Change Your Image
alan-1141
Reviews
Murder on the Orient Express (2017)
Boredom on the Orient Train-wreck
I have to own up and say that I didn't watch the whole of this film at the cinema and would not dream of buying or renting a DVD. Unfortunately this film is an example of why cinema attendances are falling through the floor. Greedy studios with no imagination other than rebooting a film or franchise that doesn't need to be re-booted and then letting a hack scriptwriter get hold of it and murder it. Completely pointless opening sequence to pretend the film has something original to offer and then a slapstick pastiche rip off of the 1974 classic with zero charm, zero dialogue, zero soundtrack plenty of dull, lumbering monologues and in total a clumsy excuse for film-making. The train stopped because of the snow - this stopped due to a train-wreck. I lasted 43 minutes before leaving.
Skyline (2010)
Great Trailer - Awful Movie that leans heavily on the genre
Great trailer but sadly an awful movie that leaves you feeling cheated by the cast, scriptwriters, effects and more importantly the producers and directors. There are some great effects in this movies and a couple of moments of great suspense but they are quickly forgotten in moments of cringeworthy script that leave you thinking that maybe the scriptwriters intended you to use your empty popcorn box to puke in towards the end of the movie! Believe the mostly honest ratings and reviews here as there are some pathetic moments here such as the stealth bomber being shot from the sky, hitting the rooftop where are 'heroes' are lying prone and then somersaulting over heroes to miss them and career into an alien, without even an explosion, wing dent or scorch mark on the rooftop. There were only three of us in the audience to watch this film in its first week and all of us just broke into derisory laughter at this scene, and also the 'touching' scene of an alien claw sensing the five week old heartbeat of the pregnant mother. The film itself steals from many SF films and I began to wonder if I was watching Scary Scifi Movie instead!
Say Hello to Yesterday (1971)
Exceptionally underrated but well crafted and acted British film
One of the most underrated British films that was produced on the cusp, between the end of the swinging sixties and the beginning of the hippy seventies. Leonard Whiting (Romeo from Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet) plays a young dreamer who is trapped in a working class existence: living in a council house with a father who has no horizon higher than working in the local factory. Jean Simmons is the mature woman, living in a leafy Surrey house with her stockbroker husband and two children, but desperately unhappy with her life. When the two unlikely lovers meet on a train to London, Whiting ignores the come-on from Susan Penhaligon by saying 'today I am going to climb Mount Everest,' and so begins his charm offensive of the mature woman across London's 1970s landscape. Beautifully written and with expert filming by Geoffrey Unsworth, Say Hello to Yesterday is one of the most insightful films ever to deal with the thrill and inevitable puncturing of the balloon that signifies the love affair between these two protagonists.