KittyG26 Reviews

Baby Reindeer (2024)

Just terrible

[1/10 · 9 June 2024]

I finally got round to watching this, because with all the rave reviews it had to be worth a look. How wrong was I?

The male lead, Donny, a horribly unfunny comedian, is such a feeble and dislikable character who makes the stupidest decisions possible at every turn. He's got this repulsive crazy woman stalking him, and yet time and again he fails to tell the truth about her to the people she is using to get to him. Even when she cons her way into his lodgings he doesn't immediately denounce her to his sympathetic landlady. When she attacks his former girlfriend, he doesn't do anything. When Martha enters the pub where he works, and from which she has been barred, he doesn't call the police. Nor does he do anything when she smashes a glass in his face. You're kidding, right?

We're also expected to believe Martha has recorded all their conversations. So when Donny surprises her in the street, she just happens to be recording? Really? Then she passes this on to the cops, so they don't believe Donny's complaints any more, even though the stalker has previous. I know the police sometimes do dumb things, but they really reach the heights in this show.

And the excuse for all Donny's stupid choices is that Martha gave him the admiration and self-affirmation he doesn't get from anybody else. Worth getting glassed for, obviously.

Stalking is a serious matter, but this badly-written series is not the vehicle to highlight it. This is just sensationalist rubbish, peopled with nasty characters. I wish I hadn't wasted my time.

Rest in Peace (2024)

Rather lame second half

[6/10 · 10 April 2024]

I liked the first half of the movie, as the beleaguered hero quits his old life and starts afresh; this was well done, and you could sympathise with his motives for taking this way out.

But I think it began to run out of steam in the second half of the movie. I was hoping for some clever plotting when Sergio returned to his previous home to find out how his wife and children were doing, but nothing much happened, and the ending was a bit up in the air. I think there should definitely have been less focus on Sergio setting up his new life, and more time spent on what happened when he went back home.

I also didn't understand why he appeared to have aged about 30 years in the 15/16 years he'd been away, while both his wife and girlfriend looked exactly the same. Couldn't they have at least given these ladies different hairstyles or something, to age them a bit?

Entertaining movie, but could have been much better, in my opinion.

The Cursed (2021)

Unbelievably bad

[1/10 · 2 April 2024]

The plot meanders all over the place and makes no sense at all. The direction is just awful. The acting is mediocre, the CGI is laughable, and the suspense is zero. It's hard to understand how anybody can make a movie quite so bad. Plus the whole thing is at least 20 minutes too long.

This is one of those movies that is padded out with pointless boring scenes of people doing things like walking about, or standing somewhere Looking Scared. There's plenty of gore, if you like that sort of thing, but that's just a cover for a poor script and any really meaningful action by the various characters.

As a final irritation, the American actor playing the lead adopts a ridiculous English accent, which travels all the way up one side of England and down the other.

Really awful. I give it one star, and that's only because I can't give it minus one.

Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget (2023)

Human chickens or chicken humans?

[2/10 · 16 December 2023]

I was keen to see this movie, as I loved the original Chicken Run.

It's a long time since the first movie, so naturally the voice actors have changed. This was OK, except I thought Thandiwe Newton sounded a bit too " posh" to play Ginger. I got used to it (love Thandiwe!), but I did miss Julia Sawalha and I think the original had a better cast.

The main problem for me was the way the chickens are now portrayed. In the first movie, they were hens living at a poultry farm, having to lay a certain number of eggs each day, or risk getting topped by the farmer's wife. So they were basically chickens living like chickens. What made it amusing, of course, was the hens' human qualities, and the fact that whole thing ran like the satirisation of a prisoner-of-war escape movie.

However in the sequel, all pretence at "chicken life" has gone; the chickens live exactly like humans, and are in effect just humans who look like chickens. Egg laying is a rare event; it's all farming and building and lounging in deck chairs sipping drinks. The spivvy rats with their dodgy goods are now lovable. And to make matters worse, Rocky and Ginger have a ghastly brat of a kid called Molly.

As the plot of this movie is also pretty weak, I found it hard to get involved. God forgive me, I was dying for Molly to get turned into a chicken nugget.

Didn't work for me. I find it hard to care about chickens who have turned into humans.

A Haunting in Venice (2023)

Enjoyable thriller

[7/10 · 15 December 2023]

Kenneth Branagh is no Hercules Poirot, and this story bears no resemblance whatsoever to Agatha Christie's "Halloween Party" (apart from the action taking place on Halloween). But as long as you can cope with these facts, this is actually an enjoyable thriller.

The visuals are gorgeous, there's a good spooky atmosphere, and some great performances. Plus Branagh pulls off the denouement beautifully. It certainly worked for me, and I'm a David Suchet fan AND a Christie aficionado!

I think ideally the director (also Branagh) could have knocked 15 minutes or so off the running time without losing anything of significance, but despite that this is a movie which is definitely worth a watch.

Locked In (V) (2023)

So weak

[1/10 · 11 December 2023]

Large chunks of the plot are lifted straight from "Therese Raquin" the 1868 novel by Emile Zola; wife trapped in a marriage with an enfeebled husband, lover arranges husband's murder by capsizing a boat, husband's mother rendered paralysed and mute ...

I don't know if this movie was intended to be an up to date interpretation of that story, but if so it failed in many ways - not least the serious lack of chemistry between Lina and Robert. Lina does not really convince as a passionate and frustrated wife, desperate for a way out. Robert is just dull, and how on earth did Famke Janssen end up in this mess? Her character didn't seem to have any real motivation, except to sit around sulking. And her "big name" status was a distraction from the main story, involving Lina, Jamie and Robert.

Anna Friel's perky Nurse Nicky was just plain irritating to me. How exactly did she work out everything that had happened, and what Katherine's motives were, from one word? Poor Katherine must have been worn out with blinking after running all that past Nicky. The ending was also very silly and improbable.

It was weak and so, so dull. Don't waste your time; I wish I hadn't.

Gods of Egypt (2016)

Nonsense, but enormous fun

[6/10 · 13 August 2023]

Gods (very tall gods) fight for the rule of a mythological Egypt. Cue gorgeous visuals, some dodgy CGI, and lots of beautiful bodies, both male and female.

The story is not bad, the acting variable (Elodie Yung, who plays the seductive Hathor, may look lovely but she's an abysmal actress). I was really rooting for cute thief Bek (Brenton Thwaites) and his pretty girlfriend Zaya (Courtney Eaton), and I loved the conflict between Horus (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and his evil cousin Set, the first-ever Scottish Egyptian god, played by the dishy Gerard Butler.

There're a lot of good action sequences to keep things moving along nicely - my personal favourite featuring Horus and Bek being pursued by two goddesses riding fire-breathing serpents (trust me, you have to be there).

In summary, not a great movie, not even a particularly memorable one, but it's certainly a fun ride to while away an afternoon. My vote is six.

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)

Five stars for Tom, but the gals disappoint

[5/10 · 16 July 2023]

A movie of this length demands a good, cohesive plot, strong characters, good dialogue. Well there was none of that here. After a poor opening sequence, of a submarine being blown up (a Russian submarine, manned by a crew speaking English with funny accents) the rest of the film did not improve much.

In a movie of this type - escapist fun - I like to see at least one beautiful sophisticated woman in lovely clothes. There were four females playing Strong Women (all the subordinate roles were taken by men) and each was boring and badly dressed. I'm female and if I want boring and badly dressed I can look in a mirror. Is it so wrong to expect a little glamour when I go to the movies? Rebecca Ferguson can look gorgeous, and she's a good actress but she was seriously wasted in this film. She sort of hung around looking depressed before getting killed. And why on earth Hayley Atwell was cast is a mystery - at least to me. She has zero star quality, and there was no charisma between her and Tom. But the worst casting was Vanessa Kirby as the White Widow; there is simply no way this person was believable as a mob boss.

You also need a good villain and that was missing too. The guy playing Gabriel just wasn't striking enough.

Good action sequences, although nothing that hasn't been done many times before, and the car chase could have been shortened considerably without any loss to the plot.

Tom continues to amaze. He's 61 and yet could pass for late forties, even in close up.

In summary, pretty entertaining, but far too long. My vote is five - but those five stars are all for Tom.

Georgetown (2019)

Rather dull

[3/10 · 2 July 2023]

Christopher Waltz always has an air of smugness, in my opinion, and he's an actor who seems to be in love with the sound of his own voice. I didn't like his performance in this film - the character made no sense. I couldn't see exactly what he was trying to achieve - wealth, power, both? The whole thing began to seem rather comic, even though it centres around the murder of the elderly wife; I would preferred more menace.

Waltz was so determined to appear in every scene that the other characters hardly got a look in. Annette Bening was overacting as usual, but Vanessa Redgrave was good. She may be in her eighties, but she still has a beautiful voice and a commanding presence on the screen.

And what happened to the end? Did Waltz just run out of ideas? Very disappointing. I think in future he should stick to acting.

Nobody (I) (2021)

Nearly as bad as a Steven Seagal movie

[1/10 · 15 April 2023]

Difficult to sit through, watching Mr "Nobody" turn into a sort of tooled-up superman, facing off what seems like the entire Russian mafia, even at one point backed up by his geriatric dad, in the form of Christopher Lloyd. I get the guy has this hitman past, which we don't learn about until halfway through the movie; although by the time we get to the big reveal, you'd have to be pretty dumb not to have guessed that there's more to this put-upon worker bee family man than it initially seems.

You like this stuff or you don't. I hated the excessive violence, although I appreciate that we're not really intended to take this movie too seriously (or at least I hope not!).

Anyway, not for me. I never saw the lead actor before; he was just OK. Sad to see Connie Nielsen reduced to appearing in stuff like this.

The Whale (2022)

What am I missing here?

[1/10 · 21 March 2023]

I can't understand the rave reviews; this is just an awful movie. The whole thing hangs on Brendan Fraser's acting and his incredible fat suit. The fat suit is indeed incredible, but I found Fraser's mawkish performance just embarrassing. How on earth did he win the Oscar?

I believe this was originally a play and it shows; all the action takes place in Charlie's dingy, miserable-looking apartment. He mourns the death of his lover and occasionally receives visits from his utterly obnoxious 17 year old daughter, with whom he is trying to "reconnect". Given that she professes to loathe and despise her dad, it's not clear why she sees him at all.

The whole thing seems to last about four miserable hours until Charlie's OTT death scene, which - if I may paraphrase Oscar Wilde - one would have to have a heart of stone to watch without laughing.

Really, really bad. If you're in need of cheering up, I wouldn't recommend this.

65 (2023)

Exciting, if a bit of a one-trick dinosaur

[5/10 · 12 March 2023]

Adam Driver lives on Planet Somaris with his irritating wife and daughter. He leaves on a two-year unspecified space mission, in order to pay for medical treatment for his daughter's unspecified illness. A meteor storm causes his ship to crash on an unknown planet and all the other passengers and crew are killed. It's impossible to care about any of them, as we didn't know of their existence prior to the crash. But then he finds one passenger still alive! - a young girl who looks 15 (she is played by a 15 year old actress) but for some reason Adam thinks she's nine. She doesn't speak English, but that's no problem, as Adam simply adopts the time-honoured method of Talking To Foreigners; this consists of just speaking to them in your own language and assuming they'll catch on. Seems to work in this case, anyway.

There is an escape vessel which detached from the ship and is located a couple of miles away. Can they make it without being murdered by one or other of the various species of dinosaurs which keep popping up out of nowhere? This is very much a "look behind you" kind of movie.

The planet they're on is Earth, of course, 65 million years ago (duh!) and to add a bit of spice the meteor which is to end almost all life on the planet is just a few hours away. Yay!

Naturally the survivors mess up in every way possible on their journey to the escape pod, so it's more or less a case of travel a bit, mess up, fight off monsters, rinse and repeat. So pretty much a one-trick dino of a plot. You like it or don't.

Adam is always watchable, although he deserves better material than this. I wish he'd improve his diction, though. Even the kid who couldn't speak English pronounced English words more clearly than him (I'm not joking).

It's pretty exciting, very predictable, and nothing very original. You may prefer to save your money and wait to see it on Prime for less.

On the Line (II) (2022)

Dire

[1/10 · 13 February 2023]

Ridiculous movie, with a really stupid plot, farcical twists, and very bad acting.

When Mel (who is 67) first appeared on screen, playing with a little girl, I assumed she was his character's granddaughter, and her young mother was Mel's daughter. But no - it is the child who is supposed to me Mel's daughter, and the young woman is his wife. This sort of thing really bugs me; Hollywood treats women actors as "past it" when they hit 40, but audiences are still being asked to accept that elderly men are perfectly believable in parts for which they are 30 years too old. Hard to credit this nonsense is still going on in 2023.

Anyway - leaving that aside - the movie is still the most awful rubbish. Turns out, everything is just a prank! - played on a new employee at the radio station. What fun! Why anybody would go to all that time and trouble just to play a joke on the new guy is a bit of a mystery. Suffice to say, he is not amused and leaves, only to fall downstairs and kill himself. But it turns out that's a prank too! Wow, isn't that just hilarious?? What an absolutely amazing sense of humour everybody in that place must have - it's a wonder they've got time to do any work, all the fun and games that go on in the office.

Spare a thought for Mel's wife in all this; if it wasn't bad enough being married to a geriatric who wants everybody to pretend he's still 40, she has to take part in all this juvenile garbage simply in order to freak out a guy whom she doesn't even know.

Dire, absolutely dire. Who ever wrote this should go and live in exile on a desert island and never contact the rest of humanity again. And please - take Mel with you.

Viking Wolf (2022)

Like a mangy dog

[1/10 · 6 February 2023]

Really silly, cliched werewolf movie. It's all there - the miserable teenage daughter (played by an actress who looks around 25) who is all angsty because her mother married again, the cute little sister who is a mute, the female police chief who goes all feminine and helpless at times of crisis. And the horribly fake-looking CGI wolf, although it is at least marginally better than the plastic dog in "Gingersnaps". Then there is the "expert veterinarian" (who looks about 14) who turns out to be an expert in werewolves too, and the gnarled old hunter with the funny accent who has been trying to eliminate "the curse" forever, yet is completely unprepared when he meets the wolf face to face. And don't let's forget the two men who are guarding a body in the woods; they are both armed to the teeth, but when the wolf shows up they just stand there looking at it until it kills them.

Really, really bad - don't waste your time. This movie is about as exciting as a mangy dog.

Beckett (2021)

Fun!

[6/10 · 14 January 2023]

This isn't a great movie, but for the most part it's a fun slice of action and adventure with some beautiful Greek scenery thrown in. I never came across John David Washington before, but I thought he was good in the role. He behaved like a real person would on finding themselves in such a bizarre situation.

But in the final part of the movie this changed; in fact, everything went downhill after Beckett got to the US Embassy. Suddenly he's not Mr Everyman anymore, but an action hero on steroids. As others have mentioned, the amount of punishment the guy can take and still outrun/outpunch everybody else is phenomenal! Well I expect this in a Bond movie, but wasn't anticipating it in this one. It was like the final section of the film was written by a different scriptwriter. And the ending was weak, like everybody just ran out of interest.

Hush (I) (2016)

You've got to be joking

[4/10 · 13 December 2022]

This started off reasonably well, but then became boringly predictable. Tradition demands that the heroine should be injured at some point, which she is; that the phones don't work, which they don't; that the villain is a smug, sneering smart-alec, which he is. You know her initial attempts to escape won't work, because if they did the movie would be over in 20 minutes.

There are always problems with a movie when the main character is deaf, because their world is different to that of a hearing person, yet it is presumed that the majority of the audience will live in the "hearing world" - so how to combine the two in a feasible way? We had one scene where a guy turns up at her house and is banging on her door and shouting her name, even though, as he knew her, he must have been aware that both of these actions were completely pointless. But if he had NOT done these things, it would have seemed odd to a hearing audience.

Nothing new here. Really nothing worth the cast getting out of bed in the morning and turning up on the set, although of course a pay check is always nice. My vote is four.

Alien (1979)

Silly, but still pretty good!

[6/10 · 24 November 2022]

I want to say right off that I love the Alien franchise. I've watched and rewatched all the films, and will watch any new sequel they care to produce. But to get full enjoyment from the movies you have to suspend your disbelief a bit, if you're going to be able to ride with all the stupid bits.

The cat in Alien always bugged me (and I love cats). There was no mention of any ship's cat until a jump scare was needed, then suddenly Jones enters the movie. And then you have to ask: did the cat have its own little sleep pod? Was it woken from deep sleep along with the rest of the crew? Why? Or was the poor little critter left to amuse and, presumably, feed itself for months at a time while the crew was asleep?

And then the shuttle business. The Nostromo is a huge vessel, yet it doesn't have a lifeboat big enough for four people? And in any case, the shuttle is actually pretty big; they could have all got in there and then taken turns using the sleep pods until they reached the "frontier" that Ripley talks about in her final scene - which is apparently only six weeks away.

And so on, and so on. I know these issues - and many others - will have been discussed ad nauseam by Alien anoraks, but I still think they're worth mentioning.

And incidentally, why do the crew call each other by their surnames? Who the heck does that?

The Professionals (1966)

Dated and boring

[1/10 · 7 November 2022]

I watched this because it has several big stars, but even the likes of Burt Lancaster and Jack Palance couldn't save it. In fact, Lancaster appeared to be playing some sort of caricature of himself; an awful performance from an actor who was capable of so much more.

Filmed in 1966, but supposedly set in 1917, no attempt has been made at authentic wardrobe, hairstyling, etc. Claudia has eyeliner, back-combed hair and a crop top, while all the white "heroes" have the clean-shaven, short-back-and-sides look of the sixties; only the dastardly Mexicans sport facial hair.

Plot is dated and boring, and dialogue is weak. The gritty realism of the spaghetti westerns would serve to highlight what fossils movies like this one had become.

Lots of shooting and explosions, if you like that sort of thing.

Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014)

Not bad, but not good

[5/10 · 27 August 2022]

The biggest disappointment was the parting of the Red Sea. Which in this movie didn't part - they just waited till the tide went out and walked across the shallow bits. Come ON!!

And Christian's initial appearance and wardrobe. If he'd been raised as an Egyptian aristocrat he would have looked like the rest of the family, with a shaved head and a clean shaven face. And he would have worn the same clothes. Instead he looked like a character from the 16th century. It's a bit like making a movie set in the 18th century and having one of the characters wear a jumpsuit and a baseball cap.

Good battle scenes - Scott excels at those - and John Turturro and Joel Edgerton are always watchable - as indeed is Christian Bale, but I just don't think Moses is a role he was born to play.

The Holiday (2021)

Beautiful location ... shame about everything else

[3/10 · 7 July 2022]

Three couples, with their assorted awful children, and a single woman, are holidaying at a FABULOUS villa in Malta. The women are old friends from their Uni days. One of the wives, who is a police officer, suspects her husband is cheating with one of her friends. Queue four episodes of people looking miserable, everybody snooping on everybody else, mysterious texts and meltdowns.

I only stuck with it because I loved the location. I kept thinking what I wouldn't give to take a break in that beautiful place. But none of these miserable creeps could relax and enjoy themselves because everybody was so busy angsting about everything.

The plot was both stupid and incredible, and I hated every last one of the awful cast.

The Northman (2022)

Miserable and overlong

[4/10 · 4 July 2022]

This movie is visually beautiful and does indeed create the feeling of another age, another culture. But the story drags on for a long time, and there aren't enough exciting scenes to sustain interest. There isn't even a good sex scene!

Alexander Skarsgard plays Amleth as a miserable, hulking lump, totally devoid of charisma. In fact everybody in the whole movie is miserable and lacking in charisma. Maybe it's because they have to speak in cliches all the time. There just weren't any "real" characters one could identify with.

Your Son (2018)

Slow ...

[6/10 · 28 June 2022]

If you're hoping for something along the lines of Death Wish, you won't like this. Jaime's adored son Marcos is beaten into a coma. Why? Who dunnit? Jaime sets out to find the answers and wreak revenge. Except it takes forever. Most of the time actor Jose Coronado has little to do except stand around looking Meaningful.

Eventually he finds and kills the youth who stomped his son into a coma, only to discover later (via Marcos's ex, Andrea) that the reason for the beating was that Marcos and his friends had raped Andrea, and recorded themselves doing so.

Jaime deletes the incriminating video, and that's the end. Literally.

I always find Jose Coronado a compelling actor, but in this case he was let down by a weak storyline and a dull supporting cast.

My vote is 6.

The Plagues of Breslau (2018)

A film with strange moral values

[5/10 · 26 June 2022]

I enjoyed about the first two thirds of this movie, despite various implausibilities, but after the identity of the killer was revealed it became increasingly silly.

I liked the casting - I even liked the female lead's asymmetrical haircut, although it didn't seem very practical for her line of work, given that she had hair flopping in her face half the time. The plot is borrowed straight from Se7en, right down to a head in box, but despite that I thought it was pretty well done. I watched the dubbed version, and that was well done too.

The problem for me was that the murderer justified her actions because she had been badly treated by each of her victims. In Se7en, John Doe was obviously crazy; but in "Plagues" we're asked to believe the killer had no choice. Yet if each of us turned vigilante every time we encountered a bad boss, a corrupt official, a ruthless landlord, we'd all be mass murderers. And not only does the lead cop go along with this, she uses it as encouragement to commit her own vigilante killing.

If not for this, I could probably overlook the ridiculous public reaction to a horse running in the street, the barrel that rolls in a completely straight line, a giant wheel crashing through the window at the police station (why?) and the series of branding irons, each with a perfectly printed word, in different sized fonts according to the part of the body on which they were used. How on earth would somebody get hold of stuff like that?

But it was the lack of moral values - murder is OK if you don't like someone - that spoiled it for me.

Blood Red Sky (2021)

Gory fun

[5/10 · 26 June 2022]

I thought this was a pretty entertaining movie and it's worth a watch if you like vampires. I do rather miss the traditional Count Dracula types though; modern vamps are just too noisy - all that screeching and growling and howling and gnashing!

The Nightingale (I) (2018)

Too long

[5/10 · 10 May 2022]

Started well, but lost its way. This movie should have been 45 minutes shorter. There just isn't enough of a story to pad it out to 2 hrs 16 mins.

Basically the "superior" whites are shown to have not a single redeeming quality, whereas the white convicts and the Aborigines are noble victims. We've been here before. The main white bad guy (who started off as a fairly believable character) was, by the end, nothing more than a pantomime villain - shouting, threatening, swearing, and pretty much shooting everybody who looked at him cross-eyed.

It took FOREVER for the bad guys to get their comeuppance, and when this finally does happen it's fairly low key and uninteresting.

Female lead was great, as was her Aboriginal companion. Could have been so much better.