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The Lodge (2019)
Spooky but fairly pointless
A great atmosphere and a talented cast are somewhat wasted on a film that doesn't really go anywhere interesting or original. While the direction gives a fantastic sense of encroaching dread it still suffers from the illogicality of most films of its type. For instance:
Why would a father (a psychiatrist at that!) think it would be a good idea to take his children back to the isolated, Internet-free snowed-in lodge where their mother shot herself? Does this sound like a fun Christmas vacation?
Then leave them with a severely mentally ill woman they dislike intensely?
Then assume that she could be trusted to locate and take her anti-psychotic medicine?
Then show her where a loaded gun is kept!? (What for, in case they are attacked by wolves?)
Then take their children's word that everything is going swimmingly without bothering to speak to his fiancee at all over Christmas?
Finally, as an aside, everyone knows pets rarely survive horror movies, so that was a bit predictable.
This said, the claustrophobic Shining-like ambiance was great, and all three main cast members were convincing. It also ended relatively conclusively for this sort of thing, though I was hoping for some sort of trick ending that completely redefined the events. So six stars then, as while I appreciated the quality of the direction and acting, it was hardly exceptional, and given how depressing it all was it could have benefitted from a better script to make it worthwhile as a work of art.
T.I.M. (2023)
The first film written by a bot?
Seriously, it's like ChatGBT had processed the script of Westworld, AI, Ex Machina, etc., and cobbled together this low-budget effort - certainly there doesn't seem to be any human involvement here. Anyway, a robot who looks like a cross between a skinny David Cameron and a Habitat model circa 1975 is given to a couple getting over the husband's infidelity. That's it for the plot, anyone reading this sentence will already guess what will happen.
One problem is, it happens so slowly. It seems to take ages before the robot goes Saturn 3 on the couple and in between we have to endlessly listen to their relationship issues. Maybe that's really what sent the robot crazy - I could only bear it because I knew they were going to be Terminated, God only knows what the robot must have felt being stuck with them 24/7. On top of this the stupid is dialled up to 11 throughout. Whether it's a brilliant engineer that doesn't understand that paired smart devices communicate with each other, plot twists that require someone finding a tiny bit of thread at the bottom of a waste disposal unit (though the jumper in question actually turns up later anyway?!) or a neighbour who A) Can't seem to understand why the wife is upset at her continually meeting up with her cheating husband; B) Somehow fails to understand that T. I. M's a robot; C Thinks driving a car into a house is a proportionate response to a rude manservent rather than phoning the police, it's complete cobblers.
Finally, in the conclusion the daftness goes off the charts. The super-intelligent robot buries the body conveniently inefficiently, the neighbour somehow impales him to a wall with a pole, and the robot resets his safe phrase/off switch (nobody thought of having it accessible online then?) to something I actually guessed, yet alone his unrequited love.
Anyway, I'll give it four stars because, while the acting was generally awful, the two human leads tried their best, and at least the robot's floppy Bullingdon Club hair provided a distraction. Aside from that, it offers nothing that hasn't been much better explored elsewhere.
FUBAR (2023)
Shouldn't be back
Oh dear, as someone who's been a fan of this charismatic and multi-talented star for decades, I just feel embarrassed for him. In recent years he's become a truly great public orator and passionate advocate for progressive centre-right values.
So why then did he ever seek to return to acting? As he himself said in his autobiography, nobody wants to see an action star who got old. Every movie (Sabotage, The Last Stand etc.) where he's tried to create the old magic has sucked, while the movies where he's tried to present himself as a serious actor (Maggie. Aftermath etc.) showed he's too limited to pull off depth.
This is compounded by his age, he simply doesn't look like the 65-year-old man he's supposed to be in FUBAR. It's patently obvious that even the most simple stunts are being done by stuntmen and this ages him even more. Age is not a bad thing, it can give gravitas, though this is hardly needed in this instance.
Added to that, the script is awful. The jokes in Arnie films were bad-good. They were intentionally silly but often well-constucted and delivered brilliantly deadpan with a wink at the audience. Here, the jokes are bad-bad and leadenly delivered by obviously embarrassed actors who know they're in a stinker. Ditto characterisation, the characters look like the lines they deliver and that is their entire depth and characterisation.
It's also very jarring in tone; Arnie films were set in a fantasy environment for a reason, violence and silly jokes simply don't work if you mix in serious real-life issues such as terrorism and arms dealing. It's tasteless, but not deliberately and ironically so, and thus uncomfortable viewing.
Finally, A) Why remake what I (subjectively) consider to be one of Arnie's worst movies True Lies when there's so many better ones available, and B) Why did he go this path when his pal Van Damme tried it to similary meagre rewards a few years ago? Yes, his other pal Stallone went the TV road to great success, but he is working with one of America's best script writers and has three Oscar nominations under his belt.
Given that he's been a tank driver, bodybuilder, repeatedly published author, politican, property developer, restaurateurand of course action star in the course of a long and versitile career, reinvention is clearly Arnie's core skill. Therefore, why he wishes to return to an unachiveable past when he was developing into a genuinely interesting public intellectual is beyond me - even if he wasn't in a terribly written turkey, I think it's never going to work.
The Ice Road (2021)
Road to Nowhere
It's becoming a bit of a theme for Amazon to hire talented actors and Gerald Butler in films that nobody would possibly watch otherwise. Geostorm is the perfect example of this, but that at least had a certain it's-so-bad-it's-good goofy charm, but this is horrible.
The plot, such as it is, involves some utterly one dimensional - or zero dimensional in Larry Fishbourne's case - characters driving some machinery type stuff to save some miners by blah blah blah and something. Oh, and and an evil company is trying to stop them because, to quote Tim Robbins in Team America, "They're evil, and they like money."
Up against them are a crack team of cliches including grizzled working man Liam, a permanently angry Native American, Liam's brother, an Iraq veteran with some mental condition that makes him talk like a cross between Dustin Hoffman in the Rain Man and Yoda, and Larry Fishbourne, who you don't even register because you know he's going to have even less screen time than Andy Garcia and Ed Harris in Geostorm.
Despite these two undoubtably fine actors, this is basically a Steven Seagal film - to the point where you expect someone to say "They say he's the best" before giving his Special Ops backgound and the arrival of the porcine preener himself. The effects are awful, the dialogue crass, and the plot incomprehensible, but it's totally lacking the entertaining lunacy you often get with straight to DVD flicks.
Worse, for a film that's about the essence of speed, they seem to stop every 5 minutes to moan, provide obvious plot exposition that actually makes things even more confusing, or do mechanical things that are about as exciting as they would be in real life. Neeson also looks too old for this sort of thing now, particularly when diving into freezing water and improbably dragging his heavy-set brother out, and when doing those sort of pat-a-cake martial arts fights with people half his age that have been the staple of all these things since the first Bourne film.
Anyway, eventually some stuff happened and it ended, but I'd completely zoned out by the end and failed to understand, yet alone care, what happened. Still, it finished, which was a relief, and I could rest assured in the knowledge that I'd never have to watch it again. Please Amazon, stop making films and start buying more good ones - because your home-developed stuff is abysmal.
Panic (2021)
Less edgy = more
Like so much stuff on Amazon, this is clearly a natural 12-rating family fodder entertainment that's been ruined by added sex and drug references and most annoyingly continual swearing to make it look edgy - rather than, as is the case, embarrassing. I'm sure nobody minds the occasional swear word, but continual swearing is a sign that you're secretly aware that your script isn't up to par (it isn't).
It's a pity, because the central idea is fun, and while the acting and dialogue are poor, scriptwriters can easily be replaced, and actors are basically just performing seals who can be taught new tricks and it doesn't really matter that much given the context of the show.
However, that said, the attempt to give it a more adult feel is having the paradoxical effect of making it seem really childish. I may be getting old, but there's very little on Amazon that couldn't be 12 rated because, let's face it, they've never produced anything anywhere near as sophisticated and adult-themed as The Wire or The Sopranos, have they?
At the risk of sounding old, more stuff for families (with some sex, drugs and occasional foul language if required) is what's required. Either that or go the other way and produce something that is genuinely aimed at adults.
I Care a Lot (2020)
Morally ambivalent in the extreme
Seriously, who were you supposed to care for? The murderous 'Russian' (we wear leather jackets, tracksuits and naff jumpers, so we're totally authentic!) gangsters or the evil people who prey on the elderly? I had hoped this was going to be some sort of satire about the callous way we treat old people or one of those torture-porn-type things where the victims show unexpected skills and turn the tables on their predators, but sadly no.
Instead it became a contest of wills between two loathsome psychos where both alternated between being nearly superhuman and unbeliveably stupid - seriously, is some low-rent con artist really going to take on a gun-toting criminal organisation and are the Russian Mafia going to bungle 'kidnapping' a WILLING pensioner from a old people's home?
Do old people's homes usually have armed guards on the door for that matter? And are mob lawyers really unable to outwit the courts with millions of dollars of money at their disposal? Can trained assassins not manage to kill an unconcious woman? Is it so easy to section Russian mob bosses who can give away millions of dollars to a woman they profess to hate but can't seem to afford a lawyer/bribe someone in authority?
However, fundamental stupidity aside, the cast are very good. Weist and Pike put in top performances in a film that doesn't really deserve it, while Dinkage would undoubtably be commanding 20-million-dollar salaries if his roles weren't unfortunately somewhat limited by his small stature.
However, it's warped morality - what a missed opportunity to show old people in a more complex light -, increasingly illogical plot twists, and, most ridicuously, the fact that we're supposed to see revolting degenerates who force old people into care homes and take their homes, savings and dignity as some sort of feminist icons, left a rather bad taste in my mouth. As did the fact that Russians (indeed any other Eastern Europeans) are now continually stereotyped as gangsters and prostitutes these days in a way the film industry would never do for any other ethnic group.
Stop trying to be edgy Amazon; you're not Netflix, you have an older and more family-orientated demographic, and you'd instead do better making movies that would have the maximum mass appeal.
Idiocracy (2006)
MAGAGHEDDON!
I enjoyed it until the final act where a bunch of slack-jawed simpletons in red hats stormed the capital in bizarre costumes shouting meaningless slogans - after that it seemed to silly to be believable.
Joker (2019)
Feel-good movie of the year!
With so much gloom and doom around at the moment, if you're looking for a movie that will put a smile on your face and a song in your heart, then this is perfect for you.
Join happy-go-lucky lovable eccentric Arthur as he cheerfully battles life's challenges to find love with a single mother, be reconciled with his doting but difficult parents, and have his fledgling career as a comic boosted by kindly chat-show host Robert Di Niro.
This is a movie that teaches you that true happiness comes from the inside. And eventually Arthur's spirit of compassion and optimistic nature is so contagious, he becomes part of a movement to spead love and joy in the face of aversity.
Not since It's a Wonderful Life has a movie so amply captured the need for tolerance, generosity and a cheerful outlook so eloquently. With disease, divsion, despair and despite all around us, let's hope there's more heartening films like this that show that nothing cannot be overcome with a cheerful demeanor and that genuine happiness and the spirit of hope (like Arthur's) is a gift that should be paid forward. God bless you Hollywood!
The Walking Dead: World Beyond (2020)
The Walking Dud (like totally)
What do you think of when it comes to zombie shows? Fear, claustraphobia, gore, the zombies being used as a metaphor for racism or consumerism or whatever, or a bunch of pretentious utterty self-obsessed angst-ridden teenagers moping around a post-apocolyptic landscape with actually far less sense of menace than the entirely zombie-free Stand by Me actually provided?
If the answer is the latter, then The Walking Dead: Like Totally Beyond or Whatever is perfect for you. It essentially takes everything everyone hated about Twilight - dodgy acting, spoilt bratty teenagers, endless naval gazing etc., and takes out the things people liked; totally awesome powers, hot brooding older guys (well, there is one hot brooding older guy here, but since he's soon established as gay, the chances of him falling for either of the self-involved sister protagonists is limited).
Anyway, alongside lots of whining, they also take a trip to visit their father, who keeps sending them messages by fax with dodgy spelling to let them know something's up (as you do when you're supposed to be the brightest person left on the planet). Julia Ormand, who comes across as more like a Girl Guides Brown Owl than a fascist despot, mopes around in the background saying enigmatic things rather than, in the case of the Walking Dead's memorable psychos, trying to kill, eat or enslave them.
Even outside the camp, things don't tend to get any more scary than the average episode of Neighbours. Zombies walk around individually, in predefined paths, and - for whatever reason - look far more like actors in dodgy masks than in the other two series. It's all a bit Famous Five - and in fact they actually end up in a treehouse for a jolly game of Monopoly on their first night with nobody even mentioning that they had no food or transport and would have to negotiate 1000 km of zombie-infested wasteland.
It doesn't have to be this way! Both Buffy and Supernatural, at least initially, catered to the Young Adult demographic and managed to be funny, scary and relevant. The teenagers here are both poorly drawn and oddly anacronistic, with the two boys seeming to have come out of, respectively, an 80's nerd movie and a Nirvana concert around 1992, and the girls never seeming to have had a day's real hardship in their lives rather than having endured the toughest circumstances imaginable like Rick and Judith Grimes.
In conclusion, like the immortal Schwarzenegger expresses in Kindergarten Cop: STAAAP WHININK!
Mayans M.C. (2018)
Mayanzzz...
Cliched tough-guy dialogue by middle-aged men who should know better; a near consistent lack of characterisation; a dubious attitude to women; awful music - especially the crass theme tune; terrible acting by the more minor cast members; endless montages of bikers driving around on quests like they were Knights of the Round Table rather than unhygenic misfits that terrorise the law-abiding; a body count that would seem laughable in a film about the Iraq War; a complete absence of the police, social workers, and normal people generally; and ludicrous plots that don't really require a WHF!? because they're only really there to take the audience to the next shootout or torture scene.
Yes, it's exactly like the later series of Sons of Anarchy - albeit lacking decent actors such as Jimmy Smits and Drea de Matteo who somehow managed to to maintain some level of credibility even after the main cast were dragged down into Kurt Sutter's Grand Theft Auto-type silliness. If this goes the TV benchmark of success of five series I'll be surprised.
Midsommar (2019)
Midso, so stupid!
If you find yourself witnessing a cult ritual in the wilderness involving a woman being dashed to pieces on an alter after throwing herself off a cliff followed by a man having his head bashed in with a giant mallet do you:
A) Escape as soon as safely possible and tell the police? OR
B) Think, ooohh, that looks like an interesting anthropological phenomenon, I think I'll hang around for a few days and write a thesis about it, after all, nothing bad could possibly happen to me?
If the answer is B, then you are one of the characters in Midsommar.
The War of the Worlds (2019)
War of the Woke
Dear God, were people actually given licence payers' money for this? The terrible CGI, the dull dialogue, the indifferent acting and the nearly incomprehensible editing pale into insignificance next to the atrocious uber-PC script which assumed that a classic story of Martian invasion would be less interesting than ten-minute-long discussions on women's rights (GOOD!), the humane treatment of refugees (GOOD!), and monologues about colonialism (BAD!).
Dr Who, Years and Years, ITV's Beecham House, and even the once excellent Poldark, have all been ruined by treating the audience like proletarian geese who have to be force-fed progressive dogma until they can regurgitate it. Nobody's suggesting bringing back Love Thy Neighbour, but can we at least go back to a time when it was assumed that the primary purpose of drama was to move and entertain people rather than to lecture them like they were naughty schoolchildren incapable of forming their own opinions?
Pet Sematary (2019)
A huge disappointment
You can always tell when a movie lacks coherence when you see the words 'Alternative Ending' in the extras - i.e. the story is so unfocused and poorly sketched out that it was possible to create an entirely new ending. either that or the first ending (whichever one that may be) played poorly in the test screening.
Either way, without giving too much away, the creepiness and emotional aspects of the book are downplayed in favour of some significant alterations that diverge from the original material to bulk up the running time and to add some frankly quite irritating and generic jump scares. Also the in-joke about John Lithgow being in The Crown seemed more than a little out of place in a film that's supposed to be about a parent's unbearable grief over a dead child, as did the more than slightly absurd death by dumbwaiter.
Some Stephen King adaptations (e.g. Misery, The Mist) work, others (e.g. Dreamcatcher, The Dark Tower) don't. However, this misfire was slightly different, it failed because the people behind it thought they could make the source material more cinematic, and dumbed it down to the point where it had little beyond a title in common with the book.
It's not terrible - it's just that, without the Stephen King connection, it would have already faded from consciousness by now. Watch it if it's cheap/on TV, but it's not worth paying out for, as it's not really Stephen King at all.
The Predator (2018)
Predumbtor
Absolutely terrible unwatchable garbage with terrible hammy acting, seemingly random editing that left you clueless as to what was going on, CGI that's actually somehow worse that the first film's, an incomprehensible tension-free plot, obvious sets, and crass dialogue that Micheal Bay might have rejected as offensive make this one of the biggest cinematic misfires in recent history.
Seriously, this isn't hyperbole - it really is that bad. After seeing a cruddy supposed laboratory where scientists swear every 5 seconds followed by a random jump to a prison bus where the wold's weediest hard men (and Thomas Jane, whyyy??) swear every 2 seconds and make cringeworthy, fingernails-down-the-blackboard awful racially and sexually offensive jokes I simply couldn't take any more. It's genuinely the worst film I've seen in years and I only saw 15 minutes of it before giving up entirely! Worryingly, according to the brave souls on here who somehow managed to sit through the entire lot I was actually seeing by far the best of it.
It's not just disappointing like Predator 2 or Predators - or even terrible like AVP 1 and 2, it's so bad it makes the turgid and nonsensical Terminator Genysis seem a masterpiece by comparison! It's like what would happen if you gave the Wayans brothers 100 million and told them to do what they wanted with it.
Bloated, bigoted, breath-takingly bad boring bunkum - this is truly the film for Trump's America.
Beecham House (2019)
Bad history, bad acting, bad plot, bad script, nice sets.
Terrible understanding of a fascinating period that is reduced to a simple contemporary moralising that makes it sound like it's written by an 18-year-old A-level history student. At no point does anyone sound authentic and the anachronistic finger-wagging about subjects as diverse as women's rights, cultural sensitivity and drug addiction sounds entirely false in its early 19th century Empire setting. I'm not sure who I feel sorry for more; both Indian and British actors are reduced to one-dimensional cliches without any real depth and with a somewhat condescending attitude to both cultures.
Not that the acting is very good anyway, and the only real gem in this stuffy and oddly old-fashioned work - Dakota Blue Richards - has little to do other than fawn over the frankly dull and pompous main character. Moreover, the other actors are all equally wooden and lifeless, although to be fair they've essentially got less nuance than many NPCs in computer games and their only purpose is to advance a nearly incomprehensible plot involving a baby and some nefarious derring do involving the British East India Company (Boo! Hiss!) and some generic maharajahs.
On the plus side, the sets and locations are all beautiful, which helps sell the holidays in the sponsored averts I suppose.
However, aesthetic concerns aside, it's a total dud. You can see why ITV barely bothered advertising it, particularly given that it was laughably put up against the excellent Gentleman Jack in the coveted Sunday 9.00 pm spot.
Shin Gojira (2016)
Lost in translation?
I'm missing something here - not least Godzilla itself. This is a monster movie where the monster is more laughable (but seemingly only partially intentionally so) than scary for most of its limited screen time, and actually falls asleep for a significant part of the film.
What it is instead, is some sort of satire of Japanese politics, with long expositions about undue American influence and veiled threats to the Chinese that Japan is a peaceful county, but if pushed, etc. etc.
I think it's meant to be a comedy, but devoid of any cultural context, 90% of it seems to be young angry people in gray suits telling old tired people in gray suits to take action. I think there's a reason why there's not many films about the democratic process - long, interminable meetings on film are about as exciting as such meetings in real life. It's as if Independence Day had devoted itself to depicting people taking minutes of things being blown up rather than showing CGI footage of things being blown up.
More entertainingly, parts of the movie are in what they somewhat optimistically considered to be fluent English - particularly by a supposedly American Japanese actress whose mangled English was only matched by her total self-belief in her English ability. However, the anyway somewhat mild amusement of this was negated by the fact that most of the 'English' was actually so incomprehensible that I couldn't understand a word of it and the subtitles only worked for the Japanese parts.
I genuinely don't know what the point of this is. If you're Japanese, this may well be one of the best films in existence - and it's certainly got a lot of good reviews. However, given my somewhat negligible interest in the workings of Japanese constitutional democracy, I - like Godzilla itself - switched off before the end.
Ghost Stories (2017)
Not many ghosts and barely even a story.
I remember the execrable Sherlock being described as 'TV for people who think they're too clever for TV', well this is horror for people who think that horror's beneath them. In its basic form, it's three virtually plotless spooky tales held together by a big reveal at the end. The problem is, the big reveal, like so many examples of it's type, renders everything so specious that you feel you've been conned into wasting your money (fortunately only £2.50 in my case), and involves a seemingly endless spiel of plot exposition - although that's really too strong a word for this self-important studenty claptrap - before a damp squib of a denouement that makes you wish you'd never bothered.
The ghost stories are rubbish too - relying on simple jump scares and poor CGI in the manner of the more forgettable James Wan offerings. However, while films of this type usually offer some genuine scares and a coherent plot, without giving too much away, the stories themselves only serve as a slight frame to hang what will eventually become deeply pretentious and self-important naval gazing by the writer to the extent it appears to serve as therapy rather than the actual film.
It's also fairly nasty - yes, I know that's rather the point of horror films, but usually they're ultimately sold as gory fun, a battle for the triumph of human existence or, in their most simple form, simply a story of good against evil.
Here, however, it's all quite depressing - casual and entirely gratuitous racism, sexism and bullying is tossed around not to show its wrongness, but seemingly merely to make what's actually quite juvenile stuff appear more adult. It's also shamelessly derivative, with everything from Red Lights to Dead Man's Shoes and Inception copied nearly verbatim in parts. Martin Freeman and Paul Whitehouse were good, but they should be, they're two of Britain's most established actors, while actresses are almost non-existent - one gets the impression that the writers would be uncomfortable with attempting to write from a female perspective anyway.
Seriously, what a total let down. While I've largely grown incurred to reading about 'the best British horror in...', this had so many positive reviews from so many critics that I was quite excited by watching it. Instead, what I got was a huge steaming pile of pretentious pseudo-intellectual bilge that's scarcely coherent in places and can barely be described as a horror film at all. If this had been a one-off one-hour TV special, it might pass muster, but the fact that this got a cinematic release beggars belief.
Complete and utter garbage; clever-clever undergraduate navel-gazing that will undoubtedly play well with the sort of Guardian-reading self-important misanthrope who loves Channel 4 late-night 'comedy' that's basically just nastiness held together by swear words, but anathema to anyone who actually likes horror (or even movies). Everyone involved in this project should BE UTTERLY ASHAMED OF THEMSELVES.
The Ritual (2017)
The best 'best British horror' in years.
It's now become customary to have a quote on every British horror film saying it's 'the best...', generally from some tiny pay-to-quote internet site. However, while not perfect, it's certainly better - both overall and in terms of production values and acting - than the thousand or so British horror films released in the past few years.
However, it will take some perseverance to appreciate. The first half hour is a wholly generic scenario of group of people who are starting to dislike each other - in this case a group of 30-something men on the cusp of middle age - who find themselves in a frightening situation while away from civilisation - namely a hiking holiday through a Swedish forest.
The first half hour is, to be fair, a little turgid, with too much juvenile swearing and some slightly contrived and cliched reasons for venturing off the beaten path. However, soon the increasing sense of dread, the spookily evocative atmosphere of the forest, and some striking visual imagery eventually come together to create an atmospheric and original movie.
However, the reason I gave this an eight is that, for the final half hour, it ventures out of the standard low(ish) budget comfort zone and enters into deeply surreal and unsettling territory that's like (without giving too much away) a cross between the Wicker Man and a Lovecraftian nightmare. The sheer weirdness of it all is aided immensely by the talented Rafe Spall's quite impressive acting range, which alternates between horror, resignation, contempt, and, ultimately, determination to survive.
It's not perfect, and I can see why some people have given it three stars, but the sheer audacity of the final act, along with the most bizarre antagonist since The Ruins, elevate it far above the usual generic fare that simply tries to emulate American slasher movies with little imagination or verve.
The Otherworld (2016)
Fairy good!
A charming, heartwarming adventure for both the young, and young-at-heart, this offers a fresh perspective on ancient myths and largely succeeds in bringing them to life. Reminiscent of the popular 1980s fantasy Legend, it offers a mixture of humour, romance, heroism and mild peril that is sure to have youngsters spellbound across it's 90-odd minutes. The special effects are good too, with lots of colour and light suitable for the themes involved, and some attractive locations (real and CGI) help bring the tale to life, while the vibrant and evocative Celtic soundtrack provides a stirring backdrop to the tales of derring-do.
Well worth a watch, and guaranteed to keep the kids quiet for an hour or so.
American Gods (2017)
The new Game of Thrones? Pull the other one!
I had assumed Mr Robot was going to be the most pretentious, boring, unpleasant and - importantly - overrated piece of television I was going to watch this year, yet amazingly, I was wrong, this is terrible.
Like Mr Robot, it is heavily reliant on continual CGI and fantasy scenes as smoke and mirrors to disguise the fact that nothing whatsoever is happening. While more artful TV shows might have a falling leaf to show the passing of time, this would have a falling leaf where we zoom in to microscopic level, zoom out and back to show the tree's ancestor being eaten by a woolly mammoth, and then forward and up, up and away to show the mammoth evolving into an alien and exploring the cosmos. Why? There is no reason, it is merely stuff that happens and that gives it an entirely undeserved sense of self- importance.
Again like Mr Robot, its politics appear to have been written by a teenager. I got as far as the reliably terrible Orlando Jones ranting on to slaves about white m***********s before deciding to call it a day. Thankfully, I missed Jesus as an illegal immigrant and Odinist Nazis otherwise the DVD player might have gone out the window. Of course, they are more careful as regards Islam than any other religion, although, for a range of reasons, it would seem unlikely any practitioners would be watching it in the first place. If The Wire was the most sophisticated TV exploration of race and identity, this is so utterly cringe-worthy you'd have to be a middle-class white teenage SJW type not to find it all trite and offensive.
Again like Mr Robot, sex features heavily, yet without any indication that the writers have ever done it. In fact, you could get rid of all the sex, all the swearing, all the violence, and all the racial stuff, and you'd end up with what it essentially is - children's television which is heavily reliant on hammy acting and meaningless monologues.
Regarding these monologues, I assumed Ian McShane would be interesting reading the Shipping Forecast, but no - trite and smug, his character is as infuriating as he is pointless, and makes you wonder where the man who brought such depth to Deadwood has gone. While many commentators have stated that Ricky Whittle can't act, i'll be charitable, and say that - like the rest of us - he might simply not have the slightest idea what should be happening, and why.
To conclude, it's just vile, sex and violence and race-baiting beneath a thin veneer of intellectualism and a nearly impossible sense of pomposity. Unless they change it drastically, this will not get past series 3, and the fact it has got some good ratings astounds me.
Shut In (2016)
The first film generated by a bot?
Dear God, this is dreadful, I've seen some boring horror films, some clichéd ones, and some illogical ones, but this really takes the biscuit.
Really, where to begin? The atrocious dialogue that feels like it's been cobbled together after a first-year Psychology lesson? The cardboard characters who hold meaningless conversations that serve no purpose other than to take up time, the plot twist that is so preposterous it's not even funny, it's just stuff that creates a film that people will watch for money?
Even at a barely film length of 87 minutes it still felt way too long. Aside from the dialogue between people who can only be described as characters because they're actors mouthing (terrible) lines in a film, at least half of the first act is meaningless jump 'scares' where nothing actually happens.
If the first half's dreadful, it's still Silence of the Lambs compared to what can, charitably, be described as the denouement. Following a plot twist that can't really be described as such - it's just something that happens to turn a collection of words and pictures into a film - any remaining viewers are forced to sit through an interminable finale where every possible film cliché is thrown at you until it just becomes white noise, and an ending so ill-conceived, you wonder if the writer has ever interacted with another (or just a) human being.
It's like Scream and all the other self-referential horror films never happened. It could have been made 30 years ago and it would still be as stale and unmemorable. I only bought it because it had two credible actors in Naomi Watts and Oliver Platt (why though?!?) and was on sale at Asda for £2.99 - and even then I feel robbed.
I can't even say this is one of the worst films ever, it's just nothing, and even now it's beginning to fade from memory.
Mr. Robot (2015)
Roboring
Utterly soulless cynical tripe dreamed up by middle aged hacks to spoon up to young people going through an awkward phase. As for the philosophy behind it, where to start? Money is evil, because, ooohh, old people are like totally greedy, and young people (without families and mortgages), just aren't materialistic. Companies are evil, because they want money, and they like steal things from people cos they're so rich, and, and, want to make money and stuff. Debt's evil, why should people have to pay back money they borrowed, surely ensuring that nobody has to take responsibility for their actions in living beyond their means will undoubtedly ensure paradise on Earth with no negative consequences? (This seems particularly true of student debt, in an obvious pitch to the core audience). It's all so childish and simplistic that you wonder if it's been written by a teenager, except of course, it's probably written by a middle aged man who doesn't believe any of it, but can remember being a teenage boy and knows how they think.
Regarding characterisation: they're all awful. All old people (anyone over 25), are like totally stupid unless they're the rare example who totally gets the youth and understands that capitalism and stuff is bad and nobody should be responsible for anything except for businesses and governments, who are, like totally evil. All women need protecting from men, because of, like, sexism and stuff, and no women could stand up for themselves without a hipster man to protect them. The lead character's particularly vile; childish and self-obsessed, he treats everyone around him like dirt, and yet we're supposed to like him because of his adolescent understanding of politics. I think he's supposed to be autistic or something, but there's no real coherence, as he is simply a catalyst for events to happen, and alternates between supposedly being socially phobic and pushy and arrogant depending on what the writers require. There's some drug use which doesn't fit with the character either, and a lot of crude swearing and sexual references which seem inappropriate for what's basically teen fodder.
The direction's boring too, clearly inspired by Christopher Nolan, it lacks his panache, and what's grungy looks drab, and what's meant to look coolly clinical, well, also looks drab. As mentioned, the script is like having an 18-year-old Sociology undergraduate shouting at you, and has, in true Guardian style, snarky sneering and a massive, and entirely unwarranted, sense of its own importance rather than real wit. The acting is rubbish, with the lead's supposed social awkwardness marking the fact he was chosen for his bug-eyed looks rather than talent. Particularly disappointing is Slater, he's the only established actor in it, yet just seems to be playing an older version of the same character he's played for about 30 years. I can't remember the music much, but I bet that's vile idiosyncratic look-at- me-aren't-I-clever hipster rubbish too.
Basically, it's utterly dreadful bilge as cynically aimed at naive teenagers as any manufactured pop star. It really is like being stuck with some teenage brat with a ring through their nose whining 'It's, like sooooo unfair', and is getting good ratings as a result of that. Hey Millenials! This isn't against Evil Corp (supposedly ironic in the script, it was just embarrassing) it is Evil Corp! It's designed to appeal to the adolescent prejudices of your undeveloped minds to suck money out of you!
I'd give this - 100,000 stars if I could. Worst programme ever.
Sicario (2015)
Sic of anti-American propaganda
One long teenage whine, vaguely disguised as a thriller, and with a heroine so utterly useless, she could have come from a 50s rom-com. Never less than hyperbolic, the fact that the plot makes not the slightest sense is hidden by the way in the director throws in so many elements, the audience is bewildered into thinking something significant is taking place. In fact, it is more like a smoke-and- mirrors conjuring trick than anything resembling entertainment. I had thought self-important and dishonest film making had reached its nadir with Syriana, but I was wrong. Anyone who watched the cringeworthy 2016 Oscars would be aware that Hollywood is more a propaganda division of the party that gives then the huge tax breaks than an entertainment industry nowadays, the question is: Why do film critics so unfailingly give 'film of the year' status to such adolescent tripe?
Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)
Get some therapy.
Dear female (non-feminist) reviewers
Simply putting adjectives like 'amazing' in capital letters and adding some exclamation marks does not a review make. Nor is it a sign of sexual inhibition to hate the franchise and everything it stands for - rather the opposite is true, I'd say. Finally, the fact that the adaption is like the book, is not, in itself, any kind of recommendation. Instead, you may ask yourself why you'd be interested in a film about an unpleasant bully who forces a patently slow-witted woman into increasingly brutal sexual practices because he likes abusing women. In fact, it couldn't be any clearer, he actually says he can only get off with women when he's inflicting pain on them! Why would this actually appeal to anyone without severe self-esteem issues?