D-C-S-Turner Reviews

Poor Things (2023)

A hammer to crack a nut

[4/10 · 31 January 2024]

This started off like Institute Benjamenta but ended like an episode of Charmed. The enormous amount of effort to construct spectacular tableaux was not matched by similar efforts to choreograph the movement of the actors, who are often dwarfed by the background or shot boringly. There is more of a story in the second half but once that gets going the film becomes more and more conventional and cliched with rather dull dialogue. The whole thing remained on the screen, it never jumped out and grabbed me.

Now I have to write more words, though I have nothing more to say, but that maybe is a good metaphor for this film.

Poetas (2022)

Like a Polish film from the 1990s

[4/10 · 3 December 2023]

For those who know nothing about this chapter of postwar European history - Lithuanian anti communist guerillas operating from the forests until as late as 1949 - this film will not help them as its account of the passing of time is very poor. Nice costumes, great locations, achingly beautiful forests, but just not enough filmic strength to make this anything more than a competent period piece. By the end I was almost wanting the Russians to get on with it and run them to ground. The translation didn;t help either, with some especially wooden renditions of the poetry which is recited - far too much - throughout.

The Zone of Interest (2023)

Much less subtle than it thinks

[2/10 · 14 October 2023]

This is an exceptionally disappointing film, misleading historically and dramatically empty, with a boring screenplay. It wants to make a point about the proximity of Rudolf Hoss's house to the suffering victims of Nazism, but it gives no proper impression of the geography of the Auschwitz complex. Thus we see the tops of the well built Austrian army barracks that was Auschwitz I, but nothing at all of Birkenau, a mile away, where the worst horrors unfolded. It also matters exactly what month and year we are in (it seems to begin in summer 43) and this is not made clear to the audience, many of who will now know that Auschwitz was first an agricultural research station, then a camp (Auschwitz I) for Polish political prisoners and then part of the holocaust from June 1942. On Hoss himself, whose autobiography is devoid of all human feeling, the film quite disgracefully shows him throwing up at the prospect of being responsible for the arrival of 700,000 Hungarian Jews, as though he cared about that at all. For the rest, the scenes are nicely shot but lacking in cinematic or dramatic interest.

The Zone of Interest (2023)

Misleading and dull

[2/10 · 13 October 2023]

Presumably those who made this thought they were being subtle but all they have done is produce more holocaust porn. First, they get the geography of the Auschwitiz complex all wrong. Yes Hoss's house was very close to Auschwitz I but the real horrors in 1943 were happening at Birkenau a mile away. In any case showing the top half of the very well built austrian army barracks that was Auschwitz I all the time makes it seem like aregular prison. The train sounds in the backrgound are not those of a train slowing down. Hoss is presented at the end as a man with a conscience, throwing up at the prosoect of killing 700,000 hungarians. He had no conscience at all. At the end, comically, the auschwitz exhibition of jews' suitcases is juxtaposed with photos of Polish political prisoners with no explanation that the suitcases are not theirs.

Above all the film is just boring, like Christian Petzold gone wrong.

On the Adamant (2023)

You will not see a better documentary

[10/10 · 13 October 2023]

If I could give this 11/10 I would. A quite staggeringly engaging, moving, profound and above all, discussable documentary, beautifully shot. A day centre for people with various psychiatric problems, housed on a barge - and what a barge, the most beautiful barge you have ever seen - on the Seine, in the middle of Paris and yet sheltered from the city. Those who attend are encouraged to participate in art classes, poetry writing, movement, and music, and some of their work, particularly the musical performances, are quite outstanding. Many of them talk directly to the camera about themselves and their lives, not with focused intensity but with life on the barge going on in the background, the figures blurred and the sounds muted, but always there. We never find out exactly why any of them are there, but that is the point - they are there, and taking part in the life of this remarkable, and remarkably humane, place, which feels like a model for what psychiatry should be. Bravo.

Young and Willing (1962)

Virginia Maskell

[8/10 · 26 February 2023]

This film deserves a higher rating. The dialogue is crisp and quite exploratory, while Ian MacShane was only 20 when this was made and is miles better than Laurence Harvey in Room at the Top.

But the star is Virginia Maskell, who gives one of the most convincing accounts, not of a bored wife, but of a genuine nymphomaniac, in the history of cinema. It is also a very good portrait of an alcoholic, worth comparing with Margaret Leighton in The Holly and the Ivy.

I have nothing more to say but for some reason am required to go on longer, so I will add a remark about. The weird Paul Robeson ending.

The Minions of Midas (2020)

Good to watch but empty

[5/10 · 25 August 2022]

This could have been better, in the hands of a better director and storyteller, and if the focus had been on the police rather than on the CEO, who for someone in such a high profile position seems to do no work at all. He is also played by Luis Tosar, who may be famous but is also utterly boring.

One comically poor device is the way the letters keep getting delivered by hand without anyone noticing who delivered them.

Wild Wind (1985)

Authentic and poignant

[10/10 · 12 February 2022]

Forget the other reviews. This has more authenticity than many other films about world war II, not least the actual locations and the soundtrack (muted partisan numbers) and the slightly spaghetti western feel of the whole thing. And in 1985, this was only 6 years before Yugoslavia was plunged into an appalling civil war.

Forbrydelsen (2007–2012)

Too many red herrings

[6/10 · 21 July 2021]

I binge watched this but only because once one has started giving up makes it a waste of time. There were too many red herrings, possible suspects, and above all people implausibly withholding information in ways that kept them in the frame. The repeated suspension and then restoration of Lund was silly, as was her implausibly distant relationship with her son. In addition, at no point was it every explained why the killer 'drove' the car into the canal rather that simply push it in.

Colditz (1972–1974)

Outstanding Ensemble Acting

[10/10 · 11 May 2021]

Watched this as a kid and then a few years ago, and am now binge watching again. After the first 3 parts that get the men to Colditz, this is one of the finest things the BBC ever did. The acting throughout is quite brilliant, with the passing of time - so hard to capture - superbly done. The exchanges between Jack Hedley and Bernard Hepton are some of the finest in the history of British TV.

The Ipcress File (1965)

very dated

[5/10 · 10 March 2021]

Great music, but really sloppy film, full of cut corners and hammy acting.

80,000 Suspects (1963)

Well made account of how to deal with a pandemic

[8/10 · 2 March 2021]

This film is way better than most reviewers seem to think.

Clearly it is topical now, and suggests pretty starkly how local authorities and the health service should respond to a pandemic: isolation, track and trace, vaccination, clear information.

Beyond that it is a good story about a marriage, with Claire Bloom beautiful and in top form

While Nero Fiddled (1944)

So bad

[2/10 · 25 February 2021]

Despite some good comic timing and music hall ribaldry this is utterly preposterous. Extraordinary to think that this was being made while the Nazis were massacring thousands every day.

The Salisbury Poisonings (2020)

Not bad

[6/10 · 3 February 2021]

Pretty good effort here, the guy playing the poisoned police officer excellent, but Ann-Marie Duff hopelessly miscast as the chief medical officer. Nobody who gets to that position these days would have impostor syndrome.

Adelheid (1969)

Real film making

[10/10 · 2 February 2021]

Outstanding in every way. Made in 1970, it is so evocative of Czechoslovakia at the end of the war and at the same time of communism in 1970, not unlike the way Wajda's The Promised Land was both Lodz in the 19th century and Lodz in 1974.

The Valhalla Murders (2019– )

standard fare

[5/10 · 2 February 2021]

This is OK but it is hard to get interested in these predictable scandi noir characters. The usual thing: police with difficult family lives, the weirdness of people living in small communities, old scores settled decades later. And of course, very smart forensic equipment.

The Investigation (2020)

Outstanding in every way

[10/10 · 2 February 2021]

No grief counsellors, no crazy headlines, just dogged and imaginative police work. This whole production is in the end about finding the right distance, in every sense of the word.

Beginning (2020)

Dullsville

[2/10 · 2 February 2021]

There is the basis of a story here but really the only interesting scene is the first one. After that it is neo-Kieslowskian scenes of domestic angst plus one very unpleasant one of, with no reference at all to the ostensible cultural basis of the hostility towards Jehovah's Witnesses. Ponderous film making and lazy storytelling.

Lost in Munich (2015)

Handled with Skill

[10/10 · 1 September 2020]

After his innovative version of The Brothers Karamazov Zelenka something apparently more lighthearted which then looks like wants to be too clever, only in the end to convince you that it is in fact very clever.

The sort of film that, in less intelligent hands, would have been a failure.

The Dark Side (I) (2016)

Brutal frankness

[10/10 · 1 September 2020]

Documentaries in which holocaust survivors return to the place they grew up in and meet locals who are still there became common enough in the 1990s. With almost all survivors now gone, this film will prove one of the last. It is also one of the best. Or better, the most startling since the writer Henryk Grynberg returned to Poland and with the reluctantly offered help of villagers dug up and held his own father's skull.

In this case we follow 85 year old Moshe who takes his son and daughters to his village near Zamosc and tells them how he escaped to the forest for 18 months, how the local Polish police willingly assisted the Germans in the murder of his brother and father, and how he ended up fighting with Russian Partisans and the red army, and then how in 1945 he returned to his village aged 18 where his schoolmates promptly tried to kill him, and how he took his revenge. Etc etc.

One very interesting feature is how Moshe and his children keep switching from Hebrew to Polish even among themselves.

The Wire (2002–2008)

Way overrated

[3/10 · 9 June 2020]

After two episodes of series 1 I fail to see what all the fuss is about. Incredibly pedestrian. Give me The Bridge any day.

Tell No One (2019)

What happened to editing?

[5/10 · 19 May 2020]

This is a badly made and sloppily edited film about an important subject. It overuses the boring and hackneyed device of hidden cameras, the nick broomfield device of showing the film makers themselves, uses unnecessary overhead shots merely because drones are available, and provides no narrative to help the viewer contextualise what they are watching.

Interruption (II) (2015)

Get on with it!

[1/10 · 16 April 2016]

Before we went in I said to my wife that this will either be very good or very bad. It was very bad. The conceit is not necessarily a bad idea but the whole thing is executed in such ponderous way that it becomes pointless. Then problem is that Greek tragedy is its own justification, so even a modern dress variation is asking for trouble. but this wanted to go much further and ended up not going anywhere at all. We lasted 45 minutes before walking out but how we managed that much is beyond me. The script was about as leaden as a script could be, and the directing ponderous. The acting was not bad, but the problem, was that this meant that we were treated to a realistic depiction of ordinary people's not very extraordinary thoughts. Hopeless.

Death in Sarajevo (2016)

a lot of basement but no depth

[2/10 · 14 April 2016]

Tanovic is a skilled director, as he showed in no-mans-land, but all the characters here were about as subtle as characters in...a play by a French intellectual, like Bernard Henri-Levy, who makes David Hare seem like Shakespeare. The film was vaguely engrossing but as soon as it finished - and it seemed to finish when it ought to get going - one was aware of how weak it was. There was far too much didactic-ism on the one hand and far too much pandering to a non-Balkan audience's image of a Balkan world of gangsters, prostitutes, money-lenders and all round violence. I am supposed to write at least 10 lines about this but god knows why as it isn't really worth two lines of comment. I can't believe the guardian gave it 4 stars (well, I can)

The Lebanese Rocket Society (2012)

it's not rocket science

[4/10 · 8 April 2013]

A poor use of excellent material. All the elements were there - a rocket science and space project in Lebanon in the 1960s, its abandonment, Middle East politics, the ethnic identity of the scientists, their age, the existence of film and photo archives, the reminiscences of the main protagonists, Beirut today - but they were all thrown in at once near the start, so that the second half of the film was, so to speak, running on empty. There was no suspense, and the really surprising things that the film makers had unearthed were not given the space to breathe. They also seem to have had a big budget but made little use of it. The recurring theme - why has this episode been forgotten in Lebanon? - was never addressed adequately.