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robertleiser
Reviews
White Lines (2020)
If someone can bear to watch this to the end...
... please let me know who killed Axel, so I can offer them a small reward and ask them to see off all the other shallow characters.
Were these characters intended to be likeable?
Arabian Nights (2000)
Seemingly gratuitous negative stereotypes
Great scenes and plot exposition, but now I feel conflicted watching further...
I was enjoying this until I noticed two (so far) seemingly needless stereotypes thrown in. In the original stories, Scheherezade devises the scheme and stories all by herself. Here for some reason, they need to invent the Alan Bates storyteller figure to provide the strategy and stories. The story would have worked perfectly well if, as in the original, she had come up with these alone. It would make her a strong, brave and CLEVER woman. Surely audiences could cope with that in the 21st century?
When the couple need to get a doctor late at night, we see the doctor's sign "Dr Ezra", and his wife comes to the door ready to shoo them away until they produce money and she says, in a stereotypically Jewish accent, "It's never too late for Doctor Ezra!". Unhelpful and completely unnecessary.
These fabulous stories survived for centuries on their content which was free of cheap stereotyping. Why introduce it now?
White Settlers (2014)
A sexist, racist chase sequence with an implausible ending
Two unlikeable Londoners decide to relocate to Scotland. They're shown a house by an estate agent with a Hollywood Scottish accent - presumably because no Scottish actors are available to play Scottish parts - and decide to buy it.
On the day they move in, the female lead (who else?) fuses all the lights while trying to wire a plug, and then begins their terrorisation by Scots in animal masks, whose visceral hatred of the English doesn't appear to need any explanation.
If you're still sitting comfortably after these helpings of sexism and racism, you're then treated to an extended chase sequence; about two thirds of the movie's' running time. Just to rub in the low intelligence of the female lead, having killed off one of the attackers, she only stuns the next one, then drops a knife on the floor beside his hand, while standing above him looking the other way. That never ends well.
Nor does the film: Having spent the night pursuing and torturing the English invaders, the attackers finally close in on them, and the movie cuts to the pair of them lying outside a Manchester tram station, with bemused onlookers. Meanwhile, back at the house, the attackers have scrubbed up, doffed their animal masks and are throwing a party, the suggestion being that everyone lives happily ever after.
Because the victims wouldn't tell the police or anything would they?
I've never liked the statement "Based on real events" in movie intros, as it's never clear to what extent. In this case I can only imagine that it's based on the real life event of two people driving to Scotland, as everything else presented here is completely implausible.