tonygriffen Reviews

Day of the Stranger (2019)

Amateurish in the worst way

[1/10 · 25 May 2024]

Is this some kind of an amateur production? Someone's school project? This movie has he worst "acting" you can find anywhere. No way these are actual professional actors. Their attempts at "acting" consist of making faces, and reciting their lines with phony low, rasp voices. The plot is incoherent and bizarrely disjointed. It has ghostly narrations (disembodied voice delivering pompous lines), hallucinations... this thing is laughable even as a bad trip. How did they get anyone to part with their money to produce this script? Wow. Wait, "Carnie Film" production? How appropriate.

This is the worst attempt at western I remember watching.

1939 Battle of Westerplatte (2013)

Awful, meandering, and pointless.

[2/10 · 21 August 2023]

This is a pseudo-psychological reinterpretation of the defense of Westerplatte. It is full of hysterics, pregnant pauses, unsubstantiated in documents conflicts and dramas. The unit defending the outpost was in reality hand-picked, and the commanders were seasoned and battle hardened. Instead the movie is trying to portray them all as screaming, hysterical old women, running back and forth. This is an awful movie with some decent albeit low budget special effects.

Perhaps the movie was trying to be trendy and "questioning", but questions it is trying to ask are unsupported by evidence, and the answers are confused and consisting primarily of emotional outbursts.

Add to this subpar play by the actors who occasionally seem surprised by the script, and you have a recipe for a D movie. Skip.

As Far as My Feet Will Carry Me (2001)

Entertaining but very uneven

[4/10 · 18 June 2023]

The strongest part of the movie are beautiful sceneries throughout the movie, and the photography, particularly in the initial scenes of the arrival to the camp. Once the escape begins, alas, the story begins to unravel, until finally about half way it turns into a bizarre sappy Hollywood story jumping from ridiculous to PC, back to ridiculous, and finally to nauseatingly sweet Hallmark Christmas card. This is easily explained because today we know that while the real-life hero, Cornelius Rost, was indeed a prisoner in a hard labor camp in Siberia, there was no escape, he was released in 1947 and returned home. So, the scenes related to the camp are riveting because he describes them from experience, but once he starts making stuff up, the story falls apart. Part of the blame has to be taken by the director. All in all, I would say watch until Forell/Rost is rescued by a group of Yakutsk Chukchi herders, then switch to something else.

The Ultimate Gift (2006)

Christmas movie

[7/10 · 7 December 2014]

I cannot believe some of the critical comments here. If you expected The Godfather, Steel Magnolias, or The Deer Hunter, this is NOT your movie. This is a family, Christmas, feel-good tear jerker. This is not a movie you later discuss with your friends over Chardonnay and cheese. Sure it is predictable, but all Christmas movies are. Abigail Breslin steals the show as young Emily. She is delightful. Someone commented she is preachy at times. If that surprises you, you have never seen children before. Yes, she is preachy, but in a delightful way. Perhaps it is not the best movie in its genre, but it is warm and pleasant to watch for the family. It's a Christmas movie.