Change Your Image
toxfly
Reviews
Allies (2014)
A Throwback to the Fifties
During the heyday of British war films in Fifties, Allies would have fitted in nicely as the B movie to some better fayre. But trying to push it out alone in 2014 was always going to be a disaster. The film received no distribution as it offers nothing we haven't seen a hundred times before. The core audience for films like this is 50+ so there needs to be an angle to even get it noticed. A simple commando raid and journey back through the lines was the staple of so many films (and TV shows), far better done, that it's difficult to maintain any involvement in the shrinking cast of new faces in this.
The budget meant that the one German armoured car kept coming up again and again bit like the Daleks going round and round in old Doctor Who. Nobody had a clue how to use their weapons. You do not loose off machine gun rounds from the hip. You'd miss your target and have to reload except you'd be dead by then. You also don't stand up as sitting ducks as the Germans continually do. They gave the Germans the same bullets from When Eagles Dare whilst the Allies bullets were everlasting.Nice but unbelievable.
This is a ten year old boy's idea of a war film. Constant gun battles, sacrifices and noise. And the odd tit for Dad. On a streaming service only to fill the shelves.
Midnight Man (2008)
Cliché ridden
Utter cliché ridden trash. We have the hero with a gimmick (can't stand daylight) a dysfunctional family and a past he wants redemption for. We have MI5 or whatever cutting heads off (as they do) but making mistakes. We have the Government minister screwing a lap dancer plot line, a murky quasi government armaments board run by brain dead totty who you just know will fall for the hero. How many times have we had this plot? At 9.30 I said to my partner that I bet they knock off one of the characters as a warning. Right on que at the end they kill Nesbitt's wife. In the trailer for the next week he says it was done as a warning to him. So why not plug him and the series? Dreadful
The Destructors (1968)
Dreadful
One wonders who or what this dreadful movie was aimed at. Poor old Richard Egan had visibly aged and by this point was physically as stiff as his acting. His well stuffed suit walks around spouting lines with the emotion of a speak your weight machine. The impression is that this is more of a pilot for a TV series judging by the direction and music.
The finale must be one of worst non-action fights I've ever seen. There is no attempt to cut the action, people stand around staring, holding guns, more staring, waiting for someone to finish one fight then start another, then stare some more.
This really should be in the bottom 250 films.
Cars (2006)
Only So So
Having raised the bar so high in the past, it would be unrealistic to expect Pixar to constantly match past successes and sadly Cars is at best only on a par with most of competition.
The problem is not the animation techniques, but telling yet again the same story of the lost toy/ant/little girl/fish and now car. Worse, the ending of the story was sign posted from the moment the hero was trapped in the little town. Compared to Toy Story this was scripting by numbers and it showed. The huge number of credited writers (and lord knows how many script doctors) does lend credence to a good idea (let's do a film about cars) which went wrong.
My kids didn't want to go to the cinema to see this ( I did) as they are bored with computer animated films. I rented it on DVD. They gave up watching it half way through and never bothered watching it again during the next week.
Disney may have bought Pixar just as it lost its way.