graestella Reviews

Doctor Who (2005–2022)

Where is The Doctor ?

[2/10 · 24 January 2019]

'This isn't Doctor Who' ; 'Where is The Doctor?' 'This is Impostor Dr Who'. Everyone is asking similar things to this rhetorically. Perhaps we need to actually ask the right questions? Perhaps we all feel it in our bones. Yes, this isn't Doctor Who. The Doctor has been replaced by the TARDIS energy matrix. His life-force is trapped inside the TARDIS. When the regeneration took place the Doctor was suicidal. To prevent his death the TARDIS changed places with him. This is why the gender changed. This why she was completely blase at having new genitals, despite noticing last time that he had new kidneys. The otherwise crap second episode was called the 'Ghost Monument.' This was a clue that that was where he really was. Jodie is running around looking confused because she is the TARDIS, not the Doctor. In actual fact she is acting her socks off pretending to be a machine in a woman's body. If this isn't true, the series is beyond awful and needs cancelling.

Jackie (V) (2016)

A Wasted Opportunity

[6/10 · 2 June 2017]

This was such a wasted opportunity. Natalie Portman's performance was superb. No one can detract from that, but it needed something more to make this into a film. You kept waiting for it to get started, but it never did. Things just plodded on for the full length of the movie. As Jackie was the centre of the story, only 2 dimensional cyphers seem to have been recruited to pad out the rest of the cast. Many only had first names. So we played 'spot the historical character' as Bob, Bill, Jack, Dave etc were introduced. Some captions for the uninitiated would have been useful. I have studied the period for 30 years and I was confused. What the casual viewer was supposed to make of this I do not know. Also some characters were unnamed, yet played by totally miscast actors. So I'm only guessing that Clint Hill and Godfrey McHugh were who I supposed they were. There was also a coterie of unnamed women, who were completely unrecognisable. They had about one line each. One may have been Eunice Kennedy. Who knows? Attempts were made to reproduce some historical scenes. Such as the LBJ swearing in. But for some reason some details were omitted. Why was Albert Thomas's sly wink to LBJ deleted? It happened. It's clearly in all the photographs. This raises questions about the whole idea of verisimilitude. What do you keep in, and what do you keep out? Perhaps whole people. Poor Edward Kennedy was deleted again. (Just like in the Kennedy's TV series) For most of the film. Until, someone realised he had to be shown marching in the parade with Jackie and Bobby. Then a mute, unintroduced actor was included. Who was never seen again afterwards. Other people, who Jackie had poor relationships with, like Katzenbach and Hoover were also conspicuous by their absence. Lots of dialogue could have resulted by their inclusion. The real people who were included, Bobby and LBJ, were so lacklustre and unlike themselves that it also did a disservice to history. I get it. This was supposed to be all about one woman. The title said as much. But she did not exist in a vacuum. She interacted with strong ego driven people who made history. Surely they should have been shown doing that. The Director was hell bent on showing her as 'alone' so everyone else had had to be downplayed, silenced, or in some cases erased. One surprise was the first ever correct representation of the effects of the bullets on JFK. This has been misrepresented so many times before that I've lost count. So kudos for that.

La La Land (2016)

Good, But Don't Believe The Hyperbole

[8/10 · 13 January 2017]

From the incandescent reviews that preceded this picture, I was expecting something like a cross between 'Singing in the Rain' and 'Moulin Rouge'. By the end of the opening sequence on the motorway overpass it was obvious we were going to get neither. It was all shot outdoors with naturalistic lighting. Despite this being LA, one of the sunniest places in the world, the light was poor. Shadows fell over faces, and in the night time scenes people almost disappeared, even the two leads. If they hadn't been wearing that yellow dress and a white shirt they would have disappeared altogether. Strangely, on the promo still, both characters are illuminated in a Gene Kelly like glow worthy of Cinemascope. This was disappointing to say the least. Then as the fantasy sequences began, I expected there to be a switch to full lighting, or a change of film stock to zap us into the eponymous 'La La Land' of the title. But no, these were dull and poorly lit as well. Wasted opportunities. How my wife and I yearned for Kelly or Baz Luhrman to jazz this up a bit. (Pun intended). What we got was a pretty prosaic story, with no real antagonist to thwart the couple. There was no evil boss, horrible parents, wicked sister, invading army or other McGuffin to keep them apart in the third act. All we got was a rather contrived row, which could have been sorted out with one phone call. Thousands of couples survive being on the road, or becoming a film star. Why was it so difficult for these two? I thought of Johnny Cash and June Carter. Who really did love each other forever, despite decades of troubles. Then a whole 'Sliding Doors' Alternate Universe happens, and our heroes' lives go off on an inexplicable tangent. Did neither of them pick up the phone in five years? Boy could these guys hold a grudge after one aborted dinner! So, despite being an alleged homage to Hollywood Musicals, we don't get a happy ending. I get it. To suffer for one's Art, pain is necessary, especially in Jazz or in Method Acting, but you sort of promised us one. At least in the promotional material. The acting itself however, was first rate. Both Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone were as good as ever, and did their best with the often underwritten material. For them alone the film still gets an Eight.

Interstellar (2014)

Simply A Masterpiece

[10/10 · 8 November 2016]

To all the bad reviewers on here, I have only one thing to say. If you hate Sci-Fi don't watch a Sci-Fi film. Of course you won't like it. Watch Fast and Furious 8, or whatever number they are up to. Even I found this hard to follow in the first few minutes. There was some mumbled dialogue, and the farm bits seemed far from 'Interstellar'. But I stuck with it. Was I glad I did. It just kept on getting better and drew you in. The confusing early scenes explained themselves eventually with a fantastic 'Bootstrap Paradox' that was worthy of Dr Who or Star Trek at their best. The spacecraft were real hardware and models just like in the 1990s. Not cartoon ones like we have become inured to in recent decades. The acting was fantastic. Especially from Matthew McConaughey who proved once and for all that he is brilliant. (Mind you I've liked him since Sahara.) This was an epic that I was still thinking about the next day, which is always a good thing. I loved the homages to 2001 A Space Odyssey. But Nolan has made a film that somehow even surpassed that classic. This DVD won't be going to the charity shop. Ever.

Tutankhamun (2016)

Come Back Victoria all is forgiven.

[1/10 · 20 October 2016]

I wish this was a full review, but I got so angry that I turned it off twenty minutes in. 1) It's filmed in South Africa, not Egypt. Whether this was to save money, or to prevent anything Egyptian creeping in, it's hard to say. Even the rocks looked wrong. The Valley of the Kings is covered in white limestone chippings. Not the khaki coloured material shown here. The older BBC production 'Egypt' (2005) which covered the same material was filmed in Luxor, and in the largely deserted Western Valley and looked the part. From the opening scene this production looks wrong. 2) Then Carter, hopelessly miscast as a strapping young man, is introduced. He finds an empty tomb and angrily punches out an unnamed French Duke. This event can only be a misrepresentation of him throwing the French tourists (plural) out of the Serapeum at Sakkara in 1905. Hundreds of miles away from the Valley of the Kings. He didn't punch anyone at this incident. Also he was an Inspector at the time and not an Excavator, but all this would slow down the plot and lose the casual viewer. However the BBC version kept it all in and didn't insult the viewer. But then again, punching out a fictitious Duke saved on several French and Arab extras and a second unit setup at a fake Serapeum. 3) Then we are introduced to a synthetic character. A female American Archaeologist called Maggie Lewis. This is in itself unlikely the way women were treated by academia in the period. She is used to replace several male contemporaries of Carter's. Implying that she was his only friend. Saves on the casting I suppose and shipping lots of minor actors out to the expensive South African shoot. 4) Lord Carnarvon is shown arriving in 'Egypt'. He drives a silver sports model of a Rolls Royce which looks far too modern for 1905. Carter's diaries record that the first car in the valley, a Model T Ford, arrived in 1923, after Tut's tomb was discovered. Oh well, it saved on hiring all those pesky horse and carriage teams during the shoot. 5) Then we get some Time Travel. Davis is shown finding a cup. After Carnarvon and Carter are granted their licence to dig in the Valley. How? He had retired by this point. In reality Carter and Carnarvon were digging in several other places for 5 years before digging in the Valley. This would make sense. But the bungling writers had already said that they were in the Valley not somewhere else. It seems at this point the writers had already given up and were just writing anything and not checking the script. 6) Then the cup is taken by the wrong assistant archaeologist to Maggie (who didn't exist) to identify. Agh! It was at this point I wondered what a mess they would make of the major story elements. The discovery of Tut's Tomb, and the alleged romance between Carter and Lady Evelyn. This appalling start didn't bode well. Then I decided to stop beating myself up and turn over. The BBC version, despite several errors, was Shakespeare compared to this. They could have just put that on again and burnt all the money they wasted on this travesty. I believe that they knew this was rubbish before they finished it. Why else did it take so long to make? Then it was previewed, without a scheduled date, for several months. Finally appearing after the much superior 'Victoria' finished its eight week run. This only increased the massive feeling of anti-climax.

A Walk in the Woods (2015)

Does a Bear etc..........

[2/10 · 25 February 2016]

This was a film were they threw out all the best bits in the book and added pointless dialogue. All fans of the original would have been offended by this, including me. That the creators of this did not care about this at all is appalling. The film was also boring. I only kept awake to watch Nick Nolte, who was excellent throughout. Rising well above the dreadful script. Redford, however looked like a pickled Mick Jagger, and was so old he appeared to have difficulty walking across the room in his own house, never mind the Appalachian Trail. He was supposed to be 47. Did he have progeria or something? By the time the bed collapsed in the bunk house, I lost it completely and began to hate the script writers. They were adding slapstick. Ditto the falling in the river, ditto the falling off the none-existent (in the book) ledge. The walk to K Mart in the film included quicksand, surely pretty rare outside of tidal estuaries. This could have been so much better. 'The Way', by Emilio Estevez is still the best walking movie by a mile.

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)

Give it the Bird !

[2/10 · 31 May 2015]

First of all there seemed to be two films. The Black Comedy and Smallville style costume free superhero film that was advertised, and this miserablist Art House thing that we ended up watching. Obviously the media decided that if they advertised it as seen no one would have gone to see it and they would never have recovered the SFX costs of the fantasy sequences. All the cast turned in stellar performances,however which made this even more annoying. You couldn't fault what they did with the dire script and its banal dialogue. Hollywood still doesn't know how use profanity, so why bother ? The eight uses of the word 'balls' was cringe making and made me long for Eddie Murphy or Chris Rock before they lost theirs. Perhaps the redundant use of this word was a comment on the film and it was a load of them after all ? The best thing in it was the use of Batman's modulated voice as his Harvey like alter ego. But then they had to ruin it by making him a solid hallucination and showing us some chickenman joke figure. We never saw Harvey.....better film. The long continuous shots were done better in Rope and had better joins to hide the fact that in places they weren't continuous. Steadycam has already been done to death and merely made you nauseous. That bloody drummer - he was annoying from the credits onward. When he appeared for real (twice) why did no one tell him to Shut the f*** up ? I kept waiting for this to get better - it didn't. The film should have ended when he shot himself. But you could tell they'd added another 10 minutes on the end for the 'ambiguous ending'. There was no need for this. Also, even Kevin Spacey in the weird KPAC did the alien thing better !

Gone Girl (2014)

Agatha Christie for the Internet Generation

[1/10 · 11 March 2015]

The mumbled and unintelligible dialogue lost me for the first ten minutes, but I gave it a second chance as the mystery developed. The boring characters were just about bearable as the plot began to twist and turn. But Affleck and Pike were so cold and mysterious, even with each other, that it was hard to like either of them. So where was your emotional engagement here? Only Margo was remotely interesting. This film also had some of the least erotic and downright odd sex scenes ever filmed. This was a film of two parts. The first part ran through all the clichés of the detective thriller. But we were cheated in the second part when the villainess inexplicably got away with it. In Agatha Christie books, when the killer makes a mistake and has a sudden change of plans this is usually their undoing. As things planned for the original crime stand out like sore thumbs in the adapted scenario. Then they get caught. End of Story! In this particular tale it was the diary. Why would Desi have taken it to a house he didn't know existed, and fail to burn it properly, when he could have burnt it in seconds in the fire at the crime scene ? The cops would have seen through that in seconds, and then the rest of her contradictions would have unravelled. What about the attempted purchase of an illegal gun ? The purchase of the car, the credit card purchases of the electronic toys, the puppets, the Treasure Hunt clues ? None of which could be attributed to Desi, so someone else must have organised or staged them. And just who was supposed to have tipped off the cops to the woodshed ? All non – sequetors that made no sense in the end. Columbo would have had her in the slammer long before the final reel. But the cops just let her off ! The non – examination by the medics of the blood covered Pike was utterly ridiculous. This hospital must miss lots of wounds as they simply don't look for them. Don't let me get taken to this sloppy hospital if I get run over ! She would have had none of the injuries from the initial kidnapping, but a mysterious venepuncture wound on her arm, both of which would have lead the cops once again to think the kidnapping had been staged. We also got treated to homages to Fatal Attraction and The Hand That Rocked The Cradle were the female lead had to be totally insane, not just confident and calculating. This is the old 'male gaze' all women are evil psychos drivel being rehashed for a new generation and we can do without it.

Mr. Turner (2014)

A Waste of Good Talent

[3/10 · 11 March 2015]

I approached this with trepidation after the mess Timothy Spall made of Pierrepoint. Playing the obviously cheerful chap, who as well as being a hangman ran a public house, as a curmudgeon who mumbled a lot. But as I got to see it free on DVD, and hadn't paid to see it I gave it a chance. It was worse than I could have believed. Spall was not only playing Turner as a mumbling curmudgeon, but this time he was inexplicably grunting and snorting for much of the movie. He seemed to be channelling his previous role as the Rat Man from the Harry Potter films. All this was without the extemporised dialogue that Mike Leigh insists his cast use. Some of the dialogue seemed irrelevant and inconsequential. Adding nothing to what already seemed a series of set pieces strung together. Ruth Sheen, who is usually sublime, seemed utterly wasted by this process and seemed in a hurry to disclaim her lines and get back to something more interesting. After this scene I began to watch each of the regular Leigh guest stars as they appeared for their one weeks work. Whole scenes seemed irrelevant. Especially when we had only a couple of hours to give life to a historical figure, why then did we waste whole scenes on made up irrelevancies ? The sex scenes. Surely the one with the downtrodden housemaid has to win a Razzie award for the least erotic ever in film history. And the depiction of the Ruskins, differed so much from the way they were presented in the recent Effie Gray, that I found their numerous scenes of waffling dialogue too much to bare. They were two- dimensional bores, totally unlike their brilliant depiction in the other movie. I actually turned it off screaming during one of their discussions of a painting that wasn't even present in the room. I found a much better film on Channel 4 that kept me engrossed for another hour. So alas I will never know if Mr Turnip, as I was calling him by now, ever painted his masterpiece. I learnt nothing about him that I didn't already know, except that his father was mad and liked to shave pigs heads.

A Good Year (2006)

Une Bonne Vacance

[9/10 · 16 February 2014]

This film had the double whammy of Russell Crowe AND Ridley Scott. It should have been fatuous and tedious - Quelle surprise ! It wasn't.

After a very slow start, and very boring City types who should have all been shot, we finally get to Provence. Like Russel we never leave there again. This film was wonderfully whimsical and an unexpected delight.

Yes, the plot was totally expected. The girl he nearly ran over was obviously going to end up as his girlfriend. He was obviously going to rediscover himself and fall in love with the country side again. But it made a pleasant change from the usual mass carnage and lugubrious battle scenes we normally have to put up with from both the lead and the director. With well studied cameos from Albert Finney and a luminous Marion Cotillard there was a lot to like in this lovely film. I must be going soft in my old age.

Legend of the Mummy (1998)

Definitely Cursed

[1/10 · 22 July 2013]

Always interested in all things Egyptian and Mummy related I invested £1 on this film at a car boot sale recently. Boy did I waste my money ! The first thing you notice on the DVD is the bad transfer and the fuzzy picture. This is not the high resolution digital imagery we have come to expect from Hollywood productions. The film looks like a bad wedding video made by your brother with a VHS.

The movie starts in Egypt 1947, the Valley of the Sorcerer ( wherever that is ) where a young Black Egyptologist carries out a bit of tomb robbing. This is from the first scene ridiculous. How many Black Egyptologists have there been ? You could probably count them on one hand. The elite profession barely tolerated women or middle class ones like Howard Carter. Don't even try to read the hieroglyphs in the tomb. These have just been carved on the Styrofoam walls at random and are meaningless gibberish.

Then we jump forward to the Present Day, which for some reason is in Marin County California not Egypt. Elderly TV Movie actor Lloyd Bochner reads some ancient incantations from a stone tablet, he is then attacked by an unseen monster. Presumably this is the Mummy, but we don't see it in order to save money on the SFX.

Cut to two bores talking rubbish about canopic jars. These had human heads during the 18th Dynasty. Despite this, one of the 'experts' thinks the jar is 18th Dynasty. Then he inexplicably starts talking about the 3rd Dynasty. As if the the word Dynasty was somehow the link in the sentence.

I couldn't take any more, began screaming, and ejected the film from the machine at this point.

Air Force One (1997)

Beyond All Belief

[1/10 · 24 April 2013]

Tried again to watch this dross again on the TV last night. Failed again. I stood twenty minutes this time, until the bullshit meter went off the clock. The ridiculous SEAL team battle at the beginning where the baddies were all bad shots was laughable. Then the assault on the 747 with rifles firing on full auto was utterly ridiculous. It would have taken only one of these rounds to have punctured the pressure hull, yet none did.

Why did some rooms on the plane seem to be huge offices on dry land and nothing like plane compartments ? To get past the obvious security checks simply have a platoons worth of M16s already on the plane for them to use. Surely a dumb move by the Secret Service, an even dumber move by the scriptwriters. Why did Ford and Oldman waste their time on this? Had a big bill just come in from the IRS ?

Harry Brown (2009)

My Name Is Michael Paine

[6/10 · 3 March 2013]

Around the time of Michael Caine's older movie The Fourth Protocol, in 1987, a lot of viewers hoped that there would be a last "Harry Palmer" movie. That we would see the old protagonist of the IPCRESS File in a late career adventure. This film could have been that film. It was even called Harry something. Was this to be a witness relocated Palmer coming out of retirement to take on the scum on his estate ? Sadly not. This Harry seems to have been an ex-Marine, not an MI6 agent.

Still, this disappointment aside, Michael Caine was superb in his portrayal of the eponymous character. The rest of the cast though were ill served by weak writing. Several pages of dialogue seemed to be missing for the main protagonists, thus we never got to find out just why the Police on the Estate were so useless, or why the gangs had taken over. In fact a lot of the back story and character detail seems to have been left out. Thin, 2 dimensional characters lacking in real motive inhabited a bleak Thatcheresque version of Clockwork Orange.

A film must surely be there to entertain. When something is this depressing we end up enjoying the violence and the revenge as our only entertainment. Emotions that come uneasily to the viewer. Are we just being set up from the beginning. Just like in Death Wish ? The scum are really scummy, so we won't mind them getting killed at the end ? The lack of credible female characters was also unforgivable. The one sympathetic female cop gets beaten and nearly killed. All the other girls are rape victims, comatose druggies or mute slags. One other, a thug's mother shouts her son's name and that's about it for her lines.

We ended up ultimately with a revenge movie which was no different from the hideous Death Wish in its analysis of violence. It's been a long time since that movie. We could have learnt something new here surely ?

Lincoln (2012)

Best Film of 2012

[9/10 · 6 February 2013]

This was exceptional. I feel as if it wasn't a movie, but some sort of time probe back to the Civil War and we were watching the real people. Day Lewis literally was Lincoln. The dry as dust dead men of the House Of Representatives were brought back to life. I only hope these characterisations were accurate, as they were brilliant. Tommy Lee Jones also was on top of his game, along with the underrated David Strathern who was once again a rock solid foil to the more famous actors. I even forgave James Spaader for some of his previous juvenile work, as here as a middle aged man he was brilliant. So many good scenes, but the murder seen through the eyes of the son was a brilliant twist. The inevitable Ford Theatre endgame is overused in a dozen other films and TV series and needed a different approach. Many on here have called this film boring - the usual action film buffs who have no patience - I myself didn't even notice the passage of time. In fact the weakest scene was the battle scene at the beginning which seemed to have been shot by Mel Gibson it was such a mess. The usual pell mell chaos a la 'Braveheart' we have suffered since that film. (See 'Gettysburg' or 'Glory' for how to do it properly.) Oh, and the hundred or so extras walking in the rain without inverting their rifles were in danger of a breech explosion. Did no one, not even Mel, spot that howler ?

When is the DVD out ? I want to see it again !

Idiocracy (2006)

The Future is the X Factor Squared

[8/10 · 2 September 2012]

So this came out in 2006, perplexed as I never had heard of it until it was on the TV last night. Judging by the biting satire attacking the corporate cretinism taking over the media and advertising perhaps we can see why. Fox must have baulked at putting such a subversive film into general release.

A dystopia were dumbing down has become the norm. This takes the Nazi's book burning to a new level and was only too plausible. I especially loved the pouring a certain brand of soda onto the crops. Only too plausible when we have children growing up who won't drink water, only soft drinks. The brainwashing by the adverts was spot on. We already have shampoos with 'vitamins' in and skin creams with 'liposomes' and no one understands how they work, or IF they work.

A lot of the jokes misfired, but hey they misfire in every Jim Carrey and Ricky Gervaise comedy to a similar level and they let them pass. But those films have NOTHING to say. Well done for trying with this one.

The Greatest (2009)

Dirge of the Highest Order

[2/10 · 1 July 2012]

Confusingly, Muhammad Ali is nowhere to be seen in this film. Or if he was in there I'd fallen asleep before he appeared.

A waste of a good cast. All of them tried their best, with the exception of Susan Sarandon who just played her standard 'Miserable Mother 1' role as seen in several other films.

The plot was implausible to say the least. I would love to have been a fly on the wall during the script writing sessions. Didn't anyone realise this was pants? "Wait a minute...you can't do that !"

We have a car crash. The boy dies. The parents (and the cops, fire service,medics and coroner ) fail to notice that a girl was in the car with him. How ? Did she walk off, or something ? Or get kidnapped by aliens ?

Were none of her belongings, purse, blood etc. found in the wreak ? Then the loopy mother spends all her time trying to interview the driver of the OTHER CAR, not the other person IN THE CAR, who has magically vanished. Somehow the other driver managed to have a chat with her son while succumbing to a cerebral bleed ( like you do ) and falling into an inconvenient coma.

Then it gets worse. The girlfriend turns up at the funeral, wearing a huge and obvious arm cast. No one asks who the hell she is. Then later she turns up at their house saying she is carrying the son's unborn child. Dad is completely shocked. Not even having noticed her at the funeral, never mind in the hospital where she must have been taken after the crash.

This preposterous plot could only have worked if the car crash had taken place on a frontier between two warring countries. Then the two occupants of the car MIGHT have plausibly ended up in separate hospitals. But this seemed to be set in the USA.

Apart from Cary Mulligan acting sexually aroused at the beginning, something very few US actresses would dare do, this film had no merits at all. If you blinked or came in late you would have missed this bit.

Iron Sky (2012)

Gott Im Himmel !

[7/10 · 22 June 2012]

I can't say I loved this but it was good. The acting from the mostly unknown cast was surprisingly good. The weak plot was just about bearable and the SFX were top rate, if a bit overblown at times. Did the final giant Nazi spacecraft really have to have so many moving parts ? That was just showing off by the computer guys.

The really surprising thing was that the real Nazis turned out to be the other countries at the UN with their secret space programmes. Really brave parody, when most US film presents a world view of imperialism and 'might is right.' It made a refreshing change to see a different slant. But then it was a Finnish/Australian/German production. Only the South Park team have been brazen or crass enough to attempt similar digs at the USA.

I loved Julia Dietze. We haven't seen the last of her, that's for certain!

J. Edgar (2011)

A Wasted Opportunity

[5/10 · 13 June 2012]

I looked forward to seeing this on DVD so much that I preordered it on Amazon. After watching it I'm sorry I bothered. Where do you start ? The constant chopping and changing of time period,which would have confused seasoned time travellers like Dr Who. It certainly confused my fellow viewers who unfamiliar with the story gave up in places. The photography which was nearly monochromatic. You could hardly see anything in some scenes. I kept shouting "turn the damn lights on !" The gay stuff, which was truly bizarre. Portraying Hoover and Tolsen as unconsummated lovers, when many accounts have said otherwise. It degenerated to fighting at one point making it look like a middle class Broke Back Mountain remake. The hideous make up, on the three leading actors that looked like science fiction mutation. The worst was Tolsen who looked like the victim of a aircraft fire at one point. More unintentional comedy.

But it was what was omitted that made the film look weak. Very little on the JFK, RFK and MLK assassinations, that Hoover failed to investigate properly. Or may have helped occur. No analysis was attempted here. Nothing on his fake war on crime while hobnobbing with gangsters. Absolutely zip on World War 2, were he actually caught a few Nazi spies. Nothing about how Hoover's 'Get King Squad' was given the job of investigating his murder. Nothing on COINTELPRO, the largest illegal opening of personal mail in history. Nothing on how most Communist organisations in the USA were fakes run by Hoover to trap new recruits. Nothing on LBJ, who was one of Hoover's neighbours and a close friend. Next to nothing on the McCarthy Trials, apart from mentioning his name a couple of times. This was were Nixon made his name being fed information by Hoover at the Alger Hiss trial, none of which was included. We didn't even get to see the shootings of Dillenger,Floyd or Nelson in any detail - robbing the film of a chance of a bit of excitement. Also, all Hoover buffs know he wore a gardenia in his lapel every day. This film was practically flower free.

I can't really see the point of making a biopic with so much history removed, suppressed and deleted. Hoover did enough of that in real life without Hollywood doing the same. The chance to shed some light ( pun intended - see lighting notes above )on a dark period of American history was spectacularly missed. Hoover comes out instead as a well meaning eccentric rather than the monster most people say he was.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008)

Not as good as the others but still a laugh.

[7/10 · 30 May 2012]

Yes it's not as good as the first two. Also it's not helped that Rachel Weiss bailed out after reading the script. ( Which is rich after making that crock the Fountain, which was unwatchable.) But his does have some merits. We get closure on how several characters got older and developed. We get to see some great special effects and it was at least as good as other preposterous Pulp Fantasy genre offerings like Hellboy 2.

The really annoying bit was the numerous deleted scenes on the DVD. Why were these bits cut out ? All of them made the movie's plot more logical and some even made better sense of some connecting dialogue. What would have been really great would to have included a Director's Cut version on the DVD with all these scenes back in the right places. Who the hell decided to cut them out in the first place ? Was it just for running time ? It certainly didn't help the narrative.

Oh, and Guy Ritchie take note, all the guns were contemporaneous with the period depicted. Not just thrown in because they were available in the props department like you did in your latest Sherlock Holmes atrocity.

The Eagle Has Landed (1976)

"It has been an honour serving with you."

[9/10 · 5 February 2012]

I re watched this recently and its still good. The extended version DVD with the 11 minutes put back in is really much, much, better too. The idiots who cut this film down for TV should be sacked to prevent them committing similar crimes to other movies.

Caine's acting is still incredibly subtle in places and each time you watch it you spot something new. Also brilliant are Jean Marsh, Treat Williams, Donald Sutherland and Robert Duval. Duval's character has cancer and winces as he walks in several scenes. Clearly he is clearly method acting the pain in his pauses.

To those who have lambasted Larry Hagman's acting as Colonel Pitts - well I can say I have met officers this stupid in the army, and after seeing David Schwimmer's character, who was based on real life, in 'Band of Brothers' it appears idiots of this calibre really did get to battalion rank in the US Army in WW2. Larry is brilliant in this film and I enjoy his moments every time I watch it.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011)

The Case Of The Curate's Egg

[7/10 · 15 January 2012]

I really wanted to like this, as I loved the previous Mitchell offering.But this one was let down by scores of anachronistic props and modern dialogue which grated on the nerves. The M1906 Mauser pistol and the 1912 Vickers Machine gun were bad enough but when Watson started firing what appeared to be a World War 2 Owen sub machine gun things got really stupid.This was all after the date being boldly stated as 1891 in the first scene. We also had not one, but two, Checkov's guns. i.e. a device is introduced early on that we just know will be used in a later scene. Like the obvious man trap in Straw Dogs that was just obviously going to have someone in it by the last reel. Here it was the magic Dungeons and Dragon's style healing serum, and the ridiculous cyberpunk/ Thunderball style micro breathing apparatus. Two get out of death free cards for our hero that were total pants.

Despite all this there were magic moments of acting and direction, but I was just too appalled by the under use of Irene Adler and the pointless intrusion of Naomi Rapace together with too much Band of Brothers style gunfire which made it all look like the Battle of the Bulge in several scenes.

Timeline (2003)

Lighthearted Romp That Entertains

[18 September 2011]

This was on the TV the other day, eight years after it was made, but I don't recall any publicity or mention of it ever before. A neat time travel premise, and they are always good for a laugh. Also there were some great early performances from Gerard Butler, Michael Sheen and David Thewlis - though his accent was ridiculous ( What was it ? Swiss ?) The Science Fiction was total pants though. A 3D fax machine that stripped you down to your component atoms then fired you through a wormhole and then somehow you ended up in medieval France. Like you do. Star Trek would have at least thrown in some Tachyon or Baryon radiation techno babble to make it sound plausible.

The Brits were all in red and the French all in blue. This made it easier to tell them apart, but I'm sure was a few hundred years too early. It was also a tad silly to have Billy Connolly ( ridiculously miscast as a professor ) asked to make Greek Fire by Sheen, when it was obvious the Brits already had massive access to gasoline. Every arrow, catapult round and flambeaux was obviously lit with it. Huge gasoline explosions lit up the sky as the battle proceeded.

The twist at the end was good however. What medieval historian wouldn't have stayed behind for Lady Claire, especially as played by Anna Friel ?

Jarhead (2005)

Just What Was The Point of This ?

[17 September 2011]

A lot of the dialogue ( This is my rifle etc ) and the boot camp intro seemed lifted from Full Metal Jacket. Even the fly nature of the main protagonist. But after half an hour I felt nostalgic for that old classic. This film was nowhere near as good. I seriously doubt indiscipline is this bad in the USMC. A lot more of them would get killed by accident. Or by their own side. The firing the guns into the air to the rap party backdrop was pure hokum. Why was knobhead (sorry jarhead )shown as being a Camus reader for all of five minutes, and then later shown to be a total moron for the rest of the film ? Sci Fi is accused of being all Science and with thin character development. This was a supposedly factual film, but despite that had 2D characters that were worthy of the worst Sci Fi. By the end I didn't care if any of them lived or died they were so irritating and boring.

The Duchess (2008)

Underrated and Brilliant

[28 August 2011]

It seems to be a common consensus on here that this film was unfairly savaged by the critics. I have to agree.

I expected nothing from this due to the hideous revues it had received. However, when it was on the TV recently I gave it a try.

Simply marvellous. I was hooked from the beginning. Sumptuous sets and really good acting from Keira and Mr Fiennes as usual. What a bastard ! I would have shot him if I was his wife. There were plenty of guns and swords around his house.

I couldn't fail to compare it with similar snore fests like Age of Innocence and Dangerous Liaisons which bored from point one, and never achieved what they did here, and both of those films were critically received.

The Kennedys (2011)

Another Curate's Egg

[8/10 · 10 July 2011]

This was very interesting and highly enjoyable. The acting from all the principals was first rate. Especially Kinnear who seemed to actually BE JFK. Or at least the first few episodes were. I put up with the three Generals merged into one, and the possibly five CIA guys merged into one - as hell, Oliver Stone used to do this stuff ! But this was supposed to be a History Channel production. It isn't really History if you use amalgamated characters. I even put up with the German Ju52 ( with its obvious fixed undercarriage ) dropping the Anti Castro paratroops in 1960. But did this piece of bogus footage have to be on the credits every week? No, what really hacked me off was the invented dialogue with Marilyn, who seemed to be more like Madonna and far too young, and the rehashing of the Lone Nut/Oswald did it nonsense all over again. And no Teddy ? Perhaps if he had been in it we would have had to have seen where he was on 22 /11/ 63. At the Capitol building, as the entire Washington phone network was knocked out by the plotters to prevent the Senate interfering. But then the History Channel doesn't want this anomaly recorded as history - a new generation might start asking questions.