blakedw Reviews

Whistle and I'll Come to You (2010 TV Movie)

Dreadful film wasting a great star

[2/10 · 27 December 2023]

Everything has been changed from the M. R. James story. Only the title remains the same to protect the guilty. There is not a whistle in sight as John Hurt grapples with the tragedy of his wife in dementia.

Why this completely alien element is introduced is not clear, bless it is an excuse to have the lead role played by an old man.

The point about James stories is that the protagonist brings disaster on himself by doing something. Like blowing the whistle. Since there is no whistle here nothing of that sort can happen.

The other element which James loves is the puncturing of confidence. Ghosts seem to pick on people who don't believe in ghosts.

The BBC had three alternative solutions they could have adopted.

They could have shown the ldJonathan Millar version. They could have made a new version. Or they could have made a good film about a man coming to terms with his wife's dementia and called it something else. They did none of the above.

The Manchurian Candidate (2004)

Good remake as long as you can stand remakes

[7/10 · 9 December 2022]

I normally don't like remakes of films I like but this is not bad. Denzel Washington is excellent as the troubled Army officer having nightmares about the mission helped into Iraq. Meryl Streep gives a knockout performance as his mother. It is very different from Angela Lansbury's dark incestuous brooding. Streep takes to heart the old Shakespearean adage the one can "smile and smile and be a villain." In fact she doesn't just smile; she bursts out laughing in her enjoyment at being bad. Which makes us want to see her downfall even more.

Lieberman Schreiber has the most difficult role as Meryl Streep's son and her makes a better job of it than Laurence Harvey did. One thing like to divide the generations is that this film is in colour. For those who grew up in a black and white world, this has drawbacks. Washington politics is something people used to watch on b/w television, where colour wa slow to spread. So older viewers don't demand colour in the way that new viewers do now. They might even be put off, just as colorised footage of World War II somehow feels less real.

Given a choice where I could only see one version I would go for the original 1962 black and white with Sinatra and a great cameo by Janet Leigh. But this is highly skilled film making and well worth a look.

Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

Darkest Film Noir

[10/10 · 7 June 2021]

Kiss Me Deadly makes every other Film Noir look pale grey and every other hard boiled detective taste like a jelly baby.

Mike Hammer is a very different private eye than the usual idealist such as Philip Marlowe. He makes his money from shady divorce cases, using his girlfriend/secretary as bait. One night he gives a girl a ride. She has escaped from a local asylum. But before they reach Los Angeles they are stopped, she is tortured for something she knows and a car crash staged in which she dies and he barely survives.

This sets Hammer on a trail to find out what happened and what Christina meant by he parting words "Remember Me." On the way, Hammer is as violent as his enemies. There are outstanding performances from stars such as Jack Elam and Paul Stewart in supporting roles and Ralph Meeker is entirely convincing.

As with many thrillers, everyone is chasing something, what Hitchcock called a McGuffin. But whereas Hitchcock's McGuffins were just an excuse for a chase, in the case it is of total seriousness.

Mosaic (2018)

Pointlessly complex trail to weak ending

[4 October 2019]

Like so much of Soderbergh's work, over complexity gets in the way of the story, such as it is. Sharon Stone is great but there is not enough of her. The other acting is ordinary. If the ending is what really happened it is inexplicable that the police didn't get it at once.

Dead Cert (1974)

This film is a real mess

[1/10 · 17 January 2019]

This film is sort of, kind of maybe based on the Dick Francis book of the same name. But only the name has not been changed presumably to protect the guilty. It's a pity because book plot was fairly filmable whereas the mess served up here by Tony Richardson is not. I have been surprised for many years that the Francis books have not all been put on film or tv. Maybe this rubbish put people off trying.

The ABC Murders (2018)

Rubbish from start to finish

[1/10 · 29 December 2018]

It is extraordinary just how bad the BBC is at doing remakes. Something seems to obsess them with a need to throw away the reasons an original was popular and replace it with drivel. So in this travesty Hercules Poirot is old and ignored. Not just that, but he is a con man who never served in the Belgian police. This is strange, because when he first appeared, in "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" Captain Hastings tells us that they met in Belgium where he was a leading member of the force. It is not clear why Poirot is supposed to have lied about his true identity or why this is brought in at all. But it is an excuse for the British police to be nasty to him and thus give a trendy warning about xenophobia. The basic concept, that one specific murder is being concealed by a chain of murders, is at least maintained. And for those who like steam trains there are some nice locomotive shots. But John Malkovit h's Poirot is a poor thing. Maybe the BBC was intimidated by the existence of a perfectly good version of this already starring David Suchet. But if that is so, why not save the money? This programme alone justifies scrapping the licence fee.

Collateral (2018)

Truly terrible

[1/10 · 5 March 2018]

One of the problems of the BBC getting a well known writer like David Hare to write is no one dare tell him what rubbish it is. So good actors ( and Carey Mulligan is very good) get drawn into a mix of 1980's liberal paranoia and inept crime thriller. Just how inept is shown in episode 1, where the manager of a take out pizza joint goes out of her way to ensure one delivery person gets the last job of the day.and that person goes straight to a place where an assassin is waiting to kill him. Does the brilliant detective on her first big case take the manager in to sweat them as th who paid them to set up the killing. No. She just says come and chat tomorrow, by which time the gang have rubbed the manager out. Throw in a lesbian vicar, some saintly immigrants and a vile MI5 man and you have a cardboard mess neither proper thriller nor social document.

Paranoid (2016)

Enjoyable despite the flaws

[7/10 · 24 October 2017]

I enjoyed this a lot despite some odd flaws. It has to many personal problems going on on the side of the investigation at the core. Some of the dialogue is pretty clunky. Right at the start the detectives get an anonymous tip from someone they give the really stupid name "The Ghost Detective." But the mystery jogs along at a decent pace and there are some good performances. Most notably from Christiane Paul as a Dusseldorf detective who leads the German side of the investigation. She is sharp, sassy, sexy and has a haircut which looks as if it cost a million euros. Well worth giving it a try

Riviera (2017–2020)

Endless boredom

[1/10 · 3 July 2017]

The trouble with the huge expansion of television i that there's not enough talent to go round. This woeful, expensively photographs series about a billionaire's death and its consequences for his family is an example. Some fine actors struggle with meandering plot and woeful dialogue. Julia Stiles is the trophy second wife of Anthony LaPaglia. His children and his first wife are all horrible. When he gets blown up on a yacht in Monte Carlo harbour things begin to unravel. A mysterious man from Interpol is investigating the family business, and because it's Interpol all the basic laws which would be inconvenient for the plot are ignored. Some people object to the sensational no implausible ending. But the real is the tedium of the episodes which go before it. Most depressing of all is the fact that this is now being billed as Series 1. I won't be reviewing Series 2.

Dark Heart (2016–2018)

Quite good but with an oddity

[6/10 · 24 May 2017]

Most of this is a workmanlike unspooling of a mysterious series of killings. The victims are all men who were accused of sexually abusing children but whose cases were not brought to trial. Links are found to a killing which took place two years ago, but the man who did that confessed and is in prison. He was father to the abused child. But parents of the children abused by those targeted in the latest round all have alibis. Helped by some very good performances, notably by the lead actor, the riddle is unwound.. But the narrative is confused by a scene which seems pointlessly confusing inserted for no apparent reason.

River (2015)

A great performance (SPOILERS)

[9/10 · 29 October 2015]

Although there are many fine performances in "River," the heart of the series is a magnificent performance by Stellan Skarsgard in the title role. He plays a London policeman whose partner, excellently played by Nicola Walker is shot dead. The series traces his battle with the emotions this causes and his frequent hallucinations. Normally I would run a mile from this sort of fantasising. But it is done so well, both by Skarsgard and the director, that with only one episode left to go I have an intense sense of loss about the series ending. London looks vibrant and frightening at the same time, which is what it is. The mystery seems a big one, though only the denouement will show if that is the case. Having a cop who talks to dead people who answer back requires a suspension of disbelief, so minor oddities, such as why is a Swedish detective working for Scotland Yard, should not worry the viewer too much. This programme grips the viewer with great intensity.

From Darkness (2015)

The BBC Should have scrapped this

[1/10 · 26 October 2015]

Some of the criticisms of this series are unfair. For example, people complain about the long silences. Yet these actually provide a blessed relief from the dialogue, much of which can only explained as a Google translation of the original Gaelic. The start makes no effort to convince us there is anything realistic about to happen. Two bodies dead for many years are found in Manchester. The police inspector in charge immediately disappears to an island in Scotland, taking his sergeant with him. No careful buildup of the investigation here. The Scottish trip is to see his former colleague and lover, who worked on similar cases. She understandably refuses to go back with Jim, so we have a knockabout scene in which he threatens to arrest her. She goes, says her piece and goes back to Scotland. I'm a bit hazy after that, though we get more recent killings and maybe a new killer. There seems to be another fat bloke with a beard as well as the policeman. Somewhere without me noticing the inspector gets taken off the case because of some complaint. But he sticks with it. One review says that the female lead had to be persuaded to do it the show because she had "semi-retired" from acting. The word semi should be removed from that description as far as this fiasco goes. One review suggests that the ending may be designed to open the way to a second series. But surely nobody, NOBODY, could be so deluded as to think we could subjected to more of this nonsense. The big mystery here is how this came to be shown at all. Why didn't a BBC executive have the courage to say "This is such rubbish we can't show it. Just throw it away." But courage is not a big thing in the BBC nowadays.

Partners in Crime (2015)

The real victim of crime is Agatha Christie

[1/10 · 13 August 2015]

The title of this series alone should qualify it for prosecution under the Trade Description's Act. Agatha Christie had nothing to do with what passes for a plot in this pathetic pastiche of a whodunnit. It is the latest entrant to a long line of programmes which use Christie titles and the names of Christie characters and then throw away everything else. "The Secret Adversary" has already been done once on British TV in a form which stuck pretty closely to the original plot. It is quite a silly plot but has a certain logic. There is even a sort of balance in the character relations and a bit of romantic mystery over where Tuppence will fix her affections. None of that has survived into the BBC version. For no apparent reason it is moved from the 1920's to the 1950's. The mystery plot is drastically downgraded, the dialogue dreadful and the acting shows how much stress the cast must have been under. The BBC seems to like doing remakes of well known classics, for example "The Lady Vanishes" and "The Thirty Nine Steps." It usually does them pretty badly and "Partners in Crime" is no exception.

Wayward Pines (2015–2016)

Terrible trash with no sense

[1/10 · 25 July 2015]

This series is terrible trash. For a few episodes I thought it would at least turn out to make sense. The only way it could have done so was if Wayward Pines was a government experiment to test how much they could get away with. As we know, the answer is quite a lot. So having a test lab for Homeland Security to see if he can get people killing in the name of safety makes a kind of weird sense. A bit like an update remake of the old British TV series "The Prisoner" sponsored by the NSA. Pretending that we are now 2000 years in the future with everyone a cryogenic survivor of the end of civilisation just adds another level of weirdness. But about half way through the first cracks appear. We see some strange creatures on the outside. And then what we are told that this is all really true. But obviously it can't be. Because somehow an early 21st Century (no coincidence this as made by Fox) helicopter is in perfect condition. And in a world where nothing exists out of a small area somehow petrol is magically available. I watched the last episode after a gap just to see how they ended it. They obviously just wanted to get it over with. The rise of series with a long story arc has produced some great TV. Think Buffy or True Detective. But the danger is you're stuck with it. Any normal series would have been cancelled after a few programmes. Wayward Pines staggered on to the end. Let us hope it will be at least 2000 years before we see it's like again.

Fortitude (2015–2018)

Just where is this supposed to be?

[2/10 · 31 January 2015]

The location is obviously the star of the show here. But just where is it supposed to be? Everyone speaks English all the time. Norway gets a mention as giving permission to the American policeman from Scotland Yard. The Governor is someone we know to be Danish. The filming is said to be done in Iceland. The theme seems to be the usual closed community where a murder takes place, a la Twin Peaks. There is even a plan for a resort with outside financing, bringing back memories of "the Norwegians are leaving." If this were clearly a fantasy place it would make sense. Maybe. If we were given a credible sense of place it would make sense. But taking a conventional murder is back projecting a strange location does not work. I doubt if many people will stick with this. And why is a former RAF serviceman deputy to an apparently Norwegian Sheriff?

The Honorable Woman (2014)

Almost Totally incomprehensible

[1/10 · 25 July 2014]

I've really tried with this one but it is so awful I have given up. it looks. As if they shot enough scenes to fill the time and then stitched them together at random. Flashbacks can play a role as we discover the past which has led us to the foreground action. But here it is such a mess that if there is substance to the plot I cannot see what it is. I have no objections to drama being pro-Israel or pro-Arab. So the politics do not worry me. But we are entitled to much better drama skills than this. At the end of Episode 4,which is where I have given up, the BBC transmission encourages viewers to go online to find out more. Could this be an admission that no one will ever find out what this is all about by watching the series?

What Remains (2013)

Please get it over with

[1/10 · 2 September 2013]

It might seem unfair to write a review after only 2 episodes of a 4 episode serial, but I find this incomprehensible and above all dull. The two things may be connected. The direction makes no attempt at coherence in the story line. That might be OK if it were exciting. But it is not. I'm surprised by the high score. I'd be even more surprised if many people stay with this to the end. There are many perfectly good actors in series who could have been doing something useful with their time. The hackneyed plot situation (ageing cop becomes obsessed with a case and keeps investigating after he retires) needs something special to maintain interest. Most of the characters seem unpleasant enough to have done something nasty. But the pace is so numbingly slow I doubt if many people with stay to the end to find out.

Marple: The Sittaford Mystery (2006) Season 2, Episode 4

The worst Christie adaptation ever made

[1/10 · 2 April 2013]

I have seen a lot of bad adaptations of Agatha Christie novels but never anything as bad as this. This giggling heap of nonsense sets an unsurpassable low. The original novel is a neat puzzle. It doesn't have any of Christie's famous detectives, but in the young Emily Trefusis has a character who lights up the page. It is a pity that she was not given the chance to blossom in other books. Bringing in Miss Marple adds nothing and slows up the action. For some reason in this generation of ITV Christie's, there is little chance for Miss Marple to do real detective work. She just keeps making the occasional remark before relapsing into the demented pixie act which Geraldine McEwan made her special contribution to the genre. But almost everyone else is even worse in their attempts to turn this into farce. Timothy Dalton is ludicrous as Captain Trevelyan. One of the oddities about the ITV Marples is that they are written by people who seem to have no idea of plot as a coherent thread running through the programme. Instead we just have a series of absurd comic turns. The scoring system here fails to capture the true awfulness of this mess, since it does not allow negative numbers.

The Lady Vanishes (2013 TV Movie)

Meritless version which drains all the excitement, humour and watchability.

[2/10 · 18 March 2013]

I don't know if this is more faithful to the original book than the famous Hitchcock version. But if it is, it shows extraordinary vision of him to have seen the material for a good movie in this boring nonsense. Wholly without humour or tension, I see it has an estimated budget of £1850. Even at that priced, the BBC was swindled. This is one of those films where it is a real strain to write the required 10 lines of comment because all one can say is it is boring. The events before the start of the train journey are truncated so we get no sense of the purpose underlying the plot. Nor is there any sexual tension in the relationships. Although too long, it feels that some key scenes necessary to understanding the role of some characters must be missing. Or maybe those characters have no role and are just there to pad out the numbers. The actors cannot be blamed for any of this. Tuppence Middleton is beautiful and makes the best of her part. Others are either competent or better, with none of the odd comic standup turns which often disfigure remakes like the ITV Marple series. So all the blame has to go to the writer, Fiona Seres and the director, Diarmuid Lawrence. And to the BBC for not throwing this in the bin rather than on to our screens. Whatever you do, do not let this tedious waste of time discourage you from finding and watching the brilliant Hitchcock original.

La symphonie fantastique (1942)

Complicated History

[5/10 · 25 February 2009]

This film was actually made in 1942 by Continental Films, a German-owned company set up by Nazi propaganda boss Goebbels. He wanted the studio to produce light entertainment films to keep the French population quiet during the war. When he saw this film he was outraged because he believed it was really a disguised appeal for French patriotism, so he arranged for it to be banned. That probably saved the film from disappearing altogether, because most of the films made under the Occupation were detested and banned after the war as symbols of collaboration with the Nazis. About the only film made for the studio which is respected today is the brilliant Le Corbeau by Clouzot.

Gavin & Stacey (2007–2024)

Best comedy on television for a very long time

[10/10 · 19 March 2008]

This is an absolutely brilliant series with wonderful characters saying hugely funny things. I'm Welsh and I have never seen anything which captures the rhythm of the way Welsj people speak like this, but the Essex characters are just as good in their ways. This isn't just the best comedy the BBC has done for a long time; it's the best series of any kind for a very long time. Everyopne will have their favourites amongst the characters but I defy anyone who has ever been west of the Severn Bridge not to see Bryn as the ultimate hero. Lots of the success lies in the timing, because the actors don't stand around for hours trying to milk laughs. All in all a very tidy show.

The Condor Mystery (2005– )

Excellent 4 part detective series in French

[10/10 · 14 February 2008]

The Mayor of Condom is murdered and police Capitaine Julie Leroy arranges to be sent from Toulouse to investigate. She has a personal agenda because the secret identity of her birth parents is known to someone there. The murders start piling up, the personal complications for her get more complicated and we see a beautiful vignette of small town life in one of the most beautiful parts of France (Gers.) Excellent ending France specialises in these summer series, where murder and romance mix and this is one of the best. Fine cast all round and Agathe de la Boulaye is outstanding as Capitaine Leroy, exceptionally beautiful, funny but determined to solve her first big murder. Only problem is that so far it does not seem to exist with English sub-titles, so if you don't speak French already you will have to learn. But it's worth it.

Chance Meeting (1959)

VERY CLASSY THRILLER WITH A GREAT LEAD ACTING PERFORMANCE

[9 June 2001]

The plot is pretty conventional Scotland Yard potboiler; Hardy Kruger suspected of a murder he didn't commit but the evidence looks bad. But the surprise of the film is a brilliant performance by Stanley Baker as the Police Inspector Morgan doing the investigation. Baker grew up in Wales near the home of the more famous Richard Burton, but he was every bit as good as an actor. His performance is tightly wound, with shafts of anger about the special treatment he is asked to give an upper class alternative suspect. Very different from the laid-back aristocrats that many films imagine populate the British police. It's a bit stagey and you won't find any of the car chases which litter so many police films. But the supporting cast are all good and Baker is a joy to watch.