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Dave Addo
Reviews
The Terminal List (2022)
A passable thriller but seen it all before
I don't quite understand the 8+ overall rating for this show. It was OK, I enjoyed it enough to watch it right through, but it was pretty average in most respects.
The 'man seeks revenge for death of wife/child/family' has been done to death, and this didn't really bring much new to the genre. Pratt's unreliability due to a brain tumour was a nice twist, but we've seen that in other series and movies before (usually amnesia caused by head trauma).
I love Chris Pratt, and he was pretty decent in the role, and while the nature of the role meant he had to be suitably dour throughout, it did become a bit depressing after a while. I also found the early episodes quite slow in parts.
Characters like Jai Courtney's baddie Steve Horn were so cookie-cutter. You could tell just by the haircut that he was a baddie the first time you saw him, and he played to all the tropes.
And the episode where Chris is on the run in the bush, while actually quite exciting at times, was pretty unbelievable. Maybe my grasp of technology isn't so good, but I doubt the thermal imaging camera tracking him would confuse a couple of tiny batteries for a human (do batteries even give off heat when not in use??).
This was certainly watchable, but I was expecting much better.
The Beatles: Get Back (2021)
Interesting but over-long
I guess if you are an absolute die-hard Beatles fan you could never get enough of this sort of thing. But for a less fanatical admirer like me, it was another case of director Peter Jackson not being able to edit material down enough. He made a big thing of having 60 hours of footage to work through, and in the end cut it down to around 8 hours. For me, two 2-hour episodes would have been plenty. There is simply far too much repetition. Yes it's fun to watch the Beatles jamming away, but hearing vaguely different versions of the same few songs over and over and over just got boring. An interesting slice of music history for sure, but I came away feeling like I had wasted about half of my eight hours of viewing time.
Outlander (2014)
Becoming worse as the seasons progress
My wife is a big fan of the books, and I enjoyed the first season. The second season dragged a bit in parts, but was enjoyable enough.
But the third season, which we are about half way through, is becoming a bit of a slog. There's been little action (apart from several rather awful sex scenes) and many scenes have been dragged out well beyond what was necessary.
But it's the two main characters' faces/physiques which are simply laughable, for two people who have supposedly aged 20 years since the previous season. Apart from a few odd streaks of grey in the hair, they look exactly the same. Jamie's body is ridiculously ripped, yet he is supposed to be, what, in his mid-40s? Even a battling highlander wouldn't have a body like that without many hours in the gym, let alone a printer. It was so obvious they even had Claire make a comment in E6 'A. Malcolm' along the lines of "you must be more than just a printer to have a body like that". Yes, a gym bunny I suspect. And Claire hardly looks like a mid-40s woman who has had a couple of kids.
I realise this is fantasy, but the lack of any meaningful aging makes it hard to invest in these two as 'real' characters and has spoiled the program for me.
Also, the quality of some of the acting has dropped: when Jamie was reunited with Claire his acting was dreadful, and their later over-long sex scene was cringeworthy.
Blindspot (2015)
Interesting premise, not very well executed
Great idea, and the pilot was intriguing. But the more I watch, the hokier it gets. Some of the scripting is terrible, and some of the acting not much better. Kurt Weller's accent is awful. It's just so silly in parts. In the most recent episode I watched (7 I think) the 'heroes' were trying to avoid armed secessionists in a forest - and were walking along talking at the tops of their heads, then standing stock still in every clearing they could find. When Patterson finds a code hidden in a book, she blurts out "oh look, someone's circled random letters on the page - it must be a code"! Please, writers, give us a little more credit. I sincerely doubt I will be sticking around long enough to find out whatever the (unlikely) explanation is for the over-arching storyline.
Australia (2008)
Could have been so much more
I enjoyed Australia - to a degree, I sat through the whole thing with two thoughts going through my mind: 1) it could have been so much better and 2) the cast is suddenly going to burst into song and dance.
This is a real, over-the top, hammed up film. By the time I finished watching it I was very full - from all the cheese and corn I was fed! Baz set out to make a film in the style of Gone With the Wind and sort of succeeded - but I wonder what the point is in making a film with all the failings of the earlier movies as well as their good points. Haven't we got past all that unrealistic, hammy style of acting? Why bring it back?
The film had a good story and some great visuals, but I feel if it had been played straight it would have been much better. I found Nicole Kidman particularly grating for the first third to half of the film. Hugh Jackman was a little better, but still overacted dreadfully. Maybe the whole thing was meant to be tongue-in-cheek - surely the scene of Hugh washing himself was!
Perhaps it should have been played LESS straight - if Baz had really gone for it and turned it into a musical it might have made more sense. As it is, it came across to me as a musical where they forgot to put in the songs.
I don't feel I wasted my dollars, or my time - but I do think I could have got better value for both.
Within (2005)
So bad it was hilarious
I haven't laughed this much in a long time - or seen a film so ineptly made! Talk about so bad it made me laugh!
Firstly, I estimate that for about 40 percent of the film's length, I couldn't tell what was happening, or indeed even what I was seeing. I can only describe the camera work as frenetic meets LSD. There are whole segments, minutes long, where all you can see are blurred flashes and fragments of cave wall, people and various other unidentifiable stuff. I spent half the film asking my teenage daughters what was happening, but they couldn't follow it any better than me.
Then there are the "black" moments, when in an effort to scare us (woooooooo) everyone's lights go out and the screen turns pitch black - and I don't just mean for a few seconds. I think the longest lasted almost two minutes. I guess blank film is one way to keep costs down...
I suspect the "director" had recently read a book on all the "must-do's" to make a scary movie, and decided to throw them all in - about 20 times each.
There are three good things about this film: 1/ It's short at 90 minutes (though still an hour and a half too long!) 2/ All the characters die (after all, it's impossible to care about any of them). 3/ There was one genuinely good scene - when the group are looking up the shaft they came down, after discovering their rope fallen to the bottom (saw THAT coming), a large boulder is pushed across the opening, sealing them in. I WASN'T expecting that, and it was genuinely chilling.
And what's with the early campfire scenes with the shot, after shot, after shot panning from behind the camp lights. I swear the director used almost the same shot about 20 times in 5 minutes.
And I'm positive that after the first kill, the EXACT same footage of blood on the cave floor is used twice in about 90 seconds.
All in all, a CRAP piece of film making. I'll watch almost anything, but this is close to where I'd draw the line.
Forgotten Silver (1995)
Don't read this review unless you want the big spoiler...
Well I was sucked in. I'm a New Zealander, and even though I have a fairly good handle on my country's history, I found what I watched to be quite believable. This must be the premier hoax documentary of all time.
When Peter Jackson (yes, of LOTR fame) discovers "lost" old movie footage and then arranges restoration of same, he finds a historic record of work by one of the country's pioneer movie makers - film that shows, among other gems, proof that Richard Pearse achieved powered flight before the Wright Brothers.
What's really clever is that you are never actually told the whole thing is a hoax. In fact, when it first screened in NZ it caused an uproar because it was assumed to be fact. Once you know it's fiction, you can look back and see just how incredibly ridiculous the whole thing is. Really, the whole thing is just so far fetched, yet that is the film's great achievement because when you watch it, you actually believe it (at least I did!) Appearances by genuine movie industry people like Leonard Maltin of course add to the realism.
Having said all this, I guess this review has spoiled it for you readers...
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
Surprise - it really IS good
My first thought after coming out of the cinema was: 'this is the first super-hyped film I've ever seen that didn't disappoint me'.
In fact, it was even better than I had hoped. Yes, I have read the books (2 or 3 times) but I'm not a 'MiddleEarth freak', so I was quite happy with the licence taken with the story in places. It was going to be inevitable that some plot and character devices would be required in transferring an epic of these proportions to the screen, and I was entirely comfortable with the compromises Peter Jackson made. And it sure didn't feel like 3 hours' viewing (a slight let-down in fact, as the time whizzed by so fast I almost felt I hadn't got my money's worth!)
Coming from New Zealand, where the whole film was shot, I was obviously very keen on the 'scenic' aspect of FOTR, and it didn't disappoint - although I confess I didn't actually recognise a single location!
Perhaps what surprised me most was the overall quality of the acting; without exception the cast (and casting) was admirable. I thought Viggo Mortensen played a very good Aragorn, and Frodo was much better than I had hoped. I could go on about the top notch special effects, fantastic sets etc, but you've all heard it before. Suffice to say, superb.
This isn't to say, of course, the film was entirely without fault. I found the score a bit overly (& obviously) dramatic in places. And, while I realise the time constraints, I felt there wasn't enough introduction or explanation of some of the Fellowship - particularly Gimli and Boromir. and just how DID Gandalf get his staff back?
These are minor quibbles though, and (apart from the music)not something I really noticed until I thought about it afterwards. Overall, I give FOTR my highest recommendation
Star Wars (1977)
This film has everything!
I knew this was going to be unlike any other film right from the first scene. There's a view of starry space, and a space ship slowly glides into view. Then it gets bigger, and bigger, and bigger...and I realised this was a film on a different scale to anything I had seen before.
It's true - there's more action, more hammed-up acting, more special effects, and a great new take on the ol' good versus evil story. Let's face it, Star Wars is basically a fairy tale - it just has more than its fair share of butt-ugly characters in it.
I guess the proof of any movie is how it stands the test of time; with its 20th anniversary re-release it proved just as entertaining as when it first hit the screens. This is truly a classic movie
Billy Elliot (2000)
The type of 'feel-good' movie the Brits do so well
I really enjoyed Billy Elliot. It gave a very nice depiction of one boy's efforts to rise above the drudgery and pessimism of strike-torn life in the English coal mines. It would have been very easy for the black side of the film to drag it down, but there is enough comic relief to balance this.
Main criticisms - the storyline was a bit predictable, and some of the dialogue was almost incomprehensible. Being a Kiwi I'm probably more used to English accents than most Americans, and I have lived in England for two years - but there were still some whole conversations where I couldn't catch a word! Perhaps taking realism a tad too far for the mass-market...
On the whole though a very enjoyable, well-acted film.
The Fast and the Furious (2001)
A REALLY enjoyable B-grader
TF&TF is a really dumb, B-grade film - and I thoroughly enjoyed it!
It's one of those films where you need to shove you brain in neutral and overlook the less-than-Oscar standard script, ho-hum acting and plot holes big enough to drop three Honda Civics in. Take it as a pure adrenaline rush though and it's great. This brought back memories of the original Gone in 60 Seconds from way back in the 70's. Lots of squealing tyres, jumping, bumping cars and not much else. Cool!
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
The way all movies should be!
When I first saw Raiders I knew nothing about it - I went purely on sighting the movie poster, not expecting too much. From that very first scene, where the Paramount 'mountain' cleverly changes into a real mountain, I realised this was going to be something special.
The almost relentless action is beautifully balanced with just enough quiet moments, and there's plenty of humour so you know not to take things too seriously. Best of all the story line is great.
There are a few plot holes - like how did Indy get inside the submarine without being noticed? But these minor infringements can easily be overlooked in what is on the whole a cinematic masterpiece.
I guess I've seen Raiders upwards of 20 times now, and could easily watch it that many more. I have introduced my daughters to it, & they love it almost as much as I do. I think this is one of those timeless movies - certainly it plays on many that have gone before it, but that's part of the charm. Long live Indy!