Reviews

Shogun is one of my favourite books, a sweeping saga of intrigue, murder, plots within plots, great characterisation. The 1980s series stayed true to all that and more. This 2024 version is like a mouthful of dead sea fruit - green and lush to look at but hollow and lacking in any real substance where it matters.

I'm sure why some important key elements of the plot were changed or omitted. What's the point of taking a great story and reducing it to a shadow of what it should be?

The romance between Blackthorn and Mariko lacked any depth or passion - it feels more casual, like a one night stand or two.

There's little to no coverage of the manipulative evil that was the Catholic church, most of the Jesuits and their machinations were left out of the series completely. We hardly see any of Blackthorn's crew and their degeneration in a land that should have elevated them.

Mariko's sacrifice had no impact because there was no build up nor explanation for it until after she was gone. Why was she buried when she was cremated in the book? In the book she states that she is Christian but samurai first. Oh, yeah, let's twist the narrative to suit our 21st century mindsets.

As for the change in plot to indicate that Ochiba changed her mind about supporting Ishido, why? She and the heir die which enables Toranaga to become Shogun.

What a pile of rubbish. Honestly, this could have been awesome. Instead it's just a rushed version that absolutely annihilates what could have been a masterpiece.

Couple get trapped in car in blizzard. Couple argue. Couple have baby. Couple choose to stay in car despite a day of blazing sunshine and the passing of a snow plough. Woman wraps baby in blanket instead of holding baby next to her skin beneath her own clothing for extra warmth. Cell phones are not charged. They have no idea where they are. Man get hypothermia and dies. Woman and baby get rescued. Fin

Ugh, what a mess. I don't believe for one minute that anyone could be so stupid as to not try to get help and walk to keep up the body heat. The only hot air they seem to survive on is their own silly arguments.

If you're going to make an historical film at least make it authentic. Don't put 21st century characters and situations in a setting where it just would not have happened. Victorian societal strictures would never allow a white woman to be dictated to or raped by a person of colour.

As a movie trying to depict 'girl power' it fails. What woman watches the sexual abuse of another and then has sexual relations with the abuser?

The only realistic event is when Sebastian owns up to the killing of the boy and Katherine pins the blame on him and everyone believes here. Shades of Deep South. ......

Right from the get go all you need is Andrew Scott's face to convey all the sadness, loneliness and reticent yearning to know this is going to be very special movie. People are complaining that it's slow or turgid. They miss the point and most likely miss the whole spiritual message embedded within...that we live in a world so lacking in personal introspection about who we are and why we're really born into the lives we have.

What struck me most was the aching sorrow of Scott's character, Adam. The fatalistic acceptance of his lot in life, then his childlike wonder when he has a chance to meet with his dead parents and rectify the past in order to heal.

Is it such a bad thing that this is fundamentally a ghost story? Loneliness can render people into living ghosts. And we see both the dead and living coming together by some Divine permission in order to facilitate healing.

I did wonder at some point if Adam was already dead, but living in a purgatory dream state where his soul had to heal in order to pass into the light, hence is parents being 'allowed' to meet with him in order to finally share how much they loved and love him.

However you interpret this movie, the ending is a lesson to us all, particularly in a world where it's too easy to shut ourselves off and others out.

I had no idea when I watched this what it was other than a haunted house movie, and it took until the final denouement to release what was really going on, and then it hits you like a ton of bricks, particularly if you know anyone or have had any experience of someone suffering with dementia.

This is real horror. The metaphors are all there, and you may have to watch it twice to really appreciate what's going on.

From the black mould (the crawling invasive disease of dementia) to the silent lurking horror under the bed (the impending insidious progression of the disease) to the maze like claustrophobic dead end corridors of what turns out to be the mind of the mother trapped within the disease. To the final peeling away of the mother's identity and humanity to reveal the black shell of the monster of full blown dementia. Ugh! It really hits home.

To all those who posted bad reviews, you can see none of them get the movie, or its message. One day they might.

The movie starts off OK, the acting is fine and the characterisation builds nicely....until the Cenobites make a show.

Hellraiser movies all hinge on the dark, eldritch menace of these dimensional horrors. Only in this movie, they're a bunch of mincing nonentities led by an effete shadow of the tall, imposing and powerful character created by Doug Bradley. Changing the sex of the lead Cenobite, or making it asexual, might have worked if the person playing the part had some charisma as in Mel Gibson's version of Satan in The Passion of the Christ. All we get here is a lisping WAG type Pinhead who'd look more at home in the salon getting a manicure than flaying infidels alive. There's none of the lingering shots or slow menacing movements of the originals...these Cenobites prance around in a horribly girly way that just ruins the whole movie. Bad costumes and worse make up. What a let down.

The whole movie drowns in a bad script, terrible plot and turgid attempts at being a bit scary. None of it made much sense to me, though you're able to pick out that the main character is getting bullied but then suddenly the bully is his best friend and the girl in the swimming pool is the daughter of the other girl who is scared of some bloke called Silver who we never know who he is or what he wants or who or what are the water goddesses, and and and.....do they all die at the end? Not sure. It's never made clear. Don't hold your breath for a supernatural riveting movie. It's a puddle.

FIN.

This is a movie about a psychological abuser who controls and dominates the woman he groomed as a teenager. Tim Roth captures the creepy, controlling energy of the covert narcissist to perfection. He knows what buttons to push and how to pull the strings of his enabler. When she was a young girl completely in his thrall, she falls pregnant. The baby boy isn't welcomed by its father, whose narcissistic condition demands full possession of the main character played by Rebecca Hall, so he kills the child. It's intimated that the baby was cooked and eaten, and Roth's character tracks Hall's character down and tells her the child is still alive within him, a twisted abhorrent pregnancy that needs its mother. Once more Hall's character feels her sanity slipping away, the familiar tell tale hallmarks of abuse - gaslighting, triangulation, coercion.

Many reviews just don't get the ending. But I saw it as Hall immersed in the safety of her subconscious, her murdered baby resurrected, her daughter home, everything normal and safe. As the camera pans in the golden comforting light dims and Hall's expression begins to change intimating that she's living in a world of her own creation.

This was a more than just a horror film. It lifts the hatch on the darkest human emotions.

As with most Bond films, the opening sequences were OK. But then we have what amounts to the most dreary Bond song in living memory, a dirge of such colossal proportions you just know what follows is going to be tosh. And it was.

Where is the scathing, rapier wit, the merciless charm, the dangerous charisma that Bond is renowned for, and what he was written as. We know he's a misogynist, and probably a psychopath, but that's what made his character so riveting - the anti hero and all time bad egg so achingly handsome and darkly sexual neither male nor female can resist.

This Bond is just about holding back the years, and this no fault of Daniel Craig who played him marvellously in Casino Royale. Nobody can help getting old. But James Bond should be a man at least a decade younger than Craig. When you see him against the inevitably young women who always play Bond girls, it just makes him look even more over the hill.

I nearly cheered when he got blown up outside Vesper Lynd's tomb. There's no room in fantasy for a weeping Bond. Sure, real men cry, but he's not real...he's JAMES BOND!

The final denouement was like something out of Dallas, and I can't imagine how they can resurrect the name unless there's some woke plan in the pipeline for Jodie Turner-Smith to give it a fresh angle? Or perhaps it'll all be a Bobby Ewing-esque dream!

The real, and only, star of this movie is Bond's car. It lived up to every expectation and stole the show. That's the reason this review has two stars instead of one.