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Reviews
Dr. No (1962)
Hasn't aged well
Now that Amazon have released all the official Bond films on Prime (April 2022) we decided to start at the beginning with Dr No. We found it very entertaining but not for the right reasons! Some scenes made us laugh out loud, for example in the car chase scene there is a clunky back projection sequence of Connery steering frantically but not in sync with the moving scenery behind him, and pulling ridiculous faces as if in terror/excitement or needing the toilet maybe. Also the chasing car brakes to avoid hitting the obstruction and then we next see it tumbling down the mountain side in flames without any intermediate shots to show why/how it got there.
Connery's acting was very poor in places and his inexperience really showed. It will be interesting to see how he develops as we watch the next few films in the franchise.
The audio was awful on the version we watched with dialogue whisper quiet followed by extremely loud action scenes. Don't have this problem with other films on Amazon Prime.
It's difficult to see how this franchise became so popular after such a bad start - however I was 15 when this came out and it seemed very glamorous and exotic at the time! I don't know if the budget was quite low but some of the scenes looked very poor even by 1960's TV program standards at the time. It has to be watched of course as the start of an iconic franchise that has embedded itself in our culture, but, oh boy, this was not a great film in our opinion.
Quantum of Solace (2008)
Worst of the Craig Bond movies
Rewatching the Daniel Craig Bond movies and found that I hadn't watched Quantum of Solace, well not all the way through anyway. It jars that this is supposed to follow straight on from Casino Royale in almost real time, but the direction of QoS is so different from Casino Royale that it might have well have been a few years later. I found the action sequences too loud, too long, too violent and too many. The editing of these scenes also made them seem disjointed and disconnected. There's not much of a plot and the villain is a bit underwhelming. All the acting is fine but the Bond style is missing somehow, there's little elegance or glamour in the characters or locations. There's no Q so there's no outrageous technology to chuckle at, just guns and fists and more guns. Also strangely humourless which I guess was deliberate but again a Bond film without some cheesy humour is missing something. One last stupid thing - the hotel in the Bolivian desert is powered by hydrogen fuel cells which is nonsense as it's a desert and banks of solar panels would be used. Oh, but then it wouldn't all blow up at the end would it!! Oh not the last stupid thing - covering Gemma Arterton in oil in a poorly judged 'homage' to Shirley Eaton in Goldfinger was just crass.
Witness for the Prosecution (1957)
Great plot but some odd acting
A typical Agatha Christie twisty plot with much to enjoy. Some puzzles aside from the deliberate ones though. How did the character Leonard Vole, who met the Marlene Dietrich character in Germany while serving in the British army, acquire an American accent (he was played by Tyrone Power) for example? Marlene Dietrich at one point played a cockney woman so atrociously that she would have fooled no one, and appeared to be channelling a witch from Macbeth. No wonder she didn't get the Oscar nomination she expected! Also Tyrone Power's shocking overacting can only partially be excused as we find out his character is lying a lot of the time. That Charles Laughton's barrister was supposedly convinced of Vole's innocence by this overacting actually made me laugh.
You don't expect great depth or human insight from an Agatha Christie story and you won't find any in this film, but is an interesting example of fifties Hollywood cinema and quite good fun and worth watching just for Charles Laughton's performance.
Stowaway (2021)
Big plot holes, disappointing.
I have great respect for Joe Penna but this was a let down. Two big plot holes killed it for me. Firstly how the hell did Michael end up where he did after he was doing something with the second stage firing pins and thought he was hooked on or something......so he fell, what? Inside the outer skin of the crew compartment?! This was so ludicrously unlikely that I expected some plot development that he had deliberately stowed away for devious reasons. But no, he jut fell inside the crew capsule. Just unbelievably silly as the premise for the whole film.
Secondly the CDR (or whatever) was damaged by Michael falling into it/through it (yeah I know) and it was a mission critical piece of kit about the size of a brief case. And they didn't carry any spares for it? It unscrewed easily so a replacement? Or a way of repairing it? Or an alternative backup system? Nope, none of these - It was mission critical remember and it had no redundancy. This was so unlikely but it was the crucial plot device that led to what what followed. So what followed was just ridiculous. I kept thinking there has to be more to this but no, that was it. There were nice ideas in this film I just didn't care about the fate of the characters because they all deserved to die for taking part in such a ridiculous plot.
Crimson Peak (2015)
Really enjoyed the twist at the end
So what twist, everyone else who has reviewed the film here will ask. Well, the final shot during the credits shows the book of the film's title written by Edith Cushing. So most of the film is in the imagination of Edith. The clues are there if you look for them. She writes a story with ghosts. She's told it needs a love story which she scoffs at but does so anyway in her own macabre way. Yes the story is predictable because she's writing it from her imagination when she has not lived enough in the real world to know any better. Del Toro's imagery of the gothic mansion and goings on are perfect to illustrate a young woman's imagination of things which she has never experienced. Almost everything she imagined came from listening to Thomas Sharpe speaking to her father's company, it's all there. Oh, and the butterflies. And the nightmares of a child. Brilliant, I loved it..
Unsane (2018)
Insane plot or unsane?
I wanted to watch this as I read it was filmed on an iPhone and the director has a good back catalog, plus some excellent cast members. It was ok but once we saw events happening independent of the main character (eg the police finding the body of the man whose identity the stalker stole to get a job at the institution) we realise that the main character was not imagining everything so the suspense was lost. After that there were some standard jump shock stuff and an 'enigmatic' ending which didn't satisfy me at least. So, ok, but could have been a lot better.
Snowpiercer (2013)
Startlingly good, weird and wonderful
Firstly I must say that the reviewers who thought this film was crap should stick to watching super hero/Marvel/Star Wars films. This film is in a different genre by a well respected director and if Weinstein (just convicted of sexual assault) hadn't fallen out with him and petulantly squashed a wider release it would surely have a better reputation.
Perhaps because Chris Evans was in it some of the aforesaid "it was crap" reviewers expected a different film altogether.
I need to watch it again as there are many levels of mystery to be uncovered. I think what people think are 'plot holes' are the director making points that are not immediately obvious but which reveal themselves - even while you sit and ponder on what you just watched.
There are many moments of horror, comedy, farce and violent action. And yes, some of it makes no sense at first, but stick with it and if you enjoy savouring the art and craft of film making you will be well rewarded.
Brawl in Cell Block 99 (2017)
*spoiler alert*
*spoiler follows*
The climax of this film requires you to believe a cell phone call can be made from deep inside an ancient prison with feet thick stone walls everywhere.
That how bad it is. Still, if you like seeing people's heads being stood on and their skulls splintering and their jaws bursting out, and other explicit acts of extreme violence then give it a try. You won t be disappointed.
If, on the other hand, you like great acting and great writing then I would give it a miss. I fast forwarded through a lot of it so I could at least see how it ended so maybe I missed some good bits, but I doubt it.
Killer Joe (2011)
Violence for the sake of it
I saw no redeeming features in this film. Yes, I watched all the way through hoping for some redemption of one of the characters or a moral message to emerge. But nope. Everyone was stupid and/or violent trapped by greed and stupidity. The violence was bloody and explicit and horrible. Watch this if you like that sort of thing (oh and there's a bit of nudity and humiliation of women to entertain you as well). A thoroughly nasty film with a cliche of a guess-the-ending non-ending.
Bad Move (2017)
Sadly doesn't work for me
I watched the first episode of Bad Move hoping for a Jack Dee vehicle that featured his extreme put-upon miserable long suffering character portrayal that we have come to expect. Unfortunately we get Jack Dee 'lite'- pared back, presumably in the hope of a broader 'family' audience.
Sadly for me it just doesn't work. I have continued watching hoping it would get better but it hasn't. The noticeable lack of adverts in the break is a giveaway that audience numbers are not what was hoped. This is despite an excellent cast including Kerry Godliman and Miles Jupp who do their best with a frankly dull script and predictable 'sitcom' plots. One crass element is the wholesale lifting of the 'Little Britain' unhelpful shopkeeper character who continually shouts questions to an unseen partner. Unfortunately this features in every episode as if it is original and hilarious. It is neither.
The Jack Dee character, Steve, makes an unlikely web designer and since his livelihood depends on internet access the fact there is none when they first move in is ridiculous - they wouldn't have moved there without checking there was fast broadband available. He seems too one dimensional and I expect more venom and angst from Jack Dee than we get here. It's safe family friendly stuff with some good ideas but it's disappointingly thin gruel for comedy fans and whilst everyone has obviously worked very hard on the production I would be surprised if it got another series. Maybe the addition of another writer might spark it into life?