proctorluke Reviews

Barney Thomson (2015)

An Enjoyable Dark Comedy

[8/10 · 23 July 2023]

This isn't earth shattering, and has a bit of a feel of a 90 minute for TV film, but has a stellar cast, is well-acted, and has at least a dozen laugh out loud moments, with a further dozen or so chuckles.

Glasgow absolutely was the right setting and enviroment for this film, and it captured the essence, humour, and characters of working class glasgowfolk well (though I feel the same story with only minor tweaks may have worked if set in Merseyside or Newcastle as well, maybe North Dublin too, but not many other places). It possibly would have worked better if made into a bit of an 80s or 90s period piece too, some of the tropes and plot devices requiring newspaper ads and landlines may have made that a better fit.

But it was good....the ending was going for surrealism but worked well enough in a way where the story wasn't supposed to be taken wholly seriously anyhow.

Some of the negative reviews seem to be either expecting something more, or are bit sneering about working class characterisations.

Also it would have been difficult to do without the swearing. People complain, and I agree in many films it can be unnecessary - but in a Glasgow take of a Fargo meets Coen film, it was entirely necessary to swear and use the local vernacular colourfully in order to capture the essence.

8/10....and well worth a viewing.

Nine Perfect Strangers (2021)

Well acted and reasonable, pacing off though

[7/10 · 14 May 2023]

Has potential, and plenty of interesting plot lines, but definitely some issues with pacing.

Feels believable though that a cultish centre for rich people would be like that.

Also despite being British and living in England in the past, Luke Evan's english accent is off, and his South Wales accent comes through unintentionally at times, on a character that is clearly supposed to be English rather than Welsh.

Not sure how noticeable that is to more international audiences, but to a British eye it slightly jars, where it probably would have made more sense to keep his character Welsh if he struggles with a Southern English accent.

My favourite is probably Manny Jacinto's character, performing against type.

The Road Dance (2021)

Reasonable, Let Down by the Ending

[7/10 · 1 May 2023]

A reasonable film, well acted and beautifully shot.

A tragidrama in many ways, with a bit of mystery thrown in too, the themes of futility in war and also that of women's roles in early 20th century and the associated hardships and cultural taboos that come with that territory are all well-explored.

The film has two weaknesses in my view, the first is the ending - I won't go into too much detail but it is disappointing and departs from what it was building up to. The film would be an 8/10 if it finished ten mins earlier.

The 2nd is the setting and language. It isn't believable for a small Lewis village to be entirely English speaking in 1916 (it isn't believable in rural Lewis in 2023 even), which jars from fully immersing in the scene and finding it realistic.

This could have been circumnavigated either by having the film at least bilingual between Scottish Gaelic and English, or by setting the film somewhere just as rugged and isolated in Scotland but known to be English speaking eg. Shetland or Orkney would have worked just as well, and then slightly changing the rural activity from potato crofting to something else to suit the different location if needed.

Insisting on keeping the setting as Lewis, and even more so in that time, but with a 100% English language film was a mistake in my book.

Still a solid watch all the same, where you root for the protagonist.

2 Broke Girls (2011–2017)

Very Poor, Feel Less Intelligent with each Episode I watch

[2/10 · 2 November 2022]

My partner watches this, I find it painful to do so, but will occasionally when with her.

It's essentially just a nickelodeon or Disney channel comedy but repackaged into jokes which are ruder but of the same intelligence level.

Threadbare plots, terrible acting, and hardly ever does a joke even land, let alone surprise you or please you. It certainly doesn't help that nearly every single line has an attempt at a joke in it.

I won't even get into the laugh track being anything but subtle.

I feel less intelligent each time I catch myself watching this show.

Also has aged terribly. All in all avoid unless you have no other choice.

Bridgerton (2020– )

It is like Reign, but set a couple of hundred years later

[4/10 · 29 December 2020]

It's the type of thing that you want to hope is a tongue in cheek parody, or a comedy, but it doesn't wink enough to let you know that it is, so the worry is it's a teen melodrama trying to take itself seriously.

Not enough good bits from the book are in the show, nd some of the divergences fail to improve either.

Don't mind a diverse cast in an unrealistic setting personally, but once that's done, by still keeping the pomp and circumstance, as well as the classism and sexism aspects all still in place makes it obviously jarring.

The opportunity would have been to subvert all of that surely, once one of those fabrics was removed. Tell a new and different story more obviously tongue in cheek and more loosely based on the story.

Is more similar to Reign (a dreadful, loosely historical teen drama but one that at least is self-knowing about that fact, and plays up to it), than other things that once they did one twist it could have been.

Pride & Prejudice and Zombies, would have been a better inspiration, in how to set up the world building of non-accurate or loosely accurate history.

The Duchess (2020)

Not brilliant, but better than what some are making out

[7/10 · 7 October 2020]

It isn't exactly groundbreaking, but does have some genuine laughs in every episode, and the drama side of things improves much better from the 3rd episode onwards. Might have worked better as an eight episode run, one of the negatives is that the first episode is a bit too fast paced, and from that a bit contrived, where it seems to be trying to set up in one episode's worth what could have been done in three, but as I say that pacing improves as it wears on.

Positives

• Genuine jokes, and some on the money quick fire pop culture references, similar to Katherine Ryan's stand up
• Dynamic of general style taken from some other shows, but not overly used (elements of Motherhood, AbFab, Fleabag all in there, but not overdone)
• Shep, the father character, is brilliant, and very convincing as a washed out boy band from the early 00's, with a touch of Conor McGregor, as well as one of the Gallaghers thrown in as well.
• The main child actor playing Olive, is better than what some reviews are giving credit for here, and in fairness most of the supporting cast are strong too.
• Whilst very middle class in tone, it nonetheless shows a real and beleievable side of London, that adds to the overall creditability in terms of environment. This is how I imagine life in places like Muswell Hill or Highgate to be in day to day life, whenever being there on the periphery.
• it comes to a satisfying, if unconventional, conclusion. Whilst that makes me feel this works better as a stand alone series rather than future ones, part of the good bits of the dramedy was where the transitions in character's lives were meeting. A new series, moved on a couple of years therefore would be out of sync with that.

Negatives

• Ryan's character isn't the most likeable, again if it were eight episodes and especially the first half of the series stretched out a bit more, a lot of that could have been resolved, you root for her more by the last couple of episodes
• The actor playing Evan, the boyfriend, is pretty poor, and very wooden in this.
• Although funny in moments, Jen (the perfect mum character) is a bit too clichéd, and it gets close to grating at times.
• Can be overly woke at points, where it doesn't seem necessary. This could be intentional, and almost a parody of woke stuff whilst still being a bit woke at the same time; part of the plot seems to want to show Katherine to be woke but not necessarily for the right reasons, but I'm wary this could be giving undue credit if not the intention of the set up. It's a maybe negative, depending on which way you belive it to be intended.

Hope this review gives some balance; it's three hours well spent if you give it a chance.

Gun City (2018)

It's OK, and you'll get through to the end, some plot twists, but a bit convoluted, and a few hard to ignore faults

[7/10 · 29 March 2020]

Firstly, I definitely liked the movie, and the acting was spot on, from a largely veteren and well-known (at least by Spanish standards) cast.

The plot is intriguing, has enough twists and turns to keep you interested (though a few seem confusing, and some poor editing choices therefore feels may have been at play), and it does all come together to an engaging denouement at the final scene, with a decent ending as well.

However a couple of the flaws. Chiefly the setting in terms of location, it is so obviously filmed in Galicia and not in Catalonia by anyone who's ever even just been to Spain, that it becomes at times off-putting. The greenery, level of rain, architecture of the urban locations, the sea obviously the Atlantic and not the Mediterranean etc. all contribute to finding it difficult to escape into the setting and believing it; i don't see why if Galicia was chosen for filming that the same film couldn't have been set in Vigo, A Coruña or Ferrol, and if it did have to be Barcelona un order to make the plot be more sellable to foreign audiences, then more outdoor filming should have taken place in Catalonia. Secondly the guns are all over the place in terms of what weapons were available in Spain at the time, too much so to be believable, and again it distances one from engaging into the setting. A final criticism would be that the fights although well chereographed, are filmed too much in the style of peaky blinders.

Taking all those points aside however, still a solid film, and better than a lot out there on Netflix.

Safe (2018)

Unrealistic plot, and nothing new idea-wise brought to the table, but passable

[5/10 · 21 May 2018]

I've seen all eight episodes, others in the house were watching it rather than something I actively chose, and it passes the time well enough.

The immediate flaw is the Gated Community setting in the UK - They are extremely rare, and where they do exist are nearly always apartment complexes rather than large suburban streets. Although you can find private roads with such housing similar to the programme's setting, the size of this community supports a whole secondary school, so gives the impression up to 3 or 4 thousand people live there minimum - The only places of such scale in the UK are Armed Forces Bases or the British Armed Forces or (ironically perhaps considering the writer's nationality) US Military, which would have been far more realistic a setting for all of this rather than some school fire creating such a community.

This kind of suburbia made it feel like how a US show would be under a British setting, with British camera lighting and accents, but everything else feeling out of place.

Many people with very standard jobs also lived in the community too, making it hard to buy into the rest of the story as this particular facade was so weak.

As for Michael C. Hall's accent - I don't think it sounded too bad. I never really watched Dexter religiously (though most bits of what I have seen I thought were good), nor have I ever read the books. His accent just sounded generically wealthy middle-class to me; I feel some of the negative remarks are more to do with people being so used to seeing him having a different accent on screen, that it becomes hard for some to adapt to it. It was far from terrible though.

His and Mark Warren's character's amount of spare time they had to investigate considering their employment was farcical, (though their double-act of sorts was also probably where most of the show's best moments occurred) and without revealing too much the shoddiness of the main group of detective's work from all angles is unrealistic.

But it isn't terrible despite it's flaws - it's ok if you're only looking for a B-movie standard mini-series, and it delivers in passing the time by.