soju1664 Reviews

Monkey Man (2024)

Promised so much but didn't deliver

[6/10 · 20 April 2024]

Some of my favourite films of recent years are Nobody, Extraction, John Wicks and even Polar, so I was looking forward to watching this.

First the good bits:

-Story was OK, nice to mix it in with excluded and socio-economic divided groups in India. Nothing amazing/original here and it had some holes.

-Acting was perfunctory, nothing stand out great and nothing atrocious.

-Violence, on occasion there was some well shot satisfying violence.

Now the bad bits:

-All of the unrelenting shaky cam, absolutely no need for all of it. I almost walked out in the second act because of it and I've never walked out of a cinema. They tried to do longer type shots for the action especially in the final act with less shaky cam, but still not shot well.

-Really, really too many out of focus shots, either the cameraman was really inexperienced or they had too much really bad stylistic advice. Really distracting and really frustrating (just like my overuse of "really")

-Almost constant poor framing of shots. Nothing was easy to watch and fortunately once shot every few minutes was OK to give my eyes a rest. Not sure if they bothered checking the cinematographer's CV before they hired him. Surely they had one, right?

-The action, I love action films especially gritty, realistic, violent ones where the choreography has to be sharp and flow. This wasn't bad by any means but completely forgettable and shot appallingly compared to any of the films mentioned above. Dev Patel was OK, but a couple of times he was waiting for a punch and just out of the rhythm of it.

All in all a disappointing film and a waste of the price of the cinema.

Baywatch (2017)

Beautiful Bodies, Beaches, Sunsets, Stupid Jokes.... What's not to like??

[7/10 · 24 June 2017]

I saw this as we had a toss up between this and Pirates of the Caribbean. We couldn't face another rehash of that franchise, so despite the negative reviews we went for Baywatch. We were both very pleasantly and humorously surprised.

Baywatch isn't going to win any Oscars or cause me think about it again and again like some movies do (Covenant & Prometheus being good examples) but it did entertain me solidly for two hours.

It has funny bits throughout the film which caused me to laugh out loud and is well paced, although a little formulaic with the story. The cast were good, especially Dwayne Johnson who seems to have had the part written for him. The humour isn't high-brow but there is a good amount of the film parodying itself.

Much better than The Mummy and a good waste of two hours, which is exactly why I go the cinema.

Shameless (2004–2013)

Simply the funniest show on British TV for years

[6 March 2006]

Simply the funniest show on British TV for years. Shouldn't be viewed by anyone who doesn't like shows with course language, violence, drink and drug abuse or who generally gets offended pretty easily. Everyone else though should enjoy.

It took me a while to fully appreciate the show but after a couple of forced episodes (what are mates for!) I'm addicted. I'm not entirely sure if the humour would translate to the US or oz but judging by the reviews the show is getting, it looks like it'll being going global! I used to live in Manchester and I find the quite a lot of the humour is northern, then again I live in Scotland and loads of my mates up here love it too!!

STOP reading and watch/rent/beg/steal/scam a copy ASAP