mmsbk Reviews

The Miracle Club (2023)

Very Irish ( major spoilers)

[4/10 · 24 August 2023]

Being very Irish is a plus for me, as were all the actors , all of whom do a great job. Laura Linney has never been a favourite but her performance here is nuanced and restrained and believable.

I wont rehash the plot as it appears in many previous reviews , and I am about to reveal major spoilers , not just for the sake of it but because it is in the plot that I find the film most disappointing.

I can easily believe that Chrissie was banished from her community at 17 being unmarried and pregnant, but the likelihood of her being sent to America , NOT to family but alone and to a boarding house seems, well, unlikely. Very expensive for a start and in 1927, which is when it must have occurred, not easy to arrange. The boy who is father to the baby is presumably never told of the pregnancy. His mother lies to him and says Chrissie doesn't love him and has gone to the US to 'pursue her dreams' . The only person who has been told is the Kathy Bates character ,Chrissie's bff and it is she who tells the boy's mother (Maggie Smith) . He then kills himself from grief. Both these women and Chrissie's mother all then commence to hate her for forty years, especially the bff. The boy's mother apparently thought Chrissie was trying to 'entrap' him, an ugly but believable rationale then - she did actually know her loved her and wanted to marry her. Her own mother presumably couldn't stand the shame But most inexplicable is the bff. Why the 40 year hate ? There is no suggestion she was also in love with the boy, she knew her dearest friend was in deep trouble and had confided only in her.

Ordeal by Innocence (2018)

Where were the staff/servants?

[6/10 · 11 July 2020]

I had forgotten the original plot so l didn't realise or mind too much about the Phelps reinvention. Loved the Art Deco curtains as did a previous poster and of course the costumes and decor generally . I can't, however , let go of my annoyance at the idea that the maintenance of that mansion and grounds, let alone the maiding and servanting of half a dozen people , the laundry and the entire cooking and serving of all meals, including vast Christmas fare was apparently totally undertaken by the hapless Kirsten..... Shallow and pettifogging of me no doubt, but l got obsessed with the lack of a butler, footmen, maids, gardeners, cooks and what have you without which such a house would not have functioned.

Emma. (2020)

Pretty good actually

[8/10 · 19 February 2020]

Well,I liked this version , not perfect but very watchable. I was not familiar with Anya Taylor-Joy and at first was distracted by her , to me, un-Emma ish looks . I got over that though and found her rather good . Johnny Flynn's Mr Knightly was, I thought , not anywhere near dignified and dictatorial enough and not really old enough either, but he is so watchable and fun that I got over that too. Bill Nighy as Mr Woodhouse was very interesting casting - he played him as endearing , even loveable, and eccentric rather the selfish hypochondriacal old misery the book portrayed . But I love Bill Nighy and he can do no wrong as far as I am concerned. Miranda Hart as Miss Bates , also interesting. Too young and not really boring enough but a delight anyway.

I do not understand another reviewer not being able to tell some characters apart - Mrs and Mrs Elton for eg, are sui generis and played excellently. Harriet Smith too . I did agree that it was odd that Emma's sister Isabella and her husband the younger Mr Knightly are portrayed as having a seriously acrimonious marriage , not at all what I remember from the novel , where she was certainly neurotic about colds and stuff but Mr John Knightly was kind of amused and tolerant.

So , all in all, I liked it and found it not at all parodic or without substance. Oh and costume and location just sumptuous . Actually I don't remember the Woodhouse residence as being THAT sumptuous , but eh...

The Water Diviner (2014)

Pretty fine movie overall ( spoilers)

[8/10 · 28 December 2014]

One thing I believe this movie does well is the portrayal of the Turks as a complex, cultured people. The excellent actor Yilmaz Urdogan is a major player in this of course, but credit must go to Russell Crowe for his direction, and though he has himself starring, he is a generous lead actor and not at all afraid of portraying a character less than utterly heroic. The almost supernatural element of his water divining and , by extension, the ability to know where his sons fell was fine by me, I don't need total realism to like a movie or a book . Where I found it less than likely in an unacceptable way was around the finding of the surviving son. If one is to believe he was so damaged and guilt ridden as to give no word - at all - for four years - to parents (whom he knew loved him greatly) then I find his apparent sudden and complete return to normalcy on meeting his father completely unlikely. Granted he confessed and explained and was forgiven but that might have been done by letter years before . He seemed so returned to normal as to be able to make little jokes even . Not believable to my mind. Also a false note, I thought, was connected to Ayshe's son. It was clearly a cultured, middle class family , even if a little short of money. I found it unlikely she would have allowed him to be down at the docks touting for customers. He'd have probably loved it, being just at the age to be adventurous and want to feel useful. I just think she would have been less than happy about it. And his conventionally-minded uncle certainly would ! And while I'm discussing what IMO were weaker parts, I could actually have done without a the love story angle, which felt like an addition for box office purposes, though a well executed one admittedly . I really liked the gravity and dignity with which they both approached each other however, and I am always more moved by a gesture and a intimate smile than the tearing off of clothes. So well done, if superfluous, if that makes sense .

All in all, a good Boxing Day movie and I am glad to have seen it and glad to find Russell is still my favourite leading man !

Death Comes to Pemberley (2013)

Loved it spite of the bad bits

[8/10 · 12 December 2014]

First , I do have to agree with reviewers who noted anachronisms of language and highly unlikely behaviours - Georgiana falling to her knees crying in front of male servants in the public rooms being one of the most obvious. I do not believe for a moment in the central premise that Darcy and family would be cast into Outer Darkness socially because his brother-in-law was a criminal. Gossiped about undoubtedly, but bad apples among the aristocracy are hardly uncommon now or then.

I feel also critical of the costuming and general appearance of Elizabeth , it become clear at the end as to why she might have looked tired but why she should be so badly dressed is beyond me . One coat-like garment resembles nothing so much as a hessian bag and she appears to only wear two plain dresses for weeks on end. Georgiana seems to have only one - though it is a nicer one . And Elizabeth's hair seem so be permanently dishevelled for no good reason. While I'm carping , I also have to say I don't understand why there appears to be almost no upper servants in the vast edifice of Pemberley. Such an establishment would have a steward and/or butler, several footmen and under-footmen and Mrs Reynolds would have many maids under her . Ah well, no matter really I guess.

On the plus side, I thought all the acting was great , especially the female cast. Lydia was beautifully cast and played, as was Lady Catherine and Mrs Bennett . I wish they could have had bigger roles in fact . So, in spite of the above mentioned criticisms, I have to say it was a very watchable period drama and , actually, much more fun than the the book . I like PD James very much , but this was NOT her best work and frankly rather a tedious dry read .

13 Steps Down (2012)

A satisfyingly frightening villain

[8/10 · 29 December 2012]

Luke Treadaway does, I think, a great job in this. His character, deeply flawed and damaged from childhood abuse unfolds in a believable and quite frightening way. His acting is good enough to even have you feel sorry for the child he was, despite his hideous behaviour to women as an adult. Geraldine James is Miss Chawcer, fossilised and acerbic and not without pathos of her own. Her high handed, upper middle class attitude to the working class and ( at first ) pathetically aspiring Mix is a clear pointer to trouble to come. Ruth Rendell is very good, very practiced at this kind of thing and both actors brought this less-than-pleasant aspect of Englishness to life brilliantly. The actress playing Mix's obsession, model Nerissa Nash was, to my mind the weak link. Very beautiful and well able to portray vulnerability, I found her responses to Treadaway's psychopath less than convincing. She appeared somewhat worried and nervous rather than terrified. Wonderful atmospherics, almost Gothic in tone. Loved that aspect .Also, the clever and sad little episode with Nerissa's would-be saviour.

The ending , with the Christie lookalike added nothing,and was frankly a bit silly. Overall, damn good .

Call the Midwife (2012– )

Love it

[9/10 · 10 October 2012]

I do agree with those reviewers who have pointed out that this is not a documentary but a drama. Yes indeed some details are wrong ( I grew up in the UK in this era so have some knowledge of it, tho not quite so grindingly poor) True, that the nuns are not, to me, very believable, appearing, apart from the lovely chanted prayers, to have no spiritual life or discipline at all . Still they are good TV , though not as utterly great TV as Miranda Hart as Chummy. I think it unlikely that Lady Fortescue Cholmondley -Brown would have capitulated as easily as she did, but who cares .It was worth it if only for Chummy's line "Sorry Mater, not entitled any more" when exhorted to wear white for her wedding...

The Darling Buds of May (1991–1993)

A timeless idyll

[28 February 2012]

I just caught some re-runs of the on ABC iviews of this and I'm struck by how completely watchable it still is. Though I have lived for many years in Australia, I'm English country born and bred and the evocation of the countryside is just wonderful ( yes, I know it's not really like DBOM all the time )

Casting is, as others have said, utterly spot on and the ludicrous anonymous 007 who preferred an American film version - which, incredibly , relocated this quintessentially English scene TO America, is simply to be ignored. As, I would think, should be the film . I wonder what HE Bates would have thought.

If you can get the books, get any and all, HE Bates was a great writer poetic, funny and profound. Not unlike Thomas Hardy only with a lighter touch.

Cellular (2004)

Really, really bad

[1/10 · 24 April 2010]

Didn't expect much, an action thriller - maybe with some good acting - after all it has Jason Statham, Willam H Macy and Kim Basinger. We continued to watch it BECAUSE it was so bad, you know one of those movies where you believe it must be going to get better . It didn't. From the first moments of Kim Basinger , at least 15 maybe 20 years too old for the role and looking worse than I have ever seen her , shiny faced, and stringy and strained - to the last with Millam H Macy in the fakest fake blood outside a high school play.

The plot (everybody else has given that so I won't bore on) had potential, and we were prepared to suspend disbelief a bit, but really, so much bad acting and utter nonsense with people hearing music from broken phones hidden under coats across a 20 foot attic space attic , well, please.............

One of those where, when other people's reviews praise it, you cannot believe you watched the same movie

The Boys Are Back (2009)

Missed the mark for me

[5/10 · 13 December 2009]

I had relatively high hopes for this, a Scott Hicks and with Clive Owen in the lead. And set in South Australia where I live..........but I was ultimately disappointed. Clive Owen seemed to merely get by in the lead role, rarely displaying any complexity of emotion, and on occasion (perhaps the fault of the script? ) displaying none at all , for instance in response to such a fraught question as the older son asking him " but why did you leave ME?" Or when the same son cries in frustration and anger. It's not as if he is convincingly showing a man who is bad a displaying emotion either , it's more like he couldn't be bothered. There is a similar non-response when later the boy tells him that his mother , Owen's ex-wife , hates him ( the son)

The young actors were very good indeed, acted Owen off the stage I thought, in the depth they brought to their characters.

I do wish, for once , that a movie about a spouse dying could be made featuring an ordinary ,flawed couple, not always these golden blessed types who gaze adoringly at each other and stand silhouetted against perfects sunsets in each others arms.

And anyone who has been close to someone dying of cancer will find the diagnosis of advanced virulent cancer with NO symptoms other than a dramatic collapse and , eventually a Camille-like elegant fading away in his arms, ludicrous.

Smaller things that annoyed me were how did the kids at the beach party know where to go to gate-crash ? Maybe I missed something.

Planes to the UK seem to be easy to hop on to as well, no booking or waiting about ..and as for the older boy's mother taking him to Heathrow airport to fly to Australia when she had had no communication at all from Owen in response to her telling him that the boy was actually coming , yeah, that's likely

Lovely scenery, good young actors, but that's about it for me.

Blow (2001)

Casting of the Jung parents

[5/10 · 25 January 2009]

I was so taken by the strange casting for George Jung's parents that I could hardly concentrate. Rachel Griffiths as Johnny Depp's mum??!! She's five years younger than him ! Ray Liotta is only ten or twelve years older than Depp. So why? The are both ( all) great actors, make up and costume are good and Rachel does a great American accent. But nothing can make her look like his mum -and in any case, why not cast an American actress of more or less right age . I don't understand it. I'm not saying they didn't do a great job, nor that actors alway have to be a within a strict age range for every part, but this seemed so odd that I thought there must be some arcane reason for the choice, but I couldn't see it. Can anyone enlighten me?

Butterfly Kiss (1995)

Goodness how some men hate this movie

[8/10 · 3 January 2009]

Look, for instance at darkfalz' comments. No , on second thoughts don't bother , the man is deranged, I just looked up his record of comments on other films and I see he is perfectly foaming at the mouth when it comes to depictions of women in anything but vapid model-girl roles. Oh yes, and he appears to think female victims of male violence are somehow to blame for it, merely by being there.

I originally saw it as a tortured love story between one deeply damaged, psychotic woman and another who was drawn to her awful power , almost against her will. Perhaps an element of S & M present also. However I see Eu and Mi are interestingly suggested as different personalities of the same person by one reviewer. I'll have to see it again in the light of this comment. I didn't actually think the fact that both were women was particularly significant- not at all meant to be representative of lesbian love or anything like that. In fact the couple could have been a man and a woman or two men, the issue really was the attraction and need the two had for each other. Serious acting and screenplay. The accents didn't bother me, why should they, we hear thick US accents in movies all the time. I never quite understand why some Americans appear to need subtitles for Australian or UK accents

7 Women (1965)

Oh dear, poor Norah

[26 February 2007]

This isn't so much a review- indeed I didn't know the film existed and I haven't seen it - as a lament for the late Norah Lofts , a writer of great power and subtlety. I can't begin to say how much it looks like Ford mangled her stirring and poignant tale (surely he was the last director on earth who should have been tackling an intricate female-nuanced situation! ) Suffice to say that Loft's Dr Cartwright, far from being some sort of pseudo man-imitating, girl-cowpoke,and American to boot, was actually an Englishwoman of education and compassion, whose outsider status derived from her non-religious stance and relatively 'liberated' attitude to personal freedom. Words fail me as to the ending ......

The Proposition (2005)

Gripping

[8/10 · 1 November 2005]

A beautifully crafted film, making superb use of the landscape. Too many people have already exhaustively detailed the plot, so suffice to say that Guy Pearce and Ray Winstone's characters play out their drama of justice in concert with various other interplayed 'stories'. For instance the obvious love, but also obvious unfulfillment of the Stanleys' marriage, the complex relationship of the three brothers, the killing of Gulpilil's character by the Tommy Lewis character-a denouement subtly suggested by the other aboriginal actors's characters drinking while observing their fellows being captured and abused. Personally, I found it extremely refreshing to see complexity and difference being utilised in aboriginal characters. No simplistic Noble Savage stuff here. The Tommy Lewis character was a small gem to my mind, a man angry and disillusioned but nevertheless a warrior of sorts , and able to distill wisdom from two cultures also. Presumably that was what one commenter was objecting too, that such a man could be self-taught, as was Arthur Burns.

Also I find it hard to understand some comments about David Wenham's portrayal- this was not a caricature or naive melodramatic reading , but a portrait of a cynical and declasse expatriot, who knew very well how to play the fop to deliberately annoy and distance himself. Note his his insolent use of "Martha" instead of the polite "Mrs Stanley " for instance. Hard too to understand why Guy Pearce's performance was called 'wooden' or 'emotionless' , personally, I think it was an excellent portrayal of a tortured man. Nor was he any hero, but as violent as his brother - but without the sadism.

The ending was perfect- did he or didn't he ........

Footballers' Wives (2002–2006)

It's meant to be like that!!!

[20 November 2002]

Possible spoilers

I just love this series. Here in Oz we have just had the last cliff-hanging episode of, I hope, the first series.

Can Jason get any worse? Can Tanya save them again? Can't Jackie, Char and Kyle see that the baby plan just can't work !! Who is really behind the kidnapping of Holly, and can Donna and Sal work it out - perhaps Marie can console Ian, now Jason has rejected her ( AGAIN- really, couldn't she see it coming!!! And what of Frank.......And the Scottish stalker.........

I find it hard to believe that reviewers seem to think that its some sort of slice of real life. Its glorious soap, soap, of the highest order and far from bad acting, they are perfect ( well, perhaps not Susie Amie) but Cristien Solimeno and Zoe Lucker are classic. How he must enjoy the anti Italian thing his character does.