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Mark @ Carstairs Considers (2464 KP) rated What Happened at Midnight in Books

Aug 27, 2020

Nighttime Crime

Frank and Joe Hardy are shocked when they get the new request from their father, famed detective Fenton Hardy. He wants them to break into a house and steal something. Of course, it is to keep an invention for his client safe. However, doing that puts the boys on the radar of a gang of smugglers. Will they be able to protect the invention and round up the smugglers?

I remember as a kid the title really intriguing me. Yes, several scenes take place at midnight, but the title isn’t as relevant to the story as it might be. That hardly matters since the story is so action packed that it is hard to put it down. Coincidence rules quite a bit, and the characters are thin. Elements are also very dated today. So in other words, it’s a typical Hardy Boys book. Still, I take that into account when I pick up one of these books, and I enjoy the nostalgia I get from revisiting these old friends.

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Awix (3310 KP) rated Warcraft (2016) in Movies

Jun 3, 2020

Warcraft (2016)

2016 | Action, Fantasy

6.3

(42 Ratings)

Movie Rating

Joyless and gruelling fantasy action movie, made in the bad old style. Orcs from another dimension invade Generic Fantasyland; people ride about, waving swords and hammers, spectacular mystical events occur, the CGI bill rockets upward at supersonic speed, and - I suspect - two days later you won't remember more than the most basic elements of the plot. (Most of the Orc characters are played by human actors in greenface makeup; I can't understand why there hasn't been more fuss about this.)

Half-decent score and I suppose the art direction is okay, if not exactly subtle, but this is the worst kind of fantasy film, as characters, places and concepts feel like they've been arbitrarily created to suit the story - 'cheating at cards to win paper money', as one novelist once described this kind of narrative. No depth, no resonance, no involvement - but then I've never played the game and have no awarenes of the Warcraft franchise beyond this film. (No doubt if they ever get around to doing a Euro Trucker 2 movie the boot will be on the other foot.)

Kudos

Awix (3310 KP) rated Edge of Darkness (2010) in Movies

May 5, 2020 (Updated May 6, 2020)

Edge of Darkness (2010)

2010 | Drama, Mystery, Thriller

6.0

(11 Ratings)

Movie Rating

The legendary TV mini-series is retooled for the big screen as a bog-standard Mel Gibson revenge thriller. A detective's daughter is killed, and his investigations lead him to discover she was a target of forces within the military-industrial complex operating above the law.

As well as two-thirds of the running time and most of the plot, the movie version of Edge of Darkness also cheerfully dispenses with virtually everything that made the TV show so memorable: theoretically a fiendishly convoluted thriller, it also contained an environmentalist subtext, an incest subtext, a subtext about Anglo-US relations, even some borderline SF & fantasy elements. All of this is gone and just replaced with Mel Gibson looking intense and beating people up. As a result it is very hard to care about what's happening, although the illogicality of much of it does manage to cut through (someone poisoning someone else and then deciding to shoot them as well is practically a motif). Ray Winstone is not bad as Jedburgh, but given the source material the rest of it is unforgivably lousy.