kazerniel Reviews

Fenced In (2022)

Incoherent, but funny

[5/10 · 29 October 2022]

The film has plenty of humorous scenes, but it never really coalesces into a coherent whole.

It has both a very childish sense of humour (with cartoonish CGI!), but also long scenes full of sex-related references and banter. So it feels like the film doesn't really know what kind of audience it tries to address.

While it does a good job of painting both conflicting neighbours as likeable and unlikeable at the same time, the characterisations and character dynamics are completely subject to Rule of Silly. Two character can be swearing at each other in one scene, and have a friendly chat in the next.

Mindful Escapes: Breathe, Release, Restore (2020)

Vague fluff

[5/10 · 22 May 2022]

It feels like this show can't decide what it's trying to be.

It's made up of nature footage under a narration that is trying to sound deep and inspiring, but is instead just vague fluff that's barely connected to what's going on on the screen. I couldn't figure out what the narrator was actually trying to tell to the viewer.

For a meditation aid, there's too much talking.

For a nature documentary, the narration is completely uninformative.

From the BBC iPlayer blurb I was hoping for a more grounded explanation and guidance about mindfulness instead of whatever this is.

Spy in the Snow (2018 TV Movie)

Gimmicky

[5/10 · 19 January 2022]

The spy cam is a pointless gimmick; the vast majority of scenes seem to have been shot with a regular camera, so a lot of the time unconvincing mechatronic animals take the centre stage from the real ones with no payoff.

The occasional anthropomorphising writing, and comedic music and sound effects don't help either.

The Lake District: A Wild Year (2017 TV Movie)

Misleading title

[3/10 · 12 September 2021]

Misleading title - the documentary is 80% about local people, tourism and sheep farming, not wildlife.

Also it's really heavy-handed with camera effects, eg. Not sure why every 6-second segment of someone walking down a path needs 3 crossfade transitions.

It features a few nice landscape- and macro timelapses, but I can't recommend it to viewers who would want to watch if for the wildlife or nature scenes.

The Great British Year (2013)

Superb camerawork, bad writing

[6/10 · 24 February 2020]

Spectacular stop-motion and slow-mo camerawork, but the writing is really bad in places. It is terribly patriotic in tone, and has several instances of inanely anthropomorphising language. As if hedgehogs cared about outdated human mores on female sexuality, or if birds "flown thousand of miles, risking \[their\] life to be part of our British summer". Just no, please. Bad enough when laypeople think like this, nature documentaries should really avoid this human-centered point of view.

A Breath Away (2018)

Weird ending

[6/10 · 30 May 2018]

The ending kinda shot the movie in the foot. Nothing was really explained. We just got to see how a few people coped with a natural catastrophe. But the lack of actual wrap-up left me quite dissatisfied. (How much of the world was affected? Preteens will run the country/planet now? Iirc they said third of Paris's adult population has died, but it seemed more like 99%. Why didn't the wind disperse the fog for days?)

Another weird thing was the dog that chased them through the city. Ok, let's say it's young enough that it's not affected by the gas. But still... family dogs don't behave like that, practically hunting down people over long distances. It wasn't protecting its territory, it wasn't starved, it had no reason to behave in such an unnatural way other than plot convenience.

Also it was weird that they didn't just get in a car and get the f--k out of there. Even if the roads were blocked by other cars there must have been smaller streets and such that they could have used to get around.

Aside of the above plot malfunctions, the atmosphere (haha) and emotional tension worked really well, and the visuals were pretty good. The child actress was mostly terrible, but sadly child actors usually are.