Film Reviews by RD

We're both fans of Jean Reno and French crime thrillers.

This series covers one story per episode, and only pretends to be French.

The story depends largely on the dialogue in US english, and is quite dull and often shouty in the style of third rate US cop series.

The plots are fairly complex and deserve better scriptwriting to show their worth.

Not a worthwhile viewing experience.

We persevered though disc 1 but couldn't face disc 2.

We were pleasantly surprised as soon as we started watching this film.

A 1927 silent film didn't seem like an easy few hours, but we were glued to the screen the whole way through.

The music soundtrack added to the scenes very well indeed.

This film covers the life of an angry factory worker, chronicling his run-ins with both his colleagues and bosses. There's consistent shouting throughout the film which gets tiring, and any story was lost as we both nodded off during this film.

It's a struggle portrayed in the film, and also to remain watching it.

We backed out of it near to the end as we'd had enough, and switched to something easier to watch.

I couldn't make out the plot or story to this film, despite watching until very near to the end. There were a lot of flashbacks and scenes of past/ present shown at the same time which didn't help, but despite some good cinematography the whole film left us completely bewildered, which prevented any involvement with the characters.

Sorry go say it was quite beyond our meagre brains to understand what it was all about.

Dickens' characters were written with quite a deal of over-exaggerated traits, and so this film manages to do great justice to Dickens by choosing brilliant actors that encapsulate the essence of each character.

Even though the film is from 1935, the transfer is bright and crisp with pretty good sound considering it was only eight years after talkies were introduced.

It retells the story with fair accuracy and much of the original printed dialogue, with the main difference from the book being the condensing of scenes, as the book itself is extremely long.

WC Fields as Mr Micawber is a true delight, and the portrayal of Uriah Heep is as near perfect as I can imagine. The young Freddy Bartholomew brings a soft maturity to the role of the young Copperfield.

Although this is an old film (88 years old) with dated acting traits, the inspired nature of the story well told with such brilliant actors puts it in the must-see category of films.

We couldn't make it past the fist five minutes, the whole film was an awful tribute to over-acting. From Sherlock Holmes trying to act manic to Robert Duvall's overblown english accent, it all grated badly on the nerves. The dialogue revealed very little in the nature of a plot and just seemed to be there for ridiculous dramatic effect.

I can't see the rest of the film recovering from such a dire introduction.

Avoid.

In many ways it's a beautiful film, but it meanders so slowly that meaning is lost - actually it never arrived with us.

The central character of Kafuku finds his wife dead some time after discovering her in bed with another man. He never confronted her and this causes long suffering regrets throughout the film.

Halfway through the film the credits roll and the viewer realises nothing's been developed or dealt with.

It seems like it's the dead end of a dreary film.

Then...the film carries on with the second part set some years later where Kafuku is hired to direct a performance of Uncle Vanya, with his wife's lover as the eponymous character. Rehearsals are focussed on for some time, and the characters interact with each other, but it's all a bit baffling with no clear direction or plot.

Kafuku builds a small relationship as he bonds with the driver he has been allotted, but then the film ends.

I must admit to checking out the insides of my eyelids for a few moments in this film during the really slow scenes, but my wife stayed awake in these parts and we shared notes afterwards to no avail.

The story never really seems to get going, and many of the scenes come over as casual and vague. The film is set around poker tournaments, of which there are several scenes, but we are never shown any tension or content to the games, which leaves another empty gap in the story.

There's some friction between characters in various scenes, but it never seems to go anywhere. The result is a viewing with a lot of hope that the story will develop, but unfortunately it just bumbles along until the end.

This is most unusual for a film involving Martin Scorsese.

It's actually a great story, and is shown with typical French matter of fact pace and scenes which roll the story out in a slow but deliberate fashion. This is often extremely good and I am a great fan of French cinema, but this film just didn't work for me and I did find my eyelids closing more than once.

The story revolves around Yvon, who is unjustly convicted of passing a fake banknote, and we follow him through a series of logical downturns in his life from then on. There is a side plot dealing with a dishonest shop assistant, which although he meets up with Yvon later in the film, does not add to the story and is a distraction.

The whole film and acting is done in a deadpan slow manner that really does become irritating and does not help the actual story.

Even the ending is odd, it's very violent but you'd never notice as the scene is slow, methodical and quiet just like the rest of the film.

This film is set in the adrenalin and cocaine driven financial boom years of the eighties, and the hurried shouted dialogue throughout the film reflects this. Parts of the dialogue are undecipherable, and much of it is in the jargon of Wall Street financiers which completely baffled these two viewers.

So we endured most of the film trying to work out what was said, and the flow of the film never got going.

After about halfway, the plot begins to gel, and it's easy to see what's basically going on. Still no depth of dialogue and the plot progresses on and on.

Oliver Stone does have a talent for bringing out depths of characters, and there's one scene where Michael Douglas addresses the shareholders which is very good indeed, erudite and well acted.

The rest of the film however is a dated financial swindle plot that races headlong to the half hearted finish.

There's a first long scene of the trenches in 1914 which doesn't introduce the film or give you any idea of what's to be expected. This is then followed by a lengthy nightclub scene many years later, again slightly odd with it's Sister Rosetta Tharp blues content (great music but incongruous) and its outrageously overt sexual dancing (again incongruous and highly unlikely for 1937).

At this point the two of us were were wondering when the plot was going to arrive, and what was this film all about. Not a good start to any film.

Then at long last the action arrived in Egypt, with some very odd and perplexing scenes before the film and plot got going - at last. The dialogue is thin and short for the whole film, giving no understanding or development of the weak characters, and so the film dragged on like this until the end. Someone killed someone just about sums up the interest here. Each scene seems to be padded out too much so that any pace of the plot is dragged down on a regular basis.

By contrast the filming is excellent, the music and sound effects likewise, so there's good technical quality to the film, although the over-used computer generated effects become very obvious and wearisome, and unfortunately add to the overblown nature of the whole film.

Kenneth Branagh's interpretation of Poirot is also incongruous in that it is novel and understated, which would come over much better were it to be put into a less pretentious and feeble film.

Although the picture quality is good, the same cannot be said for the sound track which features relentless irrelevant music, with sound effects and dialogue in thin distorted and compressed mono.

If you remember In a Gadda da Vida by Iron Butterfly from 1968, you will recognise the bass line which appears all through the film. You can hum along as it may help to brighten up the viewing experience.

The plot is extremely simple and hackneyed; the mafia terrorises a town, a brave policeman (the hero) is constrained by his superiors so much as to be ineffective, then the hero recruits relatives of victims, arms them and ambushes mob in one enormous shoot out. That's all folks, end of film.

This is the 70's at its most cheesiest, and with the screeching mono soundtrack is not a good experience.

It starts badly, with an frantic over the top scene of all the sisters going mad in a large

house. It's a mood setter for the rest of the film.

The next great gaffe is Claire Foy saying "for f**** sake" as she is found hiding in the wardrobe. It's not the only instance of 21st century language in a 19th century setting as the youngsters behave as gobby modern brats, and the f word reappears later. Any believability is shattered as the film continues with overacted scenes throughout.

The pace does slow at times but swings to the opposite extreme as over sentimental dullness which is very overindulgent.

There is so much to Louis Wain's life that could make several good films, but here it's all wasted on an amateurish directing disaster.

The finest part of this film is the final credits, where you can actually view many of the great pictures an good detail as they roll past.

It's not a bad film, the plot is centred around the main character Ayse who is pursued by her husband's family through forest and roads with the heavily armed pursuers being given the slip by an agile and focussed Ayse. There's plenty of shooting and violence, with the mandatory amounts of blood and injuries to keep the thriller part of the film going along at a fair pace in parts, but in other parts the plot slows down and becomes temporarily dull, but it soon recovers for another chase sequence.

It's all very formulaic and the plot is very simple so don't expect any depth of involvement, just sit back and follow the chase.

There are quite a few confusing dream sequences and flashbacks throughout the film, and it's often not clear whether the action is actually happening or whether it's all in Ayse's head. This has the effect of stopping any involvement in the film whilst the viewer tries to work out what's happening.

The film goes through all the action for the duration as described above, and just before the end has a big shoot out with the sudden arrival of a lot of unknown characters including some which I understood were already dead. Then while this poor viewer is trying to work out what's what, Ayse limps off into the forest and the end credits roll. It's a very disappointing, empty ending as if they suddenly ran out of budget and closed it all down.

Watch it for the chase, the shooting and the violence but don't expect too much.

It's not bad, but there's no real depth of interest generated by this series. It compares with the UK series "Silent Witness" and is a little slower and less interesting as a result of poor directing, weak characters and a slow storyline.

The main characters all show their foibles and demons (like any crime thriller) to add depth to themselves, but the plot often spends too much time on these sideshoots with the result that the main crime solving part of the plot loses out and the whole momentum of the story is lost.

Technically the dialogue is of poor quality with levels often going down too low, some colloquial muttering, and most voices suffering from a boxy mid-range quality with very little of their high frequencies. We resorted to switching on the subtitles which helped a lot whenever the dialogue dropped. This is on a calibrated Dolby Atmos system with reference front speakers. The episodes are in two channel stereo.