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richarddesmond
Reviews
A Lonely Place to Die (2011)
A lonely place to waste my time
As other reviews have gone before, this film does pretty well in its opening scene, a tense yet enjoyable journey up a cliff face only to end in near disaster, setting the tone for the rest of the film....NOT. Some nice establishing shots.
In a nutshell I guessed the ending less than an hour in(not that I'm trying to brag), I always felt one step ahead of the plot (NEVER a good sign). The acting was OK, the plot diverged SOOOOOOO far away from what would of made it compelling, interesting, original film, yet it fell into a clichéd boring ending, black and white in terms of the characters.....and just to put things in perspective....'The Descent' (a FAAAAARRR better film than this) cost just as much and did so much more with the idea of outdoor adventure gone wrong, interesting sympathetic/empathetic characters.....just let that sink in.
AVOID THIS BAD FILM.
Decisions (2015)
Where do I start?
I'm torn between the idea that this film was either lazily or incompetently made, and despite the fact the writer, director, and lead actor is the same man: Larry Stanley, I'm still going to go for the lazy option....I'll explain.
Larry, I'm sure you're a nice guy who had good intentions when making this film but unfortunately this is a bad film, and in many ways. The acting, blocking, script, dialogue, cinematography, sound, sound design are all extremely poor. This film took me 5-6 sittings to get through to the end.
Every scene is either people on the phone to each other talking, or people at a table, at a bar, on the sofa, on the bed....talking to each other. Because of this the film feels sooooooooo stagnant, boring and lifeless, nothing interesting happens, people moan and talk about how bad their past was.
No one is in the moment taking action, no clear goal that leads to a result that causes something else that requires greater action, raising the stakes.....you know, when films are interesting and exciting. Sitting at a table or on the phone, or in bed talking about how bad their past was or how awful such and such a character is or "remember when....", and not in a way that brings about interesting conflict either, doesn't develop the characters, doesn't further the plot, things just go around and around and around, visiting the same locations. Things just happen, then in another scene something else happens, and then, and then...my point is no scene influences or justifies the scene that follows.
The story is clichéd and unoriginal, because of this it is a very predictable film in terms of its plot and thus served nothing interesting or exciting throughout the film.
Larry Stanley has to be the most uncharismatic actor I've ever seen, even Tommy Wiseau has more charisma. Again I'm sure he's a lovely guy and its nothing personal, he is just not a good actor. Larry constantly looks like he doesn't want to be there, his eyes display the same uninterested, lifeless look for the whole movie. The lead girl is equally as bad in terms of her acting, there are a lot of scenes that require her to be emotional and every time it is sooooo forced and awkward, not believable at all.
The sound in this movie is utterly AWFUL, coming in and out of both stereo channels with awful compressed, reduced quality at times, sometimes it cuts out completely, and it's very distracting....not that I was engaged much to begin with.
The sound design is equally bad, and at times non existent where it needs to be. There is a scene where the lead female is taking a shower. She turns it on(sound of shower is heard), undresses and it cuts to her feet stepping into said shower (sound of shower is suddenly gone) ??????why??????1 minute in the editing room would of fixed this, see where I'm going with the lazy option.
There are scenes in busy restaurants and bars and parties with NO background noise of people talking or music, you can download this sound effect free online, how lazy is that???
Love Socks (2015)
The worst Indie feature Film I've ever watched
What I hope for in and indie ROM-com is one that is crafted much better than the Hollywood slack, the copy and paste, the predictable story line etc. And with a premise that aired on the slightly bizarre I was intrigued to watch this. What I got was much worse than the aforementioned Hollywood slack.
Everything in this movie is terrible; acting, cinematography, shot design, plot, production design, tone, screenplay, editing, sound design...the list goes on.
Acting; The acting is awful, absolutely awful throughout the cast, the lead guy is so uncharismatic, so uninteresting, he just reads his lines off the script with zero effort, in parts it feels like he's struggling to even say or remember them, he even mumbles a line in the film, and in the same scene he looks directly into the camera and the editor uses it in the film???, and this guy is in 'Home and away'?...someone fire the casting director for that show. You're supposed to root for this character, trying to get with the girl, but he's so uncharming, unconvincing, stupid; he believes that his gf is allergic to babies, because his flat mate made it up on the spot, seriously?
The acting is pretty much the same for the lead female. She was very unconvincing in her plight with her condition, her emotional moments remembering her mother.
Cinematography/shot design; The best way to sum up the cinematography and shot design is, lazy. There seems to be no thought behind visually telling this story, no visual style, just plonk the camera anywhere and point it at the person talking throughout the film. There are close ups where there shouldn't be
Tone; The tone is bizarre, from creepy (lead female on her own giving out free candy to little girls and boys in a playground and introducing herself) to just awkward (lead guy taking a dump in the toilet with loud over the top sound effects) to attempts at humour in the wrong places: At the start of the film the Dr. gives a low down as to the condition of the protagonist but laughs it off as comical....WHAT? The Dr. laughs it off, aren't you supposed to act professional? This poor child will sneeze forever, who knows what physical/psychological effects it will have. Have you no sense of professionalism?, no humanity? this is funny?....terrible, just terrible writing, directing!!!
Sceenplay: The writing is awful, If you remove the idea of the protagonist have this unusual rare disease (that isn't really at the forefront of the film and isn't prevalent throughout the film) you end up with a film that is just as bad. Other films utilise unusual traits in order to try and make the film seem unique, this disease doesn't even do that. You could remove the sneezing aspect and it would be just as bad
Editing/sound design: The editing seems very jarring and noticeable...editing should be seamless, sound design is also poor. In the scene in the shop where we arrive at present day, we cut back and forth between the protagonist and the male lead, but as we do the sound of a fan blows in and out if the cuts, could no one turn it off while shooting, I know Oz is hot but for the sake of the film? its so jarring and amateurish.
The filmmakers didn't even bother to use a boom mike, so when an actor has his back to the camera (shop scene) its hard to hear him, its distant, and then when the camera cuts to a close up the volume increases, another clear sign no boom mike was used, which kind of sums up this film: LAZY!
Drinking Games (2012)
Lacking the thrills and suspense!
I felt the urge to compile a constructively critical review on this platform, seeing as the filmmaker removed my comment(also constructively critical) on YouTube...very "professional".
Adapting a stage play as this is, falls prey to the age old concept that film is 80% visual and 20% audible and vice verse for plays, this was not translated well. With most of the film occurring inside a single room the film becomes visually stale and loses any visual impact for what was supposed to be a suspense thriller.... visually thrilling or suspenseful. It takes almost almost 50 minutes for anything interesting to occur, and when it does we are not rewarded for our patience for sitting through a fairly generic college party and whiny college guys and gals trying to get wasted, boost their ego and lose their virginity.
The character Noopie stood out as the notable actor in terms of performance, not amazing but good. He had the most interesting of desires within the film, the rest were fairly average roles, underdeveloped and there to be messed with by him, and have the usual clichés that you'd expect in a young adult/college film. To be fair, Richard and his gf had some depth to their character and conflict, but were in too few scenes together(they deserved more screen time, much more interesting than Sean and his gf...I say gf though there is zero chemistry between them), potential but not the required development.
This film isn't terrible, isn't great.. it's passable. With the idea of metaphorically killing off other characters with words and some action the writing needs to be razor sharp and very well crafted from all characters in order to sustain an interesting suspenseful thrilling plot that will hold the attention of the audience, but in my opinion it slumps in many places when it falls into weak/pointless scenes, generic and clichéd dialogue, characters who serve no purpose in the film and an inappropriate slow moving plot, missing the main points of a suspense thriller, my attention waned a few times.
Where is the suspenseful thriller I was promised? If you're after a well crafted, interesting, suspenseful, thrilling film, avoid!