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Reviews
Force of Nature: The Dry 2 (2024)
It's wet, very wet.
This film shows just what is wrong with Australian film making. It looks like a telemovie. It's just not the type of film which creates any sense of a 'night out at the cinema'. There is nothing epic or grand about it. It is a dull, plodding story told by very pedestrian actors who just seem to be there for the money.
Could Robert Connelly really look at the finished product and say, 'That's a winner! That's going to attract large audiences and make a stack of money.'
If he thinks that . . But no, let's not insult his judgement. He must know it is not going to be a huge smash.
But as one of the producers, surely Eric Bana knew it was pretty poor? Why didn't he object?
Have all these people lost their sense of quality? The broad reader consensus is that the second Dry book was not as good as the first, yet the film was still made. Why?
I saw it 4 days after release, in a large cinema on a hot Melbourne day when going to the movies is an attractive activity. Yet, there were 5 people in the audience.
After seeing it, I compared it with other films I have seen recently, including: Saltburn, Napoleon, Fallen Leaves
and Anatomy of a Fall.
Those films all take you on a journey and have something to say. Force of Nature you on a soggy walk in the bush with some very boring people. Avoid.
The United States of America (2022)
Was this COVID trickery?
The film rolled along quite pleasantly. It flipped between the clever and thought provoking and merely contemplative. The very sparse use of any dialogue is rather odd.
BUT the most interesting and arguably deceptive aspect is the closing statement on the screen which says that all the 52 film sequences were filmed in California. I had to read and re-read that very carefully to make sure I understood correctly.
I noticed lots of people were leaving and didn't read the statement and so left thinking they had just seem 52 bits of film shot at the announced location. That is definitely what I thought I was watching.
But the film naker has confirmed it. Despite each of the 52 sequences being announced as, for example, 'Grand Junction, Colorado', or 'New York, New York', they were in fact, located in California.
I have read the film makers explanation for this but I was unconvinced. It seemed like a desperate ploy to convince the viewer it was very clever when really, it was the huge compromise that had to made in order to make the film. It ends up being trickery.
The Bridge (2013)
They used the wrong car!
Just catching up with the US version of the Bridge. I liked the US setting at first but then it lost me. By about Ep 5 I had little idea what was going on and not very motivated to find out.
But here's the thing which annoyed me most: the car driven by Sonya Cross, the American female detective.
In the original Danish/Swedish series, the female drove a Porsche 911.
In the British-French spin-off, The Tunnel, the corresponding character drove a Porsche 944.
But in the US version, she drives an old SUV. Very uncool, not fast or interesting. When she drives it fast, it looks like it is about to roll over. Even if the producers could get a Porsche in the US (although there are plenty of them) they could have had her drive a classic US muscle car., like an old 1970s era Corvette. Given that they copied lots of other things, the car was an annoyance to me.