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Reviews
Linoleum (2022)
Simple, beautiful and profound
Beautiful, touching and tender. The möbius strip made me cry.
Extremely well acted. Jim Gaffigan was great. The score set the dreamlike tone. It was a wonderful and inventive way to explore such difficult subject matter. It was simple and profound and I found it inspiring. I don't shed a tear at much, it's a cynical old world, but this film got to me. That is a rare a beautiful thing.
Beautiful, touching and tender. The möbius strip made me cry.
Extremely well acted. Jim Gaffigan was great. The score set the dreamlike tone. It was a wonderful and inventive way to explore such difficult subject matter. It was simple and profound and I found it inspiring. I don't shed a tear at much, it's a cynical old world, but this film got to me. That is a rare a beautiful thing.
Callan: God Help Your Friends (1970)
Sad and brutal: a great episode
The moral dilemmas of Callan, and the dirty morally bankrupt nature of the spy game are on full display here. Dirty squalid rooms frequented by dirty squalid men weaving banal destructive webs with no clear reasons why. This episode is so cynical and hard hitting I shed a tear at the end. They really don't make them like this anymore, but they really should.
Alec Leamas summed up the core of this episode, and, in a way Callan, with his words in 'The spy who came in from the cold':
"What the hell do you think spies are? Moral philosophers measuring everything they do against the word of God or Karl Marx? They're not! They're just a bunch of seedy, squalid bast***ds like me: little men, drunkards, qu***s, hen-pecked husbands, civil servants playing cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten little lives. Do you think they sit like monks in a cell, balancing right against wrong?
CHiPs: Kidnap (1980)
Timothy Carey!
Great action from the boys. The whole episode is just one long "action packed" pursuit. The eccentricities of Veteran oddball and all round class act Timothy Carey make it seminal viewing. And if you like a repetitive funk sound track to go with your highway chases then this is a definite for you. They don't make 'em like they used to, and thank god some may say, but clearly they lack taste in their TV nostalgia. 1980: the beginning of a fine decade!
The Witcher (2019)
A SLIPPERY SLOPE TO OBVIOUSNESS TEDIUM. THE SHOW MAKERS NEED TO TAKE A LOOK IN THE MIRROR.
Series one wasn't bad. It was promising in all kinds of ways. I hadn't read the books and knew little of the Witcher world so I could not make comparisons there. Henry cavill seemed like a commanding presence on screen in the role and the story arc for, and character of, Yennifer were intriguing. The world was dark in tone too. Series one built nicely and I looked forward to the second series.
The second season came and I thought it was a mess.
It lacked the integrity of the first season and seemed very much like a child's adventure story written in school. The dialogue was terrible and used so many "modernisms" that it took me out of the story on several occasions. The season arc also lacked structure and pace and meandered wildly. And each episode unfortunately lacked that integrity to the world season one seemed to have.
I never understand why, and it is done again and again in scripts, writers take away the powers of a main character and think it is dramatic or clever writing. It isn't. It is short change for the audience and tediously convenient for writing purposes. Yennifer without powers was just another medieval broad in a cape and not the enchanting character we had grown to love. When I was young, Superman lost his powers in the early films, and I thought then, "wait a minute I came to watch superman, not a boring bloke with a greasy side parting". Taking away powers of a character in this way is bad writing and a cliche for the audience who have seen it before, and it never works, and is in no way dramatic: we know those powers are coming back when it suits the writer, usually in the climatic scene when they are needed, and guess
what? Yep. Yawn.
The writing was poor on other levels too. Character's behaved against their character for writing convenience and plot convenience. This was especially noticeable with the other witchers who seemed all over the place, both in acting levels and tone. A lot of the acting was poor with other characters too and superficial posturing was prolific throughout: this is usually down to poor writing and bad dialogue and bad stage direction. The writing in series two was so infantile: "They did this, and then they did that, and then there was a monster and then he beat the monster and then they did this but she was bad and nobody knew, and what we didn't know was he was bad when we thought he was good and then they all fought and beat more and bigger monsters and then the lady got her powers back and they beat the big bad lady witch and then we all laughed and the princess lived happily ever after, or did she? Luke I am your father!" It was her dad all along! OMG!". What mental age do you think we the audience are.
Get some proper writers and keep some integrity in the scripts, in the world and with the characters. This show is meant for adults and not infantile children and to be honest I found it pretty insulting on lots of levels .
Later I found out that the show threw away a lot of the source material and did it's own thing. Bad writing 101 again and oh so arrogant. I never understand why film makers buy a property or a book and then discard it, seemingly with contempt. Always seemed a dumb decision to me and insulting to the audience too, and doubly insulting to the fans of the original material.
I have never been a big fan of Cavill, but I liked him in this and I thought his performance was compelling and the one thing holding the whole of series two together. The show makers sold him short and the key cast short too, and unfortunately, the audience along with them.
My hope is that the writers will find their intelligence for series three, but I doubt it. I think they have killed the series and source material as easily and as effectively as a Witcher dispatches a monster. A shame really, I had high hopes.
And it needs a map!
Girl in Room 13 (1960)
Eccentric B-movie curiosity
Great broads, great hats,, nice film stock. The rest is cardboard. Sometimes broads, hats and garish colour can make for a good night in.
There are B-movie pleasures to be had here. Worth a watch for curiosity value and those sumptuous "pushed" colours. Donlevy goes along for the ride and retains his dignity. The quirks on offer had me happily mesmerized for 80 minutes. Like it or loath it, it is a unique little film, and possibly, in its own way, a kitsch classic.
If John Waters and a young Rainer Werner fassbinder had a baby this might be it.
Deadwood (2019)
A beautiful lament to both characters and series
A lament to the characters and the series. As beautifully written as the series. Simultaneously complex, violent, touching and full of warm humour, and full of integrity too: both in front of the camera and behind it. It was, for my mind, one of the greatest pieces of tv. This is a fitting, intelligent conclusion to a series where everyone raised their game and stayed faithful to that conviction until the end. Salute.
King Arthur: Excalibur Rising (2017)
Interesting B movie take on the Arthurian legend.
People sometimes look for the wrong things in films. Fx and cgi don't matter a great deal if the purity of intention is right. This is not a big budget film and it would once, in a different era, have been a B-movie. As far as B-movies go it's pretty good. It re-works the Arthurian legend a little and takes influence from john snow and other aspects of Game of thrones and maybe Merlin has chunk of Gandalf in him and maybe there is a hint of Highlander in there too: It also cashes in a little on the guy Richie film using a similar poster. Movie making is about taking what you have and making the most/best of it and that is all they have done here with these elements.
If you have high expectations and are comparing this to Excalibur then you are going to be disappointed and probably write a 2 star review. If you take it on its own merits then it is a thoughtful piece of work with a lot of integrity and good low budget intentions. It kept me intrigued and I found it strangely touching in moments. I liked the understated use of location, especially the one used for the lake from which Excalibur came. The film has many failings (some of which make it even more interesting) but it has many good qualities too.
Sam fuller made great low budget films, and even though this is clearly not Sam Fuller in any way, the point I'm making is, there are joys to be had in a low budget film, and equally there are many crimes against cinema in films where hundreds of millions are spent. When people watch on mass and confuse gandalf with merlin and think that good CGI makes quality cinema then maybe it's time for a re-think and we should re-engage our brains again.
I liked the film, it had a lot going for it and it was actually quite unique. I'll watch out for the film maker's future films. I think he may have something really interesting in him if he gets the chance to do it, sticks to his guns and doesn't, like others, confuse big budget fx with quality film making.
The Walking Dead (2010)
YOU WILL NOT BEAT ME!
I have been watching this badly written, no insultingly written, tripe from the beginning. The first season was good, but then it became the waltons in season two and has been going down hill ever since. The only good episode along the way was at sanctuary and that was it. The writers do not know how to create characters or plot arcs. They can not write for toffee and the direction is just so poor. The characters are so inconsistent that the writers just have them doing things to serve the plot and not the integrity of the character. in the episode i've just watched, ten series in, Both alpha the villain and her side kick could have both been killed, but suddenly the 'heros' conveniently forgot to shoot or stab in the head. Just INSULTING. After ten series you forget that!!!! The cast are always going on to 'the talking dead' and explaining portentously and in great detail what their characters were feeling and what their motives were, but why not get some writers in who can show that in the god damn scripts and in the god damn character interactions. This is nothing but 'Eastenders' set in the zombie apocalypse. For years and episode after episode, series after series, they have been promising, no threatening that something exciting is going to happen and it never Actually does and we have to watch weeks and weeks of drivel to get to another plot ending that fizzles out and another villain is thrown away in an unsatisfactory fashion. It's like being in a teasy relationship were you think you might get some but never actually do, but for some inexplicable reason you miserably hang on in desperate hope that something is bound to happen sooner or later, but it never ever does! Sheer intolerable botty water of the highest stinkiest order. I have unfortunately invested so much time and effort in this crap that I will not let it beat me! It is doing everything to make me switch off: terrible plots, inconsistent badly drawn characters, insulting plot points, zombies, where are the god damn ZOMBIES?! Slow, oh my god so slow, insulting to the intelligence all round, but it will not win! I will beat the f*^cker. I will overcome all that these dreadful show makers throw at me. I will see this out like a bad case of the norovirus and I will re-grout the bathroom afterwards with a god damn smile! This terrible affliction i have brought upon myself will not beat me. Come on nicotero and the rest of you mother show makers. bring it on and do your worst, can it get any worse?! Bring it on and I will see this out to the knife in the head finale. I will see this god damn wretched show out to the death that it deserved years ago! Oh yes! You will not beat me!
I'll give you two stars out of respect for the tedious endurance it must take to make it, because god damn it is tedious to watch. I'll say it again: This show is nothing more than 'Eastenders' without the zombies.