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liam-johnson
Reviews
The Jackal (1997)
Mostly awful
I suppose you could overlook a number of silly points like Geres weird wandering accent. It does occasionally hit "Irish", but most of the time it is just "not American". Or why exactly the jackal needs some sort of anti tank weapon to take out a single civilian 200m away. But why should I overlook these points? There are plenty of better movies out there.
If this movie had renamed the characters, I suppose it might have rated 5-6 stars. Unfortunately it just had to pretend to be a remake of a classic, so you are just going to get people making comparisons. The original Jackal was a calculating killer on an important job. He didn't leave a wide trail of corpses behind him because the decided to flip out to prove how hard he is. Neither did the original Jackal make simple mistakes like revealing his plan to taunt his trackers or leaving blue prints behind. That last part was stupid, he request the plans from the Jack Black character then kills him for demanding more money, but then doesn't bother to pick up the plans afterwards?
As a remake, this deserves around 2 stars. As a brainless action film, it might get 6. So I will be magnanimous and average at 4.
Doctor Who: Midnight (2008)
Not bad but...
I had to watch "Doctor Who Confidential" to get an idea what they were trying to do with this episode. There was quite a bit of potential, with the mind robbing (speech stealing) entity, but ultimately, it did not really satisfy. After a reasonable build up, it just fizzles out.
There were far too many unanswered questions at the end. What was the entity, and since it lives on this uninhabitable world, how can anybody be sure that it will be bothered by being kicked out the door? Since it is so obviously dangerous and aggressive, how come the doctor is happy to assume it is alone?
Yes, it was an interesting study in human nature, but was it Doctor Who? Not for me.
Earthsea (2004)
Painful cheap tat
I cannot believe how bad this is. A number of posters complained that fans of a book should not get upset if a movie is not like the book; an adaptation can never be the same as you imagined when you read the book. They are right, but this goes way beyond just an incomplete or different adaptation.
There is nothing of value in this film at all. It is a rehash of some of the worst low budget fantasy concepts, with nothing new to offer. This is “made for TV” in the worst possible way, cheap, tacky and definitely aimed at the lowest intelligence of viewer.
The real crime though is that with the budget and a mini-series format, they could have made a decent adaptation of the books instead of this “thing”.