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Reviews
The War of the Worlds (2005)
Could have been so much more
I was very enthusiastic about this movie at first. Although early plans for the film were to set it in Seattle in 2004, I was overjoyed when Hines' elected to make it a period piece. Unfortunately, the film doesn't live up to expectations.
Although it is very faithful to the book is is marred by a bad screenplay, poor acting, poor (and very extreme) grading and the overuse of very cheap CG images.
One of the worst offenders for CG are the "crane" shots. Unwilling or unable to hire a crane (even a cherry picker would have done, guys!) Hines' instead elects to do the shots in CG.
A lot of scenes appear to have been shot against a green screen with backgrounds keyed in. This is, of course, absolutely standard practice for the vast majority of movies. But Hines' elects to use the technique in an odd variety of places; keying in fields and sky which by rights should have been shot on location. Maybe they ran out of time during principle photography and had to finish in studio?
What the film needed more than anything really is a good editor, both at the script stage and when producing the final cut. 180 minutes is far too long - 120 minutes is more than enough to tell this story.
The Time Machine (2002)
A travesty
What nonsense is this? Why make a film and called it 'Based on the book' when it bears little more than a passing resemblance to it? It would be simpler, surely, if you want to tell a story about Alexander Hartdegen and his lost love, just to write one? Rather than crowbar it (and a hundred other irrelevancies) into an already existing, and timeless work.
As an adventure film in its own right, "The Time Machine" has its moments. The casting isn't ideal, but the direction is good and the visuals are pretty. However as an adaptation of the classic Wells' novel, it fails abysmally.
Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) (2000)
Lots of fun
Don't watch this if you're expecting to see the 60's version of Randall and Hopkirk, with prettier effects. Randall and Hopkirk 2000 (as I shall call it), is nothing of the kind. It is the same TV series in name alone and that's the way it should be.
Gone are the seedy back-street meetings of a TV series that seemed to be almost embarrassed to feature this fantasy element - which only arose because creator Dennis Spooner wanted to write a series about a ghost. The original Randall and Hopkirk was almost apologetic about the fact that one if its main characters was dead.
Thankfully Randall and Hopkirk 2000 revels in it. The plots are a little predictable, but if you want heavy detective drama go watch Cracker. Writer Charlie Higson did what they daren't in the 60's. He had fun.
The only real flaws are Reeves and Mortimer. Whoever told Vic and Bob that they can act should be shot through the lungs. That said, there has been a very clear improvement in the quality of their acting as the series has progressed.
And don't even get me started on Tom Baker. The man is a genius!
Roll on series two!
Mindgame (1998)
I've seen better
But then again I've seen a lot worse. Certainly the weakest in a long line of recent 'monster' spin-offs from "Doctor Who", that started with "Shakedown - Return of the Sontarans" in 1994, and went through "Downtime" (1995), "Auton" (1997) and "Auton 2 : Sentinel" (1998). Although the premise is an appealing one (a sci-fi take on 'three men stuck in a lift'), the limited budget and the fact that the aim was to shoot the whole production in one day meant that the end product was a great disappointment. Miles Richardson is wonderful as the Draconian and Sophie Aldred is passable as the human. Sadly Toby Aspin - after delivering a wonderful performance as Commander Steg in "Shakedown" - is really terrible as Commander Sarg, who - far from the squat hissing trolls featured in "Doctor Who" - played Sarg as a very loud roaring character. And even then, not a terribly well played loud roaring character. Worst of all has to be Bryan Robson's 'Alien', who looks so terribly laughable in that mask, it is impossible to take him seriously. As a bonus on the only available release of "Mindgame" is "The Making of Mindgame", a 37 minute production about this 30 minute film, which is happily a lot more entertaining than it's subject matter. It goes along way to explain why "Mindgame" turned out so bad, detailing the hideous production problems that beset Reeltime's small crew. And when viewed in that context.. it somehow doesn't seem as bad as it first appeared.