moray-jones Reviews

Hosts (2020)

Fundamental disconnect between some reviews and what I saw

[3/10 · 26 October 2020]

There has definitely been a major marketing push to make this film out to be something it's not.

I'm usually happy to take a low budget into account when watching a film and look for what was done well, but there was very little here to appreciate. Read a five star review and then prepare to be disappointed.

The script was full of waffle and didn't go anywhere - characters stood/sat about giving tedious monolgues supposed to inject meaning.

The directing was mainly static shots that didn't even allow characters to move - a woman tries to direct her boyfriend (after a massive dialogue that should have been left on the cutting room floor) to lights in the garden whilst rooted to the sofa. A family watch a murder, rooted to their chairs.

I liked the actors - though they had to squirm for what felt like hours in every scene to show their terror.

The whole thing should have been done as a short. There's nothing original about the film and there was not enough story to make a film of this length. And not enough money to make it look even that half-decent.

Then the money could have been spent on some polish and the writer would have been forced to consider what the point of the whole thing was.

So bad it's bad!

Four Lions (2010)

Awful....just awful!

[1/10 · 26 May 2011]

I was going to give this 2 stars, but I see 1 star is actually for awful! The acting was mainly good and the lead reminded me of Robert Carlyle. Unfortunately the film was crass and stupid.

It basically had one mechanism for humour - juxtaposition. They're buffoons trying to do something deadly. And this gag was used everywhere. Police trying to shoot a target arguing over whether the honey monster is a bear, for instance.

But we're just supposed to laugh at everybody - no one is competent, everyone is stupid. The only thing missing in parts was the Benny Hill music.

I suppose, with the subject matter, it is supposed to be satire but satire should be cleverer than this. And for genuine comedy, in my view, you need to believe that some of it is real.

This film didn't have the courage to be anything but pastiche and ultimately is just a cash-in on world events and not a commentary.

Permissive (1970)

Masterful film-making

[9/10 · 7 January 2011]

I just watched this as a restored BFI DVD and I'm glad someone took the trouble to bring this film back to public attention.

It has the look of being docu-drama, with nothing glossy, as it tracks a young woman coming to London to join her friend in the big smoke. Dressed in duffel coat and thoroughly unschooled in life, she finds her friend not the perfect protector, though friendly and helpful.

Her friend holds, and guards, the coveted position of band-leader's girlfriend amongst a gaggle of groupies and is well ensconced in the life of swinging London.

There are drugs and sex, all of it mundane and unglamourous. People use the drugs to check their feelings and avoid the hurt and fears they all want to be too cool to have.

There is living on the streets and the drudgery of a band constantly packing up its Ford Transit and moving from one cheap hotel to the next.

But the director uses a great device to imbue scenes with tension and momentum, sneaking us little flash-forwards in the lives of the characters, silent clips of where they will soon be - whether it's having sex on a toilet or dead.

Along the way we see the band playing, and have their music on the soundtrack giving a great authentic feel.

The film isn't about the band though, it's about the women who follow them. What looks like it is starting out as a moralistic tale about women getting abused by callous men in their naiveté, develops into something much more powerful.

The men are pushed into the background and hardly show any initiative. They are pretty much 2-dimensional, unobtrusive and show little in the way of being predators. One guy is painted that way, but is not ruthless and far from the centre of focus and actually does display more to his character.

I have a friend who went to an all-girls school and assures me that, as a man, I would never know how brutal a female pecking order can be. In films, we see it all the time with the core cliché of the beautiful girls who get usurped by the plainer girl who wins the heart of the hero. But it's usually there to show the underdog winning through despite the machinations of the beautiful stereotypes.

I feel this film does something quite rare. It makes women and their relationships the subject of the film, and attempts to make it authentic as well - even rarer.

Wild Country (2005)

Kept me hooked

[8/10 · 3 January 2011]

I really enjoyed this. Thought the actors were very naturalistic and pulled off their roles very well. This meant I stuck with the film to the end because I wanted to know the outcome. There were bad points - SFX should have been concealed by the dark more and it was too formulaic. Bold effort though and I expected to see a higher average, but there is some cheapness to be looked through. But in its own right, I was happy to watch and didn't find any slack. The actual horror was low because of this, but the tension was there. I've scored it high because I enjoyed it and wanted to see the end, whereas many glossier films I find myself just hoping that they will end.

Unstoppable (2010)

If it's your type of film, you'll enjoy it

[8/10 · 29 November 2010]

This is cinema! Tony Scott's simple, but effective thriller.

A train gets away from a driver in Pennsylvania when he is shunting it in the sidings. What at first appears to be a 'coaster', a train rolling down the tracks under gravity, turns out to be something much more. The air brakes weren't attached and the train is under power…and therefore building up speed.

Two men, both with family problems, decide to try and stop the train… against orders. Small children are on another train that may end up blown to smithereens by the runaway train.

Did I mention that the runaway train was carrying hugely explosive chemicals…well, it is! Enough, in fact, to blow up the whole town it is heading towards. And the town is built beneath a steep turn in the track which will totally derail the train and its explosive chemicals causing a huge chemically explosive Armageddon in the town.

Yup, that's about it. But in Tony Scott's hands it is simply great. The train relentlessly powering towards catastrophe and the two hero's doggedly and manfully getting on with the job in hand.

We're not bogged down with backstory – there is some family problems thrown in, but this is a film about two men chasing down a runaway train. Real men. Old-fashioned, non-metrosexual men who are still good guys anyway.

Quite simply a riveting, fun-filled 90-odd minutes. Enjoy!

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010)

Apparently he was racing against time

[6/10 · 29 November 2010]

OK, so I probably shouldn't really be reviewing this, not being a Harry Potter fan. But I went to see it.

I went to see it on the word of a Harry Potter fan that this was a good film in its own right.

I beg to differ.

Harry Potter fans may well be, and I think in the screening I was in were, sitting in slack-jawed adoration as lovable Harry Potter and his adorable chums meander around for 10 hours (well, that's what it felt like) gazing avidly at their navels.

If it wasn't for the insane price tags of the actors, I would have thought this a very low-budget film as most of it consisted of the three of them dawdling around in woods or on hilltops, wondering what they ought to be doing.

Harry confessed to not having a plan. 'No, really?', I thought. 'Why not try meandering some more."

There is some spectacle, but it was entirely meaningless to me as a humble muggle-hugger, but I'm sure it will be good for the fans.

I'm assured that it is quite faithful to the book which also meandered and, if you enjoyed the book, you will probably enjoy the film.

That said. I may return for the sequel to make sure that Helena Bonham- Carter gets her comeuppance. B!*ch!

Life as We Know It (2010)

Maybe fill a gap for rom-com fans

[5/10 · 8 October 2010]

Points to note: people were laughing in the cinema. I left before the end.

The good: Katherine Heigl. The premise

The bad: everything else.

The trailer made this look like it could have some flair. It doesn't. Caricatures playing out a cliché. As a horror fan, it made me think of a slasher film - satisfies the genre hunger, but disappoints otherwise.

Really and truly could have been a hell of a lot better and I think this is one of those cases where Hollywood producers just think they know how to do a rom-com.

Still, maybe it improved towards the end, but I'll never know!

Unthinkable (2010)

Soulless tale that kills the thrills with clunky telling

[6/10 · 17 September 2010]

It's a good premise - how far should we go to get information that will prevent a terrorist outrage? And the stakes are upped by making it 3 nuclear bombs due to go off, hidden in warehouses in America.

Samuel Jackson is a brutal information extractor/torturer. Carrie Moss is the FBI agent confronted with this ruthless approach that the government keeps secret.

But it seems that the makers assumed an exciting premise would make an exciting film with little more effort.

Jackson's ruthlessness is portrayed as hard won wisdom. He behaves like he's a psychopath, but actually it's just that he has a clear vision of the answer to how far you should go. He refers to one of the army's original interrogators as a 'petty sadist'. Not like Jackson who has a job to do and does it without letting his emotions interfere.

But this is so Jackson can to-and-fro with Carrie-Ann Moss. To my mind an extra dimension could easily have been added by Jackson's character actually getting excited by his torture work. Then we would have a mixed motive - of the authorities - as they would watch Jackson having joker-esquire fun with his victims.

And Moss is solid but boring. Yes, the woman is the one dragging her heels, unable to compute that the suffering of one man can be offset against the suffering of many, many more.

Just to keep us interested, why not have a woman as the torturer rather than the nurturer?

All-in-all, a bit of heavy handed pontificating, that seems to be there to make us think. Thanks for that.

Watchable, but far from great.

Inception (2010)

Seriously average

[6/10 · 17 July 2010]

I was writing a review, but accidentally refreshed the page! So just my twopence worth to add a score.

I won't trash it to be anti the ridiculous 10 star ratings, but give it what I would genuinely give it as a film. Though the only reason I am bothering is because of the insanely puffed up reviews. The only idea I can give for that is that it may have been exciting for younger viewers as it managed to get itself a 12a rating.

The cast were great to watch and the action was impressive. But it all hung on such emptiness as to make the whole film just show. What dull dreams the people had. All temporally sound and with exact structures. Who dreams like that?

And the Freudian segregated layers - oh no, don't go down into the basement in his mind.

Everything carefully explained along the way to justify the plotting, like children making up the rules of a game as they go along.

Could have been clever, but wasn't. But it was showy enough to make some believe they had seen something clever. I think when the excitement dies down this one won't be remembered as the classic people want it to be.

Smash Cut (2009)

Robbed!

[22 December 2009]

Not sure how I'm going to take this review up to 10 lines, which is the minimum I'm allowed to write, but saw this on a shelf again recently and felt obliged to warn others not to bother with it. I had assumed that, by now, it had been swallowed into a dark abyss and nobody would be at any risk of parting with money for it.

Mercifully, I only rented it and don't think that I even finished it. It was awful. One of those films where someone tries to make a 'so bad it's good' film'. Well, that didn't work. It was so bad it was painful. At a glance I expected it to be biographical, but it was just using that in the blurb to get noticed. A total nonsense, dragging painfully on and on.

Take your money and give it to a wino - it will be better spent.

Orphan (2009)

Excellent on the surface, lacking underneath

[6/10 · 11 August 2009]

A good film - very good looking and excellently acted.

The downfall seems to be the lack of real cohesion in the story - not so much that it doesn't make sense, but that there is a lot of points made to have an affect that is not really achieved.

A couple adopt a child from an orphanage. She is lovely. She turns out to be a somewhat troubled youngster with psychopathic tendencies. The family is divided - the mother can see the problem, the father believes in the adoptee. Isolation, paranoia, etc, etc

But this story is embellished by back story that is blurted out here and there. The mother has a history of a drink problem - can she be trusted? Yes. She is an extraordinarily competent person and the two points where drink is an issue seem to be jemmied in rather unconvincingly.

The husband has roving eyes - again rather obviously illustrated with engineered dialogue and a scene where a woman makes a pass at him. But neither of them exhibit any real problems. He seems to be a most loving and attentive husband, and her an extraordinarily composed wife.

The mother-in-law hovers around, presumably keeping an eye on the troubled woman - another illustration of how the wife can not be trusted. Yet she only is given one point to make her presence felt in that capacity and then wanders around like a ghost for the rest of the film neither saying anything nor taking power from the wife.

Then we have the police turning up at a crucial time - twice - where they are so obviously waiting in the wings for the resolution before stepping on to the set, that it is annoying.

I'll highlight this as a possible spoiler, though I shall be circumspect. There is a twist to the film which is almost entirely pointless - the only possible reason for it is that it makes it OK to give a child a good pasting on the cinema screen.

The film is very good quality, just fundamentally lacking. There are many ideas that seem to have been sketched out when they were writing the story that should either have been fully included or totally excluded.

They are not to the forefront enough to create the atmosphere that they presumably intend or subtle enough not to intrude rather than contribute.

Worth a watch, but not a re-watch.