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Drat1964
Reviews
Gold Diggers (2023)
Just not funny
Certainly this is not meant to be taken seriously (as another reviewer stated) and that's fine, comedy has a long history of poking fun at history or overlaying modern values onto historical periods. Standouts at doing this are shows like Blackadder, Blazing saddles or some of the Carry On movies. Sadly Gold Diggers just isn't funny. Some reviews here stated it was cheap with poor sets, Blackadder could said to be the same each series had only a couple of small sets yet it is still fondly remembered and re-broadcast 30 years later. The ABC is a government funded network, known to not be that interested in ratings in the way commercial networks are, giving many shows that didn't rate that well 2-3 seasons, yet they dropped Gold Diggers after just 8 episodes.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)
A bit of a downer.
The franchise has had it's ups and downs, Raiders set a very high bar, but Temple of Doom pushed the ick factor a bit to far and suffered for it and the female lead was also pretty annoying, Last Crusade recovered more of the feel of the first film, bring back Sullah and new characters of Henry Jones and Marcus Brody which added considerably to the film. Sadly there was such a long gap to the next film that Denholm Elliott had died and Sean Connery had retired. Then we get Crystal Skull which at it's base was a pretty good film dragged down by the very annoying Shia LaBeouf earning the film the lowest IMDB rating of the series. Then we get to Dial of Destiny, this seems to take the ageing element of Crystal Skull and push it to the max. We start with a depressed Indy about to retire and not happy about it there's a by the books car chase that feels a lot like the one in Crystal Skull and the intro of a new character Helena who is from the start almost as annoying as Shia LaBoeuf. There is a quite good flash back scene showing a de-aged Indiana. The villain Dr Voller is quite good but as the the film moves on it seems to lose steam. Antonio Banderas is introduced as a new character and then killed off in short order.
Main characters from the series Marion and Sallah are reduced to little more than bit parts, sad in what is claimed to be the last film in the series. Overall a bit to depressing and while there will be the usual reviews claiming haters, you can't get round the fact this film was a flop at the box office, Disney is said to have lost 134 million on it.
The claim this is the last film, is down to statements by Harrison Ford and Stephen Speilburg, but Disney own the rights, even with the flop of Dial I can't see them ending a franchise they have just spent a fortune to acquire.
Into Death Valley with Nick Knowles: Episode #1.2 (2023)
Cool?
A very good documentary on Death Valley with some excellent footage of the desert itself and the plants and animals that live there. Also covering a good deal of the history of the region and places to visit like furnace creek, an abandoned gold mining town, a golf course and even an opera house. It also shows some of the local jobs like snake handler and date palm farming.
At around 35 min these's a bit of a goof when the host is talking about other gold mining towns that disappeared when their gold ran out Skidoo, Leadfield, Ballarat.
Ballarat is a city in Victoria, Australia, it didn't disappear it now has a population of almost 120 thousand people.
Battle of Britain (1969)
Excellent, but!
One of the better late 60's WWII movies, with a who's who of UK actors of the time gives an excellent recounting of the actual Battle of Britain with a fairly even handed look at the events from both the British and German side. Some of the best aerial battles ever put on film using (mostly) real aircraft of the period sourced from the Spanish airforce and private collections. The story covers things like the belated use of Polish (and other countries) pilots. Has a couple of side stories involving a pilot who loses his family (Ian McShane) and a WAAF officer )Susannah York) who gives a performance that could only be described as ditzy, not helped by her mop hairstyle from the late 60's not the early 40's. Which is often seen escaping under the front of her cap, something that would not have been allowed under the WAAF dress code of the time. Apart from this, a very good movie.
UFO: Sub-Smash (1970)
Tries hard to build the drama!
Clearly what is often referred to as a 'bottle show', set mostly on one set. Tries to build the drama after their sub is damaged by a UFO and sinks to the bottom with 5 crew members and with only two ways out, a torpedo tube exit (that doesn't actually work) and an escape hatch that takes 90 minutes to reset after each use. To add insult to injury 'Straker' tells 'Nina' the torpedo tube is much easier than the escape hatch, we then see poor Nina struggle to crawl along the very long torpedo tube, while the crewman using the escape hatch simply steps in, has a little trouble turning the release handle and then is out. The problem with all this is the escape hatch is so large you could easily fit 2-3 people in it at a time. The 90 minute wait to empty the escape hatch of water also doesn't make sense as it would make much more sense to simply open the inner hatch once the outer hatch is closed and let the water from the escape hatch into the much much larger inner cabin (they would only have to do this once), instead of waiting 90 minutes, had they done this all 5 crew could have been out in just 2 tries and less than 5 minutes.
Stargate SG-1: Avalon: Part 1 (2005)
Should have ended on a high in season 8
First off, really liked SG1 seasons 1-7 but it went down hill a bit in season 8 then off a cliff in season 9, there where a few good episodes to be fair. But over all, having watched the series through, including the commentaries, it's obvious Richard Dean Anderson grew tired of the show from around season 5 and wanted to go off and do other things, appearing less and less often as the producers used work arounds to cover his absences. I had started to find the very vague hints at a relationship between Carter and O'Neil just annoying and childish (hints that continued on through seasons 9-10 and even into Atlantis). Then there's the two new characters both from Farscape, first the fairly cardboard Cameron Michell, who in the SG1 universe is a fighter pilot who is suddenly offered a role as a leader of a completely different military unit that does field combat and ranger like work without any sort of training for that work. Then there's Valda, a character who is from the start annoying and dishonest, yet they keep letting her get away with that and let her join the team (perhaps the should have renamed the show FarGate or SGscape, there's even a rather silly scene where the cast of SG1 play a version of Farscape) The series 8 onwards main villains are also just to similar to the original villains the Goa'uld i.e yet another set of aliens who are all powerful and pretending to be gods, they couldn't come up with something a little more original. I'm an atheist, but even I found the religious theme's beating me over head. SG1 really should have ended at the end of season 8, in that scene where the original team all gather at O'Neils cabin to go fishing, with Goa'uld defeated and a strong hint Carter and O'Neil where together (finally)
Stargate: Atlantis: First Contact (2008)
Whoops!
Just watched this after getting hold of the DVD box set, liked the premise but the end seems to have not been thought out, with the destruction of the entire gate room, which seemed to melt the Atlantian tech consoles but rather oddly left several earth made notebook computers not only intact but still working. There also seems to be a glaring plot problem with doing this, they have already established they can replace a gate, by inserting another gate from somewhere else, but how can they replace all the other Atlantian tech in the gate room including the console that controls the gate itself or the Atlantian long range sensor controls they seem to use quite a lot, yet it's all back to normal when it next appears 2 episodes later.
Stargate: Atlantis: The Lost Tribe (2008)
What ever happened to Colonel Caldwell
What was a fairly good two parter, seems to lose steam in the second part, the new villains in the steam punk outfits make a good entrance in the first part, with a pretty good smash and grab on Atlantis, to take the Attero device. Only in the second part to have several of their supposedly very advanced ships, taken out by a single junkyard ship, held together by hose pipe. Then there's Colonel Caldwell, captain of the Daedalus and a main recurring character, he features in the first part up to the point where the Wrath take over the ship, he is stunned with the rest of the bridge crew but in second part he is neither seen or mentioned again, after the crew retake the ship, Mr Wolsey (a civilian) seems to be in charge of Daedalus (a military vessel) this seems a rather glaring whole in the story, if the actor was not available it would have been pretty easy to write in some injury or other, but to simply ignore his presence is just bad writing.
We Interrupt This Broadcast (2023)
Oh for the good old days
Australian and British TV has produced many good, well remembered sketch comedy shows over the years like Fast Forward, The Big Gig, Full Frontal, Benny Hill, French & Saunders, Not the nine o'clock news etc.
In more recent years there have been not very funny efforts like Kinne and Get Krackin, which thankfully disappeared pretty quickly.
You'd think it should be easy to make some quite good comedy sendups of lame pretentious reality shows like Survivor, Master Chef or MAFS, sadly WITB fails at this almost completely I don't think I laughed once during the entire show. Comedy is about pushing the envelope and trying new things, neither of which WITB tries to do. Old shows like D-Gen did this and launched the careers of quite few comedians who went on to feature in many other shows over the years.
According to the advertising this show has something like 25 writers yet for that it just isn't funny.
Forbidden History: Secret Life of Moses (2020)
Oh Dear!
Seems to lurch from one absurd theory to the next.
An oceanographer talks about the eruption of the super volcano at Santorini with a linked tsunami as a possible cause of the sea dropping (he discounts this theory) for the parting of the Red Sea. The problem is Santorini is in the Mediterranean to get to the Red Sea you have to cross 140km of dry land He then goes on to claim a possible cause for the parting of the Red Sea as a tidal effect at the north end which Moses knew about and the Egyptians didn't, given the Egyptians carried out trade and war across this entire area for centuries, it's absurd to claim they would not know about the tides.
The documentary then wanders off into talk of magic citing the 6th & 7th Books of Moses, which have no historic references at all, appearing out of nowhere in Germany in the 1850's.
Journey Through Albania (2021)
Waste of time!
There are the elements of what could have been a good documentary, ruined by a host who seems to be some sort of self interested influencer, correcting experts she is talking to or making um's & arh's while they are answering questions. Some quite good scenic shots of the country are offset by interview footage where the camera moves around pointlessly often showing the mic boom or sound guy, moving completely around the host and the person being interviewed, although in hindsight it may have been the cameraman trying to distract from the host's rather annoying interview style. In the episode I watched the host stated several times that a particular Albanian historical leader was short like her, she puts this to a local historian who says no he was actually quite tall, which she choose's not to believe. There also seems to be some confusion over when this was made, it's marked here as 2022, but the episode I saw was date stamped 2019. Overall it had the feel of something made for Youtube or a blog rather than a real TV show.
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)
Not a great version of the legend
King Arthur as a story has been around since at least the 1100 hundred's and may (or may not) be loosly based on someone who lived around the 6th century.
As the various movies go, this is problay one of the worst, possibly why it bombed at the box office, there seems to have been a solid effort to overdo everything here, from the size of the elephants (which dwarf even the super sized elephants from Lord of the Rings) to the absurd hyper activity of using Excalibur. Until I saw this version, I had thought no version of the Arthur story could get worse than the awful "First Knight" where American Richard Gere, doesn't even try to do an English accent, just plays it as an American, I was wrong!
The original King Arthur story is a good one, that has survived for almost 1000 years, if someone just did that story without stupid over the top visual effects, that would be a pretty good movie. The 80's 'Excalibur', certainly had quite a few problems (like the 15th century armor, in a story that is traditionally set around the 6th or 7th century) but was a far better telling of the story than this version.
Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021)
O.K. But not markedly better than the first version
For a while D. C. movies have tried to imitate the Marvel style of action and humor and it never quite worked (they where better back in the days of the Dark Knight and the first Henry Cavill Superman, which showed when the D. C. universe fell in a heap after the first version of Justice league and the rather weak Wonder Woman 1984 after the quite good first Wonder Woman. This also lead to Superman (Henry Cavill) being let go, odd given he is probably the best Superman to date.
The first version of Justice League was a pretty average film and frankly I see little change in this new extended version, putting some extra shiny spikes on Steppenwolf or changing Supermans suit from red & blue to black or tweaking the look of cyborgs digital costume is not really an improvent to the flaws of the original movie nor is extending it out to 4 hours. The rather absurd use of an old fashioned box format to "preserve the directors artistic integrity" is pointless unless that artistic integrity, means watching it on a TV from the 1980's. I really can't see the reason for all the 10 ratings this is getting, it is pretty clearly a vanity project for the director whose only aim seems to be to change every little thing he can from the Joss Whedon version. To come up with a movie that is not that different but twice as long. While first the version of Justice League was not great, I actually prefer it, to the new mega long version.
Dune (2021)
Was always going to be difficult to turn into a movie!
I'd start by saying, I read the book many times through my teens (almost 40 years ago) and loved its complexity and characters. It has been said, almost since the book was a hit back in the 60's, that it would be impossible to make into a movie. This is the 3rd attempt (4th if you count the failed attempt) to bring it to screens. In order of their release, hated the 84' version with dodgy effects, the ornithopter's look more like washing machines, the personal shields looked like something from Minecraft, it had a similar feel to that other (over the top) DeLarentus effort 'Flash Gordon'. Then you have the TV mini series, while it clearly a much lower budget which shows in some of the effects, but still much better version, truer to the book than the 84' version
But for the current movie I have mixed feelings, it certainly has great effects from worms to ornithopter's to the look of Dune itself. Most the actors seemed well cast, but did find a few odd choices, the main one being Paul Atredies, he seems a bit weak for someone who going to lead a galactic revolt. Then you have Zendaya, saw her in the latest Spider-Man movies and thought she was not a very good actress, I see nothing in Dune to change that opinion although the character she plays seems to have been been expanded (from the book) why?. Then you have Jason Momoa who seems to have made a career out of playing "Jason Momoa" from stargate Atlantis to Aquaman to Conan and now Dune. The last grumble would be Stilgar, not sure why the leader of a closed off society of Fremen would have a thick and difficult to understand Spanish accent, while his followers all have pretty vanilla English accents.
The movie itself does (as quite few reviews have said) seem to drag, a number of recent movies have gone with the multi movie idea from Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit. But where they put some effort into creating cliff hanger endings to the middle parts, Dune part I just seems to stop. I'll certainly watch part II, but hope it is an improvement on part I, in terms of pacing and script. On finding out the director's previous efforts include Arrival and Blade Runner 2049, I could certainly see the link as both of these seemed similar, a good deal of promise but just seemed to slow and laboured getting to their points.
Not really part of a review, but I did find the Oscar speech of the cinematographer funny, when he said he thought the director did a good thing, going with an unknown cast, which may come as quite a surprise to well known actors like Oscar Isaac, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Charlotte Rampling and Javier Bardem.
The Day We Walked on the Moon (2019)
Not to bad, but it's been done before
Not a bad documentary but showing how long ago this was, as we now are seeing the sons of some of the astronauts, rather than the astronauts themselves. The material has been covered in many other documentaries over the years, my favourite remains from the Earth to the Moon. Although did find the narration a little odd, it's Mark Strong, an English actor, for some reason doing an American accent. If they wanted an American accent there are any number of good Americans who could have done this or just have Strong do it in his own English accent, I just found Strong doing a fake accent distracting and annoying.
Hunting Hitler (2015)
Utter rubbish
The premise makes no sense at all, if the FBI knew he was still alive and living in Argentina (as the show suggests) they would have gone after him, you only have to look at the effort put into the Nuremberg trials to see how much they wanted to bring all the Naxi's to justice and Hitler (as leader) would have been the most wanted of all, they would have gone after him, no matter where he was. The show of course never presents any real evidence it's all based on assumptions, which the hosts leap to with repeated consistency. While the actual evidence that Hitler shoot himself, is ignored as is the multiple reports of witnesses is also that he shoot himself. Hitler's own psychology suggests he was not the type to runaway and hide, his own last comments suggest someone who could not face his defeat or that he would want to live in a bunker hiding in Argentina
While the history channel can do very good documentaries, they also seem to produce rubbish like this, things like "ancient aliens" use the same logic leaps and assumptions, when the who and the how of who built meso American structures has been well explained by main stream science and no "aliens" where required.
As for Hitler, the actual story that he shoot himself as his wife took poison and then their bodies where burned, remains the main view of what happened to him, and nothing in this nonsense series really presents any solid evidence that alters that, even history channel cancelled this show.
Avengers: Endgame (2019)
Plot holes galor
As others have said time travel is always a cop out, but there seem to be some major problems with it's use here, first is the fates of black widow and gamora, we are told (by the writer in the bluray commentary) that black widow can't be brought back because the fate of obtaining the soul stone can't be undone, yet gamora seems to have undone here fate from the same choice. The small point that if gamora never made the choice due to the time travel, then in fact none of the events in the previous could never have happened as Thanos would have been one stone short seems to be ignored.
Then you have Captain America's fate, he time travels back and lives out his days as agents Carters secret husband, cool. Unfortunately this then means that within the MCU universe He also has a reactionship with agent 13, technically his own great niece, whoops.
The Expendables 3 (2014)
Don't bother
Will probably be remembered as the film that killed the franchise, there was a 2 year gap between each of the first 3, but 3 is now 5 years ago, a 4th is supposed to be in development but it looks doubtful. Characters like Rhonda Rousey who simply can't act doesn't help much, have never really understood the appeal of Jason Stratham he seems to be the same character in every movie he has ever been in. The only saving grace here is Mel Gibson who plays a good bad guy, and goes some way to resurrecting his career after some recent problems, Jet Li drops in for a couple of minutes and not really sure why Harrison Ford did this at all
Evolution (2001)
A wasted premise
There was a basic good idea here but it seems to get lost in an attempt to be funny which it often fails at, the effects are pretty good but the cast don't seem to have much chemistry. Some quite good actors are wasted in the minor parts Julianne Moore does her best. Seann William Scott just seems to be playing the same character he has played in all his movies. Ivan Reitman has made some excellent movies but this isn't one of them.
Pacific Heat (2016)
Just doesn't work
To start, have to say I am a fan of the creators of the show and their past work like 'the panel' and 'front-line' but have to say Pacific Heat just isn't funny. Lots of denial in other comments about comparing this to Archer, yet every review I've seen make the connection. I have to say before seeing those when this show appeared recently on free to air TV the first thing I thought was this is a pale clone of Archer and I've seen nothing that changes my mind. While I'm not a big fan of Archer if it was a choice between the two I would watch Archer.
Whose Line Is It Anyway? Australia (2016)
Really awful
Liked the US "Drew Cary" version which could be quite funny, this rather sad reinterpretation just didn't work and seems to have disappeared with no sign of a second season, this had the same sort of feel as "The Slide Show" another failed comedy? show that didn't really work. Saw several eps of Who's line is it and found nothing at all funny, even the usually very good Cal Wilson was wasted in this rubbish.