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joe-52027
Reviews
Raising the Bar (2016)
Blame the writers/director/and executive producer...
I've been watching this with my daughter - she's seen it like 20 times (she loves gymnastics, but knows nothing about quality cinema). Like most Aussie films for kids coming to Netflix in the US, it's a cutesy film meant to entertain children. I'll leave that there. But, is Australia really that far behind the US and UK in filmmaking that they don't know how to light or mic sound? And who wrote this?? Is it common in Australia that at a teen gymnastics competition that the broadcasters make rude judgmental comments about the teens performing in the arena on the Jumbotron for the competitors to hear? This is a major fail for the writers, the director(s), and who ever produced this and thought it was worthy of being sent out. I feel bad for the actors who probably did the best with the junk they were given to work with. Awful.
Luna Park (2021)
Great all around. But, the music is a major failure.
I was trying to find a place to comment on this and IMDB seemed the right place. The atmospheric tracks they chose for this series are just fine. However, whoever they hired and made the pop music choices for the soundtrack should've been fired. It's incredibly jarring to be experiencing a foreign piece set in a specific time period (1960s) to be shocked into hearing overbearing music from the 2010s. The 21st century pop is wildly out of place and a stain on the filmmaking - which I must compliment as having very visually pleasing color palette, nice camera work, excellent acting, and perfect set design. But someone has to grab this series back and re-edit the soundtrack choices. Even if 1960s American pop took its place that would at least be acceptable, but I can think of plenty of other Italian hits from the same era that would've worked, too.