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Just like the main protagonist of this "documentary" (advert), the movie itself is a pretty good manipulator. First, the title sells you the idea this is going to be one of those docs which reveals the dark truth behind a manipulative business figure. Then we get a few snippets of people saying the guy is a manipulater, the course is a cult and so on. All the kind of stuff we're used to seeing in these kinds of docs, so we're no prepared for the twist coming halfway or so into the movie, where are the people who've had bad experiences reveal their side of the story. Except they never happen in this doc. Then there's the TV psychologist whose insights are intercut with the main character being "open" about his back story.

As soon as it reaches the point in the story where he turns his life around by starting a life coach "business" (pyramid scheme), it becomes an advert for the pyramid scheme.

It dawns on me - I've been duped. They've deliberately (and quite cleverly actually) got us all to watch this garbage for over an hour. Which is a classic con-job strategy. The more time your victim invests in your story, the they want to believe it. The more likely they'll become a customer...

Don't be suckered.

I saw the Guardian 1 star review and got curious. Watched the first test as it seemed the next contestants were about to repeat the same test I thought "are you serious?" Well their test was slightly different and was edited shorter.

This show has some of the best cinematography in a reality show. I think they're even using anamorphic lenses. Plus drone shots and slick editing. They're going for the 007 movie vibe, which is a little counterintuitive for a reality show. The USP of a reality show is it feels live and rough. This doesn't. It feels staged like an unrehearsed movie.

Its a mashup of various successful shows. So we have teams of pairs travelling across the world. But they're introduced slowly, like the Alone series (not all in the first episode). Brian Cox plays a kind of Bond villain Alan Sugar.

Except he comes across as a friendly uncle who thinks he's being evil. Except he's helping the contestants. Is he against them or not? That bit seems confused.

The tasks are right out of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? And ABC multiple choice without any friends to call. Every single task... so yeah it does get very repetitive. Once they find the case which contains the question it generally feels like an anti climax. And many of the questions are very easy.

The main problem is a basic lack of tension or intrigue. The contestants are not competing against each other. Instead each team is running their own quest to win the £1m. Therefore cutting between them has no meaning other than a way to stop the audience getting bored.

Cox is completely detached from the game and just supplies his robotic instructions and clues. Probably recorded completely separately. Unlike say Sugar in the Apprentice or the guy who used to present The Crystal Maze. They're part of the game and that adds to the fun, the intrigue and the tension.

They surely missed an opportunity to introduce some 007 intrigue between teams, by having them compete for the big prize conducting some Bond style espionage against each other.

As it is, it's just about entertaining enough to keep one's interest in an undemanding way, for a few hours casual viewing.

I just wonder how contrived the whole thing is. What if all the contestants got the questions wrong early? End of show. Maybe that's why the questions are so easy.

A lot of the stunts are far too dangerous for ordinary folks to take on without professional supervision. But that stuff gets edited out to give you them impression a couple ordinary blokes are suddenly expert rock climbers. In one task involving a cable car they don't show the contestant getting a safety cable attached to him, but you can see it in the wide shot. The editing implies they're left to complete the tasks alone.

Then there's convenient boatmen and taxi drivers who happen to be up for helping them out. There's time challenges which nobody ever fails.

It does have potential but they should rework the format.

Many years ago, a friend entered the London Scifi Film Festival 48 Hour challenge. Teams turn up for the challenge and are given certain props or dialogue that must appear in the film. This is to stop cheating. My friend didn't win. I asked who won, he wasn't too impressed. I watched the winning film and I was blown away. By far the best film made for a 48 hour challenge I'd seen. It was Factory Farmed by Edwards. The story isn't developed (I've tried a 48 hour challenge - its tough!), but it's so beautifully made, it's stuck with me ever since. I often refer to it when teaching filmmaking, as its a great example of what can be done with minimal resources. There's also something haunting about the way it's shot and edited. You need to understand this was made pretty much by Edwards working alone, improvising a story (filming & editing) over 48 hours. It shouldn't be compared to a movie where you have a huge team behind you plus months/years to develop a screenplay. Watch it for what it is, the beginnings of a major filmmaking talent.

Great acting, great cinematography, with a good and solid (but not particularly unique) music score.

I might also say that about the crime-thriller plot, which certainly keeps up the twists and turns, but for me is let down by some unlikely events. Some events just stretched reality too far for me. Some elements come across as "by the number" cop thriller stuff.

Some of it had me screaming at TV, WHHATTT?

After the 2 girls go missing, our hero Detective Loki is revealed as having never failed to solve a case. OK, so that's reassuring but not really believable.

Anyway, a day later his boss is giving him a hard time because he hasn't moved the case forward in 24 hour. They obviously don't like each other. BUt how does this add up so soon after we hear Loki is the star cop. Surely the boss wouldn't be giving a guy a hard time with his 100% success rate.

This just feels like this is what happens American cop movies - the boss has to give the hero a hard time.

And considering how badly Luki performs in the following case, it would have made far more sense to make him a loser cop in the last chance saloon. Then the bosses attitude would have made sense (and his actions for the rest of the movie).

So they bring in the main suspect, Alex Jones, and the father of one of the girls (Hugh Jackman) attacks him in front of half a dozen camera people and news reporters. However, even though they are filming at the time, none of them manage to record the moment where the suspect gives away that he knows where the girls are. You know what reporters are like, they would have been zooming right in.

Anyway, the dad is let off by the cops (really? OK, we'll let it go). Then he goes and kidnaps the suspect and locks him in some abandoned property he owns.

This goes on for a while and I'm wondering why the suspect hasn't been reported missing. I guess it's not convenient for the plot yet. But eventually there is some vague news that the suspect is now missing.

The cops would surely go directly to the dad, seeing as he attacked the suspect in front of about 15 people. But no, it's not the first thing on Luki's mind. Instead the plot meanders on a bit until Loki "discovers" Jackman driving to his abandoned house. Surely he would be suspect number 1 at this point and his every move followed by the cops??

He then watches Jackman walking towards the place where he has Alex locked up. But he gives himself away by watching him from his parked car, parked in the middle of the road. OK, a minor screw up, but still - this is the guy who solved 100% of his cases remember.

The dad is warned when a trucks honks his horn at Loki. Loki chats with the dad and seems to buy his story about wanting to get drunk. But he doesn't trace the path the dad was taking before he was alerted - whhyyy? Are you so dumb, you don't even go and look??

This kind of stuff goes on. Loki eventually discovers the abandoned building. But does he get a team of cops to search the entire building, because surely this would be the most obvious place to look for a missing guy who was attacked by the owner.

During an interrogation, Loki then allows another suspect to grab his gun and kill himself. How bad is this Loki guy? The 100% record remember. OK, so this awesome cop has developed anger issues since taking on this case. So is this anger issue something he's always had or has it only just surfaced?

Another cop movie cliche is that Loki gets to wander around on his own, acting alone, charging into suspects houses without any kind of warrant or permission from the boss. Any cop in reality would have been sacked long before. Certainly after allowing a suspect to take his gun and kill himself.

But there's no repercussions, no consequences. Plus a bit of plagiarism from the movie The vanishing at the end. The plot is pretty much the only thing that lets the movie down, however.

If you're reading this review instead of hammering in the front door of your local politician, demanding they stop doing things to kill this thing we're living on, then you are a character in this movie. I started watching this movie with my film critic eyes, analysing the qualities of the film as a piece of art or entertainment, which is exactly why the characters in the film are unable to do anything about the impending doom. We built this society and this is how it acts. One thing I got, right from the start, what happens in this movie is EXACTLY what would happen if a comet were about to hit Earth. The TV news show with 2 anchors whose job it is to make light of the news no matter how serious the news is, even after they're told everyone has 6 months to live, is just about the perfect description of where we are right now. And when head scientist finally cracks on the show and just starts shouting like a lunatic... just watch the movie and remember: if we continue acting like the characters in this movie, we're all gonna die.

As Steven Soderbergh made his way back to feature film directing, bringing us the rough round the edges psychological horror Unsane - shot on iPhone 7+ smartphones. By contrast High Flying Bird was not shot on iPhone 7+ phones... actually iPhone 8+...

Soderbergh spoke about a new age of B-Movies. Not in the sense of second rate - but going back to the golden age of cinema, when b-movies were cinema fillers for huge audiences.

They were shot on low budgets. Often with limited lighting and not too many stars or spectacular sequences, with crowds of extras.

Instead, the director had to work around his limited means creatively, often filling a lot of the film with dialogue - as it's much cheaper to shoot: if you can't film all those scenes, you can always have one character tell another character what happened.

Be in no doubt, although a lot of those old B-movies were fillers, some were remarkable pieces of cinema. All the better for being forced into creative use of limited resources.

Indeed, this was how film noir was born. And that is very much what High Flying Bird reminded me of. Those old b-movie sports pictures which couldn't afford the big action scenes so left the sport part in the background while the action focused on the backroom talk.

I loved the cinematography. And it was absolutely refreshing to see old school camera angles instead of the tedium we get now - when every kid with a few hundred dollars to spend sports a DSLR and Bokeh inducing lenses.

Boken is no excuse for cinematography. And this is why the use of smartphones is a breath of fresh air. Without those boring ricks to fall back on (do we really need to see another extreme shallow depth of field close up?), every shot in this movie was thought about. Every shot had a purpose. And how great to have the wide depth of field of smartphones bring the surrounded architecture into play. Not a shot or a building was wasted.

And that's what this is all about. Instead of cinema fillers we have Netflix fillers. Who knows, just like the last time some of them may just turn out to be little gems. Soderbergh knows he'll never win any Oscars for these new b-movies. As did those movie directors of old. But he knows he'll have the freedom to make the films he wants to make and have fun doing it.

An excellent little British short film. Minimal resources used to great effect. A guy turns up for his first night shift manning the toll booth. Slowly things start to get weird. Perfectly paced to inflict enough eeriness to get the spine nerve a tingling. A convincing performance by the lead, who convincingly portrays a man losing his touch on reality. Stocks is learning his craft quickly, with a few shorts now under his belt. One shot, a homage to Kubrick's The Shining, is excellently nailed. For a second there I thought it was actually Jack Nicholson cut into the movie.

Nice music, well shot, and well acted. A pretty impressive cast, considering the slight nature of the screenplay.

For me, this film was a bit of a mess, in terms of theme and tone. What was it about? Who was it about? It just seemed to meander from one thread to the next at random. It goes from serious drama, to melodrama, to soap, to Grange Hill level kids' story. The film felt like random dramatic moments pasted together without too much thought. One minute its improvised ultra realism, with the kids messing about on the sofa. Next minute, we're watching weighty drama. This happens without in such a clumsy way, you begin to feel confused and detached.

The characters are not developed. Ideas and narratives are touched on and then dropped as we switch to some other idea or characters. Finally the film moves into the last act where a series of absurdly, clichéd dramatic events are used to build the loose threads to some kind of climax.

There are some nice moments. But overall, it just doesn't come together and is too poorly written.

I've become a somewhat solitary creature of late. One lonely, miserable Sunday afternoon, I decided to try to cheer myself up by going out and catching Amour before it leaves the cinemas. I don't normally find depressing films depressing, if you see what I mean. Being a depressive person, I tend to find solace in films that inhabit the darker side.

But this was actually depressing. This was like being punched in the ribs for a couple of hours. I came out feeling mentally bruised.

This film is about the end of our lives. Most of us will face this situation at some point (if we're lucky and make it into our 80s). It's also about how current Western society deals with ageing and death. This is a film about us - indicated by the opening long and wide shot of an audience sitting in a theatre: we're an audience looking at an audience; we're looking at ourselves.

Georges and Anne start the story as a healthy couple in their 80s, with no real drama in their lives. Pretty soon, ill health hits Anne and for the next two ours or so we are with Georges, witnessing her gradual and relentless decline.

The performances are magnificent and touching. Emmanuelle Riva is uncompromising in her portrayal of an elderly woman in a failing body. Jean-Louis Trintignant plays the helpless and hopeless onlooker, performing his duty for the woman he loves, without much emotional support from those around him. This is the final slow dance at the end of life.

The photography is subtle, tasteful, gentle even - as if not wishing to intrude on the simple life and death story. There's nothing to get excited about or distracted by. Just watch.

Ultimately, the film asks questions about how we deal with a slow death in old age, and how we deal with those dealing with it. I came out of the theatre feeling pretty hopeless and went to bed to sleep it off. Strangely, by the morning I felt an inner calm. Every day concerns had become trivial.

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We like our drama full of relentless rage, do us Brits. Screenwriters across the country are coming up with new ways to have the working classes screaming at each other. Add generous quantities of GBH and a liberal garnishing of senseless killing.

Everyone in this film is angry. The secret of the British 'it's grim up noourth' melodrama is not to ask why anyone is angry. They just are, okay? They're poor, so do we need any other explanation? Nope. Just shut up and take your medicine. Well acted medicine, I have to admit.

This film shows how much great performances can hide an average director and an average screenplay. You generally expect an actor-turned-director to get the most out of his actors, and Considine certainly does that.

The script is pretty weak, though. I would call it crude. Unsophisticated thuggery inflicted on an apparently willing audience. Considine must be tapping into some kind of Sundance-inspired masochism.

How do we hide the writer's lack of ability? Have everyone shout meaningful, heartfelt monologues at each other. The problem is, particularly at the start of the film, these monologue's are not motivated by the action in the story. Peter Mullan's Joseph is a fighting, furious drunk who hits the ground running - or should I say, punching and kicking.

He meets the unlikely born again charity shop owner, Olivia Coleman's Hannah, and before they have been together a few minutes, he is verbally slashing her with cutting insights. This outpouring would have felt awkward if the characters had known each other all their lives.

This style continues throughout the film. Plot twists are delivered without skill of insight. Why is Hannah - who seems fairly sensible - married to some kind of raging psycho, whose introduces himself into the story by urinating over her while she's asleep?

This ugly and cruel Punch and Judy show of a film continues in this, and can only build to a dramatic climax by increase the violence to an absurd degree. By the end, people are acting like pure caricatures. If it wasn't so gruesome and so visceral, you might laugh.

If you're looking for a film which addresses the issues of arranged marriage, this is not it.

Two young women, one Jewish one Islamic, both belonging to families which are strict to their respective religions, start up a friendship and end up helping each other through the hazards and dilemmas of arranged marriage.

The conflict throughout this story is very light. It only really gets heated at one point near the end when a pro-womens' lib head teacher is told to back off (and you can almost hear the director applauding). Yes, the film-makers leave you in no doubt where they stand and make sure to avoid any deeper reflection on the subject. Just when you think some kind of drama may be about to kick off, the film does an about turn and heads for the emergency exit (signed 'COP OUT').

Of course, there are happy arranged marriages. But do we need this kind of saccharine-sweet depiction? There was a film about non-arranged marriages made in the 70s which ends with the wives wheeling their shopping trolleys around a store like zombies - it's called The Stepford Wives. Arranged has a similar end scene, but even more chilling considering the film-makers intended this to warm your heart.

You could try watching this film and imagining it's a sci-fi movie set in alternative reality where women's lib never caught on. Or maybe you're up for an arranged marriage and you need convincing.

Yes, it looks amazing. I don't understand how you can say the plot is flat and there are no characters and then give it an 8/10. Sure, for 45 minutes, I was going 'wow'. But then you get used to it. And you need something else to keep you going.

How about some character motivation? I didn't feel like I knew any of the characters by the end of the movie. They were action movie clichés which seems to indicate we don't need to know anything about them. All we need to know is the bad guy has big scars on his head. Apparently, that's enough to explain why he wants to snuff out blue people so much.

This movie didn't know what it was about. The US war in Vietnam? Native Americans being removed from their land by high tech invaders? Saving the planet? The world wide web?

The way the web was lumped into this so crudely just made me sigh. It makes The Matrix look street. I know Cameron is old but come on.

Whereas The Dark Knight kept people guessing, nothing in this movie happens which you wouldn't expect to happen, at exactly the point it happens.

I'd say it was very disappointing if it wasn't for the fact this is pretty much as bad as I expected it to be. In the preview screening I was at, quite a few people decided to make for their last train rather than sit through the predictable finale.

...for people who've never actually experienced any hardship. Like middle-class kids who've been pampered by mommy and daddy since birth.

The main character has supposedly suffered childhood traumas enough to torture any person with guilt and depression for the rest of their days. Yet this guy wanders through the movie, looking little glum, and it all ends... well I don't want to spoil it for you.

And the Natalie Portman character - what is she supposed to be? She does this quirky, small-town, teen-girl routine. She looks about 25 but acts about 9 years old. I understand the writer was trying to make her "different" but it was all so forced and just didn't ring true at all.

Just like the rest of the movie.

Another Brit film that looks like a TV drama - a fixed camera set up on legs; pan left or right to follow the characters as they cross the frame. Apart from one or two moments where Meadows decides to give it a bit of style, this film looks very land. In fact, modern TV dramas look more cinematic than this. The acting was extra-naturalistic, in the Ken Loach style.

The use of black and white footage, complete with fake scratches, for the flashbacks is so bad, like an hobbyist playing with his edit software he's just got for Christmas... it's almost comical.

This film suffers from the British film-making disease of underdevelopment. We see this guy on his trail of revenge, slaughtering everything in his path. We never feel any tension, because there's never any doubt - his targets are hopeless, and await their fate like lambs. There are several moments where the gang have the upper hand, and a clear opportunity to remove their problem, but they do nothing. They run away.

Not much of an opposition then.

Do we learn much about our protagonist? Not really.

There's an nice twist at the end, but really, adding a bit of heavy-weight choral music doesn't make up for a lack of depth in the script and the director's vision.

This film conforms to me Meadows is still a schoolboy, making films for a laugh with his chums; so they can all drink cheap cider, smoke joints and snigger at themselves.

This film has been executed with considerable skill - 10/10 for visual and storytelling style. It is brilliant, expert and flawless in its execution.

Much of the style is stolen from Scorcese movies, as unashamedly as the characters in the film steal money. I don't mind that, as there's plenty of original invention - I particularly liked a scene in the a room where the time fades from one part of the story to the next, with the room's decor changing, but the camera angle was fixed. Although, I'm sure someone will tell me that wasn't original either. The use of freeze-frame with subtitle is tired now, as it's been done by so many Scorcese wanna-bes in the last 15 years.

So this was all very impressive - except I didn't care about any of the characters. I don't know how accurately this is based on the "true story", but if the real characters can dispatch each other as carelessly as their fictional versions, and think of nothing but screwing, stealing or killing, I think they must be rather boring company.

Much of the action focuses on a man called Li'l Ze who, we are shown, kills people and enjoys it, from a very early age. Why he enjoys it is a question not entertained here, and so he comes across as a rather bland killing machine; at one point, shooting a comrade on the spot for talking to him in an annoying way. I wasn't sure if this was supposed to be a comedy moment - it certainly came across as one.

The one character who isn't obsessed with killing and stealing is the narrator, Busca-Pé, who's ambition is to become a photographer. But he's not really involved in the story, except to be in the right place at the right time to be able to recount it for our benefit. We never see Busca-Pé have much of an effect on events, or express much of an opinion, or even express much emotionally during the constant slaughter. He seems more concerned about losing his virginity than anything else.

The way women are portrayed in this film is questionable. They are either objects of sex, having sex, talking about sex, being raped, or being beaten by their men. At no point do we hear what the women of the City of God express their thoughts or feelings on this hellish world in which they exist.

In fact, nearly all, if not all, of the characters in this movie appear entirely soulless. Are we supposed to sympathise with Li'l Ze's best friend because he doesn't kill people as wantonly as the rest? Am I supposed to feel empathy for this man because he occasionally persuades Li'l Ze to spare someone's life (meanwhile, coming across as a fairly easy-going chap - something of an achievement, considering the countless killings he's been involved in)?

No matter how skillfully this film was made, how well acted, how perfectly constructed, as the body-counted mounted, like the characters in the movie, I didn't really care.

I thought Gladiator was bad. Never did I dream R Scott could go further. This has to be a contender for the greatest movie anti-climax ever created. R Scott confirms he either has a complete lack of understanding of history, or he just doesn't care whether his epics make any kind of logical sense. He manages to take fascinating periods of history and turn them into simplistic fairy tales. The story of Robin Hood has more historical accuracy than this.

What happened to "show don't tell"? Characters are constantly telling each other supposedly deep and meaningful things, without any kind of demonstration.

Any meaning there might be in the script is destroyed by Orlando Bloom's performance, which is as flat as a pancake. I just couldn't care less about his character. I couldn't care less about any of the characters. Even with some decent actors doing their best with wafer thin material.

And having sat through two hours of irrelevant talking, and a few spectacular moments during the battle for Jerusalem, the ending is astoundingly absurd. Beyond even laughter.

To think of the millions upon millions wasted on this idiotic tripe.

None of it makes sense. None of it has any meaning. None of it has any sense of reality.

Yes, it looks pretty enough. But it's like sitting through a 2 1/2 hour TV ad.

Don't even bother going for the battle scenes, which form only a minor part of this festival of low-grade dialogue.

People seem to either love or hate this series. I found myself liking some of it, but overall I thought the scripts were underdeveloped. Considering the unrestrained venom that went into the original Nathan Barley character (as realised in the www.tvgohome.com spoof TV listings - which I still find hilarious), this TV series is actually pretty tame (and sometimes lame).

I found some moments of this show funny, but not rolling around on the floor laughing my head off like when watching Brass Eye. Nathan Barley the TV show is just not daring enough. The worst moments are when the shows slip into clichéd sitcom farce, which just doesn't fit the Chris Morris style.

Good, but not great.

A patchy British send-up of the way Hollywood rewrites history in favour of America.

Although I enjoyed seeing a British film sticking two fingers up to Hollywood, in the end it only, and ironically, serves to demonstrate why Hollywood has won the war in the UK box office. A ramshackle gathering of comical ideas, just about held together around the idea that Churchill wasn't a fat old British aristocrat, but was in fact a young American hero who single-handedly saves England from the Nazis, while falling in love with the future Queen of England.

But too many times the script fell foul of going for the obvious gag, or just swearing for supposed comical effect. And the action sequences were so incompetently done, looking more like something out of an episode of Dad's Army, that they didn't work as a send up of Hollywood action sequences.

Whereas Monty Python had the talents of Terry Gilliam to give their movies style, Peter Richardson is somewhat less than gifted in that department. Some of it looks good, some of it just looks cheap.

Reeves and Mortimer are tedious as usual, and you just get the feeling that most of the Brit comedians who appeared were just here to amuse themselves. This gives a pretty amateurish feel to some scenes.

Still, I laughed and I think its worth seeing, simply because it does show up the absurdity of Hollywood history.

This is a well made biographical movie, which works well in parts, but as a whole fails to deliver. The film looks good, without being stunning. The acting is flawless, without being inspiring. The story told here is fairly inoffensive. What surprised me was how tepid this was, considering the nature of the character it focuses on.

One major problem I had with this movie is it doesn't seem to know what it wants to be - it starts as a light-hearted buddy road movie, with considerably less edge than, say, Easy Rider. It drifts on in this way, with Guevara at times too-honest-to-be-true (hint hint - he's going to be a revolutionary leader one day). Half way or so he discovers he cares about the injustice of third world poverty. He goes round with some lepers looking concerned, swims a river, everybody's happy, then end.

But where was the conflict? Where was the internal struggle as Guevara's new beliefs lead him against his old way of life? Is this a bio-pic about one of the 20th century's most notable revolutionary leaders, or about two likable students bumming around South America on a motorbike. Both and neither.

What was missing was a complicated character with dark and light sides, good and bad, internal struggles - eg: Lawrence of Arabia. What you get here is a watered-down Jesus-figure.

Like Guevara, I have suffered from asthma since I was 2. The movies never get it right - and this one was no exception. Asthma is not like that - I know they have to dramatise it but all these loud choking sounds actors make are silly. When you have asthma you wheeze, you struggle to draw in a breath - so you either have to breath very very slowly, or with quick short breaths. I'm sure one day I'll see a movie where they get it right.

I went to see this movie to see what all the fuss is about. I don't get it. OK, it looks pretty. But as a story - zzzzzzzzzzz. This one came across as a bit of a propaganda-flick promoting the idea of one "great" leader.

Every scene is SOOOOOOOOOO slow, and this is down to the simplistic nature of the story. A 5 year old would be bored by this story line. You could have told this story in 10 minutes. The whole thing is very stylized, photography, acting etc. And ooh look, people can fly (in a very silly way).

Not only was the story slow and simplistic, but it didn't seem to make an a lot of sense. The whole thing is one, gigantic, drawn out, spectacular, anti-climax. The characters behavior was either obvious or absurd.

No, it's not for me - and I honestly can't see what people find entertaining about these films.

As with nearly all British movies this effort falls well short of Hollywood standards. A first-time script shows itself up to being rather an amatuerish attempt. Brit movies are mostly created by people who have come fresh from TV without bothering to understand the medium. Lame, quirky sit-com style dialogue dominates the first act. There's a confusion as to what the writers are trying to achieve with some vague notions about character set-up and development.

However, I was prepared to forgive the weak opening, after the 2nd act started well with two very funny moments. Everything seemed to be coming right and I was sitting back ready for a good hour's laughter. Unfortunately, me and the rest of the audience were to be dissapointed. The comedy dried up pretty soon, with us realising we were at a one-gag event where the writers had no idea where to go with this story.

The script fell into a muddle - is this sitcom? Farce? Romantic comedy? Horror? Drama?

Barely a snigger was to be had from the entire second half of the movie.

At one point, our heros are beating a zombie to 'death' in time to a Queen track being played on the duke box. Maybe this got huge laughs in other showings, but in my theatre there was a deathly silence as this scene went on and on... and on.

A moment later I noticed people leaving.

The end is pretty bad. The writers just seem to have forgotten this is meant to be a comedy. Perhaps Simon Pegg decided to write himself some emotional scenes to look good on his showreel. Waste of time - he really ain't that good an actor.

All in all, this movie was a failure. The fact it was located in Crouch End (where I grew up but is now inhabited by the media 'elite') didn't endear it to me either. They tried to make out Crouch End is full of 'normal' people (the place is full of people who think they're great movie makers but are really just average TV makers). Now, if those Crouch End zombies had been the BBC/Channel 4 TV producers, media lawyers, wanna be script writers, graphic designers, pseudo-intellectuals... now there's a zombie flick I wanna see.

Some of this film was done very well, particularly the opening 15 - 20 mins. I was hoping for a Das Boot gripper, but after the opening, it didn't really deliver, except as an education into life in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic wars. Maybe readers of Patrick O'Brian will say that's exactly what the books are so we shouldn't expect anything else. I don't know. Considering the story made a point of the hardships a 18th-19th century sailer had to suffer at sea, I expected the men to be tough and gritty, no nonsense types. But unfortunately they were no more than the old stereotypes we are used to seeing in any movie made about sailors of wooden ships made in the last 100 years. The end came as a bit of anti-climax, as it all ended so quickly and easily. This movie is essentially about one ship chasing another ship, but the motivation for the chase lacked weight. There didn't seem to be any great reason for them to be after this ship, apart from the captain saying they had to. The film would have benefited going deeper into the psychology of the captain as he becomes obsessed with defeating the French ship, creating more conflict with his fellow sailors as he risks their lives for his own personal desire to win. What we get here is a cardboard cutout of a heroic captain from some kind of 1950s comic book. But maybe that's what Patrick O'Brian's books are like.

I watched with curiosity. This film is really just a comedy. But I only sniggered about 2 times. Some of Tarantinos jokes fell very flat on the audience I was watching with. Some of the jokes were purile and adolesent. But as it's rated 18 here in the UK, there won't be any 14 year-olds in the theatre to appreciate them.

I enjoyed some of the sequences - particularly the anime. The end snow scene. The big fight - which is basically a ballet with severed limbs. Impressive. The occasional little quirk here and there.

But overall the dialogue was bad to terrible (I don't care if it's intentional), there was almost NO story to speak of, what there was was utterly predictable, and the pace of the movie frequently dragged.

Watching this was like watching someone else play a video game. I was completely detached.

Not a masterpiece by any means. But, like rummaging through a magpie's nest, I wondered what I'd find next - something old and shiny and valuable, or just a dirty beer-bottle top.

Apart from being shot like a TV drama, the story was ridiculous and all the characters apart from Okwe are flat and 1-dimensional, both in terms of script development and acting.

I live in a part of London where if I walk down the street and hear someone speak English I turn my head in surprised. I have immigrant neighbours from Africa, Turkey and Eastern Europe. None of them act like the characters in this film.

Frears very rarely creates any live atmosphere in this film. And some of the decisions in the story-making process are just plain stupid and wrong.

The mistake is that on the one hand we are given the feeling this is a serious drama dealing with very real and heartbreaking immigration issues. But on the other, the story is so ridiculous, particularly the final twist, that you can't take it seriously.

Typical of British film-making, this movie is caught between being entertaining and delivering some kind of social message. It does neither. I'm not surprised that most of the other reviews are written by Brits. It is obvious that Brits know nothing about movies. No wonder we can't make a decent one.

The problem is we chose to go and see The Matrix in our millions and now it has the power to multiply itself at will. Why did we go to see The Matrix?

The Questions is: why didn't we not go to see The Matrix?

Surely, seeing is believing?

You could just as easily say, reading is understanding.

Are you saying that the makers of The Matrix series read many books on philosophy without having the intelligence to understand any of them?

No, you said that?

Why the question mark?

What?

You had a question mark after a sentence that wasn't a question.

When we understand nothing, all words become a question?

What if I just say "A"?

Then ask yourself, why did I say "A"? See, it becomes A question?

"It" becomes "A" question?

No, "It" becomes "A"... Question?

Listen, can I do some martial arts now? I forgot why we started this conversation, anyway.

Good. You never truly know a scene until you forget the point of it.

Yeah, whatever. I'm bored now.

Boredom is the The Test. The Test is The Key. The Key is The Matrix.

Right, just shut up or I'm going to roll up my black dress and kick your ass for 30 minutes.

30 minutes... 60 minutes... 1/2 an hour... 1 hour... Time is an illusion which you never truly feel until you sit through one of these conversations.

That's it. Excuse me while I superglue my shades to my face...

"It"... What is "it"? Do we know "it"? Do you know "it"... Do I know "it"? Does "it" really exist?

SHHHHUUUUTTTT UUUUPPPP!!!!

Cut To:

FIGHT SCENE: People pound each other with metal bars and smash holes in brick walls with each other then emerge with a small cut above the lip.