Smashbomb

Search

Search results

All (2460)

Content

Awix (3310 KP) rated Downton Abbey (2019) in Movies

Sep 28, 2019 (Updated Sep 28, 2019)

Downton Abbey (2019)

2019 | Drama, History

8.4

(17 Ratings)

Movie Rating Watch

Big-screen version of the popular costume soap feels like a long episode of a TV costume soap that's ended up in a movie theatre by accident (there's a shock). Daily life at Downton is thrown into uproar by the royal visit; this is mainly just a pretext to hang various low-stakes storylines onto, none of which are especially gripping.

The heritage view of the country is pervasive and unquestioned; the plot mostly concerns a bunch of people utterly determined to be as servile and deferent as they can, no matter the obstacles in their way. You either accept this is normal behaviour and buy into the film's picture-book idea of English life, or you don't, in which case this is not the film for you. Fine performers get very little to do; not much happens overall, to be honest. But if you watched the TV show and have affection for these characters I expect there will be much here you will enjoy. To me it just seemed like a load of under-powered smug monarchist piffle.

Kudos

Looking for the Goshawk

Conor Mark Jameson

(0 Ratings) Rate It

Book

The book traces Conor Jameson's travels in search of the Goshawk, a magnificent yet rarely seen (in...

Awix (3310 KP) rated Into the Night in TV

May 31, 2020

Into the Night

2020 | Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller

8.0

(3 Ratings)

TV Show Rating

The cheap gag about Into the Night would be to declare it the best Belgian apocalyptic SF disaster thriller mini-series ever made, but it deserves better than that. Not entirely unlike Lost, but without the plane actually crashing: passengers and crew of a commercial jet find themselves desperately travelling west, perpetually, as the sun's rays have suddenly become lethal. Characters come into sharper focus, tensions within the group build, there are many incidental crises and problems.

It's done with a slightly broad brush and occasionally becomes a little contrived, but there are great performances from the ensemble cast and it soon becomes genuinely gripping and tense, though not without the odd moment of black humour ('I'm going to die in Scotland... with Belgians!' despairs one character in the first episode). Not sure what they're going to do if it gets a second series, but this is a fine piece of entertainment. (Right-thinking people will surely watch the original version, with subtitles if necessary: the English dubbing is not great.)