bootlebarth Reviews

Breaking Bad (2008–2013)

Dull unbelievable comedy

[4 December 2019]

The producers, actors and everyone involved with Breaking Bad are comic geniuses. Not a scene rings true. In every moment the performances represent behaviour that has never occurred or never could between real human beings. Somehow the television viewing world generally regards this comedy as serious drama.

Where to begin? Why not the crazy driving scene in episode 1 of season 1? The only reason for the comical driving is to produces a crash that leads to more comedy. Ho hum, so it goes - on and on and on. Walt has coughing collapses to remind us how ill he is between periods where he seems as fit as you (probably) and I (probably not).

By the end of episode 4 I'd had enough. The paranoia scene in which happy-slappy bicycling evangelists were seen through a suppose paranoid misperception as vengeful, sword-wielding, grenade-toting bikie avengers finished it for me.

Absolute rubbish, but if America can elect you-know-who to lead them, favourable opinions of televisual crap fade into insignificance.

Getting On (2009–2012)

Unwatchable

[2/10 · 27 October 2018]

This could have been a good series. The hospital setting has plenty of promise, the acting is good and the script and situations interesting - with plenty of chuckles.

But the camera work is awful to the point of being unwatchable. What is the point of all those motion-sickness inducing sweeps, all those abrupt changes of focus, all those blurry shots of nothing?

Director Peter Capaldi must take the blame. Why was his chosen shooting style given the nod? I hoped series 2 might be an improvement over the three episodes of series 1, but its opening episode was just as bad. Enough was enough.

Incidentally, when Capaldi appeared as a doctor in the first series the camera treated him more kindly. What vanity, what cinematographic incompetence!

Peter's Friends (1992)

Tedious and trite luvvies

[14 October 2017]

Cambridge University is one of the best in the world. Some of its alumni show off in the Footlights and later drift into show business: Stephen Fry, Emma Thompson, Hugh Laurie, Tony Slattery, etc.

They make shows and films that might be of intense interest to their narcissistic selves, often showing their true colours while pretending them to be comic, satiric, or whatever.

Peter (Stephen Fry) is - yawn - rich, thanks to his recently deceased father. He invites a small group of old chums, and their partners, to his pile for a New Year party. All are semi-nutters, including some out of touch for four years. None are even slightly interesting.

The so-called humour is laboured. Only the most easily pleased viewer will crack the faintest of smiles in nearly two hours.

Naturally there are complications. Friend Sarah, a token pigmented person with a disastrous romantic history, has bonked two of the small party in the past, including presently celibate, formerly bisexual and - shock late announcement - HIV positive Peter. Her latest amour is an impossible character played horribly by Tony Slattery, for which he deserves a Golden Raspberry award.

The supposedly intelligent and successful people of Peter's Friends are wholly incapable of leading ordered lives. Is this really how Fry, Branagh and company see themselves? The only sympathetic character is Vera the housekeeper, who announces her departure towards the end - but not before some absurd scenes involving her wood-chopping son, including a chatting-up by Sarah and a woman-on-top bonk with Emma Thompson.

Branagh's representation of a drunk was certainly not a performance that contributed to his later knighthood.

Peter's Friends is a film, full of luvvies pretending to poke fun at themselves, but obviously without believing a word of it, and hoping to earn enough from it to keep them in the style they think their superior intelligence deserves.

Awful.

The Martian (2015)

Tediously implausible

[5/10 · 4 April 2016]

The budget for this film was over $100 million. The hours subsequently spent watching it by people who could have been otherwise employed for nearly two and a half hours might have been sufficient to rebuild the Great Wall of China.

Technically 'The Martian' is impressive. An unbelievably huge spacecraft with space that puts the grand hotels of the world in the shade. Real potatoes that germinate when a presumed dead survivor is stranded. Miraculously not dead Mark grows them in Martian dust and human poops. A crew of five in a spacecraft big enough to house a thousand Syrian refugees.

As gentlemen in Dubai are likely to be offered by imported ladies of easy virtue, there is a happy ending. No tension, it was bound to work out well.

Ridley Scott doffs his directorial hat to political correctness. The Commander is a gorgeous woman, as is another of the crew. Persons of what are inaccurately labeled black and yellow skin feature strongly in key back-room roles. We have a Hispanic in the heroic rescue gang.

The dialogue is banal throughout, with plenty of f**ks and s**ts. I don't remember a single ear-catching line. To call the characters two-dimensional is to give them more substance than they deserve.

Well done Matt Damon for nursing your planetary rover over 3,200 kilometers of a path that was forever smooth.

This film is rubbish, all show and no substance.

I liked the closing scene. Mark (Matt Damon), now a retired spaceman, lectures in the middle of a circular venue. Why would anyone talk to an audience, half of whom are behind him? That must have been a Scott Ridley joke to give his cameraman a license to swoop and circulate.

It was obvious from the start that Mark would survive. All the excursions and alarms came to nothing. Clever stuff, but about as gripping as a pair of teflon pliers.

Norte, the End of History (2013)

A funereally slow, nasty, implausible bladder-burster

[4/10 · 12 January 2015]

Fabian, a pretentious, pseudo-intellectual leads a small adoring clique of fellow law students. Imitating Raskolnikov in 'Crime and Punishment', he brutally murders Magda, a heartless money- lender, and her teenage daughter.

For unexplained reasons Joaquin, a poor man with a young family, is convicted of the crimes and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Fabian gives the deprived wife some money and asks his friends to do what they can for Joaquin. He then rapes his god-fearing sister and slaughters a dog to round off the nasty, sadistic episodes that punctuate what passes for a story. The film ends with him taking a canoe ride.

How can this implausible, unresolved plot occupy 250 minutes of screen time? No problem, just point a camera at something and let it roll while next to nothing happens. Scenes go on and on for no obvious purpose. They can be repeated knockings on a door with cries of 'Fabian, are you in there', to lighting and smoking cigarettes, to plodding along paths, to observing landscapes. More than four hours could have been edited to, say, 90 minutes without any significant loss of material.

What director Diaz has produced is a semi-motion picture, a mildly intriguing but generally tedious variant of the wham, bam, thank you ma'am school of frenetic film-making with eternally swooping and sliding cameras and cuts every few seconds.

Diaz changes the appearance and tempo slightly with fuzzy landscape shots, probably taken from a drone with an inexpensive camera, and some jerky hand-held footage that could have been borrowed from Lars von Trier.

Almost at the end, Diaz cocks a snook at his audience with a ludicrous levitation scene.

Norte, despite its faults in pacing and plotting, is not short of striking visual images. If they had all been reduced to about a third of their displayed length and allied to a plot that made some sense, a watchable film might have been the result.

The Godfather (1972)

Clandestine butchery

[7/10 · 23 November 2014]

I admire the way authors and directors have fun with their readers and viewers by including scenes of great dramatic impact that are completely unexplained.

The Godfather has a perfect example in the 'horse's head in bed' vignette. Implicitly we are required to believe that intruders armed with equipment to decapitate a stallion in the prime of life breezed into the stable block of what was presumably a fortified estate belonging to a movie mogul. Khartoum is somehow subdued without startling the other horses, stable lads, nightwatchmen, burglar alarms etc. His head is severed with stealth and silence. Then the slaughterers break into the movie producer's house and make their way to his bedroom, carrying the bleeding head with them.

After what has already been accomplished there's no problem in placing the head under the duvet at the foot of the bed and smearing blood all over the slumberer's pyjamas, hands and face without waking him. Whistling a happy tune, perhaps, the horse butchers, recruited from afar at a moment's notice, make their exit without difficulty or detection.

More nominations please for the most outrageous, impossible scene in a vaguely serious movie. I give this only 9.9 out of 10 to leave the slightest of breathing spaces for anything even more improbable.

Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery (1997 TV Movie)

An amazing story beautifully told

[10/10 · 31 October 2012]

I'm writing this when there are only seven other reviews. Compared with the hundreds or thousands of reviews of popular cinematographic dross (the greater the dross, the more the reviews), is there any point?

The Journey of the Corps of Discovery is an amazing story, beautifully told. President Jefferson sends his secretary to find a route to the Pacific Ocean across thousands of miles of largely unknown territory. The adventure proves that truth can be stranger than fiction. This is an epic trip. Ken Burns has made some marvelous series, but none better.

There are so many memorable moments that it seems pointless to select a sample. I'll never forget Meriwether Lewis's diary entry on his 31st birthday, rueing his indolence and lack of achievement at what he thought would be the half-way stage of his life.

Everyone should see this wonderful series. Unfortunately, the bulk of the popcorn-eating, couch-potato viewing public prefer banality and fantasy to fact.

Treat yourself to one of the best series ever.

Downfall (2004)

The worst film I've ever seen

[1/10 · 17 June 2012]

Forget 'Battlefield Earth', 'Wolf Creek', 'Dancer in the Dark', 'Catwoman', etc. 'Downfall' is inexcusable and unforgivable. This trivialisation of one of the bleakest periods of human history should never have been made.

There's a loose correspondence with real events: World War Two happened, Hitler died, and that's about it. Almost every scene rang false. There was no mention of the holocaust, just a few anti-semitic ravings, briefly confined to the later parts. The acting was uniformly (as befits a Nazi drama) awful.

It's a blasphemy against humanity to make a film like this. Show what actually happened, or get as close to it as possible when the records are lacking, but don't make an 'entertainment' of those dreadful days.

Any return to the evil and slaughter of 1939-45 should leave a viewer stunned and outraged. 'Downfall' fails at every level. It fails to tell the truth. It fails to involve any viewer who has any inkling of the truth. It shows scenes that certainly didn't happen.

Until watching 'Downfall' I'd rated 'Inglourious Basterds' as the worst war film ever. After what I saw tonight, Tarantino's greatest folly is now reduced to a mistimed joke. If you're going to falsify history, why not immolate Hitler in a Parisian cinema, cocking a snook at reality?

I can only think that 'Downfall' was made by persons wholly insensitive to human suffering who hoped to wring a few tears from a popcorn-gobbling audience by showing human suffering.

I kept watching, with increasing reluctance, for a long, long time. Then I felt so disgusted with the film, and with myself for being dragged along by a manipulatively false and farcical story, that I hit the off button.

Everyone involved with the making of this loathsome film should be ashamed of themselves. The favourable IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes ratings can only have come from reviewers not old enough to feel connected to the unspeakable vileness of Nazi Germany.

I thought it would be a hard call, but 'Downfall' is the worst film I've ever seen.

The Road (I) (2009)

Okay, okay. Hard to believe, but the film is worse than the book

[24 August 2011]

At the age of 60 plus you accept that life's high and low moments have already passed by. I watched 'The Road' in a mood of masochistic appreciation. The competition for the worst film I've seen is high: 'Sex Lives of the Potato Men', 'Once Upon a Time in the Midlands', 'Breaking the Waves', 'Dancer in the Dark', (and anything directed by Lars von Trier) etc. How wonderful and depressing to plumb new depths.

The last two words on the soundtrack are 'okay', 'okay'. There are two instances of 'okay', 'okay' in the opening scene. Take away 'okay' and 'poppa' and there's not much left of the spoken word. What remains is largely unintelligible mumblings.

Nothing is explained, half the film is in near-total darkness. I emote easily but not to this art-house tosh. Goodonya Cormac McCarthy for selling the film rights and laughing all the way to the bank.

'The Road' is a bad book, despite being rated as the best novel of the first decade of the 21st century by at least one agency. The film is worse, much worse.

The book has to be a joke, but the film makers seem to have taken it seriously - okay poppa? We saw the cellar filled with humans destined to be eaten; although everyone knows that keeping meat alive in times of hardship is a waste of food.

In the interests of good taste (yum yum), we were spared the sight of the abandoned spit- roast baby that McCarthy includes in his cynically successful book.

I don't mind films that know they're bad. But this is a film based on a dreadful book that has been widely acclaimed. Sorry to the other turkeys, all worthy in their own right, but this is the new low point of my film watching.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

The long, the unsynchronised and the improbable

[30 July 2011]

Has 'The Good, The Bad And The Ugly' acquired too much of a halo over the years, putting it beyond criticism? To me it was a rehearsal by Leone for the vastly superior 'Once Upon A Time In The West', my all-time favourite.

When I last watched Blondie, Tuco and Angel Eyes I missed the start. The Man With No Name (except the endlessly repeated 'Blondie') was stumbling across the desert. Tuco was carrying on in a sadistically clownish manner that was simultaneously tedious and repellent. It was only sloth that held me in my seat.

Most film directors are forever pulling the legs of their audiences. Leone is no exception. Using all sorts of tricks, he allows the story to creak along in the most improbable manner, either hoping that viewers won't notice or don't care. One of Sergio's little jokes is that if something isn't seen by the camera, neither will it be visible to the characters, even though they're looking in different directions. The best gag of this kind is when Tuco and Blondie are captured as they stumble into a huge army camp they somehow fail to spot.

In like fashion, useful props materialise out of nowhere. While Tuco scrambles in the cemetery to dig up the stolen gold, Blondie manages to construct a makeshift gibbet from a convenient tree and a length of rope long and strong enough to tie up the 'Titanic'. And where did the the shovels come from in the treasure-hunting scenes? Almost every new twist was improbable.

You have to admire the mixture of frailty and resilience of participants in Leone's films. Baddies are dispatched with a single shot. Tucos and Blondies are beaten or baked to within an inch of their lives but bounce back as readily as cartoon characters flattened by steamrollers.

Some people don't mind poor lip-synchronisation, including Signor Leone, but I do. The distraction of mouths often moving independently of the words they purport to speak is aggravated by the laboured dialogue. Thank goodness Leone stepped up several gears for 'Once Upon A Time In The West' by using a brilliant writer and employing a much better cast (Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, Jason Robards, etc) than the irritating Eli Wallach and the dull-as-ditchwater Clint Eastwood.

Despite these grumbles, there's a lot to be said in favour of 'The Good, The Bad And The Ugly'. It's stylish, idiosyncratic and spectacular with a wonderful score by Ennio Morricone. But rather than be considered the greatest western ever, as judged by many enthusiastic IMDb reviewers, the film is better regarded as a highly creditable rehearsal for the undoubted masterpiece which followed.

Ripley's Game (2002)

Stupid rubbish

[4/10 · 28 January 2011]

According to IMDb, 'Ripley's Game' cost about $30 million to make. I suppose it helped a few people. John Malkovich, perhaps the most narcissistic, look-at-me actor ever to strike gold in Hollywood, presumably earned a million or two. What we have here is yet another example of the overpaid watched by the underemployed while millions or billions remain undernourished throughout this overcrowded, callous, corrupt, ill-governed world.

The plot is stupid beyond belief, and the way it unfolds is also stupid beyond belief. The plot is so stupid that I'd be stupid to summarise it, and any readers would be stupid if they read my distillation of all the stupidities.

Why, while living in a world where millions of infants die every year from preventable causes, do people make and watch nonsense like 'Ripley's Game'? Surely time and money could be put to a better use.

I thought that Patricia Highsmith, the authorial creator of Ripley, is regarded as a writer of some talent. If the film is even loosely faithful to her novel, the world would be a better place if her books were pulped. I can't help repeating the word: stupid, stupid, stupid.

Everyone who is listed on the credits, which run to the usual hundreds, should be ashamed. The only saving grace of this terrible film is the seductive European, mainly Italian, locations. Give me a plodding travel documentary any time.

What's the stupidest of a rich choice of stupid scenes? Perhaps the events in the German train toilet, where three garroted corpses (one of which returns to life soon after, wearing a stupid bandage on his ear to indicate that he was the guy almost killed by a wire round his throat) and two assassins comfortably fit into the toilet.

I could take a week to list a small fraction of the stupidities in 'Ripley's Game'. I was stupid to view it from start to finish. I'm being stupid to waste more time on this IMDb review. Nobody will read this before they see the film. Anybody who reads this after seeing the film is stupidly adding to the time they have already wasted in its observance.

There was a word in the back of my mind that might usefully provide the most concise of summaries. What was it? I remember - STUPID.

Mary and Max (2009)

Unbearably sad and immensely funny - a human and claymation masterpiece

[10/10 · 26 January 2011]

A few IMDb reviewers give this wonderful claymation film by Adam Elliott the thumbs down. They must be more severely disabled by Asperger's syndrome than Max, and completely incapable of normal human responses.

I don't want to seek words to describe how good 'Mary and Max' is. I don't want to think why others might object to some or all of it.

From start to finish, 'Mary and Max' is marvelous. Anyone who has a heart will love it, especially anyone who has a damaged heart and can't quite fit in with the regular world.

The most idiotic of the hostile reviewers are those who have a knee-jerk reaction to a pen-pal relationship between, at the start, an 8 year old Australian girl and a 40 year old American man.

Most of the words are narrated brilliantly by Barry Humphries. The claymation figures are grotesque but so skilfully manipulated that they evoke sympathy rather than revulsion from the viewer. The details are witty and charming, with many liable not to be noticed at a first viewing. Only Australians (fellow nationals of Adam Elliott) are likely to be familiar with the two most frequently recurring musical themes. Not many people beyond these shores will know 'The Waltz of the Wombat'.

In my IMDb reviews I normally give a plot outline, with the necessary spoiler warnings. My advice for 'Mary and Max' is to see it for yourself, without prejudice. If it leaves you unaffected, or hostile, I don't even want to start thinking about what you must be like in real life.

To repeat and expand, this is a wonderful, wonderful film. It hardly hits a false note, and I'm not going to highlight the few seconds that jarred with me. After watching it, I'm still in a daze. At the halfway point I thought: this standard can't be maintained; there's no way the loose ends can be satisfactorily tied. I was wrong.

I have to give up now. The immediate effects should have worn off, but I'm still overwhelmed.

Tommy (1975)

Dated, boring and spectacularly stupid

[1/10 · 10 November 2010]

Imagine a really bad music video lasting about three minutes. Then imagine watching 40 of them in an uninterrupted row. That's what Tommy is like. Awful.

What induced Ken Russell, other than his obsession with Oliver Reed, to make this abomination?

The Lake District scenes at the start and finish are easy on the eye, especially the view of that finest of mini-mountains, Melbreak, at the end of Loweswater.

Elton John steals the show as the deposed pinball king, and if he's the best part you can imagine how bad the rest is.

Tina Turner provides a wonderful advertisement for cosmetic dentistry and hints at her famous constipated chicken dance.

Fragmented film, so disjointed review, in short snippets, lacking a story, making no sense.

How Not to Live Your Life (2007–2011)

Faint early promise soon dies and rots

[1/10 · 20 August 2010]

Episode 1 is a bit quirky for about ten minutes, then it's downhill all the way. Here's a so-called comedy without laughs. The situations are stupid, the script lazy and the characters - leading or incidental - are irritating, boring or ugly.

I can almost see how a pilot might have persuaded the world's greatest optimist that a series might work but it doesn't. How anyone could have commissioned more of this rubbish defies belief. Dan Clark must be the least funny writer and least charismatic actor ever to have been granted a series.

One embarrassingly bad scene follows another. 'Little Britain' and 'The Catherine Tate Show' did their best to plumb new depths of awfulness but 'How Not To Live Your Life' is worse. Its only possible value would be as compulsory viewing for TV producers under the title of 'How Not To Make A Comedy Series'.

Around the World in 80 Treasures (2005)

Great idea spoiled by awful presenter

[5/10 · 24 June 2010]

Do people of tenderer years than me know about the curate's egg? A polite young clergyman, entertained at breakfast by his bishop, was asked about his stale egg. It was 'good in parts', said the curate, remembering the shell.

Around the World in 80 Treasures is 'good in parts'. How could it be otherwise? A crew spends months travelling the world to present wonderful things made by man, ancient and modern. Of course there has to be a mix. Some treasures are new, others are old. Some are enormous, others are tiny. Think of a contrast and you'll find it.

The bad parts are when presenter/writer Dan Cruickshank appears, speaks and gesticulates. He is an embarrassment of the highest order. Can't he voice words except in a breathless whisper? Why does every sentence have to be punctuated by unnecessary pauses? Is he incapable of speaking without making irritating hand gestures every few seconds? Why choose a presenter who can't even pronounce 'treasure' properly?

The choice of treasures hardly matters. The series includes things and places that everyone has heard of (Angkor Wat, Petra, Granada...) and a smattering of oddities (VW beetle, modern chair...). Many of them are astounding, but as soon as the the viewer begins to marvel the idiotic presenter intrudes.

When Cruickshank is absent his series provides wonderful images. As soon as he appears, any magic vanishes. My rating is an average of at least 9/10 for the choice of treasures, and at most 1/10 for the execrable way in which they're presented.

Memoirs of a Geisha (2005)

Subtitles please

[6/10 · 31 January 2009]

All adaptations of books are tosh. When the book is written by a Caucasian man about the vanished life of geishas in Japan, you shouldn't expect too much.

As we know in the west, all Asians look the same, so who cares whether the cast are Japanese or Chinese? Basically (here come the spoilers) this is a story about a sub-teen who is sold into geishadom. After lots of gloom, rain, brutality and unkindness, our geisha-in-the- making has a rare moment of delight. A rich 'Chairman' buys her a cherry-flavoured ice drink. She yearns to meet him again, and he - in the typical way of pulp fiction - never forgets her. Despite all the intervening intrigues, wars and bonking with American colonels and Japanese doctors, all ends happily.

Apart from the first few minutes of unsubtitled Japanese, or whatever, everyone speaks fractured English, often in more impenetrable accents than the average Hollywood mumble-film (No Country For Old Men, etc). This film strains the eyes and the ears to their limits.

Visually there is much to keep the eyes engaged, but TMOAG is a film that promises more than it delivers. On the plus side, nobody talks on the phone and there are no car chases.

What are we left with? A glib plot, sumo wrestlers, absurd dances and paper-thin characters. By the standards of today, we almost have a classic.

The Big Sleep (1978)

An incredible film - incredibly bad, that is...

[1/10 · 18 January 2009]

Michael Winner, who claims as many of the credits (I use the word loosely) as he can for this celluloid abomination, is an intriguing phenomenon. He makes dreadful films, but presumably they earn enough at the box office to persuade yet another philistine, bean-counting producer to sign him up for another assault on sensitive eyes.

As a sideline, the horrendously smug and obese Winner is a restaurant critic. Some of the less respectful publications in the UK hint that Winner is so loathed by chefs that every dish he is served contains a not so secret ingredient. How can I explain? The special stuff that is added in the kitchen to Winner's sauces and soups could otherwise have been deposited at the local branch of the Sperm Bank.

Does Winner think he makes good films? How did he persuade Mitchum, Stewart, Reed et al to take part in this dire production? Do superannuated movie legends have no self-respect? Surely they don't need the money. Shame on them all for signing up with him.

As a standalone film, this might earn 3 stars out of ten. As an unbelievably misconceived remake of a 1940s classic (despite all the loose ends of one of the most complicated and creakiest plots ever), I'm being too generous in awarding the IMDb minimum of one star.

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Classic books don't always beget classic films

[6/10 · 21 December 2008]

A classic book about a noble theme doesn't guarantee a classic film. I started the DVD with high hopes but found the barely intelligible infantile antics of the first hour almost unwatchable. Did it have to take that long to introduce the unseen Boo Radley and announce an accusation of rape?

The courtroom scenes were excellent, as were almost all the moments when those irritating kids weren't running around, slamming doors, being stupid and shouting in high-pitched voices.

A child's words on a page, especially if precocious, don't easily translate to moving pictures. The film suffers from its attempts at faithfulness. The story is strong enough without the distractions of playground fights.

Fans of the film should visit the ridiculous 'Rotten Tomatoes' review by Emanuel (Mr Moustache) Levy. He seems to think Jem is a girl. He says that Boo is chained to a bed (not shown) and that he has yellow teeth (hard to spot in a black and white film), and that he drools.

The issues are important and an enduring embarrassment to the 'Land of the Free' (which was founded on slavery), but that's not enough to qualify the film for greatness. Judge the book on its merits and judge the film on its merits. On the screen, To Kill a Mockingbird would have worked much better as an adult story with the children as bit part players. It had its moments, but those kiddie scenes held it back.

Romulus, My Father (2007)

Slightly off target, but heartbreakingly beautiful

[9/10 · 29 November 2008]

The American dominated 'Rotten Tomatoes' website gives the bore and gore abomination of 'Wolf Creek' the thumbs up but doesn't like 'Romulus, my father'. Raimond Gaita's personal story is extraordinary. His broadcast reading of his book is moving, as is this film. If you see this on DVD, don't miss the interview with Gaita on the extras disc.

For people who still possess hearts and emotions, 'Romulus, my father' is unmissable. Gaita, the author, is no exhibitionist. The film takes liberties with his hastily written memoir, but most of the essentials are preserved.

The child acting is outstanding. The direction is unobtrusive. The transition from young son of battling Australian immigrants to professor of philosophy is mentioned only in the closing titles. If American critics and audiences turn away from this, but award Oscars to turkeys like 'American Beauty' and 'As Good as it Gets', there's not much hope for humanity.

If you like car chases, explosions, tough guy grimaces and special effects, stay away. If you still have human feelings and haven't been brainwashed by what passes for popular culture, take a deep breath and witness this exceptional film.

The Shining (1980)

A tedious, overblown, overrated waste of time and money

[3/10 · 20 November 2008]

Someone should have told Kubrick that films don't have to run for nearly two and a half hours. Some films shouldn't be made at all. 'The Shining' belongs to that over-populated mass of things that subtract from rather than enhance life.

The story makes no sense. The acting is embarrassing. Scene after scene drags. The excessive running time destroys any suspense and gives the viewer too much time to think about the stupidity of the plot.

Presumably Kubrick, bloated with self-esteem, thought he'd redefined the horror genre with this nonsense. 'The Shining' is as bad as 'Lolita', quite an achievement.

If this was a directorial joke, it was an expensive one without a punchline. If Kubrick thought he'd done a good job, he was sadly mistaken.

Watching grass grow or paint dry suddenly don't seem such unrewarding activities.

The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

Implausible plot in scenic settings

[5/10 · 28 September 2008]

'The Talented Mr Ripley' is a very silly film. It is a perfect example of how style can triumph over substance. From start to finish the plot is 100% nonsense. A geekish lavatory attendant (Tom Ripley/Matt Damon) stands in as an accompanist wearing a borrowed Princeton blazer. This is enough for a shipping magnate in the audience to finance him to go to Italy and bring back his playboy son (Dickie Greenleaf/Jude Law).

Ripley falls in love with Dickie's life and with Dickie himself. For a while he manages to attach himself, leechlike, to the black sheep. His first advances, hinting at a game of nude bathtub chess, are rebuffed. An improbable turning point occurs when the hithertho nerdish Tom slices open the side of Dickie's head with an oar during an unlikely boat trip for two and then beats him to a lifeless pulp in the biffo that follows.

From this point, Ripley leads a double life, as himself and his victim. When rumbled by one of Dickie's old chums (Freddie/Philip Seymour Hoffman) he turns to murder again. The net seems to be closing in but Ripley keeps wriggling free.

Writer/Director Antony Minghella uses the oldest trick in the book to distract viewers from the hollowness of the plot. Just as a skillful conjuror diverts the gaze of the audience from where the trick is really happening, so Minghella disengages our critical faculties with picturesque backdrops of Rome, Venice and even Jude Law's posterior.

The cast do well enough, apart from Matt Damon who wouldn't have got a look in at a 'Queer as Folk' audition. None of the characters they play invite empathy, so the viewer scarcely cares who might live or die, and whether Ripley will get away with his literally incredible double life.

Surely the hard-boiled American private detective hired by Greenleaf Senior will unravel the tissue of lies and coincidences? Nope. Fade to unreadable titles and who cares? The stars of this film are the locations and the art direction. Without them it would be the disaster the absurd and wholly unbelievable plot deserves.

The Glass Key (1942)

Hard-boiled (N)ed

[23 August 2008]

The Glass Key first appeared as a hard-boiled novel by Dashiell Hammett. According to Raymond Chandler, no mean chronicler of an age when tough guys eternally chewed on stogies and never removed their hats, the book was Hammett's favourite of a personal output that included The Maltese Falcon.

The oddest thing about the film is the name change from Ned Beaumont to Ed of the story's leading character. What a difference a letter makes and for no obvious reason.

Viewed from a distance of 66 years the film isn't bad, mainly because we make allowances for the time. The music is tinny and the credits are over in less than a minute. Alan Ladd moves stiffly and straight-backed (as Ed/Ned Beaumont) from one scene to the next. Veronica Lake smoulders prettily and looks trim enough to win Olympic gold for rhythmic gymnastics.

Paul Madvig (played by Brian Donlevy) has succeeded in the underworld and now wants to turn to politics. He attaches himself to 'respectable' Ralph Henry and takes a shine to his daughter Janet. Madvig is a blustering buffoon blessed with a capable and loyal pal in (N)ed Beaumont.

Early coincidences abound to construct a plot knot that has to be unravelled before the closing titles roll. Madvig's very much younger sister, possibly the oldest looking 18 year old in the history of cinema, is stepping out with Henry's son, Taylor, a hard-drinking, gambling, black sheep of the family.

(N)ed finds Taylor dead outside Madvig's house. He seems to know his boss and best pal must be innocent, despite the fingers pointed in his direction. The story rattles on as (N)ed tracks down the killer. In the process he becomes a human punchbag for one of Madvig's rival's goons.

Much of the plot depends on unlocked doors and blind eyes. Characters walk into houses and rooms when the turn of a key would have brought the action to a shuddering halt. In his darkest moment, (N)ed is left unobserved so that he can recover from his latest near-fatal bashing, find a lighter in a bathroom cabinet, start a fire and make his escape.

There are plenty of twists and turns before the final account of Taylor's death emerges. Romantic loose ends are tied up. Alan Ladd occasionally appears without a hat. The film ain't bad but the book is much better.

Earth: The Power of the Planet (2007)

The good greatly outweighs the bad - a 'must see' series

[9/10 · 22 August 2008]

It's a revealing indication of the times we live in that hundreds of comments are made on idmb about nonsensical Hollywood blockbusters, but only one - before this - on an exceptionally interesting television series about the history and future of our planet.

Presenter Iain Stewart takes us on a tour of the forces that have shaped the earth over the last four and a half billion years: volcanoes, atmosphere, ice and oceans. A basic understanding of the material shown should be part of everyone's education.

The worst aspects of the five part series are the visual intrusions made by the over- enthusiastic presenter. He flaps his hands, twists his mouth into many strange shapes, and speaks in a Scottish accent strong enough to require sub-titling (not provided) for many English speakers.

There are also too many of the rapid cuts that seem to be standard fare these days, as directors assume that viewers have the attention span of a goldfish unless bludgeoned into wakefulness by flashing images too rapid to see properly.

Behind the flaws lies a wealth of information, often accompanied by startling images. The crater of an Ethiopian volcano shows, on a tiny scale hugely accelerated, the same features as the shifting of land masses as the tectonic plates separate and clash because of the forces from the molten core. A man jumps from a plane and surfs the atmosphere, illustrating that air is a fluid. We see irrefutable evidence of the shrinking of glaciers and the potential for melting permafrost to release methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere.

If we don't already know, we learn that Earth was completely icebound for millions of years, that ice ages have come and gone, that the Mediterranean has repeatedly disappeared when land movements closed the Straits of Gibraltar, that the global oceanic currents have stopped again and again causing massive extinctions, and much more.

The final episode explains how unusual and possibly unique our planet must be despite the billions of stars in our own galaxy and the billions of galaxies elsewhere. There are plenty of references to climate change that might be the result of human activity, but life on earth will survive with or without modern homo sapiens.

Never mind the irritations. 'The Power of the Earth' is a fascinating, alarming, reassuring and chastening series. Maybe it could have been done better, but it's good enough to be seen by anyone with an interest in history, the extraordinary ability of homo sapiens to understand the universe, and the shape of things to come.

People Like Us (1999–2001)

Keep your ears and eyes open all the time!

[10/10 · 13 August 2008]

Hapless Roy Mallard (the almost entirely unseen Chris Langham) makes documentaries about 'people like us': bank manager, estate agent, mother, vicar, photographer, pilot, etc. These half hour episodes are as droll as anything you'll see or hear.

The droning narration is a masterpiece of nonsense. Almost every sentence has a misunderstanding, a mixed metaphor or something downright silly. If you like lines like: 'if John and Mary are still together in two years they'll both have been married to the other person, as husband and wife, for the same period of four years', make sure you watch 'People Like Us'. But if you prefer to snigger at custard pies, painful blows to the groin or creepy Benny Hill chasing bikini babes, this won't be your cup of tea.

This is cerebral rather than visceral comedy. There are some running jokes, mainly about the appearance, marital status and name of Roy/Ray Mallard/Nolland/Mattard and the succession of faux pas he commits.

The acting is excellent throughout. Even the credits play the game by not linking performers with their roles. All we see is that the BBC wishes to thank Tom, Dick and Harriet, etc.

Each episode is superficially pedestrian and boring, as we appear to follow a typical day of 'people like us' in the time-honoured 'fly-on-the-wall' manner. But this isn't wham, bam, in your face comedy. You have to concentrate very hard to get everything. Watch out for the flustered mother loading slices of uneaten toast into the dishwasher. Listen to the flight attendant, Susan Churchfield, switching to French, introducing herself as Suzanne Eglisechamp and later asking passengers to return to their assiettes. Note the plane reflected in the office block windows flying backwards.

'People Like Us' is a wonderful series, for those who like that kind of thing. For aficionados, it could hardly be bettered. Rarely has humour been so clever and concentrated. For others, reruns of Benny Hill, Paul Hogan and too many others of that ilk can always be found. I know what I prefer.

Under Milk Wood (1971)

This was 'a play for voices' - pictures are superfluous

[12 August 2008]

Dylan Thomas, whose surname was borrowed by someone born Zimmerman, was a weaver of words. He wrote a radio play, not a film script. If you have the DVD, put on your blindfold or turn your back to the wall. The visual elements, although they merge well enough with a faithful adaptation of Thomas' words, add little and tend to distract.

If you insist on watching, there are some irrelevant treats. It's good to see Elizabeth Taylor playing a scrubber (of a floor). The casting director must have had a sense of humour to give David Jason, not the most authentic of Welshmen, the Onanistic part of Nogood Boyo.

Sometimes a verbal work is enriched when embedded in pictures. Not so with 'Under Milk Wood'. Thomas demands attention with the ears, not the eyes. This film is a worthy but misguided attempt to bring the work of a great writer to people who can't be bothered to read or listen.

Dylan Thomas knew best: this is 'a play for voices'.