Randall's Flat

Having seen this film I can now say that my life is complete. The complex, and indeed entirely pointless storyline and character arcs of the subjects are displayed to the audience in such a way as to almost be called Brechtian! In no way did the shakey under developed sets and complete lack of acting destroy my brains ability to be completely fried by the storyline's staggering ineptitude.

I cried whilst watching this film, not from the emotion conveyed to me by the actors, but by the fact that clever, intelligent people who never meant any harm to anybody invented the technology that this has been preserved upon, for all time. Though rather like many other inventions over the past two hundred years, it hasn't taken somebody very long to come up with something horrifically awful to do with it.

I believe that this film will soon be available to buy on DVD in stores up and down the land. I've seen a preview copy and would recommend that you do not throw away your money this way instead do something more useful with it, like buying a litre of used engine oil and drinking it whilst watching Last of the Summer Wine and listening to Elton John's Candle in the Wind, again and again.

I said at the beginning of this review that my life was complete after watching this film and indeed it is. Now I can go through a back catalogue of films that I thought were poor, but now I am able to watch them in a new light. Thank you Chris Atkins, now where did I put Remo Williams: Unarmed and Dangerous.

This came to me via work, someone had to watch the promotional DVD that came to our distribution company, someone deluded obviously thought that just because we have a few crappy titles in our catalogue that we might need another, I drew the short straw and had to watch this, revenge now is mine. To quantify this horror of a title, bad acting, inaudible sound, cheap & obvious special effects, loathsome characters amble in and out of pubs and bars getting very drunk and swearing. The lead female whose previous claim to fame was appearing in a none speaking (her voice was dubbed over) as a body double, naked from the head down wearing a mask in 'Eyes wide shut', should have been wearing a mask this time too for she'll never live this turkey down. I destroyed the disc before putting it in the waste bin so there would be no possibility of other poor soul having to suffer watching this amateur dramatics, boring beyond tedious, self-indulgent crap! Flat indeed like tasting a beer found the day after a party with a few cigarette butts added for flavour.

Why is England so strange in that it creates men that write film scripts that become films so childish that it makes my skin crawl with disgust. I was repelled from the start, yet I felt compelled to watch, unbelieving that a film so pointless and ugly had actually been created...funded. No wonder the British are considered no more to be a hot bed of new talent, when direction like this is forwarded to our festival to be concidered for competition. More suitable for burning in a large bonfire with every other copy prior to distribution. I feel most strongly about how insulting this film was to me.

This film is sexist, racist, homophobic and purile! A poor homage to 'Withnail and I', it's full of very sub Farley brothers toilet jokes, copious amounts of totally ridiculously excessive drug taking and abuse, the film (I'm being generous in calling it that) features two leads that use the excuse of supposedly being completely of their faces and wasted on alcohol abuse to ham it up shamelessly. The constant moving camera is unbearably shaky, leaving me feeling sea sick. Rude, crude the only redeeming feature is its atmospheric and well lit. Avoid with a vengence, you have been warned! One out of ten, would have been zero if it was an option.

To my surprise this film was a murder mystery. I really liked the way it manages to disguise this fact for most of the movie. A slow beginning sets the plot in motion and introduces some great characters (Tommy was excellent)who you want to see more of. There are some excellent steadicam shots that add immense energy to key scenes and some nicely executed externals that stop the film becoming claustrophobic. Steering a refreshingly reckless course from drama, through comedy, to farce, and back again it's a film that couldn't be made by a studio with an eye on distribution. Some highly offensive one-liners and great background gags (the firemen in particular are genius)keep you unsure of what you're watching until the final act, where the two leads act their socks off and leave you with a lump in your throat where previously you were suppressing a laugh. Excellent.