p-seed-889-188469 Reviews

Normal People (2020)

Selfish is the new normal

[3/10 · 4 August 2020]

If the title "Normal People" is supposed to be taken literally then this series certainly hits the nail squarely on the head since it depicts random events in the lives of two supremely normal people. Most of us are somewhere on the scale of normal, and there is nothing wrong with that, but the problem is that normal people are really not that interesting. Sure we can identify with them, but does anyone really want to sit through five hours summarizing the hum-drum and unspectacular events in someone else's normal life? It is about as exciting as watching a 5 hour slide show of someone else's holiday in a place we have already been to.

This series is marketed as a "sweeping story", a term that must have changed meaning. "Gone with the Wind" is a "sweeping story". "Doctor Zhivago" is a sweeping story. "War and Peace" is a sweeping story. "Normal people", the book, may well be a sweeping story. But Normal People" the series barely makes it to the "story" level, let alone a sweeping one. I get the impression that if the book is a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle the series producers have selected 12 disparate pieces to base their episodes on, thereby dooming it more to a series of fragmented vignettes which presumably they hope, taken together, bears some resemblance to the actual book.

The "story", if such a term is appropriate, revolves around a couple called Connell and Marianne as they transition from school to University over a period of what I gather is about three years. Connell is the high school "jock", the star rugby player who is popular with everyone. Unlike your classic school jock he actually seems a really nice guy, being humble, respectful, polite, courteous, diligent, intelligent and shy. Frankly he almost seems too good to be true. Marianne, on the other hand is a problem child, belligerent and disrespectful to both teachers and fellow students.

Surprise surprise, Connell and Marianne enter into a relationship. And surprise surprise they have the same problems all normal people do , except in their case the "misunderstandings" that are the frequent cause of most relationship problems are so gargantuan and contrived as to be downright preposterous. The two progress from School to University. Connell, whose manifest interest in literature is displayed by his picking up a book and saying he has read it, somehow between lectures magically writes a book, as you do. He is, apparently, a genius. Marianne, well we are not quite sure what she does, it seems to involve history, also turns out to be a genius. Lurking in the background are your archetypical university hangers-on, generally insufferable, pretentious, entitled know-it-alls with few if any redeeming features. Marianne gets involved with a string of neer-do-wells while loyal heart- throb Connell patiently bides his time making do with long suffering Helen as a temporary stand-in. We bounce around from Dublin, to Sligo, to Italy where we are surprised to find Marianne's family actually own a house, and for good measure to Sweden, just because we can. We find 10 episodes too late that Marianne's mother and brother are bonkers, which may just go part way to explaining why she is like she is. We never find out why the brother, in particular, is a complete psycho, he just seems to be an afterthought in all this and pops on and off stage as it suits. In the final episode boy genius Connell is offered a chance to study in New York but Marianne loves him so much she will not go with him, she has her own life to lead. What??????

I am wondering what, or who, there is to like about this. The lead characters are not particularly likeable, in fact as the series progresses we like them less and less. They are both supremely passionless people for whom the words love, romance and passion are not in the dictionary. We see each of them pass through a series of "relationships", all of which are ultimately casual couplings of convenience, which, the second they become inconvenient, are brutally abandoned with the words "this isn't working for me anymore", heavy emphasis on the word "me". In none of these random couplings, not only including but especially the one between Connell and Marianne, do we see any sign of actual love or romance. Yes there is lot of lust and animalistic rutting, heaving, panting and exposing of epic amounts of breasts and flesh, but you can see all that any day down on the farm. Either in the pen-ultimate, or final episode, I forget which, Connell and Marianne finally "get back together", an event at which we might rejoice that finally "love conquers all". But no, all this means, apparently, is another opportunity for sex, which Marianne not only insists is anal sex but also that Connell hits her. Someone tell me this has any resemblance to love, it is a supreme example of selfishness purely for sexual gratification. And in the final episode the pair care so much about each other neither can, or will, make any sacrifice for the other in order to stay together. They make yet another selfish decision to go their own separate ways and we are supposed to be sorry for them. Give me a break.

This is a series which has a beginning, a string of picaresque events masquerading as a middle, and an end not because there is any resolution but simply because it ran out of episodes. It is peopled by paper-thin cardboard cutouts whom ultimately we know nothing about, and whom personally I could care less about. The only "characters" of any warmth are Nile the flatmate and Helen the long-suffering "Marianne stand-in", heartlessly used by Connell.

I started this review by saying the series, as its title suggested, is indeed about normal, boring people. I end by hoping beyond hope that these people are NOT normal, for I do not want to be part of a world populated by such selfish, soulless, passionless, loveless individuals.

Not having read it I am prepared to concede the book may be a 10 but I give this series a 3, as a concession to the acting, which was excellent.

Reprisal (2019)

Horible, just horrible

[1/10 · 16 December 2019]

If you think the one thing the world needs most is more violence, depravity and bad taste then this is the program for you. Fifteen minutes of unremitting violence was all I could stomach, and if you can last longer more power to you. A program of absolutely zero redeeming features.

Back to Life (2019–2021)

Initial charm rapidly wears thin

[4/10 · 11 August 2019]

It is difficult not to be charmed by Daisy Haggard's portrayal of Miri, a recently released prisoner for a "murder" committed 18 years before. And at the end of the first episode it is difficult to not be excited at finding what appears to be a genuinely new premise for a comedy series. Unfortunately this strong start only made it all the more disappointing when the series degenerated rapidly into a string of cliches, gross improbabilities and characterizations too unreal to be credible.

Standing back and looking objectively it seems to me the root of Back to Life's (BTL's) problem is its structure. There is a reason that the majority of comedies are sitcoms, long running series of individual episodes, each of which has its own self-contained story. It is of course possible to have shorter comedies series such as "The office", "Flight of the Concords" or "The Detectorists" but again while these may have their own overarching story that links the episodes together, each episode also has its own self-contained story. Compared to these standard comedy formats BTL is an anomaly. On the one hand it is supposed to be a comedy but on the other it is also a "who dun it", and while the combination of the two is an interesting and brave idea in my opinion this combination is just never going to work. A thriller is a thriller and a comedy is comedy. Yes it is possible to have a black comedy such as "Killing Eve" or "Lock stock and two smoking Barrels". But BTL is not a black comedy it is essentially two incompatible concepts unnaturally grafted together which makes it very difficult to be belly laughing at bizarre and unreal characters one moment then deadly serious with supposedly real characters and situations the next. It is a bad case of schizophrenia.

To be honest, had it not been for the fact that I was watching this with another person I would have given up at the end of the second episode. Up to then I had absolutely no expectation that the whole murder thing was going to be a recurring theme and was simply expecting the characters to develop. The initial premise, of a "killer" being released back into society is an interesting one but one that palls very, very quickly - there are only so many times (about two) you can show Miri being rejected by society and find it even vaguely amusing. After 2 episodes the whole "Miri rejection" thing became simply a substitute for the time honored "catch phrase" - something that reliably happens at least once an episode and which everyone for some reason is supposed to find funny.

No one expects everything in television to be realistic, especially not in a comedy. But even by these relaxed standards of reality the whole premise of BTL stretches credibly well beyond breaking point. Sorry but it is just not credible that a schoolgirl would have been convicted of murder at all, let alone jailed for 18 years, for what must have clearly at the time been regarded as an accident. Sorry, I know there are some crazy people out there, but I simply refuse to believe we live in a world where people are as consistently horrible as the ones shown in BTL and who, without exception, hurl abuse, paint rude messages on walls, send obscene parcels, paste posters, throw rubbish, etc, etc as they do here. Yet the entire premise of the series relies on that very fact. It is all just a house of cards.

Normally in a comedy series you have at least a few "straight guys". Yes, Seinfeld has its Kramer and friends has its Phoebe but generally speaking most characters are at least not too far away from someone we might all know in reality. In BTL EVERYONE is a whack job, except, ironically, Miri herself. Mandy is a nutter, Miri's ex is a nutter, the woman next door is a nutter, the policewoman is a nutter, Miri's parents start normally and then become nutters, the fish and chip man turns out to be a nutter, the investigator is a nutter, the checkout kid, the entire expletive hurling, rubbish hurling community are nutters. And incredibly, against this ridiculous unrealistic backdrop we are supposed to care about actual, real things such as the parent's relationship and who really did kill Lara. Really? And the whole resolution of why Lara was killed and why that was not established in 5 minutes at the time of death when seemingly everyone knew. Ridiculous.

Call me a prude but I didn't need to hear all the swearing, which is probably the most intensive and obnoxious I have ever heard in any television program, period. There was a time, about 30 years ago, when the appearance of a swear word was, for some reason I never understood, supposed to be funny. It was generally regarded as the sign of a program in desperation trying to make up for a lack of actual humor and brings zero credit to the writers/makers of BTL.

In short, some spectacular talent, and some genuine moments of charm, ultimately undermined by the one-trick premise of Miri being continually abused and by a structure that could not support it.

Maudie (2016)

Bored by Maude

[1/10 · 2 June 2019]

When I first started watching Maudie I had no idea she was an actual person so for the first 10 minutes or so I thought this was a fictional story about an ungrateful woman, her brother who acts like no human I have encountered, and a long suffering Aunt, who the brother seems to hold some sort of mysterious power over. One moment this woman is hysterical because the brother has sold the house, the next she is mysteriously in a nightclub, as of course were common in that hotbed of the jazz age, Digby, Nova Scotia. By now I am rolling my eyes at the ridiculousness and the sheer black and white and lack of nuance of every scene. The brother and Aunt are evidently BAD and we can only assume, although as yet we have no idea who this woman is, where she came from and what she might possibly contribute in the future, we must assume she is a heroine of some sort in the making. Lapsing into profound boredom I consulted Mr Google and found "Maudie" is/was an actual person who is famous in in her home town for painting kitsch pictures of cats and other things that are dignified by the title of "folk art". Well what to think now. I ask myself, am I actually interested in this achievement? Well, kudos to her I guess for achieving what she did, but no, not really, I'm not. Am I actually interested in the road it took to make these achievements possible? On the basis of the movie so far the road seems to be an extremely boring one populated by a woman of no particular warmth who seems to make very stupid decisions. We know absolutely nothing about this woman. She may have been at her Aunts for a week or all her life, we have no idea. We don't know why she couldn't have stayed with her Aunt and painted pretty pictures there and lived happily ever after. She appears to have some sort of disability, but we have no idea what it is. Is this disability, whatever it is, sufficient for us to root for her on that basis alone and watch in awe as she overcomes it to become "famous"? Would she have become famous if she did not have this disability?Why are we making a movie about this particular artist instead of the thousands of other possibilities?

And of course hanging over all this like a dark cloud is the fundamental question as to whether ANY historical person or event should be documented by anything but a documentary. Anyone who has read any of my other reviews of movies based on historical events or people ("Sunshine and Oranges", "Hachiko", "Saving Mr Banks", to name a few) will already know my answer to this question. Judging from other reviews many people have intensely enjoyed "Maudie" and for that I am thankful and somewhat in awe for I wish that I too could enter a world where fantasy is perceived to be real. For in the final analysis "Maudie" IS pure fantasy. NOONE in this movie said, or did, ANYTHING that occurs in this movie. Not a single sentence, phrase or solitary word in this movie was ever said by Maudie or her chums. We know she existed, we know she had a disability of some sort, we know she had a hard time (like most of the rest of the World) we know she painted, we know these paintings became popular. Maybe we have quotes of things she might have said in later life, I don't know and am not interested enough to find out. But fundamentally, like all of these "biographical" movies it is all a mess of a screenwriter's imagination to provide enough tension and tear jerks to sell tickets and win awards. That is it. Sorry but I did not make it past 30 minutes. I gave up at the ridiculous scene where the rich New Yorker knocks on the door of Maudie's hovel (as rich people are wont to do) and threatens to take all her fish business away (what is she, a fish magnate?). She sees what appears to be the work of a blind 5 year old let loose with a paintbrush on the wall, and my heart sinks even further as I see the road of discovery stretch relentlessly and monotonously ahead. I see the triumphs, the heartbreak, the wetting of hankies...argh, it is all too much... Click. Goodbye Maudie and good luck.

Roma (2018)

One for the art house crowd.

[2/10 · 5 May 2019]

In the interests of full disclosure I must admit I only made it half way through this movie. Perhaps that makes my review unfair but on the other hand an hour is surely sufficient time to expect some sort of payback.

We immediately know this is an arthouse movie because a) it is in "black and white" and b) its opening credits are possibly the longest and most boring in cinematic history. Perhaps this was just a cunning and thoughtful ploy to get all the non-arty people out of the movie theater in the first few minutes thereby saving them two hours of wasted time.

Inexplicably other reviewers praise the cinematography. I could not agree less. First there IS no cinematography in the commonly accepted sense. It seems to me that the cinematography is limited to pointing the camera in the general direction of the "action", something that is done adequately for sure but not exactly the height of sophistication and innovation. Second, the movie is in "black and white". There is a reason I put "black and white" in quotations. Real black and white is what people used to make with black and white film, and if you want to see what this looks like, and some REAL cinematography using all the finesse and effects that black and white film allows, you could do a lot worse than watch "The Third Man", a masterclass in the use of lighting. "Roma" has evidently been filmed in colour and someone has clicked the "convert to Black and white" button on some software to produce this insipid parody of black and white. It has such a limited dynamic range there is virtually no contrast and it should more accurately called "grey and white". I found it incredibly difficult to watch and impossible to pick out any detail. Technicalities aside we might reasonably ask why a film set in the 70s should be made in "black and white" at all. What exactly was the point in this decision?

We might equally well ask the same of the plot - was there actually any point? We are presented with about a dozen characters none of whom we get close to. They are all just cardboard cutouts that we see as props rather than characters than we can empathize with and root for. I really don't care about the Doctor and his wife's problems because I don't know who they are. Ditto, the two maids. Where did they come from? Why should I care? We see them go through their daily routines but, well, so what? One of them suddenly finds herself in a hotel room with a virtual stranger waving a curtain rail about. Of course she gets pregnant. But who is she? Why did she just jump into bed with a stranger? We will never know because we don't know her as a person. It is all very intellectual and distant.

Roma is not a "bad" movie as such but it is extremely pretentious and seemingly made for the gratification of the director rather than for an actual audience.

Killing Eve (2018–2022)

Killing Eve Series 2 digs itself into a bigger and deeper hole.

[1/10 · 2 May 2019]

Season 1 of "Killing Eve" was like a rocket. It launched with a hiss and a roar, flashed brilliantly for few seconds, then by Episode 3 plummeted dismally into oblivion and stupidity (see my Series 1 review "Crashed and burned" for more on that).

The premise of Killing Eve is paper thin, a house of cards, a veneer behind which there is no substance. It is like Villanelle herself, a precocious child that is fleetingly attractive in its precociousness for about 5 minutes after which you want to hurl it headlong out the window. Killing Eve has no discernible plot beyond some goobledegook about "the 12". Its only reason for being is presumably the supposed appeal and interplay of its two leads. Herein lies the problem for surely Villanelle and Eve must be two of the most annoying characters in the history of drama, Villanelle with her God awful cod-Eastern European accent and smug smile, and Eve , featuring a horribly miscast Sandra Oh, perpetually looking like a deer caught in the spotlights. I would walk miles, and pay a lot of money, NOT to be subjected to these two imbecilic characters.

Why someone thought this ill-conceived one-trick pony deserved a second series is one of life's mysteries. Presumably the original writer of Killing Eve realised its rickety "premise" was long past its used by date because Series 2 has a brand-new writer who has been given the unenviable and impossible task of trying to make a silk purse from the sow's ear that Killing Eve had become by the end of Season 1.

After 4 episodes of Season 2 it is clear the hapless writer is frantically floundering round desperately trying to make something out of a premise out of which nothing can possibly be made. In 4 episodes NOTHING has actually happened. We have a "new" character (the "ghost") and surrounded Eve by more useless idiots including another schoolboy and a woman, neither of whom (like Eve herself) seem to actually do anything. We have forgotten, if we ever knew, why Eve is there at all. The mysterious "12", have all but disappeared, not that that is a great loss because they were just some ridiculous ploy for making the audience believe the series actually has a plot (fat chance there). They seem to have been replaced by some equally ridiculous "Peele" organisation with some tortuous connection to something I couldn't care less about. We have spent a whole 2 episodes getting the famous Villanelle out of hospital and back to health, in the process of which she kills a 12 year old boy (in what world is that supposed to be funny?) and an elderly man, who is left with a toilet brush in his mouth (gosh, that was hilarious too).

If all this was entertaining, or the leads had some sort of attraction, I would overlook all this. But the leads are horrible, and it is not entertaining. If it is supposed to be a comedy I have laughed once in 4 episodes (the bit about the windows).

Killing Eve? The sooner the better I say.

Mr. Mercedes (2017–2019)

Kill me now

[1/10 · 21 October 2018]

As noted in my existing review of Mr Mercedes Series 1 that series had absolutely nothing going for it, being a continuous litany of horrible unrealistic people doing horrible unrealistic things. It was therefore with great reluctance that I agreed to give Series 2 a shot.

Once again we see the ridiculous Bill Hodges (aka "Mr Do Nothing"), his ridiculous ex-colleague, his ridiculous neighbour (aka, "Mrs What actual Function do I have in this story") and the ridiculous Holly, possibly the most annoying character in the history of drama. On a perfectly still day we see a small tree spontaneously fall over, leaving a perfectly formed root ball.

So far so stupid. But wait - there's more! We are introduced to some new characters who are illegally trialling some drugs on Mr Mercedes, with consequences that a 2 year old could predict. Then again, speaking of 2 year olds, this whole thing looks like it has been written by one.

There was no way anything could recover from such a ridiculous premise, and after falling about the floor laughing we admitted defeat and gave up.

Required viewing for those wishing to know how not to produce a TV drama.

Waru (2017)

Film making 101

[3/10 · 30 June 2018]

I wish I could be as gushing and effusive about this movie as others have been but regrettably I can't. I preface this review by expressing my admiration for those who brought Waru to fruition, be they the directors, actors or the many unsung talents that are necessary to bring a movie to life. I have no doubt that each of them was thoroughly dedicated to bringing the message of child abuse to the World. But however talented these people may be as individuals as a group they failed miserably for some very simple reasons.

Waru is a movie made by a "sisterhood" of 8 directors according to set of "non-negotiable parameters - they had to have a female Maori lead, the story had to connect to the death of a child, all the stories had to take place within the same 10-minute timeframe, and the vignette would be one continuous shot". In other words Waru was made by a committee who take a heart breaking and important subject and treat it like an assignment for "Film making 101". Now if Waru was a comedy, or about something as innocuous as say baking a pie, we might think, well, that's weird but given the nothingness of the subject we will allow it. But Waru is not about baking a pie, it is about what is probably the most tragic subject in any race's world and therefore the decision to dilute and subjugate that message to personal vanity is almost sickening. "Waru" the movie is so clever it barely even mentions Waru the victim or what happened to him and it sheds no light on what the problem might be or what we might do to make it go away. Indeed if you had not read the publicity blurb beforehand you would probably not have the faintest idea what Waru was about. Subtle, intelligent, cutting edge filmmaking you may say? No, just pretentiousness and an insult not only to the viewer's intelligence but more importantly to the children who continue to die but which these filmmakers chose to push to a poor second place behind satisfying their own intellectual vanity. Even the choice of the child's name "Waru, meaning 8 in Maori, is in poor taste, denying the victim an individual personality and instead replacing it with that of the "sisterhood".

It is easy to see how this might have happened. Waru was made very quickly on a shoestring budget and the decisions that were made may have been the best of a bad lot. To be honest its makers deserve huge respect just for finishing a movie, any movie, good or bad. Maybe the deliberately imposed "rules" were imposed by the films funders. But for all that if you can't make the film you want to make with the resources you have, then maybe it is a better choice to make another film.

But, for whatever reason, the decision was made to make the film within this framework, totally nobbling Waru to the point of immobility and rendering it a total mishmash of nothingness. I am sorry to say that the only emotion I experienced watching Waru was one of anger at seeing an opportunity wasted.

The movie, we are told, consists of 8 "vignettes", vignettes being a fancy name for "fragments". If, as is debatable, this movie is supposed to have any sort of flow, the first and last "vignettes" should have been the strongest. After all you want to draw viewers in with a strong start and you want to finish with a strong ending, and hopefully a point, or at least some sort of resolution. In Waru the first and last vignettes are in fact the weakest, not because they are poorly made, but because given the ridiculous "Film making 101" constraints that must be followed, it is inevitable. At least two of the other "vignettes" appear to be totally irrelevant to Waru's story. Two "vignettes" have more interest than the rest but this interest is not in the least related to the "story" of Waru, if such a story actually exists. One is interesting because it shows a part of Maori culture that many non-Maori will be unfamiliar with, the other for the superb young actress who will someday be a star. I presume it is on the strength of her performance that she appears to be the poster girl for Waru in the trailer and promotional paraphernalia.

I repeat again, there was a lot of talent involved in Waru but for all its good intentions it was hoist by its own petard. Every single one of the 8 directors could have, in isolation, made a "Waru" hundred times better than the one that was made by the group. I look forward to seeing one of these movies in due course.

The Patriarch (2016)

An uplifting and inspiring story

[8/10 · 19 June 2018]

I see this movie has been given a bit of a drubbing by many critics. This is somewhat confusing for while it may not be "Gone with the Wind" or "Citizen Kane", it is a far, far better movie than a great many movies that have been reviewed far more favourably.

First up I would like to give a HUGE vote of thanks for a movie that shows the Maori people in a positive light, this must be a first. I am fed up to the back teeth with movies that show the gangs and the violence, not that these do not exist in any race, but enough already, we get the picture. What we badly need are some positive role models to aspire to and this movie is a step in the right direction. So bravo for that.

Not that Mahana is a "Maori" movie as such, for while the main characters are indeed Maori they could be any race or any mixture of races, they are simply people in a particular time and place, struggling like everyone else.

This movie has been described by some as a "pot boiler" and a "melodrama", rather unfairly I feel. I have seen a few potboilers in my time and this isn't one of them. And while there are a number of scenes that are overly sentimental or just plain unbelievable (the opening car chase and the horse in the cinema, for instance) in the overall sweep of the movie I think these are acceptable without rendering the entire movie a "melodrama". Personally I would say that Tamihori/Morrison's "Once were Warriors" is just as, if not more, melodramatic than "Mahana", yet ironically it didn't get branded as such because it was a "serious" movie with "serious" themes, whereas Mahana is "just" a story and doesn't get off so lightly.

As stories go it is a relatively simple one, not unlike "Warriors" in some respects since Temuera Morrison virtually reprises Jake the Muss. The acting is superb all round, and the cinematography breathtaking so full marks for technical aspects.

Seeing "Mahana" may not have changed my life but then again very few films have. But I enjoyed this movie far more than I expected and felt better for having seen it, so what more can you ask?

Paris etc (2017– )

I think you have to be French...

[4/10 · 19 June 2018]

There is no doubt French movies are a very different animal to most others, in a way that is simultaneously very obvious yet quite difficult to put into words. And so it is with "Paris, etc", a TV series that presumably goes down a storm in its home country yet leaves me scratching my head desperately trying to find some hidden depth that I have yet to find.

The advertising blurb for this program describes "Paris etc" as a "drama comedy" featuring "5 strong women". Having seen 3 episodes I have encountered zero drama and zero comedy, although I have noted a number of women. However I have no idea who these women are or why I should be the least bit interested in them. Some of them seem to have ill-defined relationships with ill-defined men (who may or may not be "strong") and some of them seem to have ill-defined children, but really I have not the faintest idea of what is going on, nor do I have any interest in finding out. None of these characters is in any way interesting or show any potential in becoming so. The most exciting things that have happened so far are that one woman has fallen off her bicycle and another spends her life on buses lugging round a massage table. Yes, it is that gripping.

Each episode so far has started with a gratuitous sexual encounter. Possibly in France this seen as terrifically funny, risqué and daring but personally I find it an insult to my intelligence, not because I am "shocked" but because it is exceedingly boring, contrived, irrelevant and just plain stupid.

OK, maybe it is just me, we are all different. If you are French, or maybe just European in general, you may love it. Try it for yourself, I am very happy to be proven wrong, but for me 3 episodes with no payback was more than enough.

The Salesman (2016)

Technically sound but lacking a point

[2/10 · 3 June 2018]

I enjoyed this movie as I was watching it, with my admiration growing and reaching a crescendo up until about 10 minutes from the end, at which point things headed seriously south. But as the credits rolled and the distractions of the brilliance of the acting and execution disappeared a whole wave of questions came crashing down which pretty much destroyed the underpinning logic of the whole story and undoing any redeeming features it may have had

If you look at the "story" scene by scene there is very little that stacks up as being logical or natural and the whole thing is exposed as a rickety structure stuck together by bits of string and sealing wax by the director/writer to make some point. While this lack of logic might be forgivable if the point was worth the deception, personally I fail to see what exactly that point is, let alone what it might be worth.

Speaking of rickety structures, let's talk about the collapsing building first. Surely this must be the most ridiculously outrageous and unlikely scenario ever concocted to provide the relatively simple premise of someone having to find a new flat. Is the art of building in Tehran so basic that this sort of thing happens on a regular basis? Was that quick cut to a piece of digging equipment supposed to imply that this was the cause of this disaster? Really? And what on earth is the whole point of "The death of a salesman" side issue? If this is supposed to be the classic "play within a play" conceit, a la Saura's Carmen, then I must have missed something, for while indeed in the film's coda a (shirt) "salesman" may indeed have died, if there is any similarity beyond that it went right over my head. And the whole crucial set up of why Rana left the door open is totally tenuous to say the least. As for the culprit rushing off leaving his keys, his phone and his pick-up truck? Ridiculous. And just how did that glass get on the stairs and why did the culprit not have his shoes off? And while his socks were found, where were his shoes? And how come the pick-up truck, apparently a crucial part of at least 2 businesses, was allowed to remain at the flat for a number of days without any of said businesses missing it? And what is all the nonsense with the previous tenant leaving all her belongings at the flat, something that is entirely irrelevant to the story. And how did Ehmad suddenly end up at the Hospital and why is he so unmoved by his wife's plight? What exactly did happen to Rana we never find out - it is ridiculous to think the old man hurt her so we can only presume she slipped and hurt her head. Why was it not possible to find out more information on the man's phone, even if it was "cancelled"? Why was the pick-up truck not examined in detail? What was the point of that episode with Ehmad in the car and a lady wanting to change seats? Why would Ehmad think that the driver of the pick-up truck was the culprit when clearly it is a commual vehicle? Why did he not confront the suspect on the spot instead of making up some hare brain story about wanting to move some things? Why would the suspect actually agree to this, and why when he couldn't come in person would he send his future father in law who is half dead and lucky to make it up the stairs? Who is stupid enough to lock a half dead man in a closet for hours?

This, then, is the house of cards that forms the backdrop to the "story". So what is the actual "story"? Basically it can be summarised in a very few simple sentences. A woman is "assaulted", although we never find out if this is because she was startled by a peeping tom and slipped, or whether she was bashed over the head. Said woman has PTSD, well fair enough. Woman's husband is not angry but resentful of woman's subsequent behaviour. Husband identifies the "culprit" and threatens to expose him to his family. His wife gives an ultimatum that if he does so she will leave him. For a moment all seems well and the culprit's family start to take him away. Then, for reasons only known to the husband he reneges at the last minute and exposes the culprit to his family. An ambulance arrives the culprit may or may not be dead and the wife walks out the door.

If anyone can tell me the meaning of all this they are a better man/woman than I am. If the movie had stopped before Ehmad exposed the culprit it could at least have ended on a poignant note of redemption and forgiveness, a cliche perhaps, but at least a good one and one that would have redeemed the movie despite its many flaws. By allowing Ahmed to expose him the director destroyed any possible payout for the audience and all we are left with is a bunch of question marks set against an artificial world and involving people we really don't care too much about.

In conclusion all I can do is echo what I have already said in my review of another movie by this director ("About Elly"), which is that this movie seems largely an academic exercise pretending to be something deeper than what it actually is.

Killing Eve (2018–2022)

Crashed and Burned

[1/10 · 22 May 2018]

It is difficult to know what to make of Killing Eve. If I was asked to describe its genre I would have to pass. The closest I can think of is "black comedy" although that fails because it is actually not funny. Sure there are frequent attempts to be "quirky" but quirky is just and cheap and easy way out of a screen writer having to think. I gather we are supposed to find Vilenelle funny because she says "oops" when she kills someone. If it worked the first time, it has sure worn thin by the second, third and fourth time.

I have no idea what Killing Eve is all about, not that that is necessarily uncommon in many "spy" programmes, in fact it is almost obligatory. The original "mcguffin" of trying to find the assassin has now morphed into finding "The 12", the shadowy organisation that is the stock mcguffin of every James Bond movie and its ilk from time immemorial. Mcguffins are OK but they have a purpose, which is to provide a reason for something interesting or at least visually arresting to happen, even if that something is as predictable as a car chase, an explosion or some other form of deering do. This Killing Eve fails to do, labouring under the misapprehension that a liberal dollop of quirkiness is sufficient reward for the audience.

No offence to Sandra Oh but I have never warmed to her as an actress although presumably many have. Perhaps that is more a reflection of the roles she has played than her acting ability but she always appears to look like a stunned mullet to me. To my surprise I think she does a good job as Eve, although her role is a thankless one. She doesn't actually seem to do anything, she is largely an observer whose main task is, I gather, supposed to be some totally unfathomable sort of fixation for Vilenelle, so basically a human mcguffin without which the whole "premise" would fall apart. And therein lies the (largest of many) problem, because this presumed and inexplicable fascination is simply unbelievable, for both parties. Sure, some sort of tension and competitiveness between the "Cat" and the "Mouse" is standard fare in this type of story, for example Sherlock Holmes fascination with Irene Adler or Professor Moriarty. But these are battles of wits whereas the whole Eve/Vilenelle thing is just some sort of random and baseless construct concocted by the writer to support a house of cards.

Jodie Comer seems to have a ball playing Vilenelle and she does an outstanding job of pulling off a difficult, if not downright ridiculous, character. If the genre of Killing Eve is indeed a "black something" then the line between what is just black and what is unacceptably evil is a very fine one, and it only takes one facial expression to tip from one side to the other. Regrettably, presumably under instruction from the director, she overdoes her smug smile to the point that if I see it one more time I will hurl something large and heavy in the general direction of the television screen. Not only is it an exceedingly tedious cliché it is destroying the whole character of Vilenelle, for while we may put our morals temporarily to one side to tolerate the depiction of someone who is indifferent to killing most of us draw the line at taking outright pleasure in doing so.

At the end of Episode 1 I was yet to be convinced. At the end of Episode 2 I was hooked. At the end of Episode 3 I was totally over it. I have watched up to Episode 7 only because my wife wanted to. I really have no interest in the fate any of the characters, or in the "story" such as it is, and I presume that Villenelle will turn out to be Caroline's daughter, or something of that ilk. But I really don't care.

Trauma (2018)

Freaked me out.

[9/10 · 26 March 2018]

Frankly this scared the Hell out of me, in a way very few movies or television programmes have ever done in my life. Amazingly this is achieved with no blood, no violence, no swearing, just pure alienation from normality. In many ways in this respect, and methodology, it is very similar to the movie "Funny Games" which IS the scariest movie I have ever seen.

We tend to assume that people are generally all the same. Sure we all have our personal idiosyncrasies but at our core we share a common concept of logic and operate according to well defined rules of human engagement. In Trauma we see the simple terror of encountering someone who has his own rules, who will not, cannot, engage in life according to the rules we live by. We realise just how absolutely powerless we are. After all, how do you reason with someone who has no reason?

If that were not enough in its own right we see how the various "human rights" based initiatives introduced over the last couple of decades actually encourage this type of behaviour by encouraging "victimhood". Like John Allerton's Hospital, all institutions now have processes and procedures are in place to help loonies like this extract their pound of flesh from well meaning, if sometimes imperfect, people when things don't go quite according to plan.

I see many people have rated Trauma badly because they saw it as being unrealistic and Dan as not behaving normally. I can sympathise with that view because in the first 10 minutes I felt that way myself. I assumed Dan was supposed to be a normal person and consequently within minutes I was rolling my eyes, to the extent that I toyed with turning it off. Then the penny dropped and I realised that the WHOLE POINT is that Dan is NOT a normal person, he is insane, and that is what makes Trauma so terrifying. Just how do you deal with someone whose mind works with a different set of rules? It is like coming to the table expecting to play chess only to find your opponent is playing poker. Dan is obviously extremely clever in his way, but it is his way, and not our way.

The acting throughout is superb by all parties, the storyline, scripting and dialog are superb and yes, totally realistic for a story whose main character is an insane person. It is by far the best in a dense clump of recent British Television series, most of which are inconsistent at best and riddled with flaws at worst. It has elements of Liar in that it features an irrational person relentlessly seeking harassing someone for something of which there is no evidence actually occurred, and elements of Doctor Foster, which also features a protagonist who quite frankly borderline insane in her quest for revenge. Importantly, at 3 episodes, it does not outstay its welcome or dilute its impact with irrelevant sub-stories.

To the writer and producers of Trauma - bravo and keep them coming.

Mr. Mercedes (2017–2019)

An unpleasant and unrewarding experience.

[1/10 · 20 March 2018]

I have just finished watching the fifth episode of Mr Mercedes and although there are 5 more episodes to go this will be my last. I think I've given it a fair trial and that my assumption that things are not going to change for the better is valid.

Having read only a smattering of Stephen King's output of 64 books I am my no means an aficionado of his works. There is no doubt the man is a genius, but surely it is only reasonable to expect that over such a voluminous output some of his works will be more inspired than others.

While it is possible that the television series has massacred the book, since Stephen King is credited as executive producer that seems unlikely. If that is the case then Mr Mercedes the book would appear not to be at the peak of Stephen King's output.

I gather Mr Mercedes is supposed to be a departure from Stephen Kings' characteristic "supernatural" genre we all know and love. Personally I would disagree, for while it may be free of parallel time/space continuums, evil cars and people with psychic powers the characters in Mr Mercedes, and the world they inhabit, are so unbelievable as to fall into the category of "super-natural".

Given that every possible combination and permutation of possible plot elements has already been used millions of times before it is no criticism to say that Mr Mercedes, and indeed every book written, must at its basic level be a string of clichés. We've seen cops who are obsessed with the "case that got away" before. We have seen murderous villains before. We have seen gumshoes before. It is the detail that is added to these cliches that distinguishes one book from another and makes some books better than others. I have no doubt that the detail in Mr Mercedes the book elevates it to something out of the ordinary, but if so, those elements have been lost in translation in the TV series. The protagonist, Bill Hodges, as portrayed in this series has absolutely no appeal. In fact he is revealed early on to be a fundamentally horrible person by the way he harasses an innocent woman, contributing in no small way to her suicide. From an act of such cruelty there can be no return for the character of Bill Hodges, he is irredeemable as a human being. Five episodes in and he has still done nothing, he has not been clever, he has not shown any insight. His greatest feat of detective work in 5 episodes has been high-lighting text (which someone else provided) containing the word "apple" with a blue high-lighter. Apart from that he has simply bullied, raged, thumped, sworn, sworn again and then sworn some more. If he is supposed to be a "gumshoe" he has failed miserably. Message to Mr Hodges - your average gumshoe may be aloof, dishevelled, irascible, cynical, have drinking problems, be down on his luck and down at heel, and maybe not even that bright. But he does NOT rage at people, he does NOT swear at people and he does not harass innocent people to suicide. Most importantly at some level people engage with him, sympathise with him, and root for him. In all these aspects, and more, Mr Hodges fails miserably. Remarkably, for a man of no visual or actual appeal, this guy is a veritable chick magnet, a source of hope for the rest of us ugly, aging hippies to be sure, but really? What planet are we on here?

The villain is more than unlikeable, which I suppose is as it should be. But he is at least "interesting", whereas Bill Hodges is not, and, credit where credit is due, the actor does a great job. He is generally to be found in 3 scenarios, the computer shop, which is peopled by ridiculous, obnoxious, and irrelevant people, his home, which is peopled by his ridiculous and irrelevant mother, and his car. Oh, and of course, I almost forgot, in of all things in an ICE CREAM VAN! Just like in real life, right? He may not possess "supernatural" powers in the generally accepted sense but thanks to the powers of technology he is in effect a "wizard", seemingly performing supernatural activities. Amongst his other achievements he seems to have created what appears to be the definitive "Universal Remote" which can control anything in the World. Haha! If that isn't "supernatural" I don't know what is. Despite the fact that he never seems to actually do anything somehow he manages to create super-elaborate computer generated montages that would in reality take weeks to generate. We see him and his mother do interesting things together, which at Episode 5 seems not only irrelevant but totally gratuitous and a desperate attempt to be "shocking". The only interesting aspect of this little distraction is that it demonstrates yet again the hypocrisy and double standards in the wonderful world of gender issues for there is not a snowball's chance in Hell we would be shown a father doing this to either his daughter or son. If the justification for the inclusion of this tawdry aspect is to give some sort of back story as to why our villain is a villain I would argue that there is only one thing scarier than a villain who kills for a reason and that is a villain who kills for no reason.

We don't know why our villain has waited 2 years to suddenly start harassing Bill Hodges, or indeed why it should be Bill Hodges he is harassing, since it would appear from the flashbacks it is Bill Hodge's sidekick who headed the investigation and that Bill Hodge's greatest contribution to the case was sitting back silently in a comfy chair drinking tea. We don't know why our villain, who clearly has issues that torment him on a continual basis, decided to have 2 years off being a villain. We don't know why a villain who's MO has all the subtlety of ramming innocent people with a car should suddenly be playing physiological games through a computer. None of this makes sense.

In amongst all this we have the usual suspects, Bill Hodge's annoying cardboard cut-out ex police partner, the brilliant gardener/nerd who talks like no adolescent I have met in real life, his father who talks like no-one I have met in my life, the dying mother of Bill Hodges main squeeze, who talks and acts like no-one I have met in my life, the villain's obnoxious computer store colleague who acts and talks like no-one I have met in my life, the computer store boss who acts like no one I have met in my life, and of course the obligatory, patent-pending Stephen King bully, who acts and talks like no-one I have ever met in my life and who meets a messy fate in his car.

I have never understood Stephen King's obsession with swearing but if we took out all the cuss words in Mr Mercedes it could pretty much be filmed as a silent movie. Sorry, people may indeed swear in real life, but they do not do it with the frequency, ferocity and downright cruelness on display here. If the point was to be "authentic" than Stephen King misses it by a country mile.

Many of Stephen King's books have been satisfactorily condensed to 100 minute movies and perhaps this is Mr Mercedes major fault. It is just too flabby. There is just too much irrelevant stuff going on that does not progress the story. While I might be hooked by a taut cat and mouse game between Bill Hodges and the villain, I am not the least interested in all these side stories and back stories. I don't care about the Computer Shop full stop. I don't care about the bully. I don't care about the villain's mother.

In a nutshell, dissapointing.

The Way Back (I) (2010)

Gave up at Mongolia

[3/10 · 25 February 2018]

I saw this movie some years ago, or more accurately I saw half this movie some years ago. Maybe I was having a bad day but at the time I just couldn't summon the enthusiasm to see it through. So when I saw it advertised recently to appear on television I thought I would give it another shot.

This time round I made it as far as Mongolia, which I suppose is progress. That I got this far is probably because this time around I noticed that it was directed by Peter Weir and because I am a big fan of Gallipoli I gave it more leeway and time for development. Alas my patience and respect for Peter Weir were not rewarded on this occasion.

There is something very fundamentally wrong with this movie, or perhaps the story itself does not lend itself to audience engagement, at least on the big screen. Peter Weir's genius in Gallipoli was to make a "war" film (or actually an "anti-war" film) by showing practically nothing of war. 80% of that movie was about building up the characters and the relationship between them, and because we know them so well we actually care about what happens at the end. In "The Way Back" Peter Weir seems to have forgotten about the need for audience identification with characters. Perhaps I missed a few things with the bas russian accents and names that do not register after hearing them once but quite frankly I had no idea who those people traipsing around Siberia were and even less idea why I should care. I think (but I am not sure) that there is one key protagonist (the one we see being interrogated at the beginning) and a bunch of other guys, but that is hard to tell because they all look and sound the same. If that were not bad enough these strangers do stuff that anyone would do in that situation and they do it for a long time against a backdrop that looks basically the same. I had no idea where they were going and no idea of the distances involved or the absolute immensity of the landscape, be it Siberia or Mongolia. A map and some aerial shots would have helped enormously for as it is it looks like they are off for a weekend tramp. We have absolutely no concept of the magnitude of their feat, which I would have thought is the whole point of the film.

Our heroes, whoever they are, are so clueless that they have to batter a watch with some genius who tells them they must turn off the generator and cut the wires to escape. Bravo, that is certainly a plan and a half. How they disabled the generator, or cut the wires, we are not shown, nor are we shown how they escape dozens of guards and dogs in hot pursuit. And yes, we have a BLIND man thrown in for good measure, that's right, not just a BLIND man but one who indulges in syrupy flashbacks. And then, blow me down, if our intrepid team don't meet a pretty young girl partway along and for reasons best known to themselves they skip across some ice together. It is all very lazy, uninspired and unbelievable stuff.

Eventually our band of heroes gets to the Mongolian border and comes across a huge archway in the middle of nowhere...ah...what? They are surprised to learn that China is also a communist country, which in 1941 was not actually true.

Annoyingly, despite starting the movie with people speaking their actual languages and having English subtitles, as soon as we get to the Gulag everyone amazingly speaks heavily accented English. Perhaps this approach would have cut the mustard 30 years ago when all Hollywood Germans spoke like Colonel Klink, but in this day and age portraying foreign language by using badly accented English is just plain embarrassing to all involved. Quite apart from the embarrassment these rotten accents made it difficult to understand what anyone was saying, and because one actor's poor impression of a Russian speaking English sounds much like another's poor impression of a Russian speaking English, it only made trying to figure out who was who even worse.

OK, this is not the worst movie in the World and indeed I see that many people think this movie is the best thing since sliced bread. I'm glad others enjoyed it, but for me it was an emotionless and heartless experience, which ultimately I had to terminate because I found the boredom of real life more interesting.

The Good Doctor (2017–2024)

Just when you thought television couldn't get any stupider.

[1/10 · 9 February 2018]

We live in strange times. How is it that If humans are so smart that we can video call each other anywhere in the world, build driverless cars, create virtual reality and virtual money, we are also so stupid as to use this brilliance to devise, disseminate and apparently enjoy The Good Doctor?

The Good Doctor is predictable as night follows day, implausible and ridiculous, but that is not the problem. Every medical drama since the genre was invented has been predictable, implausible and ridiculous. You know that everything from Dr Kildare to House will involve life and death situations, an increasingly bizarre and arcane medical situations that pull heart strings and tax our brilliant protagonists, combined with the usual relationship issues.

No the problem with The Good Doctor is that while it uses the same formula as every other medical drama it implements it so badly. The devil, as in most things, is in the details. The "characters", if I may loosely use that term, are an array of cardboard cut outs that seem to come from another planet, for where else would you find such a perfectly culturally balanced cast of unbelievably beautiful Asians, unbelievably beautiful Afro-Americans and unbelievably beautiful Europeans? Do people like this even exist in real life in this World? The injection into this mob of other worldly clones of an "autistic savant" is not clever, it is stupid, or at least it is in this program. It is quite possible that the original Korean series introduced such a character with more subtlety, but in this version it is laid on with a foot wide trowel to the point of insulting the audience. Although I only made it through a single episode I can already tell you what will happen in the series, chapter and verse. While this may also be true of other formulaic series I often choose to carry on watching because the characters are intriguing and/or the general peripheral detail and observations that develop along the way.

Of such subtly or promise the Good Doctor shows no signs. Instead we have ridiculous, annoying and intelligence insulting graphics that keep popping up, presumably to show us what a genius our hero is - such as a picture of the main arteries of an arm - something that any first year med student would know. Then of course there is the old "brother who supported me but died" story - always good for pulling the heart strings - if only we hadn't heard that one a thousand times before. We have the wise older figure spouting Hallmark platitudes about giving everyone a chance, and constant cloying violins and two note tinkling on a piano. The Good Doctor has more saccharine than a maple syrup factory and all the finesse of a sledge hammer through a plate glass window. I understand that few movies and TV programs are perfect in all respects but this one is appalling in all of them. It is a fiasco of missed opportunities on an awe-inspiring scale.

I am appalled this has an IMDB rating of 8.5 and what that implies for the human race. It seems that behind the facade of PC enlightenment and cell phones we are really no more discerning than the citizens who bayed for blood in the amphitheatres of Rome. To quote Mr Trump - "sad".

Wallander (2008–2016)

Totally Mystifying.

[3/10 · 9 January 2018]

The biggest mystery with this series is not the stories but why on earth the BBC chose to copy something that has already been very well done, in its country of origin, and so recently. Are things really that desperate in BBC television land? Bizarrely we have a program that is supposed to be set in Sweden but in which everyone speaks the Queen's English and the backdrops are so generic it could be set be in any one of about 100 countries. It makes about as much sense as Swedish television making a carbon copy of Midsommer Murders, spoken in Swedish. It really is head scratching stuff.

Surely then, given the bizarreness of the premise, the only possible remaining justification for hijacking the Wallander character and anglicising him must be that they are going to do something different and groundbreaking with him. If you thought this you would be supremely disappointed for based on the first episode Wallander is a by the numbers, cliché ridden, yawn fest. Dishevelled middle aged detective with stubble? Check. Trouble with his daughter and parents? Check. Wife left him? Check. Relationship at work? Check. Groups of people huddled round desks stating the bleeding obvious? Check. Visually arresting but ultimately ridiculous and gratuitous introduction? Check. A series of murders involving some arcane ritualistic aspect? Check. Rookie who throws up on seeing his first victim? Check.

I have never read the Wallander books or seen the Swedish TV series, but given that Kenneth Brannagh went to so much trouble to get the author of the novels to agree to doing this series you might have thought the Wallander character was something truly exceptional and supremely rewarding for an actor of his calibre. Based on the first episode I can report that in fact Wallander as portrayed in this series is simply the usual cut-out character, of no interest, and what's even worse, supremely incompetent at his job. In the first episode he is singlehandedly responsible for the totally avoidable deaths of two young people, presumably so we can see how "human" and affected he is, which is, I gather, is Wallander's "claim to fame". Death number 1 - ridiculously a young girl is in the middle of a field of tall yellow flowers. How she came to be there, and why, we never find out. Not only that, she turns out to have possibly the largest can of petrol in the world. Because if you want to kill yourself you would intuitively go miles into the country to a large field of yellow flowers and choose the most ridiculous way of killing yourself, right? Even without the petrol can we can all see that this girl is on the edge, but that does not stop our hero from barging in like a complete klutz, resulting in the girl killing herself. At the end of the episode, having contrived to lure the killer into a trap, not only do 4 police fail to intercept the culprit before he gets to his prey, but despite having minutes to do so, are unable to disarm him and Wallander ends up shoot him dead. You can see now why his name is Wallander for evidently he is a complete Wally. Not only does he needlessly kill a 15 year old boy, but a boy who is not a villain, but doing what he thought was right.

At no time does Wallander show any signs of good leadership, good judgment, or good detective work. We are left wondering how on earth he came to be in the position of leading a police team, and how they could possibly have any respect for him - he has no presence, no charisma, he is just an emotional, angry little man. He gets angry with witnesses and does and says stupid things that would see him fired in a heartbeat in real life.

Of course in his team we have all the usual suspects. A woman with no apparent function but who is the latest recipient of the "Broadchurch award for worst hairdo", taking over from Ellie Miller. Apparently she has lost her hairbrush and is now doing her hair with a blender. Meanwhile another woman of unknown function exchanges many furtive glances with our hero Wallander. Rounding the team out we have a couple of fellows whose function appears to be to barge in when things get slow and say "Boss I think you'd better see this". Disappointing and bizzare beyond measure.

Aquarius (I) (2016)

Close but no cigars

[4/10 · 17 December 2017]

First the good points - the actors are fine, the script is natural and believable, and the photography is fine. However in this day and age all these things are a given, just like we expect a modern car to have 4 wheels and be as reliable as any other car. You don't get points for that any more.

The problem with this movie lies with the story, or maybe even deeper than that, a reason for its existence. If a filmmaker wants to make a movie for his own entertainment or for trying out different techniques that's fine. But if a movie is intended for general distribution it is not unreasonable for a paying audience to expect some return, either in sheer entertainment or at least some stirring of emotions that would not otherwise have been stirred. In this the movie fails, leaving us with a feeling that we have been at most cheated, or at least, misled. This movie is by no means the only or worst offender in this respect, and I did make it all the way through the movie waiting for the pay-off to appear, but ultimately it was a disappointment.

This movie has all the hallmarks of being substantially made up as it went along, and/or being written around the characteristics of its actors. The lead actress, it seems, has had a mastectomy in real life, therefore the story is to some extent written around that, although that fact is irrelevant to it.

Yes there is an overarching story in this movie, that of someone being pressured to move out of their home by a commercial developer. This premise has a lot of potential which despite a relatively long running time of 2 hours and 20 minutes regrettably was not realised. Not only was the potential not realised the story is not even finished so that when the credits roll we are left wondering if this is just Part 1 of an ongoing series.

Ideally a story should have a beginning, a middle and an end. As has been mentioned this one has no end, and arguably it has no beginning either, or perhaps more accurately, it does have a beginning but one that is irrelevant to what follows, or is perhaps a beginning for completely different movie and which got edited onto this movie in error. This "beginning" starts with a car load of youths on the beach listening to music before moving indoors for a birthday party for an "Aunt Louisa" in which a large number of people appear, most of whom are unnamed and with indeterminate relations to each other. Aunt Lousia sits there stoically looking for all the world as if she would rather have slivers of bamboo poked under her nails than be at this party. For some inexplicable reason this scene seems to require many gratuitous flashbacks of phonographic sex, involving, we must assume, Aunt Louisa in youth. You would think, then, that Aunt Louisa would feature heavily in the remainder of the movie but you would be wrong. Aunt Louisa is mentioned once in passing in the remaining 2hours. She is, apparently, a red herring to throw us off the scent.

With a sudden leap we leave the mysterious Aunt Louisa to an unknown fate and zoom forward 30 or so years to the main course of the movie to focus instead on a "Clara", someone who was also present at the aforementioned Birthday party but about whom we as yet know very little. Whoever she is, she is, of course, now a retired woman, still apparently living in the same apartment in which the historic party took place.

Whereas in the beginning segment Clara is constantly smiling, time seems to have been unkind to her, for she never smiles during the entire remainder of the movie. She is a cold, hard, cynical fish, it seems, to everyone, including her own family, although for all that she is well regarded and respected by all. We do not really know anything about this woman, but her past seems to have involved music, and she seems to be some sort of minor celebrity, with a circle of friends and relatives, some of whom may or may not be the same as the young people in the beginning segment, we will never know. She lives with another woman whose function and relationship is unclear and whose presence is entirely unnecessary. We find that Clara has had a mastectomy, and wonder if this is to become a major subject in the movie, but no this is a mere detail irrelevant to the story.

Clara it seems is not all that bright because she has not noticed that over the course of the last 30 years all her many neighbours in the apartment have moved out and that she is now the building's sole occupant. The building's owner, possibly not unreasonably, wants her to move out so they can build a more modern complex. OK, we get it, we might expect Clara to fight back, but given Clara's lack of personal warmth and her seeming obliviousness to the inevitability of the situation over a period of 30 years, it is difficult to root for her 100%. Yes, we can watch with interest to see what eventuates, but it is difficult to become emotionally invested in her struggle. We feel like an observer of someone we are not particularly interested in.

After 2 hours and 20 minutes the filmmaker, it seems, has had enough, he evidently has no idea how to finish the story. So he orchestrates an implausible ending and films it in a way to give the impression that, voila, in one fell and cunning swoop, this has solved Clara's problem, whereas it is obvious to anyone that this would not be the case in real life. We, the audience, find we have been cheated, we have been sold half a story, and not a particularly interesting one at that.

OK, I perhaps exaggerate a little for emphasis, but only a little. I expected better, and it should have, and could have been better. Not a disaster but a disappointment.

Empire of the Sun (1987)

A 153 minute onslaught of stupidity.

[1/10 · 15 October 2017]

I stumbled across the existence of this movie just a couple of months ago, 30 years ago after its release. I'm not quite sure how I missed it back in 1987 but based on a score of 7.8 on IMDb and an overwhelming number of its reviews including the word "masterpiece" I was determined to seek it out and mentally prepared for a mind- blowing experience. I was therefore delighted to find it in the "classics" section of the movies on-board a recent international flight. It is not often that movies fail from the first frame, but this one did, literally. It begins with an overlong shot of some dirty water, some petals appear, then some pieces of wood, which in time turn out to be a number of wooden coffins. We zoom out to see a Japanese warship collide with them. So ends the first 2 or 3 minutes of this movie, showing a ridiculous situation which adds absolutely nothing to the story. We might be thinking, OK, well, the director has satisfied his ego and got the arty, gratuitous shot off his chest, now on to the real movie. But, alas, it was not to be so. The "plot" of this movie, and I use that word generously, is the picaresque meanderings of an obnoxious little boy to become an obnoxious slightly older boy over the period 1941 to 1945. This consists of a non-stop string of the most ridiculous, contrived, unnatural, laughable episodes you might have the misfortune to imagine. I made it to an hour and 20 minutes only because I could just not believe what I was seeing - it was, in its own masochistic way, fascinating, like watching a train crash. I will not bore you with the details of particular absurdities, but I am confident that if requested I could make a minute by minute itemised list of cringe-worthy examples. I was somewhat incredulous to find that this movie was based on a well respected "semi-autobiography" (whatever that is) by J.G. Ballard. That surely means that in its original form it had some redeeming qualities and that the author was not in fact anything like the ridiculous character in the film. Surely, hopefully, there has been a titanic "loss in translation" somewhere in the movie making process. I do not know if J.G. Ballard, Tom Stoppard or Stephen Spielberg is to blame but the screenplay is beyond execrable. It is as if it has been written by someone raised in a cave by wolves whose only knowledge of humans is from reading books. No man, woman or child I have ever known has acted, or spoken the way EVERYONE does in this movie. To say that EVERY character is a caricature would be an understatement, they are caricatures of caricatures. The Chinese are caricatures. The British are caricatures. The Americans are caricatures. The Japanese are caricatures. I also did not realise until after watching the movie that the "boy" was acted by Christian Bale. This I found astonishing as there are not so many movies about the 2nd Sino-Japanese war, the only one I know being "The flowers of war" in which Christian Bale also plays the lead role. Apart from staring Christian Bale both these films are similar in that they feature ridiculous characters in ridiculous situations. No offense to Mr Bale, he makes the best of a bad lot, but he does seem to be a bit of a jinx in this historical era. I realise that "Empire of the sun" is based on a "semi-auto biography" but it seems bizarre to me that the only movies of this historical era of China have British or American characters as their leads. Frankly, in an era in which millions of Chinese were being slaughtered or starved to death, why should I give a toss about the privileged treatment of a British boy, and a thoroughly unpleasant one at that? Perhaps one day we will get a real movie on this subject that will finally do it some justice. I do not know if the reverence for the Japanese that is so frequently flaunted in this movie is simply a reflection of J.G Ballard's original book, or something added by Spielberg or Stoppard. While I understand that in these enlightened times all the nations of the World are supposed to sit around the camp fire and sing "Kumbaya", it has to be said World War 2 was not Japan's finest hour as human beings. Therefore it seems not only strange but in poor taste that the Spielberg who recognises the horrors inflicted by the Germans on humanity in "Schindler's List" fails to recognise those inflicted by the Japanese in this movie, and in this respect it is an insult to the millions of civilian and military casualties. In fact, when I think about it, this movie is pretty much an insult to everybody. It is an insult to children, who do not behave like they do in this movie. It is an insult to adults, who do not behave as they do in this movie. It is an insult to every nationality represented. It is an insult to veterans. And it is an insult to the intelligence of the audience.

Jackie (V) (2016)

Stunningly bad

[1/10 · 19 August 2017]

I feel sorry for the people who made this movie, I really do. I have no doubt their intentions were noble and that they thought, or hoped, they were creating a masterpiece. But alas, it was not to be. It is difficult to imagine that anyone involved in this movie could possibly be happy with the final result for it is not just not a great movie, it is not even a good movie, it is an excruciatingly bad one.

It is difficult to know to know where to start, so let's go straight to the acting. While many reviewers are waxing lyrical about Natalie Portman's portrayal I would disagree. Firstly it is a miscasting of epic proportions. It is forgivable that she is not the perfect physical incarnation of Jackie but it is not forgivable that the casting people chose someone who's physical stature is nowhere near that of her subject. The real Jackie was a whole 4 inches taller than Portman and while most people would call Jackie beautiful I don't think anyone would call her petite. Natalie Portman is petite, elfin even, and it is difficult for a petite person to satisfactorily play someone who has completely different body type. It is not her fault, she is just not physically built that way. Furthermore, look at any photo of Jackie and you will see a person who exudes strength and natural charisma. Natalie Portman never achieves this and how could she possibly do so given that she just does not have that gravitas, once again, not her fault but a fault of casting. Jackie's hair was iconic and integral to her look and image.

While it is unreasonable to expect any actress to have a face that looks like Jackie's it is not unreasonable for a hairdresser or wigmaker to reproduce her hair. So why do we have Natalie Portman in a hairdo that is nothing like Jackie's? While the makers go to extreme lengths to insert NP into historical footage, apparently they can't be bothered to give her the same haircut that Jackie had in the original footage.

And that "accent", if that is what it was. When she first opens the door to the reporter, given that here was a lady who looked nothing Jackie, and spoke what seemed to be some sort of Balkan language, I thought that she must be the Hungarian housemaid. Thank goodness for subtitles. If you listen to the real Jackie she spoke nothing like this. While she had a slightly exotic voice she did not have the effected, whiney, barely intelligible voice that Portman gives us. This is important, because the impression it gives of Jackie is she is an annoying, pretentious bimbo who it is impossible to empathise with and who you wish would just go away.

Finally the luckless Natalie is given the most excruciating script I have ever encountered - to call it a second rate soap opera script would be high praise for it. It is a string of clichés connected together with clichés, with more ham than a spam factory. See brave Jackie stride purposely through the mud at Arlington. See brave Jackie comfort her children - "mummy, when is Daddy coming home" - I almost laughed out loud at that. See Bobby Kennedy berate himself for not achieving enough. Hear a priest tell us why bad things happen. Hear a reporter praise Jackie. Hear Jackie make witty remarks about General De Gaulle. See Jackie wipe the blood off her face and arrive home alone in Washington from Texas still wearing her bloodstained clothes. Hear Jackie listen to Camelot. Oh lordy, please make it stop, I surrender.

I have no idea what the filmmakers intended. Was this supposed to be a hagiography or a hatchet job? Did they make her appear such a buffoon to bring her place in history down a peg? Or did they actually believe the way they portrayed her would cause anyone to think better of her or venerate her?

Of course neither I, nor most people, have any idea what Jackie was really like. All I know is that the script is such a complete fantasy that nothing in this film can be trusted. It has added absolutely nothing to our knowledge of Jackie and distorted history a bit more. Poor Jackie, I just hope they don't have movie theatres where she is now, she has suffered enough.

Midnight Sun (2016)

5 minute review

[2/10 · 5 August 2017]

This is not a "5 minute review" because it took me 5 minutes to write, it is because that is how long I watched this program before abandoning it.

We start with what is obviously a CGI'd picture of a man lying on something, shouting. We hear whining, things start spinning and the camera zooms out to reveal, wait for it – the man is tied to a now spinning helicopter rotor blade. Never mind that it would be impossible to secure his body and have it remain there long enough for what happens next to happen. Never mind that the helicopter would shake itself into a million pieces due to the blades being out of balance. As the camera zooms out enough for things to become a little sketchy we see a trial of red shoot off the blade, which we have to assume id the man's head flying off. This, apparently, is a murder, using a helicopter as a weapon. Yes, that's right, death by helicopter. There will be no problem tracing the murder weapon for this baby. I expect the writer thought this was innovative and edgy, but no, it simply sets a new high/low in stupidity.

OK, it would be a rare program indeed that did not require some suspension of logic at some stage. I mean, you would ask for your money back if a James Bond movie did not have at least one crazy, logic or physics defying scene in it. But the difference is, this was not billed as a James Bond,"Boys Own" action program it was billed as a Scandinavian noir mystery with an implied promise of sophistication and reality.

Next we are in a somewhere in Paris and amazingly a driver is finally asking his hitchhiker where he wants to be dropped off. Of course any normal person would have done this a couple of hours before this, but evidently this is no normal program. The hitch hiker is duly dropped off and we know we will never see the driver again. Well that whole piece of dialog was a complete waste of time wasn't it.

Next we are back (I think) in Norway. Against a backdrop of a small mountain of whiteware a man is trying to load an oven into his car. I can only assume that having random mountains of whiteware scattered around the landscape is a Norwegian thing. Evidently the man thinks this is a free service because he was intending just to drive off with this thing, but no, an assistant, says he must pay. The man informs the assistant that he must have this oven today because it is his son's Birthday, so he will pick out any old random, untested oven, no doubt it will just fit perfectly into his kitchen, he will personally wire it up, and bravo he will cook his son a cake. The shops, we are told, are closed, but luckily the great Norwegian Whiteware Mountains never close and so the assistant whips a VISA machine out of his overall's pocket, as you do, and although no price is mentioned, the deal is done. So what the blazes was that all about? I doubt very much we will hear anything again of the oven, the son, the birthday, or the cake, so I can only assume this entire sequence was simply the most bizarre way in the world to introduce a new character, and that at the end of all this all we know about him is that he has a son, it is his birthday, and that he is an ace oven installer.

What can you say after this dismal start? What is the acceptable "stupidity ratio" for abandoning a program? One stupid episode per quarter hour? Whatever it is, in my view it was well exceeded.

Perhaps it got better as the writers got into their swing but they crashed and burnt at the first hurdle and so I will never know.

Apple Tree Yard (2017)

Good to a point

[5/10 · 13 July 2017]

I have to say this is one of the more thought provoking series I have seen in a while, probably because there is a lot of it I don't understand and even more that I understand but which defies logic. But perhaps that is exactly what its producers intended.

There can surely be few things more boring, or unsexy, than someone else's affair. Thrilling for those involved I'm sure but excruciating for everyone else, and people endlessly rutting in public places hardly constitutes a plot. Consequently I almost gave up about 50 minutes into the first episode. The extreme ferocity of the rape at the end of this episode certainly produced the shock the producers intended, although the micro-second "Jekyll and Hyde" transition from harmless academic to brutal rapist animal did seem too excessive to be likely. The rapist's subsequent reversion back to someone who sends flowers and texts and acts more like a besotted, deluded dingbat rather than a malicious stalker adds to the confusion.

It is never explained how George Selway knew about their affair and indeed by the end of the series one wonders if he ever did know. Even if he did, it beggars belief he would rely on this tawdry piece of information to ensure she did not report the rape, so the rape, and the non-reporting of it, simply do not make sense. In the immediate aftermath of the rape the viewer is led to think that the reason Yvonne does not report it is so her affair does not come out into the open. Then suddenly that whole scenario goes out the window and the reason for not reporting becomes because of the process and shame involved in doing so. It is all rather confusing. Surprisingly she has virtually no physical marks after this brutal ordeal, just the tidiest of finger marks and no sign of the shiner she should have had from being whacked in the face. To be honest I would have expected her to have more marks on her body from her shenanigans with Mark Costly down in the crypt.

Through all this we are all wondering what she sees in this Costly character who has all the charisma of a sack of spuds. This, I suppose, is the whole point, that she has distorted this supremely dull person into her knight, and from this we really should have guessed right from the start that Yvonne is a sandwich short of a picnic, if not an entire hamper short of a picnic.

Fast forward and we find our lovers sitting in a car outside the rapist's house. And again, thinking back, we should all have guessed that this sudden unexplained plot jerk means that some crucial information has been deliberately withheld from the viewer. Something unnamed but obviously dastardly goes down in George's flat so we are not surprised when the Police interrupt Yvonne and her family in a restaurant and arrest her. But on the other hand we really should be surprised because how did the police know she was involved and how did they know she was in that restaurant? What gave them away, and so quickly, is never revealed.

In amongst all this we have a few red herrings thrown in for good measure, a troubled son whose story turns out to be irrelevant and a husband's dalliance with a student, which I presume is supposed to make our heroine look a little less slutty and justified in her affair.

The trial is all a bit weird, being more a posthumous trial of George Selway for rape rather than a trial of Yvonne and Mark for murder. By the end of it we have a woman who has majorly perjured herself to the point no one would believe she had been raped at all, and we have no idea why a person who has clearly murdered someone gets convicted of manslaughter, nor how someone who is obviously an accomplice to murder escapes conviction completely. It is difficult not to think the series trivialises rape. We have, for instance, Yvonne not reporting a rape, and perjuring herself in Court, because she is apparently more ashamed of being discovered as a cheating wife than she is concerned about being raped, implying that in the scheme of things rape is the lesser offense.

In the epilogue we find out what the crucial missing preamble to the murder was, and it is difficult not to feel a little cheated. Deliberately withholding information just to create a shock at the end is a cheap trick, it is like Sherlock Holmes, after painstakingly analysing the ash from a cigar and the tattoos on someone's back, announces the murderer is someone that has not even been introduced to the reader. We are left wondering just what else has been left out, or indeed if any of the bits we have been shown are actually true. The entire rug of the series is pulled from under us. Once again perhaps this dislocation is exactly what the producers wanted but it is treading a fine line between shocking and infuriating viewers.

So what do we have at the end? A couple of loonies, a dead rapist and a bunch of question marks. My verdict is that while generally enjoyable the series is far too simplistic and that the only reason it "worked" at all is because it was so rushed that viewers mis- interpreted the obvious non sequiturs and gaping holes as being "deep" and "thought provoking" rather than the obvious plot flaws they are.

This Beautiful Fantastic (2016)

File under "British Gem".

[4/10 · 2 July 2017]

A strange little movie this but it will no doubt appeal to lovers of the "British Gem" movie genre. Personally I find "British Gem" the 2 most feared words in the English language (or possibly first equal with "Human Resources") but evidently enough movie goers find them appealing enough for the British to keep churning them out. That's fine with me as long as I am warned in the movie's promotional material so I can do something more enjoyable, like plunge my hand into a vat of boiling oil.

Some reviewers have compared this movie to Amelie but I wouldn't agree. While the first few minutes of the movie attempts to give some bizarre back story to explain how eccentric the heroine (Bella) supposedly is, for the duration of the movie itself she acts completely normally, apart from a touch of OCD. Her apparent need to be orderly certainly plays no part in the story, in fact it is completely contradictory to the way she lives, with her garden in chaos, which is somewhat confusing. Amelie was strong and always in control and her quirkiness was pivotal to that movie. Bella is never in control and she is not inherently quirky, she is just lost, unfulfilled and drifting. However it is true that both movies rely on the appeal of an attractive actress who has a certain quality that one would be hard pressed to accurately define - perhaps "instantly lovable" is somewhere near.

As others have noted the "plot" is completely predictable and the "characters" are all the usual suspects for this kind of movie. It is all a bit of fluff and I doubt it will be challenging "War and Peace" for a place in World literature any time soon.

For all that I enjoyed this movie more than I expected and this is entirely down to the actors, who generally handled their fairly thankless and undemanding roles with subtlety. In the wrong hands this movie could very easily have tipped the scales from just teetering on the edge of working into something horrific, and it is a credit to the cast that they pitched it just right.

I saw this movie with a group and the comments ranged from "the worst movie I have ever seen in my life" to "quaint" and "exquisite". My view is somewhere in between.

Churchill (2017)

The height of perversity

[1/10 · 23 June 2017]

On the basis that other reviewers have very adequately covered the glaring objections to this film I will keep this brief.

In an action packed life of 80 years involving 2 world wars and one other significant war (The Boer War), a momentous political career, a life filled with both failure as well phenomenal achievements, that the filmmakers should think it necessary to MAKE UP a story about Churchill seems like the pinnacle of perversity. It just defies any logic hitherto known to mankind.

"Poetic license" is nothing new in movie making. However this movie is more like a "license to kill", kill a man's reputation, kill the concept of history, and kill the truth. The preservation of actual history in the light of revisionism is difficult enough without the general public being exposed to downright lies to further confuse and deceive them.

I give this movie a 1 as a protest, in the probably forlorn hope that if enough people do the same to all movies that mess around with history, movie makers will get the message and steer their movies in a way that treats people and history responsibly.

Sunset Song (2015)

A shocker

[2/10 · 11 May 2017]

As I watched this movie I grew sadder with each passing minute. Not because the movie was sad but because this movie was someone's baby and it is never pleasant to see someone's dreams and hard work come to nought. I would like to say this is a great movie. Failing that I would like to say it is a good movie. However I cannot do this, because it is not.

This is not so much a movie but a set of fragments, literally EVERY one of which either makes no sense, is totally and unrealistically contrived, overacted, irrelevant, and in many cases all of the above. We have a classroom scene in which someone says "oh,oh,oh butin", very interesting I'm sure but...why? We have two girls walking along a path, saying ridiculous things and displaying lesbian tendencies but why? After this we never see one of these girls again. We have a girl called Christine - annoyingly called by everyone "Chris" – surely a nickname that would only used by her family and a few close friends. This "Chris" has a brother with whom she seems to have a relationship that is close enough to be disturbing. For no apparent reason the brother starts spouting nonsense rhymes which include the work "Jehovah". Apparently his father has been stalking him for he is waiting outside the door eavesdropping and beats the living daylights out of the son for using the Lord's name in vain. The father ostentatiously cleans his gun, so we know that we can expect a scene involving this. Sure enough in the next scene, the son, again for reasons which are not clear, against all advice, uses said gun and once again gets the living daylights beaten out of him by his Father. Subsequently we see the brother half naked, cradled in his sister's arms, as of course you do in these circumstances. The marks on the son's back are completely inconsistent with the punishment he has received, and as regular as graph paper. The father gets a new harvester and although presumably the arrival of such an expensive, large and unusual piece of equipment must surely have been the talk of the community, apparently the son is only aware of it once it is put into action. Despite the wonder of this device neither father nor son is in the least bit interested in its results. Harvesting the cut wheat apparently consists of picking it up and putting it down again a few feet away. A worker randomly arrives from nowhere and the father is he hires him immediately when just a minute before he didn't need anyone. Chris delivers said worker a meal and he fondles her legs, with Chris just standing there seemingly enjoying it. What does this mean? Next up we have a gratuitous look at Chris admiring her nude self in the mirror – ah, proving what? We never see the worker again. There is a storm, simulated by what appears to be a couple of sparklers tied to some fence posts. Chris goes out to look after the horses. For reasons difficult to explain the neighbours are also out shouting "Chris, Chris", as you do in a storm. Fast forward, Chris gets married. There is a brief and pointless appearance by a Miss Melon who duly leaves having contributed nothing. One night the father in law suddenly arrives in uniform – apparently they give these to you as soon as you enlist. In what seems to be an outtake of village of the dammed we see scores of people wandering through the cornfields to get to church. By and by the husband also suddenly walks out of the house to enlist. Sometime later he just as suddenly arrives back a completely different person, I mean a COMPLETELY different person. Perhaps this is supposed to mean something but I don't know what. In due course he leaves again. Chris gets a message saying her husband has been killed and falls about crying "they're lying" about 100 times. We see the husband in flashback before he is shot for desertion. Miraculously his original personality has returned and almost as miraculously in time of war his father is there to visit him. Outside deserters are getting shot one after the other in some sort of assembly line when in actuality only 400 people deserters were shot in the entire course of the war. The husband is shot by 4 riflemen, as opposed to the usual dozen, and what's more they do so with no orders. Meanwhile back at home Chris is talking to her husband's shirt, yes that's right TALKING TO HIS SHIRT, saying that she understands, which is just as well because none of the audience do. Stringing together all these meaningless fragments of nothing we have a turgid narration that seems as it was written by a "random angst generator" on a computer. I don't think I have ever heard so much rubbish and cod-philosophy in my life - the only message I got out of it is that apparently "Chris is the land", very deep I am sure. None of the characters are the least bit interesting or likable. I could care less about any of the characters – Chris, the father, the mother, the brother, the husband – none of whom resemble, act like, talk like, think like, any rational human being I have ever met. And what does it all mean? Is there actually a point? War is Hell? Life in Scotland in the 1910's was Hell? Being a woman is Hell? Men are pigs? It is very sad that so much effort and care resulted in such a poor film. I truly hope the makers were pleased with the results but to me it is ultimately one long facade behind which lurks precisely nothing.