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Reviews
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: Subspace Rhapsody (2023)
Musical shark-jump
Eventually every incarnation of Star Trek jumps the shark and "Strange New Worlds" does so with this episode. This is silliness for silliness' sake, but why? What are the writers saying here? Do they think Star Trek is high camp anyway, so why not have a musical episode? Do they believe Star Trek fans will not be put off by anything and did they deliberately write a silly episode to test this theory? What is the most damning thing in this episode is not the singing as such, it is the low quality of the music. Like many contemporary musicals this episode is full of generic ersatz-music that sounds vaguely musically but is otherwise totally uninspired. Even the shark must been wearing earmuffs.
Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Lazy, self-indulgent film-making at its worst
Recipe for a blockbuster:
1. Find good guys just about any audience will root for and bad guys just about any audience will hate. Let's see...Jews fighting Nazis!
2. Copy a style of film-making that you - as a teenager - liked a lot, ensuring that teenagers of all ages will also love the film. Let's see...spaghetti westerns!
3. Get the hammiest of hammy actors and convince him to overact as he has never overacted before, knowing that will infect the rest of the cast. Let's see...Christoph Waltz!
4. Give the film a runtime of 150 minutes, never mind that at least 60 minutes of that are filled with self-indulgent dross. Let's see...draw out every scene of the film as if it was the most important one.
5. Get so lost in contemplating your own greatness that you stop caring about anything else. Let's see...use the tragic events of WWII as a backdrop to your childish story.
6. Throw out the following items: your artistic integrity, your heart, your moral compass and your backbone.
Repeat the above steps ad nauseam.
No One Will Save You (2023)
Frustrating viewing experience
Trying to be clever, original and deep at the same time, this film fails on all counts. A recluse with a dark secret falls victim to an alien invasion...or does she? Maybe it is all a metaphor? Or maybe it is both? Even after the ending of the film I was confused about that. But then, so was the film. What did not help was that the film very deliberately avoids using any dialogue. There is plenty of human grunting and alien chittering, but no actual words are uttered by the characters. Why? Because it is clever, original and deep? NO ONE WILL SAVE YOU has some well-filmed nightmarish sequences - hence the three stars - but remains a frustrating viewing experience, especially at the end.
Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
A genuinely unpleasant watching experience
This film tries very hard to be different and clever. If only it also tried to be enjoyable or at least watchable. It may have many profound messages, but if it does not manage to package them in a way that enables me to spend more than two hours in front of a screen all that effort is plainly wasted. This is a ludicrously busy viewing experience, but that does not in itself make it funny. Unfortunately there are no good ideas in this film, neither visually nor in the dialogue. A lot of good acting talent is wasted on banal characters and a pointless plot. Might this indeed be the first film script written by AI?
All Creatures Great & Small (2020)
Started well, but season three is a huge let-down
I really enjoyed the original BBC series, which led to me reading the books it was based on. I loved those so much that I must have re-read them at least twice over the years, When Cannel 5 started to remake the series a few years ago I was sceptical at first, but the writing and the acting soon won me over. There were new storylines not based on James Herriot's books, but these were well integrated into the framework of the vets' everyday trials and tribulations.
In series three, however, the writers have decided to completely abandon the source material and come up with only new plot elements. The result is a poorly-conceived soap opera. It is now all about the conflicts and hangups within the Farnon household. Consequently characters seem to spend most of the time staring meaningfully into the middle distance and sighing.
The war, which in the books and the original series forms a backdrop to events, takes centre stage here, while the treatment of animals and the Yorkshire characters have become merely an afterthought. So the series has given up on the original material's unique charm and has become just another mediocre British wartime drama.
The inclusion of the insufferable wartime refugee child character in the Christmas episode was the final straw for me. I will stop watching this soppy mess and go back to my box set of the BBC series.
His Dark Materials: Lyra and Her Death (2022)
Becoming too convoluted
I tried reading the books twice and gave up halfway through just as many times. Now watching the third series I see why. The whole thing is getting way too convoluted, new characters keep being added, the religious overtones become more prominent and I am losing interest once again. The worst thing is that I no longer understand the characters' motivations. Everything seems to be either random or faux-deep. This is annoying, because I loved the first two series. But in episodes three and four of series nothing seems to be moving. Everybody is stuck in some place. Mrs Coulter benefits from people falling for her duplicity again and again. And why? Because of her lascivious pout? It is a shame, really. I can see myself not liking the last episodes.
Im Westen nichts Neues (2022)
Decent film but not nearly as good as the 1930 version
Erich Maria Remarque wrote IM WESTEN NICHTS NEUES in 1929. It was an immediate bestseller and was translated into multiple languages in its first year of publication. In 1930 Universal turned it into a powerful film that won the Oscar for best picture. After this seminal adaptation the subject was not touched again until a 1975 decent US TV movie. Strangely it took nearly one hundred years for a German film to come out.
Now Netflix have put up the money, a lot of it apparently, and a 2 1/2-hour adaptation has been released. Is it worth watching? Meh...
It is hard for me to review this film without constantly comparing it to the Lewis Milestone version, but I'll try to do that.
The 2022 version is a big budget production and it is keen to show that. There are ample scenes in the trenches and on the battlefield with lots of extras and even more CGI. Felix Kammerer does an excellent job portraying protagonist Paul Bäumer and the other actors are doing fine jobs as well. The screenplay is in the spirit of the novel. That is it for the positive aspects.
What I did not like were the many liberties the adaptation takes with the source material. It leaves out huge chunks of the novel. We do not see Paul and his school friends in basic training, there is no ex-postman Himmelstoss, no secret tryst with the French girls... Instead a sub-plot has been inserted detailing the efforts of German envoy Matthias Erzberger to get the French to agree to an armistice. In order to accommodate that by far the greater part of the film takes place in the last few days of the war.
Now the way I see it there would have been two ways of approaching this adaptation. Either go the way of the 1930 version and try to make the viewers experience the war through the eyes of Paul and his mates. Or take a more clinical approach more than a hundred years after the war and try to explain what was actually happening militarily and politically. Unfortunately the 2022 film tries to do both and does neither satisfactorily. We simply do not see enough of Paul and his buddies to properly identify with them. Of all the conversations they have in the novel and the 1930 film only one fragment is included here. And we only get glimpses of the shenanigans in the background, which are further devalued by by clumsy simplistic typecasting of the generals and politicians.
So is this a German fiasco appropriate to the Great War it depicts? That would be going too far. It is a decent film that falls flat mostly as an adaptation of Remarque's novel and even more so when compared to the classic 1930 film. Now this is a high standard to hold a film to, but then why would you remake such a classic?
Invasion (2021)
Painfully slow and boring!
This is a soap opera with aliens somewhere in the background. Or at least I think there are aliens. There ought to be aliens, because the blurb says so. Only they never seem to make a significant appearance in the show. I almost wore out my fast-forward button hoping to see anything even mildly exciting. This series tries to be extra-subtle by saying and doing nothing of interest whatsoever. And why should I care about all the soap opera characters? The best thing you can say about "Infiltration" is that it makes you want to watch "Independence Day" again. That may not be the most sophisticated film ever made, but it certainly is fun to watch. Unlike this dirge.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022)
Elf kitsch and hobbit cutesiness
If you sink one billion dollars into producing a show you need everybody to love it. So you make it look gorgeous and ensure that there are no rough edges that anyone's taste might get snagged on. And what you end up with is kitsch. The world of the elves looks like so many Pre-Raphaelite paintings - or rather dime store versions of these to adorn teenagers' bedroom walls. The hobbits look like Hummel figurines.
The plot is "something something great evil" and as original as a soap opera in its 20th season. All of this makes the show just about as exciting as a Sunday school primer.
Prime asked me to verify my age before viewing. Why? Maybe because this is trying so hard to be inoffensive that that in itself becomes offensive.
Stranger Things: Chapter Nine: The Piggyback (2022)
El's main mission
After watching a great season's disappointing finale I cannot help but think that El's main mission is not so much to save Hawkins but to save Netflix. We get very little payoff for having watched many hours of TV. Instead we get a massive cliffhanger ending. Netflix' desperation to make people hold on to their subscriptions seems to have trumped good storytelling here. This is a shame.
Stranger Things (2016)
Good season spoiled by dog's breakfast of an ending
I have always loved Stranger things. I thoroughly enjoyed the first part of season 4 and even episode 8, but the final episode was a disappointment. There were so many loose ends that in trying to tie them all up AND leave on a good cliffhanger for season 5 the storytelling did not get enough attention. The strength of the series has always been that it is character-driven, and so many things happened to so many characters in season 4 that a satisfactory conclusion would have needed time. Instead after a surprisingly quick showdown we got half an hour of clichéd "disaster movie survivors footage" that did not really give the individual characters any room beyond a quick "Tick, we've done her. Tick, we've done him."
I felt the briefness of the showdown (after a long build-up) and the much too generic treatment of characters beloved by so many people were possibly due to the same mercenary obligation to rush to a cliffhanger so that fans would hold on to their subscriptions in expectation of the next series. Frankly, after this I don't know if I will.
The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021)
Ticks all the boxes
If you liked the first two installments there is no reason why you should not like this sequel. The people behind the CONJURING series have done a really good job once again. This is a solid horror film with a coherent story and great suspense throughout. The jump scares are used more sparingly than in the first two parts but there is a truly menacing atmosphere throughout, which I actually prefer. Altogether the film seems more mature and self-assured than the first installments. What has not changed, and what sets the CONJURING films apart from so many other horror films is that at the heart you have likable characters that you can identify with and that you actually care about. If you can keep up this high standard, please keep them coming!
Le tournoi (1928)
Exciting underrated film
I watched LE TOURNOI yesterday. What a revelation! I am a bit of a Renoir fanboy and have seen all of his silents, but so far LE TOURNOI had only been available to me in the hugely truncated 9.5mm version with a running time of around 35 minutes. I had never thought much of it and believed the critics that rated it as a fairly shoddy potboiler. But now that I have seen LE TOURNOI on the Gaumont DVD in all of its glorious two hours I have discovered that there is so much more to this film. Technically it is an audacious tour de force, with an incredibly mobile camera, many close-ups and actual handheld shots. Colorize some sequences and convert them to 16:9 and LE TOURNOI could have been made yesterday. This makes for a very exciting viewing experience. Add to that the ultra-lavish interiors and costumes, hundreds of horses and the backdrop of actual Carcassonne for the location shots and LE TOURNOI is a feast for the eyes on that level, too.
Unfortunately other aspects let the film down a bit. The plot is fairly unsophisticated, with a pure maiden and a villain straight out of Victorian melodrama. Maybe it is because of this that Renoir does not seem to be overly invested in the climax, the tournament of the title. I couldn't help but feel that other directors would have made a lot more of the fighting sequences. Renoir seems to have concentrated on the psychological drama, which might have been a bit of a wasted effort here due to the lack of it in the plot. The only mention LE TOURNOI gets in Renoir's memoirs is for the contraption Renoir claims he invented to shoot a scene at a banquet. Seeing this scene properly for the first time I understood why he singled it out. Here villain Francois de Baynes has brought together his harem of high society ladies around a table ready to greet (and mortally embarrass) his new fiance. Before she arrives he enters the room and - with the help of Renoir's contraption - the camera follows him slowly making his way along the assembled ladies, putting his hands on them in various ways and thereby obviously claiming them as his possessions. It makes your flesh crawl, especially as the actresses do a very good job of conveying their squirming anguish and he of displaying his obscene enjoyment of the pain he inflicts. This scene more than compensates for the lack of outstanding acting in the rest of LE TOURNOI and it alone makes the film worth watching. Altogether quite a discovery. LE TOURNOI ought to be a shoo-in for film festivals, if only for the fact that it is strongly reminiscent of GAME OF THRONES. I was reminded of Ramsay Bolton a lot.
Deliver Us from Evil (2014)
Boring, predictable and clichéd
I have sat through countless not-so-great horror films because there often is some form of pay-off, like one memorable scene. Not so here. This film is put together from well-worn clichés: the tough New York cop with a loving family that he does not have enough time for ("Daddy couldn't make it to your generic sports game, dear."), the tormented priest with a dark past, mysterious words straight out of 'My first Latin primer' scribbled on walls, lights going out in basements, possessed people with way too much mascara. I could live with that. What I cannot forgive is that this film is so boring! Two hours and nothing happens. A few scratching sounds to indicate evil. Sheesh!
Relic (2020)
Allegorical horror
Like THE BABADOOK, VERONICA and THE POSSESSION this film makes a real-life crisis manifest itself as a supernatural apparition. Here the horror of watching a loved one physically and mentally decay and eventually die is given the form of a haunting.
I believe that if you have been through something like this yourself you will recognize it and be reminded of these situations. That certainly is how it was with me. It made watching the film painful and hard sometimes.
This is not popcorn fare but an intelligent and relevant use of horror elements to tell a story worth telling.
I wish they had toned down the sound effects though, Most horror films use bass rumblings, but this one overdoes it.
Barbarians (2020)
A German BRAVEHEART: "Freiheit!"
If you enjoyed BRAVEHEART you will probably enjoy this series. It is done in the same vein, takes just as many liberties with history, is just as flawed but also just as much fun if you allow yourself to be entertained.
The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020)
Stilted and predictable
I thought and still think THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE is the best horror film/series in the 21st century so far. I had held out on watching it because it was such an old story and had been done many times before. When I finally did watch it I was surprised and delighted that Mike Flanagan had taken this old chestnut and made something utterly original out of it.
So while I was apprehensive that he had chosen another well-known story for his follow-on project I thought that he would probably prove me wrong again and once more turn it into something completely original. Unfortunately he did not.
THE HAUNTING OF BLY MANOR is apparently too full of reverence for the Henry James novella it is based on to step out of its shadow, but also does not have the courage of its convictions to go full on Victorian gothic. This makes for cringingly awful viewing.
In the modern setting the framing device and resulting voice-over sections come across like some cheap fix on a failed film project or like the bargain-basement solution of a 60s Italian B giallo movie.
The extremely British actors act so extremely Britishly that they would easily outdo any school production of Sherlock Holmes or such like.They all seem to have been raised on repeats of UPSTAIRS DOWNSTAIRS.
And then... the pacing. With such a well-worn story you just cannot proceed so slowly. Everybody and their dog knows what happens in THE TURN OF THE SCREW, so let's get on with it and show us something interesting already. If you want to build suspense slowly choose a fresh tale or add something significant to make us interested.
And finally...the competition! With a masterpiece like THE INNOCENTS to compete with you really need to pull it out of the hat. But unfortunately this time Mr Flanagan's bowler hat seems to have been empty.
Ghost Stories (2020)
Not standard horror fare - tongue-in-cheek Indian stories
If you go to this film expecting conventional horror you will be disappointed. Instead the four directors use horror film elements to make wry comments about modern India, and they do so very effectively. Acting, production values, lighting and camera work are of a very high standard. So if you approach this anthology with an open mind it can be enjoyable as well as instructive.
Onward (2020)
Disappointingly mediocre
Just like TOY STORY 4 this looks amazing but the story seems cobbled together from well-worn elements, so much so that the film makes much too little of the unique world it inhabits. Just compare it with the exuberant brilliance of MONSTERS INC and you'll see what I mean.
Emma. (2020)
A socialist manifesto?
In the 1929 Soviet propaganda film THE NEW BABYLON the Paris bourgeoisie are watching from a hill as the Paris commune is being brutally crushed. The film effectively contrasts the idle rich feasting above with the workers being slaughtered below. In Autumn de Wilde's EMMA we find a not dissimilar scene with the genteel society of the town lounging lazily on a hill to enjoy the view. This time the contrast needs no cross-cutting as the film makes sure we see enough of the servants whose unrecognized work makes this idleness possible. Throughout EMMA we find these sly little vignettes of servants carrying out menial tasks: dressing or undressing the named characters, serving food or placing screens for Emma's eccentric father. The film makes it quite clear that a society as preposterous as regency England's has these two sides to it: the hard-working real people and the hothouse flowers like Emma Woodhouse (who - by the way - we first encounter in her own hothouse picking flowers). And while those at the top of the social ladder in this film talk incessantly, those at the lower end never get to speak, neither the servants nor the salt-of-the-earth farmer Mr Martin. An exception seems to be Mr Knightley's servant, who reprimands him for walking rather than using his carriage. And here we have it: Mr Knightley is different, more real than the rest of the gentility. He goes out riding with Mr Martin the farmer and we are told he cares more for his tenant farmers than his grand house, where normally all the stately rooms are closed up. And it is Mr Knightley, in the scene on the hill, who reminds Emma Woodhouse of her privileged position.
Unlike in Greta Gerwig's LITTLE WOMEN, however, here the wokeness and subtle political messages add to rather than distract from telling the story. De Wilde has simply identified these messages in the novel and put them on display in her direction. That means that the film can still revel and luxuriate it decors, costumes and jewelry, these elements simply take on a different meaning.
Add to that the fact that the acting, direction and camerawork are wonderful throughout, the writing is razor-sharp and the whole thing is wonderfully tongue-in-cheek, and you have an extremely enjoyable up-to-date adaptation of a much-beloved novel.
Little Women (2019)
Too many egos, too keen to be different
While this is still an entertaining and ultimately satisfying film to watch, quite a few things mar the experience. First and foremost there is the inexplicable atomizing of the narrative structure of the source novel. This does not help tell the story and it would make it very hard to follow it for anyone who has not read the book or watched a previous film version. So is this supposed to be some sort of meta-LITTLE WOMEN? After all there are other postmodern touches in the John Fowles-type ending and the speaking to camera.
Secondly what's with the fast editing and close-up to close-up camera work? The mood of most of the piece is sedate and does not ask for or benefit from this rapid Odessa-steps style cutting.
Had you wanted to properly deconstruct the story (and why not?) you should not have gone so conventional and outright lavish on production design. Both screenplay and shooting/editing style would have worked better with a reduced sparse decor.
All of this smacks of a writer/director with a muddled vision but a very keen intention to be perceived as doing something different, 21st century and woke. So there is one massive ego that gets in the way of making a good film. Add to that the hardly less pronounced egos of Ronan and Pugh and the whole thing suffers. Watson does her best but that always turns out to be Hermione Granger, I'm afraid. Streep is actually good, but the role is an easy one to do well in.
So altogether a watchable film, mainly on the strength of that old warhorse of a story, but nothing to justify the hype here.
Ready or Not (2019)
Great fun romp, very entertaining
Do not watch this film looking for horror. This is rather a thrill ride, very much like the DIE HARD franchise. It is very tongue-in-cheek and just in the right spirit to keep you entertained for a solid 90 minutes. What more can you want from a film?
Pyewacket (2017)
Slow, ponderous, boring, predictable
Very obviously done on the cheap, but that is not why I did not enjoy this. The whole curse thing seemed to be not fully realized and a little half-hearted. The film stays too much on the side of realistic teenage troubles and there are only tiny hints of the supernatural. Add to that the fact that this drags even in fast-forward mode. So you watch a teenager's angst-ridden face for 80 minutes, there are some fairly clichéd devices supposed to create suspense, but you get little to no pay-off in the end.
Ma (2019)
Entertaining thriller with a stand-out performance
Don't gripe about this film. It does what it says on the box, and does so effectively. It is a well-made thriller obviously geared at younger audiences. The characters are believable and likable enough. While all the actors' performances are solid the reason this film is worth watching is Octavia Spencer's stand-out performance in the title role. This is monstering at an Anthony Perkins, Anthony Hopkins, Kathy Bates level and it lifts the whole film from a run-of-the-mill programmer to a proper, eminently watchable thriller.
I always like it when horror films connect with the audience by reflecting their genuine fears or feelings of unease instead of using some outlandish conceit. MA does this very well by on the one hand tapping into the teenagers' misgivings about underage drinking and on the other hand subtly but very effectively making use of race issues in the USA.
Midsommar (2019)
Pretentious, overlong and predictable
If you have seen a few films before then you will know after ten minutes how this one ends. However you will still have to sit through two and a half hours until you get there. And these two and a half hours are full of pretentious details that I was not remotely interested in. I was hoping against hope that I was wrong in my expectations and that something original would happen. But no such luck. Add to that the fact that none of the characters are engaging or likable and this is one massive drag. The worst thing is that it takes itself so awfully seriously that at times it becomes unintentionally funny. This film is already halfway to self-parody.