Reviews

I was sure I would love this so I bought the BluRay. Silly, old me. It started off with a dark scene in the garden. I guess it was dusk, but the visibility was so bad I thought there was something wrong with the disk.

Later it became lighter and more colourful but what a boring dirge. I couldn't believe it. The soundtrack consisted of slurping food, banging around kitchen stuff, chopping, and clonking on hard floorboards. And, if you are vegan you will definitely be better off avoiding this.

It was a constipated script and in disbelief I started skipping through the movie to see if it livened up at some point. If it did, I missed it.

I have over 2000 movies in my collection despite getting rid of those I would not watch twice. Several of my movies revolve around food and the food industry, (Chef, Ratatouille, Julie & Julia, Chocolat, No Reservations, The Hundred Foot Journey, and they are good. This movie is one I will not watch once.

I wish I could return the BluRay but I guess I will have to inflict it on some poor soul at the charity shop.

I think a lot of the reviews on here are negatively unfair and possibly by those with a poor attention span.

I found the movie highly entertaining. It had it all, gun fights, treachery, double-dealing, an eternal triangle, murder, excellent characters, decent plot, revenge, humour, thievery and skullduggery galore. :D

Not sure as to its authenticity but isn't that the case in a lot of 'period' movies? On the run John Mason (Slater) looked like he'd just been to a barber shop and was seen picking tomatoes that looked remarkably like plum tomatoes. They were, apparently, first grown by the Amish in 1870 so, well, maybe. :D The woman of note seemed to be wearing satin and lace lingerie that one might see in Victoria Secrets. :D

Someone wrote that Donald Sutherland was hardly in it. Sutherland was in several prolonged scenes as a rascally lawman with strange ethics, and played a key character, so I don't know what they were looking at. He was in it from start to finish.

Christian Slater gave a stellar and performance in this as the guy who cannot be trusted around others girlfriends. :D. In fact, all the performances were good, so I've given it an 8/10 because I would certainly watch it again.

Limited cussing. Language moderate with the occasion f word, and I still don't no what the Spanish "No saques" or whatever it was is supposed to mean. Not up?

I bought this as a DVD set, series 1 and 2 because I always enjoy Michael Sheen's and David Tennant's performances and they did not let me down in this.

However, the writing absolutely stank! Someone wrote in a review that if you don't find it funny then you have no sense of humour. What is perceived as funny is subjective. The humour was frequently puerile except for one single episode that I saw and that was episode 3, series 1, with Samuel L. Jackson. I laughed out loud at that, and that was it. I was going to pack it in after episodes 1 and 2 but that episode 3 made me stick with it - in hope for more of the same. I got half way through series 2 and I realised that I was wasting precious minutes of my boomer life watching it.

The humour was so desperate that the same things were repeated over and over, presumably to try and get a laugh if it didn't work the first time.

It's off to the charity shop.

Want a laugh? Have dark humour? Watch Relatos Salvajes (Wild Tales) made by an Argentinian director.

I don't suppose for a single second that this review will be popular with many, or any, who have seen it already but I have to say it.

Okay, Otto is a grouch but a misunderstood one. What is he grouchy about most of the time? He is grouchy that people will not play by the rules. For example, if you live in a place where it says Residential Parking Only but some will choose to park there anyway, and suchlike.

Or what about people who make assumptions about your life, or jam their foot in your door when you want to close it because you want to be alone, or come to your home to be friendly but just happen to want something at the same time every time they call.

Should I go on? Perhaps not.

Call me Ottorita. Call me Victoria Meldrew. I don't care. Call me someone who empathises with grumpy Otto and despises Marisol (I have a rude name for her) with a passion.

So which are you, an Otto or a Marisol. I'm definitely an Otto. 😂

I bought the BluRay of this some weeks ago and I was more curious than thinking I'd like it. It was brilliant.

Any movie that has me holding my breath or grinning is a mark of pure entertainment. I loved every bit of it and I don't agree that it was corny, or lacked character depth, or full of cliches. Was it? I was too busy enjoying the ride to start nitpicking on what was an exciting movie. Those aerial scenes were stellar, particularly the combat scenes, and when I watched the BluRay extra showing how Top Gun Maverick was made I was gobsmacked. I really did think that most of it was CGIs but, in truth, CGIs were few.

What I loved in the extras was discovering the horrible ordeals that most of the cast had to go through to be allowed to head off to the heavens in one of those fighter planes. Not me. They had to do survival tests in case one of the planes, during shooting, should unfortunately happen to end up in the sea, or a rock and a hard place.

Maybe now I have told you all that, maybe you will want to watch it or rewatch it to get a whole new perspective on it.

Well done to Cruise for the pure entertainment and to Val Kilmer, who was in a beautiful scene with Cruise. Despite his health issues, Kilmer looked good and brought a special, gentle element to an action movie.

This came up on iPlayer so I decided to give it a go. I thought I had watched it years ago and now I wonder if, years ago, I also stopped watching half way through.

Cher is a great actress, so talented, and I liked the cast, so I thought it must be a movie worth watching, but no.

Thing is, Cher's character was so awful from the get-go that I couldn't stand her. I didn't like Cage's character either. The only good thing I can say about it, not having watched all the movie, is that I'm glad I didn't pay for a cinema ticket to see it.

Loved Cher in The Witches of Eastwick with such a brilliant cast; loved it so much I have the BluRay.

I watched this because Neeson is a favourite of mine in action/thrillers (Ice Road, Cold Pursuit, Taken, all those are brilliant entertainment) and I stuck with Ordinary Love all the way through for no other reason than curiosity and because it's a short movie.

While cancer is depressing enough for all of us - people who have it and people afraid of getting it - it was the constant bickering that got on my nerves and was hard to watch. Yes, for the most part it was lighthearted banter but, my goodness, it was so wearing. Niggle niggle niggle. It reminded me of the series 'Marriage' starring Sean Bean. In that series the couple also bickered and, you know, I think I got through about half an hour before I gave up on it.

Ordinary Love did go into detail about discovery, diagnosis, treatment, the horror of it all, how it impacts on the sufferer and those who stand by feeling helpless but, if that weren't enough they had to pile on marital squabbles... Honestly I expected them to have a dog and for Fido to traumatically run over by an ambulance or something but no, no it wasn't a dog that met its doom. Not quite! 🙄 It's only fair to say that the performances were great all round and I have to applaud Lesley Manville for her bravery in doing a Sinead O'Connor. Ironic that those scenes were the ones that added the much needed humour.

How someone so successful in computer software could be so stupid is beyond me. While the first half of the film, maybe even 3/4 of it, worked quite well and was often amusing despite the subject matter, it went downhill like a ski champion towards the end. You know those moments when you are shouting at the screen things like 'leave their name in the message', tell security, they will put a halt to...' and so forth.

I liked the cast, and the acting, the storyline was good but seriously, when a screenwriter uses stupidity to build tension, the wrong kind of tension, more like infuriation...

... I just couldn't bear it. I hope my life never depends on such a clown.

I bought series 1-3 secondhand BluRay, quite cheaply, and expected to enjoy them as I have read and own Thomas Harris's novels and I own the BluRays of the films based on them which I have watched several times. I have managed to get through season 1 but it is going, with the unwatched others, to the charity shop .

Presumably the makers call this series Hannibal as an audience hook (it worked with me) because it is really about Will Graham.

What I found really wrong about it is the repetition, the constant flashbacks, the dream scenes ad nauseam, and although I am never fazed by anything I see in a thriller or horror movie, I found the repetitive focus on the atrocities performed on victims somewhat akin to torture porn and somewhat trashy.

The writing is poor because it is all padded out with repetition. Scene after scene of Hannibal preparing meals, serving meals, eating meals... Not a series for vegetarians! If you compare this series with the movies starring Anthony Hopkins and Ralph Fiennes you may note that it lacks the tension, it's all right in your face with no surprises. There is nothing sophisticated about the plot at all. It's boring. In fact, I watched much of it on fast speed because I was missing nothing.

Had to laugh at one scene where someone, it was decided, had killed themselves. Amazing. It would be physically impossible to do it the way it was done but, hey, never mind, it made for another gorily spectacular scene.

What a great cast. Great performances by Hackman and Morgan. Thomas Jane was annoying and I am still not sure whether it was his character that was annoying or Jane's performance.

This isn't one for action fans. It nearly all takes place in a room at the police department except for peculiar scenes where Morgan's character is at the 'scene' of murders, as if he had been there, talking to Hackman's character, telling him why he is under suspicion, what he is accused of. That technique didn't work for me. For me, it would have been better with Morgan absent and just his voice describing events.

It's a who dunnit without a doubt. The problem is, the evidence is so damning you cannot help but begin to wonder 'Is that it? We know who dunnit all the way through so what is the point?'

And then we have the soundtrack. For me the soundtrack totally wrecked what would have been a passable drama. It consisted, inter alia, of horrendous banging noises, presumably trying to rev up the excitement of a very unexciting drama, and I actually thought at first it was someone in another room at the police station banging something. It was totally absurd.

So there you have it. Of course, most people may have seen this already and know for themselves how it all plays out. Did he or didn't he? Do I resent the time spent watching it? The best I can say is 'not entirely'.

What a beautiful, feel good, movie.

I didn't know what to expect because I read reviews where some said that nothing happened etc. What were they expecting? An action movie? This is drama with genuine circumstances. Who hasn't yet grieved for the loss of someone and not tried to repair the hole in the heart in some kind of way, maybe by reaching out to others?

Anyhow, The Meddler is a serious misnomer for a movie about a widow who is trying to make some sort of life on her own and in doing so gets joy out of helping others. She wasn't meddling at all, she was helping. A woman with a heart of sorrow and gold.

It's quite magical really and I loved every minute of it. It is a bitter sweet tale, mostly sweet, and a shot in the arm.

This series had such great potential. It had a great cast who all portrayed excellent characters so very well, and I was particularly drawn to it by Tom Ellis's Lucifer so cleverly showing different facets of Lucifer's personality. Brilliant performances all round really - Maze, Dr Linda (love her facial expressions), adorable Dan, Chloe, the delightful Amenadiel, and all the rest.

But the script. The abysmal dialogue which was saved only now and then by some really witty laugh-out-loud repartee. However, there wasn't enough through my watching four seasons of it for me to want to see more. For me, the scriptwriters let this series down really badly. The cheeky wit and cheeky scenes started to become seriously tacky and while I had hoped that Netflix picking up the series at season 4 would have elevated it, it did not.

It all turned into some trashy soap opera and I kept wondering how actors feel when they have implausible lines to deliver in implausible scenes. Even fantasy has to have some degree of credibility.

I had bought the first three seasons as a collection and was about to give up on it when I saw that Ranker had season 4 as the best ever. I fell for it. I bought the disk, and once again was disappointed. Anyway, off to the charity shop it all goes.

I don't care whether there are any historical facts or not in this satire, what I do care is spending time and money on a series because I expected it to be brilliant, judging by the cast, costumes, and sets and discovering it is a steaming pile of poop.

On a positive note, the costumes and sets were outstanding. Interesting casting choices. Was Prince Grigory Grigoryevich Orlov (1734-83) really an Asian? His portraits don't indicate such.

I'm not fazed by strong language, nor nudity, nor even the occasional scene of simulated sex but I don't seek it out nor do I appreciate it when it fills so many precious minutes of a movie or episode. This was full on. It made The Game of Thrones seem tame. Did anyone else get sick of hearing "Huzzah".

Then the eye gouging scene, which upset a lot of viewers. Did that actually happen or was it some other perverse 'let's shock the audience' moment? That was in the second episode and I thought it so absurd that I ejected the disk and decided the hours of my life too precious to waste on this garbage. Did the eye gouging upset me? Hell no! I've watched the full series of The Walking Dead more than I can count so I'm pretty immune to horror but everything in its place.

People call this comedy. It's not. It's poorly thought out satire and it reminded me of the uncomfortable wedding scene in The Game of Thrones where King Joffrey is making people with achondroplasia play the clownish role of The Five Kings. Joffrey thought it funny. Those of sound mind did not.

Usually, when I so dislike a movie, I won't get past the first half hour but it was getting late, too late to start watching another movie, too early to go to bed, so I stuck with it. Glad I did.

The first half was dreary, puerile, unfunny stuff. I couldn't understand why Crazy Stupid Love had a reasonably high rating or why such a top rate cast would want to star in it. It was drivel.

However, the second half of this two hour movie was hilarious. I laughed and I laughed and when I stopped laughing, when it ended, I thought about the movie and how different the first half was from the second.

Crazy, Stupid, Love has two directors, Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, who frequently work together apparently and whose work I cannot recall ever watching until now. Did they each direct a separate half? Is that what happened?

Anyway, can I recommend it? I honestly do know if I can. It is SO confusing. After the literally hundreds, maybe thousands, of movies I have watched over more than half a century (yeah, I know, I started when TVs were all black and white with a tiny screen), I cannot recall any movie that is so clearly divided in quality.

Of course, others will think differently, and have judging by the rating.

I bought the DVD. I'd read the poor reviews and knew not to have too high expectations despite loving every minute of The Mule. I like Eastwood better in his more recent movies as opposed to his spaghetti westerns. He plays the grouchy old man superbly.

He's had criticism for his role in this. People remarking upon his age, how a 91 year old would not be able to do this and that, criticising the romance aspect of it. Look, there is nowhere in the movie that says he is playing a 91 year old. Have these critics never seen a movie where the star plays someone of a different age to their real age? Of course they have. I judged that Eastwood was playing a man in his 70s and, let's face it, there are a lot of septuagenarians who look and seem worse off in age than Eastwood.

I hate to say it but I wasn't convinced by the boy. He kept reminding me of Sabu's performance in movies of the early to mid 20th century. The style was somewhat forced. Eastwood was great. He always is. Someone criticised his voice, saying it was an old man's voice. I must be misremembering; to me he has pretty much always sounded like that, speaking low, slow, and gravelly.

The screenplay was dreadful, the plot a decent idea badly let down by lousy and unconvincing dialogue. I'm surprised Eastwood didn't do something about that so perhaps his judgement is impaired somewhat.

I wanted to be able to give this a high rate but I cannot. I cannot give a movie a high rate simply because I respect and admire its director, producer, and leading actor. I cannot and will not patronise Eastwood.

Here's to his next movie and I hope it's a good one. If you are reading this Clint (as if) Give me The Mule. Give me Gran Torino.

I was all set to give this a 10 but I struggled to actually see what was happening much of the time. I thought it was my eyesight, my television, the BluRay. Nope. I checked the extras on the disk and the colour was fine. I checked the trailer on my desk top computer, which has a 4K ready monitor, and the picture was dull, almost monochromatic with little bits of colour showing here and there (bit like watching Schindler's List). This was particularly noticeable in the scene close to the end. Driver was wearing blue, Damon red, and I could only just see the colour on my TV to tell who was clobbering whom!

The movie is quite long, and the story told by more than one perspective which is why, I expect, some found it repetitive. I was surprised by the crudeness of some of the scenes. Not what I expect from a Ridley Scott movie, and not the kind of scene that attracts me to a movie.

I thought the plot, based on a true story, was good; the performances, and dialogue, all stellar. It's very much medieval drama with a bit of action thrown in. Women's rights campaigners will have been screaming at the movie and perhaps realise that they are better off than many thought. At least, I wouldn't have wanted to be a woman in the 14th century.

Oh, and I could hardly recognise Affleck. I kept looking at him and thinking 'now, who is that, who is that?' It took a while.

This is a whodunnit. I'll give you a clue. It wasn't the butler.

Who writes this drivel? I want my money back! Boring is not the word for this movie! I do have the word for it, and several others, but I don't think they would be allowed in a review.

It's bad enough that conversations were the most absurd and inappropriate that I have ever heard in my life - armpit hair, fawning over hands culminating in an offer of tart (I think that meant an actual baked tart but who knows?) but each sentence was delivered on a monotone by everyone. Even Kidman was boring and I usually like her. I can only think this was intentional.

I expect something might happen at some point but after 44 minutes of it, finding myself working up to a rage after wasting precious minutes of my life on another crock, I ejected it out of my BluRay player and slung it on the pile of stuff for charity. I shall share my misery with others.

I watched this movie limp along to the lamest of endings. I paid £3 for the DVD, secondhand, and thought I had a good deal until it arrived and I realised Woody Allen had directed and written it. Oh dear.

Even so, I thought it might have some merit because of the star cast but no. Farrell mumbled as is often the case and I found myself sorry that there were no subtitles. It should have been saved by the two cracking actors in it: Tom Wilkinson and Phil Davis, who, neither of them, ever turn out a poor performance, but their roles were brief and couldn't save this tragedy of a movie.

And what a rotten script they all had to deal with. The plot was ok, kinda, ish. Or it might have been with a better writer, but the dialogue was just plain dumb, repetitive, boring. Something on the level of:

We have to do it No we don't Yes we do No, I don't want We must I can't.

You can No We have to do it No we don't

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

I have to base this review on my viewing experience, not necessary what others saw, or head.

You see, I watched much of this with English subbing which was so bad it turned what I assumed was supposed to be a thriller into a comedy. That's why I gave it 4 stars out of 10 because it was so bad that it was hilarious! There was even a child with, obviously, an adult doing the child's voice. I'm surprised the dog didn't speak too.

Also, I think the translation was a bit off. Either that or the screenwriter was drunk.

Oh dear.

Oh, very very dear. 🤣

To be fair regarding the soundtrack, there are few musicals where every, or almost every, song is memorable. Offhand, I can think of one: Grease. I remember every single one of them, can hum them, sing them, know the words. Could I say this about Dreamgirls right now, an hour after watching it? No. I had seen it once before, years ago, and remembered it favourably and mistakenly. I realise now I remembered it favourably for the fewer than a handful of songs that I consider great. You know the ones.

The performances were fine although the storyline was pretty shallow, as was Effie. Was she supposed to be likeable?

Throughout the movie the emphasis was on Hudson's character having the best voice. Not in my view. Ok, Hudson can hit all the notes and then some but she seems to shout her way through every song whereas Beyonce does not.

Aaah, well, anyway. Not the best musical - and I admit I am not a fan of musicals - but it has its moments.

No, not the final Marvel movie ever made. The final Marvel movie that I will ever watch, let alone buy. What absolute piffle. The director, famous for nothing, created a movie that had plenty of action and very little else to make it worthy of more than 2 stars. I gave two stars for the occasional bits of comedy provided by the Alexei character.

For goodness sake, imagine writing and directing a series of eight episodes, the plot slowly and excruciatingly building up to a grand finale, only to end on a cliffhanger. What is the absolute point? Presumably there was to be a second season but even the director thought it was lousy.

I bought the DVD collection, interested (and qualified in) fashion and design so I was really looking forward to this but really I could have done without the full frontal dangling male genitalia (was that supposed to make this particular tale worth watching?) not to mention that it was all carried out like a trashy soap opera.

Some of the garments were fabulous but many were totally laughable and worthy of a low-budget discount store.

The series has been take to a charity shop.

I love Mads Mikkelsen's performances and have seen many of his movies. When I read that this was comedy, I thought "That's just what I need right now, to lift me out of this gloom that has descended upon so many of us over the last 2 years, this madness that continues and seems to evolve.

Another Round wasn't comedy for long, At about 20 minutes in, it started to be funny when four adult males, friends and teachers at the same school, agreed to test the effects of alcohol on an academic level, a study. Then it all got out of hand and that is when the comedy slid into tragedy.

I was expecting it to be a kind of didactic tale, a warning if you will, but it wasn't and the ending was a waste that, considering the circumstances of the ending, seems rather odd and out of place.

Not the best of Mads movies, sorry to say. However, on a happier note, the performances of Mads Mikkelsen, Thomas Bo Larsen, Lars Ranthe, and Magnus Millang, were stellar.

What's going on! I cannot believe I stuck with this all the way through. I only did it because I'e had an exhausting day and was too tired to get up and change the BluRay for something else. Did I really pay for this?

It took over an hour for me to become slightly intrigued. I could not, from start to finish get past that I was watching actors playing a part in a film. A good film will make you forget and draw you in, but with this there was no suspension of disbelief.

The special effects were iffy, none of it made any sense not even on a science fiction level. A biologist who doesn't think of using a mask or protective gloves...

We got repetition of scenes which weren't necessary. Unnecessarily flash backs to previous boring events. Oh dear, another one to inflict on some poor unwitting soul visiting the charity shop.