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Reviews
Frozen (2010)
Some good thrills with lots of padding.
I liked this for the most part. It starts very slowly, in fact the first twenty minutes were rather boring, but it morphs itself into a good story by the midway point. There were lots of talky scenes that didn't really add to the story and stank of padding just to get the film to a decent running-time.
The sense of isolation throughout is good and feels real. You really feel totally alone and desperate at the right times in the film. The acting was good (if a little uneven) and I really felt sorry for the characters by the end. There was one character introduced in the beginning who doesn't appear in the rest of the film, which seems odd and pointless(or maybe I'm missing something?)
The cinematography was so-so and the music was frankly dull. But this didn't inhibit my enjoyment of the story. It's a film to watch once and I enjoyed it's atmosphere, but something was missing. I think a more satisfying ending would have improved it, but it just ends with no information on what happened to the characters.
All in all, a decent thriller with some good tense scenes, but really, nothing to rave about.
Sightseers (2012)
Enjoyable (jet) black comedy with a disappointing ending.
I enjoyed this for the most part. It has moments of humour that everyone will chuckle at as well as some moments that only people with the darkest, driest sense of humour will understand.
It would be easy to assume this is similar in tone to Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead, but it isn't. It has an extremely dark, uncomfortable atmosphere almost throughout and this will put some people off. I feel if this film were any longer it would be hard to sit through.
Two things that put me off slightly was the hand-held camera work. It depleted the sense of isolation in some scenes and would have been more effective if the camera was locked down. Another thing was the ending. Without giving anything away, the ending was lazy on the writers' part and made almost no sense.
All in all though, I would recommend this film to anyone who gets British humour and likes quirky, dark comedy.