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Kirk Bage (1775 KP) rated About Time (2013) in Movies

Mar 3, 2020  
About Time (2013)
About Time (2013)
2013 | Comedy, Drama, Sci-Fi
8
7.8 (17 Ratings)
Movie Rating
I have gone on quite a bit about this one recently. I just think it is wonderful, and by far the best and least mawkishly sentimental work from Richard Curtis, of Love, Actually infamy. It makes me laugh so hard; the perfect awkwardness of Domhnal Gleason against the cute intelligence of Rachel McAdams; the exquisite turn by Bill Nighy as the time travelling father; and every small character and very British nuance in-between – it is such a pleasure. It also makes me cry… a lot! What I like about it is that it feels exactly like being in love. Exactly! There will be regret and pain, but in the end there is that one person that gets you and always will. And that idea… feels good!
  
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Awix (3310 KP) rated Hampstead (2017) in Movies

May 8, 2019  
Hampstead (2017)
Hampstead (2017)
2017 | Comedy, Drama, Romance
2
2.0 (1 Ratings)
Movie Rating Watch
Soul-eatingly horrible late-life rom-com. Recently widowed clearly well-off American woman living in (duh) Hampstead meets human womble living rough nearby, there is chemistry, despite the fact her friends disapprove and he is about to be evicted by the council. Various life lessons are just waiting to be learnt.

A calculated new take on the classic Richard Curtis formula, although it is even more obvious and predictable than most examples of the form, and has virtually no good jokes to make you not care about this. The soft-focus depiction of homelessness and the social divisions in London is simply objectionable. Gleeson and Keaton are too good not to find their moments even in a film like this, but they are glitter on a dungheap. Hollow and mechanical, unsurprising, unfunny, unemotional and manipulative.
  
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Kirk Bage (1775 KP) rated The Vikings (1958) in Movies

Mar 3, 2020 (Updated Mar 5, 2020)  
The Vikings (1958)
The Vikings (1958)
1958 | Action, Classics, Drama
7
6.8 (4 Ratings)
Movie Rating
In a productive period seeing him make four or five films a year, Douglas returned to work for Richard Fleischer in his pursuit for the great epic that would finally win him the Oscar. The Vikings was a star-studded spectacle that despite some memorable scenes between himself and Tony Curtis, falls a little flat as a satisfying film in entirety. A box office hit, but a critical flop, it has to be counted as somewhat of a failure, except for the fact it is one of the better known moments in his career, thanks largely to the powerful visual of Douglas with a dead eye and scar; proving you merely point a camera at him and get magic. My favourite trivia around this film is that Douglas offered a prize for best beard on the first day of shooting, only to turn up himself entirely clean shaven.
  
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Awix (3310 KP) rated Last Christmas (2019) in Movies

Dec 3, 2019  
Last Christmas (2019)
Last Christmas (2019)
2019 | Comedy, Romance
3
6.2 (18 Ratings)
Movie Rating Watch
Thunderously crass and obvious Christmas turkey, in which A Christmas Carol is involved in a head-on smash with the Richard Curtis rom-com formula: many normally reliable performers are scythed down by the shrapnel, possibly along with unfortunate audience members. The Christmas Carol personal-redemption story formula requires the lead character to be a horrible person in need of reformation; the rom-com pattern requires them to be cute and loveable from the start. Even if Emilia Clarke was as good an actress as I am always being told, she would need to be equipped with a much better script in order to square this particular circle.

This is the main problem the film has to contend with; others include the misplaced belief that quirkiness is an acceptable substitute for actual wit, and a generally pervasive sense of insincerity (it's hard to shake the notion that some key cast members were only employed to help flog this thing in Asian markets). This is before we get to the astonishing non-twist central to the story, or the glib platitudes casually dropped into the script. I imagine people will say its heart is in the right place (somewhat ironically); this is only true if you think the correct place for the heart is between the ears. I laughed once, and this was understandable, for it was at Peter Serafinowicz: unfortunately he is only in one scene.