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damonreynolds
Reviews
Leonardo (2021)
Unspeakably awful script
Fascinating story, good cast, nicely produced, but with a script so utterly trite, predictable, pedestrian and unimaginative, that whoever spent the 20 minutes or so it must have taken to write this drivel from start to finish should be utterly ashamed of themselves. No charm, wit, empathy for the characters, nor a shred of acknowledgment that the viewer might have a comprehension age above, say, 8. A completely wasted opportunity.
The Palace (2008)
It's silly, but it's good
Okay, so a certain amount of belief has to be suspended to enjoy this, but that doesn't mean it's not good TV. There seem to be far too many comparisons to the West Wing. The Palace is basically a tongue-in-cheek dramatisation of a whole bunch of 'what-ifs'. And, if you can get over the initial premise and look a little deeper, there are quite a number of points here about male succession, the spilt between crown and parliament, staff loyalty, the duty of monarchy and so on. This has not just been thrown together - in fact by making all the characters fictional the writers have much greater license to look at and expose some of the more interesting facets of the UK constitution.
The main problem is that it falls between two stools. It's too silly for a Royalist drama, and not quite biting enough for black comedy. It would actually be much better off on Channel 4. ITV doesn't have much of a history of 'faintly subversive' so doesn't know what to do with it, and the critics don't know what to make of it.
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Did I see a different film to everyone else?
Please, please, please stop the madness. Now usually the IMDB seems to be spot on in terms of user ratings. Good films get high marks and bad ones hang around the 3s and 4s. Clearly though I must have sat through nearly two and a half hours of completely different movie to the one that gets 7 in the ratings here.
This film is not just poor - lots of films are poor but but that doesn't make them unenjoyable. No, A.I. is gob-smackingly, buttock-clenchingly awful. Now I am generally a big fan of both Spielberg and Kubrick. Both great directors and even visionaries every now and then but it seems that from conception to delivery thing the whole of AI was a ghastly mistake. It's very slow, unenvolving, over sentimental, and worst of all incredibly derivative. There is not one single original thought or shot in the entire film - just a regurgitated mess of Blade Runner, Close Encounters, 2001 and a score of others. Even the debatable 'best bit' in the flesh fair was frankly done better in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome and that's really saying something. Yes the special effects were nice but hardly earth shattering.
All of this is, of course, a great pity as some of the basic ideas underlying the film from a moral and philosophical point of view aren't actually that bad. What is life/how do we define love/when should we stop playing God/etc, all are good themes. But to so completely wash over over them with such slush that half the time one could be mistaken for thinking you're watching a coffee commercial is criminal.
There is no humour, none of the interesting ideas ever really surface, and the ending is so ludricrous I didn't know whether to laugh in disbelief or just retch into my popcorn bucket. On top of all that it's actually fairly badly acted and even the editing is not up to much.
Do not go and see this film, go to the video store and rent Blade Runner again. Then if you have some time left over go and watch vinyl emulsion seep slowly into fresh plaster. I promise you it'll be more fun.