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Reviews
Fanny Lye Deliver'd (2019)
Disappointing
I found it hard work. Some of the speaking scenes within the farmhouse seemed far too actorly, complete with Shakespearian stances. Not Mr Dance of course, he's very good.
I don't know why it saw fit to tie a love cult heresy with Quakerism. Or quite why the villainous pseudo cavalier was quite so villainous. His assistant thug was cartoonish.
The woman's voice over predicted things that didn't really come to pass - Dance's character was not as enfeebled by the end as it led you to think would occur.
Beautifully filmed and lit though.
If you want a book about free love heresies, set a little earlier, read 'Q' by 'Luther Blissett'. Bonus is it comes with a great story.
Strange Angel (2018)
Interesting if uneven
Interesting show, uneven acting and at times awkward plot lines but good production values.
It seems that much of it is fiction made up by George Pendle to make a good story. For me that undermines the entire project. A few new characters and a few imagined situations are forgiveable but he's written his own fantasy.
The final episode had a decent conclusion, if more Austin O. Spare than Aleister Crowley, but what was in the cakes of light, hmm? Not perhaps what you expect. Most of the cult of Thelema seemed to be an excuse for an orgy.
At the very end we also get to see that charlatan El Ron, lol.
Note that when he heard of the exploits of Parsons and El Ron, Crowley said they were idiots.
Disclaimer : I read a lot of Crowley stuff in my youth. While in some ways it stays with you, it's hard to get any sort of objective view, though that maybe is half the point. He had some advanced ideas amongst everything else. If I'd seen this show back then, it might have saved some time.
And feel sorry for Leah, the Ape of Thoth, and her and Crowley's baby Poupee, that Crowley, deep in his ego, let die from neglect.
Partisan (2020)
Abysmal
One of the worst foreign dram series I've seen and I've seen a lot.
Once we see the dead man being kept 'alive' we know this is crazy land. Artifical insemination, a plot to take over Denmark via organic vegetables. (They weren't even super power bio dynamic).
What were they thinking?
Filming was fine, some acting was fine.
Story was atrocious.
Fares Fares should have known it was a hopeless story that no amount of editing could fix.
Make Up (2019)
Excellent psychological unsettler
It's a smallish low budget drama shot as if it's a horror movie. The sound of howling wind, mysterious noises in the buildings, flash-backs, flash-forwards - all very Nic Roeg, which I hope the director takes as a compliment. Lead actor Molly Windsor is great in this.
The Love Witch (2016)
Disappointing
I watched The Love Witch and thought it was very poor and I can't udnerstand the praise. Disclaimer: I'm male, not young and I like art moives - auteur even,
I've now read an interview with director/writer/producer/editor Anna Biller
.. and there lies the problem.. when one person does everything, unless they are a genius, there's no one to say "hold on, this bit needs more work"
Shot on film for the 60s aesthetic and designed to have the 60's look, that part is fine, but I think she's a poor writer and an average director.
I get that it's a pastiche designed to comment on how women *and men* are in these imaginary roles of knights on horseback and Disney princesses.
But big deal, there's nothing new in that and she doesn't make a funny/insightful/devastating commentary on any of it.
One comment I read here suggests we are within the character's damaged mental state by the end of the film but it has no impact.
It's stuck in pastiche-ville so all a bit pointless.
I think one mistake was not doing anything with the 'plain friend' whose husband the leading lady (I choose my descriptor appropriately) seduces - when everyone is fake and shallow there's no pay off.
Le passager (2014)
Poor
The trouble with this series is it has good production values and decent acting so the first episode draws you in. There's a silly bit in the second or third episode where some guys start blasting everyone with sub machine guns - yet nobody bats an eyelid - ah of course this happens a lot in in France.
You hope the silly bit is an exception but the nonsense builds and builds.
Later it turns out it's former French Foreign Legion guys, in fact they're everywhere - plotting and being evil - so normal behaviour.
The guy who ends up the number two character is so detached it's bizarre.
The story goes from silly to downright ludicrous in the last episode - an evil professor appears from nowhere. His villa is a fancy French trad pad at the front - yet walk round the back and it's a decaying 19th century industrial complex on the docks - oh but lovely to film in.
The director did an OK job but the writer should have been sacked - if they'd made a standard cop series it could have worked. The obsession with stupid twists drives me mad. Merde.
Happy New Year, Colin Burstead (2018)
Oddly vacant
Great acting does not a compelling story make.
What a cast to use irresponsibly on such a random splatter.
All I can think is that Wheatley dug out an old project where he thought he could write a pilot for an "Eastenders meets Dallas" soap and it would be called The B... Bursteads.
One impressive point was you did get to know 12 characters in 90 minutes - but then several of the cast you didn't get to know at all, and you were left thinking "So why are they there?".
The Charles Dance character, or at at least her motivation was desperately pointless - as was the former girlfriend of several of the guys, who, by coincidence, was working at the remote house.. well soapy.
The song that the vilified son played and sang for his mother was cringeworthy in the extreme - and the follow on, of his German girlfriend's Liede was bizarre - and then it was midnight - thank god.
Great acting but don't bother. Failed pilot, not taken up.
Crimson Peak (2015)
Waste of Del Toro
Pan's Labyrinth made sense because the underlying motif was the Spanish Civil War and the horrors of the war allowed the nightmare imagery.
This on the contrary is just a petit guignol gothic melodrama. While it shows that Hiddleston is suited to the saturnine and cadaverous, Jessica Chastain's role as the evil sister is thoroughly overplayed.
But the red skeletons that keep appearing do nothing but make you laugh - they are too shiny and synthetic and ther movements comic in their efforts to scare. What a waste of Dle Toro's imagination - maybe he needs the money - yet he put his name to the script.
And what on earth is the red liquid underground clay that they pump out - there's not enough story to suggest it's a metaphor for anything - and I've never heard of red sludge there for the digging.
You can't introduce too many random fantasy elements or it fails to dispel the disbelief.
There were also elements that were foregrounded to have a significance but then never did - the clay machine, the dog, the red vat of gunk, the faithful retainer.
Three stars is over generous.
Side Effects (2013)
What a mediocre movie
I've not seen a Soderbergh movie before - I won't look out for any more. Jude Law - is that acting? - it's so flat - at no point does he seem 'desperate' - yet the situation he is in calls for desperation.
SPOILER His wife, when she walks out, just does that cliché thing people do in movies - but Law hardly seems to care.
The two female leads were far better.
But the way the twist is revealed is firstly.. "eh.. did I miss something.." and then it's "oh.. what.. is that it?".
At the end Law seems so smug in his handling of the situation - we're dealing with a murder and conspiracy so please show some emotion - or let us know you are experiencing both relief at getting out of the hole, yet also some awareness of the tragedy of the murderess - but oh yeah right - she's a murderess, no sympathy required.
I was led to believe it was a comment on Pharma but it's not. Polanski would have done a far better job.
The Falling (2014)
Very good
I thought it was very good - it's a slow atmospheric movie in the British movie tradition of Nic Roeg. Reviews here complain of unanswered questions but that's only if you don't pay attention.
I did think it was a private school, but seems not - a private school of the 1960s would be more the environment where repression and hysteria are confined, only to spiral out of control.
It did lose pace in the last quarter, though concluded with a strong scene. Acting was excellent from all the main parties.
I'll certainly look out for her next film. Ludicrously I'm now required to add more lines to make my review more interesting - a pithy review of the salient points is far better than a lengthy ramble.
As other's have said above the mother figure was the least satisfactory - being a class conscious Brit there was a clear disconnect between the mother's Southern England rural accent and the daughter's well spoken accent - was it meant to be a grammar school? I don't know.. otherwise the late 60's was very well drawn.
Ne le dis à personne (2006)
tres disappointing
This was reviewed in my newspaper as 5 star (the best). I was expecting a classic French thriller perhaps in the style of Claude Chabrol. This movie was silly, too artificially convoluted for its own good. I look forward to French movies as they avoid the hyperactive pace of Hollywood (and British) films. There were weak attempts at back characterisation of the detectives. It looks as if they shot too much footage and then tried to make the film in the edit suite. This is real Agatha Christie stuff, the explanation at the end is "well I killed a, because first b killed c, and then z killed x but really it was g" - what a waste of 2 hours. I think the writer of the story is the main criminal here.