Gewitty Reviews

The Conspiracy of Dark Falls (2022)

As bad as it gets

[1/10 · 6 January 2024]

I began watching this and after five minutes got the feeling that it was going to be a dud. After twenty minutes I gave up. Almost everything about the film is appallingly bad; the dialogue; the acting, the plot; all scream, 'amateur dramatics'.

Right from the start, there was not a single scene which looked or sounded convincing. The characters were wooden and the script sounded like something out of the last century (or maybe the one before that). If I try very hard to find something positive to say, it would be that the photography and editing aren't bad. But that in no way does anything to save what is a real turkey of a film.

The Interceptor (2015)

Dire

[2/10 · 8 July 2015]

Totally terrible casting. Generic plotting. The Interceptor desperately wants to be glossy and cool - but isn't. It's grey and tepid.

The members of this 'under-the-radar' covert squad look and behave more like the staff at a social services office. Not one of them manages to give a convincing performance. Even Trevor Eve, who usually delivers good characters, struggles with appearing menacing as a crime boss. Which is hardly his fault, given some of the lines he has to deliver.

All in all, The Interceptor is a pretty poor showing by BBC Drama Productions and only survives in its prime time slot because it's summertime and there's very little in the way of competition from other channels.

Thank Heaven for Netflix.

Constantine (2005)

Pretty dreadful

[2 September 2011]

Keanu Reaves at his most wooden (on a scale of one to ten, this was Oak). Rachel Weisz was completely wasted. Not at all the sort of part that she usually excels in.

All in all a pretty dismal effort. Only for die-hard fans of the comic- strip fraternity.

Not one I imagine most of the key players list on their CV's.The plot is laughable (I didn't laugh out loud though), The effects are standard ho- hum stuff, and on the version I watched, the sound was muddy and a lot of dialogue difficult to hear.

Francis Lawrence really ought to stick to directing music videos. Even Britney isn't as bad as this stuff.

Broken Flowers (2005)

An appallingly boring film

[1/10 · 22 June 2008]

I'm a Bill Murray fan, but this effort was just not worth his talents. The general impression I got was that the director was attempting to emulate the sort of moody, angst-ridden, atmosphere of some of the great French movies. However, his idea of what this involves seemed to stop at having Bill Murray sit on a sofa, expressionless, staring into space and doing a pretty good impression of a catatonic for long periods of time.

The inclusion of big names such as Sharon Stone, Jessica Lange and Julie Delpy ought to have brought some life to the piece, but they seemed as tired and dispirited as the rest of the cast.

I ended up in pretty much the same state.

Flood (2007)

CGI and CGS!

[1/10 · 6 May 2008]

This awful effort just goes to show what happens when you not only use computers to generate the effects, but also let them devise the plot and write the script. Someone somewhere has obviously come up with a new bit of software that asks a few questions then churns out four hours of loosely connected clichés, lousy dialogue and a collection of stock characters that you end up wishing had all drowned in the first five minutes.

Tom Courtney took the prize for worst performance. Saying that he was wooden would be an insult to trees. It's hard to fault Robert Carlyle in almost anything he does, but the odds were stacked against even him in this one, especially since he was for some unaccountable reason required to adopt a gor' blimey London accent.

A complete washout.