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Markcheshire
Reviews
A Complete History of My Sexual Failures (2008)
Funny, sad, excruciating ...
The negative reviews about this film are plainly missing the point. This film is extremely well made tragi-comedic artifice. I laughed. I shed a tear. I ached. Waitt is a genius in the making. And, having watched this film for the second time (after a couple of years' gap) I am pleased to say that I enjoyed it even more than the first time round. Great stuff. I have now said all that I want to say and I am sorry but I seem to need to pad out the review with this flummery now in order to ensure that it will be posted. I simply cannot understand why I have to write any more at this point. It seems quite unnecessary. Maybe this accounts for all the plot re-hashing which appears on this website.
Wuthering Heights (2011)
Painful
This is a film about domestic violence, racism, cycles of abuse. It contains many scenes involving the infliction of pain. This is quite apart from the love story. So why did it leave my partner and I so unemotionally affected, apart from the rush of relief at leaving the cinema?
Wuthering Heights started well for me; I thought I was going to enjoy the experience of wild moorland, naturalism, authentic dirt, etc. Unfortunately, too little attention seemed to be paid to the quality of some of the cast's acting (some of which was, frankly, embarrassing) and after the nth roll on the wet moorland grass I began to lose patience with the lack of attention to the narrative detail.
Yes, the moors looked fantastic. Yes, we got that life was grim.
But the affectation of the hand-held camera is a metaphor for the film as a whole. It wobbles about and makes you feel a bit nauseous. And then it does it over and over again and again until you want to beg for mercy.