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trevjohns
Reviews
Disney's Broadway Hits at Royal Albert Hall (2016)
Not for me.
The singers here are absolutely fantastic, professional, easy on the eye and with the necessary voice quality to send the lyrics soaring. But they forgot the most important thing. For a program called "Disney's Broadway Hits", it was the hits, the songs themselves that should have been the stars, not the vocalists. This should have been a case of 'it's the song, not the singer'. They were so "noble' that they "nobled" the entertainment value out of existence.
Too many obscure songs, sung without a single blemish I admit, but causing me to fast forward to find songs that I knew. And when found, they were, in turn, found wanting. Some choreography, folks, would have enhanced and, for me, saved the entire show, which I abandoned before the end. Disney songs need to be performed, not just exquisitely sung.
Wolves of War (2022)
Cable tv is the enemy here
Cable TV has a lot answer for. And that 'lot' is the number of very poor quality movies (those rating less than 5 stars on IMDB) being pumped out and not worth the effort of hitting the play button. I can only presume this is to give the growing horde of cable channels some "content".
They are awful, cheap things that are worse than time-passers, films that can be used to do just that. No, they are time wasters. That time being the 20 minutes one spends giving it a chance, before switching it off in contempt.
Poor benighted "Wolves of War" here is just yet another one. I have taken aim at it here because I just spent 2 hours trying to find a historically based movie to watch. I tried 4, 2 set in Roman times and 2 in WW2. They were all garbage.
And it is not just today, but for months I have flicked through the cable dross and found hardly anything to watch. To review this movies, which is my job here, I will say that it is: merely adequately acted, (no one was anything other than a cliche)', poorly budgeted (it looks cheap) and full of technical errors, (a character gives his main weapon to someone else while he goes out alone to operate the radio. In enemy territory!). But these just few problems are not "WoW"s sins. There is a plethora of the said "bill fillers" that work exactly the same way. Even the opening credits of the different movies use the same regimen, Black and white historic stills fading in and out of ones of the cast "acting".
But being one who is here to help let me suggest: Movie makers, pool your resources and make a few quality movies rather than copious poor ones. That way you should be able to afford a good director and historical/technical advisors who actually are knowledgeable, instead of just thinking they are, thereby cheapening the whole production down to garbage level.
Near enough is never good enough, when the customer is paying for it.
A Christmas Carol (2019)
Almost 10 out of 10, but...
This "A Christmas Carol" opens with lumps of coal being set out on Scrooge's floor, and the presentation that follows is as black, hard and intent on soiling as they are. The IMDB blurb refers to this version of Dickens' horror story as Gothic and it is one of the few films that can be truly called that. This rendering has all the required features of 'Gothic'; "an environment of fear, the threat of supernatural events, and the intrusion of the past upon the present. The setting typically includes physical reminders of the past,". Add that to the total blackness of coal and you have a fair idea of how the mood of this story plays out.
The actors, art direction and script are marvellously good, stunning even. In addressing just exactly WHY Scrooge is as he is, we are taken on a cerebrally probing, psychic, psychotic even, passage into his past, present and future. Guy Pearce is the best Ebeneezer Scrooge I have seen. Cold, calculating, literally, and rationalising in all his mercenary doings.
His history, Christmas Pasts, the best of the sets, lend reasons, if not excuses, to his behaviour. And that behaviour wends its way into becoming, eventually, heinous.
So heinous that, at its peak, the story takes on the doomed aspect, as it might be, of a submarine, torn and rent, filling with cold black seawater on a downward plunge into inescapable depths. "How can it be saved?", I wondered, because I know the story and what eventually becomes of Scrooge and the other characters. And I had every right to query and think him perhaps impossible to save. Which is where the 10 out of 10...almost, comes in.
The final act, when it occurs, seems rushed, artificial, forced even, and does not do anywhere near the justice that what has gone before, deserves. Dickens, and Pearce's character himself, warrant better. It was almost as if the final scene was filmed first, before the pith and gravity of the script had been absorbed by the production.
If this denouement had shouldered the load equally, with the searing, close personalism and emotional anguish from before, then the message of the story would have been well served.
Which is that we all, you and me, are hardly ever looking beyond our own selfishness. And being like that, we are all Ebeneezer Scrooge. We all warrant our own "Christmas Carol".
Napoleon (2023)
Should have been called Napoleon and Josephine
This should have been called "Napoleon and Josephine" because, frankly, there's too much of Josephine in it, and not nearly enough of the brilliance and personality of Bonaparte. The historical inaccuracies are manifold. I read that director Scott says that "If you weren't there then you can **** off". Well I was not there, but the erroneous simplification of one of history's greatest characters shows Scott wasn't there either. The battle scenes are gaining accolades, but even they shouldn't. Wrong and over simplified. If you are going to make a movie about Napoleon, his generalship should have taken centre-stage, not his domestic tussles with the Missus. A grand disappointment. An artilleryman, as Napoleon was, taking part in a cavalry charge? I don't think so! Oh, how I wish Kubrick had carried through to make his version. I give this six stars, mostly for having the courage to take on such a mighty story. Too bad it fell far short of its subject matter.
Bupkis (2023)
Who?
I have never heard of Pete Davidson. I did not find this funny. Well, at least the first 10 minutes of the first episode, after which I gave up. Not my fault. Opening sequences, I believe, should be entertaining enough to draw you in. This one didn't, so it mustn't have been.
Which is interesting because the sequence is very similar to the one that introduced "Futureman", which I really liked and binge-watched to its well acted and fulfilling conclusion.
Why would this be so (?), perhaps you ask. I can only proffer that the lead character, who I presume is Pete himself, was not funny. For a comedy, that has to spell, not this time.