Change Your Image
clewis2666
Reviews
Challengers (2024)
A great disappointment
After the extraordinary good reviews this film got I was expecting a realistic portrayal of life in the world of tennis but what I got was a travesty of that, more like a fairy story for teenagers. Maybe it was my fault but, as a tennis fan, I was expecting something that made sense. I'll come to that in a minute -- that's where the spoilers will be.
Others have commented on the mind-boggling switching between periods and places. I found this jumping o'er times very hard to follow even though I tried hard to see how old the characters were looking on each switch--they vary from teenagers to, I think, late twenties or a bit more.
In the early part of the film we are treated to a really horrid series of sequences of these three young people being sexy with each other, which seemed designed for teenagers and not for adults. I found these three leading characters throughout not worth the watching. She was stupid, conceited, faithless and unreliable. The fair headed lad was weak and uninteresting, the dark haired lad was a sleaze-bag. Were we supposed to care about them?
The tennis background was ludicrous. The fair-headed one was supposed to have been a good player but now he had to be encouraged to play even at the lower end of the game on the Challengers route. Yet we are told that all he needed to do to become a leading contender for the US Open Championship was to win a little known challengers tournament in New York. His erstwhile friend, now a burnt-out case was for some reason expected to meet him in the final, which he did. I did not object to the ending, which was weird, because the whole film was weird. But what was beyond ridiculous is that the girl, now married to the fair-headed one with a little daughter, went to beg the other guy to deliberately lose the final so that her husband could regain his mojo! On top of that, she was willing to be unfaithful to gain that objective! How stupid can you get!
Apart from all that, these shots of tennis being played, which have received so much praise from critics, were nothing more than players running backwards and forwards very fast and every time the ball was hit there was an exciting noise like a Winchester rifle being fired! None of these players ever played a volley until the very end of the film. Maybe the makers of film hadn't heard of the volley, which is actually quite a common shot in tennis!!
Then when in a match the score was one game to love in the final set the players were sitting down at the time, which never happens after the first game in the set, and then the umpire got them to get up by calling the score and announcing who was going to serve. What nonsense!
I was expecting a sensible film based in the world of tennis. None of the reviews warned me that this was more like a chick-flick set against an imaginary background of the tennis world, a rather ugly fairy story set against excruciating music . Just add it to the number of rubbish sports movies that have been made.
The Quick and the Dead (1995)
A horrible film
I am forever reading reviews of movies, both professional and amateur, on this excellent website, but I rarely write one myself. When I do, it is usually because I have rated a movie very highly when the general consensus has seemed to be otherwise. I have very rarely, if ever, written a review simply to rubbish a film, but this is one such.
Spaghetti westerns are silly, unreal and unbelievable versions of real westerns. They are, in effect, a desecration of the real thing. Everything about them is overdone, and stupid, particularly the camera work and the characterization. This film manages to take everything to the ultimate nadir. The central plot is disgusting, --a so-called game of deadly gun duels, one against one, until the last player is left standing. Sharon Stone, the star, is almost invisible, being so utterly colourless. Co-star Gene Hackman does his best with a silly characterization of a deadly killer and heaven knows what Russell Crowe was trying to be. Too absurd to be rated as a western of any sort and too horrid in every way to be rated higher than one star out of 10.
All involved should be made to watch a week of real westerns--I am sure any of the readers of this review would be able to supply them with a long list of suitable movies.
A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014)
I hardly stopped laughing
I don't often write reviews but when I saw so many downbeat reviews of this hilarious film I felt I had to align myself with those who enjoyed it.. I cannot recall a film comedy that I have enjoyed more than this one. If I wasn't laughing at the jokes, including rude ones, I was enjoying the great performances of the leads. I can see that for some people some of the rude humour went too far. Even I was shocked at times, but I continued laughing. Part of my pleasure was due to the fact that, not having heard of this film before I was not expecting anything special, and as my specialty is westerns I have high standards. And I got high standards--though of a different sort from what I expected! Bravo to everyone involved in this gem!
Meek's Cutoff (2010)
Silly, boring and pretentious
In my humble opinion you need to be some sort of pseud to see anything of value in this waste of space. There is a glimmer of interest in seeing this version of a wagon train--a few Puritan travellers and three wagons led by a grizzled pioneer across, effectively, a desert -- until, I hasten to add -- the only bit of action in the whole sorry mess, one of the wagons breaks up as it goes down an incline. But even if so much was not photographed in the dark and even if so much of the conversation was not unintelligible, the 'plot' would remain a miserable excuse for a story. One soon gets bored and nothing happens. A great artistic innovation? Nothing of the sort. A decent western (I have been a fan of Westerns for more years than I care to remember)? Absolutely not. To be avoided at all costs.
La fille au bracelet (2019)
A total let-down
Do not read this review if you dislike spoilers!
This ran for most of its time as quite a decent courtroom drama -- the trial for murder of her best friend by a ridiculously composed young girl (eighteen at the time of trial).
The proceedings --whether or not a fair representation of a murder trial under French law -- were weird, with judge, prosecutor, defence attorney, witnesses and defendant popping up all over the place to put their oar in from time to time. How any of them had any idea of where they were going, or getting to, I do not know!
Anyway, what made it a total non-event for me is that the resolution of the drama, if you can call it that, was totally limp, and equally unsatisfactory. Call it a documentary, if you like. True, but I should have been warned that was what it was, and not a whodunnit.
Hidden Assets (2021)
Brilliuant police procedural
I cannot believe anyone could hate this show, unless they had a private agenda. It is a rattling good story, with interesting locations, and the two tecs leading the inquiry are excellent. The ending, if you can call it that, obviously envisages a second series. Good!
300 (2006)
Rubbishy comic strip of Greek history
I would give this load of infantile rubbish zero if I could. The depiction of what was an actual important event in Greek history is infantile in the extreme, suitable for a 'monster' movie or some work of an impoverished imagination. The photography is likewise -- quite insufferable. Nothing is true to the history. For example, the priests (ephors) are witlessly depicted as monsters. They were not. They were men who presided over meetings of the council of elders, or gerousia, and assembly, or apella, and were responsible for carrying out their decrees.
I feared for the worst from the outset when what was supposed to be a normal enough wolf was depicted as a weird monster. It was nonsense from first to last -- a confession, I should not use the word 'last' as I did not last it out to the end.
Oh yes, they could not even pronounce the king's name properly -- Leonidas -- accent on the second syllable please, not the third (he was not Leonides).
The one plus point in this whole farrago of nonsense was Lena Headey -- she was/is (still) very pretty.
Too Close (2021)
A nightmare
Utterly terrible. Two main characters, both unpleasant and unstable, one an apparent murderer,m the other a pretty uselss 'forensic psychiatrist'. Emily Watson was virtually catatonic most of the time, Denise Gough gave the worst OTT performance of a maniac I can remember. -- she had two moods, the first we saw was an angry spiteful malicious creature, the other was an out and out lunatic. Neither made any sort of sense (par for the course) I had to turn it off ten minutes before the end because she (and everything else) was being so absurd.
Lad: A Yorkshire Story (2013)
A decent effort, but...
Fairly routine plot, nicely handled , though with a fair few amateurish touches. All those friends of the participants who have been drafted in to give the film ten stars have their hearts in the right place, but I am not a Yorkshire bloke and, with the best will in the world, I cannot see this very decent film getting more than 7 out of 10 from a competent critic. Methinks that lot doth protest too much!
I Care a Lot (2020)
Who has got it in for whom?
I enjoyed this black comedy a lot. The script was inventive and fresh, the performances were good. Rosamund Pike especially. I just do not understand the many user reviews that loathed it. The metacritics did not loathe it at all. I tend to think this pattern of abuse is like a twitter pile-on. someone has decided the film has to be pulped and that someone has a lot of followers. But why? Do they not understand what a black comedy is?
Invaders from Mars (1953)
Never forgotten after nearly 70 years
I was 14 when I saw this film. I totally agree with the rave reviews here. So, to keep this short, I just draw attention to the moment in the police station when the lad is asking the desk sergeant for help and suddenly, as the man bends forward, the lad sees the dreaded mark on the back of his neck. He knows now he can get no help there, but quite the opposite.I was devastated.
I have the same apprehension these days when I think to speak to anyone about the current twin perils of critical race and critical gender theory. Dare I suggest that white men are NOT all racist or that the biology of sex is real and immutable, or will I be met by a hostile glare and the sudden realisation that the person I am speaking to has been caught by the new ideology?
Traitors (2019)
Terrific series
I am bewildered by the poor reviews. I lived through this period and I found the story, the dialogue and the acting exciting and convincing. The characters are very varied and the twists and turns gripping and unforeseeable.
If one is looking for mindless action as per James Bond or the others, this is not for you (not to say there is no action: there is, but it is properly integrated into an interesting story). If you are an intelligent viewer who likes to be challenged a bit, go for it.
Safe Harbour (2018)
Great actress triumphs over confused plot
The great thing about this "thriller" was, in the opinion of this UK resident, the convincing performance by the beautiful Nicole Chamoun. She seems, unusually, to come from some inner place which informs her performance and gives it a truth which acting generally lacks. Some top-quality director needs to latch on to her very soon.
I am totally uninterested in gender and diversity agendas. I am only interested in whether I am watching a gripping and, above all, convincing drama. This was not one such. Other reviewers have pointed out various inconsistencies in the plot. For myself, I found that, in short, it did not make sense.
I could never work out if the yacht at the time the fishing boat was observed was still heading away from Australia, probably towards Indonesia, or was already going back to Australia. We seem to be told at one time that they were towing the refugees' craft back towards Indonesia, which clearly the latter would not have wanted. There was some talk about the yacht changing direction (in the night?), But I never understood when or why. We were told earlier on that the vote whether or not to help the refugees was something like 5 to 1 (I won't say which way). Yet later it is revealed in a flashback that it was very different. We are told at one point that a member of the refugees I will not disclose who) cut the rope, and yet the denouement tells us something very different.
The various, and many, interchanges between the two families go up and down, in terms of friendship and hostility, in an inconsistent and unconvincing fashion, heavily violent one moment and all tender and forgiving the next. There is a lot of bad behaviour by the Australian husband, only topped, to the point of being ludicrous, by the baleful hysteria of his sister, who, when she learns of an old boyfriend's infidelity (whom she hadn't seen for years) goes quite mad.
So, in all, fairly daft and only worth having watched (for four hours!) for that lady's performance (without which I would not have bothered to write this review).
Silver Linings Playbook (2012)
Horrid beastly film
I absolutely hated this film. I am amazed to hear it was meant to be a comedy. I only lasted 40 minutes or so. The company of mentally ill people behaving like sad lunatics is hardly agreeable, certainly not where they are behaving in a totally ridiculous manner all the time. I can only echo what reviewer Pinko 2004 wrote:
'This film contains a horrific depiction of mental illness that objectifies human beings as caricatures. Cooper's character, who is supposedly the film's primary protagonist, is portrayed in such a disturbing way that an uninformed viewer could not be blamed for thinking that those who are bipolar - a very real illness with very real, good people who suffer from it - are all miserable, violent people who obsess over others to the point of stalking them.'
Absolutely! Hated it, hated it, hated it!
Woman in Gold (2015)
I lose any faith in professional critics
As one or two other non-professional reviewers have said, I just don't understand the many negative reviews from the professionals. As a Jew, I found the film totally gripping and beautifully done in every way. The film is grounded in the Holocaust and faithfully portrays the vicious treatment of Jews by the Austrian people as well as the Nazis. The later intransigent attitude of the Austrian authorities who will do anything to hang on to the stolen painting should come as no surprise. Austria has never admitted its culpability in the Nazi atrocities and never will, unlike Germany.I have substantial doubts about the sensitivity of these negative reviewers to the plight of the Jews at that time. Their childish complaint seems to be that the film isn't exciting enough and is schmaltzy. I found it gripping and truthful.
A Bigger Splash (2015)
What a load of rubbish!
Complete load of rubbish, masquerading as an art(y) film. Four characters, only one of whom is remotely sane, three of whom are both uninteresting and unpleasant. Tilda Swinton is her usual pretentious self, only voiceless. Mathias Schonaerts is handsome and quiet (thank goodness). Ralph Fiennes doing manic is the most irritating and pointless character I can remember on screen. No-one half civilised would stand him for as much as minute. The nymphet does what you expect nymphets to do. I despair of professional critics who go weak at the knees if they can describe a film as arty. Thank goodness for so many sensible ordinary viewers who tell it like it is.
Das letzte Schweigen (2010)
A plot that is unconvincing where it is not actually unintelligible
Beware! This review is crammed full of spoilers. I have no problem with the acting, the music or the photography. My problem lies with the script. In short, I did not fully, or even mostly, understand what was going on. The main thing I did not understand was which of the two miscreants committed the second murder. According to the subtitles the second murder did not involve any paedophile element, unlike the first murder, and therefore we are presumably being led to believe that it was committed by the accomplice and not the main murderer. The subtitles also told us that the presumption of the police was that whoever committed the second murder did so in order to attract the attention of the other member of the duo, though why he felt such a desire to meet him again after so long was not clear. The idea that either of them would imperil themselves by committing a murder merely for the purpose of sending a signal to the other member of the duo is little short of fatuous. Even a paedophile, let alone someone who has not committed any crime except to sit and watch a murder and do nothing about it, does not go out to murder a girl without a sexual assault merely to send out a signal. So what is going on here? Also there were too many different strands going on here, most of them adding nothing to the plot would apparently being there to add some sort of colour to the narrative. You have the former detective who beds the grieving widow. You have the shambling youngish detective, half bonkers with grief for his deceased wife You have the weird behaviour of the accomplice who goes to chat to the original widow (having years before witnessed her daughter's murder); and then, in a manner again I did not properly understand, she suspects that he was party to the death of her child and so informs the police (I think I've got that right). Worst of all, somewhere in the middle of the film they introduce a third girl victim, who seems some years before to have been kidnapped by the main murderer, tortured on a video, and then presumably killed. That aspect of the plot completely baffled me. Why was it there in the first place? I also found the fact that the original murderous paedophile got away with it a thoroughly unattractive ending to the film. So you can see that I actively disliked the film.
The Whale (2013)
A convincing near-documentary feel to a gripping story
I am surprised by the negative tone of 2 of the 3 reviews currently available here. Perhaps "disappointed" would be a better term to use than "surprised", because I can understand that if one was wanting or expecting a high voltage adventure, albeit on a smaller budget, the sort of thing that Hollywood would certainly have produced (and, as we are told, is about to produce), the muted tone of this near- documentary would not be well received. Some time ago I put this film on my rental list with Lovefilm but when it arrived the other day I could not remember why or when I had selected it. As the film began I observed, possibly a little to my surprise, that it was a BBC production, but, even so, I didn't twig that it was made for TV. I can say right away that in my opinion it made an excellent TV offering. But the question is: does it make an excellent feature film offering? I was gripped by the film all the time, not in a Tom Cruise sort of way, but simply by the unfolding of the story and by the very well portrayed interchange between the members of the crew, who for the most part acted very well (it seems a shame to say this, but I thought the captain (spoiler!) was not a very successful portrayal, changing, as the script required him to do, from a strong-minded leader to a useless wreck, merely because, through no fault of his, his ship had been lost – and then, really, becoming a leader again after a few supportive words from his previously antagonistic first mate). The placing of the cabin boy, later in life Martin Sheen, at the heart of the film was very successful, and, to me, the atmosphere, as well as the nitty-gritty, of an early 19th century whaling ship seemed very well captured. (Spoiler – for anyone who doesn't know the story of Moby Dick!) It is fair to say that the sinking of the ship was not thrilling, just factual, as, for that matter, were other aspects of the film which could, by others, have been Hollywoodised, such as the cannibalism. The ominous behaviour of the surviving whale did not seem particularly convincing, probably because he wasn't feeling ominous, merely lounging around. Certainly there was no attempt to depart from the truth and give the creature a few chances to ram the small whaling boats. The film merely told the truth, as I imagine it to be, namely that apart from hunger and thirst and the consequent cannibalism, 2 of the 3 boats were rescued and the other, for whatever reason, was not seen again. Again, I emphasise that the cannibalism, which could have been made utterly gruesome and unforgettable, was portrayed factually, that is to say in a manner that will not satisfy the sensationalists. But, to revert to what I said much earlier, the film had, as I imagine it was intended to have, a documentary feel. Taking it all in all, I would give it, without hesitation, 7 points out of 10.
Macbeth (2015)
Hugely disappointing -- for anyone who cares at all about Shakespeare
After all the really good, not to say rave reviews of this film I, who, like countless millions, think Shakespeare was a marvellous writer, was really looking forward to seeing it. My disappointment was total. Let me say first what I have no problem with. I have no problem with the fact that they obviously had only a small budget. The scenes were almost all shot outdoors, on Rannoch Moor or somewhere similar, in the mist. The costumes were fairly cheap, raggedy looking things, but why not? We are talking about mediaeval barbarians, and Scottish ones at that (no offence intended). I do not even have a problem with them pulling the play around a lot, chopping it up a bit and re-stitching it, provided they keep some sort of sensible narrative going. I do not really have a problem with them adding an extra scene, character, or line here or there, provided they keep the sense going. No, what ruined the film for me, made it very painful to watch from almost the outset and unremittingly thereafter, and what required of me an iron resolution to see the debacle to the end – which I needed to do if I was going to write a review – was the appalling handling, most particularly by the two lead actors, of Shakespeare's lines. Almost all the time Fassbender and Cotillard appeared to have little or no understanding of what the lines actually meant. She delivered most of the lines in a hushed, sibilant whisper, he in an uninvolved monotone. I do not ask that they should perform like Laurence Olivier or some such, but at least they could bring some inflections to the lines, bring out the meaning and make them interesting. These two seemed to have no intention behind their sotto voce recitation other than to get to the end of the sentence as quickly as possible. The fact that there was scope for some decent speaking should have been demonstrated to them so clearly by the excellent performance of their colleague, David Thewlis as Duncan. There is a man who, with his theatrical training, knows exactly how to handle Shakespeare, whether on stage or, as here, in front of the cameras. There were also one or two good performances in smaller parts, particularly from some genuinely Scottish persons, including an elderly actor, whose name I cannot give because I never discovered what the name of his character was. The long and the short of it is that your wonderful film stars are quite hopeless at speaking Shakespeare, particularly if they need, for artistic reasons, to speak quietly. They have not had any training in supporting the voice when speaking quietly, so that it comes out as a low growl, a whisper or a hiss, or a mixture of all three. This was what put me off right at the beginning, the Lady hissing and shushing through lines, which were virtually unintelligible. You get the same sort of thing in the world of music, where pop singers need all manner of electronic support as they alternate between whispering and screaming. A good example of what happens if you try to sing when you do not know how to support the voice was given by Anne Hathaway in the film of Les Miserables. How she could have received any praise for this effort, as opposed to her dramatic scenes, quite baffles me. The last part of her pathetic solo (pathetic in both senses) was no more than a hoarse whisper. She is, of course, not to be blamed for this, as long as neither she nor anyone else thinks of her as a singer. So, with the two lead performances flat as a pancake and largely unintelligible, how can I give the film any stars at all?
Kyss mig (2011)
A largely sensible and interesting drama undone by the pathetic ending
For quite a while I watched this film with interest and respect, but little by little I began to have some doubts about it and, then, I was turned off completely by the ludicrous ending. SPOILER I then looked back over the film and, bearing in mind the slight doubts I had about certain aspects of it even before the dreadful ending, and enlightened to no small extent by the variety of reviews from users on this website, I concluded that, all in all, it was something of a con and not to be taken too seriously (by con I mean a sort of confidence trick, almost too clever by half, or at any rate too clever for its own good). I didn't like either of the young women, but that is not in itself a reason to criticise the film. I thought the blonde girl was silly, unthinking and irresponsible (often called "free-spirited" – haha!), and I found the dark girl boring, repressed and depressed. If the blonde girl had been a guy she would probably have appeared as the worst sort of Casanova, or at any rate a guy who followed the urgings of his penis without for a moment engaging in any sense of responsibility. The dark girl, Mia, although engaged to be married in a short while to a reasonably normal and decent young man, allowed herself pretty quickly and willingly to be seduced by lesbian Frida and the two of them were soon having a good time in bed and apparently devoted to each other. They called it love – and here I am not making any distinction at all between love between two women and love between a man and woman – but it was nothing more than strong sexual attraction, for which, apparently, Mia was willing to ditch her man and change her life. As other reviewers have pointed out, the two of them never seem to have any sort of conversation together, let alone a meaningful one. Then there was the odd little bit of dialogue between the two of them when Frida suggests that Mia was more adept at making love to a woman than a "virgin" would have been and Mia acknowledged that she had had a previous lesbian relationship. Where was that supposed to take us? It gives the lie to the whole meaning that we had ingested up to that point, namely that Frida seduced an otherwise "normal" girl away from her man with her sexy wiles. Then we had the strange behaviour of Mia's father, who actually and literally refused to hear what Frida's mother was telling him, i.e. that Mia, his daughter, was in a lesbian relationship with her own daughter; and yet, within a very short while, he had changed from being in total denial to someone who admitted that he had had his "doubts" about his daughter before and now he simply wished her to be happy. But the final blow that convinced me, to my anger, that I had been led up the garden path all along, thinking that this was a serious study of passion (not love) between two women, was the pathetic ending that brought the whole film down to the level of a romcom – and not a very good one at that. I cannot believe that this was the ending that the auteur originally wanted. I suspect it was put in to satisfy the masses. We have Mia ditching her fiancé without a second thought (I do not know if we are supposed to feel she was in part justified because once, just once, he spoke a little harshly to her), dashing off wildly to beg Frida's mother to tell her where she had gone, racing to the airport, desperately trying to bypass the security man at the gate, watching, so we thought, the flight to Barcelona sailing off with Frida. The next thing is that we see Frida standing in the departure lounge looking wistfully at the plane. So she didn't go to Barcelona, huh? But that is not the end of it. She has gone on to take a plane, but not to Barcelona – that pretty little coastal town looks nothing like Barcelona – where the hell was it supposed to be? And in the twinkling of an eye – there is Mia prettily stepping up some pretty steps, accompanied by some pretty music, to see the lovely Frida sitting pensively on the sea wall, and the two of them with one look, pledge their eternities – I mean live happily ever after. Some chance! Frida will ditch Mia pretty soon, as she has already done to more than one of those who loved her. The writer would have done so much better to end the film with Mia being too late to stop Frida flying off to Barcelona. We would then be left to understand that things are not that easy, not that rosy for Mia's future, that you do not behave like she did without creating difficulties for yourself, and that in all probability the two of them are better apart, more likely to be happy in the long run apart, and that – we should be left to guess that this is a possibility – Mia will go back to her man, whom she seems to have loved well enough over the previous years, and certainly enjoyed sex with well enough, and will try to put things together again, but – our imagination will tell us – we do not know if she will succeed.
Die Wand (2012)
Pretentious, slow and boring
The best word to describe this film is "pretentious". That means that it is giving itself airs, claiming to say something important that we lesser mortals have not yet appreciated, and, in so doing, boring us to bits. (POSSIBILITY OF SPOILERS) I understood the film in the following way: the invisible wall is just a way of telling us that the woman had made the decision to cut herself off from the rest of humankind so that whenever she seemed to be wanting to approach someone her inner fear sprang up to restrain her. She has chosen to live alone, having marked out a large swathe of beautiful barely inhabited highland country wherein to live and have her being. She doesn't want to die. Even though she is intensely depressive, and very boring to watch and listen to her low-pitched whine, she gets to know the local animals and is pretty good at keeping herself alive. She bonds with a dog. She apparently has some isolationist experiences which may be valuable for her mental state, though they sound weird or trite to the ordinary viewer. But everything she offers is manna from heaven for art-house patrons and the superior sort of film critic, who would probably quite enjoy watching paint dry. This is similar to that, but it is better in that the countryside and the photography are lovely and worse than that in that there is the additional element of the miserably depressed woman. The couple who bring her to her cottage play ghastly pop music very loudly in their car, presumably a ham-fisted way of telling us, perhaps through her perception, how boorish they (or all other humans) are. Whether we see it as catharsis or denouement or, as I do, merely as confirmation of her hatred of mankind, we see in the final moments of the film that the one human who somehow manages to penetrate the wall is cruel and vicious and the woman, whose hatred of mankind may be seen as being responsible for creating this figure in her world, expresses that hatred and takes her revenge by being extremely nasty to him. End of story. Yawn yawn.
The Gift (2015)
Stylish 'thriller' but unconvincing in many ways
I am really surprised that this film got so many rave reviews from the critics and equally from amateur reviewers. The film is well presented and the actors do as well as they can with the material they are given, but that is not enough because the plot – the script if you like – has to be effective, and it certainly isn't. It is as if the director wants to show how clever he is by starting the whole thing off for the first part of the film as a stylish thriller in the Hitchcock mould and then turns the whole thing on its head to surprise us. Yes, I found it surprising, but also disappointing and unconvincing. We were presented initially with the theme of a reasonably pleasant married couple being slowly traumatised by the increasingly weirdo former schoolmate of the husband who seems to be seeking to make best friends of the couple, particularly by loading them with unwanted presents. BEWARE spoilers. There is a reviewer called Alcor on the Meta-critic site whom I heartily recommend because he sensibly pulls apart the logic, or rather absence of logic, of the plot in a number of ways. I will simply list a few of my own: (SPOILERS!) Early on the weirdo, who seems from the start to be a down-at-heel loser, puts a present of fish in their pond and leaves fish food at the door. Later he appears to have killed the fish and to have taken their dog away. Some effort is made – oh how clever – to evoke sympathy for the weirdo, who was apparently bullied at school by the husband (he meets the husband by amazing coincidence many years later miles away from the school), and later there is a scene where the successful in-control husband beats the poor weirdo up (again, presumably). Oh, I forgot to say – he is too nice to have killed the dog, and simply slips the creature back home a little later. Meanwhile the weirdo has invited the couple to dinner in a gated mansion, to which he has apparently gained access through the garage door( he was only entitled to take a rented car from the garage). He spins them some story and leaves for a few minutes, during which time he makes a video of them, or at least a sound recording, having apparently been able to bug the mansion's living room (the owners know nothing of this!). He never tells them (until much later) that it wasn't his house and he shouldn't have been there, so how was he supposed to give them dinner? Was he going to take over the kitchen and do all the cooking himself? – that is never explained. We are told more than once that the husband "ruined his life" as far as one can understand the situation which is never clearly explained – by making up a story that the weirdo at school was seen in a car with another boy/man. We are given no further details. Meanwhile the beautiful and apparently poised wife, Rebecca Hall, is slowly being driven over the age into a nervous breakdown, having apparently only recently recovered from one. That enables some slender plot line to develop whereby the husband tells the wife that the weirdo fancies her and the wife pathetically evinces some sympathy for the weirdo There is also some incomprehensible side plot whereby the husband, coming out of his house after a shot has been fired and/or a window has been smashed, is clobbered by an assailant who we all imagine to be the weirdo but in fact turns out to be some bloke that he has beaten in the race for a promotion. That bloke then makes some sort of accusation, which we can never properly understand, that the husband sent some false email to discredit the bloke (no further details are given), and as a result the husband is in disgrace and loses the promotion and his job also. What utter rubbish! This bit seems to have been tacked on later, possibly as a sort of biblical lesson punishing the husband for his childhood bullying. The husband is also – oh so cleverly – shown to lose all sympathy when he loses his temper with the weirdo and beats him up brutally. Then the ending! -- meant to be like Wow! -- SPOILER we are supposed to believe that this no hope loser managed to get a key to the couple's house , managed to put a video bug inside, may have drugged the wife and may have raped her there and so would be the father of her new baby. Spare me, please! How could the professional critics not see any of this? How can one have the slightest confidence in them? They seem to see only the surface gloss and to be incapable of applying any sort of gentle and limited intellectual examination to the events of the film. If they did, they would find it to be a stylish farrago of nonsense.
Marti, dupa Craciun (2010)
A slice of real life -- nothing more
Those who like action in their films (as one reviewer well put it: guns, paedophiles, crazy driving, genius scientists, blacks and drugs, stock exchange, apocalypse, Bruce Willis saving the world, Asian crime gangs, etc --things that have no place in Romanian society)- will not like this film. I confess I found it a little boring until the final emotional scene where the actress playing the wife gives an astonishing portrayal of grief, which I will never forget. Utterly convincing. The rest is a deliberately mundane account of adultery between two very uninteresting, i.e. normal, people, who obviously enjoy, whether they know this or not, the thrill and the deception -- playing their pre-ordained roles in the time-honoured way of us human beings. One can admire the artistry with which the mundane is conscientiously portrayed but asking at the same time 'Do I need to see this? I prefer Bruce Willis'. The saving grace, for me, was, as I have said, the betrayal scene and the subsequent reaction of the wife. The other two are really no more than ciphers. The husband is completely without charm,vigour or grace, whomever he is with and the mistress is just that, and no better for being a professional (dentist). So film buffs may rave, while I acknowledge the qualities of the film, but say that it is not really the sort of material which I like to spend 90 minutes of my timer with. Correction: true, but that actress added something to my life in the last 15 minutes of the film.
Después de Lucía (2012)
Overcooked school bully tale
A well made film, technically, but I found the story unbelievable. Alejandra is a new girl in a Mexican school, still grieving for her recently deceased mother. She soon makes the serious mistake of having sex with a handsome boy, who videos the event, with her knowledge, and then, without her knowledge, causes the video to be sent round the school. Charming!.Thereafter the bullying is ceaseless. My complaint is this: what no other reviewer, I think, has pointed out is that in all this class of school children and their horrifically escalating violence towards the meekly submitting Alejandra, not one of them shows for one moment any decent human feeling for the girl. Some reviewers tell us that this sort of wholesale 'everyone against one child' bullying happens all the time. I don't believe it.
The ironic ending is powerful (suitable for a Greek tragedy), but not original.
Lal Gece (2012)
A worthy film, but is that enough?
This should really be a play. The only action (or inaction, perhaps I should say) is filmed in a straight forward manner in the bridal chamber of an old man and a child in backward Anatolia. They converse to an extent and the ending may be a surprise. Clearly it is an honest film that portrays aspects of this strange and distasteful tribal situation (uncivilised is hardly the word for it) and it would work well as a chamber piece in the theatre, but for the ordinary film-goer, such as me, I am afraid it is a bit of a non-event and rather boring in its 90 minutes progress (or lack of it). So, interesting certainly for anyone concerned with Turkey and its traditions and/or its folklore such as Scherezade but otherwise I guess I would advise you to give it a miss.