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julsepsom
Reviews
The Winter King (2023)
Hmm, good ish but also boring
I read the books a long time ago and my memory of them is that they were not my favourite Bernard Cornwall books and I am a huge fan so I was intrigued to watch this series.
The first episode is tedious but is scene setting and character introducing so I gave it the benefit of the doubt. The 2nd episode was a lot more exciting, and thereafter it alternated between being dull and I fell asleep, to being exciting, back to dull, on to interesting and so on. Merlin is barely around, Nimue is really annoying but I think that was like the book. Derfel's mullet is perhaps historically accurate but is very distracting, the French loyal sidekicks are great, Arthur veers from brilliant to terrible tactician, Eddie Marsan was brilliant and the scenery was stunning.
The Winter King is OK but is very hit and miss and nowhere near as good as The Last Kingdom.
The Out-Laws (2023)
AWFUL
Adam Devine's acting is out of the school of Jim Carrey and Will Ferrell i.e. Very, very annoying. It's just face pulling and silly voices. Stupid.
Pearce Brosnan has a thick Belfast accent - why? It brings nothing to the part unless he's supposed to be really hard and scary, but he's too gorgeous looking for that.
For a "comedy" it's not funny at all - I think I laughed once at a bit of slapstick from a minor character.
As a bank heist plot - it would have been good if played entirely straight with a much more switched on FBI agent tracking them down.
The best characters were Owen's parents.
Tayna pechati drakona (2019)
Awful
I like Jackie Chan, I like Arnold Schwarzenegger. I like Rutger Hauer. What were they thinking? We watched about 5 minutes of actors, including Jason Flemying, in dubbed english which clearly didn't match what they were speaking. Had the script been re-written after the scenes had been shot and edited? Were some of the actors speaking a different language altogether? We turned it off. I would rather the actors spoke their natural language with subtitles added. Unwatchable.
The Gray Man (2022)
Seen it all before but it's fun
How many films are there where a rough diamond is taken out of his surroundings/prison/wherever and turned into an expert figher/computer hacker/whatever? This is another one.
How many films have a back story involving a child and father figure mentor? This is another one.
How many films have a protagonist who is a murderous psychopath? This is another one.
How many films have improbable car chases, crashes involving multiple vehicles which are all done on CGI because they are so improbable? This is another one.
How many films have good but unrealistic fight scenes? This is another one.
How many films have scenes all over the world for no reason at all? This is another one.
However, the story line makes sense even if it's not realistic at all. It's entertaining and there are some good one liners. It's worth a watch if you like this sort of film.
Pieces of Her (2022)
Why did we bother
Lordy, this was frustrating.
Andie, a 30 year old woman I kept forgetting wasn't a teenager.
The young Jane Queller played by an actress who could only pout, act sulky and walk around like a wet blanket was out-acted by the 4 year old playing her daughter, the young Andie. Younger Jane looked so far removed from her older self played by Toni Collette that I had to keep reminding my husband who she was - to be fair he did fall asleep throughout most of this.
Everything was so long drawn out over the 8 episodes that I lost track of what Nick wanted to do to Queller Senior in Oslo and why. What was the motiviation for the imposter woman being there? Who was sending people to attack Andie and her US Marshall protection officer?
In the last episode Andie lay some flowers outside a restaurant in memory of 2 people - they obviously died there, and there was a flashback to someone being shot in a restaurant - but we don't recall any of that. I suspect we had both fallen asleep at the relevant moment - you can tell it really gripped our attention.
We had to finish the whole series but at the end were left asking several questions because it just didn't make enough sense.
Things Heard & Seen (2021)
So frustrating
This is a slow burner and gradually the wife discovers things about her husband which are not good. He begins to be found out for being a fraud and reacts. The last 10 minutes makes no sense whatsoever and completely spoil what could have been a good film. Film makers, here's a thought. Think about how the film ends first and then write the rest of the script. Even the end of Stephen King films are rubbish.
The Midnight Sky (2020)
Slow paced but intense
If you want a natural disaster film where a young beautiful scientist saves their family and/or the world, don't watch this film. If you want to see London, Paris, Cairo and Washington lose their iconic buildings in a tsunami, meteor strike, sudden ice age or shark tornado, don't watch this film. If you want everything tied up neatly, don't watch this film.
If you want to be a grown up and watch a film which starts after the apocalyptic event, which makes YOU fill in the gaps and the back story rather then be spoon fed them, then do watch this film. Its about relationships, life ending, life starting, decisions made, regrets, and resignation of those decisions. For those commenting saying it's bad science, be honest, has any film set in space or one which shows the destruction of the world had any basis in science? Watch a documentary if you want facts. Watch this film if you want to see good acting, beautiful other world scenery, the raw elements on earth and a fictional story.
Il primo re (2019)
Slow, ponderous and dull
I don't know how other reviewers gave this an average of 7 stars. The film starts with 2 shepherds in a valley with woods either side who are suddenly swept away by a tsunami wave! No establishing shot to show they were near the sea. Already ridiculous. The story continues. Apart from the very graphic fight scenes all the characters actions are so, so slow and laboured. Everyone walks and does things as if they were in a trance. Romulus looks like a neanderthal. They dress like cavemen but have swords, knives, bows and arrows. Lots of moody looks from Remus staring into the distance. He tells his band of fellow escaped slaves and villagers who he "won" by killing their warriors that they would leave and build a city. They'd just left a village of a few crude wooden teepees so how does a shepherd suddenly get such an idea? Oh yes, a witch foresaw it, sort of. Suddenly Remus proclaims himself King, not Chief or leader, but King. His self imposed power goes to his head and he becomes a despot, leaves the witch tied to a tree to be mauled by wild beasts. The film ends on the banks of the River Tiber, surrounded by marsh, woods and the 7 hills with Romulus declaring the city, yet even to have a lean-to shelter built, to be called Rome. The end.
Gaslit (2019)
1 star for giving people a job
Spoilers - to save you from losing 90 minutes of your day.
From the first minute you just know that this is a bad, low budget, made for TV film. A wife is kicking out her husband for cheating on her. The "teenage" daughter, who looks about the same age as her mother is a terrible actress. Really terrible. A policeman arrives later to tell them that the husband is dead in a car accident. Then a few days later the daughter doesn't come back from a camping trip with the neighbour Mary and her own daughter, who tell the mother that they've never met her daughter. Mother rings the policeman to tell him about the missing daughter and he takes her to a therapist who tells her that her daughter died in the same car crash. For some reason they are all obsessed with keeping the mother warm because they say it's cold even though they are all wearing T-shirts and it's the summer??!!
It's all a convoluted plot concocted between the neighbour, who is the husband's mistress, the policeman and therapist who are the husband's best buddies, and the husband who is not dead and it's all to make the mother appear mad. Why?
The husband wanted to be with his mistress and the wife was kicking him out? So, why?
The penultimate 10 minutes is without doubt THE worst part of a film I have ever ever seen. Honestly, do yourselves a favour and pass this one by.
The Bone Hunter (2003)
Why bother?
I shall admit right from the start - we couldn't get passed the first few minutes and turned the film off. We saw a lovely rugged landscape, a few roman soldiers walking in a line, wearing very clean clothes - not a rip or stain in site. And all to the background of incongruous 1970s style wispy romantic music. Then they are attacked by a small band of tribe people, yelling not convincingly and the music gets a bit more frantic but only by half a notch. There was some very half hearted "fighting" ...and then we switched off. Why bother making a film if the start of it, to get the audience interested, is so dreadful?
Off-Piste (2016)
Not what I was expecting
I came to this film expecting to see a revenge movie with an ex SAS soldier remembering his training and skills to take out an avenging enemy. A bit like a budget version of any number of Hollywood blockbusters with INSERT ACTION STAR OF YOUR CHOICE with the enemy dispatched in a number of different, improvised ways. Well, if that's what you want to watch don't watch this film.
Other reviewers have said the Northern Irish accents are terrible - well they didn't jar with me, they were strong, presumably Belfast, accents so not a cod Irish accent like Tom Cruise's in Far Away.
A soldier did a terrible thing and has been suffering with the consequences ever since. He hides away in the mountains and seeks help from psychiatrists wanting them to wave a magic wand to absolve his sins but he seems to want to continue punishing himself.
An Irish girl goes to find him for revenge but it doesn't quite work out that way. Meanwhile her unstable, obsessed with her friend chases after her with his equally dangerous mate. Here the film gets slightly silly. The 2 Irish men find her very quickly, she spurns the obsessed one - again - and the 2 men make an unbelievable decision. Cue sequence of events which is probably what you thought the film was about anyway.
This may be a low budget film but it's done well. I've seen a lot of really, really terrible American films with bigger budgets which have dreadful scripts, awful CGI and are badly acted with known actors only doing it for the pay cheque. This film isn't perfect but it's not dreadful either.
This film is about revenge and understanding. Wanting to die and wanting to live. It's about humanity.