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tim-1519
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Ricky Gervais: Armageddon (2023)
He may have set the bar too high that even he cannot reach it
If I listed my top 20 comedy specials of all time, I think possibly all of his previous ones would be in there. And Animals and Politics would be in the top 3, but this felt like it was rushed at best and a cash grab at worst.
The material felt old and rehashed with the *spontaneous* dog joke feeling like it was straight from Bernard Manning's book of jokes.
And the constant need to explain himself (Jimmy Carr has started doing this, so maybe on a deeper level they are fearful of being taken literally) was a bit tiring.
There were some funny bits with the cultural appropriation joke brilliant and so clever, but I'm not sure I need to see him use the handjob action in any more specials. It was very funny the first time and pretty funny the second time, but now it feels/looks more like a metaphor for him milking the Netflix coffers.
I still love the guy and will watch his next one because even comedians have bad days at the office.
Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)
Not at all horrible
I find it a shame that movies like this rarely get judged in isolation. The MI enthusiasts rush to give it 10 stars and get all defensive with people who try and rate it critically.
I really like Tom Cruise other than maybe his religious tendencies, but he really isn't a very good actor and he pales compared with the likes of Daniel Craig and Matt Damon.
But, he can carry a film on his charisma, likability and his incredible guts in delivering his own stunts.
Make no mistake, this movie is state of the art when it comes to stunts and special effects.
But in their haste to make jaw-dropping effects the makers completely forget to write a coherent script.
There were some amusing one-liners, but by and large it felt like it was a race to get to the next action sequence so the scriptwriters could go back to drinking coffee and staring into space.
As such the character development was negligible and the film felt super shallow (which of course, it is).
And the insistence in every scene where these was dialogue with more than two people to rotate the lines equally felt like an in-joke. Or maybe the actors were paid on lines delivered and they were trying to make sure everybody got well paid., Whatever the reason, it was awkward to the point. Of embarrassing.
I enjoyed it on a big screen, but I doubt I would have watching at home and I don't care one way or another if I see Part 2.
Oh, and who was shovelling the coal in?
Luther: The Fallen Sun (2023)
Time to let it go Idris
I thought the last season of Luther was abysmal. Even the plot holes had holes, and I only saw it out because of the screen presence of Idris Elba and my loyalty to a previously solid franchise.
I wasn't expecting much from Luther: The Fallen Sun and I didn't get much.
Actually, that's not true, I got a lot, but not much of it made any sense and it felt like a movie that couldn't figure out its own identity and what genre it belonged in.
The main baddie in this one was sooooo close to a Bond villain including castles, cross-continent shenanigans, and murders so creative that Salvador Dali would have felt humbled, that it felt like it was he and not Elba was auditioning for the next Bond.
If the writer wasn't on acid most of the time he was thinking up different ways for the victims to die, he probably needs to be kept an eye on.
Elba was his usual brilliant, charismatic self and arch-villain Andy Serkis was pretty good too (the rest of the acting, not so much) but as per the final TV season, there were too many gaping plot flaws and too much shoddy writing.
I didn't hate it, but I think I probably would have done if it hadn't been for Idris Elba carrying it.
Top Gun: Maverick (2022)
Great action, dreadfully predictable script
Worth a view on the big screen for the action scenes but boy were things predictable.
Cruise was his usual charismatic self, but let down by a cliche-ridden script that felt like it had been written by AI as well as some lukewarm support.
Continuity errors and plot flaws were many, which is a shame and unnecessary when you consider the budget.
Worth a trip to see on the big screen for state of the art special effects, but I'd have hate to have sat through it at home where a decent plot is more important.
Slow Horses (2022)
Worth watching just for Gary Oldman
Slow Horses is used to describe a division of MI5 where they send those agents who have screwed up on some way. Slow is on itself a derivation of Slough as they call it Slough House because it may as well be in Slough for all the concern that the rest of MI5 gives it.
Having worked in Slough, I definitely get that analogy.
Gary Oldman may just be the greatest actor of his generation and he raises the entire thing from mediocrity to entertaining.
If you're anal about plot holes and continuity errors like I can be, you may find some parts irritating, but it's worth watching just for Oldman and quite a lot of fun.
This review was done after episode 4 because annoyingly Apple TV have decided to drip feed it in the oldschool way.
Reacher (2022)
Is this just fans of the books losing it?
I was really looking forward to this because I enjoyed The Killing Floor, but I'm super disappointed. It felt like something Fox would put out at 9 pm on a Monday night.
Dreadful acting, hammy, cliched script with preposterous fight sequences.
It just seems like a vehicle for Alan Ritchson to get his shirt off and do a poor Robert Mitchum/Clint Eastwood impersonation.
Ritchson is clearly a closer fit to the character in the books, but at least Cruise is a competent actor.
The Responder (2022)
British/BBC drama at its best.
Fabulous acting, perfect pace, gritty and at times, highly amusing dialogue, really interesting characters and a seemingly realistic look at what it can be like being a cop working a run down drug-riddled area of a biggish city.
The thick Liverpool accents can be at times tough to decipher, but if you like hard hitting TV crime/cop stuff that never has you thinking 'well, that couldn't happen' well worth pushing through.
Best thing I've watched since Time.
Stay Close (2021)
Not even Eddie Izzard could save this
I used to love James Nesbitt, but I this is one (bad) cop drama too many for him.
A horrible script that plumbed the depths of implausibility and then went a bit deeper was worsened by acting that was more wooden than Pinocchio on stilts.
Cartoonish characters and a competition to see who had the whitest veneers in the cast (won by Sarah Parish in case you're interested) didn't help.
Izzard tried his best to drag this mess up to respectability, but to little avail.
Coming on the back of watching succession and the top drawer acting and clever script that had to offer I felt like I'd gone from driving a Ferrari to a milk float. A very old milk float at that.
Wrath of Man (2021)
Some dreadfully cliched writing
I loved The Gentleman and Lock, Stock is one of my favourite films of all time, so I was looking forward to watch the Wrath of Man.
I'm pretty sure Guy Ritchie was on some of sponsored-cliche for charity during the first 20 minutes, as the script was just awful, to the point of embarrassing. It almost felt like it had been written by AL that had looked at ton of scripts from average gangster movies.
I'd have stopped right then and there if Ritchie hadn't made it and built up some trust equity.
It did get somewhat better, but I'm really not convinced that security guards saunter back to their armed vehicles chatting with $2m on a sack truck wearing no head or neck protection.
Statham is fairly charismatic, but he's still nevertheless Jason Statham, as he is in every movie. The only real need I can think of to make him British is that he can't do accents. Sliding in one joke about him being a Limey and one-line about him going back to London doesn't really cover up the fact there was no benefit to the plot.
As I said, it got somewhat better, but the ending felt rushed and didn't make a fat lot of sense. I'll not say any more than that for fear of spoiling the plat.
I you're meh about Ritchie then this won't convert you, but if you love him like I do/did, then you'll do fine with this....maybe.
The Guilty (2021)
If you haven't seen the original, this is good
I'd normally steer well clear of anything that IMDb scores under 7 because it rarely gets it wrong.
However, I watched this because many of the reviews ripping it were based around it not being as good as the Danish original.
I'm sure the US version of The Killing wasn't as good as the Danish original, but it was still really good.
I thought it this was pretty good too and Jake Gyllenhaal was his usual very solid self.
He plays a cop who is waiting to go to court for some unspecified issue (that emerges toward the end of the film) and is on 911 duty answering emergency calls.
He gets a call from a woman he believes to have been kidnapped by her ex-con husband and he's on a mission to find her before the guy kills her.
He is clearly a man with anger management issues and I'm pretty sure he'd not have been able to do some of the stuff he did like abusing people who call in when it's clearly not a legitimate emergency.
All the action takes place in the responders office and most of the cast only appear by voice at the end of a phone line.
I can imagine that if you have seen the original then this would be a let down as much because you'd know the plot twists (and there are some good ones), rather than because it's poorly acted, filmed or paced.
It's not your usual thriller as it's a bit bleak and there's no car chasers or gun fights but I'd definitely give it a high 7. Perhaps not quite an 8, but I'm lashing out at some tough reviews!
Baptiste (2019)
Time to call this one a day
It had more ploy flaws than Money Heist and more overacting than Your Honor with a twist that was more like a slight curve in the road.
Missing was great and the character of Baptiste was interesting and complex warranting further development. But even so, season 1 only clung on by its fingertips.
Well, for the second seasons somebody stamped on those fingertips as the writers churned out a formulaic script stretching credulity and making my eyes hurt from all the rolling they did.
This didn't feel like a BBC drama at all, it felt more like something one of the main US networks would churn out and be very proud of themselves for going highbrow because it was set in Budapest.
Time (2021)
Bean is outstanding
I reluctantly watched at the behest of my wife because I'm not a fan of Sean Bean and didn't think of him as a particularly gifted actor or one who could carry a movie/tv series.
How wrong I was. He was spellbinding and turned in the kind of performance that showed why others rated him so highly and I should have too.
This 3-parter is dark, very dark. It really gets into the underbelly of the British penal system and from everything I've read it's brutally accurate, especially when it comes.to the drug aspect.
It's a must watch and did I say Stephen Graham is his normal brilliant self too?
Criminal: UK (2019)
Overhyped and overrated
IMDb rarely lets me down, but it got it horribly wrong with Criminal. At least the UK version.
David Tennant is a great actor and he did his level best to keep the first episode going, but after that it was just awful.
Plodding script, highly predictable twists, and preposterous scenarios.
It was an interesting idea and I get why the producers would have loved the pitch, especially with the ability to run it across multiple countries, but in the end it was just pretentious and utterly tedious.
About the only good thing I have to say (other than Tennants acting) is at least there were only 3 episodes.
Pine Gap (2018)
Excellent, but not your average spy production
This is unusual for a spy thriller in so much as there are no car chases. no guns and no ludicrous special effects.
It's a lot more cerebral than most productions of this genre and the line between good guys and bad guys is murky at best which messes with your head when we are used to having a clear delineation.
I can definitely understand if you watch movies like the latest Mission Impossible (as I was unfortunate enough to do last night) and find they to be your idea of a great spy type movie, that this may seem a bit slow.
The action does come in bursts and as I said above, it isn't the traditional chases and knife fights, but action inside a huge Ops room as people away from the real conflict try to make sense of it and deal with it accordingly.
I'm a Brit so was on the fence, but my guess is that if you're an Aussie or an American, then you will lean toward your country making the best political decisions and being 'in the right' and the other country not really understanding what's at stake.