public_me Reviews

Remember Me (I) (2010)

Unforgettable, astounding...

[1/10 · 18 February 2023]

Astounding vacuity and unforgettably overplayed. Not a glimpse of a real character nor the development of one. The intense emotions ostensibly being portrayed by the main players was never earned. The 'heartthrob' male lead employed a repertoire of one or two 'looks' - if not staring dead eyed ahead - to convey the unspoken turmoil eating away at his (and our) life force. His face appeared semi-prosthetic throughout, he either has less muscles up there than the rest of the species or they've atrophied from practicing his strange James Dean/John Belushi face too long.

A looping litany of confected micro dramas populate the film ... this was probably written for the pleasure of adolescents, though beforehand I thought I was embarking on something better ... was too hasty skimming a line or two of high score reviews on IMDB ... sigh.

Every turn is so predictable in this flick, but wow, not the very last sequence, I really didn't expect them to hitch a ride on a catastrophic event from real life for one last cheap trick. Yuk!

Six Minutes to Midnight (2020)

Eddie Izzard finds his level

[1/10 · 6 June 2022]

He of the pink beret, lipstick and embarrassingly shrill EU Army advocacy - on Question Time, circa 2018.

I'll say this much ... he's a better actor than a comedian. Not by much, but then he's starting from a very low bar. A dismal purveyor of lefty mini-bites for credulous yoof and atrophying Baby Boomers: 'War is Bad ... Peace is Good' etc. Yea it's that simple folks!

The film has some lovely sets, locations and cinematography ... more than enough to quickly expose the stark lack of integrity and talent in just about every other department. This is worse than mid-range TV drama, and within 2 minutes of the films start we are made all to aware of the crass level this operates at.

Please, avoid this trash at all costs, and by so doing allow me in some small way to vicariously redeem the 45 minutes of my life that I threw away giving this trash the oxygen it did not deserve. For that I thank you from the heart of my bottom.

Modern Masters: Warhol (2010) Season 1, Episode 1

Alastair Sooke performing: see this for what it is

[1/10 · 1 November 2021]

Excitable little puppy art historian waves his paws and dribbles over low aspiration low grade art."Please like me, please give me a job." Woof woof!

But throughout he is hideously lying his soul away.

That's the problem these days. Not the artists, but the Art Historians. The telly presenter-performers. The curators of your ignorance.

This one is called Alastair Sooke, but it really doesn't matter what they're called, they all seem to arrive pre-compromised by the industry.

Because this programme is not really about Warhol, it's about the performing presenter.

Warhol is just a vessel for Sooke's increasingly laughable analysis.

He is either a frustrated actor/performance artist, or so utterly inculcated into the scam of the Warhol Foundation/ Trust (or other revenue stream) and so to perpetuate the daubs of trivia that is pop and conceptual art. Or he is a deluded fool. Maybe all of the above ... it happens.

He presents throughout in the rote style, with preposterous extrapolations purporting to relate to the dreary Warhol images, none of which is Andy's own work of course: he didn't have an original idea in his blonde be-Wigified little head - he reproduced other peoples work i.e. Copies/sampled photos and grabbed second hand processes of others (silkscreen) and simply adding REPETITION ... the zero aspiration variant.

As in the Marilyns, or the Campbells soup cans. Yawn.

Oh yea, nearly forgot: some of them transition to be a bit faded ... shattering, poignant, the human condition laid bare. Etc.

Sooke makes it up as he goes along, never avoiding the verbose, quite unburdened by considered thought. He decides to imagine an inner life for this thinnest of gruel.

Drab film footage of a clearly insular and bored Bob Dylan sitting motionless and expressionless awaiting his Warhol photo shoot gets the schtik : apparently this footage was innovatory because as Alastair clarifies superbly, it "still has resonance and currency even for contemporary artists". Quite, the conceptual blaggers, art dealers (and most art historians) are all terribly keen on harvesting as much of your currency, er ... but that would be of the folding or BACS type, as they can 'curate'.

Ultimately in his zeal to appeal or to think of something of interest to make up or relate with regard to the ultra low grade art of Warhol or his life, Alastair Sooke reveals a creepy FAN type interest, sharing schlock newspaper reports to camera of Warhol's life in a voyeuristic section near the end. Perhaps included to add to the drama or the emotion or the intelligence, or the beauty. Or just about anything Please GOD - and so to compensate for the absence of any actual artistic content: but Sooke was all the while eyes wide performing, one could almost hear the lip-licking.

Forget about art, that left the building already.

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Hollington Drive (2021)

An exemplar of its kind: you won't want to not miss this!

[1/10 · 19 October 2021]

Affluent middle class drama set in a parallel world. A world you'll only find in, er ... recent affluent middle class TV dramas.

The formula is all there: a mixed bunch of uptight unhappy people ostensibly living with family and/or partners but not by any stretch delivering credibility in performances or plot.

Banish any thought of fresh or original thinking by this 'acclaimed' writer, let alone any resemblance to real life characterisation.

The generic sound design type score is right out of a mould, I've heard worse but it all adds to the feel of a production by Committee.

But the writer has all the boxes ticked, the Committee will have required and approved the racial mix quotient, though perhaps they'd have wished for a depiction of inter-racial partners that could possibly have ever existed, even in our imaginations.

And again, it was written by a woman, so it's another equal opportunity to fail, and she nailed it.

Whatever, this dross is why I avoid TV drama.

A Star Is Born (1954)

Compelling and unforgettable

[9/10 · 13 July 2021]

Filled with raw talent that is honed over their careers this vibrant rich and artful talent is busting out of the screen.

The extremes of the human condition are believably communicated more than any graphic & expletive laden garbage from today.

It is a WOW!

I must say I was shocked by how good this was.

Judy Garland exceeded my expectations and I knew what she possessed.

But then James Mason ... quite amazing, his final scenes are as moving as anything I can remember watching, but almost beyond tears in the context.

Urban Myths: Samuel Beckett and Andre the Giant (2017) Season 1, Episode 2

Well done to everyone in this rare gem of a production that is charming, mischievous & understated

[9/10 · 13 July 2021]

Thewlis is great here, but really the whole production is a joy, It is beautifully written and filmed: gentle, charming, mischievous and understated.

It has quality in every department ... writing, production & acting.

Inevitably for me it is a bittersweet reminder of the rarity of such qualities in the ghastly modern TV world.

Just look at the other episodes in this series where the humour is so forced, though I haven't watched them all to be honest.

Well done to everyone in this rare gem.

The Deer Hunter (1978)

Even Di Niro can't act in this ...

[1/10 · 14 February 2021]

As a 23 year old middle class Englishman watching the film upon its big screen release and without preconceptions or political agenda I found this fundamentally clumsy and artless. Very boring, no meaningful dialogue ... er, scriptwriter anybody? Or method actors hoping monosyllabic improv would somehow pass for real world or please God any sort of character development ... I mean they took 3 hours to utterly fail to create insight or empathy towards any of the main characters, and resorted to gross saccharine music abruptly dropped in as needed in the absence of actual narrative or film craft. Even Di Niro is awful...but I can't really blame him. After 42 years I just watched this again and to my immense surprise - because there are so many times over a lifetime we have good reason to reappraise initial responses to artworks, the benefit of age and perhaps wisdom (!) - it was every bit the same boorish, clunky, self indulgent piece of sappy rubbish as I thought the first time round. Filled with 2D cartoon characters, but less believable because the script and storyboard is an atrocity. Amongst the worst films ever made, just as I remember.

To the Wonder (2012)

Impoverished aspiration. Zero ingenuity or insight. Low grade art.

[1/10 · 28 January 2019]

I'll get to the point. Contrary to what so many reviewers say I see no beauty or insight in the film.

Even the music programming choices and the way in which uses music are desperately predictable and unimaginative, and he uses it so much to prop up this empty vessel.

He plumbs the depths placing the best of Wagner - the Prelude to Parsifal - over the final scene/end titles, an act of colossal HUBRIS. Placing this artless film adjacent to the properly profound art of a genius: art that encapsulates what it is to be human, to have a soul, to be mortal. Music that you cherish and return to throughout your life and that goes to places that are never evoked nor conveyed in in this hapless buskers ramblings.

And how does this film break new ground to warrant the claims that have been made for it? It does no such thing: 60 years ago in France a film like Bresson'a Au Hasard Balthazar was truly different, although perplexing, but it had had enormous breadth of ambition, a truth to tell. That was a film that left you thinking long ... an experience that gave you fuel to think on ... even if you didn't think you quite understood the film. But there is no such fuel within To the Wonder.

I know that as soon as I've posted this I will never give it another thought.