timarmstrong-02193 Reviews

Shazam! (2019)

A joy

[8/10 · 18 January 2023]

I just rewatched this on TV as part of my cunning plan to get my other half to come and see the upcoming sequel with me.

It's really lost nothing in the past three years. Asher Angel and Jack Dylan Glazer as Billy and Freddie are genuinely funny (especially Freddie). The scenes where Freddie 'trains' Billy are the best thing in the entire DCEU to date.

Zachary Levi nails Cap (whoops, sorry Shazam) completely - his boy in a man's body schtick is perfectly captured.

My only criticism is that, Freddie and Mary apart, I could have done without the rest of the Shazam family. They would have been better brought into a second movie.

Finally, DC/WB. Come on grow a set. Tell us what Freddie and Mary's super-hero names are these days. I'm pretty sure they aren't Mary Marvel and Captain Marvel Jnr, but they must be something. In Cap Jnr's case, it's no way to treat Elvis's favourite superhero.

More like this please, WB and less star actor-driven rubbish . Affleck, Johnson and Robbie have ruined the franchise. As someone or other said, in superhero movies it's the characters that are the stars, not the people playing them.

The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)

Blimey!!!

[3/10 · 18 January 2023]

I thought that was the biggest load of pretentious rubbish I've ever seen in my life. I stopped watching when the not so cunningly disguised Vincent Van Gogh character cut off his second finger. I couldn't stand it any more. Vincent Van Gleeson sits glowering in a pub for no particular reason. Moronic Farrell character can't understand the whole thing. Repeat many, many times.

Never has a director shouted, 'Look at me, look at me, look at me - I'm so clever. I'm doing yer actual ART here', more loudly or more persistently.

An absolute pile of steaming cow pat.

Total and utter twaddle. Nice Oirishy scenery and music, though.

Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)

Lots will like this - I didn't

[2/10 · 15 January 2023]

This appears to have been written by a group of 6th form English students. The baddies are basically US Marines engaged in raping the world of the peaceful Navi/Navajo/Vietnamese for its rare, um, somethingorother/ for no particular reason. ALLEGORY, huh! The characters do things for no sane reason (we are being attacked in the forest, endangering our forest brothers and sisters, we shall go to the coast and endanger our sea brothers and sisters - we must track down and kill this bloke and his family because, er, don't really know - some of us will be human with boats and harpoon guns and stuff and some of us will be avatars - Mowgli will be in it, for no particular reason). Copycatting abounds. I spotted Stagecoach, Apocalypse Now, Moby Dick, Pocahontas, Titanic (I suppose plagiarising your own film is OK), The Poseidon Adventure, the Jungle Book and High Noon. I'm certain there were more. It did look nice for about half an hour, though, until I got bored.

They've already made Avatar 3. Good luck getting anyone to come and see that.

Happy Valley (2014–2023)

Seasons 1 and 2 Revisited

[9/10 · 15 January 2023]

What an absolute belter of a show. Season One is superb and Season 2 may be even better.

Sarah Lancashire heads a magnificent cast magnificently. Her character Kathryn is impossible to look away from. Siobhan Finnerhan is also superb as Kathryn's damaged but loving and supportive sister - their scenes together are a joy. James Norton's angelic-looking villain is one of the most truly evil creations of the 2010s and George Costigan is his usual hilarious self - some of this lot were together in Rita, Sue and Bob Too, way back in the day, and their rapport is obvious.

Props too to Sally Wainwright. She manages to address issues of gender and diversity subtley, without ramming them down our throats. That's how it's supposed to be done and how it no longer is.

Without Sin (2022)

More tedious wokery

[3/10 · 8 January 2023]

It seems that nothing can be commissioned for ITV or BBC that doesn't have a fully completed check-list of PC nonsense.

This show is fully compliant. All the women end up as strong independent characters, even the Mum who starts out being dominated by her off-screen oafish partner. And the end the sisterhood is bizarrely intact - victims and killer all onside with each other. All the men are rotters, villains or morons.

So far, so 2022. But why do all the inhabitants of Nottinghamshire now speak in cockney (or at least Estuary) accents? Why is Mum doing the night-shift in a cab, while one is living in middle-class luxury. Why has St Paul's Cathedral relocated to be visible through the window of a Nottingham dealing room? Why is there only one white person at (white) Granny's birthday party?

It's total rubbish really. The over-rated Vicky McClure Vicky McClures her way through things and the rest of the cast struggle to act at all. Is it the horrible mechanical lines they are given or are they all incompetent? I suspect the former, although the accents are unforgivable.

Black Adam (2022)

A bad movie

[3/10 · 19 December 2022]

I love DC. I love Rocky. But this movie is terrible. Slow, dull, no story and completely unsympathetic male and female leads. Also the comic relief guy wasn't funny.

I liked Hawkman (a Hawkman-led JSA movie would have been better, though I notice DCEU have plumped for the boring Carter Hall character that no-one cares about instead of the cool Katar Hol character with the super-cool wife (Shayera) that could actually sustain his own comic) and loved Dr Fate. The other two JSA members were throwaway characters - Atom Smasher is about E list in the DC canon and the female one I'd barely heard of.