Change Your Image
matt_dt_jones
Reviews
Intruder (2021)
Why the drugs
What was the point of the drug subplot? The wife grew up there, she could have known about the tunnel coming up on the farm, no need for the farmer's help or presence. The drugs story was padding only. The story would have been better if man kills burglar, wife takes blame, only Sally Lindsay suspects and works it out.
I wonder if that was the original idea? As it turns out Lindsay hardly does anything and certainly doesn't bring the killer to justice. A weak, rambling story based on an interesting idea. As for Sam's acting, absolutely hilarious. I really did laugh, so that's what the one Star is for.
Doctor Who: Turn Left (2008)
Turn Left
A story doing nothing but treading water. A loop in which nothing has happened by the end. As with all such stories (alternative universe stories being the worst offenders) it is the equivalent of 'I woke up and it was all a dream'! There can be no tension, no drama, because the viewer knows it did not really happen and putting things back on track will solve every single dilemma that is set up. People can die, come back to life, never have been born but none of it matters because it is all rubbed out at the end with the return to real time or the real universe. So who can care about the story when watching it? Not me. You might argue that Donna sacrificing herself is where the drama lies, but she is alive again in the proper time-line so it is only a manufactured "big deal". But it was produced nicely and could have been worth making if the writer had been forced to live with the consequences of what he did and been able (big 'if' perhaps) to come up with real solutions rather than the get-out 'it didn't happen'.
Doctor Who: The Satan Pit (2006)
Satan Pit
Loved Part One, The Impossible Planet, but whoops, what a disappointment part two 'The Satan Pit' is. The cliffhanger of something apparently rising out of the pit was - nothing coming out of the pit. Then ages spent crawling round air vents to pad out the story, the Beast a roaring thing empty of intelligence, so no Doctor/villain confrontation I'd been anticipating. The TARDIS is somehow inside the pit despite the pit not being open till long after the TARDIS fell through the planet crust. And finally another ready made solution which existed for no logical reason - I mean, why not plunge the Beast into the Hole as soon as the pit opened? Why not plunge him in all those years ago instead of imprisoning him anyway. Why not - I could go on but I've lost interest...
Cymbeline (1982)
The Play's the Thing
The BBC's intention is to put Shakespeare's plays on the screen, not to 'improve' them. Certainly I could argue that a little adaptation here or there, a few edits impossible on stage, and armies fighting out battles in outside locations would make the thing more enjoyable, but it really would be wrong for the BBC to have done this, even if they could afford to. What we have here is what Shakespeare wrote and we see it as he intended, with the limitations but also the opportunities for imaginative descriptions for an actor to get his teeth into. 'Cymbaline' is too long a play and relies as often is the case in Shakespeare on luck, mix-ups and quickness to mistrust. Unfortunately it does it rather lumberingly at times. And how anyone could mistake Helen Mirren for a boy, let alone her own father not recognise her is dodgy enough; the BBC could at least have disguised her a little more! Overall the production was good, with the performances of Mirren and Gough and Jesson particularly working for me. I thought Lindsay good enough, but Pennington sadly subdued on all but a few occasions. In short, a play I'm not fond of was done almost as well as I could imagine it being done.