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robbeaus
Reviews
Ashanti (1979)
Worth the effort
I liked this, because I was getting fed up of Black people saying that slavery was all the work of the white man
The truth is that Slaves and Slavery was never owned by only white People. Slaves have been taken since the birth or the human race. African slavery was only developed by black Africans going into the interland and taking fellow Africans for slavery. Whitemen couldn't go into the bush as they would died all to easily from tropical nastys. Even after Britain outlawed slavery, Africans still took prisoners into slavery for the middle East, where it still goes on today.
If people want to preach about nasty whitemen and the Slave trade they should look at there own before they point fingers.
Alien: Covenant (2017)
Awful
OK so you are responsible for possibly the best Sci-Fi franchise of all time. Fans have been avidly following the Alien time line for years and years, decades even. And this is what they get served up with? Canned pap! After the end of the Ripley years, I suspect people will have been waiting very patiently for this offering, hopping that we would get to grips with the back story that is the beast. Prometheus 1, which i thought OK didn't really help and left more questions than answers. Then we were tantalised with the prospect of not just 1 but 2 new Alien films. So just what were we served up? 1, Don't they Syc evaluate Astronauts of the future? What, they simply pick 22 people of the unemployment lines, throw a suitcase full of money at them and then ask them to fall apart as soon as any problem pops along? I guess in the film Apollo 13, they weren't really marooned in the cap, but were robotically guided by robots and ground crew? 2, In all if not the majority of the film series, quarantine rules are constantly ignored, with the Alien not needing a single 'o' level in how am I going to breach this space craft rigged for space running and the horrors of propelling a 1,000mtr long space craft through simply the most frightening terrain imaginable, No all you have to do is infect a host, and the numpties who are the hosts fellow crew members simply bring you inside, where you can rock 'n' roll through the crew to your hearts content. 3, Once inside you then can seemingly move with ease through this humongous space ship with insider knowledge only possibly obtainable from the ships designers, who of course aren't actually on this afor-mentioned ship and thus the beast could not know anything about the ship? 4, Before all this, the crew is diverted from their main task of delivering the cargo of potential colonists all 3,000+ of them including embryos, simply on the word of one of those un-syc evaluated astronauts, and at the behest of a John Denver record. Clearly this captain has well exceeded his intellectual capacity for captaincy. Best stick to ships cook or busboy? And the list goes on and on.
I have given the film a 5 as the special effects a some of the best i have ever seen and possibly why i will be waiting with baited breath for the next instalment of the goon show. In the fallen hope that Ridley sorry Sir Ridley, will endeavour to give us true Alien fans a film worthy of its name, Please
2022
I have downgraded my 5 to a 1, having been encouraged to review the film again. I find it worse than I first recall, in short it was pap served on toasted pap. Every action shot was previewed by a decision that would never have been carried out by real astronauts, and the hysterics passing for sound judgements beggar beliefs. I firmly believe that the actors picked for this had previously worked for MacDonalds to firm up their method acting ability.
Efterskalv (2015)
A story in 3 parts, hard work
This is a film, which struggles to make clear what it wants to be. It is also riddled with inconstancy's which leaves the viewer wondering just what they are being offered. The first part, the arrival, John arrives home from an unspecified period of time, in an unspecified institution, his monosyllabic part of the overall script, quickly lead this watcher to wonder if they might be better off leaving the viewing and reading a newspaper? Moving onto the next part, which fails significantly to clarify the muddy mist, which has descended over the screening. Whilst the action improves significantly, with the arrival of some form of normality, the lack of any relationship between father and son is slightly clarified by the arrival of granddad, but remains boring. The final segment of the film is no clearer than the rest, but at least by then we do have a fuller idea as to just what is going on, but only just. I understand that the film maker, was making an analogy of Swedish Society and the problems that unchecked immigration is bringing Sweden and there way of life. But there are far better ways of getting your message across, that migration is a massive problem and is causing no end of problems between Swedes and uncle tom cobly and all.
Museum Hours (2012)
Dire paint drying experience
Warning this film is a complete waste of 109 mins of your life, you WILL come away from the cinema feeling like you have lost something important in your life.
I have two dogs who are suffering from a mild stomach upset at the moment, and our daily inspection of their movement each day is so much more entertaining than this dire waste of space.
It starts of slow and progresses to a point of numbness that will represent your own bottom after sitting through this rubbish. There was a film about some mechanic in a garage a few years ago, which we felt at the time had plumbed the depths of crass nothingness. Museum Hours makes that film seem on reflection an Oscar contender.
There is nothing to redeem this film, even the artifacts on show and Brugels Art which features prominently which are wonders to behold, fail to pick this pail of Pooh up from the bottom of the well where it wants to live. None of the Actors made so much of the slightest effort to try and get the director to do what he was paid (well we think that was his role in this) rather than dwell on this private joke of a film. As somebody else has noted have I mentioned it was slow? Even the backdrop of Vienna failed to rescue this from it's who full lack of reason why?
If this sort of tripe can attract funding, then no wonder the film industry is in such a rock bottom place. I can only pine for what has been lost in the need to fund this!
This film is not for the purest it is not for the casual film buff it is not even for an aficionados of the work of Jem Cohen perhaps in the misguided belief that he is somehow related to the Cohen brothers themselves. This film is for the local rubbish tip (all copies that is) ASAP lest anybody else gets punished with 109 mins of this.
Intouchables (2011)
Superb French Future Classic
This is not just the shoe in for the best foreign language film at the 2013 Oscars, if there was any justice in the world the Best Film, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor, it is that good. I have no intention of spoiling anybody's enjoyment of this film by spoiling it. But this film does jokes the way you and I eat the popcorn in the cinema. From the soon to be classic dance sequence, to the down right hilarious in a wicked bad taste way tash monologue. What should be a dour tragic tet a tet between a down at heals Algerian immigrant and a upper class French billionaire, is nothing of the sort, it's uplifting its got a heart and above all it propels French Film into the super star bracket. Yep it's that good However don't believe me get down to whoever wherever it's being shown and bathe yourself in a piece of Cinema magic.
La femme du Vème (2011)
A trip into the mind of a serial killer?
I will say from the off, that my conclusion comes from reading other reviews after seeing the film. Which left me confused and lost as to what I had seen. Ethen Hawk arrives in Paris from who knows where, gets robbed on the bus and reaches the end of the line. He ends up in a seedy café, where he manages to get a room with no money in his pocket and seemingly on the back of being an American. Later the bar/café owner offers him a job as a doorman letting people into a non-descriptive place of 'entertainment/bad things'. He meets his estranged wife and daughter, as well as meeting a strange but alluring French widow, who needs his body and mind. He later discovers his obnoxious neighbour dead in the shared toilet, and he has a brief fling with a polish bar maid who just happens to be the same bar owner's girl. OK so far? If you see the film like that you will end up as confused as most of us watching the screening as I did. However if you start to think about the allegorical message of a serial killer, incarcerated in the system then it starts to make more sense. What this film does for me is to take me on a journey as our 'Hero' arrives at the entrance of the institution is stripped of all his possessions apart from his passport or his identity and locked up in a series of small rooms as he relates to the audience just what he did do to end up where he was. He fleeting contact with the police and his frequent evasion of them is the Hickockian hallmark of a man on the run. The rooms he lives and works in is his cell, Paris is but a backdrop in which to establish his story (perhaps his wife was French, as she is portray in the film)? But the cast of whom he reacts with his victims, including his wife and daughter. Reflecting on the film, I think on hindsight that it's not to bad, and I fact made me think about the boundaries that people set up for the self's and what happens when those boundaries are breached. All in all a good effort and one that perhaps might do well with a second viewing?
Resistance (2011)
Wry, sharp look at occupying powers and their victims.
Having read the reviews on IMDb, it was with some trepidation that I set out to have-a- look-see at this film. As apart from Andrea Riseborough, and Martin Sheen, this was a bit of a step in the dark for me. I knew that Amil Gupta was a newbie, but supported by the up and coming cinematographer John Pardue (Frequently asked questions about time travel) who works are starting to attract the big boys, I was somewhat fortified and set out to see for myself what the fuss was about. First of all I don't know what film the others saw, but it certainly wasn't Resistance! This was a sumptuous feast in its presentation, its thought process and not least its cast. A simple story of what might have been if the war had gone differently played for all there worth by a leading band of players. I won't give the plot away, save to say don't what ever you do miss this potential classic. Stunning performances by Ms. Riseborough and her male lead (not Michael Sheen) Tom Wlaschiha, gripped me to the seat as I debated will they won't they, and an ending that was completely expected made is 92min expo see like 10mins and me demanding more. But what I most enjoyed was the Welsh landscape presented as a lovingly prepared canvas by the adept camera work of Mr. Pardue. As I say if I tried to deliver more I run the risk of giving the game away. So buckle your belt, seek out you cinema sixpence and don't miss this one