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jimamilstead
Reviews
Jeremy Vine (2018)
Rabble rousing masquerading as journalism
This show followed on from The Wright Stuff, hosted by Matthew Wright and had, by far, a more balanced view regarding current events.
Now, it's just heavily biased waffle with guests who are on the extreme left of the political spectrum, hosted by a divisive figure who thinks he's correct about everything and likes to stir things up on twitter by manipulating a pile-on from all the minions who follow him.
The three-star rating is for Storm Huntley, the co-host, who is far more neutral whilst reporting on whatever the subject may be.
I've actively been avoiding this show since Jeremy Vine took over hosting duties, but will catch up on it time to time whenever a guest host takes part in his stead.
Community (2009)
Went to pot from season 5 onwards
A genius sitcom ruined by too many seasons, especially the ones that followed Chevy Chase's departure from the cast.
The argument is there that nothing further could have been done with his character, but I would suggest that nothing further could be done with Ken Jeong's character, who was completely unnecessary after the first season and was about as funny as cancer in the episodes where he did appear.
Seasons 1-4 are certainly worth a watch, but everything following this is desperate, unfunny comedy that makes me mourn everything that came prior. The Troy and Abed show deserved a proper closure.
Friends: The One with the Anniversary (2019)
Anti-Netflix
Yes, this is just four episodes stitched together, which could have been watched at home on home media, but this was a chance to watch Friends on the big screen and keep cinemas alive.
Personally, I think all the people saying "We could have stayed at home and watched this on Netflix" are absolute morons who will cause the death of cinema. I don't use Netflix and never will.
Juno (2007)
Diabolical. Cody.
I find it unusual that this movie won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, as it isn't really that original, Knocked Up and Junebug are just two variations on the same theme.
The plot follows Juno McGuff as a precocious teenager, who's actually a bit of a bitch, who spouts pithy dialogue throughout like it's a 91-minute episode of Dawson's Creek and gets impregnated by her geeky boyfriend (Michael Cera) simply because she was bored and didn't want to watch "The Blair Witch Project". Juno contemplates abortion, but upon discovering that babies have fingernails she decides to adopt to picket fence couple Jason Bateman & Jennifer Garner, but not all is perfect beneath the facade.
The main bone of contention I had with this movie is that I really didn't care about Juno. She is very unlikeable, especially the way she speaks to people with complete disrespect, particularly her parents (J. K. Simmons & Alison Janney). There's constant references throughout to cool music, cool movies and cool figures of pop culture, but this doesn't make Juno a cool movie. Although there's good acting from the ensemble cast, the male characters are written one-dimensionally, especially Jason Bateman whose husband to Jennifer Garner is a pathetic incarnation of a man forced to keep his dreams and ambitions in a locked box with his balls. The movie also fails to tie up it's loose ends as you'd like it too and the soundtrack is spattered constantly with twee Belle & Sebastian-esquire crap.
Teenage girls will probably adore this movie, but this reviewer found it to be tawdry overrated (Mc)guff. It's also decidedly irresponsible as there is no ordeal, it's just a minor inconvenience of Juno's life which she manages to brush aside before the closing credits and she can get back to playing guitar with Michael Cera. Twee Twee Twee.
Watch Knocked Up instead, it captures the emotions of pregnancy a hell of a lot better without constantly reminding us how cool it is with it's "in touch with the kids" dialogue.
Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny (1972)
Enough to put you off Christmas.
I just watched this movie online... Wow!! It's so hideously bad it makes some notoriously bad movies by Edward D. Wood look like Citizen Kane, the only motivation I could think that this abomination was produced in the first place was simply because some guys had a couple of tacky-looking fancy dress outfits laying around in the loft and decided to make a movie with them.
The plot (or lack of) consists of a particularly creepy Santa stranded on a beach in Florida because his sleigh is trapped beneath two grains of sand (we learn that his reindeer have already flown back to the North Pole courtesy of some grainy-looking stock footage). Santa sings a song and waves his hand around a lot and telepathically enlists the help of some neighbourhood kids to bring their household pets to help him out of this pickle. One girl turns up with a guy in a Gorilla suit, while others with a variety of farmyard animals. Even Huck Finn & Tom Sawyer join Santa's helpers, but this is all to no avail, so he decides to tell the story of Thumbelina to some REALLY bored looking children...
Now, the version I watched didn't have the story of Thumbelina at this point (like the original release) and it simply fades to black and then back to Santa being creepy.
For no reason whatsoever, some other guy in a white rabbit costume drives a Fire Truck with an awful lot of children passengers towards the beach only to detour through an amusement park and finally get to the beach while the children sing songs. Santa and the rabbit character mumble to each other and then they take off. The kids run back to Santa's sleigh and it mysteriously vanishes.
Then comes the Thumbelina adaptation, which, in a nutshell is a fairly pretty girl singing songs around the same amusement park Mr. Rabbit took an inane detour through. The narration of the story sounds like it's coming through a PA system and the sets look like something in the average 4th graders Christmas nativity. However, this is the best part of SC&TICB simply because the girl who plays Thumbelina can carry a tune when she sings.
I can only imagine that the intention of this movie was to advertise "Pirate World", the amusement park where most of it is based, quite the way Santa Claus (1985) advertised a certain fast food restaurant and soft drink brand.
As a movie, this is the poorest you could ever find. Everything about it is amateur, from the acting to the set design to the photography, editing and direction. Even the songs are akin to the type a 6-year-old could come up with. The kazoo-heavy score is also inferior. This could surpass for entertainment as a movie, and if it's intended to be a 90-minute advert, it fails at that too. Pirate World shut down around 1975. With this movie to advertise it... I'm expecting Santa's wake very soon...
Transformers (2007)
Let's hope Michael Bay doesn't get his mitts on the rights for "M*A*S*K"
I waited 20 years for this!! 20 years for someone to make my beloved cartoon series of the 1980's into a motion picture that would take me back to my youth. Unfortunately, the project fell into the hands of Michael Bay, who indelibly brands it with the mark of what he thinks an action movie should be.
Unfortunately, Michael Bay's vision consists of stretching 60 minutes of plot well over 2 and a half hours, shoving two dozen characters you couldn't care less about into a movie which needed 5 or 6 max, and editing action scenes with such quick-fire erratic panache that no one in the theatre quite knows what the hell is going on.
It wouldn't matter too much if you started watching this movie half-an-hour in, as that's when the Transformers turn up. The first 30 minutes consists of something going on in the Iraq war, and an idiot trying to sell a pair of spectacles on e-bay. The same idiot is trying to get into pants of the sluttiest looking girl at school, so he buys a banger from a used car garage which turns out to be an Autobot, an alien machine able to transform from vehicles, etc. (Although it takes over a minute to transform with all the emotive facial intricacies, nice one Bay!)
Cue more autobots coming to earth to battle with the evil decepticons, a subplot involving the FBI, CIA and any other acronym associated with American Defence. John Turturro appears on-screen and makes everyone completely forget what a fantastic actor he was in the early 90's Coen Brothers films. Jon Voight aims for yet another Golden Raspberry nomination, and there's something about these glasses which point out the location of "Oh, who cares? This storyline is a new kind of bunkum"
How did Michael Bay screw this up? How did the writers screw this up?! All they had to do was take the same story from the 1986 animated picture and adapt it into something similar, but they tried their hardest to make this as different to the animated cartoons as possible. The only thing that stays the same is the names (Optimus Prime, Megatron, etc.) and the sound effects when they transform.
The only positive about Transformers is the special effects, when you can make out what the hell is happening on Michael Bay's canvas. There's too many negatives, most of which are mentioned above, but the key, repeat KEY, K-E-Y, weakest link is that you just don't care about the characters or the cybertronic war unfolding on screen. Even when Jazz gets torn in two, the action moves quickly on to another set piece that the audience has no time to react to the movie's only sense of tragedy.
And what is the big deal about Megan Fox? She's not bad looking, but she would be a whole lot prettier if she didn't spend the whole movie describing the smell of her farts.
Personally, I just hope Michael Bay doesn't get his grubby little mitts on MASK, one of my other personal favourites from the 80's...
...or Thundercats. ...or Master Of The Universe. ...or My Little Pony...
Santa Claus: The Movie (1985)
Magical enough for undemanding children...
Spotting this title in the Christmas TV listings, memories of it flooded back into my mind, so I decided to read what people were saying about it on IMDb. None of the reviews best fit my opinion of it, so I thought I'd chip in my two cents.
This is not a classic, nor is it a terrible movie. Some people are likening it to such terrible children's movies as 'Mac & Me', 'Superbabies' or 'Troll 2'. It's nowhere near that bad, despite deservedly earning it's reputation as one of the biggest turkeys of all time. The latter statement purely down to the hideous amount of money it cost to produce and recuperating precious little of it. It's a helluva lot better than Rene Cardona's 1959 movie of the same name, starring a young Pia Zadora.
Giving this movie 10 stars is a big head-shaker too. It doesn't have the magic of 'E.T. - The Extra Terrestrial' or 'The Wizard Of Oz', lacks the character of 'Pinocchio', 'Snow White' or any other Disney movie you could throw a stick at, even Will Ferrell's 'Elf' is a title I'd recommend before this, but there are quite a few decent things about Santa Claus: The Movie. The casting isn't that bad, and there's some performances that raise a smile, particularly Dudley Moore and John Lithgow as the obligatory pantomime villain. The costumes and art direction are reasonably convincing, and the special effects aren't too shabby for a film made in 1985 (Check out the visual effects in Cocoon, which won an Oscar that year). This is a great movie for undemanding children, providing enough magic throughout the running time to keep them quiet for 90+ minutes. Even adults with the heart of a child could sit through it without thinking how numb their backside is getting.
That's probably the best description the movie can be given. It's not a boring dullard, but it's no masterpiece either.
It might have even got 6/10 had it not been for the McDonald's advert halfway through.
Apollo 13 (1995)
Not a sequel to Rocky...
That's what a friend of mine thought when it was originally released!! Apollo 13 has great potential, but Ron Howard's paint-by-numbers directorial style make this a plodding, documentary-esquire TV movie. In the hands of Spielberg, Cameron or Zemeckis, say, this could have been a nail-biting, edge-of-the-seat adventure. Even the coda lacks genuine thrills because the opening credits state the movie is based on the book by Jim Lovell, Tom Hanks' character.
Only good performances, particularly Ed Harris' director of operations, and a very good screenplay, filled with some great one-liners, give it appeal.
Coyote Ugly (2000)
The Ultimate Beer Goggles Movie
The term 'Beer Goggles' refers to your perception of things when you consume vast amounts of alcohol as depicted by some of the characters in this movie. I'd recommend drinking as much if you're settling down to watch this trash, the theory being that you'll be asleep before the opening credits have transpired.
I could waste my time writing a tirade about what is wrong with the actual movie, but it would be a complete waste of time and keystrokes. Young girls who don't know any better won't pay any attention to any negative publicity this bile gets, they'll just watch it, vainly hoping that if they look reasonably pretty, and open their legs to opportunity, their life will be a breeze too. The same young girls will probably watch this film in a double bill of a Katie Price/Jordan/Paris Hilton show on the ITV2 networks Thursday slot of dumb-ass programmes.
Piper Parabo is terrible in this movie, although she can't be held accountable for such an unlikeable character. In a key scene which points out what a doxy she is, she waltzes into a record company HQ like she's the Queen of England and demands that they listen to her music and sign her up. Because that's how it happens in real life isn't it? I write reviews on IMDb, it doesn't make me Siskel & frigging Ebert! They could have made this a 'Working Girl' for the 21st century, but it's closer not to Melanie Griffith's industrious heroine, but rather Bambi Woods in Debbie Does Dallas.
King Kong (2005)
Amazing and emotional
I was incredibly sceptical of watching this, since remakes are never really up to the scratch of the originals, etc. and since the Original King Kong is so classic and was followed by poor remake in 1976, I decided to miss this on it's initial release.
In the week's that followed, I decided to give it a chance and was pleasantly surprised, almost flabbergasted! I realised that the reason they remade Kong was because the technology was available to ensure Kong could make facial emotions which previous versions lacked and that is what makes this remake powerful and emotional. All of Kong's facial characteristic make the beast seem almost human and the chemistry between the giant ape and Naomi Watts is magical and heartwarming. The coda is one of the most tear-jerking moments I've ever witnessed.
The only disappointments were it's over-elaborate running time especially due to character building of secondary characters (Jamie Bell, etc.) which didn't add to suspense, even the scenes on Skull Island drag on for a little too long - but the visual effects and art direction are a gem for the eye. Jack Black hams up his performance and didn't "feel" right in his character, but everyone else is subtle in their performance. Naomi Watts is beautiful and amazing, but this movie is made by Andy Serkis' amazing performance as Kong!
Bad Santa (2003)
Aside from the usual...
Unlike your typical Christmas movie, Bad Santa is refreshing as an anti-sentimental Xmas flick - Billy Bob Thornton is superb as the acerbic, alcoholic, vulgar Santa as is Tony Cox as his "little friend".
The script is very Coen, but does dive into a bit of saccharine sentimentality towards the end and waivers into unconvincing territory when Gin is killed off. Also, what the hell happened to John Ritter's mall manager?...he just seemed to disappear?? Despite being hilarious on my initial viewing, a repeat viewing made me notice so many mistakes and goofs, that it ruined my enjoyment somewhat. Also, the end is a little too twee and Taxi Driver-esquire...
Matchstick Men (2003)
Irritating and disappointing
Nicolas Cage's acting was okay - playing a Con Man with a conscience and a rather nasty obsessive compulsive disorder. But the rest of the cast irked me especially Sam Rockwell as Cage's partner (and apparently, only friend) and Alison Lohman as Cage's long lost daughter who cries crocodile tears every ten minutes! The "twist" was clichéd and predictable (the antagonist is the protagonist's best friend in far, far too many films). It also left me feeling hollow and cheated. I thought this movie would give me hope about family unity, but it's moral seemed to be - people who steal deserve to be stolen from by people who steal. Still, our Nic ends up on the right side of the picket fences at the end - selling carpet and living the fruitful, Christian life with Mrs. Jo Bloggs from the grocery store.
On the whole, it's a load of tripe! 3/10
Doctor Who (2005)
How much per episode????
I know that our Doc has the ability to travel back and forth in time, but that does not justify gaping mistakes in continuity.
***SPOILER*** I noticed one scene, where Doc and Rose are running across Westminster Bridge and a night-bus drives past, the clock on Big Ben confirms the time as 11.30pm. In the next scene, Rose's mum is shopping in Oxford Street when the Auton's spring to life. London IS NOT A 24-HOUR CITY. Or, if it is, nobody told me and I f__king live here. ***END SPOILER***
Other than the bad direction, Christopher Eccleston breathed life into his incarnation of the world famous Doc, it's just a shame the writer's never gave him some better material to work with. Billie Piper proves that she's a better actress than a singer, but that's not much to show off about.
Alas, I'll keep my eyes focused on the next few episodes, with a pilot so bad, things can only get better. Can't they???
Irréversible (2002)
The only film to make me dry-heave!
If you're looking through these reviews, chances are that you've heard something about Irreversible, otherwise you wouldn't be here.
Gasper Noe's vision is gut-wrenching, dizzying, sickening and disturbing. Time destroys everything - so the tagline goes. The first line of dialogue in the movie also states it: Time destroys all things. Irreversible narrative is told in reverse, so time cannot destroy everything, since it begins with destruction and shows you what was destroyed.
***SPOILERS>>> The opening twenty minutes are the most disturbing I have ever seen, with swirling, dizzying camera movements through a seedy gay club where all sorts are going on, the music is pounding as our protagonist searches the hallways and dance floors for the man he is looking for, a man we only know as The Tenia... If you can hold onto your lunch when this man is found, you're a better man than I am... If you couldn't watch anymore, you should have disciplined yourself to sit through it further. With a beginning so violent and sickening, it can only get better can't it?? On my initial viewing, I had to stop watching during the "fire extinguisher" scene, I knew it was gonna be powerful stuff that followed and prepared myself for the worst...
But the following scenes were nowhere near as violent, just a mad hunt through the streets of Paris, trying to find the man responsible...for what? Only time will tell what this man did.
We find out soon enough, when Alex (Monica Bellucci) leaves a party early and enters a subway to get to the other side of the street. When will women learn?? Did she deserve to get raped? Of course not! But this kind of crime happens EVERY SINGLE DAY somewhere in the world, and it sickens me. Gasper Noe forces us to watch the most brutal rape and the unflinching camera captures every moment of Alex's pain. Why does this happen? Why? Why? Why?
The movie ends with Alex's relationship with Pierre, romantic scenes of love, intimate conversations, the creation of a life. Why can't the world be like this?
I implore all women to watch Irreversible... If only so they know (repeat: KNOW) the dangers that lurk around the corners of our life. Such perils cannot be erased, but we can prepare for them...
"Hindsight is always 20/20"
Time destroys everything, but should it?
Moulin Rouge! (2001)
Mar'mite Rouge?
There are many things that will never be explained... How did humanity come into existence? How many stars are in the sky? Who invented liquid soap and why? Why do we hurt the ones we love? Why is Moulin Rouge! so popular? I just don't understand it. This movie is truly like mar'mite, it's either loved or loathed. Never before has a movie caused so many arguments, it's almost hilarity. Is this what Baz Luhrmann intended? I myself, abhor it, the swirling camera movements, the non-stop action, the music, the lights, the colours, the acting. It just all gives me a headache. Jim Broadbent especially, with his f**king ugly face filling the entire screen through many moments.
I think this film is just horrid, horrid, horrid. I have nothing to recommend it, but it is so popular, and who am I to say what's good and bad? Moulin Rouge! is truly the cinematic equivalent of mar'mite...