tomdillon100 Reviews

Sea of Souls (2004–2007)

Excellent But.....

[9/10 · 20 April 2007]

..just watched the first of series 4 last night - transferring souls etc.

The plot was almost identical to The Skeleton Key (2005) with Kate Hudson. I mean, I really couldn't believe how close it actually was! I'm sure it must be coincidence as the writers couldn't possibly have more or less copied it and hope no-one would notice?

The ending was even the same, with the evil do-ers succeeding in their plot! Come on!

What will next weeks episode be based on? The Others? The 6th Sense? How about Rosemary's Baby?

Waking the Dead: The Fall: Part 1 (2007) Season 6, Episode 5

Was this laziness on the part of the writer???

[7/10 · 24 January 2007]

I'm all for suspending my disbelief to a point but simple facts being conveniently overlooked for the sake of ease of explanation can be annoying! Boyd and Spence went to Dublin to track a suspect, and where treated in Ireland as superior officers and referred to as 'Sir'. At one point Boyd said to the chap he was after that he was a Police Officer - well not in the Republic of Ireland he isn't! Fair enough if this was Northern Ireland Ireland, but Dublin is in the Republic of Ireland and is totally independent from Britain! Boyd and Spence would have had absolutely no jurisdiction there the same way they wouldn't have in France or Spain! Was this laziness on the part of the writer as it was easier to gloss over it, or, worse still, ignorance on the part of the writer? Otherwise - excellent as usual!

Alone in the Dark (2005)

One of the Worst Films I've Seen all Year

[1/10 · 20 December 2005]

The first question is, who puts up the money to make crap like this? The second question must be, where was the custodian of their money when they signed it away on this? The are obviously mentally unbalanced! This was the low quality drivel from start to finish - the Star Wars scrolling plot outline at the beginning went on for ages and not only that, it was read to us as well! Always a bad sign as the producers appear to assume that the average punter is too stupid to read! Having watched this from start to finish, I can understand why! Little plot, no character development, a bit of macho posturing, and absolutely no suspense as you see what they are "Alone in the Dark" with almost straight away - a badly computer animated half crab/alien that looks like it fell straight out of someone's X-Box. Which it no doubt did! Avoid at all costs - you'll only feel annoyed with yourself that you wasted nearly 2 hours of your life on such rubbish when you could have used it better on something else - like going into a coma!

The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse (2005)

Major Disappointment.....

[1/10 · 24 October 2005]

It became apparent in the first 25 mins of watching this that the writers really wanted to make a feature length film and they probably certainly enjoyed the whole process, but then seemed to forget the fact that it needed a decent plot! If the best they could do was have 3 of the dullest characters enter the real world and have 'all sorts of amusing capers' then they should have left well alone! I didn't laugh once, and that whole "Adventures of Baron Munchausen/Time Bandits" thing going on in the middle was very, very poor! Convaluted, contrived and very loose. It just seemed like a whistle stop tour of anything they thought 'might' work just to drag it out to a feature.

Full of holes eg - the Royston Vasey characters needed the writers to carry on writing in order to save them, yet Jeff managed to write himself into the sub-story/time-filling William and Mary and era. If he could do this then why didn't they just carry on writing Royston themselves - duh?? And Herr Lipp's audition? What was that for? I mean what was the point? He did it, and we heard nothing else whatsoever about it?

My main point is, that while I loved the series, this was an ill thought out, seemingly rushed project. Put it this way, the plot was so poor that if we didn't already know the characters (and as a fan I had a certain loyalty to carry on watching), and we relied solely on the the story itself, this would have fallen flat on its face! At best it would have gone straight to video, and at worst would never have been made in the first place! Or maybe that should be the other way round?? Truly dreadful....

Creep (I) (2004)

The Trailers were all the best bits...

[4/10 · 2 September 2005]

Well first of all, as a Londoner I had to overcome a lot of "that wouldn't/couldn't happen". Woman falls asleep, misses the last train and gets locked in - wouldn't happen as the staff not only physically make a sweep of the station, but there are CCTV camera's everywhere, monitored from a control room at street level. Second, when the last train goes, the power to the tracks is shut off for night maintenance work, so what all those trains were doing flying about after hours is anyone's guess?? The conception of this film is obvious - a few years ago they were making a big deal of how there are so many 'dead' stations on the network that people were unaware of that have been closed for years. So lets use them to make a film - I know, we'll make it some kind of Island of Dr Moreau rewrite using these dark and sinister stations, where something unseen is creeping about hellbent on all kind of unspeakable acts to be carried out on a conveniently and unrealistically trapped heroine! While not an awful film, the idea had the potential to be a lot better. Plus, to use a boxing analogy - if you've got the other guy taking an 8 count, you don't let him recover, then jump the ropes yourself and let him chase you around the arena!!

King Arthur (2004)

Subject matter done to death

[1/10 · 2 September 2005]

Lets face it, the Arthurian legend has been covered many times, and pretty much all of them have been better than this drivel! Radical new slant on the theme is lame, casting is dreadful and whatever budget they had was spent on unconvincing plastic walls, a couple of burning bales of hay and a dry-ice machine! Clive Owen is woefully miscast as Arthur - seems more like an accountant out of place at a fancy dress than an inspirational Kinglike figure! Ioan Gruffudd must have been gutted he didn't get the role - it was obviously much more him than Owen. Ray Winstone plays the same old shouting, beer swilling/spilling character as he did over 20 years ago in Robin of Sherwood, and in everything else he has done since! The Viking Chief seems to be doing some kind of Marlon Brando dressed as a scarecrow impression, and even Keira Knightley can't make much of her clichéd character that appears to have been stuck in at the last minute when someone thought "Oops, we forgot Guinevere!" I ended up laughing out loud at this it was so bad - the investors should have kept their money and waited for something with a decent plot, director and cast to come along!