TV Series: Close to the Enemy (2016)

Unlike another reviewer, I didn't make it to the half hour mark. I only lasted twenty-five minutes. In my defence, each minute felt like an hour.

Jim Sturgess has the lead and is particularly awful, putting on an accent and a tone that are horrible to listen to, phony and irritating at once, as if he were copying a Cockney doing a bad imitation of a toff. His voice in this is completely unbearable – and as he was heavily featured in most of the first twenty-five minutes, you'll see why I had to give up.

There are so many actors out there who could achieve a posh accent or already have one (George Blagden, Alex Vlahos,  Clive Standen to name a few) that it seems stupid to cast one who can't deliver (although maybe anyone who could, read the script and said 'No thanks'). And is it me or is Alfred Molina always exactly the same?

It's not all his fault though as I often persevere longer with dramas where there's one annoying character, if the script, plot, other characters hold my interest. This is not the case here.

I've enjoyed Poliakoff in the distant past (certainly not recently) but perhaps he's had his day. It annoys me that the BBC has spent our money on something else so turgid and tiresome.

Film: Inside Llewyn Davis by Joel and Ethan Coen

At least the cat's made it onto the poster

Decided to post a review on this after seeing a page of plaudits in an old magazine: THE BEST FILM OF THE YEAR, A PERFECTLY PITCHED MASTERPIECE, AN INSTANT MUST-SEE TRIUMPH, BEAUTIFUL, HEARTFELT AND UTTERLY ENTHRALLING. Huh? Did I watch a completely different movie?

Other reviewers on Amazon and so forth have suggested that people don't like this film because there's not enough action and pointed out that it's not an action movie. But mate, if I wanted to watch an action movie, I wouldn't pick one about a singer-songwriter wandering about 1960s New York. One guy does his girlfriend a disservice by implying she's simply too low-brow to appreciate it, that there's not enough action for her. It's not that she only likes action movies, it's that she doesn't like bad movies or movies without a plot. People have written that it's darkly comedic. It isn't. The protagonist played by Oscar Isaac (who has also starred as another arrogant, pretentious character in another movie that was dull beyond belief, Mojave), admittedly he's not supposed to be likeable, is aimless in a completely charmless way and really rude to his two benefactors, simply as an excuse to flex his artistic temperament.

John Goodman

As usual, the Coens have stuck in John Goodman as a completely over-the-top caricature. They like to stretch credulity. He must surely tire of these roles (like in Death Sentence) but it's all money in the bank I guess. Carey Mulligan does her usual hard-to-like girlfriend act. Justin Timberlake is worth watching as a wholesome folk singer and Garrett Hedlund is wasted as the enigmatic Johnny Five. I'm not sure that Hedlund makes good career choices as he was also in another Carey Mulligan movie that turned out to be pretty unwatchable, Mudbound although I love the theme song from the latter: Back from the Fire by Gold Brother. And in Mojave. See above.

The Coen brothers still think swearing is hilarious when it hasn't been funny since the beginning of Four Weddings and a Funeral, a film that boasted Hugh Grant at his charismatic, endearing best. They also wrote a movie directed by George Clooney, that was absolutely dire and had a totally ridiculous storyline: Suburbicon. How Julianne Moore and Matt Damon were convinced to participate in this is a mystery. I'm not saying that movies have to be realistic but we have to be believe in the movie's world in order to be persuaded to suspend disbelief. Oh my God, poor Oscar Isaac was also in this. I didn't realise till I looked it up. I have nothing against the guy but he's now been involved in three truly dire projects. This will not deter him though because he can't lose with the Coens who, for some reason, can do no wrong as far as the critics are concerned.

The cat is by far the best thing in it and doesn't even get credited in the cast. Sensibly, he spends all his time trying to disassociate himself from this ideas vacuum of a movie and disappear from the frame. The cat should get an award, the rest was awful. Fargo was ok, although even that had a bit of a hackneyed theme but the rest of their oeuvre has left me cold and I particularly hate The Big Lebowski. For another aside on the Coens, see my blog Eagles and Glenn Frey: Beyond Cool, in which I speculate on what others seem to believe.

‘The Coen brothers are cool, therefore their films are cool, their characters are cool, therefore the Dude must be cool (and Jeff Bridges of course), and the Dude doesn’t like the Eagles therefore the Eagles can't be cool, therefore, in order to be cool, I have to dislike the Eagles’.

I'm not sure why the Coen Brothers are deemed the ultimate arbiters of cool.

So I'd like to ask: When does the Dude cease to be 'cool'? And surely, if everybody thinks he's cool, he's now too mainstream to actually be so.

For more film reviews, see 12 Hours to Live and Three Peaks.

Glenn Frey, effortlessly cool, RIP