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rosie-brocklehurst
Reviews
Invasion (2021)
Really bad
Why bother? Why bother commissioning this idiotic, irritatingly dull hotch potch of disconnected filmic waffle. Goodness. Did they not learn from eons of Star Trek series how to produce sci fi? What a waste of decent photography and location and Sam Neill. They could not even bother to edit out the Afghanistan scenes given recent history. It is in Afghanistan that the achingly slow reveal of one monster looks like a lift from another movie- War of the Worlds perhaps. Yes Monster! Like the bottom half of a Tyrannosauraus. So original. Not. The only invasion in the whole boring, intensely irritating little dramatic scenarios, all deeply unconvincing and mostly badly acted, is the invasion of viewers' integrity that this show represents.
Midsomer Murders: Ghosts of Christmas Past (2004)
Lovely seasonal show, but threads of plot fell apart
This Midsomer was a real festive treat with excellent casting (particular good young actor playing 12 year old Howard) and the great John Nettles who really is superb. Renny Rye is such a good Director and the show always has very high production values. The tension of the attic room at the top of the stairs, and the engine left running in the garage added to suspense. The elder sister was very good as an embittered and tyrannical sister and Aunt to Howard. But the acting and the seasonal feel did not make up for what turned out to be an unsatisfactory plot where the murderer seemed to be implausible because one just had to ask how they came to be in the house in the first place given the denouement of the piece. Could have had loose ends tied up more acceptably within the narrative with a little more effort.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2015)
High class production values, beautifully cast and directed, losing its way a little midstream
Love so much about this series. (There is no plot spoiler in this and I only clicked on spoiler alert because my views may put off anyone who has not watched all episodes broadcast on BBC so far. This series is so beautifully designed, acted, costumed, directed and CGI'd that I have not the superlatives these aspects deserve with which to shower it. The novelist can't be praised highly enough. I did not read the book first but have watched this enthralling series. It is dark, but fun too. History buff that I am, this is saturated with historical atmosphere and has such a superb grasp of history while knowing that it cannot even attempt to be factually correct, for this is art. It is artful art. Both magicians are superb. Those settings - I am drawn into the turn of the 19th century. I also watched Bertie Carvel in Babylon (so good), and the hugely talented actor who plays Norrell was excellent in both Little Dorrit and Tyrannosaur. Whole thing is dotted with wonderful characters -like Dickens is from the Tarot reading Pedlar to the magician's circle, the puffed up charlatan, and so on. Wonderful cameos everywhere. I spurn the religious conservationists who must actually believe in magic hokum to object to it. I suppose they would object to Hans Christian Anderson -elements of which fairy tale sensibility are I feel palpable here : The Raven King/ hobgoblin types, the character who must be the man with thistledown hair that is referred to in another review. Everything is here, a melting pot of imaginative magical genres. This exposition of magic surpasses Merlinesque/Potteresque magic as it must, for it is sophisticated adult entertainment. It also avoids the clichés of Merlinesque symbolism. This is a Gothic fantasy, a dream state magical dance with send up horror. (Dead souls brought to life, so touches of Frankenstein, a creation in tune with the period, but Dracula too (a later creation). The Peninsula campaign scenes are done well too. So bold to bring the Napoleonic war into this. Good, and good BUT - from episode three onward, for me it has begun to lose shape. Something to do with the complexity, the script and editing perhaps? Some of the ideas it has to be said which are lurking there, possibly in the original novel, are not fully formed. Began to lose direction by episode three. Still, I will stay with it because it is fantastically well done BBC.
Prometheus (2012)
A horror film wrapped in sci fi that fails in the sci fi genre
No sympathetic characters in the film , not even the placid robot who turns out to be sly (played well by Fassbinder). That was a very big mistake among many. I could not have cared less about any of the characters. The message of the film-well it is, don't bother looking for aliens as they'll turn out to be satanically nasty slime balls with teeth and will only want to kill you and destroy earth or take it over. The filmic references to Alien were deeply annoying. And it could have been so good if the storyline had been more philosophical and complete. OK this was not Star Wars (which was boring) or 2001 which was excellent but also incomplete. This started off as high concept with the idea of a trillion dollar mission looking for the 'engineer creators' of life on earth on a far off part of the universe. But the crew were idiots, not scientists or even plausible businessmen. The Mission is funded by a geriatric multi zillionaire head of a corporation who wants to meet his maker before he dies). The grand mythological Prometheus reference,and opening sequence with Promethean engineer character, led me to expect some philosophical centre to what turned out to be just a slime fest of gore. The CGI was of a quality and I am sure the budget was high, but the overall story result was just wholly inadequate. It left me with a sour taste in the mouth. It sinned on the story elements that make for good sci fi. It failed to resolve what it had set up at the beginning in any satisfactory way -which is fatal in sci fi. The film basically had no soul-just like the robot and everyone else in the film. Why oh why? Ridley Scott should be able to do so much better. Has he forgotten what story and characterisation is? I did not like Alien but I did like 2001 a space odyssey and First Contact. I yearn for a really good sci fi but Hollywood just does not seem able or want to produce .
Sweet Home Alabama (2002)
Dull, predictable with unlikeable main characters
Really disliked this movie. Badly done and dull. The characters shallow and unlikeable. The 3 minute trailer to this movie was the only good thing about it - two young kids , best friends who have their sweet first kiss when lightning strikes. That and Reese Witherspoon and the Alabama setting was what enticed me in. But the body of the film bears no resemblance to this preface. I think the plot: 'girl from wrong side of tracks - escapes small town & hick-husband, becomes fashion designer & falls for high flying son of socialite snob politician who in turn starts sniffing into girl's background', provided a skeleton of dramatic scope and might actually have worked with better development and scripting. But we have no idea for way too long as to why the main protagonist played by the normally great Reese Witherspoon, fell out with her husband from Alabama and left him. They do not 'fit'. They are not funny together. In fact the whole second act fails on every level. Reeses character is ill developed, and the actress herself seems to realise she is in a bummer of a movie and can't get out. She makes an unlikely fashion designer. She does not relate to her colleagues, (employees?), she is dull, a cipher, and when back in Alabama becomes downright unpleasant. Even the great Lynard Skynrds song was not reprised well in the ho down sequence. Why oh why did Reese do this movie?
Romuald et Juliette (1989)
A french farce with plenty of wit, joie de vivre and social satire
Why does this film lift my spirits when I am in the lowest of moods? It always does, and has done so for 25 years. I watch it at least once a year. Daniel Auteuil has the most expressive face. Firmine Richard, an untried ingenue when she made this, just lights up the room when she smiles. (Auteuil was brilliant as Ugolin, the dim innocent peasant of those masterpieces of French cinema - Jean De Florette and Manon Des Sources, based on the Pagnol novels.) Auteuil's face is just as expressive in his role as the duped boss in this fast moving light hearted farce, where he plays the blinkered and pompous chief executive of a multi-national yoghurt producer who develops an unlikely relationship with Juliette, the office cleaner. She is a woman raising 5 children single handedly in a dump of a flat, while working nights and surviving on minimum wages and less sleep. Big, black and beautiful and totally unlike Romuald's chic, over-indulged adulterous wife, Juliette represents woman with all her emotional strength and practical virtue. The contrasts are multiple. Juliette is poor. He is rich. She is French African and black. He is slightly built and white. She is working class. He is Bourgeois. He is blind to the world he inhabits and the scoundrels who surround him. She is good, strong, independent minded and wise. This is the sweetest of films that has the extraordinary ability to reach out and give you a hug.