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Reviews
Surrounded (2023)
Great western, nuanced with Bell playing all the b...sh...ers I have ever met
A rating of 5.9 is misleading. I can see how it is impossible to ban reviewers with an IQ related to the rating they give, but really? Beautifully executed, directed, acted, cinematography, the only flaw is that apparently white men can't tell the gender of black people back just after the civil war, but hey, the film doesn't work without that artifice.
I so much want to believe Bell is deep down a good sort, even though I know he isn't. Lovely acting.
A completely satisfying ending where being black and weedy gets you off the hook for killing an handful of outlaws or 'road agents', is elevated by the guile of the protagonist when discovered by law n order surrounded by their propped up bodies. Eminently watchable. Enjoy.
The Artful Dodger (2023)
Who cast Thewlis as Fagin?
A pretty and entertaining period piece set in 18th / 19th century Australia. A follow up on Dickens's Oliver Twist. The Dodger has been transported by the convict system and somehow become a surgeon. The local Governer's daughter is a love interest and there is humour and mayhem. The whole cast play it beautifully.
Then enters Fagin. What a disappointment. A central character devised by Dickens to be a loveable rogue has been transformed by Thewlis into a flat, 2 dimensional character.
Dickens's Fagin was a larger than life character, cartoonishly Jewish. Thewlis looks the part, but that's where the resemblance starts and finishes.
Maybe I have been spoiled by seeing many great Fagins, including Ron Moody in the West End. I have seen Fagin played on stage, tv and the cinema, by some greats, and some relative unknowns, but never as poorly as Thewlis's representation. Maybe the actor was trying to avoid cultural appropriation. Maybe the casting director should have cast someone Jewish to avoid that pratfall. My goodness, if they were casting a trans woman and got a cis to play it, there would have been a huge outcry!
And, sorry Thewlis, but what is that accent supposed to be?
It spoiled it for me, and probably a lot of Jewish people of a certain age to see this insipid Fagin.
Rabbit Hole (2023)
An okay conspiracy thriller
I would've given a higher rating if the whole thing hadn't been filmed either in the dark or with a blue filter. Even broad daylight is dark. Maybe the cast don't want us to see their wrinkles in high definition. It doesn't make it more moody guys, just more difficult to make anything out on the screen. Charles Dance is wooden, I'm not sure what he's going for, autistic? Evil? Psychopath? He's not pulling off any of it.
Not spoiling anything by saying the four main characters end up as a mismatched team. There's the usual humour, flashbacks to the chief character's unhealthy childhood and twists along the way. Entertaining, but not totally absorbing. If only I could clearly see what's going on. At least they don't mutter. ;)