Reviews

This isn't bad. It's abysmal. I've got more plot off the list of ingredients on the back of a box of cereal. I've seen matchstick figures with more depth of character than the characters in this mess of a movie. Think of one of the those cheap shoot-'em-up games they used to churn out in decades past -- repetitive, pointless, utterly predictable. This is a thousand times worse. What you have basically is a totally unbelievable CGI monster killing off totally unbelievable characters in a totally unbelievable, largely CGI, setting. The heard-it-all-before soundtrack tries but fails to convey what the director and his team would like audiences to believe is emotion (just about the only emotions to be found in this fiasco are disgust and despair at the depths to which filmmaking has sunk of late); and the dialogue is so ridiculously trite, cliché-ridden and hollow that you'd stand a better chance of sitting all the way through this excuse for a film with the sound turned off.

To give you an idea: I watched this for free and I still felt ripped off.

Charmless, heavy-handed attempt at turning a Poirot whodunit into a frigid, Nordic-noir plunge into doom and gloom. But making every character unpleasant and every impulse they display petty or sordid -- and rubbing viewers' noses in it all at every turn -- comes no closer to achieving realism than if they had filmed it as a musical pastiche.

No need to critique the acting as a whole or Malkovich's take on the Belgian detective here. Two aspects of this alone suffice to mark it as a product very much of its time, without a spark of real artistry or originality: the repeated, unsubtle underlining of background themes added, it seems, merely to lend artificial weight to the story (they don't at all, of course -- quite the contrary), and the plodding, uninspired manner in which the plot unfolds onscreen like a slow and totally predictable train ride taking the viewer from A to B...

The plot has enough holes that you could drain your pasta with it.

For a story about intelligence work, very, very little intelligence is shown by any of the characters. (Wait, did someone mention cognitive impairment?)

Cole has all the charm of last week's coleslaw, and always manages to look like he's struggling to remember his lines. He also looks and sounds about fifteen, which doesn't help.

Boynton is very pretty, but is also sadly lacking in the charm department.

Hollander goes through his usual repertoire of unpleasantries, mainly consisting of looking chronically constipated, only this time he's playing a goodie. Sort of. Irritatingly, he does keep mispronouncing the word "nuclear" ("newcular", he says), a very recent trend of, I believe, American origin. It always puts me in mind of George Dubya.

This is not the only anachronism to mar the production, not by a long stretch, but I won't bother to go into all the others here, lest I bore you as much as they did me. Suffice it to say they do manage to spoil any suspension of disbelief still left intact by the silly plot.

And then you ask yourself: why bother with this at all? I don't mean to watch it: why bother to make it in the first place? They stretch the story out till it's thin enough to spread on toast, but somehow manage to leave out everything that's really interesting or important. The characters are all cardboard. The cast doesn't convince. The reworked story is a damp squib. The thrills don't thrill. The intrigue is totally implausible. The dialogue has no sparkle. There's not a shred of realism. No wit. The music is, at best, bland. So, in the end, nothing at all has been added either to the original novel or the original film, both of which display some or all of these qualities in abundance.

I'll say this, though: the photography was nice. For the most part.

There's a lot of talk among the characters near the beginning about being "badass". Of course what they really should have been saying was bad script, bad directing, bad acting, bad characterisation, bad development, bad taste. The comic-book characters are the usual implausible round-up of immature morons, exhibiting plenty of bad manners, bad English and bad decision-making (yes, it's that sort of sorry excuse for a plot).

Cameron is the Ed Wood of the 80s, minus the cheesy charm. And Aliens is all the proof you need.

I rest my case, Your Honour.

Simply put, this film is ordure. An open insult to anyone with half a brain. The plot is bad enough -- a trite rehash of a million other sci-fi plots out there -- but the characters and dialogue are where this mess really plumbs the depths of rubbishness, being so abysmal as to beggar belief. How can anyone in their right minds have dished out good money to produce such utter rot? And how can anyone with a modicum of understanding have watched this travesty and not turned away in disgust?

None of the characters has a mental age above fourteen. The premise is that a huge expensive mission has been mounted to explore the origin of life, but we are asked to believe no one told these "scientists" on the spaceship where they were headed or why. And they are all a bunch of ignorant, immature morons. The entire film consists of preposterous scenes of these cardboard people speaking and behaving like snotty kids at a school outing. In fact, the whole thing sounds like it was written by a bunch of snotty kids.

And if the production is expensive, the thrills are still as cheap as they come. Take the storm near the beginning. Really? Is that the best Skidley Rott can do?

Pitiful....

Eggers goes all-out Hollywood on this one, dashing all hopes one may have had that here was as a fresh and daring filmmaker who was not afraid of a little artistic integrity or of catering to more adult audiences.

In essence, this is the Hamlet story as found in Saxo Grammaticus, only travestied as a schlock Conan the Barbarian. If you'll permit me the awful pun, with Eggers it's more Omelette than Hamlet, one laced with plenty of ketchup and artificial food colouring. And it still has the gall in parts to try to pass itself off as something "profound". The sad truth is it has all the depth and artistry of a cheap plastic toy -- one of those that breaks after just a couple of days. Only Eggers has soaked it in blood because he thinks that will make audiences take it seriously.

The dialogue is utterly ludicrous, with whole exchanges that sound as if they were written by an eager but particularly ungifted child of ten who has read far too many bad comics. The atrocious accents are straight out of the Mighty Boosh. Think Bollo, the gorilla. In fact, a lot of the film has a distinctly Mighty Boosh feel about it, only it doesn't realise it, and takes itself absolutely seriously.

The acting -- even Dafoe's, which is usually excellent -- is either wooden (lots of silly glowering looks and macho posing), or downright OTT. I won't even mention Kidman's botoxed hamming. Oops, I already have. (Ham and eggers, anyone?) But then, given the quality of the script, one couldn't really expect much else. Oh, and forget anything remotely resembling historical accuracy -- or real people, for that matter. Every character here is as flat as the screen they're on.

One last thing: the CGI -- and there's LOTS of it -- is on a par with that in The Mummy Returns. And you know what that was like...

Well, great art it ain't -- though no doubt the people involved in its production would like to think so. The film reeks of self-importance and pretension, but the end product is simply a gathering of stock characters -- no more than caricatures, really -- behaving implausibly and spouting stiff, unrealistic dialogue at one another.

Despite the outward trappings, the plot reads like yet another teenage tale of high school bullying and angst-ridden grappling with one's own sexuality. And here these subjects are tackled with about as much subtlety, depth and realism as a Christmas pantomime.

To read about the lengths Cumberbatch went to in preparation for his role makes one feel embarrassed for him. Perhaps because he was so terribly miscast, his is by far the weakest performance. But the truth is that almost everything in this film falls onto the same trap: taking itself far too seriously for its own good, while producing something shallow, wearyingly clichéd, and utterly lacking in anything approaching artistic integrity or originality.

Arguably one of the very best screen adaptations of Shakespeare ever produced. They have pulled off what many have tried and failed to do: make good cinema out of the plays. The necessary realism is there, without detracting in any way from the source material. And the acting is for the most part really superb. Hats off especially for Jeremy Irons, David Dawson, Tom Hiddleston and Ben Whishaw. The latter's Richard II far surpasses any portrayal I have seen, both onstage and onscreen.

Some scenes scenes are stretched much too long, as if the filmmakers didn't have enough material to fill the required length of the episodes. And the music is for the most part absolutely awful. But neither of these things is really what lets this series down. The real problem is - as usual with Harlan Coben's efforts - the absurd plot. If you like your stories to have at least a modicum of plausibility, then find something else to watch. The actors are actually quite good in this, but don't expect believable characters because of that. They are just pawns here, made to behave absurdly and with no regard for common sense, totally subservient to the mechanic of the ridiculous story. The revelations, when they finally come, really are eye-wateringly ridiculous.

The main problem here is that the writer has tried to pack in so many thrill-inducing elements into his story that no trace of the plausible is left, and so the whole thing falls flat on its rump. And even if you can suspend disbelief enough to enjoy the creaky roller-coaster ride, anyone with half a brain can spot the 'twists' and 'revelations' a mile off, anyway...

As with all Will Ferrell's efforts, this leaves a horrible aftertaste: the film equivalent of very cheap, very greasy junk food packed full of synthetic colouring and flavouring. - Didn't raise a single smile, let alone a laugh.

This badly botched attempt to translate a mediocre book to the big screen reveals one thing above all and proves it without a shadow of doubt: what a truly horrendous actor Tom Hanks is. Really awful. His over-the-top mannerisms, his utter lack of ability to convey anything resembling real thought or emotion, his hammy delivery, and his failure to imitate a single accent other than his own convincingly are an embarrassment - if not to him, then to the profession.

This is quite simply unwatchable. The state of decline of Mickey Rourke, whose opening line is a pathetic mispronunciation of "Caligula" - "Caliglia," slurs Rourke - seems somehow to mirror the decline of the entire industry, perhaps of the country as a whole. What little of this I was able to sit through is bad in that grotesque way only a culture in the throes of total disintegration can produce.

From start to finish: by-the-numbers, mindless, gratuitously violent bilge

Even action films need a plot and believable characters. What passes for plot in Extraction is so ludicrously threadbare and lacking in sense that you might as well not have one at all. The central characters are little bundles of cliché tied together with strings of cheesy dialogue. The action itself is, as usual, just mindless violence. The overall experience is like watching someone else play a tedious computer game whose sole object is to shoot anything that moves. The one tiny positive note is a bit of deft camerawork in one scene. And that's it. Really.

When in the name of the lunacy that was the cold war a father - albeit a puppet one - could turn his 9-year-old son into a thief and a murderer and not bat an eyelid. The creators obviously realised too late the awkward implications of their plot, and very clumsily tried to have their cake and eat it at the end. Having said that, the supermarionation really is very well done. Pity they didn't have the scriptwriting abilities to match it.

This is Eli Wallach's film all the way. His portrayal of Tuco is perfect, and drives the entire film. Lee van Cleef does an excellent job, too, though in his case it's as much thanks to physiognomy as acting. Of the three title characters, Clint Eastwood's is by far the least interesting. Eastwood is also the weakest actor by a mile. The first half of the film is really very good. The dubbing is a tad distracting, but you get used to it after a bit. The second half, from the moment the kitsch, totally anachronistic and overly sentimental music comes on -- made even worse by the fact that we're supposed to believe it's a bunch of ragged POWs playing it -- the entire thing starts to derail. The story begins to drag slightly, and the film feels bloated.

I was half-tempted to give this one extra star simply for trying to provide adult fare in a cinematic world overrun with all manner of pubescent drivel, but it was a half-temptation easily resisted. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? this ain't. Are we really meant to identify with any of the shallow, egocentric characters in this cardboard farce? Are we meant to believe a professor on the verge of death who asks his students 'who is ready to learn from the great minds of the past?' can find nothing better to do with his few remaining months than get drunk and spout adolescent, expletive-ridden clichés about 'not existing, but living' to a bunch of adenoidal half-wits? If you value the remaining time you have left to live, don't waste a second of it on this garbage.

Overrated. Perhaps because there is so much garbage on our screens these days, audiences have tended to overlook the fact that much of this clunky little film falls well below par, even - or perhaps especially - when it tries to subvert the time-worn tropes of the genre. Oh, and the acting isn't really that good, either. Sorry, Olivia.

Makes Scooby Doo seem the height of sophistication. There's nothing original here. Gatiss has collected every cliché ever foisted on Bram Stoker's creation, added the odd computer game element and a few very camp, very cheap 80s TV gimmicks, and glued it all together with some of the worst dialogue ever written for the small screen. His attempt to do a Tarantino-style take on Dracula fails on every level. The plotting is ludicrously clumsy; the characters have about as much depth as a Burger King bumper sticker; the so-called jokes tickle less than the worst of Transylmania; and the writing has all the depth and flair of Barney and Friends. Don't believe the hype. It's about as scary as a squirt of ketchup, and as entertaining as a poke in the eye.

Says Prince Thomas to his brother Hal: 'You're trying to upstage me.' To which Prince Hal replies: 'I'm not here to steal your thunder.' Are they American high school children? Well, yes... Cringe-making. Oh, and nothing could be less Falstaffian than the slow-witted, uncharismatic Falstaff in this flaccid pastiche.

Yet another wrongheaded, disjointed offering with more plot-holes than substance. The premise is absurd: merely an excuse for cardboard characters to spout cardboard dialogue and commit gratuitous acts of violence on each other. Nothing about them or the story is even remotely plausible, not even within the limits of their own fictional world. The female characters (if you can call such automatons characters) are rolled on and off-screen like props, supplying the flimsiest excuses for more violence of one kind or another. One wonders how such things ever manage to get made in the first place. Script, directing and acting alike are all bad in that slightly nauseating, cheap TV movie way, with Woody Harrelson chewing up the scenery every chance he gets. Cloaca from start to finish.

Every (stock) character in this fiasco has his or her catchphrase and distinguishing quirks, and watching it one can almost visualise the writers' little index cards for each one. Motivation: none. Situations: risible. Dialogue: infantile. As for the scares, the only scary thing about this garbage is how highly it has been rated here. Now that is a haunting thought.

It starts out silly and implausible, with two-dimensional characters in unexplained, hard-to-believe situations, spouting trite, cliché-ridden dialogue, and then rapidly descends into a free-wheeling, plotless, characterless mess. This may seem an exaggeration, but it is not. The creators seem to think that to see gore on the screen is all the public wants by way of entertainment, and the screenplay (it seems almost absurd to dignify the writing n this film with the name) veers all over the place, regardless of sense, characterisation or narrative, just to provide instances of blood-spattered violence. The last twenty minutes or so are cringe-makingly bad, enough to make you feel embarrassed for everyone involved.

... and a lesson on how to make $180 million look cheap as chips. The overall kitsch 80s feel is a monument to bad taste, and a baboon could have come up with a better plot. The dialogue is as trite as any in the very worst TV soaps, and the adolescent attempts at humour cringe-making.