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Reviews
Napoleon (2023)
Napoleon meets its Waterloo: historical inaccuracies...
I have read numerous books on Napoleon and the Revolutionary / Napoleonic wars - Roberts, Broers, Horne, Estaile, Austin and. Zamoyski amongst others. This leads me to recommend that only people who have never read a book on Napoleon watch this movie, otherwise the result will be the same massive disappointment I and many others felt. This biopic is skeletal and half of the scant meat on the bones of its story is rotten with disturbingly gross falsehoods. Napoleon's adult life was the story of Europe for 25 years, this long overdue attempt at portrayal should have been produced as a multi-season series in cooperation with one of the streaming services - God knows they produce enough worthless rubbish. Over 50 years ago the film 'Waterloo', in which Rod Steiger gave a sterling performance as Napoleon, did a very respectable job presenting cinematic Napoleonic warfare - Napoleon 2023 bears more resemblance to the, entertaining, but rather low budget Sharpe tv series. Why was CGI not employed more in the battle scenes? Rushed, unforgivably inaccurate, portrait painted with a garden broom...
A Haunting in Venice (2023)
Poirot meets Scary Movie at The Exorcist house...
...and yer strangely the result is neither charming, funny or scary! The acting is the usual overwrought hamming you expect from this series of 'Poirot' films. Lacking in conviction and soul the script is delivered by rote leading to the viewer rapidly losing all interest in what is already a ludicrously contrived plot. I used to go to the cinema and usually leave uplifted, inspired or at least with some sort of feeling I'd been entertained but all too often lately I've left with the conviction that the focus is more on satisfying the producers of the film rather than the audience. As mentioned before if you want an entertaining Poirot story then look no further than Ustinov or Suchet...
The Batman (2022)
Entertainment? Abandon all hope...
Another case of entertainers forgetting what their job title is. The script actually includes the words 'white privilege' - I could be forgiven for wanting a slice of escapism given the state of the world but Hollywood ensured there was no danger of that. This was a dismal, soulless, watered down mess and I also question how this can possibly rate so highly.
Death on the Nile (2022)
No class, no style, charmless, loud, mad and bad...
1. Watch the Peter Ustinov version - fantastic
2. Watch the David Suchet version - ditto
3. Now, if you haven't already, brace yourself and watch this....
Surely one of those few films where actors were actually looking forward to their death scene. Where to start? Poirot and his marrow gardening small talk - suspect this was supposed to be a light-hearted moment but was just weird. The kind of dance floor gymnastics last seen in 'Saturday Night Fever' or perhaps 'Dirty Dancing', Gil Gadot twerking at Abu Simbel, a sliced and diced storyline - Dame Agatha is spinning in her grave. Oh yeah, watch out for them rolling the 'mummies' off the boat in the final scene, truly bizarre and the only thing I found amusing about this bomb...
137 Shots (2021)
Stopped watching after 45 mins....
...it's at this point you hear the couple were crackheads fleeing a traffic stop. Up until this point the sombre music and emotive interviews would have you believe they were chorists on their way home from church. Cops in the US get shot and killed on a regular basis, likewise innocent people are killed in high speed car chases similar to that described in the programme - if you're a criminal and you disobey the police when collared and things go south then the responsibility is yours and yours alone.