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muskrat36
Reviews
The Call of the Wild (2020)
The problem is the dog.
Perhaps the problem is that I watched the animated version of the Lion King shortly before watching this. In the Lion King you felt that the characters had real weight and moved like real animals. In this film the dog didn't seem to move like a real animal. In The Lion King you could accept that sometimes the animals looked cartoonish, because the animals were doing impossible things. But in this film, where Buck was supposed to be a real dog, he sometimes had expressions that wouldn't be out of place in Scooby-Doo. Nevertheless, I know I'd have loved this film when I was ten years old, so I don't want to be too harsh about it.
Lazy Susan: Episode #1.1 (2022)
Mystified
The cast were enjoying themselves a lot, and it was energetic.
But what's it about?
Some of the sketches involved women who looked just like they'd come off a 1980s Coronation Street episode.
Is it set in the past?
Is it possible that women still go around dressed with huge curlers, and faux fur jackets.
I haven't seen any women doing that, but perhaps they do.
I hope so.
I enjoyed the 80s, so I am giving it an 8.
Game of Thrones: The Long Night (2019)
What the fast-forward button was made for.
I was really looking forward to the return of the Blue Dragon.
Bit of a fan.
In the event, I could see almost nothing.
Fast Forward, Fast Forward.
I watched every previous episode, and every subsequent episode, in its entirety.
Der Anständige (2014)
Portrait of a successful psychopath.
In order to be really monstrous, evil people need good qualities. Being psychopathic will only get you so far. But,combine a psychopathic personality with a twisted moral compass, a functional but shallow intelligence, and the ability to work at a given task ceaselessly, and you have a Heinrich Himmler.
Himmler was a socially awkward young man. These days we would probably call him a nerd. Through his self studies, he converted to that hotch-potch of false science and false history, which later crystalised into Hitlerian Fascism.
He saw Germany as a once great country, which had become degenerate. He wanted to return to this mythic past, and, like Hitler, thought that progress required an increasing population, destroying populations to the East, and taking over their territory. He and Hitler made a diabolical double act.
The Nazis held themselves to be racially superior, and held that inferior races, while appearing human, were lower than animals because they had the capacity to corrupt higher races, both culturally and genetically. The lower races were like a disease which had to be eradicated. For a while, if they were useful, these peoples could be enslaved, but they would not be allowed to reproduce.
Himmler was an idealist, who wanted a better world for himself, his family, and his countrymen to live in. He was also a mass murderer with an evil ideology. That conflict is the subject of this excellent documentary.
Ethel & Ernest (2016)
A Golden Age.
A piece of nostalgia for anyone, like me, over 50. We remember a country like this. But anyone under 30 might think that this film is about some mythical Golden Age. Was there really such a time? A time when a milkman and his wife, a clerk, could afford the mortgage on a three bedroom house in Wimbledon Park? A time when their child, if clever enough, could go to grammar school, and then onto University, without shouldering a crippling debt? A time when social welfare and housing were improving, and political parties vied with each other to better the lives of ordinary people.
If you think that perhaps the country was in a better financial state back then, you'd be wrong. We were in huge debt after the second world war, with debt to GDP twice what it is now. And yet now we need austerity. How did things go so horribly wrong?
The River Wild (1994)
The River is the star
Not a great film by any means, but what a river! The river is the true star, and I suppose you have to put that down to good photography and camera work. At no point in the film did I doubt that the people were actually in the boat, on the river, and in danger. There are few surprises. Nothing in the film is unexpected. I won't go as far as to tell you whether the family escaped the villains, or what happened to them, so you will have to find out for yourself. Meryl Streep's performance is adequate, but not exceptional, and occasionally annoying. I found myself wanting Kevin Bacon's character to shoot her on more than one occasion. There is a little tension generated by the fact that the criminal is more manly than the wimpy, hard working husband and inattentive father, but that is soon cleared up, and the sides are clearly drawn. The father eventually shows himself to have an alternative identity as some kind of Indian Super-Brave, smoke signals and everything. I kid you not. Worth watching if you want to watch a family film along Disney lines.
Far and Away (1992)
Bejayziz an Begob, a Grand Film.
Yes I know it was rubbish, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I almost stopped watching when our young Oirish Omadan Tom Cruise was battling with his Poteen drunk brothers, but once his father returned from his death to give him a final blessing, I was hooked. I wondered at this point if it was a screenplay written by a good Irish playwright. Nicole Kidman had a surprisingly good West of Ireland accent I thought, but Tom's was pure Kerrygold. Possibly the clichés were deliberate, and the whole thing was a satire on the American view of the Irish, but probably not. Scenery lovely, Nicole and Tom physically lovely. If you don't like it within a quarter of an hour, give it up. It doesn't change.
The Journey of Natty Gann (1985)
Does exactly what it says on the Rin Tin Tin
Watching any five minutes of this film you would be enough to recognise it as a Disney production. If you want to watch a good old fashioned boy with dog , or in this case girl with wolf, film, then you could do no better than this. Made in 1985, it could easily have been made 20 years earlier. I don't suppose older children would appreciate a film like this now, but if you are under 8 or over 40, then tuck into this wholesome feast. I gave it a 9, not because of any brilliance in the script, but because it is a perfect example of its type. Don't expect any surprises. Meredith Salinger is so good as the young runaway, however, that it set me wondering what she would have done with better material.