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herbiefrogg
Reviews
Border Town (2009)
Absolutely dire
You will not live long enough to waste 90 minutes of your life watching this dire, dire movie. I don't know where to begin. It is so bad it isn't even funny, just sad. I kept watching it against my better judgement in case it would get better along the way, but it got worse. The plot is simple, but the acting for the most part is utterly abysmal; one dimensional characters spouting clichés after clichés without a trace of acting ability amongst them (with the exception of Linda Rodriguez who plays the part of Isabella). There is a huge shoot out scene that stretches credibility into another dimension in terms of the number of bullets fired by baddies that fail to hit their target which is all of 5 metres away. It is impossible to empathise with the main character who is so incredibly wooden in everything he says and does. I could go on but I won't because I have already wasted too much time watching this travesty of a movie. You have been warned!
Cloverfield (2008)
Absolute crock
This has got to be one of the most annoying and disappointing films I have ever watched, particularly in view of the hype that surrounded its release. I had no empathy for any of the characters so I didn't care at all what happened to them. In fact, that's not completely true; there were many times when I wished the characters would just die, so annoying was their non-stop screaming and shouting out to each other. The acting was truly dire, the dialogue non-existent and there was precious little footage of the monster itself throughout the film. The character with the camera, supposedly recording events for posterity, evidently thought it more important to record the inanities of his friends rather than focus on the main event. And these were supposed to be terrified people running for their lives!
An absolute crock of a film - no one can afford to waste 90 minutes of their life watching this abject rubbish, unless perhaps they are in solitary confinement in a maximum security jail with no other option.
Death Sentence (2007)
Wasted potential due to poor script and weak direction
SPOILERS A frustrating and unrewarding film that tries to portray itself as gritty and true to life, but is so full of unrealistic dialogue and scenarios as to make the whole experience meaningless. I have a question - is America really like this? Do the Police really tell the family of a cold-blooded murder victim to do whatever the murderers ask, even when they know the rest of the family are threatened with murder by the same people? When they know that the remaining family members are also threatened with murder by the same gang and they know that the gang know where they live, they are happy to let the family remain in their home with just a patrol car stationed outside?
The main character, badly injured, can escape from a hospital room where the police are stationed directly outside, dressed only in a hospital gown and make his way back home without incident, the police apparently clueless as to where he might be headed? The police know who the murderers are but are unable to locate them despite issuing an APB for them? Yet the father of the murdered family has no problem whatsoever in finding where they hang out? There are so many other examples of this lazy script and lazy direction; I cannot be bothered to list them all.
If America is really like this, and I cannot in all honesty believe that it is, then anyone choosing to live there must be certifiable. Instead, this is more likely just another B movie churned out by Hollywood to appeal to those who are stimulated by what they see with their eyes rather than by what might cause them to reflect. If you choose to watch this movie, leave any vestige of credulity you might possess at the door and desire only to have your baser emotions pandered to. Weak plot, wooden acting and with similar relevance and gravitas as a cheap pornographic movie - you wouldn't want to watch it twice.
Wolf Creek (2005)
Opportunity Missed
DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THIS FILM. LOTS OF SPOILERS!
A prerequisite of any film, or story for that matter, is to get the audience emotionally involved. The audience must care what happens to the main character(s). This film did a great job to begin with, immersing us in the wonderful scenery and vast emptiness of the Australian outback, as well as going some way to fleshing out the three main characters. The languorous pace of the first half of the film was very effective in building up the suspense. We knew something awful was going to happen and the longer the wait, the more dreadful it would likely be.
The fate that awaited the three travelling companions was truly shocking and it seemed they would all be murdered in the most hideous fashion. Then the makers of this film got lazy. Big time lazy. They resorted to a hackneyed and overworked formula that has been done a million times before - The good guys somehow get the upper hand over the bad guy, assume the bad guy is dead, escape and then realise the bad guy wasn't really dead and he's coming after them. Yawn.
Anyone about to be raped, tortured and die a horrible, pain-filled lingering death who, when by a stroke of colossal good fortune finds that they have a chance to avert this fate, ASSUMES that their would be rapist/torturer/murderer is dead rather than making positively, absolutely sure they are, particularly when they have ample opportunity to do so, is insufferably and unmitigatedly stupid.
And I, along with many others I would suspect, have great difficulty in empathising with insufferably and unmitigatedly stupid people. In other words, from this point on in the film I didn't care what happened to these two girls. I didn't care one bit. They were given a second chance and they totally squandered it, along with any sympathy I had for their characters. If they couldn't care whether their tormentor was dead, why should I?
(For anyone out there who would argue that they were under a lot of stress/squeamish/not thinking clearly, I would ask what's to think about? Your life is about to be taken away from you and then, by some miracle, you're given a clear second chance to live. If you want to ASSUME that you will be given a third chance if you screw up on the second chance, fine, but if you're wrong and you only get that second chance, whose fault is it if someone flicks your off switch/rips out your spine?)
The film makers were lazy because this was the one part in the film where they had complete licence to use their imaginations. (The story was reputedly inspired by true events, but everything that happened to the girls is pure fiction because the only survivor and witness to these events was kept in isolation throughout). All they had to do was make sure the audience continued to care about what might happen to two of the three main characters. In this, they failed miserably.
Sadly, this is just one more schlock/horror B movie, albeit with different and interesting scenery.
The Magdalene Sisters (2002)
Utterly shameful
Warning. If you don't like a spade being called a spade and prefer instead to use the term "digging implement", then your sensibilities may be affronted by these comments. I could care less.
This is a very moving, insightful and powerful film that brings to light a most shameful episode in the history of the Republic of Ireland and the Catholic Church. This film will make you angry. It will make you sad. It will make you ashamed that in the so-called developed world, such institutionalised abuse can take place with the full knowledge and acquiescence of the State, the Church and the general population, although I suspect many Irish people will profess ignorance of these events in much the same way as many Germans did of the concentration camps.
If your knowledge of Ireland is confined to the glossy tourist brochure spiel of traditional pubs serving Guinness, folk music, rugged scenery and leprechauns, your illusions will be shattered, because this film strips away the veneer of "quaint" and exposes a much darker side that exists just below the surface. You will learn of a country where great swathes of the population are unquestioningly subservient to a Catholic Church that preaches piety but practises repression, cruelty, paedophilia, avarice and self-indulgence on an industrial scale. 30,000 Irish women were sent away to these institutions so the Church could make money from slave labour and many were kept imprisoned until they died. The last "Catholic Laundry" in the Republic of Ireland closed less than ten years ago, in 1996!
Bravo to the people who made this film and to everyone connected with it. It is only by bringing such attitudes and practices to the attention of a wider audience that we can hope they will never be repeated.