Tag: 2

Blunt Talk (2015)

Where to find it: No UK streaming I could find
Length: Twenty 25-minute episodes
Synopsis: Sanctimonious newsreader ruins life for mild laughs
Recommendation rating: 2/5

What I like about it: Patrick Stewart, season one
What I don’t like about it: season two, guilty of what it ridicules

Review:
At first this show seemed right up my street, with verbose and farcical elements clearly inspired by Frasier. Patrick Stewart, whose comedic instincts are very underrated, plays an egotistical talk show host – a kind of cross between Piers Morgan and Bill Maher – whose life and show fall apart with mildly comedic results. There’s even a great scene in the pilot of Stewart interacting positively with a trans sex worker! But sadly its premise proves too thin to sustain even ten episodes and season 2 is an unfunny wreck. Has many Newsroom moments of preachy liberalism and despite that supposedly being a flaw of the main character, it extends out to the show as a whole and adds an extra meta layer of hypocrisy.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): sex, nudity, drugs, violence (boxing), climate change

Light and Magic (2022)

Where to find it: Disney+
Length: Six roughly 1-hour episodes
Synopsis: Streaming service filler about ILM history
Recommendation rating: 2/5

What I like about it: occasional interesting “how they did that” moments
What I don’t like about it: bloated beyond reason, it’s Disney corporate autofellatio

Review:
The first half focuses on the early days at Industrial Light & Magic as they made Star Wars, the second half loses what little interest it had by focusing ostensibly on the computer graphics revolution but meandering around it because the topic isn’t that interesting. I had hoped this would focus on the process of modern ILM as they work on recent projects but it turned out to be hagiographic filler trash.

Content notes (may contain spoilers):

George Ezra – Gold Rush Kid (2022)

Length: 38:46
Synopsis: Radio-friendly pop with little depth
Recommendation rating: 2/5

What I like about it: some songs are musically quite decent, more still are catchy and inoffensive enough
What I don’t like about it: i know he can do better; it feels shallow and even cynical in parts, uses his voice poorly

Review:
A sadly forgettable, though probably commercial, album from the deep-voiced English singer-songwriter.

Content notes (may contain spoilers):

Everything I Know About Love (2022)

Where to find it: BBC iPlayer
Length: Seven 45-minute episodes
Synopsis: Brit coming-of-age Sex and the City stuffed with middle-class millennial nostalgia
Recommendation rating: 2/5

What I like about it: pretty good albeit scattershot soundtrack, occasional interesting moments
What I don’t like about it: way too many interchangeable party and sex scenes

Review:
BBC3’s latest overhyped and overprivileged comedy-drama finds starry-eyed childhood friends trying to make it as young media professionals in Camden. Their divergent paths through young adulthood and differing development rates threaten to tear them apart but friendship will win the day after over five hours of pointless partying, repetitive sex and cheap nostalgia pops.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): a whole lot of sex, drugs and partying

Lightyear (2022)

Where to find it: Disney+
Length: 100 minutes
Synopsis: Buzz attempts heroics for an hour and a half
Recommendation rating: 2/5

What I like about it: occasionally looks pretty, Sox
What I don’t like about it: miserably pointless

Review:
Ranking at the bottom of the Pixar canon alongside Cars 2 and Toy Story 4, this misadventure begins with the following mind-boggling title card then dives in media res before we have a chance to ask questions: “In 1995, Andy received a Buzz Lightyear toy. It was from his favourite movie. This is that movie.” What follows is an almost complete mess of plot holes and questionable decisions soaked in a dusty atmosphere reminiscent of The Martian (2015), the Pixar team are wasted here and don’t seem to have connected with or taken the time over the material. Sox will move plenty of merchandise, I’m sure.

Content notes (may contain spoilers):

Vicious Fun (2020)

Where to find it: Amazon Prime
Length: 100 minutes
Synopsis: Slasher comedy
Recommendation rating: 2/5

What I like about it: competently made on a low budget, hammy acting
What I don’t like about it: grim, formulaic comedy

Review:
This film finds a horror movie fanatic stumbling upon a support group for serial killers and then having to evade them all movie. It was moderately preferable to sitting in silence.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): murder, vomit, gore

The Big Conn (2022)

Where to find it: Apple TV+
Length: Four 1-hour episodes
Synopsis: Documentary series about a flamboyant lawyer who perpetrates a huge social security fraud
Recommendation rating: 2/5

What I like about it: it is an interesting story with real-life heroes and villains
What I don’t like about it: stretched way beyond the natural length of the story, cheesy re-enactments

Review:
Horrendously bloated by interviews with self-important journalists and juvenile re-enactments, this would have been decent had it been a movie.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): suicide

Man vs. Bee (2022)

Where to find it: Netflix
Length: About an hour and a half, cut into 9 episodes
Synopsis: A man housesits a mansion, where he becomes obsessed with killing a bee
Recommendation rating: 2/5

What I like about it: delivers on Mr. Bean-esque calamity
What I don’t like about it: never quite comes together, very predictable, cruel to animals

Review:
Rowan Atkinson is following the time-honored tradition of British comics: funding your latest divorce by returning to the material you swore you were done with. This is a Mr. Bean movie in all but name; Atkinson plays a middle-age divorcé named Trevor Bingley who signs up to a housesitting app and finds his first job at a mansion where all expensive items are pointed out in the pilot ready for him to destroy in the coming episodes. And so it goes.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): he gasses the family dog and falls in its excrement, fire

The Gentlemen (2019)

Where to find it: Netflix
Length: 110 minutes
Synopsis: It’s a Guy Ritchie gangster movie
Recommendation rating: 2/5

What I like about it: Hugh Grant, Jeremy Strong, surprisingly easy-to-follow for a complex back-and-forth format
What I don’t like about it: Charlie Hunnam, the open racism, so many attempts at “cool” which come off pathetic, failed humour

Review:
Every few years, Guy Ritchie makes a desperate attempt to prove that he made Lock, Stock and Snatch which come off as yet-another British gangster flick albeit with a big budget and only serve to remind us of Matthew Vaughn’s relative talent. This latest one opens with Matthew McConaughey seemingly being murdered in a pub, then cuts to Charlie Hunnam (who really should quit his day job) surprised to find Hugh Grant in his house playing the kind of sleazy ‘dark arts’ tabloid PI he’s been feuding with his whole adult life with great scenery-chewing relish. Grant’s Fletcher (all the characters are conspicuously mononymous) is there to pitch Hunnam a screenplay based on his life as McConaughey’s consigliere and provide comic relief for flashbacks explaining the complicated and violent story of a takeover bid on an underground drug network. Particular highlights include Jeremy Strong’s foppish and effete rival drug lord, Colin Farrell acting like he’s in a much better movie and the film’s laughable attempts at drug slang (“White Widow Super Cheese”). It’s reasonably entertaining but the most exhausting part of watching this movie is trying to overlook its flaws, which come thick and fast in a “throw it at the wall and see what sticks” way.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): violence, racism, drugs, vomit, rape

The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020)

Where to find it: Netflix
Length: Nine one-hour episodes
Synopsis: Young woman looks after creepy orphans in spooky manor house
Recommendation rating: 2/5

What I like about it: occasionally has excellent unsettling sequences, the child actors were great, as were the characters
What I don’t like about it: completely lost the plot by halfway, has an entirely skippable uninteresting penultimate episode

Review:
Mike Flanagan has a great formula for horror but there are better examples of it than this. What starts out promising, albeit with plenty of filler, soon evaporates and there’s an episode at the end that seems designed to kill the goodwill of anyone who invested their time in it

Content notes (may contain spoilers): general horror tropes, animal abuse, it’s very dark