Reviews

There's a simple test as to whether a movie is good; if your bum gets sore from sitting down and watching it, it's either too long or just a bad movie. Watching Oppenheimer, a very long movie, my bum never got sore. It got a little confusing for a while, getting used to the the changes in time frames, but it was never anything less than captivating. Of course it was brilliantly shot, and of course the cast was universally excellent, but I also just think the story was really well handled. It's staggering that a movie of such quality was ever compared to the trivial, silly and downright terrible Barbie - which I gave up on half way through.

A great series - and a timely lesson, because this scandal, this utter betrayal by the UK Post Office bureaucracy and politicians who didn't do their job, is just a hint of what is coming. A computer system with glitches destroyed thousands of lives, but the company who created and operated the system and the bureaucrats who ran the Post Office were more interested in covering up for themselves than addressing the problem. People went bankrupt, people lost their homes, people went to jail, people died, because the bureaucrats - and the justice system - trusted the computers rather than the Post a office managers and their written records. But think about this. Soon there will be no written records, no printed newspapers or books; everything will be in the cloud. And the people in charge of all that will be able to change lives, even history, with the stroke of a key. Like the google AI system that gave searchers black Vikings, female Indian Popes and Asian Nazis, there will be no actual truth, just the preferred truth of the people in charge. And when you turn up in court or some 'peoples' tribunal, facts won't matter. Like those poor Post Office managers, only the technology will be believed.

I only watched this because Jodie Foster was in it, believing she was a guarantee of quality. I was wrong. Oh, she was good, as were most of the cast. But the whole thing was a disappointment. First, it's really not a detective story - there was hardly any detecting going on. Second, there was way too much mumbo jumbo throughout, with the inevitable deep and meaningful spirituality of indigenous peoples dominating the thin plot. Third, the thing dragged on endlessly because there were way too many subplots and back stories going on. Fourth, more bad miners aided by dumb and bad men, being taken on by good and smart women, yadda yadda. And finally the resolution was ridiculous - with even more mumbo jumbo added for good measure. And then the ending never seemed to end, with subplots being rounded off and, yes, still more mumbo jumbo. I should have taken my wife's advice and given up after the first two episodes, but Jodie Foster was in it, so I was sure it would get better. But it didn't.

...because this is an excellent series, with great performances, realistic action and a good plot. None of your Hollywwood ten minute fight scenes; the violence is short, sharp and decisive. The first season held my attention throughout and I looked forward to very episode, even though I could see the ending coming a mile off. (You could could look at it as the copying of a great ending to a great movie or just a nod to that movie. I wasn't sure about season two, but warned to it after the first couple of episodes. I'm not fond of endings that leave parts of the story hanging for next season, but in this case I'll forgive them because it was, otherwise, the perfect finale to the main plot line.

This is nothing but a highly political and really bad ad for the UK National Health Service. The plot was appalling, with promising sparks leading to damp squibs. Nothing made sense. I had expected yet another of those charming ensemble movies that have been churned out lately, where a fairly mundane and predictable scenario is lifted into reasonable entertainment by the quality of the cast. Instead we get... nothing much. Bleakness. A disjointed structure. Totally unlikely scenarios. The adviser to the far right government health minister, the man behind the closure of small aged care hospitals, goes to inspect the small aged care hospital where his father is a patient? Really? Oh, and of course he's gay. That's compulsory now, apparently. What these actors were doing in this mess is hard to understand. Maybe they thought it was a worthy cause. If so, they were wrong.

Polite Society starts off in a fairly standard way. Two sisters, very close, then one of them gets engaged to be married, which leaves the younger sister feeling a little deserted. So far, so normal. You can immediately see how the plot will develop. Younger sister tries to break up the couple, falls out with older sister, but then has an epiphany and discovers her future brother in law is a wonderful person and everyone hugs and lives happily ever after. Deception that's not what happens. It kind of does for a while, but gets progressively more and more surreal. Many will watch this movie and think it went totally off the rails. But I just found myself laughing - partly because it was, yes, silly, but mainly because it was fun. And we didn't really need another predictable "boy meets girl and other girl/boy gets upset" movie, did we?

I didn't expect a lot, but got even less. I just found it irritating from start to finish - well, start to halfway, because I just couldn't take any more. I had thought that maybe it would be clever like Enchanted (the original, not the appalling sequel) with a short sequence in Barbie World (like Enchanted's cartoon cliche intro) and then quickly turn into a humorous and entertaining fish out of water story of Barbie adapting to the real world. Instead the opening Barbie World sequence goes way too long, and then the 'real' world she goes to isn't just short, it's more plastic and silly than Barbie World. When she returned to Barbie World, I couldn't take anymore and switched off. My advice? If you're not hooked by the first 15 minutes, do the same. It only gets worse.

This started so well. Season 1 and 2 were excellent, developing interesting three dimensional characters who felt real - whether they were Nazis, Japanese or part of the various resistance cells, you believed them and could understand their actions, no matter how bad they were. I'd have rated those first two seasons at least nine stars. Then it started getting a bit shaky. Season three was...okay, maybe worth six or seven stars, still watchable, but it became like a less entertaining version of Sliders. The aims of the Nazis became totally nonsensical. And then came season four and suddenly it's all about BLM! Suddenly there's a whole new black resistance movement and a big bunch of new characters, all of them perfect, none of them with faults, none of them slightly believe and it becomes a big rolling mess which I would give, at best, two stars. A pity. The arc of a number of the characters had been so interesting, and then it was all thrown away. Most disappointing final season since Falling Skies.

As a movie, this isn't bad. Well put together, reasonable script, some good moments. What makes it worth watching is Russell Crowe. He hasn't been in many great things lately, but man ... he can act. He makes the character of Father Gabrielle Amorth - the Pope's Exorcist - interesting, amusing, likeable but most of all believable. That's important, since Father Amorth was a real person and he actually was the Vatican's chief exorcist. While Father Amorth is an intelligent man who recognises that 98% of the cases he is called to attend are actually not possession but mental health issues, on this occasion he confronts the real deal - and it's him the demon actually wants. Not for everyone, but as I said, worth watching just to see Russel Crowe making it obvious that he is still one of the best actors around.

Had high hopes for this and it started fairly well but quickly got just plan nonsensical. And downright irritating This person was supposed to have conned countless people, created endless false identities, yet none of his victims ever speak up. Worse, when he creates a fictional identity as a climate scientist heading a major climate action organisation based in Greenland, no one checks his credentials and Oxford University backs him. I was 50/50 till the last episode, hoping it would redeem itself with a good ending, but no - it was totally ludicrous. It was like they wanted a big finale, so just ignored anything that had happened in the previous episodes, all common sense or any interest in reality. Not a single character did what normal people would do at any stage in the five episodes. Just annoyed that I persisted with it, hoping it would get better.

This is an excellent series. Some may find it slow moving, but I think the pacing was just right. Sigourney Weaver is, in many ways, odd casting, yet she is the best thing about it. In all logic, the part should have gone to an Australian actress - after all, June is supposed to be an Australian matriarch. The wonderful Judy Davis comes to mind, and I'm sure she would have done a wonderful job, Yet Weaver is exceptional, even if her accent is unclear. The rest of the cast is also excellent, Alice young and old and especially Twig. And it is a great story, one that delivers a series of surprises and twists but is always true to itself. Well worth watching and one of the best series ever made in Australia.

Cast is fine. Filmography is fine. Basic premise okay. Script an utter, confusing, catastrophic mess. Too many dead ends, too many unexplained sub plots, and just so many totally illogical, completely unbelievable and simply ridiculous things happening. What in God's name is the Bollywood style Pakistani super agent doing in there? Not saying he's a bad actor, but I kept expecting him to slip into a big dance number with 20 backing vocalists. Why not leave it up to the Iranian agent to be the main antagonist? And what's with the try-hard attempt to be nice to Islam in the strangest ways and the wrong times? And then the ending was set up for Kandahar 2. Can't see it being made. Be better to watch The Covenant a second time rather than this.

Caught up with The Hour a decade late and just loved it. Great cast giving us great characters doing great work with an excellent script. Just staggered that there was no third season or a comeback season five or ten years down the track to catch up with the characters in later life - especially since we were left with a cliffhanger ending. (By the way, there should be a moral rule that producers have a clear conclusion to shows like this in case the show isn't renewed.) Both seasons were equally good, and yes both tended to give slight nods and winks to modern left wing talking points - that's always annoying - but the performances made up for any of those things.

I loved the first four seasons of this series and wondered what this fifth season would be like without the wonderful Nicola Walker, who was the heart and soul of series (with apologies to the also excellent Sanjeev Bhaskar - Sunny). Generally, Sinead Keenan is fine, and the rest of the team are still good, along with all the characters rolled out as suspects. My disappointment with this particular season is the blatant and one-sided politics of the script. In the writer's view, every single problem in the UK is the fault of the Conservative Party, primarily Maggie Thatcher. Maybe the show's creator is young and unaware of what a mess the UK was before Thatcher became PM, with huge unemployment, high inflation, non-stop strikes, and all the key industries, many of them nationalised by earlier Labor Governments, in total decay. The UK had become the basket case of Europe. By the end of Thatcher's reign, the UK had low unemployment and Europe's strongest economy. Yet in this series, we get endless speeches delivered by every second character insisting their lives were a mess because of Thatcher and Conservatives generally. Sorry, but I can do without the left wing lectures when I watch TV.

Sometimes you just want to watch a movie that doesn't involve impossibly ridiculous car chases, endlessly tedious fight scenes and yet another super hero saving the world. They're hard to find, but this is one and it's well worth a look. These kinds of coming of age movies can sometimes get a bit mawkish, but it avoids that as well. The cast is good - Ben Affleck is one of those actors a lot of people like to dump on, but I usually find him watchable and he's very good in this as the uncle who is the central character's true father figure and make role model. Lille Rabe is excellent as the mother and Tye Sheradin does well as the son/nephew when he is older. Oh, and Christopher Lloyd was inspired casting as the grandfather.

Justified is just brilliant. Loved it. The whole series was terrific. The entire cast was brilliant. It's funny. It's dramatic. It's emotional. It's great entertainment. Raylan Givens is the best hero I've seen on any U. S. TV series. Just so dry. And Boyd Crowder is the best bad guy, villain, or anti hero. Comes across, as many have said, like a young Jack Nicholson - and there is no better actor or character to follow. I could see him playing McMurphy in a remake of One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, if anyone was stupid enough to remake that classic. Didn't think they'd be able to sustain the script quality after the first series, but they did, introducing new and equally good characters. A must watch.

Tried this movie having no idea what it was about. Expected yet another one of those movies where the star is desperately trying to stop a runaway train or maybe rob one. Instead we get a quirky, funny and sometimes ridiculously crazy bunch of characters all, apparently, hit men and hit women but none of them having any idea they are part of some bigger, complex plan. There are big name cameos everywhere Ryan Reynolds turns up in a three second scene. Brad Pitt is very good as the main character. Never been a fan, but he was terrific in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Burn After Reading, so is winning me over with his quirkier roles. So a bit of rollicking fun.

Midnight's children is an incredibly complex book. It's part Forest Gump, part sci-fi fantasy, and encompasses pretty much 50 of the years of history leading up to and after the partition of India (which is where the Forest Gump analogy comes in - our main character, or members of his family, is involved in every aspect of that history). The sci-fi fantasy bit is the strangest part of it all - a special psychic connection between all the children born at the moment of partition - the Midnight's Children of the title. (They also all have an array of diverse super powers.) How do you make a movie out of something like that? Not easily. Don't think you could even make a mini series that captured the full breadth of a book like that. So you have to simplify so much that, really, all that's left of the book is the title. If you haven't read the book, the movie is quite okay. If you have, forget the book and just watch what's on the screen.

Didn't have high expectations and the reviews were mainly middling at best, but this was a surprisingly well acted, well produced movie that was also very believable. You could easily see something like this happening. The shooting style was just right for the script, with just enough moving camera to add to the realism but not so much as to induce seasickness. The script was tight, the editing was sharp and the story moved along at a good pace - with no wasted minutes on endless car chases and fight scenes. Perhaps the eight I've scored this is slightly generous, but only slightly; this is a movie we'll worth watching.

Surprise, surprise - a Nicholas Cage movie that's really good. Clever, funny, and very entertaining. Cage does brilliantly playing a fictional (perhaps only semi-fictional) version of himself that is far from flattering. He and Pedro Pascal work really well together and Pascal almost steals the movie with his natural charm. The idea of a noted 'alleged' international criminal (Pascal) paying big money for a Hollywood star (Cage) to attend his party might sound far fetched, but plenty have done it - Putin and various dubious Arab leaders have hosted quite a few of them. With the CIA then persuading Cage to work for them, and throw in the twist of Pascal trying to get Cage interested in his screenplay, then the rest just follows nicely.

Major things happen...on a train, in the streets, in the city...and nobody seems to notice. People who should be a lot older if they were actually important Germans from WW2 still seem to be in their prime in the late 1970s. Too many of the political issues and woke ideas of the 2000s are prominent too many years earlier. There are regular issues with continuity and people do endlessly illogical things. Okay, the end surprised me (I've only seen the first series and I'm nor rushing to watch season 2) but even that, while intriguing, didn't really add up. But I've watched worse and I probably will watch the second season.

This was going to be a wonderful series, one of the best ever. But the Producers destroyed it. Totally mangled it. And I'm not talking about the ludicrous last series without Kevin Spacey. The big problem was that they liked the golden eggs they got from this goose so much that they kept stretching and stretching and stretching, with filler episodes slipped in regularly and never allowing the plot to reach its natural conclusion. The original UK series did it all in two four episode series - the rise in the first four, the fall in the second four. This American series went on forever. If they'd followed the UK lead, maybe even expanded it to two series of 10 episodes, it would have been an all time classic. So much as I loved the first two series (even if I found the filler episodes annoying), I can't give it the ten stars it should have earned.