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Reviews
Laatste zeven maanden van Anne Frank (1988)
Horrible audio
Audio engineer should be disqualified from ever again working in this industry. For that matter, so should whoever did the lousy subtitles. This is, in fact, a reasonably decent documentary about Anne Frank but is rendered almost unwatchable by the botched soundtrack. Can't this be fixed??
Keizersvrouwen (2019)
Karina Smulders is wretched
Why do directors permit their leading actresses to look like they're about to burst into tears? The character is a bold, take-charge woman who runs a string of high-class escorts, yet she's always on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Similarly Laura Sepul in "Banking District" ... who runs a multibillion-euro empire but spends every episode wiping her eyes.
A Year in Port (2016)
They're playing you for suckers
Come on, if you're going to make a whole movie about a specific wine region (e.g. Port), you really should, early on, explain WHAT IT IS. But noooo, the producers have decided you are not entitled to this information. Instead, we get a lot of fanfare, hoopla, cricket, bike riding, and the like. Nothing that even suggests that port is a world-famous after-dinner wine, sweet wine, etc etc etc. Why not? Does David Kennard think we are too stupid?
The other gross insult is at the end, when the music to illustrate the Douro flowing down the hillsides is ... the Moldau by Smetana. Truly gross.
I think Martine Saulnier deserves both credit and blame. Credit for having bankrolled these European vineyard extravaganzas, blame for using them so shamelessly to exploit her own import businesses.
rating six but really should be three.
When Jews Were Funny (2013)
Oy veh
Dreadful. Slow, belabored, unfunny. Once or twice we see or hear flashes of brilliance, but for the most part there is nothing except an occasional heavily-accented Jewish ancestor.
Histories of the Holocaust: Buchenwald (2010)
Dreadful
The subject matter is dreadful, yes, but this wretched documentary does not merit your admiration (or disdain, for that matter). The script and narration are unremittingly bland and tone-deaf, and the German pronunciation is completely off-kilter. Lord knows how anyone could have provided funding for such a piece of amateurish history. I want to take the Welshman who wrote and narrated these films by the neck and shake him.
Return to Seattle (2018)
Boring
Gawd this is awful. Nothing happens, acting is wooden, photography is unimaginative, dialogue is clunky.
A Year in Champagne (2014)
Flat
Subtitles are particularly crappy in this snail-paced look at Champagne. (Example: the "liqueur d'expedition" is NOT "liquor" but sweet wine.) For all the time spent ballooning over the vineyards and watching machinery turn, there's no single coherent explanation of what Champagne actually is, why there's a need to remove sediment after the second fermentation, etc etc etc.
And what's Martine Saunier doing here? She imports one of the central characters into the US but not a peep from her about how Americans perceive Champagne.
Writer-director David Kennard is also responsible for the equally dreary "Year in Burgundy."