jmvscotland's Reviews

The Last Repair Shop (2023)

9/10

22 March 2024

I'm sometimes amazed at the movies that win top awards at the Oscars each year. I'm thinking here, for example, of "Birdman" and "The Shape Of Water", both of which I thought were terrible, a view evidently shared by many others.

But, in fairness to the Academy, sometimes they get it just so right. And here, with "The Last Repair Shop", we have the very best example. My wife and I watched it last night, just a few days after the 2024 Oscars were awarded, and we were just blown away by the quality of this short documentary.

The several people who work in the instrument repair shop should touch everyone's heart. They are just the best people in the world and rightly deserve to be honoured here in this magnificent short film. The personal stories of their life struggles are inspiring and touching, as is their dedication to the work that they very obviously love.

This film is one that I could easily watch again and again. Any time I might be feeling low or when the modern world just seems too insane and overwhelming.

8.5 from me. Fantastic.

JMVSCOTLAND.

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The Zone of Interest (2023)

7/10

Interesting but quietly boring

11 March 2024

I get it. Honestly I do.

This is the other side of Auschwitz-Birkenau. The less inhuman side where good German people lived, only a few short steps away from the monstrous reality for millions of the doomed.

I can very well understand why this movie won the award for best sound at this year's Oscars but I'm a little less understanding of the award for Best International Feature Film. Certainly the droning vocal sort of sound that was employed a few times during the movie's 104 minutes was effective in conveying a sense of the menace of the place where the Höss family lived, so very close to barbarity but in a world quite separate.

Having said all that, I can't quite escape the conclusion that this was a movie which was so slow-cooking that it never really amounted to too much at all. I was really not engaged very well.

Of course another movie of the nature of "Sophie's Choice" or "Schindler's List" was not really needed at this time. But, all the same, those two movies and some others of a similar kind might have worked better than "The Zone Of Interest". A kind of hybrid would have worked better, at least for me.

This is not a bad movie at all, lovely to look at, very well acted and with that terrific sound effect thing, it was quite menacing.

My score is actually 6.8/10 but I rated it 7/10 as IMDb doesn't provide for fractional ratings.

JMVSCOTLAND.

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Homeland (2011–2020)

7/10

EXCELLENT BUT SOMEWHAT UNBELIEVABLE

26 January 2024

My wife and I are now watching "Homeland" for the second time.

While it is an excellent series in many ways, I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking that where the excellence stops, the incredulity begins.

I think in particular that Claire Danes is truly terrific in the role of the main character, Carrie Mathison. I speak here as someone who has been diagnosed as bipolar type 2, thankfully not a severe hindrance to my life and my relationships; at least that's the way I see it. It would surprise me very much if Claire Danes is not in real life also a bipolar sufferer. Her portrayal is clearly of someone who is very seriously affected by bipolar disorder, and probably Type one with schizoid and paranoic tendencies as well. Either she is seriously bipolar herself in reality or she has been expertly coached by those who are able to present a profile of such a person. In shorty, Claire Danes' portrayal of someone suffering from very serious psychiatric problems is nothing short of astonishing.

But, here is where the problems for the series begin with me at least.

I think it was in either season 1 or season 2 that it became known to the CIA that Carrie was seriously mentally ill. She was thrown out of the agency as a result. Carrie had done her very best to hide her illness but it had to come out. There is no doubt at all that anyone suffering from such a serious condition would be seen as a security risk and would never either be recruited or be allowed to continue in the CIA after such an illness became known.

How then is it possible that she could subsequently have been reinstated and promoted to the rank of Station Chief while all the time showing every sign of being unstable and very much a loose cannon to all those around her? No, of course it's not possible.

She constantly goes off her medications (as those who suffer mental illness commonly do as soon as they start to feel better) and, as a result, soon becomes seriously manic and sometimes depressed, presenting a constant danger not only to herself but to all of those around her. She is sometimes coherent and occasionally has brilliant insights but the fact is that she is far from being well enough to occupy any position of importance within the CIA.

I don't believe that I have given anything away here as far as the plot is concerned and therefore run foul of the spoilers policy. My feelings are in relation to the series as a whole and about the behavior of only one of the main characters.

Homeland is really an excellent series but I have to say that I do have major problems with the behavior of Carrie Mathison, not because she is erratic and clearly lives on some other planet but rather because of the improbability of her occupying any position within the CIA that requires, above all else, rational thought and sound judgment.

Jmvscotland.

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The Days (2023)

4/10

A 100 HOUR DISASTER PLAYED OUT IN REAL TIME

9 December 2023

My wife and I recently watched this series on Netflix.

Initially interesting and involving, what eventually played out here in "The Days" was numbingly boring. It appeared that every recorded piece of dialogue, every failure to make a decision, everything that went through the mind of anyone involved in trying to manage what happened, every single thing recorded anywhere about Fukushima Daiichi was given airtime in this Netflix series.

The result was a series which, while at first pretty good, by episode 5, was way beyond boring. I was sitting there yelling at the screen "Oh, F-- F--- S---, DO SOMETHING".

All but one or two of the characters portrayed in the series seemed far more interested in "saving face" (translation of saving face is actually lying) and failing to make the decisions that so desperately needed to be made. It's no wonder that the character of the Japanese Prime Minister was portrayed as a nasty type, surrounded as he was by people who appeared not to know what the Hell they were doing and who he must have felt were hiding vital information from him. In his situation, I would have been even more impatient.

All of this faffing about resulted in our giving the series away somewhere around episode 7 since we were constantly nodding off.

It appears that the cue to make this series about Fukushima was the previous and excellent series "Chernobyl" which was much better in every possible way. Chernobyl did in five episodes and five and a half hours what Fukushima utterly failed to do in eight episodes and seven and a half VERY LONG hours. Fukushima could have been so much better if it had taken place over three or possibly four episodes and without all the time wasting and utter failure by all involved to do what was so obviously essential.

Not recommended this one.

JMVSCOTLAND.

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The Sound of Violet (2022)

3/10

I did not like this at all

29 November 2023

I learned a lesson again today when I saw this movie rated 7.9 on IMDb. So, decided to dig it out to watch it.

Now, first I must say that I don't normally review a movie that I haven't watched all the way thorugh. But, this time, I just couldn't do the full 107 minutes. What I did manage was about 40 minutes of one of the dumbest movies I think i've ever seen.

The plot of the movie is in the IMDb short summary so I don't think I'm contravening IMDb policy on spoilers when I say it's just unimaginable that most of the characters in this silliness appeared to be oblivious to the obvious fact that Violet is a prostitute. They therefore failed to alert the autistic main character, Shawn, to that simple fact. Perhaps he would still have been interested in her had he known what trade she was in, perhaps not. That knowledge might have made for a much shorter and possibly a lot better movie.

I see now that the rating of 7.9 was based on a total of.94 ratings. But, importantly, ony eight people before me bothered to write a review.

I must try to avoid paying to watch a movie simply on the basis of a good over all rating here on IMDb. A rating of 7.9 probably indicates that a movie is great, or at least well worth watching. But, regrettably, as here, not always. This one was rubbish.

JMV.

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Dawn Breaks Behind the Eyes (2021)

1/10

A ZERO RATING SHOULD BE AN OPTION

5 December 2022

In how many ways did I hate this movie?

It was just dreadful. A complete waste even of the short time one has to endure in watching it.

Everything about it was rubbish and I really can't understand why some reviewers rated it well. Nor can I understand how this lot of cr*p won any awards, even the down-market awards that it evidently did win.

A review must be of a certain length to be accepted by IMDb. That's a tough ask for this one. Rarely have a seen a movie which is this terrible, even in the horror genre which is littered with failures and garbage.

41 characters required it says. Now, it's only 10. Enough.

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The Omen (2006)

7/10

IT WAS OK

23 October 2022

Generally speaking, I dislike remakes of classic movies. I saw the pathetic remake of "The Shining" some time ago. What a waste of time and money that one was. The remake of "12 Angry Men" was fine but also not as good as the original. And then we have the American remakes of classic and highly regarded movies from abroad. I'm speaking here for example of the American "The Vanishing", the utterly dreadful remake of George Sluizer's very own classic Dutch original (Sluizer directed both but copped out, no doubt for money, in the happy ending American remake).

Then we have "The Ring" and "Dark Water", bad remakes of terrifying Japanese originals. And now, here, we have the 2006, thirty years after, remake of "The Omen". This particular remake was of course quite unnecessary but in my opinion is not a bad remake of the 1976 original which I admit scared the s**t out of me and my wife and my sister in the cinema all those years ago.

I don't much like Liev Schreiber as an actor. Much less do I like Julia Stiles. In my opinion, Liev Schreiber was nowhere near as good as Gregory Peck, Julia Stiles not nearly as good as Lee Remick, Mia Farrow not as menacing as Billie Whitelaw and Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick not nearly as menacing as Harvey Stevens.

This movie had a kind of a Harry Potter feel to it. Not, I hasten to add, simply because of David Thewlis' and Michael Gambon's presence.

But, having said all of that, and I while I think remakes of "classic" movies are rarely justified or indeed advisable, this remake of the 1976 classic of The Omen really isn't too bad at all. It is at least faithful to the original and it does not seek to give itself the terrible and, all but inevitable, American happy ending. No problem from me.

7.3 out of 10.

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U311 Cherkasy (2019)

4/10

BORING. BORING. BORING

1 May 2022

I was keen to watch this movie because of the atrocity that's right now, as I type this, being committed by Russia against the sovereign State and the people of Ukraine.

This movie, "U311 Cherkazy", is supposed to be about the Russians' annexation of the Crimea in 2014. But it isn't really about that at all.

You know, as something of a student of cinema and with a very, very large collection of movies, TV series etc on DVD and Blu-ray, I think the thing that most pisses me off is a movie that fails to deliver the goods. A very good example of this is the movie "Barry" which is SUPPOSEDLY about the early life of Barack Obama, but just isn't. That movie said nothing substantive about the young black man who would become President of the USA and this movie U311 Cherkasy, says next to nothing about what happened in the Black Sea and in the Crimea in 2014.

This movie runs only about 90 minutes but it was 57 minutes in before any Russian even appeared, menacingly or otherwise. The rest of the movie just involved minor skirmishes between the Russians and those few Ukrainians who, on that occasion, decided to give even the smallest FU to the Russians who would ultimately steal a part of Ukraine in what turned out to be something of a rehearsal for the terrible things that they're doing in the rest of Ukraine now. Eight years later.

I found "U311 Cherkasy" very much a waste of my time. It promised a lot, said very little, showed nearly nothing and simply failed to deliver.

Very, very poor in my opinion. 4 out of 10

JMVScotland.

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Dirt Music (2019)

6/10

SHOULD HAVE BEEN SO MUCH BETTER

29 March 2022

First of all, I am Australian.

I read the novel "Dirt Music" not long after it was first published and I remember saying to my wife that it would make a terrific movie.

It is the greatest cliche to say "Oh, but the book was much better". In this case, that's most definitely true. There was an opportunity here to make a truly good movie, even if not a great one. How the producers, writer and Director managed to come up with this poor movie based on a great novel is difficult to comprehend. That's particularly so given the two fine actors involved. David Wenham is almost always terrific and Kelly McDonald, one of my very favourite actresses, doing a fine job with the Australian accent.

I gave the movie 6/10 not because the movie is in any way worthy, but simply because of the spectacular scenery of the locations where it was filmed. That is, around Esperance in WA. Not, I have to say, where the novel was based as I recall but all the same, beautiful.

I didn't really rate this movie highly at all and it's unlikely that I'll ever feel compelled to watch it again. It could have been, should have been, SO much better.

JMV.

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Somers Town (2008)

2/10

TOO LONG EVEN AT 68 MINUTES

15 February 2022

I wanted to like this movie as much as I liked "This Is England". But, this one just falls flat. The acting by and large is wooden and not at all convincing apart from the two characters - Mariusz (Marek's father) and. Maria. Everyone else involved didn't deserve any credit at all.

What a waste of an hour. Just stupid. I hated it

JMV.

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Knowing (2009)

6/10

VERY MUCH a movie in two parts

7 February 2022

I have watched this one I think three times now so it's not actually a bad movie in my view.

But, it is a movie in two parts. The first part (up to about 1 hour and 15 minutes) was really well thought out and very interesting with John's discovery.

The second part of the movie (the last 45 minutes odd) was pretty much a waste of time and quite unbelievable.

Again, it's not a terrible movie but it really might have been so much better.

JMV.

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Pleasure (2021)

6/10

Very Difficult To Watch - Even For Anyone Who's Into Porn

12 January 2022

I am very open-minded when it comes to the subject matter of this movie and I do agree with many others that Sofia Kappel was actually remarkably good in this, especially for a first timer.

Although I have no personal problem with porn at all, it is the exploitation of those such as the Bella character in this movie that gives me cause for concern. Of course there are those who will say that viewers of porn are a large part of the problem. However, it is those who are actually in the porn industry who must bear the shame of the exploitation that obviously occurs there.

This is not a bad movie by any means. But it was strange to me at least that the producers of the movie seemingly had little problem with showing the male actors in full naked detail while very largely keeping away from nudity among the female characters.

I didn't mind the movie apart from the nastiness of some of think are called the "Gonzo" scenes depicted but it is not actually a movie that I'm ever very likely to seek out again.

6/10 from me.

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When Nuvolari Runs: The Flying Mantuan (2018)

7/10

A movie about motor racing without any motor racing

12 January 2022

I liked this movie. I really did. The cinematography was excellent so the whole movie was just beautiful to look at. It was well written and well acted all around. So, I have no complaints there at all.

But, here's the thing. This movie was about Tazio Nuvolari, the racing driver. So why then was there absolutely no attempt to show any actual racing apart from old footage of the real Nuvolari in races in the 30s, 40s and 50s? I compare this to other recent movies like "Rush" (excellent) and "Ford vs Ferrari" (really and truly excellent) which were just full of scenes involving actual racing.

Is it really too much to ask for some presentation of motor racing in a film about a famous motor car racer? In that regard, this movie failed miserably but, it was enjoyable nonetheless.

7/10 from me.

JMV.

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The Rescue (2021)

8/10

13 People in Thailand Owe Their Lives To Foreigners

30 December 2021

I am a foreigner living in Thailand so the events at the cave in 2018 were fairly close to home for me personally.

At the time this rescue was happening, I was aware that the Thai authorities were not always cooperative with the scruffy "falangs" (a very derogatory term used in Thailand for foreigners) who showed up to try to save the boys in the cave along with the one adult who was with them. But, this documentary attempted somewhat to make plain the extent to which the Thai authorities actually hindered the foreigners after their own Thai Navy SEALS failed. I guess the situation might have been worse than was shown in this documentary but that the producers felt that they had to tone down the truth a bit.

This documentary makes it clear, for example, that the foreign divers were, at various times, forbidden to do, and were otherwise obstructed in doing, what they came to Thailand to do. That is, to rescue the 13 individuals who were trapped in the cave. And all this entirely at their own risk of injury or possible death. It's barely credible that the Thais evidently said that if any of the 13 died in the rescue attempt, then the foreigners might be prosecuted under Thai law, I guess for "manslaughter" or whatever they might call that. The truth is that if these incredible people had not flown in from all over the western world at huge personal risk, it is quite certain that all 13 would have been left to die. I'm afraid that this is in fact fairly typical of the way foreigners are generally treated in Thailand.

The guys who made the incredible rescue in this instance were truly heroic and I am glad the documentary made that clear.

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Swiss Army Man (2016)

2/10

A FART JOKE DOES NOT A MOVIE MAKE

20 October 2021

I'm not going to waste much time reviewing this pile of s*it movie.

I usually make it a rule for myself that I don't write a review unless I've actually watched a movie all the way through. This movie "Swiss Army Man" is just so incredibly dire that I have, at least to try, to warn others. I watched the first tortuous 45 minutes which was basically one long, long and way over-done fart joke and a discussion of masturbation. At the 45 minute point, I started fast-forwarding, pausing from time to time to see if it had improved, even just a little. It didn't.

The movie rates 7.0 on IMDb. That's USUALLY a fair indication that a movie has at least some merit. Regrettably, that's not always true.

Paul Dano is one of my very favourite actors and Dan Radcliffe is also usually reliable. How they became involved in this project defies reason for two, at the very least, good actors.

Thankfully, I only paid $2 for the disc on which I bought this movie. It is rubbish and my advice is stay away.

JMV.

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Secret Obsession (2019)

6/10

AND THE AWARD FOR LEAST CONVINCING LIMPING IN A LEADING ROLE GOES TO BRENDA SONG

14 September 2021

The movie "Secret Obsession" wasn't quite as bad as the overall rating and most of the reviews suggest.

However, the thing that I hated easily the most was Brenda Song's role which consisted mostly of lifeless acting, appalling facial expressions and a limp that just couldn't be believed. And she got to do the fake limp in just about every single scene in the whole movie. If there were a category at the Oscars and other awards involving least convincing limp in a leading role, or even in a supporting role, Brenda's performance in this movie would truly stand the test of time. She was just awful and the lead actor was very little better.

I see that Brenda is half Thai on her mother's side and that explains an awful lot. I live in Thailand and I don't have any access to TV here precisely because Thai acting is always so thoroughly appalling that I refuse even to have the possibility of it in my house.

Over all, a rubbish movie that certainly doesn't bear watching ever again.

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Minamata (2020)

8/10

Finally, a good performance by Johnny Depp

20 August 2021

Johnny Depp is one of my least favourite actors. Mostly, he's just horribly bad. Think here, all of the Pirates movies, Dark Shadows, The Tourist and Cry Baby.

But, occasionally, just occasionally, he turns in a good performance, such as here in Minamata and in the past, in Finding Neverland, Sweeney Todd and Public Enemies.

I was really surprised and delighted at his performance in Minamata. So, he can act after all.

A tragic story, very well told and acted here with tight direction and a great script.

8 out of 10 from me. This is a movie that's compelling and which I plan to watch regularly.

JMV.

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Chernobyl: Abyss (2021)

5/10

VERY, VERY, VERY POOR MOVIE

20 August 2021

Warning: Spoilers

Many others have already said that there just isn't any comparison at all in quality between this movie and the really excellent TV series that was made a couple of years ago; a series that I watch regularly and very happily.

"Chernobyl 1986", or "Chernobyl: Abyss" as it also appears to be listed here on IMDb, is a pretty poor movie. But what really annoyed me was that the audience was expected to believe that the main character, the fireman, Alexei, was somehow immune to the effects of ionizing radiation while all around him, those who was exposed to far lesser levels of radiation were dying like flies. He goes into the plant after the explosion to rescue two others and has no radiation effects at all while the two he rescued quickly died. Then he goes into the basement level of the plant to try to drain the water under the reactor building and seems ok after his heavy exposure there as well. Then, and this is truly impossible to believe, he goes into the basement of the building for a second time and is also heavily exposed again. Finally, this superhuman guy appears to suffer some ill effects of all that exposure to radiation but we don't see him die, as he most certainly would.

All this unbelievability is driven by a plot that's not good and by a love story which, in the circumstances, also appears quite beyond possibility.

Yes, folks, don't waste your time with this one. Just watch the HBO series instead. It's thoroughly wonderful.

JMV.

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The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

7/10

A Very Good Film Over All But What a Disastrous Finale

18 July 2021

Warning: Spoilers

I have now seen this movie twice. Once many, many years ago when I was a young man and again just last night (17 July 2021) when I watched it with my wife when I was aged 65.

It is a very good movie over all but it does fall down in my opinion in two particular ways.

First, in portraying the Japanese soldiers in the camp here as anything other than the inhuman bas*ards that they were in fact. My ex wife's British Soldier grandfather died at the hands of the Japanese on the Burma/Thailand railway on 7 July 1943, aged 35 years. Her grandmother never forgave the Japanese, always refusing to have any product made in Japan in her home, right until she died many years later.

It is notable that the modern-day Germans have sought to atone for the enormous sins of their fathers and grandfathers by revealing and acknowledging the truth about the Nazis' part in, and their actions before and during, WWII. Knowledge about that war and what occurred at the hands of the Germans is not something that is watered down or hidden from students in German schools and Universities.

The Japanese are still, to this day, not anywhere near as honest and forthcoming about Japan's aspirations and actions before and during WWII. And they still refuse to offer any form of actual compensation to those (mostly) Korean woman who were enslaved and raped by the Japanese military.

It is my understanding that the Japanese still teach students in their educational institutions that Japan's role was as that of a liberator of the oppressed people of South East Asia. Liberators for example of the Vietnamese and Cambodian people from their French masters and of the Burmese and Malay people from the influence of their British rulers. They still refuse to acknowledge that Japan was responsible for its own "Holocaust" , a holocaust which was very much on par with that carried out by the Germans in Europe.

I suppose that a decision was made at some stage while making this movie that the Japanese Commandant and the Japanese guards here should not be portrayed as being inhuman for the whole of this movie's considerable length.

Apart from what I believe is the inaccurate portrayal of the Japanese soldiers and guards here, my only other problem with The Bridge On The River Kwai was the ending. And, without reading other reviews, I am quite sure I'm not the only reviewer to express the following opinion.

How is it even possible to imagine that a British Colonel prisoner of the Japanese during WWII would place the safety of the bridge above the interests of his own army and its allies. For him to have pursued the detonation wire to its origins and to discover the plot to destroy the bridge that his men had just completed, to give the game away to the Japanese Colonel and then finally to kill his allies, is quite beyond belief.

No British Colonel would have been even remotely that stupid. Was he seriously damaged mentally by his time in "The Oven"? Am I missing something here? Are we really expected to believe that the successful completion of the bridge came to be of greater importance to Colonel Nicholson than the successful prosecution of the war against the Japanese? No, I really don't think so either.

By all means, watch The Bridge On The River Kwai. It is still a good movie despite its age. But, if you want to see and to experience something of the truth of what the Japanese military actually was during WWII, you should also be sure to see "Unbroken" and "The Railwayman". They are, in my opinion, better and much more accurate movies in what they portray of the suffering of Allied Prisoners of War at the hands of the Japanese.

JMV.

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The Stoning of Soraya M. (2008)

8/10

PROBABLY THE MOST DISTURBING MOVIE I HAVE EVER SEEN

13 July 2021

I had already watched "The Stoning Of Soraya M." once before, about three years ago. I watched most of it again yesterday. Obviously, the first time, I knew basis of the story but I couldn't really have been prepared for the final 20 odd minutes of the movie.

Yesterday, when I tried to watch it a second time, I was OK until preparations for the finale were being made. Then, knowing what was to come, I just couldn't do it again.

Don't misunderstand please. This is a remarkable and a very fine movie in every way. But the violence that is depicted here to a woman, whether innocent as she undoubtedly was, or guilty, as she was falsely accused of being, was just too awful for me to witness a second time.

I have to be careful here not to say anything that might get me into trouble with IMDb. But, what is depicted here is in fact an integral part of society in that part of the world where the movie is set. Violence against any individual should never be tolerated. Violence of this type, in particular again women is, in my opinion, the most dire sin of all.

By all means, watch this movie but be prepared never to be the same again after you have seen it. If you are anything like me, it will haunt you forever. The only other movie I believe I found so disturbing as this one was "The Execution Of Private Slovik" from 1974 and starring a young Martin Sheen. Watch that one as well if you can find it and if you have a mind to be disturbed and haunted by that one too.

Jmvscotland.

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Us (II) (2019)

1/10

APPALLING IN EVERY POSSIBLE WAY

29 June 2021

If this wasn't the worst movie I've ever seen, it was so close as to make no difference at all.

Every single thing about this movie was trash. Just laughably bad. Although the first 10 minutes were only just OK, there wasn't a single thing about the movie after that point that might have saved it from what should, from me, have been a zero rating (something evidently that IMDb doesn't provide for).

Just appallingly awful.

JMV.

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Torbaaz (2020)

3/10

Most of the positive reviews are fakes. Dearest IMDB - you have been spammed!!

22 June 2021

BOY, did I make a mistake!! I read the reviews on IMDb regarding "Torbaaz" and I thought "oh, that sounds pretty good". I could have watched it on Netflix for next to nothing but I decided most unwisely to buy a Blu-Ray disc before watching it there. Well, friends, Torbaaz may not be the worst movie I've ever seen but, if it isn't, it's bloody close!

There is only one aspect of Torbaaz that saves it from a score close to zero from me and that is the occasional views of the scenery in the locales where it was filmed and much of the cinematography in the rest of the movie. I'm guessing that it was actually filmed in India since, unusually, IMDb doesn't show filming locations for this one. Apart from the cinematography, the rest of the movie was, in my opinion, just woefully awful.

Clearly, it was trying hard to cash in on the success of the wonderful "Lagaan" from 2001. The basic plot was all but identical, the music could almost have been lifted from Lagaan and the final scene involving the game was a carbon copy.

Now, for the problems with Torbaaz. The acting was dire, especially from all of the kids involved as well as from the main character Naseer (Sanjay Dutt), the script was terrible, the plot was absolutely predictable and the direction pathetically bad. It's only the cinematography by Hiroo Keswani that prevents me from giving Torbaaz a real drubbing.

After I finished watching this lot of rubbish, I looked at the user reviews on IMDB and it became apparent very quickly that something rather strange has happened here. I have never before on IMDb seen so many one line (or possibly as much as two line) reviews for any movie, all of them giving ratings of 7, 8 and 9 out of 10. Then I looked at the reviews that rated the movie 2 out of 10 from what I believe were real people rather than Bots, and there was the answer. Others have also concluded that the overall score for this movie was deliberately inflated in some way, probably involving software, to give the impression that it's actually worth watching.

The fact is that very, very few people bother to review a movie at all without putting some thought and more than just a few words into the review. Some other reviewers also noticed the obviously fake reviews for this movie.

With the very greatest respect for what it is that you do IMDb, you have been spammed here with what I suspect are many hundreds of computer generated reviews praising this movie Torbaaz when I think few real people who bother to write reviews would rate this lot of trash well at all. IMDb, you really need to improve your anti-spamming, anti-botting software and your moderators need to pay much closer attention to the reviews that are submitted.

I will never, ever bother to sit through this again, even though the cinematography was quite lovely. This is definitely a movie for avoiding.

Generously, 3 out of 10

JMV.

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Breezy (1973)

8/10

HELLO MY LOVE --------------- HELLO MY LIFE. A rare gem of a film from a great director.

9 June 2021

I was more than old enough to have seen "Breezy" when it was first released but I didn't in fact see it until many years later. I am quite a fan of Clint Eastwood's movies and I think this is one of his very best. And I also think that Bill Holden and Kay Lenz were both spectacularly good in this.

I looked through the lowest rating reviews of "Breezy" and, quite predictably, there were quite a few that banged on about the age difference between the main characters, Frank and Edith (Breezy). Some of the reviews were not very nice, accusing the older man Frank of what it's obvious that he'd be accused of these days. Logic rarely plays a part in blind prejudice.

I am a 65 year old Australian man who's been living in Thailand for nearly 10 years. I particularly identify with Frank's character in Breezy because I have been in a relationship with a lovely little woman who is now 41 years old. She's been my wife for nine years and we are very, very happy together.

I often refer to my new wife as my "medicine", my way of coping with the many bad aspects of the modern world in which most of us live.

I have to say that, despite my regard for Clint Eastwood's movies, and for this one in particular, there are a few problems that come from its age of close to 50 years, as I type this review. Let me enumerate:

1 like many other movies, notably "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and the original "Italian Job" and a few others I could mention, the repetition of Breezy's theme in this one really goes a step too far and just becomes annoying. Nowhere near as annoying as the monotonous dirge Moon River in Breakfast at Tiffany's but all the same

2 who would have thought that the language of the 60s and 70s (like the verb "to dig" something and Hippy (Hippy Dippy here) would be so out of place and frankly stomach churning 50 years on? I like to think that if I'd directed Breezy, I might have made an effort to avoid using such "hip" words and phrases which were, let's be honest, bound to age and become so anachronistic in a movie viewed many years after its release

3 some of the characters really were just caricatures. I'm referring especially here to Roger C Carmel's character, Bob Henderson, and Frank's ex wife, Paula, the lush.

For me Breezy is a wonderful little movie. It makes this 65 year old man cry every time I watch it, because it tells a story which is just so close to my own.

8/10 from me. Bill Holden was great in the role of Frank and 20 year old Kay Lenz was simply adorable.

JMV.

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The Burning Plain (2008)

6/10

Terribly confusing and difficult to follow

5 June 2021

I'm not stupid. Really I'm not. Ask anyone.

But while this movie was kind of entertaining and was well acted, at least by Charlize Theron, it was incredibly confusing and very difficult to follow, jumping around continually from one period to another with no obvious reason for doing so. It was difficult to be at all sure who was who and what was what and ultimately, for me, that made it just plain annoying.

It's NOT a movie I'm ever likely to watch again.

JMV.

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The Infidel (2010)

3/10

Utter Rubbish. Not funny in the slightest

5 June 2021

I was kind of hopeful that this movie would be the entertaining comedy that many others think it is.

But, for the whole of its 104 minutes, I never even chuckled and never even smiled. It was just awful. Terribly unfunny and embarrassing. I had it on as background and just waited for it to finish before I came to my computer here to give it a public flogging.

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