sleggin Reviews

Nine Lives (I) (2016)

Wow, was this bad.

[3/10 · 10 August 2016]

I kept trying to understand why it was so bad. I had a lot of time to wonder in the theater and liked the process because it distracted me from how very bad this was.

It wasn't just that the dialogue was wooden and it seemed like Kevin Spacey (whom we all adore and is the reason I went to this picture) did his performance in over Skype while reading the script for the first time, or that the plot was so predictable you could leave, buy popcorn, apply for a refinance on your mortgage, come back and know exactly where you were - the movie is disturbing.

The Big Bad Board was absolutely right. The story was so unbelievable even an 8-year-old will be asking: "Can you do that in two days? Or at all?"

I have no idea what they did to that poor cat to make it walk "drunkenly" but it was horrible to see the fur all matted and strange - did they use masking tape? It was the director, I decided. He had to have told that girl to behave like a possessed, grinning animated walking dead ready to monster-morph and cook the cat for dinner. Pretty girl. I bet with the right part and director, she'd be delightful.

Just ... don't.

The Fifth Estate (2013)

Better then it's Box office

[7/10 · 10 January 2014]

The Fifth Estate is actually a much better film than it's abysmal performance at the box office suggests. Possibly it will find it's audience in DVD release. It's worth the time and money for Cumberbatch's performance alone and a sad fact that it's sudden-death at the box office will preclude anyone from giving that performance serious Oscar consideration.

The problems with this picture are the lack of any real thruline in the narrative, an incredibly confusing first ten minutes, an assumption by the writer and director that the audience would come armed with foreknowledge of the subject and events.

Yet, it would be a mistake to miss seeing this picture when it does come out for home viewing. Once we get past the sad start, the character is compelling, the performances excellent and the events of great significance.

Little Favour (2013)

More Student Film than Professional Short

[3/10 · 10 January 2014]

This is the most beautifully produced and brilliantly acted student film I ever saw. It is also, despite the high-quality talent, a mess and muddle of a film. The villains are hackneyed stereotypes, the dialogue cliché-ridden and the character actions incomprehensible. The directing is so poor that at the pivotal moment of the film, the action we need to see is out of frame.

Loyal Cumberbatch fans will surely praise it to the heavens and his extraordinary talent is on display, but it's simply not much of a story and poorly told, at that, with the very serious issue it touches on at the end handled in an offensively shallow manner.