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Reviews
Gray (2023)
Nothing is resolved in the end. Don't bother!!!
There's a certain arrogance in assuming that by leaving a ludicrous number of unresolved issues you are guaranteeing yourself a second series- and stuff the audience.
This over- stretched poorly scripted, often badly acted, poorly cast and horrendously accented waste of time was actually bearable up to episode 4 but after that the longing for the denouement leaves you grimly hanging on. But to no avail because literally nothing is really tied up at the end. You're left with a memory of endless posing by the main character merely subverting the male secret agent sexual aggressor trope, a bizarre performance from Rupert Everett and a scantily supported and flimsy plot going nowhere. Don't waste your time.
Snowtown (2011)
Try and look away
The other reviewers are absolutely right, you try and look away but you just can't. It is a deeply disturbing, mesmerizing and unforgettable (unfortunately) glimpse of an horrific underbelly of society. Revulsion, fascination, frustration and disbelief churn in an increasingly unsettled stomach as the activities go through their awful gears and by the end you, like Bunting's victims, are begin for it to be over. And you yearn for Jamie to turn back on his way to Snowtown but you've been brought despite yourself to abandon all hope.
The cinematography is superb - bleak, grimy, huge yet claustrophobic.
The performances are astonishing - Henshall's demonic and seductive sparkling rides a razor's edge of tension in every single moment he is on screen. Lucas Pittaway's tortured mind works it's way through his every look. And there are no weak links anywhere.
Quite quite brilliant.
I'd have given the film 10 but I still don't feel right...
Prometheus (2012)
Loved it! Especially in IMAX 3D! But the plot...???
Firstly have to say I was looking forward to this for months and it didn't disappoint. It looks stunning and in the full IMAX environment was awe-inspiring at times. Gruesome, slimy and suspenseful.
Michael Fassbender is one of the most creepy bad guys ever and it's his and Noomi Rapace's movie really. Supporting cast (or monster fodder) strong too.
But the plot is so full of holes as to be slightly disappointing in hindsight. Here come the spoilers...
1. Why was it necessary to conceal Weylands's presence from the crew, most of whom didn't know why they were going there in the first place? Totally unnecessary. 2. Given the main 'agenda' why was it necessary at all to warn off Shaw and Holloway from engaging with any life forms they found. Surely that's precisely what they should have been doing? 3. Why did no-one chase Shaw as she headed to the med-pod? 4. Again given the main agenda, why was David trying to experiment with the crew at all? How did that help Weyland? In fact didn't his meddling actually put Weyland's agenda in real jeopardy? 5. Big question - how did all the other forms of life on Earth evolve? 6. They really skirted the question of why the Engineers seeded earth for no real reason other than to make the question of why their agenda had changed so markedly subject of the unanswered question at the end. 7. Why did it take two escape pods to escape from Prometheus? 8. Real nit-picking, why didn't Vickers turn right or left when trying to escape her doom - goodness knows she had the time! 9. Weyland was made up to look like about 100 years old - surely not if Vickers was his daughter! Was he 60 odd when he had her? Why couldn't he just have been in need of a cure for some dread disease. And the awful make-up on Guy Pearce could have been avoided...
And to be honest there's loads more, but it really didn't stop me thoroughly enjoying the movie.
Outcasts (2010)
What a crying shame!
Take some of the better character actors available to TV at present, mix in what seems like a reasonable budget and a reasonable premise for a character-based/futurist drama and you should have the basis for something which at least occasionally piques interest or asks some poignant questions.
But no, instead we get this piece of total and utter tripe. The cast seem to have been lulled into a somnolent state by a script which is almost (well, no, is often literally) laughable.
You do wonder how these things ever get signed off. I mean surely at the preview screening of the first episode at the Beeb well before broadcast SOMEONE must have coughed nervously before piping up "Err... isn't this just a teensy bit..er...boring?" Didn't any of the production staff watch it and think "Hmm, it's not quite what I'd hoped it would be..." The stock way to guarantee audiences is evidently to slaughter favourite or main characters with regularity. Kudos (who produced this pile of space dirt)does this with 'Spooks'. Like a character? Oh dear, time for him/her to go. In this case Jamie Bamber takes the full force of this drive for ratings whilst poor old Freema Agyeman only last about 5 minutes.
But it was still dull.
Deathly dull.
And it didn't get better in episode two either. Instead a pantomime villain was introduced to smugly leer at the assembled throng in the name of a Universal Spirit. Hegel is a spinnin'.
I can't bear it any more, but at least the BBC has had the sense of decency to hide the last episodes late on a Sunday night when often I'm in the mood for a giggle.
What a shame - a major opportunity missed - and it must be that there's someone in the BBC of whom people are so scared that they dare not voice any sensible criticism. It's the only explanation as to how this got to the screen without major re-engineering.