No.277 : Wine Country (2019)

Wine Country at the IMDb

Who fancies a trip to wine country to meet women with issues and more baggage than an airport carousel? Me neither, but you can’t always get what you want.

Amy Poehler writes, stars and directs and she should be thoroughly ashamed for this risible effort. The plot, as it is, involves six 50 something woman who met as waitresses in Chicago and are now embarking on a trip to the Napa Valley to celebrate one of their half centuries.

The group are your expected ragtag of pushy, dominated, frustrated, worried, disillusioned - basically everything that will attract a scintilla of empathy from the audience. Not this viewer - they all came across as a right pain in the arse to me.

They rent a large house off a disinterested Tina Fey whose character isn’t so much underdeveloped as non-existent. They have her dressed like MacGruber throughout - I have no idea if this was a deliberate Saturday Night Live homage. Poehler plays Abby who is the organised and pushy one of the group. She’s always bossing everyone about and is super confident so it’s no surprise that she is hiding some issues.

She has to wait her turn though, as another has designs on a younger lady artist, another is mousy and hates her husband, another is too focused on her job and yet another is awaiting cancer test results.

Slowly over the weekend the girls have madcap adventures such as getting pissed at a winery and annoying people, and shagging the help in the shape of an ‘I’m doing it for the money’ Jason Schwartzman.

After a few emotional moments the girls’ issues all come to the fore - will they fall out or be stronger for the experience? Seriously, have a guess!

This was a gawd awful waste of time, apart for the cast who all seemed to have a right old laugh getting drunk in the lovely Californian wine region.

My main issue is that all the women were a nightmare. Not quirky or sassy just the sort of people you’d leave a pub for if they showed up. The bonding was so on the nose its bouquet would make you retch as they all learn and grow and elicit cries of ‘You go girls’ from the target demographic of lonely people on their third bottle.

There were no laughs to speak of, unless you enjoy stuntmen in unconvincing wigs rolling down a hill for five minutes. Every revelation was flagged from a mile away with the false fronts being cast aside for a bit of truth and then redemption. I’ve not felt this nauseous since that bottle of £1.99 Kwik Save Chardonnay.

One to miss unless you want some quality female bonding with a bunch of women you’d cross the street to avoid.

Best Bit : Get back to you on that. 'W' Rating 5/23

No.240 : When Calls the Heart (2013)

When Calls the Heart at the IMDb

 You might think that it is hard to still come up with quality entries for the ‘W’ movie Blog after a torturous trail of 239 and counting but don’t believe it - it’s been a slog since we hit double figures! That is not to say that today’s film was scraping the barrel somewhat, more like scraped through the barrel and burrowed down 10 miles through to the Earth’s core!

‘When Calls the Heart’ is a Hallmark film so you can guarantee from the off there will be no sex or violence. Let’s watch it anyway! The annoying daughter who can’t act off the ‘Taken’ films stars in this as an annoying daughter who can’t act - the girl’s got range!

The film is set in olden days America where not an inch of flesh is shown and all the people of colour are on the staff. They try for  high end look but it’s more ‘Downton Shabby’ than ‘Abbey’. Everyone affects a high pitch posh voice which is annoying, as it is fake. Our heroine, Elizabeth, is a newly qualified teacher and looking onward to getting her first job. Her parents are keen for her to go to a prestigious college with Cherie Lunghi doing her best upper class twit bit as Mom.

Elizabeth is offered a top job but the sleazy recruiting agent, Mr Higgins, implies that he expects some favours for granting the post. Dirty bastard, although given the credentials of the film he’s probably just after some laundry being done. Elizabeth is distraught when her refusal to put out leads her to be offered a post in the Wild West. She is torn at first but soon finds her Aunt’s diary which details her own career as a Wild West school teacher.

The remainder of the film jumps back and forth with the diary extracts acted out by ‘Taken’ daughter wearing a blonde wig while her present day travails have her in a black wig; like I say the girl has range! The film plods on as blonde Elizabeth tries to teach the kids and weakly fend off the advances of Stephen ‘Arrow' Amell, while black hair Elizabeth endures the hazardous journey west with her Mountie protector. Things get near to a conclusion on both fronts when it’s revealed the movie is a precursor to a TV series where all the plot threads will go to die - well I’m not watching that so I’ll just assume they all die of the plague!

You can’t really find fault with a film like this as it was clear from the off what sort of gentle peril we will encounter. Things were perhaps best illustrated when black haired Elizabeth’s stagecoach gets held up by the most polite and respectful road agents you could imagine. None of them said ‘motherfucker’ and they didn’t even try to touch the hem of her ankle length dress - ‘Deadwood’ this was not.

You could see some old ladies lapping this up with barely registering scares such as a wolf ‘attack’ followed by a three mouse home invasion. On the romance front it was hard to pick between the past and present candidates both of whom were more wooden than the old homestead.

Knowing now that it was destined to be a serial it was apparent that little mysteries were being seeded throughout such as the fate of the Aunt and why her diary was hidden in the safe. I’m thinking illegal abortions but given the films trajectory it’s more likely she missed ten minutes of church.

The acting was uniformly dreadful with the fish out of water elements, when our girl had to rough it, the worst - putting mashed potato on your face and telling tales of bed wetting are hardly the stuff of legend.

You may see worse gentle and harmless fayre but I doubt it!

‘W’ Rating 5/23
Best Bit : “I piss the bed too”

No.213 : Weekender (2011)

Weekender at the IMDb

Bangin’ man - let’s have a look at this modern classic and see if it earns the whole one star that Netflix viewers have deemed it worthy of.

It’s the early 90’s and the kids are being hassled by the man. Their dreadful music can only be found on pirate radio and they have to dance in warehouses. Now I was about in the 90’s and I can clearly remember fully equipped discothèques being available and Bruno Brookes doing the Top 40 on Radio 1.

Anyway, our hero Matt thinks he can do better and with the help of his simpleton friend they track down the pirate DJ and set up their own rave in an abandoned warehouse. It is an unqualified success and Matt decides to quit when he’s ahead until he discovers all the takings are counterfeit cash. He then decides to do it again and again - can’t fault logic like that!

They start to feel the heat after those killjoys in parliament speak out against the illegal raves due to all the drugs and safety concerns - the fools! The ‘Dibble’ (the police) show up and are somehow sent away when told the rave is a private party albeit one with a voluntary entrance fee. ‘I'll be back’ says the copper before never being seen again.

With the police concerns dealt with the guys then hook up with a nice promoter from London who teams up with them for some ‘super raves’. Alas they also meet the baddies who want to take their cash and take over their raves - the swine - this is our lawbreaking activity!

As the pressure mounts schisms start to appear in the group over who had sex with who and whether it’s worth the bother any more. As the bad guys turn the screws the scene is set for some limp action in Amsterdam to see which unworthy scroat makes it out alive.

This is a really dreadful offering with nothing to recommend it apart from the ironic finger pointing at how really terrible it is. To start with you have no characters worthy of the name. They are a bunch of scuzzy drug dealers led by Donovan off ‘The Inbetweeners’ and you have no empathy for them at all. I think you are meant to see them as hero pioneers but they just come across as a bunch of dope head scofflaws.

The era is hardly evoked in the memory with an ‘Italia 90’ t-shirt the only nod towards a period setting. They also show up how insignificant the whole enterprise is when the spinning newspapers (a new innovation!) are clearly mock ups rather than the real headlines which, in truth, probably didn't exist anyway.

The short running time is padded with a few long scenes of punters dancing away and I suspect one would need a truckload of ecstasy to be drawn into these mood setting rave-ups.

The acting is uniformly awful with a lot of ‘Did you shag my bird’ exchanges cringe worthy to the extreme. The guy playing Matt seemed genuinely dense so if this was acting kudos to you sir!

Over the piece I think a morality tale was the ambition with perhaps a side of nostalgia and bravado thrown in for good measure. What was realised was a bunch of tits in shell suits jumping about and playing at being gangsters. Risible rubbish!

‘W’ Rating 5/23

Best Bit - I suppose the poolside scenes in Ibiza win by a couple of points.

No.179 : Web of Lies (2009)

Web of Lies at the IMDB

A film so obscure now that I had to make my own screen grab of the title card. The only image I could find on the web was the ‘sexy’ one below - you can’t say we don’t give you the full nine yards here at the 100 W Movies Quest!

The film’s low profile is down to it being a TV movie and an awful one at that, but let’s check out that plot before slagging it off.

We open with a girl running through a city with her headphones on. She’s dressed in a hoodie so we don’t know if she’s a jogger or a mugger but she serves to give us some nice city shots which no doubt pleased the Montreal Tourist Board. The girl turns out to be our heroine, Abby, who on arriving at her apartment is surprised by an uninvited guest. It turns out to be a sexy surprise as it is her unreliable boyfriend, Josh.

The pair have some of that movie sex where they are wrapped in the sheets tighter than a pair of mummies before falling asleep. All is not well however as Josh uses the post coital lull to access Abby’s laptop and upload a programme. He leaves the next morning but is seemingly blown up in his car - I say 'seemingly' as the budget only stretched to having some flammable jelly set alight on the bonnet.

Being a trouper Abby returns to her work as a computer programmer for a security firm and manages to do a ‘hacking for thickies’ demonstration for some investors and indeed the slow witted viewers who have stayed on board this long. Her boss congratulates her on a job well done but her triumph is short lived when two FBI agents arrive to advise that Josh is a notorious hacker who seduces lady programmers to get into their systems and presumably, their pants.

Abby is worried that her kick ass programme may have been compromised and soon finds she has been set up in an account with $10 millions. Rather than run off with the cash she starts a long quest to figure out who she can trust and how she can restore her reputation. You see ‘Web of Lies’ is a clever title - it’s a pun on the internet or something!

This was a real effort of a film to watch with acting that would make a soap opera blush. It looked more like a film school effort than TV movie with some of the actors nothing of the kind. The comic relief assistant and the excitable boss were dreadful but the lady FBI agent topped the lot with  her complex and variously motivated character a mystery to all, including the viewer.

The film did have a few surprises, but so does a bad curry and some of the computer wizardry was patently ridiculous to anyone whose ever waited five minutes for Firefox too boot up. There was a decent stab at reassessing what had gone before with previously related events replayed in monochrome from a different character’s perspective to make you second guess the plot, but it didn’t work and seemed gimmicky at best.

The big scam which was original to anyone who’s never seen ‘Superman 3’ or ‘Office Space’ or basically any film involving computers was the old ‘fractions of pennies being shaved off’ routine but at least it did try to evolve beyond this. Sadly the expanded scam was basically stealing cash using a laptop, although efforts to clue the thickies in with demos involving coasters and sugar packets were used to muddy the waters somewhat.

You won’t know any of the leads and won’t remember them after this either. The actress playing Abby was a poor man’s Scarlett Johansson and she was offered no support from a feeble douche with floppy hair. If you are into watching films with a detached sense of irony ‘Web of Lies’ may do it for you, but for anyone who values each 90 minutes of their lives it’s definitely best avoided.

Best Bit : Hello Heads of Computer Conglomerates - this is a computer - Duh!
W Score 5/23

No. 136 : Winter of Frozen Dreams (2009)

Winter of Frozen Dreams at the IMDb

This film was always going to have to do well to shake off the shackles of that pretentious title, something it singularly fails to do. It opens with a caption ‘Based on a true story’ which is always a kiss of death for me - either it’s true or it’s not anything else is just a confused muddle that leaves you none the wiser at the end.

The film sets its agenda early on with the lead, Thora Birch being convicted for murder. We then go back to 1977 with the narrative jumping around like a kangaroo on acid. A man tells the police of a dead body and they quickly dig the bashed up corpse from the snow. We then jump again with the dead guy running around with hookers. Then he’s dead again and the cops lead by the always dependable Keith Carradine looking for someone to pin the crime on.

In truth the non-linear story is well handled and while the film is no ‘Pulp Fiction’ or ‘Memento’ they at least make an effort to jazz up what is essentially quite a straightforward story. Thora plays a complex role of a hooker who has two names and dates at least two blokes will carrying on her business. One is a bit simple and is persuaded to take out a life insurance policy benefiting the tart. The other is our murder victim who in flash back rewrites his will giving our girl all his stuff. Clearly she has persuasive talents but her motivations aren’t totally clear and enough is unseen to give us doubts as to who exactly did what and to whom.

The detective angle is pretty lazily handled with no actual detecting of note going on. Basically the cops wander around picking up the pieces and sleep in stake out cars. The end clearly is no surprise as it finishes where it started to you have to wonder was the journey worth the effort? The answer is clearly ‘No’. The captions at the end which gives an update on the main protagonist assumes that we should care for her situation and frankly I didn’t. Her character is so unsympathetic and poorly defined that I couldn’t care if she got the gas chamber or a slap on the wrists.

The 1977 setting was well realised with some hideous fashions and haircuts but it takes more than a few pairs of flairs to immerse you in another age. Birch is pretty unconvincing as the femme fatale who has the men queuing up you give her all their possessions and her main beau is so wishy-washy that you’re willing him to keep seasoning his chilli to make sure.

The film has a bleak out look throughout and allied to it’s snowy backdrop this is certainly no spirit raiser. At the end of the film I was unsure where it’s loyalties lay - our girl is clearly a cow but was she a victim herself? The captions suggest that she may be but as long as she stays in the clink there’ll be no chance of a sequel and that suits me fine.

Best Bit : Mmmm chilli
‘W’ Rating : 5/23

No.69 : Where Have All the People Gone (1974)

Where Have All the People Gone at the IMDb

Another film title that should have a question mark but doesn't . After my review of ‘What‘s Eating Gilbert Grape‘ I did some research (well looked up Wikipedia at any rate) and learned that a question mark in the title is considered bad luck in America! Sadly, despite adhering to the question mark superstition, the curse claimed this film as the only thing worse than the production is the VHS box - I mean look at that - who’s going to a rent a video with just Captain Oveur out of ‘Airplane’ on it?

Anyway to business. ‘Where Have All The People Gone’ is a TV movie starring Peter Graves as one of the few survivors of a global calamity. He and his son and daughter are on a camping holiday in the Sierra mountains and are all in a cave when a bright line shines followed by an earthquake. Their friend is caught outside and at first is OK but soon gets sick. As he worsens the family decide to drag him back to town but he soon dies. As they prepare to bury him they find that he’s disappeared. But wait! He’s still there but has turned to dust for no apparent reason.

Suitably puzzled they hit town only to find no one about, prompting the titular question. They load up on supplies with a plan to head back home to Mom. On the way they encounter a crazy lady and a newly orphaned boy and they take them along for the trip. Other encounters involve run ins with a hijacker who nicks their car and a pack of wild dogs that look like they’ve been ferried straight over from Crufts.

As they arrive home some pieces fall into place but can the mystery be solved and will Mom be OK?

Although barely 70 minutes it was a real effort to watch this film to its predictable conclusion. The plot is so ridiculous and full of holes that the actors have to pull out all the stops to avoid laughing at the dialogue. The phenomena, which turns out to be solar flares, is so specific that it turns some people to dust whereas others are fine. Horses survive OK but dogs are driven mad and children get all emotional and lose the power to act in a believable fashion.

It is of course a savvy move on the producer’s part to tout an end of the world scenario that is so cheap. There are no injuries or devastation to show and a pack of salt covers the make up for all the fatalities. The lack of people save on the extras budget and the catastrophe is just a bright torch shone at the camera.

Every character gets an emotional scene with the son particularly bad in his “No, no, no!” phone smashing routine. The daughter nearly ties for awfulness with her clutching a doll for comfort histrionics. Graves himself largely has to carry the can and sadly he drops it from the off. You get no sense that he gives a toss for his family or mankind in general and he’s so devoid of emotion that a nice bed side table could have conveyed the same intensity.

The resolution was equally dire with Mom’s note a real heart wrencher complete with some pretty detailed scientific research. Well done, Mom! As with all these few survivor pieces we end with a voice-over talking about making a new start and hopes for the future - just when I was ready to end it all if this gubbins lasted another 5 minutes!

Best Bit : Graves goes mano a mano with a poodle

‘W’ Rating : 5/23

No.52 : Wheels of Terror (1987)

Wheels of Terror at the IMDb

All you fans of Ollie Reed out there have no doubt tracked down this film and been disappointed by it. Despite featuring prominently on the poster he doesn't show up until there are only 7 minutes left and slurs his way through half a dozen lines at most. No doubt he was only on set for one day but what the hell let’s stick him on the box and lure a few suckers in.

This film from 1987 is truly awful despite a well known cast and good source material - it was based on the book of the same name by Sven Hassel. The film is set in the latter stages of WW2 and an American sounding voice over man tells us that the Furher has started ‘Penal Battalions’ for dangerous missions - a bit of a Nazi ‘Dirty Dozen’ if you like. The motley crew have a few scraps before they bond after a dust up in a brothel.

Evil Colonel David Carradine has a mission for them - blow up a Russian supply train 150 miles behind enemy lines and they can have some time off and have their records cleared. Our guys set off, first having to steal explosives from the dozy Soviets before heading to the train depot in Red Army gear. After a brief encounter with a group of deserters from both sides and sexes they head off to blow up the oldest and smallest train you’ll ever see.

The initial attempt is a failure but can they succeed and at what cost? Will the Colonel keep his word and will there be anyone left for Ollie to pin a medal on?

This is a strange film - most of the cast is American yet they are all badly dubbed. I can only imagine the film was shot in English for the foreign market and then dubbed. Seeing how great it was someone must have then re-dubbed it back into English using mostly different voices. Crazy!

The film looks totally false and nothing like the Eastern Front it’s supposed to portray. The bright sunny days are a clue that we are not in Russia and it was no surprise to learn that the whole thing was actually shot in Yugoslavia. In 5 days. Probably.

I remembered some of the characters from the book like Porta and Tiny but they were nothing like the blood thirsty criminals I remembered. The lead is the guy who got filled with water in ’X-Men’ and he’s ably assisted by the leader of the Rogues out of ’The Warriors’. ’Script come out to play ay ay’ he should have said.

David Carradine is obviously miscast as the baddie German being of Eastern decent as he is. No one seems to notice but they are probably all mesmerised by his fake scar and funny, oh so tough, lines. The cheapness of the whole production is apparent throughout with the same tanks used for both sides with justification lines such as ‘they've stolen our tank let’s steal it back’ used to repel suspicious viewers. You also see nothing destroyed, with direct hits being nothing more than some petrol set alight on the tank’s bonnet.

The bottom line is that this film is rubbish with nothing to recommend it. It shamelessly cashes in of some star names who have little input to the actual film, and is so bad and unrealistic in places that it’s almost funny. But not quite.

Best Bit :Ollie as the mean General raises a smile

‘W’ Score 5/23

No.51 : Wagons East (1994)

Wagons East at the IMDb

Before we begin a word on the title. Although the poster has it as ‘Wagons East!’ the title card on the film doesn't have the exclamation mark. I’ll go with what the movie says and attribute the exclamation mark to an over zealous marketing man who may have thought that the added bit of punctuation would suggest extra zest and excitement. He was wrong.

‘Wagons East’ is notorious, both for being a bad comedy and for being John Candy’s last film - he died on location and his scenes had to be re-cut or finished with a stand in before the film was excreted by the studio.

The film opens with the familiar western map, but sadly, unlike ‘Bonanza’ it doesn't catch fire and give us all an early night. The frontier town of Prosperity has a few disgruntled citizens. John C. McGinley’s gay bookseller can only attract customers for toilet paper and Richard Lewis’ cattle baron aspirations are being thwarted by bare faced rustlers. After sharing their concerns with other bar patrons they decide to head back east - if they get a sign from god. This is duly delivered in the shape of an east pointing weather cock and a collapsing John Candy, who was foretelling his own fate without knowing it.

The feeble group, who include the town’s well covered prostitute, abandon their town the next day to begin their perilous journey. Their choice of guide in Candy is quickly questioned when he gets them lost and then sets up camp in the dark in what turns out to be an Indian village.

Meanwhile the corrupt railroad chief is unhappy - this exodus back east may endanger his fat grants to extend the line. With this in mind he dispatches his best hit man to disrupt the group and as a back up plan enlists the help of the US cavalry. In predictable Wile E Coyote fashion the hit man is caught in all of his own traps and even the Indians help our clan, seeing the exodus as a way of reclaiming their own lands.

As the ends draws close a previously forgetful trail member recalls Candy’s shady past, just as the cavalry are sent in to repel the traitorous reverse pioneers.

I tried really hard to like this film, bearing in mind its history and top ensemble cast. Sadly I couldn’t - its stinky reputation is well deserved. The first concern, and with a comedy it’s a big one, is that there are no laughs at all. There are loads of fart and pissing jokes as well as pratfalls and slapstick. None of them are funny - they don’t sit well and are heralded a mile off. Richard Lewis, who is always Larry David’s whiny pal on ’Curb Your Enthusiasm’ to me is totally miscast as a pioneer doctor . John C. McGinley, who I normally like, is cringey as the overtly gay bookseller complete with a fancy wagon and stylish line in frontier tea sets.

Candy himself is a pale shadow of his ‘Uncle Buck’ persona but is given nothing to work with. The revelation that he lead the cannibalistic Donner party is as believable as some of the later scenes where Candy is replaced by a blurry guy shot at distance. This is the ‘”two orange whips” guy for Christsakes and here we have him dying a death, sadly literally, talking a lot of unfunny rot and killing a poor horse by sitting on it.

After ‘Blazing Saddles’ it’s obviously hard to do a non-derivative comedy western but surely someone somewhere should have looked at the script and though ‘Hmm, jokes would be a good idea’. A sad end for John Candy but at least no one will remember him for this unfunny, poorly made gag free zone of an effort.

Best Bit : Get back to you on that.

‘W’ Score 5/23

No.36 : Who Made the Potatoe Salad? (2006)

Who Made the Potatoe Salad?


Sorry pedants everywhere, that’s really the correct spelling of the title. I don’t know why, unless they are implying that the person posing the question can’t spell, but the issue is never raised in the film, although the identity of the potato salad creator is requested.

I’d be frankly amazed if anyone reading this has heard of, never mind seen this film. I found it on a random trawl through the internet and managed to find an unloved and clearly unwatched copy.

The film stars Jaleel White, who seemingly is the ‘Urkel’ Homer Simpson talks about, as a policeman in San Diego. He isn't good at his job, losing a pair of criminals and his trousers in the opening sequence. Things are looking up however, as he plans to propose to his infeasibly beautiful girlfriend. After accepting the girl invites him to her parents’ for Thanksgiving so that he can get permission from her father.

Predictably the visit is a disaster for both our man, Michael, and the viewing public who have to watch over an hour of humourless housebound ‘hilarity’. Michael’s fiancée has a family full of stereotypes from the cranky dad who hates cops to her pimpy drug dealing brother. Various fissures open up from Michael’s reluctance to eating pork to him having a boner at breakfast.

Hoping to salvage the situation Michael stages a fake burglary so that he can save the day. Unfortunately for the burglar, the family get to him first and beat the crap out of him. With his deceit exposed Michel is expelled from the family home and sent home in disgrace. Can the obstinate Dad be turned around and can the marriage proposal get back on tracks?

This was a gawd awful car crash of a movie. It’s basically a sub-par black version of ‘Meet the Parents’ only without the laughs but with more racial slurs. N-bombs are dropped all over the place with virtually all the black cast being shown as stupid and prejudiced. If the script had been written by the Klan I wouldn't have been surprised.

I'm sure the humour was ironic and playing on the stereotypes used but it was handled so poorly that it just looks like a load of offensive trash. The characters were so thinly drawn they were transparent and the only time I laughed was when someone got stuck to a sofa that had been covered in plastic. My bad, I know. It’s not that I don’t like this sort of humour with ‘I’m Gonna Git You Sucka’ one of my favourites, it’s just that this was a lazy, pale imitation of something half decent and worthwhile.

The title ,for some unknown reason, came from a sequence at a family dinner where Michael enquired about the maker of the potato salad. In reply came a two minute salvo of abuse and swearing and I’ve no idea why. Is it a black thing? I doubt it, what I do know is that it was an unfunny thing.


Best Bit : Eddie Griffin shows up, on tape, but is sadly all sweary and laugh free.

‘W’ Score 5/23

No.13 : War Made Easy (2007)

War Made Easy at the IMDb

This film falls squarely into the category of films that I wouldn’t normally watch unless it fell under the scope of some madcap movie watching quest. That isn’t a bad thing necessarily and I have unearthed a few gems under these circumstances.

Sadly on this occasion the first instinct was correct and the film was a complete waste of 80 minutes of my rapidly depleting life. It’s basically a long lecture on the bleeding obvious against a backdrop of stock footage. Added to the misery is that the narration is done by Sean Penn who’s own views are widely known, a situation that doesn’t lead you to believe that you are getting a balanced picture.

The general point is that for the past 50 years US presidents have used the same tactics to justify going to war. These include demonising their target and preaching peace whilst having an aggressive agenda. To justify this patently obvious argument a single talking head is employed, who talks us through a clearly jaundiced position. How a balanced view can be achieved with only one opinion on show isn’t addressed and this only serves to reinforce the feeling that the creator’s position is being rammed down your throat.

I doubt if the targets would deny much of what they are accused of. Clearly P.R. spin is prevalent in all news and press but what do they expect? Have the dictators and madmen carry on unopposed? I’m not naïve enough to believe everything I’m told but I also don’t need a documentary to tell me the government may angle things in their favour.

The background footage of wars and carefully edited clips added to the feeling of bad taste that this left wing propaganda left behind. No entertainment or insight just a lot of spin from people who set out to expose the very same thing in others.

Best Bit : The end credits

‘W’ Rating : 5/23