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harrybarracuda
Reviews
Chernobyl (2019)
The show is great but where is the credit for the original?
The show is beautifully acted and presented, but much of the story and even elements of the script are lifted from a BBC production from 2006.
This irks me. for example:
"Legasov: It seems there's almost no-one in this room who understands what this means. It's on fire. The graphite moderator, which in itself is just - unbelievably radioactive, and what's left of the fuel core, are on fire. Now, that's about two and a half thousand tons of carbon, which, burning at one ton an hour will burn roughly - for 3 months. And every day that it burns it will send into the atmosphere more radiation than has ever been released in - in all the nuclear accidents that have ever happened anywhere in the world all put together. Every day! For 3 months! You have my word that people that are asleep in their beds in this town tonight have effectively died today. As I speak, radiation is entering the bodies of everybody in this room, everybody outside for hundreds of miles. We can no longer pretend. It's criminal. And - and it's got to stop. And you
- pointing at Boris Scherbina -
Legasov: have got to stop it."
Quote from "Surviving Disaster - Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster", BBC, 2006.
Passengers (2016)
Self indulgent star vehicle
I have no idea how people are giving this such stellar reviews (excuse the pun).
It really is just a big budget SciFi chick flick, with a extremely tedious story and five minutes of "action", presumably to make the trailer more interesting.
If I'd been just a little tired, it would have sent me to sleep early on.
A brief summation.
Man wakes up accidentally on long space voyage, realises he will die before they reach their destination.
Man gets thoroughly bored and wakes up a pretty girl to keep him company (and presumably for a shag).
Girl finds out and hates him.
The ship is in peril, so he saves it with her help, then volunteers to use the only means available to put her back to sleep.
She stupidly decides to forgive him and stay with him.
They both die.
How on earth did anyone sanction spending 110M on that crap?
It could have been an hour long Outer Limits episode and they'd still have to find something to fill the gaps.
American Battleship (2012)
Do not watch this movie.
It's a shame you can't give less than 1/10, because this is the biggest steaming pile of guano I've seen in a long time (and I just watched "No Body Found).
Appalling cliché-ridden script, pathetic acting, woeful special effects, about the only thing that I can guarantee if you watch this is that it will probably make your eyes and ears bleed.
As others have, it was obviously knocked together to try and get some business of the back of "Battleship", but the budget for that was $200 million. There's actually no budget for this on IMDb, perhaps they're too embarrassed to say just how cheap it was to make, because I've seen film students make better quality material.
Avoid at all costs.
Don't Look in the Cellar (2008)
1.2 million dollars? On what?!
I mean seriously, how the hell can this have cost $1.2 million? Surely they didn't pay any of the actors, because I'm fairly certain none of them had other work and would have paid for any film role.
It doesn't look like they actually used any film. The costumes must have come from a charity shop (or did the actors bring their own?). I'm fairly certain the sets where essentially wherever they decided to get the camera out. Fake blood doesn't cost that much.
Seriously, there is only one reason this film can have been made, and that is to try and make a clean sweep of the Raspberrys.
It is terrible, terrible, terrible, on so many levels.
OK, so I've given you the build up.
Now go and watch it. It is so bad, it is side-splittingly hilarious.
The Rig (2010)
This movie should give hope to all aspiring film makers.
If you're wondering why, with a summary like that, I can only give it 1 out of 10, let me explain.
If someone can take a script this bad and a cast so poor and still persuade people to hand their money over to it, then, if you're an aspiring movie maker, you should be ecstatic.
It has absolutely everything bad you can think of in a movie: Horrendously poor editing; a completely pointless flashback to a few minutes earlier, in black and white to remind you (if you're a complete idiot) what just happened; dreadful, tinny low budget music to match the low budget set; and a man in a plastic monkey suit grabbing people in a quick blur of camera motion while someone throws fake blood around.
And dialogue that's so poor that if they had managed to hire a cast of decent actors they would have ended up shaking their heads at the inanity of it all.
There are some tits in it. That ought to double the viewing audience.
Give this one a wide berth unless you have the choice of watching this or sticking map pins into your eyeballs.
Polar Storm (2009)
When will they ever learn
The only redeeming feature of this incredibly poor wannabe clone of "The Core" is they probably threw significantly less money down the toilet.
What a complete load of garbage. I'd rather watch a test card.
If you want details:
The script was appallingly repetitive and naive. The acting was more wooden than a sequoia. The special effects must have cost 90% of the budget. And the budget can't have been that big. The story was thoughtless and should never have made it past a one page sum up. The ending was farcical and predictable.
Oh dear God I could go on, but if I wrote a thousand words tearing this minger to pieces it still wouldn't do it justice.
Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2009)
A pointless waste of time
Matthew McConaughey seems to have given up on the idea of making any decent films, instead riding on a treadmill of banal and pointless chick flicks.
The basic principle seems to be:
(a) McConaughey starts out as ultra-cool, probably gets his shirt off a few times for the repressed housewife viewers, and shows himself to be a heartless and immature cad and bounder.
(b) The second act has him being even more caddish, and driving away the female lead, leaving him seemingly with no chance to find his true love.....
(c) And then some kind of epiphany happens and he gets the girl, her friends all swoon with vicarious happiness and the credits roll.
If this were a TV series it would be cancelled.
I can't believe there is still a market for this trash, but I suppose being the good looking dude he is he could probably pull in the Oprah audience doing an entire movie wearing a thong and humming a Cole Porter song.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
Why on earth do people moan
I'm sick of people moaning about Indy 4. It's a popcorn movie, a romp, a CGI fest, a joke cracking, laugh-inducing ride into fantasy land.
No, it's unlikely Shia's ride on the vines would land him at the exact point required to retrieve the skull; no, I doubt there are spaceships in Mexico; no, the Nazca lines are not in that location. Need I go on? It's just a movie! Get a life and go and enjoy it, like most of the millions of people that did have already done. If all you can do is pull apart a piece of unabashed entertainment like this, you are probably as miserable and sour as you come across.
You sad git.
Shaun of the Dead (2004)
Dawn of the Dead meets Men Behaving Badly
If you understand that description, you'll understand just what makes this film so funny. I refer, of course, to the British TV series, not the watered down, unfunny American version that was aimed at Budweiser toting Jocks whose idea of a good read is the Enquirer or the Globe.
Essentially this is British humour at its best, and either you like it or you don't. It's crude, thin on plot, but hugely funny on comedic timing and farcical situations.
Reading the message boards, I see so many morons ranting about how the special effects were rubbish, or the film was boring, and they are the people that are really not going to get 99% of the humour in this film. They are the people that say "Eight Legged Freaks" was fantastic cinema.
Shaun of the dead is right there with Monty Python, Benny Hill, Ab Fab, Fawlty Towers, and heaven knows what that American TV has done its best to reproduce and consistently failed to do so in usually catastrophic fashion, albeit varyingly commercially successful on the networks.
American humour couldn't invent any of these programs, they always have to copy them; even The Office is going to get a workover for heaven's sake! It's like copying the Mona Lisa. It will always be second best.
It says it all when Friends is probably the most successful US comedy series in England (probably the world); American writers and actors can find the global funny bone, but that's ticklish laughter, not the roll over, tears in your eyes, stomach hurting laughter that's in this film.
If you're a fan of British humour you will laugh at this film like it's going out of fashion and you tear muscles.
If you are not, I'm afraid most of it will go over your head, but it's certainly worth a rental for trying.
I would say Pegg had his finger on the pulse of what direction Dawn of the Dead was going to take, because there certainly seem to be some broad similarities between the two.
Personally I know I'll be watching this film again and again with people who haven't seen it, if only for them to be so grateful as to buy me a pint.
Geddit?!
Cheers, Harry