Reviews

This is an entertaining film with a modern take on the Canterville Ghost, with a bit of a mystery / murder investigation thrown in and obvious callbacks to Ghost Busters and ET. The casting was modern and refreshing and is notable for being centred on a black family instead of the typical white suburban middle class families usually shown in these films.

There are obvious plot points which raise questions such as the Tardis like nature of the house, why they didn't call Ernest by his proper name once they discovered it, why they didn't show any aftermath of discovering the murder and finally why they were moving out of the house at the end on the film.

However, overall it was a good film to watch once but is not a classic to be rewatched again and again. Acting was good enough to sustain the film and the action and plot moved along nicely with definite chapters, despite the plot holes.

The cast is great but the entire film seems to lack soul, which could be due to the lack of plot as it is not a genuine Agatha Christie story but an adaptation of one set in England. The plot moves along slowly, punctuated by a couple of murders (it is a Poirot, after all) and everything just waits for the denouement at the end with extra information thrown into the mix, taking the enjoyment out of the guessing the murderer which is the entire point of watching a murder mystery. Direction is plodding with far too many close ups of Branagh's face and spinning around the room. There also seems to be a lack of joy in Branagh's acting which seems to be against his normal joy de vivre.

It's not a bad film, just that it lacks a heart and soul that you would usually expect from a cast and director of this quality.

To start with a general comment that the acting varied from very good to poor, with the female actresses being much better than the males, especially Tanya Fear and Edith Glad, with a special mention for Stephanie Beecham who played her small and isolated part to perfection.

The film started with rolling out every hackneyed cliche about the Scottish highlands that could be found, with stilted dialogue and run of the mill direction, saved only by the cinematography displaying the stunning scenery to full effect. I assume that this was for scene setting but it did little to establish character.

The film gained pace with the introduction of Stephanie Beecham as a hard nosed lawyer and it improved when Tanya Fear as Heather became a more important part of the story, although the (again) cliched relationship between her and Geordie was ridiculous and unbelievable with the apparent age difference and speed of development. Unfortunately the role of Alice was smaller than it needed to be to display the talents of Edith Glad fully, but she played the part with conviction and realism.

Of the male actors, John Michie as Jimmy stood head and shoulders above the rest who seemed to retreat into their stereotypical characters with zero nuance and some ridiculous set pieces which can only be put down to poor writing and direction (e.g. The sword scene).

The introduction of Don Johnson (Gary Grant) may have been an attempt at humour, but missed the mark and he seemed superfluous to the plot, so no criticism of his acting at all.

However, once the characters had something to do and the plot kicked in, the film improved vastly with a decent pace and some genuinely funny moments moving towards a quite fun, genuinely humorous and well directed denouement.

In summary, a poor opening that had me looking at my watch to see how much longer I had to endure, followed by a quite entertaining story with a reasonable conclusion.

This was an enjoyable watch for a run of the mill Xmas movie set in the Highlands of Scotland (Fort William and Lochaber). The story was easy to follow and entirely predictable with almost no elements of surprise, with pleasant enough characters acting entirely within stereotypes.

The most enjoyable part of the film was spotting the Scottish cliches abundantly thrown around, from dancing in the snow with a piper in the background to the bonnie wee Scots girl with ginger hair as a secondary love interest (albeit more believable than the main relationship).

Scenery, as ever in this area, was stunning and there were plenty of shots of local landmarks to whet the appetite for more.

This is an incredibly funny black comedy set in East Germany around the time of the reunification of East and West Germany. All the characters are well rounded, helped ( in the English language version) by the dubbing which is at times so incredibly bad that the humour is taken to a new level. Who would have thought a Glaswegian accent on a senior German police officer would have been so good?

Without wanting to give any spoilers, the death toll is quite high, as you would expect from a top assassin and it gets quite gory in places, but that's all part of the fun. Yes, there's obviously a pretty big Kill Bill influence, but with more gritty and less stylish cinematography that makes it much more real.

In conclusion, this is well worth spending a few evenings watching it.

The premise is fairly interesting and the set up over the first 5 episodes is well thought out and original with the three main young actors doing a good job in their roles. However, the series then loses its way and just becomes very confusing with narrative gaps between episodes and plot leaps that don't fit in with the original premise. To be honest I lost track of what was happening and the introduction of extra stereotypical characters did nothing except reinforce tropes, especially with the needless addition of a mysterious government agency which could have been copied over from any number of other series. It's almost as though the writers ran out of ideas and just wrote any old rubbish to keep things moving..

The cast is great, the script well written and it has some genuine laugh out loud moments. All the cast are believable in their roles, but mention especially to Lawrence, Blanchett and Streep who carried the film. This film could so easily have been one of the standard modern disaster movies but is a rung above on the ladder due mainly to the excellent cast and the development of the plot. Of course, it throws in salutes to other films, most notably Bruce Willis in Armageddon.

The political satire is wonderful as well as believable and puts the past few years of American anti-Science into focus. The film also partly answers the question of what would Trump have done if this had ever occurred on his watch, and the answer is to try and profit from it first before serving the people.

Overall, very watchable and worth viewing.

To start with the 5 main cast members seemed to be paying tribute to the franchise and banking their cheques rather than adding anything new. Jeff Goldblum was especially guilty of this and at times you could almost imagine he was merging his character from Independence Day. The bright spots in the cast were DeWanda Wise as Kayla and Isabella Sermon as Maisie who brought freshness and some multi-dimensionality to their characters.

The story seemed to have been patchworked together from a series of unrelated set pieces and the whole of the Malta segment could have been missed out without impacting the story, saving about 15-30 minutes of the running time.

Plot lines seem to have been cobbled together from a random selection of films, leaning heavily on Schwarzenegger's Commando and Predator, but with a bit of Alien thrown in and a major homage to Indiana Jones, plus a bit of the James Bond Tomorrow Never Dies with the motor cycling segment.

However, saying all that the film was unadulterated dinosaur fun despite it's predictability and lack of story telling. It finished off the franchise much as the Rise of Skywalker did to Star Wars, but does not leave you wanting more.

As a final comment, I saw Jurassic Park in Reykjavik with Icelandic subtitles in 1993, and this is the only other one I've seen in a cinema. If was on a small screen I would not have survived to the end.

This film is very entertaining and well worth watching for the acting and production values, but the plot is thin and predictable. There is plenty of humour and many, many digs at the acting profession.

Overall an enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours, but don't expect anything deep or thought provoking, just pleasant froth.

This film is great fun and one of the better pseudo science disaster movies. Almost every cliche you could think of was put into the film, possibly with the exception oh the Statue of Liberty being destroyed: the divorced couple, the estranged son, the maverick scientist, the military wanting to use nukes and they even managed to shoehorn a car chase into the film. The film lost its way near the end with an attempt to be as deep as the final part of 2001, and perhaps 20-30 minutes could be cut without reining the story telling.

There were some laugh out loud moments as another cliche jumped out and some of the scenarios were just so ridiculous that you could do nothing but laugh, like the launch of the space shuttle through a breaking tsunami.

The science involved is total rubbish, but that adds to the enjoyment as you need to suspend all critical faculties, sit back and enjoy a bit of good story telling, great special effects and some reasonable acting.

This is a beautifully written film with an excellent cast, especially the supporting actors in the Clachaig Inn who were perfectly suited to their parts. The two main characters are not particularly likeable but the actors play the annoying and depressed parts very well with the bickering and arguments beautifully displayed for people thrown together with nothing in common.

Where the film really excelled were the scenes set in the Clachaig Inn where the 4 veteran actors, Sanjiv Kholi, Frazier Hines, Clare Grogan and Sylvester McCoy were entirely believable with world weary cynicism about their situation in life, all complete with their own set of problems. The other patrons were very much in the background but the back stories were just enough to make you want to know more about them.

Overall the film deals with loss and disappointment over the break up of relationships and how people deal with them, but set in beautiful Scottish scenery and the outstanding Clachaig Inn which is usually much more exciting that portrayed here. The short and simple story is told with pathos and humour and comes to an appropriate resolution in the final few frames. When I first saw the film, in the cinema, I though the film was too long by about 3 seconds as those 3 seconds removed much of the "what happened next" from the story, but rewatching on TV made me realise that the ending was perfectly in tune with the story. Maybe happy endings should be reserved for Hallmark Xmas movies and not this sort of Scottish film.

One minor bugbear which would only be noticed by someone who knows the area is that the geography is mixed up, journeys going the wrong direction for the story and roads changing from single track to 2 way in consecutive shots, plus the station being nowhere near where the action was set.

One other mark of this being a very good film is that you want to know more about the characters and how they got to where they are now and how they will change going forwards. Few films make you wonder about that.

In summary, a well thought out out and written film with great characters and actors and an antidote to the thousands of crappy Hallmark type films which infest our TV screens at Xmas time.

For a 3 minute film this contained some dark humour, a bit of reasonable acting and a silent but commanding performance by Edith Glad. Cinematography at the end was outstanding.

As an independent, low budget Scottish film it combined dramatic and stunning scenery with a style that could only be described as deliberately over the top and hammy. At least, I assume it was deliberate as otherwise it would be the equivalent of second rate regional amateur repertory theatre played to half empty village halls in places such as Scunthorpe and Whitehaven.

I will admit to staring at the screen open mouthed with shock for much of the film, but there was also a family who were rolling about laughing hilariously at some of the humour, from fart scenes reminiscent of Blazing Saddles, to Dracula posing in budgie smugglers. There were also a couple of ill fitting musical numbers including a pastiche of the Time Warp.

Overall there was some reasonable plot and character development and the acting of the girl who played Flora, the undertaker's daughter, stood out because the dialogue was delivered in a natural way rather than hammed up.

I saw this in a small independent cinema so stayed until the end, but it would have been switched off after less than 5 minutes if it was on TV.

I wouldn't normally go to the cinema to see a documentary, let alone one in Gaelic with English subtitles, but this was beautifully shot with stunning scenery interspersed with footage of people working in the nearshore fishing industry, both offshore and in the fish factories. The commentary is from historic sound recordings of workers on the boats and onshore with stories of mermaids, courting and the loss of entire families in storms.

This isn't a superhero spectacular or romcom, but something totally different. I would suggest watching it on the big screen rather than TV if you get the chance, as it will prevent distractions.

Probably the best film I've seen this year, although I haven't seen many. The film starts slowly and is not that easy to follow at first, but the plot develops and you start to understand what has gone on before, both in the film and in the past of the characters. The acting is excellent, the subject matter difficult and those add to make it a very good film.

There is an unexpected twist near the end which changes the perceptions of the film, and is extremely unusual in a film of this type, but the resolution was perfectly executed.

Carey Mulligan is truly excellent in this film, and the promise shown in the part of Sally Sparrow more than a decade ago is really fulfilled.

OK, it's not a score of one because the pteranodon were cute, especially the baby. My main bugbear is that these were pteranodon, not pterodactyl, so the whole premise was false. Saying that, the acting was awful (Bianca Hasse excluded), the story line abysmal and the director may as well have not turned up. It would be better to turn the TV off and watch traffic in the street than to watch this again.

If this was released as a parody of shark films, or possibly a comedy, the scores would be much higher. Every character is a stereotype, from the sexy marine biologist, the boat owner in a stetson chewing a cigar, the army officer, submarine commander and of course the 3 life guards, chosen for the ability to look good in skimpy outfits (that goes for the male as well). All the actors are passable in this sort of low budget film and the special effects must have been made that bad on purpose to keep the audience engrossed. For a Sunday afternoon on SyFy channel when the alternative is an old Columbo, it's exactly what you want. Yes, the story is pretty much a copy of Jaws, the science pure hokum and all suspense is absent, but it's great fun trying to predict who and when someone will get chomped for shark dinner.

Riveting, in the sense that it is like rivets being shot into your head. As a Sunday morning SyFy film it's perfectly adequate viewing, but often grabs your attention and you have to rewind to check that the special effects really were at the level of 1950s stop go animation. The lack of continuity should place this film on any university course as a case study of what happens when it is totally ignored. Acting and characterisation were entirely adequate, but would have been helped by having a semblance of a plot to work to.

Why 2 stars - well, it is eminently more watchable than some of the dreary romance stuff you get on some film channels, which are not even worth reviewing.

Finally, as a serious question, what does a "second second assistant director" do?

This is an incredibly formulaic film that fits every cliche going. Despite that it is quite fun to watch if you start with low expectations. None of the cast are particularly well known and the writing is of an acceptable standard. It fits perfectly into the genre of easy to watch Xmas films which enable you to switch off your brain for an afternoon.

The storyline is utterly predictable, as can be gathered from the title, the acting is OK and any twists either signalled or absent. Character development is none existent, but one dimensional characters never need developing anyway. As long as you don't want any intellectual stimulation, this film is fine.

This film is much better than I expected and deserves a much bigger cinema release than it is getting, especially in Scotland. If you go expecting a sequel to Braveheart with set piece battles and big speeches then you will be disappointed, as this is a much smaller and intimate film which is character based. The main point of the story is Bruce's self doubt and how he resolves it with the help of a family that has suffered losses in previous battles, set against the fight to get the bounty of 50 gold coins for his capture. The fight scenes are much more realistic than you would expect and have none of the sanitised deaths you see in other films, but people dying in pain from horrific injuries injects reality into the film. The acting is often intense and focused, with the characters given depth. Even though some parts are fairly minor, they are all integral to the story of a lawless country under the occupation of a foreign power with competing factions vying for supremacy. The scenery is stunning, but disappointingly I later found much of it was shot in Montana rather than Scotland, although there were some recognisable views, especially at the end. Overall I would say this is well worth watching, so it is worth seeking out in small or independent cinemas as the big chains seem to be blacklisting it for some reason.

Although released in 2011, the breakdown of society and the brutality towards immigrants is prescient of what is happening in the UK as it heads towards Brexit, with the rise in authoritarianism.

On the subject of the film, it is an early one of a long series of environmental disaster movies with extreme theories of climatic Armageddon being used to good effect.

The characters are beautifully cliched, the ignored scientist, the corporate environmentalist who comes good, the evil corporate boss, bad oil company, the good wife, the petulant daughter, the rich grandfather, the nice Italian student: all rolled into cliched relationships.

Saying all that, it wasted a Sunday afternoon perfectly well, but it's not something to watch and rewatch.

This is such an obvious rip off of other movies, from the title to the enclosed environment similar to Deep Blue Sea. It lacks all the humour of the Sharknado type films and is ridiculously predictable with two dimensional characters being killed off in turn. The gore level is good, but it seems big savings were made in the dinosaur special effects, with them looking more like 1950s stop go animation than modern graphics.

Overall, probably worth a watch if there's nothing better on TV, but not worth going out of your way to see it.