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* Pick of the Week - guardian.co.uk * Rated 5 out of 5 - PappasAppar.se * Rated 5 out of 5 -...

Phillip McSween (751 KP) rated The Hunt for Red October (1990) in Movies

Jul 15, 2020

Boring

I spent a minute trying to figure out a logline for this movie and I couldn’t quite get a grasp on how to put it into words. Something about a submarine led by a defective Soviet commander headed for American soil and special agent Jack Ryan (Alec Baldwin) having to hunt him down. That’s the best I can do.

Acting: 10
Performances were strong across the board and is not where the movie fell flat in the slightest. Alec Baldwin delivers as Ryan with a sharp charisma that makes the movie just slightly more bearable. I was also impressed with Sean Connery’s role as villain Marko Ramius. Definitely the type of guy you love to hate and Connery did a solid job of bringing him to life.

Beginning: 8
Wasn’t 100% bought in after the first ten minutes, but enough happened to make me want to watch more. While I have seen way better movies in my day, I have definitely seen way worse beginnings too. It gives you a bit of story while creating excitement and intrigue for the story.

Characters: 5
The acting was fine. The characters, on the other hand, bored the absolute hell out of me. None of their storylines or backgrounds compelled me to ultimately care about the story as a whole. How many times have I said bad characters breed bad movies? Couldn’t be truer here.

Cinematography/Visuals: 5
This movie relies a lot on smoke and mirrors. First you see a submarine, then it disappears. You see a missile, then it’s gone. After awhile the parlor trick gets old and so does the story. It felt like their action sequences suffered from a lower budget.

Conflict: 5
The action was mediocre at best. For this to be a movie about dueling submarines, there certainly aren’t a lot of dueling submarines. I can’t think of a better way to say this: This movie is really boring. There is way too much close-quarters talk and not enough actually happening.

Entertainment Value: 6
For every solid moment The Hunt For Red October brings, it gives you more scenes of people just sitting around discussing strategy. The high points were few and far between. It’s not a total dumpster fire, but I was certainly hoping for more.

Memorability: 4

Pace: 2

Plot: 10

Resolution: 2

Overall: 57
Contrary to what you might think, I hate shitting on movies. Sometimes, as is the case for The Hunt For Red October, it’s unavoidable. With such a stellar cast, I was hoping for more.

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The War on Women

Sue Lloyd-Roberts

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In 1973, Sue Lloyd Roberts joined ITN as a news trainee and went on to be one of the UK's first...

ClareR (5950 KP) rated If I Can’t Have You in Books

Dec 5, 2020

If I Can’t Have You

Charlotte Levin | 2020 | Contemporary, Fiction & Poetry, Mystery, Romance, Thriller

9.0

(2 Ratings)

Book Rating

If I Can’t Have You is a story about obsession. It’s funny, serious, disturbing and at times, outrageous. Constance could be a character that would be easy to dislike, but I liked her vulnerability. She is a sad character who has had a troubled upbringing. When she believes that she has found the love of her life, and is then almost immediately let down by the frankly despicable Dr. Samuel Stevens, I felt so sorry for her. And continued to feel for her as he repeatedly uses her. He clearly neither knows or cares about Constance’s depth of feeling for him. She seems desperate as she lets him use her, and even more so as she looks for affection with her housemate, Dale. He certainly seems to have the potential to be a male version of Constance, and it’s clear that she actually feels revulsion with regards to him. But at the same time, she doesn’t want to be on her own.

I think the character of Edward, an elderly man who lives over the road from Samuel, is in part the father figure that she needs and never had. He needs her too. I think things could have been far worse for Constance if she hadn’t have had Edward to consider. Edward is the device that shows Constance is a caring person underneath the obsession. She makes time in her day to care for and visit him. Like the other two men, he is a broken soul - but his obsessive behaviour doesn’t translate in to being careless with people. Instead he is a hoarder of strange knick-knacks. Edward adds an element of humour as well - his relationship with Constance is lovely.

I found it hard NOT to put myself in Constance’s shoes. After all, isn’t that what we as readers do with the characters we read about? How easy would i be to slip from loneliness in to obsession? I hope I never find out, but it’s so well portrayed in this book. This is a supremely uncomfortable book in parts - Constance is used and abused, and she in turn can have some pretty unpleasant thoughts. But perhaps that’s because she doesn’t have someone to really confide in?

I can’t actually believe that this is a debut, and I will definitely be looking out for whatever comes next from Charlotte Levin.

Many thanks to The Pigeonhole for serialising this and to Charlotte for joining in with the chat in the margins!