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melanieakehurst
Reviews
Everybody's Talking About Jamie (2021)
Enjoyed it.
It was hard to rate this one because as I've said above in the title I really enjoyed Everybody's Talking about Jamie, and it's hard not to love a lively musical . The cast, the acting,the singing, the dancing and the energy were all great. Richard E Grant was a scream! The 'however' that resulted in me knocking off a couple of stars was that it was one long.cliché from beginning to end! Every stereotyped character, every development, and of course the ending were all too predictable.
I mean, sometimes you just want to watch something frothy and comfortable which this is, so it's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's nice to have some surprises too.
House M.D.: 97 Seconds (2007)
Am still watching because Hugh Laurie is great as House but...
Little things are starting to irritate. I was glad when Foreman left as I hate his attitude but now he's back? All the glam girly docs with their flowing locks all over the patients with their wounds and infections. The way patients come in with a minor ailment and after 'let's see what this does' treatment are very soon near death. I dread to think what the hospital bills come to when it's all "we can try this because we haven't any other ideas, oh we've killed his kidneys, he needs a transplant"!
However I can still bear all this because House is such a wonderfully complex character, played with aplomb by Mr Laurie. I love his relationship with the lovely Wilson (am a little in love with those dark eyes I must confess) who is starting to become a match for his devious tricks and even wins on occasion, but always has his back when it counts. I love the clinic scenes which make me laugh and balance out all the blood and gore trauma. I love the wit and dark humour which is right up my street.
Anyway, regarding this episode I think they all missed the obvious: the man gave the pills to his dog. He knew he was going to die whatever happened and didn't want to leave his only friend in the world to a lonely fate. I think I'd have done the same. It made me sad that it didn't occur to a single one of the doctors that maybe it wasn't an accident.
Brighton (2019)
well I watched to the end.
I only watched this because I was born and bred in Brighton (1966). What a shame it wasn't actually filmed in Brighton! They did manage a few quick stock photos of the Pavilion and the bandstand but goodness knows where it was. I'm thinking maybe Hastings and part of it looked like they'd shoved some beach huts in a car park.
Anyway I did watch it all, I do like a bit of cockney rhyming slang as it seems to be dying out which is a shame. Some of it was quite funny and some of it was quite sad. What it wasn't was politically correct but the permanently offended brigade won't realise that they whole point was that although it put the characters in a bad light they genuinely didn't know they were being awful. The flashbacks showed that they had faced their own challenges which made them the way they were. A lot of it was fear and bravado.
The Open Door (2017)
Terrible
Ok, I admit I only lasted ten minutes so this COULD be an unfair review, but honestly that was the worst acting I have ever seen in my life. It was actually painful to watch.
Star Trek: The Way to Eden (1969)
Oh dear.
Well that was just embarrassing. We start with the spaceship hijackers being beamed aboard the Enterprise. Kirk asks if they are in transporter range yet and Chekov says 'not yet' but the ship is right in front of them. How come they can beam someone from a planet, even if they are underground but they can't do that? Anyway, we have a bunch of hippies who are just terribly annoying and have no redeeming features. I don't know why being a hippie means you have to be rude to everybody, must be that famous 'tolerance' that we still see today amongst the Left I guess! Chekov immediately lets himself be seduced into revealing all the ship's secrets like the muppet he is. The bloke in the mini skirt who kept playing the weird guitar I found very unsettling, I think he might give me nightmares. The funniest bit was the fat pasty girl trying to look as if she was 'playing' a bicycle wheel! At least Spock looks quite convincing when he strums away on his Vulcan harp thingy.
All in all quite painful to watch and I actually fast-forwarded through one or two of the dreadful songs because I couldn't take any more 'yea brothers'. Even in the 60s the portrayal of the hippies must have been a massive cliche. I'm only surprised they weren't all smoking pot.
Star Trek: Requiem for Methuselah (1969)
Spock playing the piano made me smile. Don't know why!
Well this was ok, some good ideas and the set was great. Unfortunately my over-riding reaction was cringing at Kirk slobbering all over a young girl he'd literally just met, in front of her family member who was also their host. Surely even 'sex god' Kirk wouldn't be so crass? And this when his crew were most likely dying horribly! I'm afraid it spoilt the whole thing for me.
Star Trek: The Mark of Gideon (1969)
Not much sense to be had here.
If the people are all jostling each other shoulder to shoulder and no one can ever be alone, how do they manage to keep breeding? It would certainly put me off having sex in front of a thousand people! Their outfits don't make it easy to have a quickie either. And basically all they had to do was agree that no one had sex any more for a set number of years and they wouldn't need birth control. It's not as if anyone could be doing it in secret. You'd think they'd have thought of that long before they got to the point where they can barely move. Also if this was all to get diseases then surely the more people they beamed down the better so why be so obstructive to Mr Spock? Also, they've never felt pain? Really? Granted they've got no disease but have they never even stubbed a toe? Those people the Captain was fighting with certainly didn't like being kicked in the face LOL. Why does the Captain have to be a sacrifice, a pint of blood should be enough to get them started. That's the thing about diseases, they spread by themselves. Sorry, just too many questions!
Star Trek: The Empath (1968)
Not keen on this one.
This is about the only episode where I wished they would just get to the end. All those interminable shots of Gem's' one 'expression' while music swelled in the background each time became very hard to bear after a while. Yes I know it was all about empathy and the human spirit and sacrifice and all, but that was overshadowed by the terrible miming which was really over-egged. The 'logic' when the reason for it all was revealed fell short as well. How had Gem's race survived until now if they were so lacking in compassion and decency? How were they so primitive that they had to be taught such basics of civilisation yet apparently (even in 'captivity') could be so perfectly presented with faultless nails, hair and make-up? Of course I'm used to suspending disbelief quite often when watching Star Trek episodes, that's par for the course, but somehow I couldn't quite manage it for this.
The Horse Dancer (2017)
Well I made it to the end...
Oh dear, this movie leaves a lot to be desired. The grandmother's acting was actually painful it was so bad, although the terrible lines written for her can't have helped.
The whole campfire songs and announcement stuff was embarrassing. I was a girl guide and we sang songs at camp but there wasn't all the shrieking and forced jollity. Still, I can see how American kids might be more into that sort of thing so I'll let that go as it's probably just me. By the way, why were they all girls? Were boys not allowed at the camp?
For a horse camp there didn't seem to be an awful lot of knowledge about horses and this really grated on me. The girl who was described several times as 'the best rider in camp' could barely stay on at a walk and at one point when she was riding with the other 'veteran camper' (Lisa?) who was stiff as a board and hanging on to her almost stationary mount's mouth, both the horses appeared to be lame. The poor horses also seemed to be cross-tied day and night with no access to any food or water or opportunity to move around. I do hope that isn't true to life in American stables!
The last bit of the movie was the icing on the cake as they shot a video with a stunt double who looked much bigger and more muscular than the actress, and the way it was shot made it so obvious it wasn't the same person with every pose showing only the back of her head or an arm!
I must admit I don't really understand how the video 'saved' the ranch. I realise they got a lot of bookings for the following summer but that wouldn't have solved the immediate problems of the debts and how to feed the horses over the winter. I understood there was some kind of sponsorship deal but then the video was shot in a field with not an advertising banner in sight so I'm not sure how that worked. But then logic was in short supply throughout the movie, from the whole 'Olympic letter' thing onwards. The posh girl said right at the beginning 'but I only ride {name of horse I've forgotten} and then later on she claimed to have ridden Orion for years in the woods!
Still, it looked like a nice place, and I guess if you are a ten year old girl who loves ponies but knows nothing about them then this movie might be fun to watch.
A Horse from Heaven (2018)
Perhaps I'm the wrong audience for this.
I think if you are ten years old and love horses you will love this. Unfortunately for me it was one long cliche from beginning to end, no surprise plot twist or anything! Also the riding is atrocious, even the so-called 'advanced' riders were painful to watch. It's obviously one of those 'churned out' movies that they know will attract viewers because it has horses and is heartwarming and I suppose there's nothing really wrong with that, but it could have been so much better.
I'll Be Home for Christmas (2016)
Nice gentle Christmas film, would watch again.
Well I enjoyed this, unlike the last Christmas movie I tried to watch and couldn't stand any more after ten minutes! I don't usually like precocious children in movies either but this girl was great. As some others have said she spoke in quite an adult way but she did so with conviction and wasn't just parroting her lines. The relationship with her 'Grandpa Grinch' was nice and unforced.
Her mother was rather more annoying and hard to take to. She was the humourless workaholic with a schedule, so beloved of Christmas movies, just waiting for a nice young chap to make her see the error of her ways. A little cliched but fine so far. What was a lot harder to believe was that she had a friend who actually wanted to bother with her because she did nothing but moan and was 'me me me' every time they met!
I loved the dog, but then that's the kind of dog I always wanted so I may be biased (although mine would be far better trained!). When he messed up the house I was worried we were going to have a heartrending dying dog scenario to bring everyone together because he was eating the fruit basket which included grapes which are poisonous to dogs, but clearly the director was unaware of that fact!
Anyway, predictable but sweet ending. I'm not crying, it's the onions - honest!
Spy (2015)
Will appeal to those who find the f word hilarious.
Amusing in parts, but far too often swearing is a substitute for humour. About half way through I got the distinct impression that they'd written the main part for Dawn French and then couldn't get her. Can't say I'd blame her for turning down a script full of the f word and excruciatingly heavy-handed sex and fart jokes. Shame really, if they'd toned all that down they might have had a half decent film. On a positive note...er... some of the stunts were good!