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Reviews
Santa's Little Ferrets (2014)
Distinct lack of ferrets
We bought this as a present for our kids, who have both kept ferrets and found them lovable and amusing pets. We had high expectation of these short films based on the previews of ferrets playing.
What a disappointment! The short films are dull, clichéd stories that wouldn't keep the attention of a 5 years old. The acting is wooden and the dialogue poor. Worst of all... HARDLY ANY FERRETS! In a 20 minutes short, there could be at most 2-3 minutes of the ferrets. This DVD was bought to see them, NOT wooden acting and lumpy dialogue.
Major disappointment. You can find far funnier and interesting clips of ferrets on YouTube. Just avoid this.
Firefly (2002)
Cowboys in space: clichéd and derivative
"A group of people travelling on a stagecoach find their journey complicated by the threat of Geronimo and learn something about each other in the process. "
That is the summary of the 1939 classic western Stagecoach, and using that as a starting point, you can see pretty much where Joss Whedon stole - oops, sorry, "imagined" - his "vision" of the future from. Firefly really is lazy work - a series of reject stories from "Alias Smith And Jones", populated with stock characters (the brawling captain, the dumb muscle bound sidekick, the prostitute, the doctor with a secret, the sentimental waggon driver/pilot) - with a tacked on sci-fi backdrop. There is absolutely nothing original here at all.
It's not all bad - some of the dialogue is sharp, and some of the acting - especially from Morena Baccarin and Jewel Staite - is excellent. But that isn't enough to save the series from a complete lack of originality in storyline or characterisation. The majority of viewers will have just see regurgitated Western plot lines and clichéd characters in outer space, and either tuned out, or watched a Western.
It's a shame really - I liked Whedon's work on Buffy, and I thought his take on Much Ado About Nothing was excellent - but Firefly sucks.
Move along people, there is nothing worthwhile to see here. Literally.
Holy Motors (2012)
Self indulgent, pretentious twaddle
Things to look for in any good film: an engaging plot, great characterisation, fine acting, sparkling dialogue, an emotional connection with the plot and the characters, stunning direction... and most importantly, GREAT ENTERTAINMENT. This "film" - if you can call it that - fails to deliver on ANY of the above.
It has no plot. There is no characterisation. The acting is average. The dialogue is an clunky as 1990's Fiat Panda gearbox. The direction is erratic and looks like the best efforts of a film student fresh of college.
The positive reviews here on IMDb appear to have been written by the type of pseudo-intellectuals who also claim that someone kicking an empty takeaway tin down the street is "performance art".
This is not a film - it is a waste of time. Avoid.
Cloverfield (2008)
Blair Witch meets Godzilla via Aliens.... in a BAAAAD way
I went to see Cloverfield with very high expectations; the trailers had got my attention, and I enjoyed "Lost" which had the same writer. I was expecting something that was fresh, original, with a decent storyline and quality dialog.
Unfortunately, this film was a huge disappointment; it offered none of the above. The story is told from the viewpoint of one of the characters that has a hand-held camcorder, and as a consequence the pictorial style of the movie is very similar to "Blair Witch", e.g. jerky camera shots in an attempt to make the film more "realistic". Unfortunately, this becomes extremely annoying after 15 minutes or so, and as a ploy to make the audience think they watching an amateur recording it is totally destroyed by the incredible sound quality, supposedly from the same source.
In addition, there isn't a storyline as such; some people are having a party, and a destructive creature suddenly appears and trashes the city they are in. There is no explanation of where the creature came from, or what it is. It's a pure lift from any Godzilla movie. The rest of the movie is simply watching the jerky camcorder follow the characters (albeit with incredible sound quality) through the city as first they try to escape, and then have to turn back to find the true love of one of the characters. Yes, it really *is* that clichéd.
After that, the storyline (what is left of it) gets steadily more and more ridiculous. The characters go into a subway and are attacked by face hugger outtakes from "Aliens". The army take them into custody, but instead of evacuating them they let them go because - hey! - the male lead is going back to find his true love. So much for realism ;) The girl they're looking for is trapped in a tower block that has been attacked by the alien, and which is collapsing, but which has conveniently not fallen over completely but just come to lean against another tower block... the same as you see in any war zone - NOT. When they climb the tower to find the girl, she is pinned down by a steel rod through her shoulder. However, they pull her free, and despite the resultant blood loss she is soon running around the city like a spring chicken trying to escape. Again, so much for realism ;)
The key fault with Cloverfield is that is it an unholy marriage of two totally conflicting styles; the realistic, camcorder style of "Blair Witch" that records the relationship between the characters, and the desire to use that same style to give some indication of the enormity of the alien that is destroying the city. It simply doesn't work, specially when it is hampered by a script that becomes more and more implausible by the minute.
Cloverfield has no outstanding dialog, no character development, no plausible plot line, and no sense of realism. The special effects are reasonable, but they weren't what I came to see. It really is that bad, and I wasn't the only one to think so. At the end of showing I went to, there was a stunned silence, and then people started laughing... in disbelief that they'd sat and watched such a pile of rubbish.
This is easily a candidate for the worst film of 2008.