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Steve-283
Reviews
Time Team (1994)
A perfect example of intelligent TV
There is far too much rubbish on television these days. Thank goodness therefore for wonderful, engaging, intelligent programmes like Time Team (and its spin-off Extreme Archaeology by the same producer Tim Taylor).
Presented by Tony Robinson (of Blackadder fame) the premise of the programme is to bring together a number of Archaeologists, experts in various fields, to try and investigate a particular problem in three days.
The team works on various of locations, mainly in the UK but occasionally abroad. They investigate a wide variety of historical periods from stone age man living in Cheddar Gorge, through Roman villas up to an American World War II bomber which crashed in South East England.
The expertise and resources, both human and technological, that Time Team can bring to a dig means that they can often discover more about a site in the three days than the local archaeologists had been able to find out in previous years. In fact local archaeologists often invite the team to investigate problems that they haven't been able to deal with themselves. At the other end of the scale the team sometimes investigates anomalies that viewers have found in their own back gardens.
Another important part of the programme is a task or reconstruction relating to the dig. For example when working on Josiah Wedgewood's first kiln, the team showed the process that he went through to produce his pottery. In another episode when excavating a Roman villa, they produced a reproduction of a mosaic.
Overall this is an extremely intelligent programme with a superb presenter and interesting experts whose obvious enthusiasm really comes across when they are describing what is going on.
Finally it is worth mentioning the excellent 'Time Team Live' digs, where Time Team have conducted an excavation over the course of a few of days with a number of live programmes over that period where they give an update of what is happening and what they have found.
What is so wonderful about this programme is the thrill of discovery. Nobody knows exactly what is going to happen and the direction of the programme can change halfway through based on the evidence that has turned up. Its a long way from the latest boring, predictable soap opera!
Shrek 2 (2004)
Superb, but much too short!
I loved the first movie for its pure originality. This film could never do that again. Fortunately the film-makers went in a completely different direction and went for the funniest script that I have heard in a long time.
The one-liners, spoofs and cameos are all played to perfection. I saw this a week before general release in the UK and I have rarely heard an audience laugh so much. There were even spontaneous outbreaks of applause in places and I have _never_ heard a British audience do that before!
The additions to the first film's excellent cast were wonderful - Jennifer Saunders was an inspired choice for the fairy godmother and John Cleese was superb as King Harold. But the biggest plaudits must go to Antonio Banderas as Puss in Boots. If you are going to see one movie this year starring an orange feline, then make it this one!
My only real criticism of this film was that it was much too short. After what seemed like only a few minutes the end credits were rolling. I suppose that there was a conscious decision to make this film a relentless rollercoaster, but with slightly slower pacing there could have been a little more character development (as in the first film).
Overall, a tremendous tour de force and marvelous entertainment - proof, if it were needed, that Pixar now have a real rival.
Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)
Boring
I have loved Tarantino's other films. They have always had three key components, a finely crafted story, comedy and violence. This film was exactly the same except that it didn't have the story or the comedy.
The film is only just over an hour and a half long, but it seemed longer. People clearly weren't gripped. I have never seen so many people wandering in and out of the cinema - they clearly weren't on the edge of their seats.
Now I've got nothing against violence if it moves the story forward, or adds to the comedy. I think the scene where Vincent accidentally shoots a guy in the head in the back of a car is a great piece of comedy and directly leads to one of the best scenes in the excellent Pulp Fiction. But the violence in Kill Bill is practically constant - and that gets very, very dull. There's only so many times that somebody getting slashed with a sword can hold your interest.
The Manga is quite well done, but is again full of violence for violence's sake.
There is comedy, but I'm pretty sure that the laughs were coming in places that the director didn't intend...
And the story. Well that must have taken all of five minutes to write. Victim of a failed murder goes out to kill the four assassins who attacked her and their boss, Bill. Cue five interminably long fight scenes (two of which are in this movie) linked by some (violent - yawn) background about each. But because its Tarantino, the people are shown being killed in the wrong order. Innovative it is not.
Of course Tarantino is well known for his non-linear films. Maybe the story and intelligent writing comes in Part 2.
But I doubt it.
Jackass: The Movie (2002)
You'll either love it or hate it - I loved it!
I have always been more embarrassed than amused by the sort of shows that play stunts on the general public (Candid Camera, Game for a Laugh, Beadles About, et al), but I couldn't stop laughing at one of the very first scenes in Jackass: The Movie.
Johnny Knoxville hires a car and then proceeds to wreck it in a Destruction Derby before returning it and trying to split the costs of repairs with the garage!
All the time you are watching it, you are saying to yourself 'This is really childish!' and 'How could they get the nerve to do that?'. But that's the attraction of this movie. It plays out in real life all the things that you would never do yourself.
Who hasn't secretly been tempted to make a loud noise just as a golfer is about to swing? The Jackass guys hide in the bushes with an airhorn!
I'm not going to try and convince anybody who doesn't like Jackass that they should go and see this film, but anybody who likes the TV show (or enjoyed 'Candid Camera', etc in the past) should definately see this movie.
Behind Enemy Lines (2001)
Utterly Unbelievable
We accept that action films are fantasy and that we must suspend belief. We accept that an entire army that has been fighting a war for years (and so might be expected to be proficient with their weapons) can't hit our hero from thirty or forty metres away. However this film was full of too many unbelievable situations to be excused:
Why would anybody put a hard drive for a photographic system in an ejector seat? I work in the defence industry and this is probably a problem of knowing too much, but a mate of mine who does not also picked this up. (And why does that 'hard drive' look awfully like a minidisc taped to a bit of card? - This prop looked even more tacky because the rest of the film was clearly polished and high budget).
A sniper, again proficient in the use of his weapon from years of war, manages to miss our hero from a couple of hundred metres when the target is sitting down, not moving and the weather conditions are perfect.
The missile evasion shots are excellent but are marred by the explosions of the fuel tanks which look awful - again, after seeing such excellent aerial and c.g. shots these poor quality effects really jar.
You find your pilot injured (a leg wound) in open, hostile terrain. Do you a) Leave him where he is so that when the bad guys come they can't fail to spot him in his green uniform against the white snow and next to his brightly coloured parachute, or b) move him to the excellent cover less than 100 metres away? Our man chose a) and, surprise, surprise, sees his pilot gunned down. Not even the American military is that badly trained.
There is a minefield in a destroyed industrial complex. There are a number of tripwires running accross an open space. Our hero starts picking his way through, when three bad guys turn up behind him. He starts to run and trips a wire. The mine to which the wire is attached is 90 degrees to his right or left, the bad guys are about 20m behind him. Yet the explosion knocks them off their aim while our hero is unharmed. Even worse the secondary explosions from other mines all over the place and ones that our hero trips as he runs through manage to kill the three soldiers (who never entered the area) yet leave our hero unscathed!
Our sniper who has been tracking the hero looks through his sight at the camera - the sight is large with no obvious adjustment mechanism and we can see his magnified eye (we wouldn't in a normal sniper sight). Next shot, a few seconds later, the sight has metamorphasised back into a standard, much smaller sniper rifle sight with the adjustments clearly visable. The magnified eye shot was completely unnecessary to the plot, but meant that a deliberate continuity error was introduced that could not fail to be spotted. This is simply bad directing.
You may think that I am just picking holes but all these things and more contributed to make sure that I for one, my mate sitting next to me, and a number of people we overheard when walking out of the cinema, could not suspend belief. The glaring unbelievabilities (OK, so I made that word up!) jumped out so often that they distracted from the storyline, which was actually above average for this sort of movie!
Toy Story 2 (1999)
Pixar's best yet
Toy Story was fantastic. Bugs life was better. Toy Story 2 is just phenomenal. Can Pixar get any better?
I went with three friends, all University graduates. We sat in a full auditorium alongside kids and adults of all descriptions. I can safely say that I have not heard an audience laugh so much in years. Pixar have an almost unique ability to appeal to everyone.
For Pixar fans there were the usual in-jokes - anybody who owns the DVD version of 'a bugs life' will recognise the toy repairer as 'Geri' from 'Geri's Game' which won the Academy Award for best animated short in 1997. As an extra bonus, they also showed Pixar's first animated short 'Luxor Jr.' at the start of the film.
Just brilliant.