video-dublin Reviews

Stay Close (2021)

Laughable, yet bingeworthy, with a satisfying conclusion

[7/10 · 30 January 2022]

At times it's hard to tell if this is meant to be a thriller, or a parody of a thriller.

What keeps you watching is Harlan Coben's genius plotting. Everyone has secrets, people's lives intertwine, and there is a trail of clues that keeps you engrossed.

The weird thing is the tone. The villains who break into a dance. The occasional comedy hijinks.

The acting is also of a very mixed standard. From the decent - the main actors - to a kind of soap opera style from Del Flynn - to genuinely amateurish, from the actors who play the club owner, and Bea.

The conclusion, though, is brilliant, and worth going through all of the above for.

Of the Harlan Coben adaptations out there, I'd put this well below Safe, The Stranger, and The Woods, and just above the worst one, The Innocent.

War Room (2015)

Preaching to the Converted

[1/10 · 6 September 2015]

What is this movie's message? Pray for what you want, and you'll get it? That sounds more like The Secret than The Bible.

A comfortable middle-class black family have some first world problems, and turn to the Bible-belt version of Christianity to solve them. If they spent less time saying "Hallelujah" and more time reading the actual Bible, they would see Jesus saying "sell what you have and give to the poor". I'm not a Christian, but if you're going to call yourself a Christian, then be one.

There is something very suspicious about the reviews so far (up to September 2015). Forty-three reviews, three of them negative and 40 overwhelmingly positive, but a score of 5.5. If you pardon the pun, there's something fishy going on.

All About Eve (1950)

Acclaimed, but I found it hard to watch

[7/10 · 28 July 2015]

I am now on about my fourth attempt to watch All About Eve. I find it a very hard slog. Each time I manage about 20 minutes, and then I have to find something else to do.

The acting is mechanical and stagey. There is no reacting here, only people waiting to give their next witty riposte. An occasional witty remark is fine. It gets tiring when everyone is witty. This has nothing to do with the period. The wisecracking in 1940's His Girl Friday or 1941's Ball of Fire, for example, is much more natural and believable.

There is no doubt that a lot of the script is great, and the premise is groundbreaking for its time. But a lot of the lines are clunkers or non sequiturs, and these are delivered with the same smugness as the good ones, which adds to the impression that the characters are not thinking about what they're saying, but just reading the text and the stage directions. Celeste Holm gives the closest to what I would say is a believable performance.

Bette Davis is the biggest disappointment. Whether she's playing happy, sad, or angry, it's always reined in, without any real emotions getting through. My 7 is for the script alone. If I had to score the acting and direction separately they would be less.