Change Your Image
hedley-finger
Reviews
Significant Others (2022)
Could be retitled Significant Looks
I gave this anti-thriller three episodes before calling it quits, even though a murder or euthanisation was at last revealed, which should have sparked my interest. Too many characters spend too much time mooning about aimlessly -- always a bad sign. After the third episode finished my wife called her sister and they agreed that the show was too slow-moving and they just didn't care about the characters. Because it is so drawn out it is hard to keep all the subplots in the air. From the other reviews here and elsewhere, it is clear that this story is very polarising. People either love it or dislike it; I'm one of the latter. All the actors are trying hard to make it work but they are fighting against a minimalist script and glacial direction.
Don't Look Up (2021)
Don't Watch This
Well-meaning. Needs more pratfalls. No need to have gone to the expense and trouble to create a gigantic colourful CGI ostrich to snack* on President Meryl's head. We could have lent you a cassowary for nothing.
* You cannot spoiler a rotten egg.
The Furnace (2020)
Good concept but could have been better executed
The ingredients are rich: in the 19th century outback, aboriginals, prospectors, Chinese, cameleers (uniformly referred to as Afghans even though they come from many Middle Eastern cultures), graziers, peddlers, Moslems, Hindus, troopers, and station hands negotiate wary relations. A hardbitten prospector has stolen gold in his possession and needs to find a way to legitimise it. He falls in with a cameleer and they trek across the desert to escape the law and other criminals in pursuit.
This is an outback thriller trying to be a deep and meaningful arthouse excursion. The slow pace eventually becomes tedious and a couple of plot glitches irritate. Talented actors work hard and turn in excellent performances, but they are fighting the director.
Operation Buffalo: Episode #1.1 (2020)
Even the actors might know it is bad
'When asked what he wanted audiences to take away from this television mini-series, star James Cromwell, who portrays General 'Cranky' Crankford, said: "I hope they're appalled!".'
We were, for all the wrong reasons.
Deep Water (2016)
A mini series exhumed from the vault
Deep Water is redolent of 1960s Australian police procedurals such as Homicide or Cop Shop. The script is a rollcall of cliches: the upstart newbie, her job-weary senior detective, the obstructive old-school station chief, the migrant family all speaking in halting Pidgin English. None of the cast or the scriptwriters appears to have done any field research with real-life police. Poor direction, bad acting, and pedestrian cinematography. The treatment by police of homosexuals' deaths at Bondi's famous cliffs was a scandal for decades and deserves a better treatment than this to educate the present day.
Chimerica (2019)
Lest we forget
I think the world, particularly residents of China, need periodic reminding of the Tiananmen square massacre, to counter the Chinese regime's continuing efforts to erase this dreadful event from history.
Whatever the artistic merits of this series, it is serving a valuable reminder of the true face of the Chinese government.