Film Reviews by Gwydion

Having a man of 42 play a man of 21 was not a smart idea.

The combat scenes were OK, but the rest bored me.

If you're not put off by subtitles, any fan of war films and heroic fantasy should watch this. Though it seems odd they haven't done an English-dubbed version, which would get it through to a much wider audience.

They could also try a different title. Maybe 'Superheroes of the Fall of the Shang Dynasty'. For Chinese and other East Asians, the idea of mortals becoming gods is familiar and believed by the religious or superstitious. A belief also found in Classical Greece, but confusing for a Western audience.

It is an heroic fantasy, loosely based on the actual fall of the Shang, 3000 years ago. A concubine who was widely blamed in later histories is re-invented as a Fox Demon - another concept unfamiliar in the West. And it is actually simplified from the original legend, which has three spirits sent by an offended goddess to be destructive concubines who made a bad man worse.

Which may be no more historic than Shakespeare's Macbeth, but certainly makes a good drama.

It seems this legend is even better known than Journey to the West / Monkey, which is much better known in the West and had a recent much-rewritten film, as well as a Japanese television series that was popular in the West with dubbing into English. As I said, maybe humans become gods is too odd in the Western view, though the very popular superheroes are essentially the same.

The plot is complex, and I found the palace guards confusingly similar. But it was entertaining, and is the first of three.

A tail told told around a murder mystery. But this 1997 film gently shows a lot about the racism and shifting balances of power in Texas, taken from Mexico and in a border county where Latinos are now a majority. Are moving into the top jobs in what is still a white power structure.

Personal feelings cut across racial conflicts, sometimes. And there are several father-son conflicts, plus a man with an odd relationship with his rather scatty ex-wife.

Several characters are not what you first think you are.

Some excellent small stories told along the way. I was impressed by one about a young black woman from a slum area, serving in the army. She sees the USA as 'their country', offering a good deal because they need her to fight Arabs etc.

We were supposed to see it as something insightful into US life and 1960s radicalism.

I saw a set of banalities.

Some quite nice performances, but was the original serious, even?

How does it feel

To love and electric eel

And borrow anything you cannot steal!

The actors playing the gangsters were exactly like actors playing gangsters.

None of them were at all convincing.

The plot was pretty thin as well. They should have been expecting vengeance, after killing a woman's son.

Also a sleazy character becoming improbably heroic, but that is routine Hollywood

An uncomplicated war story about a tank crew.

Showing some of the lead characters dying, rather than having them untouchable.

A neat uncomplicated story.

Mysteriously missing from IMDb.

I've only just discovered this long-running series. Probably never on British television.

From the first four, I find it excellent.

Each time, there is an intellectual twist. But always pre-signalled - mentioned as a possibility, along with others that prove false.

A mix of characters, but so far it is mostly about the plot and not the internal dynamics. That suits me.

Unlike most war films, a lot of major characters die.

Some successes are a bit unlikely, but losses are shown.

For me, the benevolent American female reporter was a silly addition. But the rest was OK.

Like most war films, it has the main characters achieving an unlikely degree of success.

But the actual combat scenes seemed to give a good impression of what a real tank battle might have been like. The sheer danger and the results of non-fatal hits.

Likeable characters, and the villain is shown with some complexities.

If someone had been bold enough to cut this 3 hour 9 minutes epic down to a couple of hours, it might have made money rather than losing it.

Elephants shitting and women pissing on men are not what most viewers want. The minority who find it hilarious must have their own specialist stuff. Most mainstream films have the sense to avoid it. One wonders what happened here.

There is a lot of empty chat by people who have nothing interesting to say about the Meaning of Life.

Yet there is so much that is excellent. I don't regret having seen it. I just feel contempt for the editing process.

For my taste, extensive and needless medical details were out of place in something advertised as comedy thriller. And the blurb on the disk I got gave no warning.

It also seemed to me disrespectful for a bunch of actors to be treating real human suffering as raw material.

If done in a different spirit, it might have been a good drama, since the central event was actually real.

Or it could have been done comically, but without showing so much suffering and death, all of it based on real events.

Clearly it does not offend many viewers. But I regard such people out of line. Making a joke of things that are not funny.

And it seems I am in a majority. It was a box-office flop.

Brutal and sordid, and not at all likely.

Nothing is done with what might have been an interesting idea.

And it will probably also disappoint bondage fans.

If so, it's your sort of film.

Definitely not mine.

The 'science' was sheer magic. Not at all plausible. But that's often the case. I've forgiven it for many other films.

This one, none of it made sense. New organs and people who feed on plastic. Did no one tell them that plastics are a huge range of different chemicals, sharing just a few common points in their physical behaviour?

But the main point was that it revelled in pain and disgusting images. Pointless.

This treated it all as fun, which I found offensive.

Also none of it was believable. It was like a video game, with some characters improbably strong.

Unconvincing future technology.

The setting is obviously a normal tropical forest.

And the plot is silly.