Film Reviews by RD

Quite a different flavour of a story which might have worked, but slowly paced and with a poor screenplay containing very feeble attempts at humour. It has the sort of jokes that may appeal to the very young, but mixed with quite gross shock moments as if to inject some life into the plot, it is a very clumsy drama. With some talented writing this could be good but unfortunately it looks as though it has been hastily dashed off by an inexperienced youth as a school drama project. We stayed with episode 1 until the end but were glad to finish it there.

It's a charming and enjoyable film, showing just how the stereotypical British worker operated in the sixties. Not laugh out loud comedy but definitely in the enjoyable category.

This film is unusual in that it has no dialogue, plenty of sound effects and constant loud daft music. It's a great pity they used only two tunes and tried to produce variations on them throughout, as hearing the same tunes over and over again did spoil the film a little.

Much of the enjoyment with this film is trying to put names to the well known faces.

It's a love story with a difference, it is stripped bare of the usual cliches and padding that make up the average film. As such it stands out as unique.

This black and white film is very sharp in blu-ray and with good contrast to all the beautifully composed shots.

In particular, mention must be made of the soundtrack, filled with a wide range of music (performed, not background incidental stuff) from classical to jazz to obscure folk, in fabulous quality and with great use of the surround channels. The train sound effects are superb. Many of the scenes are silent except for ambience, and it works so well.

The story is well told with a good pace and has a great mixture of action, and it is absorbing.

We rented this film after hearing Mark Kermode rate it highly, and we were so delighted to have found it.

The opening compilation of clips in episode one is a good indication of what's to come in the rest of the series. The clips appear to be completely random and don't give any idea of what the series is about. Completely baffling in fact.

The first episode starts, and then there's lots of scenes that don't appear to have anything to do with each other. That's fair enough I suppose, as many plots start like this but by the end of the first episode we're none the wiser as to what on earth it's about. Nothing is gelling plot-wise. We decided to go for episode two as well, just in case it gets better. It doesn't, and to make things worse the dreaded supernatural twist gets into the plot and completely screws everything up.

We gave up on the series after episode two as the plot was just too fragmented, the characters were rather uninvolving and the whole thing was starting to get silly.

A proper play, cleverly written and it's art so don't expect it to be fun!

I expect the whole class to write an essay after watching the play, and it should be entitled "Sexual power and attraction between the four characters" and no sniggering at the back.

Very poorly presented play, with over-emphasisied characters giving a pantomime feel to the film. The sudden bursts of dance & musical numbers put the tin lid on it all and we baled out after about 20 minutes.

We like Francois Ozon's films, that is until now.

This film starts with good visuals but they are swamped by the gushing, over-sentimental, easy-listening orchestral music. You can tell something is overdone already in the film at this early stage.

Then to the action and dialogue, which is simple and not particularly interesting to start with, but the greatest difficulty we had was putting up with the incessant terrible display of very hammy over-acting by the lead actress Romola Garai. We've seen her in other films and she is a passable actress capable of much less irritating performances, but this character is so badly portrayed we really couldn't stand watching the film.

Then there was the trip with Sam Neil in the open carriage (the "spot the dodgy back-projection" moment) which really did add to the general discomfort and led to the successful operation of the eject button at about ten minutes into the film, along with a great sigh of relief.

The performances from Sam Neil and Charlotte Rampling were very good, and took on the quality of Oscar nominations next to that of the lead character, however as a whole film that was trying to set a story it was a dismal and painful failure.

And the gushing music still persisted.

French baroque music has a charm and lilt that is so beautiful that even average performances can be beguiling, but when everything is right as in this performance it can be spine-tinglingly beautiful.

The orchestra of period instruments is spot-on in the playing, and not a vibrato to be seen from the string players giving the overall sound a plain sweetness that gives the music its character. The choir is excellent, with dynamics beautifully handled and a good balance of pure voices. The soloists are the crowning glory, they have voices that match the music perfectly, not strident, not wobbly, just pure and well balanced. All these three parts are blended together by great conducting by Raphael Pichon and are very well balanced by the sound engineer, much better than the BBC Proms standards we are used to in the UK.

Other influences add to the enjoyment of the performances, such as the stunning reverberation of the chapel which makes its presence felt throughout. Listen to the solo drummer in the procession down the aisle for how good reverb can sound! Also the use of the balconies and other parts of the chapel frame the whole performance with character and separation.

Watch out early on in the plain vocal pieces for the shadow of the conductor on the wall that looks very much like a clip from the old black & white Nosferatu film.

We rented this after seeing Mark Kermode giving it some critical acclaim on his History of Cinema series.

As many of the other reviewers point out, it's basically a kids film with very shallow characters, plenty of car chases and shoot-outs and a simple plot. The acting is ok, but there's not much substance in the screenplay to be able to give any great performances here.

What saves the film and kept us watching to the end however is the incredible synchronisation of action to the music soundtrack. The music is good and varied, and every door opening and closing, every footstep, every car squeal and crash and even all the gunshots are in perfect time with the music. A very clever and impressive achievement of film making, especially as the action appears fluid and not at all contrived. Photography, soundtrack and editing are all excellent.

One of the main characters, Bats, who spoke a lot of the dialogue, spoke it very fast, very quietly and muttered with a thick american street accent, with the result that we couldn't make out more than about 10% of his lines. However dialogue in this film is redundant to a great extent and although the problem was annoying it didn't detract from the enjoyment of the main attraction of the film - such brilliant editing.

This is one of those films that should be on everyone's list of must-see titles.

There is so much that is well done in this film, from the photography, the lighting, the storyline (based on real events), the acting (not just from the young Al Pacino but everyone), the portrayal of gay relationships (without lapsing into stereotypes), and if you see the extra documentaries on the disc there is some inspired improvisation as well.

It's an exciting and tense stand-off when a bank robbery goes wrong, and it deals with all the logical turns of events that develop after that. It hasn't aged after all these years, watch it.

Stunning performance by Ian Richardson as Francis Urquart and a terrific spiralling plot. The transfer shows good picture and sound quality however the sound is a little early and not quite in sync with the picture.

Nearly but not quite a good film. The problem is the central character, Norman, who is one of those people that exist by networking and telling lies to get into higher levels of society and hopefully earn a living by putting others in touch who can make deals giving him a cut. Charming and a little mischievous, he exists in a cloud of vagueness and nobody really knows what he does. As a central character this vagueness makes for a difficult plot, and as a result the poor audience are often left wondering what on earth he is doing and where it's all going.

The first half is slow and meanders along, he befriends an Israeli politician and that's about all. The politician becomes Prime Minister after three years and then remembers Norman (hooray), and the plot then starts to develop as the politician is embroiled in a corruption scandal which then becomes the climax of the film. Big problem, this scandal is glossed over and like the early part of the film, the audience is lef feeling like it's being kept out of the story instead of being involved. That's the whole climax we've been waiting for throughout all the film which is then hidden and screwed up. A real disappointement.

The acting however, is good all round and Richard Gere makes a good Norman. The editing is good, and the dialogue is intelligent and well written with some excellent Jewish characters, and the photography is good so we nearly have a good film, but giving the audience such a skimpy plot and hiding so much involvement especially right at the end stops any real enjoyment.

As an analogy, you know the first glass of sparkling wine that is poured when you open a bottle? It's full of foam and looks like a drink but is actually completely foam and bubbles with no actual drink under it all? Well that's this film.

This film starts as a promising Danish thriller, however it soon descends into a very simple and underdeveloped revenge movie as Zaid the surgeon seeks to avenge his brother's death at the hands of drug pushers. There's very little involvement, and the film relies mainly on sporadic outbursts of horrific violence to make its dramatic impact. No great ending, just some dead baddies.

It's in black & white, with 4:3 aspect ratio and consists of a sort of fly-on-the-wall documentary following a quiet man around all day. Nothing much occurs, he does a radio interview which goes badly as the interviewee drones on for ages, he sits in on a meeting, he has a haircut and that's about it. Tremendously dull, but so dull we had to watch the whole film just to see if anything develops. It doesn't.

About halfway through there is a song about horses with hilarious words that makes Father Ted's Eurovision entry "My Beautiful Horse" look like a masterpiece. Just reading the words from the subtitles lifts you out of the dullness for a minute or two, then it's back to dullness. At least if you watch paint dry there's a chance it's in colour!

The main story is fairly simple, and parts could be described as predictable, however the clever part of this film is the amount of detail it covers within the story. There are so many personal identity issues with just about all the characters involved which are brought up in a smooth flowing plot and well handled. Nobody is perfect.

Nothing feels rushed or slow, good editing has ensured the pace is consistent and the photography is excellent.