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Reviews
Man vs Bee (2022)
A sad return from a legend.
Mr. Bean this is, but for the lowest common denominator.
Rowan Atkinson is a legend and fantastic talent to see this performance ham fisted, with over telegraphed "jokes" shows it to be banal and just absurdly mundane.
The protagonist lacks the basic charm of Mr. Bean despite his heart break origin story.
A return to firm this is not, the BlackAdder days are sadly long gone, for a talent that talks about at length about freedom of expression of spearhead and humour.
This is terrible Netflix garbage. DON'T BOTHER WITH IT.
Star Trek: Picard (2020)
Not New Trek, Not Old Trek and not a trail blazer
Sadly the beautiful premise of the aged weary Admiral voyaging between the stars, seeing old quests and stories with nee eyes and a new crew fails to deliver.
TNG is my Trek, and I can not reconcile that this is the same captain, as even with TNGs high mixed and moral high ground rhetoric there was a sense that the characters were acting fairly naturally, Picard see characters forget plot, forget canon, forget themselves. Sadly underwhelming and a poor exploration of one of the best captains.
With a great supporting cast but boring, sad and underwhelming arcs for all concerned.
Black Mirror: Fifteen Million Merits (2011)
A Mirror Darkley
A Mirror Darkly 15 Million Merits is almost an adaption of 1984, the world which is depicts is one of stark and total sensual deprivation, where people literally live though their social networks, there isn't money, there isn't reality, there are the confines of you room, and where you work. But even in this hollow reality there are the Telescreens constantly crying for your attention, to the point of being the wholeness of your personal life.
This episode is not only a rebellion against the puerility, of reality television and the way it distracts from what is important in life, like the week of hate in 1984; it rallies the mob to a cause that is ultimately insignificant but encourages an almost self-fulfilling prophecy or purpose, it doesn't matter what is shown, or who it is, if it is real or not, but the mind has moved to a point of total deprivation of thought. The mind of these characters has become dead, uniqueness is something expressed though the hair of an avatar, it does as it is instructed, it thinks what it is told to think. In the world of 15 Million Metris, Sex and Horror are the new gods there is no morality it has all been digitized away by screaming avatars mimicking life with glassy eyed insincerity of a black mirror.
This episode if a brilliant indictment of not only the people that watch reality television and those that don't but the life it creates around it, the constant buzz between horror and sex. Ala Cheryl Cole being a role model for young women, while she prostitutes herself at HMV on posters where she kneels on all fours looking up at you, no different to the constant stream of pornography shown in this episode. This instalment is about indifference breading contempt for morality and life and that innocence is something to be cherish not sold, where it becomes cold and twisted, a broken Hallelujah.
"To predict the behaviour of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence." Friedrich Nietzsche
- Just watch it
Wild Target (2010)
Interesting and thoroughly enjoyable
While others seem to have found the film a letdown, I found it quite the opposite, expecting it to be an overly quirky and trying too hard to be different, a flaw with many smaller British and independent film today. Wild Target stuck to old formulas. this is not a criticism this film is not trying to be as serious as Leon instead it was enjoyable because you knew what was going to happen all along really the joy was the bedlam that gets you there. Its slapstick and camp and just plain silly.
I agree with danielkratky, it is a silly love story that despite your better judgement is in the end believable you just have to be willing to Wild target is a short film and to expect it to develop the characters beyond what is done is not needed, there's the good, the bad and the gormless and because of this it lulls you along with a nice wistful story of murder and mayhem rapt in some good over the top acting from everyone.
Grint whom I loath as Ron in harry potter made good in this film, despite still playing the slightly clueless tag-along.
if you want a serious look at a hit-man changing his life then go and watch The American or by Leon on DVD.
(solid_simon may i suggest that you were the only person in the screening hence the lack of laughter)