scotch-4 Reviews

Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007)

Fluff and gush

[1/10 · 17 February 2008]

"Elizabeth, The Golden Age" is an unbelievable disappointment. If you know anything about what actually happened you'd wonder what you were watching. If you have ever been to Fotheringhay, for example, you would know it is not by a lake in a setting that looks like Scotland.

Also Elizabeth's famous speech at Tilbury to her troops leaves out the best part, "I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain...." Why? The Armada battle is all-wrong with even the guns looking like they were from the Napoleonic Period.

Also Mary Queen of Scots probably had a French accent, as in the Helen Mirren version, as Mary was raised in France.

If you want a great scripted film just watch "The Lion in Winter." It always astounds me why filmmakers go to such effort with production values but can't get the nuts and bolts right.

Jerry Maguire (1996)

A real stinker

[1/10 · 9 December 2007]

This movie was so bad we couldn't get through the credits to watch any more. Tom Cruise is lethal in his overacting. You could see from the credits how bad it was going to be. It is filled with standard clichés and that's just in the credits. You knew it wasn't going to get any better. A waste of a movie rental. A real stinker. Luckily we turned on the television just to catch the start of Casablanca, a truly great romantic film. Where is today's Humphrey Bogart? Don't waste your time and money on this film. Forget Jerry Maguire just re-watch Casablanca. You'll come away amazed at what a great movie can be. This film is not worth ten lines of text.

Trailer Park Boys: The Movie (2006)

Movie format is a flabby fit

[5/10 · 15 April 2007]

One of the great things about Trailer Park Boys on TV are the scripts. In a half hour format, they are cleaver and tight. The movie format with the given script only stretched it out and makes it flabby.

If the film had been conceived with the same snappy pace as the TV versions if would have been much better; perhaps four snappy subplots cleverly linked together. The film draws too much on previous TV episodes and needs more new material.

While the production values are better than the TV series, I don't think this works for the film either. TPB are down and dirty; no polish required.

The Good Shepherd (2006)

An American rip off!

[4/10 · 6 April 2007]

I've just watched The Good Shepherd. It is a typical American production. It is a complete rip-off of the brilliant performance by Alec Guinness as George Smiley from the John La Carre British productions of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People. Good grief it has only taken 25 years for you Yanks to figure out what is going on. No wonder George Bush is your President. Robert De Niro you should be ashamed of yourself.

And because IMDb thinks you can't say what you think in less than ten lines: Here's a line. Here's another. And one more for brevity.

Scott Plear, Vancouver, Canada

The Gathering Storm (2002 TV Movie)

Great Actors, Trivial Script

[4/10 · 29 September 2003]

The Gathering Storm

Albert Finney and Vanessa Redgrave are striking in their appearance as the Churchills in the HBO, BBC, Scott Free Production of "The Gathering Storm." It is unfortunate that such fine talent has been wasted on such a trivial script.

"The Gathering Storm", which for anyone who has read Churchill's book by the same title, will find this story has thin links to the original text. Good grief, we are still trumpeting the old canard of the Treaty of Versailles being the cause of the Second World War - read Margaret MacMillan's "Paris 1919." And Hitler had black eyes? He did? I understand they were pale blue. Yes, Churchill did spend working time in the bath but after the third bath scene I was beginning to think I was seeing out-takes for a new production of Marat. What makes for history in this production is lazy and dull. This is hard to accomplish with such a rich and dynamic period of time.

The script is in fact strikingly redundant to the point of plagiarising the tremendous production made several years ago, "Churchill: the Wilderness Years" with Robert Hardy and Siân Phillips. When there are so many wonderful stories to be told about Churchill, why repeat what has already been done so well. (Just read the books by John Lukacs, "Five Days in London: May 1940" and "The Duel: The Eighty-Day Struggle Between Churchill and Hitler" for great story sources).