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Reviews
The Promise (2011)
Decent but flawed
I very much enjoyed parts of the Promise, but thought a great deal of it was basically crap.
The immediate post war aftermath in Palestine is a very good setting for a film/TV series and is a little known period in history for the general public. I thought the story set there was very compelling, with a good protagonist and remained balanced until the final episode.
In contrast the framing device of the girl reading her grandfather's diary was poorly constructed and meant we had to spend far too much time in the company of a girl whose only expression was a sullen pout. At times this became absolutely ludicrous, like her reason for wanting to visit Hebron 'to see how her grandfather's story turned out'. It's not that big a diary, unless you are the world's slowest reader you could read it cover to cover in a few hours. It was also a far less balanced story, with characters presenting as fact only one side of deeply controversial issues. Take the security barrier, condemned as useless for security reasons, and yet suicide bombings plummeted after its construction.
Talking about bias, we then come to the final episode, which presented the start of the arab-israeli war of 1948 as purely of poor helpless Arabs being slaughtered by Israelis. Both sides committed atrocities against civilians in the build up to the war and the war itself saw 2,400 Jewish civilians lose their lives. A far more interesting story might how a militia of only 30,000 Jews (at the start of the war) held back the armies of the Arab world.
In conclusion a good historical drama let down by its bias and framing device.
Enterprise (2001)
Not Convinced by Enterprise
I suppose it is due to people like me that Enterprise was cancelled.
I am a big Star Trek fan and watched most DS9 and voyager episodes on TV and I am now re watching Voyager on DVD but I never really got into Enterprise.
I watched the first season which had many good episodes, a good crew, and a good premise-the founding of the federation.
What spoilt it for me was the time travel nonsense. I wanted an intelligent drama about the founding of the federation but that didn't seem to be the idea of the producers.
After the season finale of Season 1 I gave up on Enterprise. Maybe I will watch it again in the future on DVD, but from what is said above the second and third seasons were even worse before a too late change of direction in the 4th.
I'm sure there will be another Star Trek series in the future. Set it after Voyager/DS9, maybe using some of the characters from those series and i'm sure it would be a success.
300 (2006)
Good but it could have been great
Voted 10 because of all the ludicrous one star reviews, most of which seem to come from people residing in Iran.
Just got back from seeing it. It is a good movie but could have been a great one.
It is easy to see why I read so many hostile reviews from (mainly American) critics. 'Noble' Greeks fighting barbarous Asians and all without pensively meditating on the futility of war. Even if this had been a masterpiece it would have still got a critical hammering. Ridley Scott only got away with doing a movie on the fall of Jerusalem by making the Knights Templar the bad guys.
But sadly just because a movie is being sniffily condemned by 'right on' movie critics does not make it a great one.
They seemed at first to be trying to capture the essence of Spartan society and made a far better job of it than most would have. But sadly any movie that has Spartans proclaiming that they are fighting for liberty and civilisation is losing allot of credibility. It is comparable to the defenders of Iwo Jima going to their deaths saying that they are fighting for liberty and democracy.
The battle itself is better than most Hollywood battle scenes (a very faint compliment) but does seem to be taking place on a stage rather than a mountain pass. Most of the time you never really get the sense they are fighting against a million strong Persian army and after the first engagement they give up on showing how the Spartans actually fought (in Phalanx formation) in favour of a mass brawl.
All in all the movie is only saved from being a poor one by the performance of Gerard Butler in the lead role.
When you finish there is a sense of disappointment, of an opportunity missed. Many scenes are very good indeed and with better scripting and a longer running time this could have been a great movie.