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drtimhill
Reviews
Foyle's War (2002)
GREAT series but two flaws
Wonderfully written, acted and directed series. Michael Kitchen as always puts in a nuanced and compelling performance and the plots are clever but believable. There are however two flaws, but DONT let these put you off watching this series.
First, as others have noted, every "high up" individual is always portrayed as stupid and/or corrupt. No doubt many were but EVERYONE? After a while this cliche gets a bit tired.
Second is the Samantha character. While well acted, after a while the "Miss Gullible" bit gets tiring, as she (yet again) tells the wrong person everything she knows after being told not to. Again and again. Worse, later on she marries to an even MORE gullible person who becomes an MP! Essentially all they do is look baffled as everyone runs rings around them .. episode after episode.
HOWEVER as I said, put this aside and enjoy what is otherwise an excellent series.
Dark Star (1974)
Cheesy Effects But Who Cares???
It has cheesy effects .. a terrible sound track and low production stsndards. But who cares? This movie is WONDERFUL. From the spaced-out crew to the (hilarious) alien, this has to be one of the funniest spoof movies of all time. Who can fault a movie that has existential bombs?
Dark (2017)
All bottle but no beer
As others have noted, this show is all style and no substance. Every scene has heavy over-the-top dark musical chords .. and I mean EVERY scene. Again and again and again. The acting is WAY too heavy, with everyone looking deep and dark all the time. Lightning is uniformly dark with washed out colors. Someone seems to have read "mystery show production for dummies" and think that makes them an expert.
And then we have all the dull cliches. The cop who is personally involved and goes solo. The kids who discover vital clues and .. you guessed it ... keep them secret (why?). Actors standing around looking deeply troubled when in fact they at that point have nothing much to trouble them (except for that damn background music).
Sadly the result is (yet again) a rather feeble story disguised by cumbersome production values to make what is essentially banal look (falsely) profound.
Stonemouth (2015)
Oh dear oh dear
Pretty people acting badly... pretty much sums this up. The director seems to be working from Directing for Dummies as we get the various "art" shots so he he can add them to his resume, followed by directing 101shots so we can watch the bad actors trying to act. Then we get voice-overs .. and MORE voice-overs ... and .. well you get my point. Because how else can you explain the plot and characters? ... oh wait that's right .. by acting and directing properly!
You & I (2014)
Gently paced but good character study
If you watch this movie with certain expectations, you are going to be disappointed. Which, I think, is why so many of the reviews here are so polarized. You won't find the meaning of life in this movie. You won't find gay themed cliches or tropes. You won't find pretty boys strutting around. You won't find Hollywood-style "spell everything out for the dumb audience" directing. You won't find "the big steamy sex scene". But nor will you find the movie being coy about (European) attitudes to nudity and sex (something which clearly confuses several of the other reviewers here).
Instead, you will find, essentially, a movie about the way people muddle through the conflicting chemistry of friendships and relationships. These are not titanic conflicts, causing huge explosions or overly-dramatic scenes. They are the inner puzzles we have to solve as we grope through life. What DO I feel about someone? What DO they really feel about me?
The reactions of the three principal (well, only) characters are played out against a road trip background -- not a particularly new idea, but the director lets things unfold in a paced manner, just as they do in real life. Things are NOT spelled out here; the clues are all there, but the director (wisely) leaves the viewer to fill in the holes. This leaves us to puzzle out things from these imprecise clues in the same way the characters are puzzling out their lives.
The actors mostly do a good job, the Jonas character for me being the most filled out and well acted. Jonas (a photographer) is clearly using his camera as both a shield and a way to probe the feelings of his companions, but the director wisely refrains from over-doing this (to the point, I suspect, where some reviewers didn't even notice this). Philip is more direct, and apparently more shallow. Boris is in many ways the most ambiguous.
The movie is of course not perfect, and a few scenes didn't quite click for me, but overall the development was perfectly believable, and gently touching, though ultimately sad for at least one of the trio.
I said that this movie is about chemistry, and ultimately I think the movie is best understood in terms of a catalyst .. an apt term (check on Google if you're not sure of the precise definition), though what that catalyst is I shall leave you to find as you watch it.