea that he will marry the Emperor's daughter? Out of the blue, apparently, with not even a glimpse of the girl herself. The Fremen are not nomadic desert tribes living in caves but an advanced society wearing spacesuits, which makes it highly unlikely that they would be dismissed as no threat so easily by the Harkonnens; Harkonnen sabotage of equipment is dismissed as just wear and tear, and of course, the dream of planting a water-rich Arrakis, with the plants so lovingly tended in the conservatory in the book in trust for the people, is merely a barely-mentioned sideline.

For me the big questions are why they all live in semi-darkness, in huge rooms lit by one small light, and why the Harkonnens are always portrayed as living in harsh industrial conditions on a heavily polluted planet, both in this and in David Lynch's version.

It's an interesting movie, but not one that I'd watch again; in fact I haven't finished this one yet. I might, if I can stay awake.

Leave the World Behind (2023)

Dire bilge with the worst soundtrack ever.

[1/10 · 17 December 2023]

When you spend two entire hours waiting on a movie to unveil what's happening; then after a long slow, drawn-out, yawn-factor build-up, it doesn't - not really - it leaves you wondering: did someone actually get paid for this? The music was unbelievably poor, a whining collection of songs with little-boy lyrics about sex, but for the rest - it was really just a movie about what happens when the Internet goes down. Where did all the other people go? Why were the streets and roads deserted? Why was Ethan Hawke frightened by a cloud of leaflets? Why did the daughter walk off at the end, stuff herself with food in someone else's house, and sit down to watch DVDs? I really think she was bored, too. Even the people who built the easy-access doomsday bunker decided not to wait for the ending, either. Be smart - run away from this. Very fast.

Black Summer (2019–2021)

Tedious, hard to follow, and sadly lacking

[5/10 · 30 November 2023]

First of all, I'd have killed Boone long ago. That I'll get off my chest first. One of the most annoying characters I've ever seen in any programme. Sadly, this programme had all the ingredients of a good show - running zombies, chaos, a dog-eat-dog world, yet rarely have I seen such wealth squandered so badly. It's a zombie apocalypse - but where are they? Were we running short of zombies? They're hinted at, we see one or two in the early stages, but nope - hardly any. What we do see are people fighting, people killing, people running... but when? One minute they're dead... next they're explaining how they came to be here before they died, so that you quickly lose track of who is alive, who is dead, or any kind of timeline. None of them have any sense whatsoever. Enter buildings, sleep in the largest room with numerous doors, leave doors open when they enter, go on little crusades to help others, and not one works out that shooting the zombies in the head will stop them. Not even the soldiers. Blast off bullets in all directions and run away pursued by... well three or four zombies. Musn't have had a big population in that area. Sun goes through the whole show hiding, crying, or being towed along in handcuffs like baggage, (why?) and her only contribution is to try to stop people fighting, in endless Korean. Too many of the episodes were people talking endlessly... Spears, Boone, (I'd have shot him within minutes) talk talk talk and no action. Season 2 episode 5 was just two guys reminiscing about the old days in the neighbourhood... no zombies, no interest, just yawn. They find a ski lodge, abandoned with all the lights on... walk in, take rooms in different areas and sleep without locking the doors, taking basic safety precautions, or checking the rest of the hotel as the lights blaze merrily away to attract who knows who. I lost track of who was what, who the good guys were (were there any?) who was killing who, teaming up with who, or where they were going bar firstly a stadium, and secondly an airstrip, where unknown people are dropping supplies into the middle of nowhere, and the survivors (Sam?) insist on pushing an entire crate up a steep hill without the sense to take the contents up in small batches... yes, it's that sort of lack of any common sense that makes no sense. It's well shot, seems to have had a big budget, but the hopping about in time, the vague characters who make little impact before they die (especially Boone who should have died sooner) and the sudden ending left me cold. It's just a list of deaths, one after the other, so that you eventually really don't care who it was this time. None of them, bar Anna, deserved to survive, and even then she's a 'maybe' who never developed as a real survivor. I'm glad Boone died, though. Detested him.

Free State of Jones (2016)

A well-filmed non-event?

[5/10 · 16 November 2023]

I wanted so badly to watch this movie; I love the Civil War era, Matthew McConaghy is a superb actor, and so I saved it for a clear evening's viewing. The evening was clearer than the movie. There are just too many plot holes. I could get Knight as a stretcher bearer who deserts to go home. No problem. THEN we cut to some modern court case in which we learn Knight has had a child to the slave Rachel, a massive plot spoiler leaving the viewer wondering where this comes in. Knight then returns home, lives in a swamp which is actually about two fields away from the town, going by the smoke from their fires, and attacks his former colleagues - Officers aside, these men must have been relations, friends, neighbours from before the War. No matter, he kills them anyway. Gathering a rag-tag army, he persuades them to fly the Union flag - men who have fought against this flag have no objections, it seems - and takes over a large swathe of land. Then the War ends - just like that. They all go back to being neighbours - Knight even uses the local shop, no worries about repercussions, no danger from people whose friends and relations he betrayed or may have killed. Even his former wife comes back and lives in peace with his new mistress and their baby. Then we have a random series of historical episodes, regarding slave ownership and voting, lynching, burning, and they do... what? Nothing much, a lot of talking, but no action. They just seem to sit it out as the years take large jumps. At the end we skip to 1946 and a trial of their descendants... which has no relevance whatsoever and seems to be just another historical incident added to the previous list, and once again changes nothing. Did they overturn anything, or change anything, bar this strange little rebellion? No. A beautifully shot, well-acted movie that really does nothing at all bar show a few examples of things that happened back then; terrible things, unjust things, but it may as well have been a documentary. Disappointing.

War of the Worlds: The Attack (2023)

Mars has more atmosphere

[1/10 · 22 September 2023]

Totally, totally, totally - feel free to add as many 'totallys' as you need to get the idea - dire beyond belief.

Take a book, make the original narrator a group so you include everyone who might have a interest in watching and needs to identify, alter the characters to pale caricatures of their original selves, use a few themes from the story but never develop them, and bore your viewers to death more quickly than the Martians would have killed them.

It's the story of three drifters who can't act to save their lives, wandering about the country initially on bicycles then on foot for some strange reason that they never make clear.

The Martins land, they start killing people... oh yeah, so what. There's no urgency, no build up, no suspense, no atmosphere. They just wander off looking for... something. The Martian effects are good, but they they didn't need to act. The actors did, and they didn't.

They meet a soldier who is full of soldierly cliches, but does... nothing bar talk on a radio.

They meet a priest who takes all the food, threatens them with a knife then sleeps... while they all sit there and do nothing. Not even an attempt at escape.

They find an underground chamber under a bridge... then what? No development, no reason, they just leave again. The black kid, especially, plays with guns - those are dangerous, says the soldier - he plays with grenades - those are dangerous, says the soldier; he complains, whines, whinges, refers to the Christian bible as total gibberish, is a complete liability with his stupidity and then the soldier sacrifices himself to save this kid that he has shown no interest in, no particular reason to save him, no development of any type of relationship be it father / son, friends, protector... nothing. We just don't care about any of the characters. They wander the streets, no attempt at concealment or cover, and when they're spotted... well that Martian must have been drunk. His unerring accuracy of earlier was long gone, and despite numerous shots, he missed all three repeatedly.

At the end, the Martians die immediately so no suspense or build up, and here right at our trios' exact location appears officialdom who were lurking somewhere all the time... oh yes, we knew it would happen, we're smug, let's get back to normal and by the way here's your mother on the radio - and the traffic on the road driving normally in the background. I suspect the budget was higher than the talent. I think the Martians saw death as the best way out of this disaster. Avoid.

The Stranger (II) (2022)

Might have been a documentary

[9/10 · 11 June 2023]

I watched this movie straight through; the early stages were 'what on earth is going on?' and the later stages were 'get on with it.' To be honest it may as well have been a documentary, all it needed was narration. Why on earth did anyone want to befriend Teague? What did he have going for him that was worthy of all the attention? Why was he brought into a shady, criminal organisation and treated like someone with value, even though from the start it appears he was a down-and-out with nothing going for him? It takes time to realise that he is the target, a man they are determined to catch out, and to do so they must win his trust, however unlikely it seems. I am surprised that not once does Teague ever question this wonderful friendship and bounty, as a man with secrets who should shun friendship and keep a low profile, but he appears to take it all on face value. He never asks what his job is, or what he is required to do, but is content to sit in the car or stand in the background while others run a mystical, mystifying business which we seem to find out is based on crime. His lack of curiosity seems at odds with the increasing responsibility he is given; the character never develops into someone capable of taking on ever more difficult roles simply because we never see him actually doing anything to deserve this promotion. Once it is established that he is the actual target then it all becomes something of a documentary; how to catch a killer. No drama, no tension, just an admission which is then used to search an area for remains.... but are they ever found? What on earth was the ending? If we are to assume that remains were found, and so Teague was finally caught for murder, we saw no reaction from anyone, neither the Police nor the prisoner. No forensic results, no description of what was found, just... the end. Disappointing. I like Joel Egerton, but this could have been an hour long episode of Vera.

Junk & Disorderly (2019– )

It's fun

[9/10 · 18 May 2023]

I love this series. I'm a great fan of Henry Cole, I just love his style and character. This is another of his classic vehicle-related series, in which they buy automobilia and old vehicles with which to make a profit at autojumbles, with the eventual intention in the second series of buying a Buick. Sadly they buy dear and too often, sell cheap... but it's all about having fun. Henry haggles, laughs, breaks things, keeps items for himself, even gives things away... and loses money almost every episode. It's not meant to be taken seriously, but you can learn a lot and pick up a few tips along the way. I'm giving it 9 rather than 10 as Sam Lovegrove is no longer with them, and I love his gentle style and knowhow. It's great light-hearted entertainment, just the thing to watch over a coffee and a chocolate biccie. More, please!

Deserter (2002)

Confusing title, but not as bad as suspected

[8/10 · 9 February 2023]

I read Simon Murray's excellent book back in the late 1970s, and so when this movie appeared out of the blue on television, late one night, I recognised it immediately despite the misleading title. I suppose they already had a movie called 'Legionnaire' but sadly this meant I watched the remainder expecting Murray to desert at any moment. It did gloss over his initial training, and the brutality of it - his parachute wings for example appear as if by magic - but it was still interesting. Unfortunately, in Hollywood fashion, they made changes - his girlfriend plants bombs for the OAS, and he agonises over the shooting of a child that wasn't in the book, but eventually it wasn't as bad as expected, and he ended up as Sergeant (Not Caporal-Chef as in real life). I just wish it had shown more of the training, the promotion courses, his earnest struggle to become a Legionnaire rather than his forays into Arab territory and his attempts to understand their culture. It's still an interesting glimpse of the Legion without the over-the-top USA dramatics such film-makers often inject.

The Wonder (I) (2022)

Too many unanswered questions

[2/10 · 7 January 2023]

I'll give this movie 2 stars as it was beautifully filmed. Other than that.... an Irish family are starving their only daughter in a kind of religious fervor, seemingly because they think it will save her brother from Hell, since he was having sex with her from the age of nine. However the mother is covertly feeding her, which makes no sense, defeating the purpose of the entire process, and when the child starts to rebel and is about to start publicly eating again, is then prepared to let her die. The history appears to be that the Irish hate the English because of the famine, but are happy to starve their own children when it suits them. None of them appear to work, bar one woman who cuts turf and seems to do everything that the others are too lazy or too busy praying to do. An English nurse then whisks the daughter away to Australia after burning the house down... the whole thing makes the Irish out to be a collection of religious fanatics, singing songs to Jesus but actually committing slow murder in order to help dead people. Weird. The ending with the 'In Out' bit was probably apt, too. Weird.

All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)

Why call it 'All Quiet on the Western Front' and then have a huge attack?

[5/10 · 12 November 2022]

Ok you take an excellent book, a real classic, then you steal the title and make a movie that does not, in any way, resemble the book. Last time I saw that done was the dreadful World War Z. You could have given it any name at all. It's a well-made WW1 movie (up to a point), nicely shot, a bit cliched, generally an in-depth depiction of war, but it's NOT AQOTWF. Not even close, although they do take some of the characters and use some of the incidents, but very little. Cashing in a bit, were we? Where's Tjaden, Westhus, Himmelstoss, where is the initial training, the deployment, the development of characters? None. We're led to believe it's 1917, the schoolkids are all still naive after three years of war - none of which we see - they're thrown straight into war with little training, and the old salts, the great characters from the book, aren't there to help and advise; only Katchinsky and he's a pale shadow of a character, an almost aloof, brutal, older soldier who takes as much as he gives. This movie goes beyond the book - fine - but doesn't go into the book, not enough to justify the name. The title says it all: ALL QUIET on the Western Front. A large attack, at 15 minutes to Armistice, makes a mockery of the book's title, and destroys the entire intention of the name: Paul's death meant nothing; all was generally quiet in the overall scheme of things. Unless of course you're taking the original German title, Nothing New on the Western Front, in which case attacks and death were the norm. Sadly, I doubt it. It's a movie on the horrors of war, but please change the name; believe me, there are greater horrors, such as a classic being milked in this way.

Rogue Heroes (2022–2024)

I wasn't prepared to like it

[9/10 · 8 November 2022]

But i do. For some strange reason the style does click with me, and it's not often that does happen, especially with any BBC production. They usually insert all kinds of anachronistic wokery, but here they've restrained themselves merely to a few unlikely roles for background actors. It's an adventure story, yes they're going to be larger than life, and it's sort of based on a true story - although why they introduced a fictional French-Albanian spy into the mix is beyond me. The music actually helps - it brings the story to an almost modern setting, and certainly suits the action more than Vera Lynn would. I do have a few niggles though - accents... hmmm. Was that a Jamaican pilot? Paddy Mayne sounds more like West Belfast and Dublin mix than Newtownards, it's almost embarrassing - didn't they research that? He's a paddy, not a sammy. They really do need subtitles, currently unavailable. And please - would someone start a GoFundMe page to buy Alfie Allen a different facial expression? He's got the 'I am Theon Greyjoy and I'm trying to make up for things' expression permanently fixed on his face. Otherwise I do like it, I'll give it a chance to see how things go (currently on episode 3) and if nothing else it'll pass a few hours.

Kilo Two Bravo (2014)

Accurate and gritty

[9/10 · 15 September 2022]

I liked this movie; however I doubt if I'd watch it again. It's very very true to life, and accurate - none of the Hollywood portrayal of soldiers that we see in mainstream movies. The guys are professional, and on a job, which they do as soldiers do - determination, professionalism, and a lot of swearing. There's none of this 'why are we here?' soul searching that many movies have; the fact is that they are, and they deal with what comes to them as soldiers. The dark humour, the laughter in the face of adversary, is true to life and makes this film enjoyable. However - and this is the only fly in the ointment criticism I'll make - is that nothing actually happens. It's more like a documentary. They are on duty in a war zone, they stand guard, grumble, joke, then go out on patrol and suffer casualties. What happens next is routine - procedure, triage, casevac, all expertly done, but not exciting. I kept expecting the attack: the snipers, the charge by tribesmen and the last-stand circle of soldiers desperately waiting for reinforcement... and there wasn't any. With 34 minutes to go I started to hit the fast-forward button. It was terrible, but it started to drag on... and on. An excellent portrayal of British soldiers in the field, very very accurate, and the ending where they showed what happened to the personnel in later years was very moving, but it sadly became something of a non-event. I'm glad I watched it, parts will stay with me, but it's not a movie i'll sit through again.

Outlaw King (2018)

There's more to Scotland than Mel Gibson - thankfully.

[8/10 · 9 September 2022]

Please, please, please can we have a review about a Scottish historical movie that DOESN'T refer to Mel Gibson's dreadful Bigfart as though that woeful offering was some kind of benchmark? I must admit to having a love / hate relationship with Outlaw / King; on one hand I love the historical components - the 'how things were done', a sense of the 'way things were' even if not 100% realistically accurate. It's a window into the past. I also love the way that Bruce is portrayed; a nuisance, a distraction, hated by many of his own, a selfish man who imposed his will on the rest of Scotland whether they liked it or not, and gathered the disaffected to his cause until they grew too large to be ignored. This, for me, makes the movie - it's not about a saint, loved by all and mistreated by those horrible English who also ravish Scotland, but one faction, one group, who like a modern political party endured highs and lows until eventually they achieved power, and then, just like the English, ruthlessly suppressed all opposition. This, however, is also the part I dislike. The Bruce is Scotland, a country become man. Not a thug, not a faction leader, not a terrorist who imposes his own vision of Scotland on everyone else, but someone who is 'just right'. Was he, in the end, any better than the English to his foes? I doubt it. Here he's a lovely family man, a human being, belittled and shamed by his enemies, driven to murder and destruction against his will, almost as if his enemies were to blame by not rolling over and giving him everything he wanted, whether deserved or no. Like certain modern day terrorist groups, he seemingly had no alternative to violence. It's a bit like Boris Johnston murdering all of the opposition parties then claiming he did it for England, just so it could be ruled his way. That's fine, if you share his views, and can believe that he broke his vows with no alternatives left to him, but to rebel, yet again. A good movie, interesting and well made, but a very one-sided political view where all's well that ends well, regardless.

Plan Z (2016)

I lasted 30 seconds

[1/10 · 7 June 2022]

... or however long it took the titles to start. Another one of those movies where you sit down to watch a good horror, and within seconds it sounds like a comedy. Maybe it's meant to be one? Either way, it just lost me in the first few seconds, and that was it - the same way as the remake of Dawn of the Dead did with that dreadful music. It's a pity, I had hopes, but hey-ho, that's the movie business, and so I went off and found something better to waste a cup of coffee and some Toffypops on. Next!

Kill Cavalry (2021)

Dire.

[1/10 · 24 May 2022]

Absolutely, mind-numbingly dire. After four years of grinding war.... immaculate uniforms and equipment? Incoherent dialogue, mumbled lines, wooden acting. It's not even school-play standard. Could I do any better? I'm not a director, nor a producer, nor an actor... but at least I'd try. I'd make an effort. No-one connected with this movie did.

Less Than Zero (1987)

The music made it...

[7/10 · 17 May 2022]

I rented this movie on VHS back about 1988 and went to bed long before the end. It was THAT bad. I found it shallow, dead, uninteresting. The characters just didn't grip me. Next morning, over a coffee, I watched the ending practically in fast forward, but, intrigued by the long shot after the death of Robert Downey's character, I slowed to normal speed and was immediately hooked by the excellent music of Thomas Newman. The soundtrack makes it. Just that swelling chord as Blair appears... Heaven. The movie itself is average; Andrew McCarthy is almost wooden, sometimes appearing to fluff his lines, ad lib or even be lost for words, Jami Gertz is unbelievable as a young model, too quiet and almost sullen, with a wistful sadness that doesn't really pull you in. The rest of the cast do their best, Rip is good, but it's a movie with which I have a love / hate relationship. It's amazingly atmospheric - thanks to the soul-touching music of the aforementioned Mister Newman (watch the scene on the swings and listen how the music fits); it's at times superbly constructed: vibrant colours, beautiful scenery, the blues of the pool scene, the amazing shades of lighting reflected on the actors themselves give it an ethereal beauty but the characters just do not do it for me. It's a movie that should be remade properly but with the same soundtrack; that haunting sequence in the tunnel, or where Downey watches the house from the garden... some of my favourite movie music of all time. On an opposite tack, the episode where he enters the house and chats with the young girl - the pre-teen hussy - makes me cringe. It's like watching a predator at work and removes a lot of sympathy I had for the character, but: look at him remotely - the guy's a drug addict, thief, male prostitute.... how much lower can he sink? Sometimes I think we root for the wrong character, but that's the movies. I own this on DVD, I still watch it from time to time, but really only for the amazing soundtrack, which also introduced me to Linton Kwesi Johnston, and still moves me, bar of course that dreadful dirge over the end credits. Sometimes I wonder who suggests these things. All in all it's a cult movie, but really for the wrong reasons.

Skin Deep (1989)

We've all (almost) been there... but it's a gem.

[10/10 · 14 March 2022]

Sometimes in your life, along comes a movie that makes you wonder: "What it?" If you've never grown up, never had to take a long hard look at yourself, wondered what it would be like to play the field in later years... well, this one's for you. Zack gets caught playing away.... not by his wife, but by his girlfriend.... who is then caught by his wife... but luckily he's got enough spare cash to live a bit after the separation. He drinks too much, flirts too much, chases too much, and eventually, probably like all of us, realises the grass was not greener over there. Ok so it's slick, it leaves out a lot of the heartache and the pain of real life, but it's a comedy and the humour is deeper than skin deep. There's an intelligence to this movie, a wit, a real quality that makes it a gem. It's a child of its' time, but treat it as the escapism it is - womanising, alcohol, arson... and yes I hated the dog too. Rent or buy it, but watch it. It's a whole level above the drivel that passes for comedy these days.

Survivors (I) (2015)

Slow and... yawn.

[3/10 · 13 March 2022]

Once I realised that the entire first segment of the movie was a girl talking to a camera, and a cameraman who can't seem to communicate any other way except by filming, even in private conversations in hotel rooms, I turned off. This sort of style has been long overdone; it's not realistic, it's hard to watch, and hard to understand. Who is the cameraman? Why is he always hidden behind the camera? Why does he need to film 24 / 7, even the most trivial boring everyday things? Eventually I found that I didn't care. A slow start that petered to a halt. I've given it three stars as there's a faint chance I may go back and watch in fast-forward. The only disease I saw was boredom and boy was it contagious.

Brassed Off (1996)

Enjoy the music, ignore the cliched Luddite politics

[10/10 · 14 February 2022]

I love this movie; it's probably Pete Postlethwaite that does it for me. He's great, such a range of facial expressions and a wonderful humanity about his acting. The band are great - ok we all know they're not real musicians for the most part, but they're the range of people you'll find in any club or organisation, each with their own family life, their problems and their hopes and dreams. One dying man's plan to unite the disparate, hopeless members of his beloved brass band and get them to the Albert Hall. What's not to like?

The politics. YES it's about the years after the Miner's Strike and YES it's about unemployment, no hope for the future, no money (except to buy instruments and pay dues to a band) so it's bleak, and dark, and we need the humour, the love and the music.

I just can't help thinking that the message behind the movie is in effect praising the unpraisable? What a terrible person that evil Thatcher woman was, for closing our mines and ruining our way of life... I wonder if Americans will ever make a movie about how great slavery was, and how that horrible man Lincoln ended it, and ruined a lot of plantation owners in the process? Why don't we still send children up chimneys to clean them? Let's send men down underground to spend their lives in darkness and cough their lungs away or die in cave-ins and underground explosions. They seem to like it. There's years of coal left, and no doubt our children will thank us for making them dig it out for us.

It was a dying way of life that was brought to an end; similarly with slavery. The world moved on. No doubt miners were great men with a proud tradition and a tremendous work ethic, but then so were the sailors in wooden ships, or the soldiers who died in far-flung corners of the Empire. It was a dirty, dangerous job into which many went due to having no other choice. Times change. Move on. Look back with pride, but not with rose-tinted glasses.

This could have been anything; any band, any workers or tradesmen, trying to make it to a final. The fact that it's a colliery band enabled the makers to imbue it with their own brand of yappy-dog politics. It's raining today. Let's blame Thatcher.

If this movie tells me one thing, it's: look to the future. The past is gone. Don't forget it, but don't twist it for your own ends. You didn't find paradise in a hole in the ground, but in the music you played when next you saw the sun. That's what makes it for me.

Things Heard & Seen (2021)

So what exactly happened? Why the ghost?

[2/10 · 27 December 2021]

Ok... so: We have a house where murders took place, and a couple who move in. They then drift apart and have a few affairs, then the husband is uncovered as a fraud, he goes mad, kills his boss, attempts another murder, kills his wife and commits suicide.

We have a ghost who was brutally murdered by a violent husband, and reacts to domestic violence. Other than that?

SO: what on earth did the ghost have to do with it? Even if the house had not been haunted, these things would have happened. The ghost did nothing other than add a bit of atmosphere. It didn't save anyone, didn't help anyone, didn't - in fact - do anything. Not even a warning to run, or get help, not even a clue about the murder... nothing.

It was a ghost story that may as well not have had a ghost, for all it ever did.

Other than that, it's just the story of a man who kills people then commits suicide. Was it really worth making a movie about it?