charleski2000 Reviews

The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (2023)

Fine performances, but doesn't translate well

[5/10 · 9 October 2023]

Wouk's original is set in WWII and concerns the tensions that arose when the US Navy faced a sudden influx of educated professionals after Pearl Harbour. It is, essentially, an exploration of the final throes of the Modernist shock that transformed Western society in the first half of the 20th century. As such, it is intimately rooted in its time. This film attempts to transport the setting 80 years to the future, and that doesn't go well.

The book, play, and especially the 1954 film starring Humphrey Bogart should all be familiar (if you haven't seen the Bogart film, go watch it rather than this one), so there's no need to recap the plot. Wouk's essential premise is that there's a place in the Navy for crusty old paranoid seadogs like Queeg. This may have been true in the 1940s, it's not true in the 2020s. When transported to a modern setting Queeg is so blatantly unfit for command the viewer is left wondering why the panel failed to censure the psychiatric evaluation board for gross negligence. The prosecutor's attack on the defense lawyer (Greenwald) after he lets Queeg self-destruct on the stand is absurd and (sadly) shrewish. Greenwald's final speech in which he indicts Lt. Keefer for filling the exec's head with fancy new-fangled terms like 'paranoid' is simply bizarre.

If this film accomplishes anything, it's to show how much standards of education and professionalism have risen in the past 80 years. Any commander of a modern Naval vessel needs to cope with constant complex demands and is subject to rigorous evaluation. The notion of such a commander getting away with spending three days personally testing keys because he was denied a second helping of strawberries is laughable, and should trigger a high-level review of why Queeg wasn't filtered out long before it happened.

The one redeeming aspect is that this is one of the last performances of the magnificent Lance Reddick, and worth watching for that alone.

Blue Beetle (2023)

Meh

[4/10 · 22 September 2023]

Another example of how the superhero beat-em-up genre has fallen flat on its face. It's tempting to write this off as just another DC B-team dud, but the fact is that the fare coming from Marvel these days is just as weak. The attempt to spice things up with a sad appeal to diversity (The hero is Latino! He speaks Spanish!) is just insulting, because it's the same old tired storyline dressed up in slightly different clothes.

Studios need to wise up. Marvel lucked out over a decade ago, but there's no point racing for that bus today - it's left long ago. There have been a few examples of people trying to do something genuinely creative or entertaining with the superhero genre, but studios keep chickening out. So instead we get sad trash like this that just deserves to vanish into the obscurity it deserves.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023)

Great fun

[8/10 · 7 May 2023]

A breath of fresh air in the action/fantasy genre, though it has to be said that Marvel's output has been falling flat for a couple of years now. Hugh Grant has a fine career ahead of him as a panto villain, Michelle Rodriguez is magnificent as always (especially when she goes all googly-eyed) and Chris Pine couldn't be more perfectly cast.

All the previous D&D films have been achingly naff, which may put you off. But this is a triumph, and excellent fun from start to finish. If you're on a quest for escapist fantasy and have suffered under the harsh lash of all the duds that have been landing in cinemas lately then take heart, for your quest is at an end.

Fall (I) (2022)

Pity about the stupidity

[5/10 · 11 September 2022]

This is a win if you're looking for tension and some great stunts. But you can't help groaning at the pervasive stupidity on display. The women go climbing a derelict mast for thrillz with no recon, no backup and don't even bother to tell anyone of their plan. They break every rule in the book, and suffer the consequences. You can't help laughing when they desperately cry for help from a couple of men who've parked an RV in the middle of a featureless desert - haven't they seen Breaking Bad? Do they really think a meth cook is going to call 911?

Good job painting extreme sports as a calling for empty-headed thrill-seekers who need to do the world a favour and remove themselves from the gene pool. If you're looking for a undemanding B-movie that will serve up some tension then it's OK, just remember to turn your brain off.

Irma Vep (2022)

Develops and changes radically

[9/10 · 2 September 2022]

The show starts out as a satire: the director is a narcissist prone to tantrums and endless retakes, the lead actor is a a diva who obssesses over her ex-lovers while pretending not to, the male leads are either trying to take over the direction or focussed on getting high, and the whole thing is financed by a perfume company who's using it to lure the lead into doing adverts for them. It's a nightmare!

And yet, over the course of the eight episodes, it morphs subtly but radically. Until finally you come to appreciate that this is nothing more than a celebration of the magic and wonder of the moving image. I am deeply cynical of most such efforts, which is why I'm all the more impressed when a show or movie manages to pull it off.

I haven't seen the original movie, but didn't feel that was an issue, though you need to know it exists, as the show is a reflection of itself.

The Terminal List (2022– )

Bring back Johnny Karate

[4/10 · 16 July 2022]

Let's face it, Chris Pratt's status as an action star peaked with Johnny Karate and Burt Macklin FBI. His outings in the Marvel-verse are a suitable tribute to those iconic roles. But this drab fare is just an embarrassment.

You're not paranoid if they actually _are_ out to get you! That basically sums up the plot, and the amount of eye-rolling induced by the early episodes may have you seeking medical attention. Apart from that the show's just a mix of the usual he-man tropes swirling around in an empty uniform. It's a little sad that there are still plenty of people desperate for this sort of vacuous alpha fantasy, but you have to wonder if they're also the ones who don't realise that Homelander is the bad guy.

All the same, sometimes you just want some brainless pap, and this is perfect for those times when you just want to switch off and veg in front of the telly.

The Lazarus Project (2022–2023)

Don't be put off by Ep1

[7/10 · 28 June 2022]

The first episode heavily features the overrated Essiedu putting on a low-rent Dr. Who Companion shtick. So it's easy to get fed up and dismiss the show. But you'd be missing some impressive performances from Anjli Mohindra, Rudi Dharmalingam and others, and Essiedu thankfully ends up just being a part of the ensemble. So it's well worth persisting to Ep3 at least, especially as the plot manages a degree of originality that's unusual these days.

1883 (2021–2022)

A perfect ending, pity they can't leave it there.

[8/10 · 3 March 2022]

At its outset this looks like just another Taylor Sheridan tough-guy effort, but it ends up being something quite fine. Sheridan's love for this genre and his dedication to detail and accuracy shines through. He's clearly far better suited to this than the Dallas-with-mountains soap-opera style that has led to Yellowstone becoming a faltering (though still very popular) mess.

At its heart this is a coming-of-age story centering on Elsa Dutton, the 18yr daughter of a Confederate captain heading west to banish the horrors of his past and the poverty of reconstruction. Tennage bildungsromas are two-a-penny, but seldom has TV provided us with such a glorious depiction of the joys and terrors elicited by her journey through a wild land slowly succumbing to the flood of humanity. Sheridan has often claimed that his aim with Yellowstone is exploring relationships between the land and those who live on and in it, and with season 1 of 1883 this comes to its fullest fruition.

The show is capped-off with one of the most perfect endings I have seen. Inevitably there will of course be a season 2 because heaven forbids TV executives from avoiding milking a successful show until it's dry. But subsequent seasons will be structurally and inevitably thematically different. It will take a great effort for Sheridan to match the grandeur he has encapsulated in the first season.

Station Eleven (2021–2022)

Pretentious Twaddle

[3/10 · 30 January 2022]

Take some Big Ideas. Add some Big Emotions. Mix in a generous helping of Big Issues. Top it off with some Big HBO Money. Give it all a Big Shake.

And you end up with this sort of Big Befuddled Botch. You keep feeling that you _should_ care about the characters, but the further you get into the show the more you realise that you really can't.

No Time to Die (2021)

Best Bond?

[9/10 · 13 November 2021]

The best film of the Craig era and a good contender for best Bond of all time. It provides the right amount of payoff to make sense of the whole Craig-era Bond project, and the producers and writers deserve as much credit for this as Daniel Craig himself.

The only niggle is that the finale is telegraphed a little too obviously.

The World to Come (2020)

Bored farm wife has an affair

[3/10 · 9 July 2021]

I started off really wanting to like this movie. But ...

Katherine Waterston plays a bored wife on an isolated farm in the middle of the 19th century. She thinks her husband is a dullard and has a deep-seated conviction that's she's too good for him. Then a pretty neighbour moves in down the road so she livens up the tedium by having an affair.

This is basically Madame Bovary stripped down to a skeleton and shorn of any of the insight you'll find in that classic, but with a lesbian angle bolted on to make it seem artsy. It manages to be both dire and dour in equal proportions.

Army of the Dead (2021)

Aliens 2

[4/10 · 28 May 2021]

James Cameron's Aliens is one of the great action movies of all time. It has had enormous influence on the films that came after. But I don't know I've seen any quote it so literally and at such length. The quotes go right down to lines lifted verbatim, "You don't see them ****ing each other over."

The difference is that Aliens was Sigourney Weaver versus the Mother-Queen, and this is Dave Batista versus the Husband-King. Oh, and obviously all the zenomorph space stuff is ripped out and zombie Las Vegas grafted in place. Instead of Newt we have a load of money.

Still, it's enjoyable as a b-movie.

I might have said it was well-made, except for the fact that Zack Snyder needs to stop messing with technical stuff he doesn't understand and realise that the setting to remove dead pixels needs to be kept 'on'. Turning it off on the camera does *not* result in a better picture. Luckily the studio can largely fix that in post if the film makes enough money to justify the considerable expense this will involve. At least two of the camera units he used to film had different faulty pixels, and the eye jumps right to them every time they appear. It's like an old movie that was shot on the cheap and had a couple of reels go slightly bad in processing which were then spliced in with the rest of the takes.

Promising Young Woman (2020)

Devastating and essential

[10/10 · 8 May 2021]

An absolutely outstanding movie, and essential viewing. This is the most emotionally brutal film I've seen for a long time. Just when you think you've got a grip on it, it throws a scene at you that twists things further and ups the ante.

I'm sure this film has its faults, I just can't think of any, perhaps because I'm still reeling from its emotional impact 12 hours later.

Shadow and Bone (2021– )

By-the-numbers YAsploitation

[3/10 · 3 May 2021]

I ended up rooting for the bad guys, because the goodies in this show are such a tedious and boring bunch. Ultimately it's just another example of how you can make a mint in YA fiction by just mixing up the right ingredients. The whole thing isn't helped by the fact that Jessie Mei Li is seriously out of her depth, was she taught acting by Roger Moore?

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021)

Marvel juvenilia

[4/10 · 24 April 2021]

Apparently the solution to problems with immigration is to have a guy in a silly costume give world leaders a stern talking-to.

It had its moments, but overall this is ridiculously juvenile stuff even for Marvel.

Moxie (I) (2021)

Fairly amusing

[6/10 · 28 March 2021]

Anything with Any Poehler is worth watching. But her brilliant comic touches only appear in passing in this movie. It also manages to strike some rather sour notes: No girls, flashing your boobs at the boys is NOT a feminist statement, it's just a symptom of insecurity, and pretending otherwise is dishonest.

But overall it's worth a watch, and does a reasonable portrayal of the difficulties involved in managing anger and directing it effectively at the right targets.

I Care a Lot (2020)

Nasty

[1/10 · 9 March 2021]

A nasty film about a nasty despicable character. The nastiest part has got to be Jonathan Blakeson's ridiculous attempt to provide a pseudo-feminist excuse for the psychopathic derangement of Pike's character.

The New Mutants (2020)

Avoid if you read a lot of comics. Watch if you don't.

[8/10 · 22 January 2021]

There are a lot of negative reviews here, and I'm not going to say they're wrong. This is not a film for anyone who's heavily invested in the Marvel mutant ecosphere. Put bluntly, if you read a lot of comics you won't like the film, but if you last picked up a superhero comic 20yrs ago this is worth a look. The film retreads a lot of tropes that will be overly familiar to some, but it's trying to show elements of this slice of culture that haven't made it to the big flashy pictures.

Personally, I liked it. This is definitely a result of the female stars, who put in performances that are really worth seeing. Maisie Williams is splendid, and shows an increase in her depth that's rarely found from other child stars. But the star is Blu Hunt, and that's so blatantly obvious that it's bizarre to find she's not at the top of the bill in the credits. I can only assume that Maisie Williams and Anna Taylor-Joy had better agents, but those agents really haven't done them any favours in this case, because it leaves you with a sense of injustice.

Bridgerton (2020– )

Increasingly turgid and tedious

[3/10 · 31 December 2020]

It's chick-lit tripe like this that makes you realise how astonishingly brilliant Jane Austen truly was. Quinn is just another Austen wannabe who radically fails to capture any of the nuance.

Shonda Rhimes' fantasy that England would cast off racial prejudice at the very time it was starting to ramp up its slave trade to industrial levels is grossly insensitive. Quite the opposite of being 'woke'. (And no, Queen Charlotte wasn't black, that's a B.S. theory that's been thoroughly debunked.) But at least it did give work to some superb actors and provide one of the most magnificent Afros to grace the screen, so I suppose some good came of it.

Skyfall (2012)

Classic Bond, but a bit too classic

[5/10 · 7 November 2020]

On doing a rewatch of all the Craig Bond films I'm surprised at how poorly Skyfall comes across after Quantum of Solace. They clearly went for a more classic Bond outing on this one (adjusting his cufflink after crashing through a wall), but it all falls a bit flat after the sophistication of CR and QoS.

Away (2020)

Eye-rollingly bad

[2/10 · 23 September 2020]

I'm sure Hinderaker has a bright future ahead of him writing scripts for 'reality' TV. He's excellent at ticking all the boxes and manufacturing artificial conflict on-the-fly.

He clearly had no interest in writing a show based on authentic, professional characters and the challenges they would have to overcome. Why bother doing the work required for that when you can just open your box of tricks and inject some Drama every episode?

This is not science-fiction, this is bad reality TV ... 'in space'. It's so bad it makes 'The First' look pretty decent in comparison.

Little Fires Everywhere (2020)

Gets better, then gets spectacularly worse

[5/10 · 15 July 2020]

This starts out slow, and you won't get a real feel for it until you're a few episodes in. But once it's got going it turns in to an interesting depcition of a couple of women who are having problems facing up to the way they've screwed up their lives, and their daughters, who are busy screwing things up either in emulation of or opposition to their mothers.

Unfortunately the central point of conflict feels desperately forced and contrived, maybe this is handled better in the book. But the show only really crashes and burns in the final episode. For seven episodes the finely-drawn characterisations have explored the difficulties these women face in accepting responsibility for their decisions and dealing with the consequences. But the final episode sees this all ripped up and substituted with a trite victimisation trope tied to a vaccuous moral about escaping from a cage. After spending so long seeing the damage these women have done to themselves by failing to confront their own personal truths, the only answer given is to run away from it all.

If you want to feel good about this show, stop watching halfway through the last episode, you won't miss anything. Apart from that, any show with Reese Witherspoon is worth watching, though this won't rank among her finest perfomances.

Greyhound (2020)

A great procedural movie, and a great tribute

[9/10 · 10 July 2020]

This is a movie about the procedure of command. This is an innately more complex task than the more common episodic approach that buries the procedural reality under a mask of plot and character. But this film pulls it off, largely by not shying away from the task.

Guess what? Naval warfare, especially the sort of highly asymmetric warfare shown here, doesn't really revolve around the captain demanding more speed while the engineer says she canna take it. If you're looking for a movie that's truly respectful of the labours and sacrifices made in the Battle of the Atlantic, then this is a fitting tribute.

Don't expect a character movie, don't expect to spend time below decks exploring the usual stereotypes. This movie is seen through the eyes of the captain, and the captain alone. I can think of very few other films that dare to depict the loneliness of command quite so clearly. There's little time for thought, there's no time to process or even truly grasp the horrors that they encounter (something which forms one of the roots of PTSD). What there is is the fight.

The fight is relentless and deeply technical. We've become used to fight scenes carrying a few bits of technical gibberish followed by some visceral and personalised action. There's no gibberish in this film, and the latter consists of the captain cutting his feet on broken glass. The movie, like the mind of the captain, is consumed with the intricate technical and personal demands required to hunt down a submarine at that time. That was clearly the aim here, and the movie has succeeded admirably at showing that particular aspect of this type of warfare. This is not a common way to stage a war movie, but it's worth doing well on a few occasions, and this movie achieves its goal.

The reviews show that many come looking for something more conventional, and end up missing the point, which is a shame.

To the Ends of the Earth (2019)

Schmatz

[4/10 · 4 July 2020]

Yes, there's no denying it, the Japanese are the modern masters of schmaltz, and this film is a perfect example. Yoko is a 'reporter' for a low-rent Japanese travel show whose talent consists of reeling off inane comments to camera in a squeaky, excitable voice, often after having been subjected to low-grade torture by her uninspired director. The film's ostensible narrative thrust concerns Yoko's artistic awakening as she finally manages to connect with her true emotions. Yes, it's that bad, and the final payoff is supremely unconvincing.

The film's one redeeming quality comes from a couple of subtexts concerning Japanese xenophobia and the gross inanity of the pop-culture ethos. Yoko blithely wanders into a restricted area and is so scared of the locals that she runs from the police when they approach her to check what she had been filming. The director is obsessed with filming a rare fish, but merrily waltzes right past the glories of Samarkand's Registan Square. But these aren't enough to redeem the film as a whole.

Central Park (2020–2022)

Ghastly singing, vapid humour

[1/10 · 10 June 2020]

I've watched some bad TV in my time, but this must be looking for some sort of prize. I'm not a fan of musicals, but when done well they can be very enteratining. This is not the case here. The music is leaden and trite and the singing is simply awful, and by that I mean really, REALLY bad. I bet you'd get better vocal performances from your local high-school. If you've seen Pierce Brosnan in Mamma Mia then you'll know what we're getting here.

Apparently this is also supposed to be a comdey of some sort. The only comic material I spotted was a few listless attempts at some old jokes.