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Reviews
10.0 Earthquake (2014)
Where's the ending?
A good film makes you care if its characters live or die. With a bad film, you don't care. This film's characters are so obnoxious (especially the teenagers) that I was actually hoping they would die. The fact that some did is the only time this film broke away from the disaster film formula: introduce some people, show the problems they're having in their lives, then hit them with a major earthquake/fire/meteor strike/whatever so that when they come out the other side they realise their problems aren't so important after all. This one ticked all the boxes. I was surprised by the ending, though - there wasn't one. The film just stopped shortly after the hero had apparently saved the day. I was convinced that the TV station had missed off the final reel of the film, but no - that was it. I rewound and there were actually a couple of lines of dialogue to confirm that the plan (which incidentally was doing the opposite of what they had been trying to do five minutes earlier) had actually worked, though they seemed to accept this really quickly, on the basis of a few sketchy reports. Still, if there had been another ten minutes of story that would have been even more of my life that I'll never get back.
Porridge (2016)
Much better than I had expected!
I'm not a huge fan of the original but I do enjoy it, so I was prepared not to like this resurrected version. But I was pleasantly surprised: a good story-line and likable characters. Yes, many of them seemed to be updated versions of those from the original but that just added to the fun. I could easily picture Mackay and Barraclough in place of Meekie and Braithwaite, and Harry Grout instead of Richie Weeks. However the one character we had seen before was recast. Fletch's dad (the original Fletcher's son) was seen in the sequel, 'Going Straight', where he was played by a young unknown actor called Nicholas Lyndhurst. Whatever happened to him?
The Soilers (1923)
The Soilers, no spoilers!
This film, made by Stan Laurel before his teaming with Oliver Hardy, is a spoof of the Klondike gold-rush story "The Spoilers". It is virtually plotless and focuses almost entirely on the all-out knockdown fist-fight seen in the serious versions. What sets it apart is the fact that - surprisingly for the era - the fight is interrupted on several occasions by a *very* effeminate cowboy; more Ginger Rogers than Roy Rogers!