Reviews

This miniseries devotes more time than the David Lynch version (but at 4.5 hrs will be less than the two new Denis Villeneuve films). The big success here is that it manages to unpack much more of Frank Herbert's novel, expand the role of characters who were either truncated or missing from the Lynch film. It also gains more depth by including a few more scenes as well e.g. The banquet scene, the interactions with Duncan and Keynes after the death of Duke Leto.

There is one particularly large change from the novel and this is to expand the role of the Princess Irulan who now takes on an investigation role and is used as a way of helping the audience understand the story. This makes perfect sense given that viewers of the Lynch version were largely left baffled.

Where it lets itself down is in production values. Acting is variable in quality and at times below professional levels, some actors seem to be struggling to act in English and are emphasising parts of sentences in all the wrong places. Even oscar winner William Hurt seems dead behind the eyes on this just quietly reading out his lines with little passion. PH Moriarti is often incomprehensible Only Ian Mcneice really shines delivering a pantomime like performance and occasionally breaking the fourth wall.

VFX is generally acceptable though also reused a bit in places. Some really obvious backdrops lets this down badly though in places - not sure why they didn't use green-screen but you can clearly see where paintings have been stuck together in places.

The costume design is another dodgy part of this. It feels like the designers thought making a sci-fi film was a license to treat everything like an avant garde Paris fashion show. Some very silly costumes and ridiculous hats make it hard to take some scenes seriously.

It is amazing that Ridley Scott still seems able to make epics on this scale. This film was never likely to be successful and there is a good reason why film makers such as Kubrick have failed to make a suitable biopic of Napoleon.

Main issue here is the film tries to squeeze to much history into too little time. This necessitates some major narrative gaps and omissions in the history of the Napoleonic period (no mention of Trafalgar, the Invasion of Spain, Battle of Jena, Battle of Lepizig). At one point Napoleon just seems to return from his failed invasion Russia and is told he most go into exile in Elba. It reality that decision came on the back of military defeats in large pitched battles.

That said, much of the actual history that is shown appears to be fairly accurate. There are a few bits of artistic license Napoleon meeting Wellington etc but this is a historical film not a documentary.

It strengths are probably the battle sequences and visual aspects. Scott is still great at making these sort of scenes and they are incredibly effective. Vanessa Kirby is also excellent as Josephine and probably delivers the films best performance.

This film doesn't do many favours for Joaquin Phoenix. Despite seeming like a sound casting choice, he looks uncomfortable in this role and never really brought Napoleon to life.

All in all though still worth watching. Historical epics like this are rare, it is visually stunning and although flawed people should watch these sort of movies otherwise they'll just keep making more superhero trash instead.

This episode will divide people. If you like musicals and don't want to take things too seriously then you will quite possibly like this. But one of the strengths on Strange New Worlds was that they were taking Star Trek back to its roots a bit more this feels like a diversion from that.

If you are a bit older you might remember other shows that have resorted to musical episodes in the past and normally it is a fairly desperate act when the show is starting to decline and they want to find a way to getting people to talk about it again. They did it in Buffy and Xena back in the day too.

Hard to believe this is just Episode 19 of the show and they have already felt the need to do a musical episode.

Jess Bush and Ethan Peck (as Nurse Chapel and Spock respectively) seem to be the best singers in this and get the most time to sing. Though most of the main cast sing. Pike seems to have his time limited so obviously wasn't much of a strength for him.

Not a disaster but coming on the back of an episode that was part cartoon this season is starting to feel a bit gimmicky and is a drop in quality from the first season.

This is a nice heart-warming sort of film about a extremely grumpy man interacting with his neighbours. Inevitably we expect a scrooge like transition as the film progresses and in that respect it resembles many a Christmas film.

Actually the plot (despite being based on a Scandinavian film) is very similar to the Netflix show Afterlife. Essentially the lead character has becomes grumpy and suicidal following the death of his wife from cancer but ends up helping those around him instead.

The casting is good and despite Hanks being the only recognisable face (to me at least) the other actors more than deliver.

It is still a Hollywood movie though and in the second half we are delivered an incongruous bit of gender politics that doesn't really work well with Otto's character. It doesn't kill the film as others have suggested but it definitely doesn't improve it and suggests the writers are putting politics above good writing, storytelling or characterisation.

In short though a good film. But if you watch lots of movies you will likely find it a familiar tale.

This is a scifi survival film with someone stuck on a desolate planet following a space battle. The film devalues itself with an obvious attempt to cash-in on the scifi film Dune (and it is filmes in rocky Iceland so there are no dunes in sight.

The beginning is very poor and slow with some close up shots of spacecraft supposedly filmed in the flat of the director during the pandemic. Seems like it is trying to be like the start of the death star run in star wars.

For what it is worth the use of location filming actually works well and the cinematography makes good use of the rugged landscape and use of drones in places is effective. The acting of its lead actress is solid. The special effects are basic but do the job.

While this won't win any awards and will be nobodys favourite film it does feel like an honest attempt to make a good scifi film on a small budget despite its silly title.

Normally the first episode of the season is used to draw people back to the programme. This does a poor job of that.

It certainly lacks Jennifer Connelly who brought so much to this show. Sean Bean is still good but is barely seen. If Daveed Diggs 'Leyton' is now going to be a much bigger presence in this show then I think it is bad news. His acting is a bit poorer than the other leads, and the character is dull. It may just also be that Snowpiercer itself is running out of steam and that the original concept just isn't right for a protracted series.

This is a knock-off attempt to cash in on Dune (2021) and maybe get some accidental purchases from people trying to buy the other movie.

Its a basic B-movie and comes with the usual shoddy acting and special effects of varying quality the vfx in space actually look quite good but the worms less so at times. Though it still does a better job of showing the deserts than the Scifi mini series Frank Herbert's Dune.

It also features Sean Young who played Chani in Dune 1984. She is almost unrecognisable now but does a reasonable job in her role, though not as the lead as the poster sort of suggests.

The basic plot is that a group of people get stuck on Planet Dune attempting to rescue a downed freighter and end up having to battle sandworms before attempting their escape.

Denis Villeneuve is a superb director and this film is visually stunning does an excellent job of making Frank Herbert's story accessible, its a long film but but well edited so doesn't seem long. On the whole it sticks closely to the original novel and the few compromises it makes all seem fully justifiable and necessary. The screenplay is excellent too hope the same writers do the second film if it gets made.

The casting is almost perfect (Timothy Chalamet probably a bit too weedy for the lead but still does a good job), Josh Brolin is great as Gurney as it Jason Mamoa as Duncan. Zendaya as usual is just great at everything but not a major figure in the first film.

Hans Zimmer's score is better than some of his recent work but in truth he probably peaked some years ago and what music there is isn't terribly memorable. Would have been nice if this film had given us a great new piece of music but that definitely isn't the case here.

Do really hope the second film is made and if it successful people don't get greedy and try and turn it into several.

Vera Farmiga and Freddie Highmore are excellent as Norma and Norman Bates in this show. Highmore's acting also improves significantly as the show develops making him all the more believable. They have done a great job of re-building the sets to look like the original in Psycho.

The plot of Norman and Norma has sort of been done before in Psycho IV which delivered in 90minutes what this show took 40 episodes to do. The slow pacing is padded out with unnecessary characters and Twin Peaks style unravelling of small town drugs and corruption.

The last season moves the story on significantly but the way it concludes and several characters story arcs are resolved strongly suggest the writers had no plan beyond the next few episodes and didn't really know where they were taking it.

A shame as this could have been much better had it been thought out and a bit shorter and the quality acting is largely wasted on a poor result.

Netflix are quite good a getting big names (Kendrick, Collette in this case) and making a lot of productions but the quality is often lacking and it feels like they are backing projects that other studios rejected.

This film is rather slow and a little too understated. The basic moral dilemma at the heart of the plot isn't substantive or interesting enough for a feature length production at the very least it could have been done in 90mins.

The Scifi setting is almost redundant and just left me wishing I was watching another space based films with a small cast and an ethical dilemma like 'Passengers' instead...

The acting task isn't very funny and takes far too long. Makes you think it would have been cut if Covid hadn't made it harder to film additional material.

It still a good group of comedians this year but the tasks are getting more repetitive and the show is running out of steam.

This has many of the hallmarks of a typical Netflix movie. Solid production values, some big names - but basically past-it stars (Will Ferrell and Pierce Brosnan) and a bad story/screenplay. Ferrell somehow manages to look older than Brosnan who is playing his father.

The concept of a comedy based around the Eurovision Song Contest is actually quite a good one and in better hands it might have worked well but the jokes don't land.

This sort of feel-good light comedy is probably better off closer to the 90min runtime mark as well and it feels stretched at 2 hrs.

This is a gender-reversed version of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Similar gender reversal attempts in recent years have ended in failure e.g. Ghostbusters, Oceans 8, Overboard. The strength of this film is that it sticks closely to the original screenplay and it works well.

If you are familiar with the original though this is unlikely to hold many surprises.

Rebel WIlson and Anne Hathaway both deliver solid performances.

I love these type of RPG games. I haven't played Bethesdas latest online RPG efforts (which are meant to be terrible) but this game compares unfavourably to the likes of Fallout 3, New Vegas (Obsidian's previous effort), Fallout 4, Oblivion or Skyrim.

The world is smaller, the game about a quarter as long as those titles less immersive and much more bland. The characters also compare unfavourably, this is a shame as Obsidian made a much more interesting game in New Vegas and this seemed like a good purchase as a result.

There is also a serious lack of diversity of monsters/ outlaws to kill. The dozens of different threats in the games mentioned above have been whittled down to a much smaller selection which makes it extra repetitive.

In short this seems a bit rushed, the map of the solar system has many several worlds you cannot travel too which makes it appear the area to explore is bigger than it is. Though some worlds such as Monarch are quite large.

On the plus side, this game also seems to have drawn a lot of inspiration from Firefly with your ship baring a remarkable similarity to the Serenity. I also completed it without encountering any bugs, which is something I have never experienced in a Bethesda effort.

I'm a big fan of Philip K Dick's work so was looking forward to this series. Anthology series generally open with one of their stronger stories and on that basis this is a worrying start. The acting was dry and the script dull, some reasonably well known actors appeared weak working on this. I rarely give up on a TV episode when I start one but this one pushed me to my limits.

All in all it feels like Hammer Horror meets Spaghetti Western meets Spanish Ed Wood.

The Fu Manchu films were always weak films and compared badly to many of the Hammer films of the period but this film represents a continued decline in quality from the previous trilogy and feels rather tired.

The plot is that Fu Manchu has discovered a deadly poison in the jungles of Central America which kills only men. The plot slightly derivative of the earlier 'Brides of Fu Manchu'in that Fu Manchu has kidnapped and chained scantily clad women for nefarious purposes, in this case to be used as carriers for the deadly poison to the far ends of the globe by kissing men to death! The Director Jesus Franco had a track record for making films with sadomasochistic themes so these elements are perhaps unsurprising.

Christopher Lee looks rather bored in this film and seems to be just reading out his lines.

This film is hopelessly twee, predictable, soul destroying and awful. Admittedly I don't like musicals making me biased but even by the those standards this film is painful to watch.

That said if you disconnect your brain and just want to watch something quite happy this film might be for you. The singing is OK the actors annoying but I suppose they are doing their job to the best of their abilities.

This film is exactly what it appears though, personally I am only watching it because my girlfriend is insisting and I find it cathartic to publish my thoughts on this mind numbingly bad experience..

Makes me weep for the species.