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Reviews
Palm Beach (2019)
The most excruciatingly tedious film I've watched this decade
On the plus side, we found ourselves laughing through this film, but only because it was so unbelievably bad! They're literally is no story - old friends meet for a party and spend the first hour having tedious conversations and doing ordinary and everyday things. It was basically like watching Big Brother in film format. Then we learn that who the father of the host's son is was never determined, and that perhaps they should know. After another half hour of tedium, a girl pipes up that she tested his DNA a while back and knows the son is her brother so mystery solved. If this film was 20 minutes long it would've been twice as long as it needed to be.
A Quiet Place (2018)
90 minutes spent watching possibly the most bizarre and least scary film of my life!
The essence of a good horror film is that the viewer needs to be able to feel the palpable terror from the absolute helplessness of the situation in which the characters find themselves. And in this regard, A Quiet Place fails abysmally.
SPOILER!
The premise of the film is that for reasons unknown, the world has been taken over by blind humanoid monsters with lots of teeth which stand no taller than a human being. However, despite their disability, they have managed to eradicate virtually all life from the planet in the way that no other sighted predator has ever managed. Despite our weaponry and technology, humankind has been brought to the brink of extinction by these disabled predators. Duh, ok!!
The film chronicles the journey a family takes for no apparent reason, except to lead them to an isolated farmhouse where the audience can only wonder as to their motive. Despite the father educating his son on the wisdom of staying near loud natural noise sources in order to avoid detection by the monsters, he decides instead to lead his family to as quiet a location as possible. Not beside the sea or a river or a waterfall. No bottles or cans clanking hanging from trees and clanking in the wind to provide noise cover. His actions seem only to serve to assist Darwinistic selection and precipitate his and his families untimely deaths, only to lead us wondering why he should act in such a bizarre fashion.
Nonetheless as the film progresses incredibly it manages to become even more strange and nonsensical. The father ultimately feeds himself to one of the monsters, a death so avoidable and pointless that it clearly has no purpose other than to try to add poignancy to his telling his daughter immediately beforehand that he loves her, something she had told her brother she needed to hear. Then, we are shown just how frail and vulnerable the predators actually are when a simple high pitched noise from a hearing aid can leave them helpless and (just before the final credits roll), the wife kills one with a single blast from a shotgun. Good grief!!
Given that this film scored a very encouraging 7.5 out of 10, I had high hopes. Unfortunately, largely for this reason,I literally could have not have been more disappointed. I'm simply left flabbergasted as to how anyone could rate this film higher than a three.
One of Us (2016)
Unbelievably bad
SPOILER ALERT: Ok, so the druggie murders the student couple, then in one of the most ridiculously contrived and laughable storylines ever to make it to screen, he steals a car and happens to crash it into the garden of his remote farmhouse of the parents of the couple he'd just murdered. Are you kidding me? You want me to buy in to that?!! **OFF**!!
The Dead Don't Die (2019)
Possibly the worst film I've ever seen
I wanted to like this. I like Bill Murray, and Groundhog day is one of my tip two best ever movies.
But this was unimaginably bad. Over an hour and a half of Murray going from place to place watching zombies eat some people before emotionlessly shooting a few. No wise cracks. Almost zero humour. This is a waste of an hour and a half of your life you won't get back.
Unbelievably awful.
12 Years a Slave (2013)
Dreadful
I'm really going to be the exception here and pan this film. I was no non-plussed about it that I can barely be bothered to review it properly. The amount of dead space (for example a 75 second scene showing Soloman just looking at the scenery) was astonishing - any other director would have dealt with the subject matter in about 30 minutes. Both my girlfriend and I were close to walking out with the boredom.
But we didn't because we were expecting the stage to be set for a finale whereby through complex legal machinations, the injustice is uncovered and Soloman is reunited with his family. So what complex genius might effect his release? He writes a letter to a friend! A LETTER! Genius - amazed he could devise such a complex solution given a mere 12 years! So once reunited, will we be treated to the legal wranglings to ensure this can't happen again and that those responsible are brought to justice? Nope.
So, basically, man gets kidnapped, lives as a slave working for three different "Masters", witnesses hard work and unfair treatment of slaves including murder and rape, and eventually gets to go home after writing a letter to a friend who comes and picks him up. Hardly noteworthy at all, and in my worst five films of all time.
Machete (2010)
Beyond terrible
With some big names and a 6.7/10 rating, I figured this film would be pretty good. I quite simply cannot remember a worse disappointment. It was vaguely funny, and comically gory. The storyline was paper thin. It was so badly acted that not even Robert DeNiro could help it. Realism was completely absent. The characters were all competing to be as 'hard' as Danny Trejo, with the result that they became laughable and hopelessly false. I'm struggling to find anything good to say about it, but frankly it so uninspired I can't even be bother to write any more about it.
Oh, good God, I'm got to write ten lines about this drivel. Well put it this way - if you're reading this, then you'll be having ten times as much fun as you're ever going to have watching this horse excrement.
The Beach (2000)
Deviating from the book
The original book of "The Beach" was an original work which when written in the late 90's was set in a slightly fictional world aimed at contrasting the filthy vibrancy of Bangkok with the peace and unspoilt tranquillity of the Islands of Thailand Surat Thani Province. What a shame the latter no longer exists having been overrun by commercialism and high-cost tourism!
Casting is very competent, most notably Carlile as "Mickey Mouse" who combines quirky with disturbed in exactly the right proportions. Less able, however is Di Caprio himself - his novice truly shows, and it is fortunate that his performances have improved steadily since the making of this film.
What a shame the film goes all "Hollywood" on us in introducing an intimate relationship between Richard (Di Caprio) and Francoise. Although an integral part of the film, nothing of this sort happened in the book, and the original story was a lot richer for it.
However, the book was ruined by arguably the most pitiful ending Garland has ever penned. Indeed, the most implausible and ridiculous ending of any book I think I've ever read. So I was VERY relieved to see that the film introduced a completely new ending, which I bet left the author wishing he'd had the vision to end the book in that way too!