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gpshovlin
Reviews
Shadow Run (1998)
Worst British film ever???
This film is dreadful. It could have been so good....Caine, Tim Healy, James Fox, Lesie Grantham, but it sucks to high heaven.
Did Caine have a big bill to pay the year he made this? It looks like an episode of Wycliffe or as if it was made exclusively for Channel 5, but even these are too much like compliments foe what is a truly dreadful film.
The credits look like they were done on an Amiga 500.
In terms of the scenery, they seem to be going for the 'Inspector Morse' look, but it fails miserably. The child actors are hilariously bad....do private schools still exist like this?
Total and utter dross...I know Caine likes to keep busy but maybe it is time he started taking some pride in his output.
The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse (2005)
How could they get it so wrong?
Overall, I felt this was a wasted opportunity. I feel ever so let down by the League as I felt they had their fingers on the pulse, but this film is ever so slightly up its own backside, and you can't help but feel some of it was for their own amusement.
Although I welcomed the fact that they wanted to do something different (as opposed to sending the characters off on holiday, a la Are You Being Served film version), they just don't manage to pull it off, and the irony is it probably would have been a safer bet sending the characters off on holiday.
Surely they could have stretched a full length plot around a character such as Papa Lazorous (sic) or even Geoff, who has pretty much the only funny lines throughout. I could see what they tried to do with Herr Lip, in that he faces up to the fact that he is a one joke, one dimensional character, but that was as clever and interesting as got.
The medieval section sucked big style, and reeked of a poor Monty Python sketch. Definitely more Meaning of Life than Life of Brian.
Every Home Should Have One (1970)
An all-time favourite for maybe the wrong reasons!
I remember seeing this for the first time when I was about 7. Children In Need was on BBC 1 (or maybe Comic Relief) and I was allowed to sleep downstairs to watch the whole event. Anyway, I found this on the other channel at about 2.30am, and I was totally blown away by it. Not least the funky theme tune, the cartoons, those eyes, Julie Ege etc. Anyway, a couple of years later I got it on VHS...surprise surprise, the cut I'd seen on ITV had been trimmed significantly. The bit with the hot dog vendor, the fantasy sequence where Teddy imagines a fight sequence with the vicar had both been cut, with maybe some other bits. I've seen this film more than any other film, and have collected as much stuff to do with it as I can; 4 posters, lobby cards, and approximately 60 black and white stills. If anyone has anything else related to this film, please get in touch. A few things bother me though; how did Shelley Berman get involved?Why is Alan Bennett uncredited? Shelley Berman turned up in Friends a few years back, and his character's name was Kaplan, as in this film. Was Kaplan his own persona, or was this a nod to the film? Does the US cut differ any from the UK?
Midnight Run (1988)
This film left me with a smile on my face from start to finish
I bought this film for 3 knicker from my local supermarket about 3 years ago, and I've finally got round to watching it tonight.
In summary, I felt it was a mix of Planes, Trains & Automobiles and True Romance, with a healthy dosage of Elmore Leonard chucked in for good measure.
I don't think I am over egging the cake when I say that De Niro can still turn in the funniest performances going when he wants. And this film was certainly no exception. He was suitably outrageous, cold, cynical but ultimately decent throughout.
*********SPOILER ALERT************
Grodin was nothing but likable, and I was overjoyed with the outcome.
Yaphet Kotto playing an older role, as the ageing Fed, but enjoyable nonetheless.
Well worth the wait, one of De Niro's best comedies, and one of his better films overall from the eighties