jimcglass-20464 Reviews

Mr Bates vs. The Post Office (2024)

Bizarre Reviews

[4/10 · 9 January 2024]

The reviews on here are quite incredible; the marks dished out are up there with the greatest cinematic and televisual artworks of the 21st and 20th centuries!

Yes, it's a shocking story - and it was when it first began to be reported upon more than ten years ago. And surely it's a story that should get anyone annoyed, that should get people demanding justice for the underdogs. And it certainly has brought this story to a much wider audience with the result that some of those responsible are beginning to get a bit hot under the collar. Good!

But that aside (the real world, in other words) is this this TV program any good? No, it really isn't. It's a ridiculously syrupy sweet confection. The second village we see is straight out of Camberwick Green. The acting is so overdone that it makes River City look like a class act. Show not tell? No no, this is mass audience stuff so everything must be told. Camilla Long in the Sunday Times quite rightly called it out. Get real!

Chile '76 (2022)

A tonic - this is how films should be

[8/10 · 27 March 2023]

This is a very fine film indeed; perfectly paced, it slowly builds in tension in a subtle, understated, but very real way. Great acting from Aline Küppenheim who steps outside her comfortable bourgeois lifestyle and whose eyes are slowly opened to another country. You watch - there's no need for any overblown scripted dialogue. Some others may think there's too much unexplained - I didn't feel that at all. In a world where there's a necessary conspiracy of silence you become an accomplice in the need to keep quiet. Even her stop in a roadside cafe radiates suspicion and fear. The music is just spot on - at times riffing on 70s cop thrillers and then at times discordantly modern. And the final scenes - without giving anything away: a punch in the stomach and an utterly nauseous aftermath.

Mayflies (2022)

An absolutely awful BBC plodder

[5/10 · 4 January 2023]

Everyone seems to love this so before your expectations go through the roof, I'd like to just say that it's absolutely pedestrian and plodding. Martin Compston is no great shakes as an actor in anything he does and he's so central that his terrible performance drags the whole edifice down.

Putting on a pair of academic spectacles does not make him come anything close to acting like an author, as that is literally all he has.

His friend Tully tells him he has cancer and has four months to live. What does he do? He stands, with poker face. There must be a mistake he says. We need a second opinion. We'll go private. What about dropping your jaw a bit, giving the guy a bloody hug or anything that suggests some inner emotional response.

Later his wife (the excellent Ashley Jensen) asks him what he made of Tully. "Good" he says. Good? Can you maybe act realistically. And tell us a bit more? What would a real person say?

What they wouldn't do is simply narrate a script.

It's the very worst of the BBC in house style. It might have worked years ago, and maybe still works with River City and Shetland fans but in an era of Netflix it's Stone Age!

Stardust (II) (2020)

A couple of great performances lifts this

[7/10 · 16 January 2021]

Sure, there's none of Bowie's music here, so if that's why you may want to watch it, don't bother. Once you're past that, it's a pretty engaging little film - Flynn is great (and we all know he really can sing; the Brel stuff is fabulous) and Marc Maron turned in a great performance.

Saint Maud (2019)

Outstanding

[10/10 · 22 October 2020]

An incredibly assured piece of cinema directing. Is this really her first major film?Just wow. And as for the soundscape, just superb. I came out with my jaw on the floor.

Avenue 5 (2020–2022)

Laboured and unfunny

[4/10 · 2 February 2020]

Well, I got to the end of episode two but what's the point? They've set something up here (and it's a slim story) and it's like they've no idea how to spin it out - developing it would be something else altogether. All those coffins popped out into space - amusing? Or just bafflingly stupid.

Ford v Ferrari (2019)

Hackneyed and full of stereotypes

[2/10 · 1 December 2019]

Ye Gods, what a dreadful film. What is that Christian Bale character supposed to be? That cockney accent (I think?)... Dick van Dyke springs to mind. And his 'missus' - coom in fora cuppa. But that doesn't go near explaining how dreadful it all is - the two cars racing side by side, for miles(!) with the drivers staring across at each other. Yeah. At two hundred miles an hour. And how many cliches do you want? Ferrari are Italian? Lets make all their team and mechanics, like.. excitable. Peter Sellers could have got the gig. And Ken is on the bus on the way to Le Mans.. it's France! Let's sit two nuns behind him. He gets off the bus. We'll have two gendarmes walking past. Christ, send for Sellers! Get him out that Ferrari gear. He now should speak like zees! I nearly walked out. Y