Change Your Image
ruthie-30
Reviews
Waking the Dead: Deathwatch: Part 2 (2002)
nightmarishly good....but..
I thought this was a very good episode, people returning who were meant to be six feet under, and the programme kept returning to the awful hanging scene which always gives me nightmares. I had to keep looking up Google to find out who acted what, I was stunned by David Hemmings as Malcolm Finlay, and Warren Mitchell as Edgar Truelove, the hangman. The ending, however exciting and in a way satisfying it was, as the baddy got his comeuppance bothered me for one reason. I don't think I am giving any spoilers by talking about the final scene when someone got hanged by a criminal, the police rush in...see him hanging...and do NOTHING. Cut the man down for heaven's sake! Maybe he's still alive and can be saved? But no, they just stare into the eyes of the criminal who did it. This is going to bother me for a long time.
El guardián invisible (2017)
Very atmospheric
I have never been to Spain. I am a Londoner originally but live in Israel now where the weather is constantly gorgeous, at least in summer, and one of my first thoughts of this movie was : "Is it ever going to stop raining?" (No, it didn't! Is that a spoiler in itself?!)
However, I was very gripped by this bleak, atmospheric story of a young FBI trained detective's search for a serial killer in her home town. I agree that some of the characters were much too black and white. Evil sister, evil mother, etc, who seemed to have no good side to them at all, although I loved the quote by Evil Sister at the end when she killed the serial killer, thus saving Our Heroine's life and said "if I waited for you to catch him, the countryside would be littered with dead girls." That was classic!
I was extremely moved and disturbed by the horrific tragic and sad events in our heroine's childhood that have scarred her. They lingered in my brain far far longer than the actual serial killings and the investigation into them. How anyone can go through that and come out remotely functional at the other end is a miracle. The little actress who played the detective as a child was absolutely wonderful. Worth watching.
Apocalypto (2006)
History's first ever water-birth?
After reading the reviews on here, and in the TV listings, I was expecting far worse blood guts and gore than there was. As has been said, this is not nearly as gratuitous and sickening as some of those torture porn movies that I can't bear to watch. All the violence in this film was necessarily part of the story and the culture of the time, and anything more sanitised would have been like those old westerns where people fell down dead after being shot and not a drop of blood marred their pristine white suits.
I thought Apocalypto was a splendid movie, and a very daring subject for Mel Gibson to tackle. Historical inaccuracies - as I am a Philistine when it comes to history, I had no idea of any mistakes made so they bothered me not at all. Anyway it was a piece of fiction, and showed one man's ability to triumph against all the odds.
Of course Jaguar Paw was depicted as superhuman in his strength, endurance and sheer physical abilities, but as a soft hearted woman I feel sure that his powerful desire to be reunited with his wife and child who he had left down the waterless well, carried him onwards. When he jumped down that waterfall, the fact that his pursuers did the same, and some survived, lent credence to that amazing feat.
The chase scenes were amazing although they did drag on a little, I found, but then again I have never been a fan of car chases or any kind of chases in movies. Re goofs; I did notice that the man who had his face bitten off by the Jaguar did seem to make a remarkable post mortem recovery, or maybe the undertakers had already been around to make him look half decent for his loved ones? The scene where Jaguar Paw's wife gave birth in the water filled hole has been derided on here, but for me, working in the field of childbirth education and support, it made me smile. Was this history's first ever instance of a fully fledged water-birth? Did Jaguar Paw's missus find the pain relief such that she recommended it to her friends afterwards (whatever friends were still alive after the carnage of the movie, anyway) thus setting in motion the trend that was to become the modern day birthing pool? I wonder if Mel Gibson has witnessed his wife giving birth in a pool and this gave him the idea?
The Day of the Triffids (2009)
Mixed feelings about this one....
I absolutely love the original Wyndham book. It is the scariest thing to listen to as an audio book. I had high hopes for the modern adaptation as the '60's version with its primitive effects did not manage to make the Triffids any scarier than your average house plant.
As I settled down in great anticipation to watch this two part drama, I began to wonder how many drugs the writers had been on to imagine the audience would swallow the idea of the arch baddie, hammed up to the hilt by Eddie Izzard, surviving a plane crash by holing up in the loo surrounded by inflated life jackets. Maybe this should be touted as a life-saving idea when the cabin crew are giving us their safety spiel? Maybe the entire plane should be made up of individual pods filled with inflated life jackets for just such an occasion? Putting that aside, we now have to accept that blind people cannot do anything; they have not only lost their sight, they have lost their ability to run a civilisation. Zombie-like, they stagger around London, hands outstretched, totally reliant on the charity of the few sighted ones. I wonder what the real-life blind amongst us would make of that premise. I am thankful to be sighted, but I might be very insulted if I wasn't.
I had a fun time picking out the starry cast and placing them where I had seen them before. There's Sarah Caulfield from Spooks!(Genevieve O'Reilly) Now playing Michelle, Someone From the Government. And of course our hero, lantern-jawed Bill Masen (Dougray Scott) was Ian Hainsworth from Desperate Housewives. Personally I wasn't crazy about the acting of either Vanessa Redgrave or her daughter Joely Richardson, whose super-even capped teeth looked like the "after" shot in an episode of "Ten Years Younger" but whose skin was definitely from the "before" shot. I have High Definition, you see.
The Triffids themselves lumbered along slowly and quite comically like giant thistles with hoodies on. Admittedly they had some rather nasty whiplashing roots, but one wonders whether a generous dose of industrial strength weedkiller might have done the job and Saved the World. After all, they are only plants, aren't they? I enjoyed the beautiful location shots, although I did wonder about the snowy countryside outside the abbey which was not replicated anywhere else in Masen's journey north, but that's British weather for you. And if the Triffids were waiting for warmer weather to spore, what was the time line as they spored very shortly after the snow scenes?
I found the ending showed a marked lack of public spirit on behalf of the chief protagonists but I suppose if you have to save yourselves at the expense of the rest of the country, well then, so be it.
All in all the writing is lacking in believability and the sense of total doom that was omnipresent in the book, was missing, and replaced by a comicbook baddie and some veggie-hoodies that might be a symbol of all that's wrong with the youth of society today.
Ogre (2008)
Hated the special effects but liked the acting!
As a fan of monster movies and not opposed to a little gratuitous gore, I was fascinated by the title and the brief synopsis in my programme guide, so decided to watch this movie. I confess that I missed the beginning so did not see what happened to the two teenagers who let the ogre out of his lair. I presume they were eaten but I didn't witness this. I started watching from when the other two were in jail along with the "chosen one" for the ogre's next dinner.
I particularly liked the acting of Katharine Isabelle who played Jessica, the female of the two teenagers. I thought she hammed up her lines a little but that she gave the plot a bit of realism and down to earth-edness that was missing from the whole surmise.
The programme guide listed this movie under "horror." I would think that is a bit strong for the mild violence and terror generated by this film, most of which could easily be bettered by an average computer game aimed at teenagers. The ogre himself is a bit of a joke to put it mildly. Extremely juvenile computer graphics, comic-book roars, (why do all dinosaurs and monsters have exactly the same roars, I wonder?) and slow enough plodding that left me wondering how he caught anyone that wasn't tied to a stake as a sacrifice. Anyone who wasn't actually in a wheelchair could have outrun him, I would have thought.
Then of course there is the ever-present disbelieving police. Where would a good monster movie (or even a bad one) be without a couple of coppers laughing their heads off at the idea that there's a monster in them thar woods? Despite all of this, and suspending disbelief whenever the star of the show appeared on screen to gouge and maim those unfortunate locals who stood still for the required ten minutes waiting for him to reach them, I found this film enjoyable, particularly due to Katharine's natural performance. Whoever did the CGI ought to be allowed early retirement, but otherwise it was an enjoyable romp...hardly horror though.