helenandbrian Reviews

The Sinking of the Laconia (2010– )

Definitely not anti-American, just true

[7/10 · 14 September 2012]

The film did get overly sentimental at times and there were some unnecessary plot digressions that served only as filler, but overall, a moving portrayal of actual events.

When the American bomber goes in and bombs a submarine crowded with people on deck and displaying a large red cross, that is an accurate retelling of what actually happened. Similarly, a despicable Nazi U-Boat commander actually did turn out to be a caring man who disobeyed orders and jeopardised his own safety to rescue all those survivors of a boat that he had targeted legitimately. Just as in real life, he was eventually forced to abandon them to their fate because he was attacked by the Americans. Several other U-Boats did also join in the operation.

In reality, around half the survivors eventually died before they eventually reached safety.

The Hole (2001)

Too many plot holes and unconvincing accents

[4/10 · 4 April 2011]

I do have to admit to having not watched all of this. To my discredit, I didn't think that much of it, but still kept flicking back to it from something else I was also half-watching, BUT my views are still valid despite missing out on all the plot developments, as they are much more fundamental.

Firstly, I didn't really know who Thora Birch was, but guessed very quickly that she is American. I cannot understand why other reviews have complimented her on her perfect accent, bearing in mind how clearly obvious it was that she was putting it on. Gwyneth Paltrow as Queen Elizabeth yes; Renee Zellwigger as Bridget Jones sort of; Thora Birch as an English public school girl no.

Secondly, as a suspense thriller where you are supposed to be shocked at whodunit, how then did I, watching only episodic sections, manage to guess within minutes who was almost certainly the guilty party? The way they laid this person's personality on with a trowel, it was quite clear that there was something fundamentally unhinged going on.

Thirdly, how many WW2 air-raid shelters are still clean and dry and have fully functioning electric lighting? On the other hand, I think it might have been more fun if the girls had been like Keira Knightley when I was at British boarding school myself!

Glee: The Rocky Horror Glee Show (2010) Season 2, Episode 5

Aaaaargh! Autotune alert (but still loved it)!

[8/10 · 8 February 2011]

As ever, I am torn about Glee. While it is perhaps a guilty secret of mine, I am something of a Gleek and don't want to miss an episode, but... the Autotune in this second series seems to have got ever more intrusive.

The cast are mostly respected Broadway professional who know how to sing, yet they Autotune their performances to oblivion. It isn't even subtle.

Saying that, Sweet Transvestite last night just went to show how Amber Riley/Mercedes is far and away the best singer on the show (and not coincidentally, the one cast member who suffers the least from the dreaded Autotune).

Scenes of a Sexual Nature (2006)

Odd title, but lovely film

[9/10 · 22 November 2010]

I thoroughly enjoyed this film. Simply a sequence of individual vignettes into the lives of various couples on Hampstead Heath. Nothing much happens, but there's some wonderful characterisation, nice dialogue and a few (albeit slightly predictable) twists and turns along the way.

While it can in no way be regarded as entirely "happy", it also eschewed the tendency of many British films to be unremittingly miserable and the sun shone the whole time.

Slightly confused by the title, however. Clearly the scenes themselves were of a sexual nature, but that kind of reference conjures up images of a film with, lets say, a bit more than simple talking involved. Not that I was disappointed in this, but I could imagine some people being a bit misled and complaining about not getting their money's worth.

Play for Today: Abigail's Party (1977) Season 8, Episode 3

Absolutely wonderful, but it made me cringe

[10/10 · 8 November 2010]

My parents had told me about this many times in the past, but last night when it was back on television was the first time I had ever seen it.

How fantastic! Classic Mike Leigh - incredibly funny, but at the same time really dark. A very British comedy - the idea that as the plot progresses, the knives are out and everyone's character is slowly assassinated. It's what we Brits do so well (if it's actually something of which to be proud!) - comedy that rejoices not just in others' misfortune, but ultimately in their total psychological destruction.

And what relentlessly horrible characters! There were times when it made me cringe so much, I had to leave the room.

The Jackal (1997)

Should have won an award for Least Convincing Irish Accent of All Time

[20 July 2010]

One review above says "Gere did a credible job with an Irish accent". Another points out that the director was so lazy that he didn't care that the IRA man had a Southern, rather than Northern Irish accent. According to the Trivia, Gere worked with a voice coach to get it right.

All I can say is, that both my wife and I commented the moment he opened his mouth, that we could not work out from where he was supposed to come. Clearly the intention was Irish, but it was so awful that it defies description. I couldn't say it was Southern rather than Northern, because it was so terrible that you couldn't begin to ascribe it such an accolade of being recognisable as either.

Did add a nice touch of humour to the film, though.

A Town Called Panic (2009)

Truly wonderful and delightful

[10/10 · 7 April 2010]

Saw this on a plane back from Canada and didn't expect much - just struggling to find something to occupy the time.

How wrong I was. Hilarious, totally surreal, laugh out loud funny (hate to think what the other passengers thought of me). Other reviews link this with the Wallace and Gromit series and in many ways, the inventiveness and off the wall humour are along similar lines. The gloriously cheap stop motion animation is a world away, however - Cowboy and Indian, for instance, even have the little flat stand to hold them up like regular children's toys.

Don't take that as a criticism, however- it just makes the whole thing more endearing. This isn't Avatar - this is more like Morph: forget the budget, it's all in the skill of the film maker to tell a great story that's a laugh a minute and keeps you watching. You may struggle to understand what's going on at times, but who cares?

Jellikins (1999–2003)

Terrible

[3/10 · 28 January 2010]

Mindless rubbish.

Had a son of just the right age at the time and saw a few episodes with him and was amazed at how atrocious it was. Yes I know I'm not the target audience myself, but it was so mindless that I would not let him watch it and turned over to the intellectual heavyweights that were the Tellytubbies (and that's no compliment, believe me!).

How anyone can believe that such tripe can stimulate young minds is positively beyond me. No problem with Rik Mayall: celebrity voice-overs are all the rage and he did a perfectly acceptable job, but the material he was given was simply not up to scratch.

The Tudors (2007–2010)

Watch it for the cinematography and also to laugh at it.

[6/10 · 1 October 2009]

It's fun to watch, but historical tripe. My wife and I (sad as we are) just spend the whole time picking holes in it and checking up on the "facts". Some of them are introduced to trim out excess detail - maybe even amalgamating his two sisters was done for that reason, but why on earth have her marrying the King of Portugal and murdering him when in truth, she married the King of France and he died of natural causes? Why have Henry traumatised by the death of the little boy Henry Fitzroy when in truth he lived until he was 17? Why keep Henry young and good looking when in reality he turned into a fat porker? Why did Henry keep lapsing into an Irish accent in the first series? The one that got me most recently was Anne of Cleves. If the whole point was that he married her because she looked beautiful in her portrait, why did she turn out to be genuinely good looking when he finally met her? The script had to resort to saying that she smelled bad, just so that they could have another pretty girl on screen.

On the other hand, her not turning him on was an excuse for another gratuitous masturbation scene!

ER: And in the End... (2009) Season 15, Episode 22

Great Ending

[10/10 · 29 May 2009]

This is a medical drama that seems to have captured the imagination so much more than any other before it. You really identify with the characters, and yet every time it risks degenerating into soap opera, you get a face full of standalone medical drama to bring you back to "real life".

I thought the last episode excelled in the way in which it brought everything to a close and yet left a positive note for the future. The programme is gone, but the hospital carries on and we still identify with it and wish it well. They even resolved all the subplots, something totally unheard of in an ER season finale.

A nice, albeit predictable, touch that the old stagers were brought back in one by one over the course of the last series - and probably right that for most of the time, they were just there for our benefit and did not interfere with the "real" story of the hospital itself. Particularly nice touch that they used the same actors for the two children who returned (Rachel Greene and Reese Benton).

The episode wallowed a little in sentimentality, because the expectation was that the audience would welcome that, but again, the usual side stories were juxtaposed with hard hitting, fast moving, medical action - something that was always a strong point of the series.

A final nice touch for me was the return to the old theme music. A tacit acknowledgement perhaps of how much everyone hated its replacement?

Numb3rs (2005–2010)

Mathematics? What Mathematics?

[7/10 · 17 November 2008]

I like this programme because it makes me laugh. Why? Because the mathematics in it is so clunkingly awful and artificial. Last week we had a series of mathematical formulae to predict whether someone was likely to have committed suicide. Give me a break! One of the other comments points out that if something is not expressed mathematically, then it is not fact but an opinion. Maybe so, but extending that via Numb3rs is like saying that Dan Brown is the leading theologian of his generation.

As I said at the beginning, I quite enjoy this show for its fun and escapism. And let's face it, the CSI franchises make a load of their science up too.

Daddy and Them (2001)

Great, quirky comedy

[8/10 · 9 June 2008]

Not just due to the presence of Brenda Blethyn in a supporting role, this film is very reminiscent of Mike Leigh's work. A family drawn together by some random event leads to intense discomfort on the part of the viewer, as ever increasing numbers of skeletons come out of the closet, made worse by poor (if not non-existent) communication.

Fabulously observed, there is some wonderful characterisation in this film, and some wonderful performances, not to mention a great unexpected cameo scene with Ben Affleck and Jamie Lee Curtis.

This film strives (albeit it fictionally), with Big Brother or Jerry Springer levels of voyeurism, to lay bare the trailer trash lifestyle. Painful to watch and yet intensely funny at times, again like Mike Leigh there is no hint before the very end as to whether it will be a sad or a happy ending.

The Bourne Identity (2002)

Not quite as good as I was expecting, but still fun

[7/10 · 25 February 2008]

The Bourne Identity has been hyped by many people as the ultimate spy film, out-Bonding Bond etc. etc. To a certain extent that is true - it was exciting, broadly plausible and full of action. On the other hand, for a start it wasn't exactly a spy film. Bourne starts off not knowing who he is, he is chased around a lot and nearly gets killed a few times and he ends up still not really knowing who he is. He doesn't do any spying, he just realises slowly over the course of the film that he is himself a sort of spy.

The plot was barely recognisable from the book, apart from a few names, the chase from Zurich to Paris and the fact that people were trying to kill him. The reason why they were trying to kill him and the people responsible were new and the CIA involvement was never fully explained or developed. Perhaps this was a good thing, as the book is, I think, overly complicated, but they could have kept some sort of link.

In terms of plausibility, some of the fighting looked like something out of The Matrix (maybe genuine, but filmed to make it look like it was a bit super-hero) and the part where he jumps down a 4-storey stairwell using a dead body to cushion his fall was frankly laughable.

As it is, I still enjoyed it and agree it is a great improvement on most Bond films - as witnessed by the way that Bond was reinvented for Casino Royale. The lack of plot carry-over also means that I can watch The Bourne Supremacy when it's on TV next week without worrying that I am still only 1/2 way through the book.

Pink Floyd: The Wall (1982)

Don't look now!

[12 November 2002]

I personally love this film. My wife however had never watched the whole thing. It turns out that she cannot bear to watch the bit where Pink shaves off his nipples, had always left the room at this point and had never ventured back in. Once I had persuaded her to close her eyes for two minutes, she watched the second half and quite enjoyed it!

Brimstone & Treacle (1982)

Not a pleasant film, but good music!

[12 November 2002]

Depending on your point of view, this is either an incredibly sick film or a classic piece of Filme Noire.

Basically, Sting is a strange, disturbed young man who at least believes himself to be the devil incarnate. He inveigles his way into the house of a middle-aged couple and their brain damaged daughter, persuades them to let him "babysit" and then rapes the comatose girl while they are out.

The characterisation is fairly well handled, as is the psychological aspect, but you can't help thinking that Dennis Potter was feeling rather more controversial than normal when he wrote it and that the director was exploiting the situation to get away with gratuitous, sadistic sex scenes masquerading as art.

Ultimately, this is a very disturbing film, but is at least head and shoulders above the "made for TV" play released a few years earlier.

The music on the other hand - by Sting himself (both solo and with The Police) - is much better fare. Simple production and a strange mix of styles, but at times it really captures the macabre mood down to a tee.

Limelight (1952)

Without giving the game away... an amazing penultimate scene

[12 November 2002]

Have seen this movie several times and have always loved it. The main film is pretty good, but what really steals the whole thing is the penultimate scene.

Charlie Chaplin on stage for probably ten minutes being, well, Charlie Chaplin. A magnificent performance of vaudeville slapstick that almost overshadows the whole film. Has me laughing out loud every time I see it!