Reviews Archive

Reviews Archive - D

FEATURING:

Daywatch

Death Proof

Despicable Me

Doctor Zhivago

Dogma

Dougal and the Blue Cat

Dr. No

Dr. Strangelove

Duplicity

Daywatch

(2006)

Director Timur Bekmambetov is tremendously talented but, while the script has imagination in spades, it is also frequently narratively incoherent (and gets bogged down in stuff that's just not that interesting; the whole scene at the party).

***

Death Proof

(2007)

Tarantino at his self-indulgent worst. The man who rediscovered Travolta now introduces us to Zoe Bell, a stuntwoman who cannot act for toffee.

The first half is aimless, meandering and worst of all boring. It seems to be there so Quentin can “prove” to us he can write for women. Rather than, y’know constructing a solid story. Even the car chases aren't all that. The more time goes by, the more I think Roger Avary should be getting a lot more credit for Pulp Fiction than he does.

Despicable Me

(2010)

Occasionally impressive set pieces, but mostly this is a rather laborious riff on Dr Evil. Except, instead of having a child he adopts three of them. The premise reeks of potential for milking mawkishness and cutsey kids, and true to form it's not shy in that department.

**1/2

Doctor Zhivago

(1965)

As engrossing and beautifully made as you expect from David Lean, but it falls short of his very best work.

The documentaries on the blu-ray comments on how it was the intention for Zhivago to be a passive character, but it has the counter-mechanism of puncturing some of the film's energy. It's the '60s darlings that really make a mark; Tom Courtney and Julie Christie. Alec Guinness looks like he's auditioning for Grand Moff Tarkin in the framing scenes.

****

Dogma

(1999)

A sloppy mess, like the faecal creature. Fertile subject matter from which to mine laughs, but ham-fisted and (surprise!) puerile in execution. The Weinsteins got cold feet because it was controversial? They should have got cold feet because it was shit.

Dougal and the Blue Cat

(1970)

The feature length Magic Roundabout that isn't a misbegotten CGI remake, this showcases Eric Thompson's wit and imagination wonderfully.

Dougal is up against evil Buxton and must endure his friends' rapture with the titular moggy, resist a room full of sugar and take a trip to the Moon. Fenella Fielding's Blue Queen occupies the disused treacle factory at the top of the hill and all manner of strangeness ensues.

*****

Dr No

(1962)

Fairly undercharged first Bond outing, and considerably more entertaining before the titular character makes his entrance. The cold-blooded Connery moments are especially enjoyable (killing Dent). Quarrel's demise is particularly unfair (but so was MacNee's in A View to a Kill) since he's a winning sidekick.

***

Dr Strangelove

(1964)

It’s difficult to find anything new to say about Kubrick’s apocalyptic satire, except that the Russian ambassador is clearly corpsing when Strangelove is struggling with his uncontrollable arm.

The best scene is probably Muffley's call to the Russian premier, all played on Sellers' reactions. But I love Keenan Wynn's utterly thick Colonel Bat Guano.

*****

Duplicity

(2009)

Nice to see a caper for movie for adults, but for all of the tricksiness with the plotting it's not as clever as it would like to be.

The twists are fairly transparent, but Gilroy's direction, as with the superior Michael Clayton, is refreshingly crisp and clear in style. The leads are dependable but don’t have the chemistry of the classic couples that Gilroy is hearkening back to.

***1/2

Comments

She was addicted to Tums for a while.

Marriage Story (2019)
(SPOILERS) I don’t tend to fall heavily for Noah Baumbach fare. He’s undoubtedly a distinctive voice – even if his collaborations with Wes Anderson are the least of that director’s efforts – but his devotion to an exclusive, rarefied New York bubble becomes ever more off-putting with each new project. And ever more identifiable as being a lesser chronicler of the city’s privileged quirks than his now disinherited forbear Woody Allen, who at his peak mastered a balancing act between the insightful, hilarious and self-effacing. Marriage Story finds Baumbach going yet again where Woody went before, this time brushing up against the director’s Ingmar Bergman fixation.

You're not only wrong. You're wrong at the top of your voice.

Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)
I’ve seen comments suggesting that John Sturges’ thriller hasn’t aged well, which I find rather mystifying. Sure, some of the characterisations border on the cardboard, but the director imbues the story with a taut, economical backbone.

My name is Dr. King Schultz, this is my valet, Django, and these are our horses, Fritz, and Tony.

Django Unchained (2012)
(MINOR SPOILERS) Since the painful misstep of Grindhouse/Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino has regained the higher ground like never before. Pulp Fiction, his previous commercial and critical peak, has been at very least equalled by the back-to-back hits of Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. Having been underwhelmed by his post Pulp Fiction efforts (albeit, I admired his technical advances as a director in Kill Bill), I was pleasantly surprised by Inglourious Basterds. It was no work of genius (so not Pulp Fiction) by any means, but there was a gleeful irreverence in its treatment of history and even to the nominal heroic status of its titular protagonists. Tonally, it was a good fit for the director’s “cool” aesthetic. As a purveyor of postmodern pastiche, where the surface level is the subtext, in some ways he was operating at his zenith. Django Unchained is a retreat from that position, the director caught in the tug between his all-important aesthetic pr…

He tasks me. He tasks me, and I shall have him.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
(1982)
(SPOILERS) I don’t love Star Trek, but I do love Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. That probably isn’t just me, but a common refrain of many a non-devotee of the series. Although, it used to apply to The Voyage Home (the funny one, with the whales, the Star Trek even the target audience for Three Men and a Baby could enjoy). Unfortunately, its high regard has also become the desperate, self-destructive, song-and-verse, be-all-and-end-all of the overlords of the franchise itself, in whichever iteration, it seems. This is understandable to an extent, as Khan is that rare movie sequel made to transcendent effect on almost every level, and one that stands the test of time every bit as well (better, even) as when it was first unveiled.

How do you like that – Cuddles knew all the time!

The Pleasure Garden (1925)
(SPOILERS) Hitchcock’s first credit as director, and his account of the production difficulties, as related to Francois Truffaut, is by and large more pleasurable than The Pleasure Garden itself. The Italian location shoot in involved the confiscation of undeclared film stock, having to recast a key role and borrowing money from the star when Hitch ran out of the stuff.

Haven’t you ever heard of the healing power of laughter?

Batman (1989)
(SPOILERS) There’s Jaws, there’s Star Wars, and then there’s Batman in terms of defining the modern blockbuster. Jaws’ success was so profound, it changed the way movies were made and marketed. Batman’s marketing was so profound, it changed the way tentpoles would be perceived: as cash cows. Disney tried to reproduce the effect the following year with Dick Tracy, to markedly less enthusiastic response. None of this places Batman in the company of Jaws as a classic movie sold well, far from it. It just so happened to hit the spot. As Tim Burton put it, it was “more of a cultural phenomenon than a great movie”. It’s difficult to disagree with his verdict that the finished product (for that is what it is) is “mainly boring”.

Now, of course, the Burton bat has been usurped by the Nolan incarnation (and soon the Snyder). They have some things in common. Both take the character seriously and favour a sombre tone, which was much more of shock to the system when Burton did it (even…

She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…

It looks like we’ve got another schizoid embolism!

Total Recall (1990)
(SPOILERS) Paul Verhoeven offered his post-mortem on the failures of the remakes of Total Recall (2012) and Robocop (2013) when he suggested “They take these absurd stories and make them too serious”. There may be something in this, but I suspect the kernel of their issues is simply filmmakers without either the smarts or vision, or both, to make something distinctive from the material. No one would have suggested the problem with David Cronenberg’s prospective Total Recall was over-seriousness, yet his version would have been far from a quip-heavy Raiders of the Lost Ark Go to Mars (as he attributes screenwriter Ron Shusset’s take on the material). Indeed, I’d go as far as saying not only the star, but also the director of Total Recall (1990) were miscast, making it something of a miracle it works to the extent it does.

Anything can happen in Little Storping. Anything at all.

The Avengers 2.22: Murdersville
Brian Clemens' witty take on village life gone bad is one of the highlights of the fifth season. Inspired by Bad Day at Black Rock, one wonders how much Murdersville's premise of unsettling impulses lurking beneath an idyllic surface were set to influence both Straw Dogs and The Wicker Mana few years later (one could also suggest it premeditates the brand of backwoods horrors soon to be found in American cinema from the likes of Wes Craven and Tobe Hooper).

To defeat the darkness out there, you must defeat the darkness inside yourself.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010)
Easily the best of the Narnia films, which is maybe damning it with faint praise.

Michael Apted does a competent job directing (certainly compared to his Bond film - maybe he talked to his second unit this time), Dante Spinotti's cinematography is stunning and the CGI mostly well-integrated with the action.

Performance-wise, Will Poulter is a stand-out as a tremendously obnoxious little toff, so charismatic you're almost rooting for him. Simon Pegg replaces Eddie Izzard as the voice of Reepicheep and delivers a touching performance.
***

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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