Tubby-7 Reviews

Black Hawk Down (2001)

Why I didn't love this particular film

[12 August 2002]

To call it a stinker is to garnish it in fragrance. Technically (assuming you don't include the template script) it's great. Big deal. Dull, insipidly jingoistic script is flooded with every wet cliché in the book. Unfortunately it's a very fat book, and no page is left unturned. It made me pray for a September 12th, 13th and 14th, with on option on 28 more days. Ridley Scott has sprayed his beard and tongue with a velvet coat, and over a miserably unendurable 2hrs.15mins proceeds to slide both very slowly up America's anal canals.

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968)

Pitiful castration of a great novel.

[12 August 2002]

Cheesey producer written script that surprises only by the complexities it omits, and characters that would be barely watchable in a TV movie starring Bill Bixby, God rest him. Single standout in horrendously underwritten part is Stacey Keach, who's character, such as it remains, is in purely for plot linkage., though he gives it way more than duty calls for. Character, texture, humanity, grace and motive populating the novel are absent, and have here been substituted by sentimentality, banality and easy on the mind tie -ups. It'll make you want to turn to prostitution to raise the money for a gun licence in order to start killing home spun, southern state mutes. Wait to you get to the last line, the final tearful act and wonder if the producer ever slept nights after signing off. One can only pray that Miss McCullers died before it came out. Tape it, but it and give it to someone you despise.

Tubby 7

Panic Room (2002)

Vain, embarrassing star vehicle.

[11 May 2002]

Tubbysays: PANIC ROOM? The only panic I felt was my own while witnessing this turgidly predictable mediocrity inexorably uncurl. Jodie Foster is embarrassingly dreadful. I was about 30 minutes in when I realised her son was androgenous and in fact her daughter. Drama? Apart from the fact that the script is constipated by predicability, all suspense is lost because you know Foster's starring. What can happen to a star? The writer even throws in the diabetic kid needs his shot routine. Tubby says, there's only the tension of praying it might end after 90 minutes. It doesn't. It goes on and on and on. As a Farah Fawcett tv movie it just might work. Titles excellent. Cast do their best. (apart from JF and offspring, who are as compelling as carrots) Forest Whitaker goes into his slow by meaningful routine. Music tries to do job of the script, but only points up it's vacuity. Tech excellence ditto. Is it likely that this director might at some point find the talent to actually tell a story? He seems grimly insecure unless he can find a way to shoot a simple scene in the most horrendously self-conscious way. I heard Foster turned down the risible HANNIBAL for reasons of it's violence. Perhaps her beef was that she didn't actually didn't get to perform any. This piece of dozy am dram offers her the chance. Queue to miss, or recomend to someone you despise.

The Honkers (1972)

SteveInhat - Big fan

[30 August 1999]

I saw the Honkers in the early 70s and loved it and remembered it. I also saw both JW.COOP & JUNIOR BONNER - both excellent. The reason I had to catch Honkers was that Mr.Inhat deeply impressed me in Madigan as Barney - an enduring psycho performance - which I can still quote verbatum. I also made a note of him in Hour of The Gun. I felt grim when he died (just after the Cannes screening?) But rest assured he, and the film, are recalled fondly. .

Cool Hand Luke (1967)

Faithful adaptation from novel

[29 August 1999]

This is merely to let any potential viewer to Luke know that the excellent novel upon which the film is based (and co-written by Donn Pearce the novel's author) is faithfully reconstructed. If anyone out there knows the whereabouts of mister Pearce tell him his book lives on - as well as the movie.