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billfernhill
Reviews
Passengers (2016)
Surprisingly beautiful & not what I expected.
I went into this expecting a schmaltzy, fluffy Titanic in space. I'm not the biggest fan of Pratt, but I actually shed a tear when he was floating in space, looking out on the firmament and weeping. His loneliness was palpable, and the relationship between Pratt & Lawrence is believable. Don't see this if you're expecting groundbreaking sci-fi. It's exquisitely filmed, beautifully set, and believably acted though it is, at its heart, a love story. See it for the visual beauty that it is and enjoy.
Babylon (2014)
DON'T! Just don't! You'll never get those minutes back.
What utter drivel. I expect better from Danny Boyle & James Nesbitt. Ludicrous story line, astonishingly appalling & incredibly annoying characters...an unbelievable farce, filled with some of the most thoroughly detestable characters ever to grace the small screen. The vast majority of the "police" in this abomination are so awful that you're almost praying for some random criminal to leap out & shoot/stab/blow up the whole damned lot of them and put us out of our misery. Whoever cast these vile characters should be demoted for forcing these unacceptably dreadful personalities onto the world. I'd heard some reports of this show being "disjointed", but it's far deeper than that. It's just awful. It could have been good, but instead, it's just a horrible waste of energy. This show stole time from my life that I'll never get back. AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE!
300: Rise of an Empire (2014)
300 - Fall of a Franchise
After the fantastic ride that was 300, I was a bit excited to hear about this sequel.....HOWEVER, "disappointed" is the kindest word I can use to describe this disaster. While the acting is a tad wooden, one can see why this is so as the movie progresses. Eva Green, like David Wenham, spends her time exuding a "WTF have I done!?" sense of "contractual obligation" all the way through this car crash. In fact, all the actors could be forgiven for doing just this because the blame for the entire fiasco lays firmly at the feet of the director. The ludicrous buckets of blood that seem to gush at the slightest scratch, the relentless ultra-slow-mo and the improbability of the battles just makes this whole thing utterly laughable.
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE a good B, C, D, E OR EVEN F-grade film, but this is just a disaster. It's as though some spoilt, pimply, greasy 17 year old who has an obsession with X-box gore-games, and whose only cinematic experience is watching late-night commercial telly, has been given a $100 million by his mum, no supervision and THIS abomination was what he came up with.
Don't. Just don't. It's appalling.
Janet King (2014)
Ignore the whinge from "whistleblower".
Obviously my esteemed fellow reviewer has an axe to grind. Describing it as pushing a "leftist, lesbian" agenda is utter nonsense. If the relationship were heterosexual, I seriously doubt that any such vitriol would be forthcoming. Yes, the initial police/courtroom/trial scenes had a couple of "reality" plot holes large enough to drive a tank through, but these are easy to forgive, given the extraordinary quality of this series. Perhaps if you require an absolutely, completely, utterly perfect drama series, you could make it yourself? If for no other reason than to show the rest of us how amazingly talented & absolutely NOT homophobic you must be.