simon70 Reviews

Green Street Hooligans (2005)

Excellent film about football hooligans

[9/10 · 25 August 2005]

I saw this at a mystery preview screening where I didn't know what film was going to be shown. Sometimes these previews turn out to be real turkeys but thankfully that wasn't the case this time.

Without revealing too much of the story, Elijah Wood's character gets kicked out of Harvard for a drug offence he didn't commit. He flies to London to visit his sister and quickly gets caught up in a small group of West Ham United supporting hooligans called the Green Street Elite.

The film does slightly glamorise the violence, but ends on a moralising note. An engaging storyline, good cinematography and decent cast performances make this a very enjoyable film.

Two minor demerits: 1) Charlie Hunnam's "cor blimey guv'nor" accent owes more to Dick van Dyke than London's East End.

2) To establish that Wood's character has landed in London, we hear this frankly ridiculous message over the airport's PA system - "this is a security announcement at London Heathrow airport". Presumably this was inserted for the hard of thinking.

To all the Americans who have commented that they'd avoid British football matches as a result of this film, I point out that this film is fiction - not a documentary. Hooligans are an absolutely tiny minority of the crowd at a football match and even then they invariably only fight among themselves rather than randomly attacking innocent members of the public (something the film accurately portrayed).

All in all, an excellent film, worth going to see.

Guy X (2005)

Someone forgot the story

[4/10 · 23 August 2005]

Dear oh dear oh dear.

About a US Army base in Greenland, this film could have been a winner.

Instead, due to the lack of an engaging storyline, it is pretty dull.

When the film ends, your reaction is likely to be "is that it?".

Some good performances and pretty well filmed for a low budget film, but I'd say an average day at work is more interesting than this.

The film is nowhere near as meaningful, funny, poignant or satirical as it thinks it is, instead it merely takes nearly two hours to tell a story which could easily have been well told in 30 minutes

I saw the UK premiere at the Edinburgh Film Festival and I'd be very surprised if Guy X sets the UK box office alight when it is released in October.

A Caribbean Mystery (1983)

Poor stuff

[12 January 2004]

Helen Hayes just doesn't cut it.

Rather than going the whole hog and playing Miss Marple as an American, she plays her as an Englishwoman. This is a mistake,since her accent veers from deep south of USA to England via Ireland. In short, her accent is all over the place.

Her lines are also peppered with Americanisms which no British person would ever say. Two examples:

1) She refers to "tourist class" when British people call it "economy class".

2) She says she's going to "mail" some postcards, when a genuinely British person say "post", not "mail".

Two minor examples, I know, but they add to a general feeling that this Miss Marple is as British as a fudge brownie. All the references to her hometown of St. Mary Mead in England can't change that.

Another point is that Santa Barbara is not in the slightest bit convincing as a stand-in for the Caribbean. The one shot of a caribbean town, Havana perhaps, is obviously grainy archive footage.

Steer clear of this poorly made rubbish, and watch the BBC productions starring Joan Hickson instead.

Nash Bridges (1996–2001)

Entertaining stuff

[9/10 · 17 February 2003]

Great action, storylines, jokes and San Francisco looking at its very best - nearly every episode gives a flavour of what the city is like.

Top notch entertainment, poorly scheduled all over the place by ITV in the UK.