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billcarr31
Reviews
The Homesman (2014)
Very good well directed film with strong characters
I have seen this film twice but somehow forgot Cuddy's suicide, perhaps because it is dealt with so briefly, my memory perhaps shut out the unhappy event. It is also hard to explain. Bee Cuddy, in contrast to most of her neighbours it appears, is doing well on the wild frontier. Is it implied her first experience of sex depresses her so much she feels there is no point in going on, or perhaps that she has to force herself on Briggs who has refused the offer of marriage?
Briggs I think has seen enough of frontier life to have no wish to be a settler. Ending her life does not seem realistic in my opinion. She is not the suicidal type but with courage and will of iron, nor is she plain as many reviewers describe, not a great beauty I agree, but all dressed up a woman who would turn heads in civilised circles.
Leaving that aside, Briggs is portrayed as complex man with some compassion deep within his craggy soul. He buys shoes for a poor teenager working as servant, which tells us something about her employers. On the other hand he incinerates a bunch of soulless
scoundrels who refuse to give a meal and a bed to his starving charges.
The Tomorrow War (2021)
Time travel "held together with chewing gum and string"
There have been copious reviews relating the stupidity of this awful movie and I grieve for the money it must have cost which could have been better spent on a more worthwhile project. The basic premise is ridiculous in so far as a race that apparently has the intellectual level of baboons could achieve space travel. They do not even seem capable of looking though a telescope let alone create fine instruments, and why do we always have the multiple spiky teeth cliche, which seem more appropriate to a sea creature.
They also seem impervious to bullets in spite of being flesh and blood so what is the point of spraying them with bullets? Surely in the distant future they would have thought of much better weapons. Another basic piece of stupidity is time travel which cannot land travelers on the surface but ten feet off the ground. That would surely cause broken ankles and legs, even spinal injuries. Many of your soldiers would not be fit for combat on arrival. Who thought up that idea? Is it also credible that a population in the future of at least 9 billions with many countries equipped with massive amount of weaponry could be reduced to half a million by those baboons?
The Strangers: Prey at Night (2018)
Just a waste of time
Were it possible to to give this movie, sorry junk, a minus I would do so. In fact I suggest IMDb start a minus rating precisely for this type of movie. Admittedly I only saw the middle of it as I was channel searching in a hotel for something worth while, if I had a TV guide I would never give this sort of thing any time at all. I gave up watching after the father who would have died from blood loss anyway was stabbed to death. Those who are giving this a high rate must be horror addicts or in a state of arrested development, The characters especially the victims seemed to spend the last moments of their lives doing stupid things instead of trying to defend themselves, Like running about in all directions instead of hiding or calling the police, so that one was unable to feel sympathy for their demise.
The only usefulness of this film was to give employment to a large number of industry workers a job.
The Purge (2013)
Vision of the American future
I saw somewhere that it is described as sci- fi, I cannot imagine where someone got that idea. It is more horror but not unimaginable. A gang of neo Nazis, racists, white supremacists and other psychopaths which the USA has aplenty apparently, as almost every month there just a mass shooting and almost every week someone brutally murdered. We are asked to believe that this comes to pass in every major American city and nobody is able to stop it. The police are as usual hopelessly outnumbered, but where is the National Guard, a well armed and manned by experienced soldiers?
The heroics are fairly well done and of course the whites and the Mexican have to join forces to survive, aided by the Native Americans. The device used to entrap the Mexican wife is ridiculously complicated and way above the technical abilities of the morons engaged in the purge. Given that there are more guns than people in USA I can see something like this in their future.
.It is also a concrete argument for banning the ownership of military style automatic weapons..
Annika (2021)
Nichola does it again
I am biased as I will watch anything with Nicola in it and she has been in some great series. I liked the asides to the audience which I have not seen before on a crime series. I missed the first episode so have not understood the Norwegian connection, but no matter. Nicola is backed by a strong multiracial cast which is quite in order for Glasgow one of the most diverse cities in UK. All of whom are accomplished actors. Unlike some series involving the teenage progeny of the principal, this is not an irritation here. It has gritty realistic feel and reminds me a bit of the Van der Valk series, which I also enjoyed.
The 15:17 to Paris (2018)
Good but not of the best CE
I always watch Eastwood movies as they are very well done for the most part and cover a wide range. This was enjoyable but not up to his stellar work. Granted the three heroes played themselves which happens rarely in movies. Audie Murphy was a classic we never see nowadays. There were flaws. The kids are portrayed as children with difficulties (although the teachers do not cover themselves with glory) and Stone comes across as a bit if failure as he never achieve his goals and frequently makes mistakes, but as he plays himself I am sure it is an honest warts and all portrayal. Of course his military training is the key, no civilian would charge a man armed with a sub machine gun and if the gun had not misfired Stone would have died, still no doubt as to his instinctive reaction. The fact that the terrorist is a Muslim is implied rather than stated. He never shouts the customary AA.
I think the nightclub scene went on rather too long and I would have liked to know what happened to the terrorist and the heroes later. I also missed what the other two friends did for a living, maybe it was said but I missed it. Generally a sound movie but a little overlong at three hours.
47 Meters Down: Uncaged (2019)
Abysmal - no pun intended
As a qualified diving instructor I found this horrifying and not in the way the director intended. He obviously does not knows the first thing about scuba and did not bother to enlist some advice from a qualified person. If it is useful at all, it advises anybody who thinks of going out diving with a couple of guys they had a date with, on what runs out to be a dilapidated and rusty boat, and wait for it, one of the girls has never been diving before. They are lowered initially to a shallow depth to watch the sharks which all appear to be great whites. Predictably the winch goes wrong and drops them to the sea bed. Now they might just survive that for an hour, but with all the getting into and out of the cage and screaming and shouting at the top of their voices, they would not last twenty minutes. By the way when you get to the last couple of bars of air pressure you cannot get the air as there not enough pressure to breathe it from the tank.
Strangely when they do leave the cage the sharks hardly notice them and then after swimming around using more air, they are told to get back in the cage again. If they had swum to the surface they would have needed at least 10 minutes decompression time from that depth (242 feet). Completely preposterous. And without a doubt the worst underwater movie I have ever seen.
Mega Shark vs. Kolossus (2015)
A catastrophe indeed
The most shocking thing here is that a member of the animal most advanced on the planet, if you leave out whales and dolphins, thought up this thing. Not only that but he persuaded another one to finance and produce this trash. It is hardly fit for a old style comic book and certainly should not be viewed by anybody over the age of ten. The production values and continuity are abysmal.
A man falls overboard and is never referred to again , the 'shark' is trapped inside an inlet but inexplicably gets out, oh, and BTW millions of sharks are killed every year for their fins alone but modern weapons cannot touch this one., which can also leap high enough to damage a helicopter! How would a fish know a helicopter was above it anyway, let alone aim at it?
As for the huge robot what a stupid creation, a couple of shell hitting its legs would have brought it to the ground. The only thing of value in this travesty is that it gave employment to some people.
Hot Pursuit (2015)
Switched off
I confess I did not watch much of this movie as I am turned off by Vergara. I never watch Modern Family for the same reason. Although admittedly very sexy in appearance, and I know she is very popular in USA, her style of acting. If it may be considered acting, seems to be yelling and screaming at her fellow actors. If this intended to be amusing , I am not amused one bit.
Definitely not my cup of tea, or as she is from Columbia, coffee
I expect. Well as I am required to have more characters which I do not understand as I have seen many short reviews, I am just filling space here. Reese Witherspoon deserves a better partner.
Our House (2022)
Too hard on this by far
I am surprised this has so many thumbs down reviews. I enjoyed it perhaps because Fi is so beautiful, and projects her frustration at the appalling situation in which she finds herself, though it stretches credibility that she is married to such a loser. Good plot with interesting twists and a shocking denouement. One flaw was that she could not have ground up so many tablets enough to kill an adult in
the time available. Without him s seeing her do it. Good acting including the fraudsters. I gave it eight to boost its ratings though it really only deserves a seven. Yes, it has some flaws but what TV series does not these days.
Ragdoll (2021)
Perhaps a sequel
I cannot add much to the other reviews here as I agree with most of the comments. I do not like flashbacks at the best of times and here they were especially annoying, occurring much too often. The ending was very weird
and suggest a possible sequel. I do not understand how the killer managed to escape when there were so many cops around, and the suggestion that
his wife was really the evil genius behind everything left many unanswered questions. Also, the suggestion that Lake was actually the murderer in USA or covering up a murder. How did she become a detective in London anyway? I will have to read the book to find out the real story as it seems to be a very inept adaptation to say the least.
Assassin's Creed (2016)
Parkour
It appears that parkour was invented in the Middle ages. The unbelievable climbing and leaping of the two heroes as they escape defy probability.
I think this film was made to promote sales of the video game among the
afficionados of that strange activity. The main characters seem to spend
a lot of time climbing to the top of very tall edifices and jumping off them without consequences. Most of the time it is too weird to follow the plot if there is one in fact.
Greenland (2020)
Meteor or comet?
They are not the same and many people seem not to know that. Meteors are solid lumps or conglomerates of rock. Comets are mainly frozen ice and other gases plus some dust. Consequently they would mostly burn up in the atmosphere and I do believe there would be enough solid material left to devastate cities.
Voyagers (2021)
As empty as space itself
The thing all these 'space ship' designers always get wrong is the space inside the ship. Space is at a premium in space craft. This ship has more corridors than an ocean cruise ship and vast roomy accommodation as well.
The fascist who decides he is in charge is also improbable. These young people would have been extensively examined for psychological health
before acceptance. The ship also has refrigerators for food, also nonsense as a ship designed for an 80 + year voyage would have its own food growing resources. The best moment in the film was when the grey haired survivors were looking out at the planet they were going to 'invade'. One assumes there would also be many children. Otherwise pointless.
Godzilla vs. Kong (2021)
Cannot imagine anybody over 12 years old watching this rubbish
I may have seen many worse movies than this but there are so many bad movies it is hard to remember or rank them. Clearly filmed by a crazed CGI fanatic this is just a waste of money and time which could have been used to make an intelligent film. Sadly this also reflection on the standards of the audience these days and what they are prepared to watch.
Around the World in 80 Days (2021)
Tennant stoops and does not conquer
Tennent is a good and much loved actor and it is disappointing to see him in this woke/politically correct attempt to rewrite a famous novel. The anomalies are plain. BK men were acceptable as servants in Victorian England but they did not have implied romances with white ladies. Nor stare down Southern racists In USA. All this nonsensical wokism spoils the story. It did have its moments like Fogg's passionate defence of the sepoy, though that was also improbable.
I fear that from the final shots they will attempt another series!
Wild at Heart (2006)
Makes me wild with frustration
I cannot understand how this gets so many 10 and praise. The writing is appalling, like by a teenager. They stumble form one manufactured crisis to another. They are supposed to have no money so where did all that fencing, pens, elaborate vet's equipment come from as they are not having enough guests? Sarah's mum, (Haley mills) conjures a wedding marquee elaborated decorated with coloured fabrics out of nothing apparently all by herself. Animals wander into the house and eat things including clothing. The writing is completely unrealistic. Have noticed that none of them ever sweat?
The World's End (2013)
What a waste of time
Also a waste of Freeman and Pike. I normally like Pegg but really Simon what were you thinking? Having done a pub crawl or stagger or two in my time I would noy even contemplate making a movie about such. It might be amusing to the participants but to the onlooker not, in spite of the feeble invasion of aliens theme.
Sicario (2015)
Dear bodies in a wall?
That was the first flaw. Dead bodies stink especially in hot climates so why not dig holes and bury them, much less trouble. Blunt is too delicate and beautiful to be an FBI agent. In the final scene Alejandro says she is not a wolf and she is not suited to wolf country. Precisely. At times the story is confusing especially the tunnel business, does Alejandro come out on the Mexican side? I have watched it twice and I still do not know.
The night vison sequence was most annoying as well.
The strangulation scene; how did they know she would throw herself at this stranger in a bar and go back to her room for sex? I am not worried about the extra judicial killings as I believe most drug dealers should be shot anyway as they kill more people than murderers do. This is a movie about men who are tired of the so called war on drugs and want to fight a real war on drugs. I am also not sure why partner.
Kaluuya is there either as he has little to do and few lines. All in all a film with many poorly thought out scenes. Tense, but ultimately unsatisfying.
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)
OK for video game addicts
If you are video game addict I suppose this makes some kind of sense. Complex helmets that collapse into collars and reappear complete with all seals for example. Human bodies cannot withstand the G forces encountered in the stunts and basically it is all cgi stunts. Well done, no doubt but still completely incomprehensible. A jelly fish on the head which gives insights as to where someone is? Siuts that look like they are in laser tag. I cannot imagine the thinking of those who give this nonsense 10 points.
The Art of Self-Defense (2019)
Travesty of karate classes
If we leave aside the travesty of its depictions of karate classes; I have done Karate and trust me this is almost black comedy. The instructor deliberately smashes a man's elbow and there are no consequences for example. They go out at night and kill people. However it is quite a tense and unpredictable film with good performances by the principals. The timid mild mannered accountant turns into the martinet sensei after shooting him dead. Not only that, but then although only a yellow belt he assumes control of the dojo and its advanced students after getting his killer dog to kill his main rival, because he discovers that the latter killed his dog. Classic poetic justice.
Trust Me (2017)
Poorly written climax
I thought this was reasonably good series until the last episode of series 2
which showed very poor writing. If Debbie drowned her patient in her own therapy pool, how would she explain it? Ay least she would be subject to an investigation. Of course she was supposed to be crazy but still she had managed to evade detection so far. Ally was being ruthlessly investigated and she had only done her job by reporting things. I often get the impression that writers get tied of their plots and just want to wrap thing up simply.
Hollington Drive (2021)
Disappointed
I am very disappointed to see Rachel Stirling one of my favourite British actresses in this mediocrity. I always enjoy her perfomances but did not take to this at all.
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: The Book of Esther (2018)
Complete overkill
We are asked to believe that the police open fire on a house full of children with automatic weapons, riddling it with bullets and Rollins who has no target discharges her pistol without any possibility of hitting a target at that range, yet kills the very young woman she has been trying to save!
I usually find L&O fairly credible. However, this is the worst episode I have ever seen.
Les frères Sisters (2018)
The Brothers Sisters
This a film with appalling inconsistencies and faults, The main one being that much of the movie is shot in either total darkness or semi darkness. The first five minutes are in fact totally dark except for gun flashes. To add to the viewer discomfort, the dialogue is often inaudible. Another confusing aspect is the Phoenix and Gyllenhall bear a passing resemblance to each other which in the latter part of the film gets confusing. The mysterious character of the Commodore is never explained although he is said to have great power, though Chrlie thinks he can go back and take charge of his 'empire' after killing him.. Then we have the chemist who does not know his powerful chemical is a danger to those who use it , causing severe burns. All the gun fights are played as though we are not meant to see who is fighting whom. I think there was a good movie in there somewhere but it was obscured by the direction! No complaints about the acting which is good throughout with a strong cast.