Change Your Image
davidhildick-smith
Reviews
Snatch (2000)
Stylish but incomprehensible
One should be able to understand and enjoy a film on one viewing. In this case one could enjoy it, but definitely not understand, which is frustrating.
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Powerful, layered, affecting
Incredible opening scenes with gunfire and bombs the only music. A better window into the sheer horror and desperate futility of war than any other film. Yet another immaculate turn from Tom Hanks.
The Great Gatsby (2013)
Long and Dull
Tediously never-ending drama revolving around four people about whom you just don't care.
About Time (2013)
Nauseatingly saccharine
This film is so sickly you will need wet wipes and a vomit bag.
Ad Astra (2019)
Ludicrous cosmic guff
Beautifully shot but takes all the best bits of Gravity and does them less well. The storyline is ludicrous and the voiceover offers emoti-pointers for those who aren't concentrating. I love space dramas but this was tedious and leaden, and I really didn't care about any of the characters.
Green Book (2018)
Overrated fashionable flick
Mortensen is great but the film is a 2019 whitewash wish-list of the real story. The delivery is heavy-handed and the end product is trite and at times embarrassingly clunky.
The Endless (2017)
Silly, self-indulgent
After the first 40 minutes this film just becomes boring. The random and incoherent weird events come thick and fast but there is nothing to explain or unify. The final credits are the most visually interesting bit of the film.
Isle of Dogs (2018)
BIG DIRECTOR alert
This is another film where the Director's name is bigger than the result. The film itself is beautifully cut, but the story is a bit tame (geddit?) and the overall product is tedious at times. There is little to make us truly engage with the characters and to be frank only someone with WES ANDERSON's name would have been allowed to make what was a rather self-indulgent and at times prejudiced film.
The Shape of Water (2017)
Unidimensional Moralising Fairytale
Hollywood clearly had one of those hysterical mob love-ins with this film and forgot that it's actually a really tedious watch. The characters are one-dimensional (disabled or marginalised people are GOOD, other people are BAD); the tone is moralising, and the story itself is too absurd to be genuinely engaging. I was thoroughly disappointed.