Reviews

On paper this has everything you want from a big stupid action movie. Stars who can do the violence. A plot simple enough to not get in the way of the violence. A chance to violently destroy part of a foreign country. Violent tough guy dialogue. And it does have all of that. If you wait long enough.

That's the killer with The Expendables. Having got everyone together they just hang around not doing very much for way too long as if just getting them all in the same film was enough. Which means the film relies on story, writing and dialogue, and none of those are good. Too few funny lines, too few good scenes. Even Arnie's cameo is so what? Most of the first hour is sweaty guys badly photographed in dark locations. If you stick with it you get an okay last half hour, but it's just okay, not great. It's only a bit above the straight to DVD stuff most of the cast make in their day jobs. Set your expectations way down and it is okay. Expect it to live up to the cast, and you're going to be disappointed.

Famous as the British film so bad it had to be given away for free with a newspaper, the quality of this sub-Children's Film Foundation "thriller" can be guessed from the abnormal number of 10/10 votes it gets and the large number of rave reviews from posters with no posting history and no other reviews to their name. The regulars know what this mean, the gullible might be conned. If they do dip into the waters of this one they won't last long before it drags them under. Technically inept with the boom mike getting into shot or the reflections of the crew visible it just goes on forever in a forgetful sub-DAVINCI CODE on $5 a day way. The end is just insulting but don't worry. It's not as if you'll get that far!

The press office for THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY have done a great job of convincing a gullible media and public that it's anti-English propaganda from a self-hating Englishman, which is an excellent way of luring the Celts to cinemas under false pretences. The truth is it's the most vitriolically anti-Irish film ever made. Had Ian Paisley written the script it couldn't have been more anti-Eirean. And people are sucking it up, especially IMDBers who haven't bothered to see it before flying the green.

First off, this is NOT a film about British policy. It's about what Ken Loach sees as the Irish people's cowardly betrayal of the revolution in the Irish Civil War. Loach's thesis is as simple as it is moronic. The only reason the majority voted for the treaty that divide Ireland was because he thinks they were too stupid and cowardly to see the benefits of socialism. So the only humane solution is to kill everyone who reached a democratic decision because Loach thinks the Irish people were and are simply too stupid to be trusted with the fate of THEIR own country or THEIR own destiny. Better dead than not red, eh, Ken? Oh yes, and the only reason the Free Staters won was because they were pro-British. Believe it or not, Loach even throws in a scene of pro-Treaty forces beating up poor Irish tenants on behalf of absentee English landlords! Subtle it ain't, but Ken doesn't do subtle. His message is clear – the will of the Irish people of the time was completely irrelevant and everyone, everyone at all who believes in democracy must be killed to usher in the socialist utopia that this English director demands Ireland accept against its will.

In the process, he completely disproves his supposed criticism of the invasion of Iraq running through the film – after all, if Loach believes that Socialism should be forced on the Irish people at gunpoint, how can he logically disagree with a nominally socialist British government invading Iraq and forcing then to accept a political system at gunpoint? The only difference is the system: it's okay in his eyes to kill Irish people to impose socialism, but not to kill Iraqis in the name of imposing democracy. Yet both are exactly the same – a patronising outsider justifying the deaths of innocent people to remould a nation in their ideal image.

Bottom line: Englishman Loach thinks the majority of the Irish people were ignorant children who didn't deserve to live and that Eire should never have been given independence. Very anti-British sentiments I don't think. That kind of simplistic racist anti-Irish propaganda floods the while film-making process. We get cardboard cut-out characters shouting political sound bites at each other and even, kid you not, the "God light" beams of glowing saintly lighting he throws on the anti-Treaty forces and the ugly photography he gives the pro-Treaty forces of the evil English imperialist Michael Collins (yeah, his grasp of Irish history IS that totally mixed up).

And what an awful script! Whenever anyone puts the pro-Treaty view, Loach makes sure they are a lone voice easily ridiculed and driven away by a crowd of patriots even though history tells us the majority were pro-Treaty. This is Loach's idea of being even-handed, I guess, by distorting the popular view as a minority. And what arguments. What dialogue. They can be summed up like this – "I think the Treaty and the Irish Free State is a good start.

"That's because you're a coward." "No, it is because I am evil. You can tell because I think Socialism is silly. You had better kill me out of kindness before I invade Iraq." "Right-oh then, bruv." Yes, I'm exaggerating. Paul Laverty's script is not that subtle in its contempt and bile for the Irish people. It's made worse by the pathetic performances. Even the usually excellent Cillian Murphy is no better than a six year old in a nativity play in this one. Trite and insulting racist garbage that only an old school Stalinist communist hard liner could buy into. Plus a bad movie on top of everything else. How this rubbish got the top award at Cannes is anybody's guess. Maybe they thought if they gave him an award after all these years he'd finally go away and stop bothering them.

More fantasy than history, this is just laughable.

And bad corporate product. The critics have if anything been overly kind to it simply BECAUSE it's a Michael Mann film. Over here in the UK, Empire criticised the acting, the plot and the lack of direction but then gave it four stars 'because it's Michael Mann.' A lot of other reviews are the same. But take away the brand, and you've just got a bad misfire, shoddily made, badly acted, wildly UNrealistic and which really could have been made by anyone. This is the LEAST Michael Mann film to date, just a sellout to make a fast buck. Mann ought to go back to doing films he cares about, because he's really not any good at this kind of faceless, empty product (yes, I saw it). And that's all it is. No wonder it opened so poorly.

Right from the start it was obvious that he was trying and failing to make a commercial dumbed own movie and he couldn't pull it off. He kept on trying to raise the material, but the more he tried, the more he showed up how hollow the whole thing was. The miscasting didn't help - Gong Li, much as I love her, should never have been asked to try an accent, it just killed her performance. Foxx was adequate, Farrell not. Anyone could have made this film. I really felt I was watching a bad Dominic Senna or Antoine Fuqua movie.

The biggest two problems - no plot. Mann has no interest in the plot at all. It loses interest in the mole hunt and most of the undercover plot. Nothing is really resolved, but it doesn't make any thematic point of that. It's a film that starts in the middle of a scene and then stops two hours and twenty minutes later. This wouldn't be so bad if it didn't have problem number two - virtually no characterisation. That's what drags the film out. HEAT overstayed its welcome by a good half hour, but it still had a grip of character. The characters were clichés, yes, but played as if they were true. This film just has people we don't know anything about doing things we know little about.

This may be because Mann writes himself into a corner. By beginning so far into the story, we're only really given the undercover Farrell. Huge mistake. Mann seems to think he's making a big statement about losing yourself in a false identity, but since we never see Farrell's real identity, there's nothing to lose, so no sense of loss and no empathy. That kills off his character even before Farrell does his lost puppy dog expression to show sensitivity.

You MIGHT get away with that if the other players had character, but the vague sketching of Gong Li is all you get. Jamie Foxx has no notable humanity and Naomi Harris is just there to prove he's not gay. The villains are straight out of Fred Dyer's old HUNTER TV show.

Pains me to say it, but Mann hasn't made a single decent film this century. He needs to seriously rethink what he's doing and how much he's spending.

Be objective - if anyone but Mann made this, would you SERIOUSLY think it a good movie? People are cutting him way too much slack, and his film-making is suffering because of it.

Oh, and the crappy HD video? It doesn't look realistic, it doesn't reflect the way the human eye sees in any way, it looks much more artificial than film. There's very little detail in those night scenes either, unless you call grain detail, but he could have got that on 35mm. The night excuse doesn't stack up either. Plenty of great night scenes have been shot on fast filmstock in the past. It may be quicker but it shows that no care is taken. There's no depth to the image, a lot of ghosting and artefacting. The night stuff manages to look worse than John Cassavettes SHADOWS, which was shot with available light on 16mm fifty years ago! One small saving for the balance sheet, one giant leap back for the art of movie photography.

One other huge side-effect. Because they can shoot more cheaper, you get a LOT of scenes that go on and on forever as the actors go through their tics and mannerisms. In that way it's very like bad self-indulgent Cassavettes, allowing the actors to grandstand methodstyle instead of getting down to business. That's how you end up with a two-and-a-half hour movie where you never even get a resolution to the whole reason they go undercover. It just gets in the way of the story.

If you must see it, wait for video or DVD where the problems won't be blown up to giant size.

I'm willing to lay cash on BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN being regarded as the MAKING LOVE of its day in a decade or twos time. Just like that Harry Hamlin turkey, it may be an important historical landmark but it's really not much of a film. It's not even especially daring, going out of its way not to offend the prejudices of the potential straight ticketbuyers. There's definitely nothing to frighten the horses here.

What you get is a rather laboured and overlong Hallmark TV movie instead. Tasteful, distant and lacking in passion but professionally made, it's hard to see what all the fuss is about from a European view. I suspect that people in the USA are embracing it like a banner without noticing the shonky stitching, using its box-office success to affirm their identity in a time when their government holds them in contempt. If so, any film would have done just as well, even Oliver Stone's much more daring Alexander, which did a lot more to break gay stereotypes than this does.

The way that any criticism of the film is met with cries of homophobia is worryingly symptomatic of a wider insecurity that has nothing to do with the film's strengths or weaknesses. And there are a LOT of weaknesses here. Some bad performances from Heath mumblemumblemumble Ledger and Randy show-me-the-money Quaid, a hopeless copycat score, direction that plays more like disinterest than sensitivity and a script that goes on hitting the same two points over the head forever chief offenders. Worse is some of the dialogue, that sounds like it was lifted straight from a Jeff Stryker prison porno. I almost expected to hear the immortal "I'm not gay" "You are now" exchange that's such a mainstay of gay porn!!!

Not a turkey, but more TVM than Trojan Horse. Come back, Andy Warhol, all is forgiven.

First off, this IS a fun film and Brosnan IS entertaining in it. But at the end of the day, it's not an especially good one or even that memorable. In fact, it's every other hit-man with crisis of conscience movie ever made with a splash of LOST IN TRANSLATION liven up with a much louder and larger version of Brosnan's much better character and much better performance in THE TAILOR OF PANAMA. You'll recognise the ticks and tricks, like the way he overemphasises a woman's name or overdoes the seediness to show he's the anti-Bond here. And that's ultimately why the film seems so much less walking to the car than it does when you're watching the end credits. It's Brosnan doing his party piece again, which is fun but familiar. Of the two, I'd go for PANAMA every time, because that has more going for it. But this is a pleasant enough diversion that almost gives showing off a good name.

This was part of Channel 4's Lost Generation First World War season, and it was a huge mistake to show this so soon after their own very good drama-doc about the Somme. It was a mistake to show it at all. Novelist William Boyd is a terrible film director and screenwriter who has no real grip on his subject. Instead of taking a fresh look at the run up to the battle, he uses every old cliché you've seen before in the lips of every old stereotype you've seen before. Most of the cast are so bad I've forgotten their names. Only Daniel Craig and Julian Rhind Tutt come out with any credit. Very badly photographed too, with the trench clearly an interior and far too clean. Just terrible. Channel 4 should have shown something like ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, which hasn't been on telly in years.

Every now and then, a firefight breaks out on one of the boards about this film. Amid the pomposity of the latest, DFC-2 thoughtfully wrote: "This is one film, perhaps because of its director and precarious early history, that has taken on a halo and the requisite critical support to nullify any criticism. The only question is: Is it truly that much better or different or has hyperbole and elaborate rationalisation been canonised as truth?" Which is the real heart of the issue when it comes to why I found myself taking against this film so violently.

For many people it's not enough to like the film - the dissenters have to be proved wrong. Objective opinion isn't allowed. Only acceptance of a proscribed opinion is acceptable. Anything less is a fault not of the film or a difference in personal taste but of the character of the viewer. I was involved in one dispute over on European Film about this a couple of years ago, dismissed as one of the 'army of knuckle-dragging Nantherthal British morons' that poster Paul Panzer was so fond of racially berating because it was impossible for him to accept anyone else's opinion of the film as being as valid as his own. The reason for the anti-British sentiments was, I think, because it had just been reissued in the UK and done very, very badly at the box-office. Unlike other posters, he didn't claim my fellow soldiers were unable to understand it but that we had not seen it at all because no-one who saw it could not like it.

I recently posted on a thread about overrated films, and listed this as one of the two worst films I've ever seen (BREATHLESS was the other, but that's another story). I just thought it was a bad film, plain and simple, more CARRY ON UP THE Château than high art. There are hundreds of worse films, but unlike RULES, no-one is claiming THE WINTER WARRIOR or Timbo Hines' WAR OF THE WORLDS are all-time greats, so the fall from expectation to reality isn't so hard. Thing is, would I have had such a low opinion of the film if it weren't for the following factors?

1. The film's reputation as one of the five greatest films of all time. I've never found any reason to agree with this. It just creates a gulf of disappointment when it just turns out to be a silly bedtime farce. I think LA GRAND ILLUSION suffers from the same problem, although its a much better film, BTW. It's as over-hyped as any summer blockbuster popcorn flick.

2. The arrogance of many of its defenders. Now I DON'T mean all the posters here who like the film. Some of them have been very reasonable about it, some do see that people have their reasons for disliking it. But there's still the stink that this is a film you HAVE to like to be taken seriously.

3. The insecurity of many of its defenders. Again, this does not apply to all the posters here. But there is a desperate need to cling to the supremacy of one set opinion as a mark of, to paraphrase CFK, being the 'right kind of person/film buff.' The phrase Emperor's New Clothes ring any bells?

4. Snobbery towards the initial audience. The whole thing about audiences of the day 'getting it wrong' or not understanding the film. Who says they didn't? Maybe they understood it too well, and THAT's why it flopped? Maybe they too found it's artificiality boring, it's acting bad, it's plot plain silly.

5. Reading too much into the history. We keep on getting parallels to Nazi Germany and the assumption it's a comment on fascism and indifference. I don't buy that for one second. Schumacher isn't some proto-Nazi. He's a very French figure of ridicule. He's not even German but one of those Alsatian Franco-Germans whose nationality changes with the borders after each new war. What he represents is the kind of old fashioned moral puritanism that later found its self-flagellating expression in the Vichy government and its moral renewal/hypocrisy. He's not a prophecy but a reflection of a state of mind the French flit to and fro between over the years as the wind changes direction. You'll find the same thing in America with the Moral Majority.

This is a film that needs to be seen with low expectations and an open mind. The more people insist on its undeniable greatness, the worse it looks, the more it disappoints.

Bottom line, to me the film is just another country house sex comedy. It's just the accident of history that has seen its importance blown out of all proportion as people try to explain away its failure and create a myth that the film cannot live up to for many people. And a lot of people on that long-forgotten firefight disliked the film just as a lot liked it. It divides opinions, which is one thing in its favour. But I have found that some of the people it appeals to are the very kind of narrow-minded self-important snobs obsessed with invisible rules that the film takes the p*ss out of so amateurishly. The best joke in the film is that it appeals to EXACTLY the kind of people it is attacking!

And that's being kind. This is the worst garbage since 'The Winter Warrior,' and in some ways worse because it's based on a great book that should have made a great film. But that would assume it was made by a director with talent instead of a deluded and frankly disturbingly obnoxious individual out to con audiences with three hours of amateur camcorder incompetence. You've seen better production values on 'You've Been Framed' or 'America's Funniest Home Videos.' Better acting too.

Don't make the mistake of thinking this is funny. There are a few, very, very few unintentional laughs, but mostly it's a despicable attempt by despicable people to steal your money. They truly don't deserve it. The only thing these frauds deserve is your contempt.

Seeing this turn up on digital last night heralding a season of classic ghost stories, good, I thought, just the thing for Christmas. The M.R. James doc on before it built up the story and this TV show in particular. This is going to be good, I thought. But watching it was not just like getting a terrible Christmas present but finding that it's been paid for with your credit card. I just watched it with sinking disbelief, waiting for it to get started, waiting, waiting, waiting - and then it was over.

The plot was promising: a pompous ass finds an old whistle with an inscription on it and blows it and finds himself plagued by bad dreams that turn out not to be dreams. But they're so ridiculously done that after sitting through 30 minutes of arty boredom to get to the 13 minutes of plot you just feel conned. The biggest mystery is why people think it's such a masterpiece. Maybe it was the fact that the show was unavailable for so long that it got built up in people's minds as this classic bit of British telly, but in the cold light of day it reveals itself to be utter tripe.

The US reviews have been really terrible and the IMDb user rating is lower than KING ARTHUR, so I'm wondering if Europe has got a different cut, because the film I saw was excellent. Problems, yes, like Anthony Hopkins and Val Kilmer hamming away and Angeline doing a very odd accent. Farrell's not bad even though he doesn't have enough small moments to work with to shade the role: after Clive Owen's disgracefully bad performance in KING ARTHUR it's amazing that it's Farrell the critics are laughing at.

You don't get involved in the characters as much as you should, but its an amazing flick, a real movie. It feels like it's been done for real not by a computer by someone as mad and vainglorious as Alexander himself. Not a total success, but the 80% that hits the target is really intelligent and ambitious and is worth more than a lot of pictures that work better, if you know what I mean.

I think the reason Hollywood is so dumbed down now is when someone tries to do something different on a big scale like Alexander, HEAVEN'S GATE, REDS, ONCE UPON A TIME IN America, THE RIGHT STUFF or films like that is that the American critics who are always complaining about dumb audiences and filmmakers can't get them and tear them a new *beep*hole killing them off at the box-office. Certainly seems to be the case with Alexander. Not the most successful flick I've seen this year but easily one of the best.

You'll sleep while it's on

As you might guess, I'm not Clive Owen's biggest fan, having suffered through his woodenly monotonous performances, but I forced myself to see this because Mike Hodges has made some good films in the past (as well as cack like MORONS FROM OUTER SPACE). Sadly, this manages to be even worse than MORONS, a numbingly tedious movie where the semi-comatose leads are at least three hours behind the audience in guessing the plot. The shock revelation was obvious from the start and Hodges never makes you interested in getting there. He's not helped by his cast. They're either overacting like McDowell or Meyers or totally incapable of showing signs of life, like Rampling and Owen. Even before it was invented Rampling has always looked like she's had too much botox, but inexperienced filmgoers might think she'd OD'd here she's so stiff. Her expression doesn't change from its deathmask once. Owen is more hopeless than usual, shuffling through like a zombie from a cheap George Romero ripoff. He still can't act and his vocal performance is still like a bored photocopier salesman demonstrating some clapped out machine with one eye on the clock for the pub's opening.

Contrary to other posters, it's not thoughtful or atmospheric. The plot is obvious, the characters infantile. There's no depth, no ideas, just a dragging running time to fill out. And it is achingly slow in the doing it. From a first-timer this picture would have been laughed out of the office at script stage it's so empty and predictable.

British audiences shunned the film (as they did CROUPIER) but Americans might just mistake his accent for a performance. But for the rest of us, it's another pitiful performance in the dullest British gangster film of the past twenty years. That's quite an achievement, but it's the film's only one.

If you really want to see a good new British revenge movie, check out Dead Man's Shoes instead - that really is the business. This is just a photocopy of a photocopy.

On behalf of the Scottish people, I would like to apologise to any unwary travelers who stumble upon this ruin of a film. We've produced some movie great talent - Alexander MacKendrick, Sean Connery, Robert Carlyle, Nigel Kneale, Alan Sharp to name a few - so don't judge us on this one. Please.

It's really terrible. There's no easy way to say it. I'll try to be positive and say that it's a Scottish film that's not about drugs and it's a shot on video film that doesn't want to be BLAIR WITCH. Trouble is it seems to want to be GLADIATOR, or maybe THE VIKING QUEEN but it's like watching a kid's first home movie. From a ten year old you'd be proud, but from grown-ups this really is painful to watch. Very painful. 0/10 - and that's being generous to a tee.

This is nearly the best Roman epic and the best Arthur film, but it's let down very badly by the horrible casting. Clive Owen is at his very worst here, with his patented flat vocal delivery - like a bored photocopier salesman demonstrating a clapped out machine with one eye on the clock for the pubs opening - working overtime here to suck the life out of every scene he's in. The part is pretty well written, but he's hopelessly out of his depth with dialogue. Particularly painful are his prayer and his rallying the troops, where he just looks bored stiff and doesn't even try. And what's with the look of utter contempt he gives Guinevere in the wedding scene? It's a terrible performance.

Unfortunately it's matched by the dreaded Keira Knightley, who is equally bad but in different ways. Her Hollywood career is a bit of a mystery: there are much prettier lasses and better actresses out there and she has no screen presence. She struggles badly with the lines, delivering them in a flat Rodean (a posh English school) accent that is oh so very wrong for a Scottish warrior queen. And when she gets bloody in the battle scenes, she just looks ridiculous, like she'd tried putting her lipstick on in turbulence. The fact that she's so anorexic she looks like a small child could knock her down just by blowing softly on her just makes her action-gal act that much more of a bad joke.

Together this terrible twosome sabotage the good work of director and supporting cast whenever they dominate the screen. Luckily the battles and the rest of the knights DO compensate and somehow despite the black hole at the heart of the film the telling sweeps you along. But with proper actors instead of a couple of shop window dummies this could have been a contender. Shame.

Seeing The Bourne Supremacy today with its controversial can't-make-out-a-bloody-thing shaky camera work that deliberately obscures the action, I was reminded of 2001. What would happen if those apes found a movie camera instead of a bone? Would the results look just like The Bourne Supremacy?

Well, no, I think the monkeys would make a better fist of it. But I definitely got the impression that Monkey Boy didn't understand the first thing about movie-making or storytelling. Maybe a little bit more respect for the audience might be in order next time, Mr Greengrass. If we wanted to see nothing but blurs, we'd spin around in circles until we made ourselves dizzy, not waste £6.50 on an out of focus movie. It ain't art and it ain't funny, it's just a rip-off.

Grengrass has been getting away with this shoddy style for years in bad TV shows and dramas and seems unable to understand a) just how much more irritating it is when magnified 100 times on a movie screen; and b) that the more you use it, the less effective it becomes. It's certainly not realistic - in case he hasn't noticed, people's eyes adjust focus naturally, so the constant needless shifts of focus were just moronic and totally unjustifiable - and it really did feel that the whole movie had been shot by an epileptic monkey on roller skates. I feel sorry for Damon and the stunt team who saw all the hard work they put in that was wasted by the inept, amateur night direction. I really felt cheated out of £6.50. And the worst of it is that Monkey Boy Greengrass will probably get to ruin more movies in the future now. One thing - I know better than to waste my money on any of them now. This was a good movie ruined by a director with contempt for his collaborators and the the audience. Shameful.

Cette Femme La suffers all the problems of the French policier at its most pretentious. The plot is thin and deliberately obscure, the mood one-note and tedious and the performances so minimal you're tempted to check the actors for a pulse. There's no ebb and flow to the film, no sense of momentum, just a dreary emptiness.

Josiane Balasko's investigation into a suicide is supposed to set her on the road to living life again after her son's death, but the film just renders her a blank zombified presence who commands neither sympathy nor interest. The ending is rather absurd to put it mildly, and it's not worth the effort.

Poor - 3/10.

I love Joseph Conrad but the films never seem to work. "The Duellists" was too thin, "The Secret Agent" terrible. "Lord Jim"s the best of a bad bunch so far.

This doesn't up the score much, but it's an honest try. The locations are good and it has the feel of the time and place. Casting is arse over face, with pudgy Sam Neill as the novel's skeletal Mr Jones (hammy, mannered, ineffective) and Willem Dafoe as the novel's pudgy Heyst (very good indeed). Irene Jacob's a blank sheet, but at least she's better here than in "U.S. Marshalls." Best of the bunch is Rufus Sewell, who has Jones' 'private secretary' to perfection, and he's an actor I've no time for in anything else.

Biggest drawback is the narration. Bill Patterson may be great, but he barely keeps his trap shut for more than two minutes. He's always telling us back story, what Heyst thinks, what Schomberg thinks. It's as if Mark Peploe can't let go of the novel or as if the producers didn't think the audience would get it. Considering it sat on the shelf for years, probably the last.

The end is under effective because you never get any feel that the lovers bring each other to life. Dafoe does well, but Jacob is like Isabelle Adjani at her weakest here, doing too little. Good stuff along the way, and Neill does redeem himself with the great line "We are the world, Mr Heyst, come to pay you a visit." Now that's Conrad.