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richard-1332
Reviews
Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)
How can this be part of the same project as Volume 1?
I saw Volume 1 a while ago on TV, and enjoyed it. It was cinematographically inventive - eg the animated sequence. It had visually arresting and impressively choreographed fight scenes. And it had dark humour in the dialogue. So when I saw that Volume 2 was showing, I thought I was in for an entertaining couple of hours. I was wrong.
There was none of the stylishness. Shooting one chapter in monochrome does not make for an interesting technique. The dialogue showed only brief flashes of the dark humour that leavened Volume 1, but for the most part was stodgy and leaden. As others have commented, quite a few of the scenes served no purpose whatsoever - they were not entertaining, they did not develop the characters, they did not advance the plot.
As for the fight scenes - well, there were none. At least, none of the impressive ensemble scenes from the first volume. There were just two fights in the whole two hours. The first, with Elle, was not even a fight to the death, although I admit I did find the resolution of that one OK. But it was short and decidedly lacking in actual fighting.
The second, the final climactic confrontation with Bill, must be a contender for the biggest anti-climax in cinema history. It lasted a matter of seconds, and was resolved by a bit of mystical mojo. And to get there we had to sit through about half an hour of the Bride and Bill playing Happy Families and then reminiscing about what went wrong in their relationship.
Others have commented on the inherent misogyny in these films. I didn't get that with Volume 1 - it was too "cartoony" for that. It came through very much in Volume 2. Lingering shots of the Bride panting in agony or terror. Bud and his friend salivating over how they were going to kill her. And the ultimate in the idea of a wrinkly ancient like Bill with a young beauty like the Bride.
But the film's bigger sin was in being boring. Several times I found myself reaching for the remote to fast forward. It just could not hold the interest.
It is not the worst film ever. That honour is reserved for 2001 - A Space Odyssey. Now that is two hours of my life that I really want back. But it was a real disappointment, and hard to believe that it is part of the same project as the inventive and stylish Volume 1.
Doctor Who: Last of the Time Lords (2007)
Disappointing - breaks the internal logic of the series
I had hoped for so much more. This story just failed on so many levels. The most basic, though, was the way the Doctor was returned to his old self by the power of thought from the Earth. I could buy that the power of thought might overcome the telepathic field from the satellites, giving the Doctor, Martha and Jack the opportunity they needed to stage a fight-back, but not this. It seems that in pushing, pushing, pushing the story as far as possible, the scriptwriters pushed the Doctor beyond the point at which they could find a credible return for him.
The quasi-religious tale of Martha walking the Earth, telling the story of the man who had saved humankind so many times, without them even knowing, was so clunking as to be embarrassing.
Finally, the Titanic breaching the structure of the Tardis? Oh pur-lease! Yes, OK, I found it amusing at the time, but it just doesn't work like that.
There were positives. John Simm was excellent as the Master. The solution to who the Toglophine were worked well for me, as did their child-like menace. And the hint as to Captain Jack's ultimate destiny was an incredibly neat tie-up - you have to wonder how long that has been the intention! But all in all, this was the weakest in the series by a long, long way. A great shame.
Hope It Rains (1991)
Dry, melancholic and quite moving
This series was not to everyone's taste. It was not a laugh-out-loud comedy. Instead it was an interesting and bravely-written piece, with some dry, rather melancholic humour in it. On a number of occasions, the script-writers could have gone for a warm fuzzy moment with the Tom Bell character coming out of his grumpy shell, but they went for integrity of character instead of the cheap feel-good moment. This in turn enabled them to show the vulnerability of the outwardly quite angry and hard Holly Aird character.
In showing his loneliness and her vulnerability, it was quite moving at times, and deserves more respect than your average sitcom.
Team America: World Police (2004)
A truly dreadful movie
I saw the first five minutes, and thought that there were some good moments - parodies of all the clichés from action movies through the years, the Team America fools accidentally blowing up the Eiffel Tower in their attempt to stop terrorists, and I thought this was going to be a good film.
Unfortunately, that proved to be the best bit of the movie. The only other moments I found remotely entertaining were the arrival of Kim Jong-il's "panthers" and the puppet sex.
Beyond that, the unremitting and entirely gratuitous crudity soon became boring, and was not leavened by any more subtle "humour". Toilet humour has its place, but when it constitutes virtually the entirety of the script for a 90 minute film, it soon loses its appeal. The political message - that America has the right to blow up anything it chooses and that we should be grateful to them for it, while those who claim that other approaches than violence might have merit are traitors - was tiresome propaganda for Bush's policies that brooked no possibility of an alternative viewpoint. It was entirely in keeping that it was delivered via a particularly crude sexual and scatological metaphor. And after those first five minutes, the repeated - oh, so often repeated - parodies of all the action movie clichés wore very thin indeed.
I would rate it as the second-worst movie I have ever seen, after 2001 - A Space Odyssey.