jamesowen-2 Reviews

The Mercy (2018)

Froth

[4/10 · 4 January 2021]

I suppose any popular 101 minute treament of this story is going to struggle to explore the themes of male expectation, failure and isolation that are relevant to the Crowhurst story, and certainly for a film about being alone at sea for 7 months, we spend a lot time seeing pretty images of Teignmonth.

The script and pacing are rather generic in its box-ticking of events, the usual cliched news report voice overs and discussions in pubs chugging along the events in a necessary manner, while divorcing us from whatever Crowhurst experienced on his own, hearing of the travails of his competitors and how they variously piled new pressure upon his unfolding catastrophe. The second half of the film would have benefitted without showing any other characters at all. Of course his family were suffering from their hopes, of course his publicist and financier were taking advantage of him, but there was no of course about how Crowhurst's decent into madness led him to writing about 'cosmic beings'. The most intriguing part of the story remains untold, and it could only be examined through more isolation, more of the sea.

Beyond that, Colin Firth is miscast. Crowhurst was an eccentric, he was dashing and goofy at the same time, vigorously intelligent and utterly misguided, and Firth makes the whole terrible misadeventure look like the misspent Sunday afternoon of a Daily Telegraph reader. I suppose Firth was required for funding? Hardly his fault thoigh, but this role needed Hugh Bonneville, Martin Freeman, or a more left-field actor.

Impossible (2017–2021)

Poor

[2/10 · 31 August 2018]

Pity the poor producers of this show, lumbered with expectation after the genius concept of Pointless, they've scored an inevitable miss here. The presenter has zero charisma, which suffers further by being spread so thinly over so very many contestants. But the real problem is the game format. The basic law of quiz shows is that there are right answers and wrong answers, bringing in 'possible' and 'impossible' ones makes for a very woolly, unrewarding game, that doesn't reinvent the word like 'pointless' did. It just kind of sounds dumb.

Flame & Citron (2008)

Too little, too long

[2/10 · 30 January 2012]

Presumably this was the big one for the Danish, a multi-million dollar production about their own WWII Resistance heroes, so it's possible to forgive the plaudits it gained at home - much in the same way that awful Pearl Harbour film garnered 4 Oscar nominations in America. Sadly, the faint praise for having made the film at all is about as far as I can go, because this is a long, drawn out disappointment.

The are many, many problems, the acting and direction constantly clash, as if both searching for one another, hoping to find a narrative harmony that they never actually achieve. If we're watching a cerebral brooding affair, do we really need to see so much brow-sweat and half-shadow? We already know they were stressful times without it being quite so underlined in endless reams of perspiration and artificial unkemptness. This unfortunate disunion isn't helped by wholly one-dimensional and oppressive characterisations. There's no camaraderie, no gallows humour, no attempt show any intellectual bonding, never mind the enemy, comrade sulks at comrade.

But the crucial weaknesses are in the incoherence of the double-triple- crossing script, and the unexamined motivations of Flame and Citron to continue killing regardless of the revelations about the intents of their handlers. Rather than heroes who fought through the duplicity and shadiness of war-time collaborators, we are served with what could have been a couple naive tantrum-teens, who apparently believe whatever was the last thing they were told irrespective of anything else and throw one big strop after another when they discover they were lied to yet again.

Now I don't know the real story behind the two obviously brave men, but such a portrayal seems like a disservice.

Dorian Gray (2009)

Dorian Gray or... Buffy?

[4/10 · 16 September 2009]

Wilde's Gothic horror classic deserves better than this maltreatment. The impression of his subtlety lost builds from the getgo where a mass overbearing ominous strings instruments accompany our innocent Dorian Gray as he explores his newly inherited mansion with it's apparently unsettling Victorian decor, so obtrusive is the din that before there is any given basis for unease we're unavoidably instructed that things are a bit creepy. You know it's going to be tough going when opening doors in a slightly spooky house requires all the anxiety an orchestra can muster, like scary man! This is an unfortunate style that pervades the whole running time, the music and the lighting scream unbearable tension and all of it occurring quite apart from the story and the dialogue. Thus we're left with a film that simply tries too hard frighten.

What's good about Dorian Gray is the hair, although Ben Barnes isn't the blond of the book his magnificent sleek crescendo of a haircut does some superb things throughout the movie, it deserves an award and really ought to feature is a shampoo commercial. Similarly Colin Firth's beard, he stops short of twizzling it for the saucier of Henry's lines, at least I think he does, or maybe he did. In all other respects the acting is everything that's asked for an entertainment.

The bad, the departures from the book are manifold, some admissible as presumably Oscar Wilde was limited by the times in lived in, his implied homosexually becomes a whole lot more than that in the film and fair enough on that score. Other changes, notably the inclusion of Henry's daughter, are more questionable, disfiguring the story into soap opera cliché - the producers presumably concluding this makes better sense of things for a contemporary audience. And then there's the CGI denouement, it looks like a Meatloaf video, and looks like it's meant to look that way too, so we're a long way away from the book by this point of the film.

To look for the positives, beyond that beautiful hair, I'd have to say if you're enjoying the current splurge of vampire films you're going to enjoy Dorian Gray. Clearly the beautiful immortal bisexual anti-hero ticks a lot of boxes for fans of post-Buffy blood fantasies and the abiding feeling is that this a film meant for them, not the readers of Oscar Wilde.

Futurama: Bender's Big Score (2007 Video)

You don't have to be a nerd to be disappointed

[2/10 · 28 December 2008]

Casual fan of the original series here, always respected the ingenuity and wit of Futurama enough to sit down and give it a spare half hour, so to be blunt, I'm not the breed of obsessive fan you'll find at the conventions.

And yet, I too feel disappointed after watching this feature length outing. Like all good science fiction the brilliance of Futurama (the series) was in how the other worldly setting gave enormous capacity to say things about our modern world, funny things and sometimes touching things in the case of the series. That's all gone with the film, instead we're heavily into self-reference territory - making poor jokes about New New York in 3007 rather than funny ones about New York 2007, so one of Futurama's enormous strengths is gone. It's the major gaping hole in this picture.

It's variously bad for other reasons, not the least the over-use of the time travel mechanism to tell the story - which is bad news whatever the story. The songs are nowhere near the regular standard of the Simpsons/Futurama stable and cemented with nerry a care for the dialogue surrounding them. The cameos fail too - if Al Gore isn't going to have any funny lines, why not just have an impersonator read them?

To sum up, let me explain the shallow depth of the humour we have here. It doesn't spoil too much to inform that in the denouement our villains employ a field of golden death stars. That's a 12-year-old's idea of funny/cool. For the rest of us, it's a cheap, tacky, sloppy solution from the writers to the problem of how to stage a final battle scene.

Stick the TV re-runs instead folks.

The 11th Hour (I) (2007)

Splat

[5/10 · 13 December 2008]

Sheesh, what a mess.

If Americans are relying on documentaries like this to convince Joe the Redneck that anthropogenic climate change is real I understand why we all feel there is so much more work left to do. You see, the problem with the film is its complete lack of a narrative, one scientist/politician/activist after another, however respectable, snappily quipping about consumption, pollution, the oil economy, in no particular order does nothing to explain where we came from or where we are headed, or why. So the documentary teaches nothing new, it just juggles around the same themes, incoherently referencing the all correct verbiage to satisfy an green audience but neither inform nor empower it.

The visuals do not help, we can't go 5 seconds without seeing an iceberg disintegrate or tree being chopped down. After the first half hour it becomes like some sort weird sort of exercise in CIA-style mental conditioning. Does no good, indeed it destroys a viewer's concentration, rather than enriching or rewarding it. Also, it has to be said, some of visuals are entirely erroneous, for a the moment when told that human behaviour may cause the release of subterranean methane, why are we shown a clip of a sea vent? There are at least a dozen similar misleading visuals here, and as much as I'm into green politics, let's face it, with instances like there is a touch of propaganda to this documentary.

Conclusions? Save some energy, turn it off, read some George Monbiot instead.

Romance & Cigarettes (2005)

One Ambitious Failure

[2/10 · 10 October 2008]

Amazed by the countless positive user reviews on this title, I can only surmise that too few people have ever seen a good musical.

The highlight comes fives minutes in with a belting Engelbert Humperdinck number, neatly choreographed and wonderfully performed by the male cast. From R&C gets terminally poorer.

Let's begin with the disjointed plot and characterisations. We never quite learn why James Galdofini's dullard has an affair with a memorably ridiculous Kate Winslett creation, because his family life is a plain mystery to us - the portrayal of each member of it from feisty wifey Sarandon to slacker rock band daughters are flimsy as tissue paper and no deeper. This does not incline the audience to interest, there's nothing to care about, no level to possibly engage on them with. It's like an earnest high school production from kids who failed realise well drawn characters are every bit as essential as any plot.

That's before we get to the bizarre Christopher Walken cameo, of which we're all so welcome accustomed these days. This was one self-parody too many from an actor presumably now deemed too old for meatier work in Hollywood.

The songs are wonderful songs, can't fault them a bit, the best scenes of the move. One has to imagine therefore how much more brilliant they would have been had they had anything to do with the plot. The kitsch karaoke favourites stuff just doesn't work, it only emphasises all the other problems of this film, reminding us the ideas where there but the writing wasn't.

Whimsy? Fantasy? Let's have it, but please Hollywood, put more work into it than this.

Titus (1999)

Why?

[3/10 · 12 January 2008]

What a strange confection this movie turned out to be.

Usually I'm eager applaud all attempts to bring Shakespeare, plus his dialogue, into the modern age, but then usually his plays were good! Titus Andronicus has always been a mess, the language and characterisations poor by the Bard's standards. It's a nasty, bleak, affair, devoid of nuance or humanity. So it's a mystery as to why it was filmed at all.

What makes this film yet more bizarre is the frankly stark and pretentious historical motifs. Far from suggesting the timelessness of revenge stories and human frailties, the muddling of eras, the set design and costume jumps from Ancient Rome to Mussolini, are distracting and little else, though in fairness does help paper over the cracks provided by the source material. To read other IMDb reviewers, it does however appear to impress those with a mind willing to enjoy such artifice. It's cool only should you choose it to be.

True the cast do get their teeth into in the film, most admirably avoiding embarrassment, save for Jessica Lange, who is helplessly miscast. She's more pantomime villain than Queen of the Goths. I had to restrain myself from cautioning her, "He's behind you!".

Tony Hopkins is of course the star, and scenes wain without him, even though, he fails to save Titus from the falling into the annals of turkeydom. The only worth, the only reason to give two and half hours of your life to this film, is the climatic dinner scene. It is unmissable, the manic and enormous Hopkins unleashed, in fact fast forward to that scene, you'll miss nothing important from the story.

If this is to be the definitive modern version of Titus Andronicus, it's true, the play was always as awful as everybody said it was.

Lady Chatterley (2006)

Without compare

[9/10 · 13 December 2007]

As you enter the cinema, I think there are several instructions certain viewers must first take heed of, as regards this film.

Firstly, face facts, it's French, so don't be surprised if there are hardly four lines of dialogue in the first thirty minutes. This works marvellously as an introduction into the repressed yet sensual world of the characters, but if you know you're likely to get bored without having everything immediately explained, then please save yourself the bother.

Secondly, it ain't all about the sex. If you're seeking XXXX thrills, again, don't bother.

Finally, Lady Chatterley is based upon the second (earlier) version of the book, NOT the famously explicit and more widely published rewrite Lawrence ultimately settled on. Don't be expecting the clunky politics that isn't very relevant in the 2000's, instead enjoy a tale of love and freedom, of hope that two very different people can become a reason for one another's happiness within this overbearing world we're all inevitably a part of.

As for the film itself, acting honours go to Marina Hands for an exquisite portrayal of Constance, truly from her performance every emotion can be felt without a hint of exaggeration. It's delightful stuff. Jean-Louis Coullo'ch's Parkin/gamekeeper is a good fit, for what really is the less starry role, and he handles everything, including a touching confessional scene, with an admirable strength and gentleness.

Underpinning everything is the lavish production, sound and photography to make an audience feel as part of the forest setting, a tranquillity that intimates so much of what the story is trying to say.

This is superb stuff.

The Voice in the Night (1941)

Stirring!

[8/10 · 4 June 2007]

This is the sort of intelligent movie you simply won't meet with in modern cinema. Yes, it's blatant propaganda, and yet the film serves so much more as a clarion call for justice, civility, and yes, freedom too. What we have in the lead character, Dr. Roder has got to be one of the most real, most believable and admirable heroes in of cinema.

My advice is don't get bogged down with the occasional stuffiness of the production, enjoy this exultation on the bravery inside those who are able to stand up for what they believe in.

It's a shame Freedom Radio will only ever get seldom showings on obscure channels in the mid-afternoon. This is the sort of film we'd do well to show in history classes.

Ladies in Lavender (2004)

A Film for Grown Ups

[8/10 · 6 August 2006]

By the standards set by Hollywood mayhem the pace of 'Ladies in Lavender' is very slow, but that importantly allows character development, as both sisters carrying differing emotional baggage we never quite understand are effected by their nubile male discovery on the beach.

The forlorn sexuality of pensioners, its fears and fantasies, is a topic seldom touched upon in cinema, if ever, and Ladies manages to broach the subject without frightful gratuity or disgusted condemnation. This is not a reason to avoid the film!

Comedic relief in the form of Mariam Margolyes maid is enough to perk us up between the sadder elements of movie, as are an ensemble cast of fine lesser known acting talents from the British industry, and the Cornish scenes are a picturesque treat too.

Sit down confident you'll watch an affecting story, superbly acted.

Suicide Kings (1997)

A Plot Twist Too Far

[3/10 · 27 February 2006]

A survey of the cast, which include Christopher Walken, Jay Mohr, and Denis Leary, suggests there might have been a cracker here, alas 'Suicide Kings' founders with a script more shallow than a paddling pool and plot so contorted an audience can feel cheated.

The collegiate bucks at the centre of this film make up annoying group of young man, each friends and each jerks with an intense pre-existing dislike for each other. That makes it doubly bizarre and unbelievable to suppose they'd ever trust each other to carry out the convoluted plan which serves as the basis of the story. Indeed they're all so devoid of any redeeming qualities it's difficult to imagine why we should care what happens to them.

Ultimately I'm left assuming this was an attempt at a thriller with the shock value of 'The Usual Suspects', but the devices used are so obvious you spend half the film second guessing an answer that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. In fact whatever you come up with would probably have been better.

This is a dud.

The Astronaut's Wife (1999)

An insult

[1/10 · 2 February 2006]

There is scene in this movie in which a stroke is medically referred to as "a severe insult to the brain". A line which describes this entire film far better than any reviewer possibly could.

Obviously influenced by The X-Files, the first thing that strikes the viewer is the invasive use of tense mood music. If the Astronaut's Wife is opening a fridge there is a string quartet behind anxiously heralding a danger which subsequently doesn't exist. In a TV show like The X-Files it's a trick used to great affect because it's stylistic and the shows exhibit a degree of wit and imagination that relieve us from the pointless tension. Neither of those saving graces feature in this film.

The characters are poorly drawn, we're constantly told Spencer (The Astronaut) has changed since his last mission into space. We need to be told this so often because we're deprived of witnessing very much of his prior personality. And throughout the story Jillian (The Wife) never functions as anything more than a paranoid wreck, even before she suspects that something is really wrong.

Fans of Depp and Theron will be as disappointed as the rest of us. Johnny's flyboy astronaut is utterly out of place since we all know true spacemen are stiff and boring scientists, yet this guy is exhuberant like the barnstorming 1950's test pilots that never really existed. God only knows what hewas thinking with this part. And Charlize, throughout she never lifts above the catatonic. Literally, and I mean this folks, there is nothing more to her performance than the bags under her eyes and hers is the lead character, our heroine for crying out loud! That's beyond appalling.

As a thriller there is never a comfort break in this pretentious sci-fi flick that asks us to care for a character it's impossible engage with. It's non-stop, we're expected to be in the edge of our seat with every single scene, and if the plot doesn't supply the drama a 'bus' (that's the Hollywood term for a false shock) will. They are countless, and soon annoying. The same can be said for the way The Wife is mysteriously at the front of every crowd during key moments of action, which is one of the other cheap dramatic tricks overused by a really really bad director.

Until recently writer/director Rand Ravich hadn't been in charge of a film since this 1999 failure, you'll know why.

Fifteen years ago this was the kind of film that made a frustrated Quentin Tarantino decide he really needed to begin making his own.

It's diabolical.

To Catch a Yeti (1994 TV Movie)

Among the worst ever

[1/10 · 31 January 2006]

It doesn't get much worse than this folks. To Catch A Yeti is bad in every respect, beginning with the creature itself. The bug-eyed gooning animatronic representing said beast is an insult to cinema, with movement literally restricted to the thing being dragged along, on a poorly disguised sled, through the snow. Similarly the annoying coos which emanate from the Yeti's static plastic face are an annoying as they are bizarre.

Beyond that the production values are below par from children's television, never mind a movie, and its star, one Meat Loaf, though tasked with the difficult job astonishingly manages to be the worst feature in the entire film, proving once and for all that rock music saved many a movie audience from his bewilderingly insensate acting style.

Plot and characters, in as much as they exists, are instantly forgettable, and quite honestly you'll spend the entire film being obsessively irritated by the Yeti. Yes, it really is that lamentable.

Arguably children might get something out of this on a Saturday morning while mom and dad enjoy a lie in, but an enjoyable family film this isn't.

The Whole Wide World (1996)

Good but repetitive

[5/10 · 29 January 2006]

Clearly from the comments previously posted about this film there is a fan-base out there for it, but one which this audience member finds surprising. There is more to 'The Whole Wide World' than most Hollywood romances, indeed it's refreshing to have a decent rom without the annoying com.

The problem is the succession of arguments between the two lead characters becomes so repetitive that although this film runs for under two hours it repeats itself and eventually becomes quite boring.

As pulp writing legend Robert Howard, the alternatively sexy Vincent D'Onofrio is on good form, allowed to exercise his unique ability to deliver bellowed diatribes, and Renée Zellweger performs well in the role of a meek-yet-spitfired-girl-next-door-teacher-type turned on by a brilliant outcast, a character which surely engages the bookish fantasies of the female audience this chick flick will most likely appeal to, as she becomes a heroine for ultimately tolerating Howard's volatile insecurities. Ain't that always the way, huh ladies?

Taken from that characters true life memoirs the script is centred firmly on her experience of Howard which leaves the characters slightly one dimensional, and we actually learn very little about a potentially fascinating man, indeed we shouldn't think of this as being a film about Howard or whatever made him tick.

Special mentions goes to the very last scene is a typically saccharine Hollywood ending, with obvious conclusions presumably reiterated to elicit tears.

So what do we have? A watchable if repetitive and melodramatic romance that's slightly better than most Hollywood offerings. Nothing less, and, despite what some hyperbolic reviews say here, certainly nothing more.

Winged Migration (2001)

Not a documentary

[3/10 · 29 January 2006]

'Winged Migration' is beautiful, immense and ultimately... disappointing.

As a British viewer I may have been previously spoilt by the work of the BBC's Natural History Unit which uses similarly mesmirising visuals to far better affect because we learn something about the subjects. The minimal narration of this film teaches us nothing of the birds, so after the first half hour of soaring geese and gannets diving to the harmonic tones celtic/Gothic choirs, it began to get rather boring, and I say this a bird enthusiast. The stunning visuals might take your breath away and make you marvel at the truly amazing journeys the birds annually undertake, but how much more impressive the birds might have seemed if there was a narration informing of the distances involved, or that birds perhaps born only eight weeks earlier manage to complete them.

If on the other hand you want to switch your brain off, and relax to pretty pictures for an hour and a half, this is your movie. It's like muzak. It's an alternative to taking a herbal bath.

So far as parents are concerned, unless you're personally capable of providing your children with information about the birds, they'll get just as bored as I did.

Finally the staged scenes, primarily the frequent use of imprinted birds, which might not be obvious to most viewers, raises questions about how far wildlife documentary filmmakers should go in their portrayal of the truth. If you initially understand that the flight sequences are being filmed from a microlight the birds have been specially bred and trained to follow, it gets rather annoying after the first couple of scenes to see yet another wild species coerced that way by the filmmakers.

The truth in this film, much like the birds, is manipulated to produce a superficial and oblivious illustration of what are remarkable creatures.

Try David Attenborough's, The Life of Birds, instead. All the beauty and explanations too.

The Negotiator (1998)

Negotiating through the clichés

[3/10 · 19 October 2005]

One of the eternal shames of 90's Hollywood, this film could have been so much better. An astonishing cast of stars backed by more talented character actors than you could shake the proverbial stick at. The Negotiater had the tremendous misfortune to be directed by a complete dud. The viewer can only assume that during production the director, F. Gary Gray, must have been ticking off pages from the Big Book of Hollywood Clichés, much as he did with dire Hollywood remake of 'The Italian Job'. The occasional reference to the science of body language raises the intellectual level on only the most superficial basis.

However, if you like movies with cops and feds shouting about 'jurisdiction', each of whom may or may not be the true villains, then you'll love this, certainly there does seem to be an audience for that kind of manhood waving tosh. If on the other hand you're tired of dumb gun-happy action movies with plot holes and pointless shock twists that treat the viewer like an idiot, you'll want to avoid this film.

The Kid Stays in the Picture (2002)

Letting Hollywood live

[9/10 · 9 October 2004]

It would be easy to criticise this documentary as a self-indulgent superficial exercise in egotism, but only if you choose the disengaged cynical view of the film. If you can alternatively sit back and enjoy an autobiographical Hollywood fairytale described by a seasoned storyteller who has been and there done it, who knows both the ugliness and the magic of movie-town, USA, you're in for a treat.

The gloss, the glitz, the joy and self-recrimination, it's all seldom been so intimately communicated in film. Dismiss any notion that it's vapid story-light Entertainment Now celebrity pap and rent it out.

8 out of 10.

Patch Adams (1998)

A brief note about weird people

[9 October 2004]

As a mental health advocate I feel compelled to mention that 'weird' socially inept piano-playing orphans tend not to be murderers. I could not be more appalled at this film's ten second introduction to 'Larry' and the subsequent impact of the character's actions. Rarely, in a film with pretensions to tenderly telling an interesting story, can I remember such lamentable and outrageously simplified use of mental illness as a cheap plot device, it plays entirely on the prejudices of the general public. The romanticised scene in which 'Patch' contemplates suicide also demands similar criticism. The depth to which the characters emotions are explored bearly a dip a toe in the shallow end of a very shallow pool. In addition to this there is virtually no incite into why it is that Patch is so remarkably different to everybody else. We're almost asked to imagine he one day simply fell out of the happy tree, an inspiring 40-something sweetheart med-student/clown. It would have been truly interesting to explore where this apparently real-life character came from, but the film is too busy congratulating the simpering heights to which Patch's self-indulgent empathy eventually manage to reach.