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His Dark Materials (2019)
Great start, but....
I have to agree with several of the other reviews. Season1 was great, Season 2 not so great, and Season 3 awful. My rating is an average for all 3 seasons.
Season 3 was dull and dreary and sooooo slow. Then, just when you think it can't get any worse, there is a miserable ending! In fairness, you can't blame the production team, because that is how Philip Pullman wrote it. The guy must have some serious happiness issues!
What you can blame the production team for though, is the fact that they used the same actor from Season 1 as Roger. Although he died at the end of Season 1, and has been in the land of the dead ever since, he was back in Season 3 looking older and much bigger! Who knew that you keep on ageing after you die!
The Cry (2018)
Good, but......
First, the good. The acting was top notch, especially from Jenna Coleman, who was phenomenal! (I'm not just saying that because she is from my home town) The story was good, with some clever twists, and the scenery was lovely.
Now the bad. The directing. This let the whole production down. As others have mentioned, the pacing was very slow and the whole thing could have been shorter. What really annoyed the hell out of me though was the constant jumping backwards and forwards in time. We were getting flashbacks within flashbacks within flashbacks! This made everything very confusing and ruined the whole flow of the show. I would have rated this as an 8 if not for this.
A Quiet Passion (2016)
Disappointing.
First, the good point. Cynthia Nixon was excellent, and her death scene was very harrowing.
However, this was so dull and dreary and full of inaccuracies. To me, the biggest let down was that Sue, the one true love of Emily's life, to whom she had written hundreds of letters and poems, was on screen for about 5 minutes in total. There was no indication that they were even close friends, let alone lovers!
There was no mention of Higginson, with whom she had corresponded frequently, and who was instrumental in publishing her poems. She never met Mabel Todd, and Samuel Bowles had been a family acquaintance for several years longer than suggested here.
Her mother's illness and death was also rushed, in that she had a stroke in one scene, and died in the next, when in fact there were 7 years between the two events.
My final gripe is that she was shown in a regular wooden coffin, when in fact she was buried in a white coffin.
Very disappointing to this Dickinson fan.
The Last Son (2021)
I love a good western...unfortunately this wasn't one!
Even a half-decent cast couldn't save this drearily paced script. (I say half-decent because although Thomas Jane has been in some good movies, neither Sam Worthington nor Heather Graham ever need to get excited around Oscar nomination time).
The story itself seemed a little stupid as well. Worthington is cursed that he will be killed by one of his offspring (should have kept it in his pants) so he kills them off first before they get a chance to do him. It seems like most of them were totally unaware of who he was anyway, so if he had just left well alone, he needn't have worried. By going out of his way to find them, he actually puts himself at risk. The story was so slow and dreary that I ended up fast-forwarding through most of it. Even so, I knew what the ending was going to be. I rated it a generous 3 (and one of those was because of the cameo appearance by Heather Graham's nipples!).
I love Westerns, but there have been some absolutely dire ones released in the past couple of years. I am keeping my fingers crossed that "1883" will live up to expectations.
Dýrið (2021)
I'm never watching another Icelandic movie. Ever!!!
I love Noomi Rapace and will watch anything with her in it. Two of her other films, which I had never heard of, were "What Happened to Monday" and "Close", so I thought I'd give them a try. I'm so glad I did, they were great. This is not one of those instances! One of the most painfully dull and boring movies I have ever watched. I say watched, but I ended up jumping bits just to see if it got better. It didn't. It is also one of the most absurdly weird plots ever. I gave it 2 stars for the scenery.
Black Summer (2019)
S2 Hugely Disappointing!
I've given an average of 7 for both seasons. 8 for season 1, and a very generous 6 for season 2. After season 1 I was really looking forward to this, but what a let down. They have gone the same way as The Walking Dead and are focused on rival groups fighting each other, with the zombies just incidental. If you like lengthy scenes of people running around senselessly shooting each other, with no dialogue, you will probably love this. Personally, I prefer more of a story. There are also a couple of episodes which are completely opposite, and are full of dialogue, but with nothing really happening, and which don't advance the story at all. You expect a couple of episodes of padding in a 20 episode season, but not when there are only 8 episodes! It also has one the oddest, most unsatisfactory endings ever. On the one hand I hope there is a season 3, so that I can see what happens but, if it's going to be just more of the same, I really hope there isn't!
Debris (2021)
Great Start.
Ignore the naysayers, this got off to a great start. Production quality and special effects are top-notch. Some reviewers complained that it seemed like a couple of episodes had been missed, because the story picks up part way through the events. However, I found this very refreshing, and had no trouble understanding what was going on. I guess some people's IQ is just so low, that they have to have everything spelt out for them. Looking forward to the rest of the episodes.
The Flood (2020)
Disappointing.
This could have been so much better. The story was quite good, but could have been told in half the time. The rest of the movie was padded out with pointless fantasy/dream sequences which added nothing at all to the story. It was also interspersed with random pop-type songs, totally out of keeping with the on-screen action or the time period setting. The action scenes and violence were over-the-top and unbelievable to the point where I thought the Director was trying to be Australia's answer to Tarantino!
Death of Me (2020)
Great, a must-watch........you've got to be joking!!!
Utter garbage. Avoid at all costs. Someone has clearly tried to merge "Rosemary's Baby" with "The Wicker Man" and failed miserably. The only good thing about this movie is the scenery (Thailand).
Raised by Wolves (2020)
What a shame.
Like so many others have said, this started off well but went downhill fast. I'm afraid that all the religious nonsense is a big turn-off for me. It also follows the typical Hollywood pattern for kids in movies, none of them do as they are told and go wandering off on their own. They are all stupid and none of them particularly likeable. Which brings me on to the finale, totally unbelievable! I will not be looking out for Season 2.
Ghosts of Darkness (2017)
Ignore the reviews.
When I say "Ignore the reviews", I am, of course, referring to the positive reviews! I watched this because some a-hole had said that it was one of the best haunted house movies he had ever seen. Well, he can't have seen many. This was dire. The acting was awful and the special effects weren't special. I have seen better on a Wednesday afternoon on the SyFy Channel, and we all know how bad they can be. I never thought I would ever say that a movie, which was only 82 minutes running time, was too long, but this was. It was that boring. Never again will I ever base my evenings viewing on an Imdb user review, just as I don't expect any of you to base your viewing on this review. You all have free will to make up your own minds, but don't say I didn't warn you.
Cheat (2019)
Good but annoying.
I enjoyed this opening episode, and can't fault Katherine Kelly in anything she appears in. However, I found the direction to be annoying. It started with the main 2 characters, Leah and Rose, facing each other through a glass partition, obviously in a prison, but that was OK, because it wasn't apparent who was the prisoner and who was the visitor, so I'll let them off with that one. However, during the episode, they showed flash forwards to things that were going to happen. Apart from spoiling the surprise for everyone, this is just simply lazy film making. It's as if they can't trust the story to keep peoples attention, and have to keep throwing spoilers in to keep everyone interested. Why can't modern film makers just start a story at the beginning and sequentially play it out to the end?
They did a similar thing with "Nightflyers" by killing off one of the main characters in the first 5 minutes, and then spending the rest of the episode getting to that point. Needless to say I didn't watch any more of it.
Factual and reality TV program makers aren't much better either. It really annoys me when, after a commercial break, they have to recap what has happened previously! I don't have the memory of a goldfish, and am quite capable of remembering what happened 5 minutes ago!
Anyway, "Cheat" is only 4 episodes, so I will stick with it, but I reserve the right to come back and have another moan after it finishes, depending on how it all pans out.
Cheat (2019)
Good but annoying.
I enjoyed this opening episode, and can't fault Katherine Kelly in anything she appears in. However, I found the direction to be annoying. It started with the main 2 characters, Leah and Rose, facing each other through a glass partition, obviously in a prison, but that was OK, because it wasn't apparent who was the prisoner and who was the visitor, so I'll let them off with that one. However, during the episode, they showed flash forwards to things that were going to happen. Apart from spoiling the surprise for everyone, this is just simply lazy film making. It's as if they can't trust the story to keep peoples attention, and have to keep throwing spoilers in to keep everyone interested. Why can't modern film makers just start a story at the beginning and sequentially play it out to the end?
They did a similar thing with "Nightflyers" by killing off one of the main characters in the first 5 minutes, and then spending the rest of the episode getting to that point. Needless to say I didn't watch any more of it.
Factual and reality TV program makers aren't much better either. It really annoys me when, after a commercial break, they have to recap what has happened previously! I don't have the memory of a goldfish, and am quite capable of remembering what happened 5 minutes ago!
Anyway, "Cheat" is only 4 episodes, so I will stick with it, but I reserve the right to come back and have another moan after it finishes, depending on how it all pans out.
February (2015)
Hugely disappointed.
This movie is soooooo sloooowwww, and extremely boring.
The reviews that I read before watching it made it sound pretty good. Well, they must have been watching a totally different movie, or they're easily pleased.
Nothing much happens until the last 20 minutes, and there is absolutely nothing scary about it at all. Actually, that's not true...the scary thing is that it ever got made in the first place!
Nothing is explained, and the "music", if you can call it that, is overly loud and annoying.
Don't waste your time, and spend the 90 minutes doing something much more exciting....like watching paint dry!
My Little Eye (2002)
Don't be fooled by the trailer
Those of you who saw the exciting trailer to this movie and are tempted to go and see the full film I have just two words......don't bother!!! All the action in this movie is contained in the trailer, the rest of the movie is just padding, which resulted in me nodding off at least twice. The plot is nothing more than cashing in on the current craze for reality TV programs. You get to know hardly anything about the characters which means you don't really care what happens to any of them. There are a lot of good "killer in the house" type movies around, but this is not one of them. I give it 2 out of 10 for effort, but overall it is a waste of 95 minutes.