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Reviews
Bodysong (2003)
Great concept, flawed delivery
I had been really psyched in expectation of seeing this film, but the end experience has left me rather flat. The two major issues of contention I have concern the structure and the much-hyped soundtrack. Although billed as a journey from birth to death the film actually continues past death into a bizarre and ultimately pointless montage of random and arbitrarily selected human activities. Ending the film at death would have been appropriate both in terms of content and time.
My other concern is the soundtrack, which is used to make judgements on what we see, in an otherwise silent film. However this is done inappropriately so that 'womb-time' is depicted in an anti-abortionist almost sacred manner and sex as both crazed and frenzied, whilst death camps are merely romanticised by elevator music! The net result is to depict sex as more unsavoury than the Holocaust! Either let us make up our own minds or treat all human activity with the same contempt.
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
Object Lesson in Tedium
Overblown, overlong and pompous, the third instalment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy has disappeared well up its own backside - and seemingly taken a whole host of weak-willed and easily-pleased movie-goers with it. Equating length and special effects, falsely, to cinematic excellence, Peter Jackson has created a film so tedious and slow-paced as to make re-reading the snore-inducing novel seem like a brilliant idea. The hobbits are so wet and dreary as to make Gollum (an exact replica of Jar Jar Binks without the ears) look like a hero - every second they take up screen time I just groaned with embarrassment and boredom. Jackson' sole directing technique is the slow pan, fine for establishing scenery, wince-making when it comes to our third trip up Frodo's nostrils. Most of the characters just make you want to go up to them, slap them sharply round the face and tell them to pull themselves together and get a brain/life. Worse of all, the spiders were done better in Eight Legged Freaks, the ghosts were sub-Pirates of the Caribbean and the battle sequences were as confusingly grey-on-grey as the last instalment of the equally dreary Matrix trilogy! Judged on its merits alone this movie would feature as number one only in a list of the biggest wastes of time and money in cinema history, but sadly a gullible public have lost their way. Please, please - do not make The Hobbit, Peter!