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Reviews
A Small Light (2023)
Where to start....
Good dialogue and authenticity were obviously dumped for this series. It is far too contemporary, it feels like a piece written by a team of modern day American writers for a (mainly) British cast, because that is exactly how it comes across as, some of it is laughably bad.
The depiction of Miep Gies as a jolly, fun-loving, frivolous, boozing girl is terrible. The aim seems to be 'Emily In Amsterdam'.
This series could have been set in London during the late 30s/WW2 for all that matters, but this is supposed to be at least (loosely) an historical piece, focused on Miep Gies & the Frank family she hides, set in Amsterdam featuring the persecution of the Jews and an invasion of a country (The Netherlands) by the Nazis. The sheer horror of all of this seems to have been lost in this holiday postcard depiction of events.
If this were a total piece of fiction it'd be bad enough but this is supposedly based on a real story. Artistic licence aside this is really not very good.
Silo (2023)
Another dystopian future only peopled by North Americans...
Despite half the cast being British and the series being filmed in England why is this yet another series where everyone has an American accent? Why wouldn't they have mixed accents? Seeing some these very good British actors speaking with (sometimes) quite poor American accents really does grate after a while. Why do most dystopian futures in tv series like this only feature North Americans it seems, despite having quite multi-international casts? The overall premise of the series is quite interesting with some great sets and costumes but it gets undermined by some rather poor scriptwriting and ropey overacting besides those suspect accents.
Belfast (2021)
Almost non stop music throughout and too much Van Morrison!
Great actors, good script, cinematography, art direction etc but a Van Morrison track every other scene makes for an totally episodic, disjointed affair of a film. I lost vount of how many tracks there were, but definitely too many. The scenes seem too fleeting and jumped around far too much, apart from the odd few, when the there was thankfully no bloody music. The lack of cohesion and sporadic direction was so much so it didn't retain as much interest as it should have. By the way if you don't like Van Morrison (I don't) this film will annoy the hell out of you. A great shame as the sentiment and intention behind this film was coming from a good place.