Drama > Spall, Timothy Drama

A weird film about reality

Advantages: Interesting story
Disadvantages: A bit confusing at times

The 2001 film, Vanilla Sky, is a bit of a weird film that may not appeal to everyone. It is a remake of a Spanish film, Open Your Eyes (Abre los Ojos). Vanilla Sky is about David Aames (Tom Cruise), a wealthy man, who owns a publishing company and seems to have the perfect life. When he and his friend Brian (Jason Lee) are at a party, he meets a beautiful girl, Sofia (Penelope Cruz), who he falls in love with her. However before David can pursue ...
...girlfriend, Julianna (Cameron Diaz), is determined to get revenge. She crashes her car with David in it, leaving the surviving David with a disfigured face. David tries to rebuild his life and tries out find out more about Sofia, but things start getting confusing for him, when someone dies David is help to blame and is put in the care of Dr Curtis McCabe (Kurt Russell) who tries to help him piece together the mystery of his life and work out what ...

mozzie76 30.10.2009 · Read full review
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Review of Vanilla Sky (DVD)

Streets ahead

Advantages: Wonderful, thought-provoking and gripping
Disadvantages: None

...I died - and quickly. The cash machine swallowed my card. So... made penniless and sentenced to death - just an average day really. Still, I can withdraw money tomorrow, and I doubt Mr. Atzel will be able to track me down and murder me, so all's well that ends well. Sometimes, there is a happy ending. Which brings me on to 'The Street', written by the legendary Jimmy McGovern, where there is generally a happy ending in each episode. How well do ...
...home-made Bailey's cheesecake; Derek on the other, a writer who tells me to turn my music down if I throw a party. But I don't know what goes on inside their houses - do I really want to? Yes, if its anything like 'The Street'. Each episode of this 6-part drama, tells the story of the inhabitants of one household on 'The Street'. Each story kind of intertwines with other stories, so some characters appear in more than one episode, but each one has ...

kevindye 02.09.2008 · Read full review
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Review of The Street - Series 1 - Complete (DVD)

Mikado restore equilibrium

Advantages: Biopic of Gilbert and Sullivan, comic period drama
Disadvantages: Quite slow in part. 160 mins in length

William S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan are undisputed masters of operetta. Mike Leigh wrote and directed the film “Topsy-Turvy” in 1999 as a tribute to their work. The film focuses on a specific time in the pair’s career. A period drama set in 1884, at a time when Gilbert and Sullivan were at the height of their fame. They had already had ten successful productions. However, their latest work, Princess Ida, is a disaster. Sullivan, the composer (Allan ...
...the flop on the inane and repetitive plots devised by his partner Gilbert (Jim Broadbent). However the two are contractually obliged by D’Oyly Carte and the Savoy Theatre, to continue their collaboration. In a meeting intended to improve relations and to plan their next production, Gilbert outlines a scenario for the next production to which Sullivan replies, "Oh, Gilbert! You and your world of Topsy-Turvy-dom”. Things look bleak until Gilbert has ...

MAFARRIMOND 19.09.2004 · Read full review
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Review of Topsy-Turvy (DVD)

Aka The Last Hangman

Advantages: Educational and quite emotional in places
Disadvantages: Dark subject but never trivialised

Let me get this over and said right away. You WILL see hangings. Executions. It's a very dark film. And not just the subject matter. This is some of the story of Albert Pierrepoint, the United Kingdom's most prolific executioner of modern times. The settings of most scenes and the shooting of them are very dark or quite dark. Not much of this film is brightly lit, but there is a good reason for that. A dark subject needs a suitable background & setting ...
...2 which carried on into the early 1950's. Albert starts out as a humble grocer who is eager to follow in his fathers footsteps as an executioner. His 1st job is supposed to be as an assistant to a hangman but the man he is supposed to be assisting loses his nerve and Albert steps in to take his place and hangs the man thus taking his first step towards a career and infamy. Albert is even chosen by Field Marshal Montgomery to go to Germany and execute ...

atytyut2434 09.03.2009 · Read full review
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Review of Pierrepoint (DVD)

How many stars does it take to do Dickens?

Advantages: A beautifully fresh presentation
Disadvantages: Some poor "English" accents

...A brief plot outline Nicholas Nickleby is dead. (This seems to be a theme of how Dickens starts his novels!) But we are not concrned with that Nicholas Nickleby, it is his son ... young Nicholas Nickleby who is the hero of our tale. After his father's suden death leaving his family with little money the young Nicholas goes to his uncle in town for advice. As you can imagine the uncle is loaded but does not help the Nickelby's at all. He manages ...
...Hall. Now Nicholas is warned that this school is not pleasant by an old friend of his fathers but he goes none the less. When he arrives at Dotheboys he is greated by malnourished, down trodden young boys who seem closer to death than receiving a good education. In particular the young boy Smike is the Headmaster's servant boy and often beaten. As you can imagine Nicholas is there to become the boy's saviour and helps Smike to escape. He then beats ...

nkemp_99 03.02.2007 · Read full review
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Review of Nicholas Nickleby (DVD)