demoncleaner
Posts: 2160
Joined: 3/10/2005
From: Belfast
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Stunningly obtuse review from David Whos (pardon me) Hughes there. I know! Me neither...
I know enough now (yes, I admit, even through personal experience) that being embittered about Empire reviews is incredibly touchstone behaviour for trivial stupidity but having seen this film I honestly think the complacency any non-committal review would engender in a potential viewership should be raised as a matter in PMQ's. It would be a shame Empire couldn't make a higher contribution to our global retreat from nuclear holcaust simply because they can't legislate for the attention span of one reviewer. Perhaps the brevity of the write-up too should be for-shamed up and down, but I whole-heartedly appreciate the extra feature that Empire have put on the front of the site. I wouldn't have seen this today were it not for that so no snarky comments from me on that score. It's an acknowledgement perhaps that the highlighting of a debate is more important in this instance than qualifying how well a film does in its description of an issue.
I know all this makes me sound like a bolshie person who gravitates toward these kind of issues just to feel like a crusader. Nothing could be further from the truth. I'm naturally too lazy an individual to have pursued activism of any kind. So yeah, I had my first bolshie instinct tonight from seeing a film where my only prior instinct was to see "a good movie". I think that I can support the cliche in this instance that "everyone should see this film" not only that, I'll go one further and also say I think everyone should drink the koolaid too and at least sign up for Global Zero. Walker's film did not show the other cliche that the subject is "too important to ignore" - it showed nuclear disaster is too INEVITABLE to ignore. Certainly the scariest message of the doc.
For my own appraisal of the fill-um. I thought it was incredibly lucid (to an excessive degree at times, but that can't that be a criticism when the issue of zero needs to be so instructive). I also felt it was incredibly well put together. I could clearly see the essence of the episodes. Descriptive initially of the 3 main problems. The nuclear state. Terrorism. Incompetence on its own, or in conjunction with the other two. I think perhaps the later stages of the piece was a re-evaluation of this triptych, only this time with an emphasis on what can be done about each. I also think perhaps that this structure can lend to a sense of repetition (when there really isn't any). As does the small corollary against every point raised throughout which is "we're all going to die" 
So yeah, I had no problems with the film, my only issue is the "all going to die thing" but that's not an issue of the film. So I'd really recommend everyone see this, There are a lot of "most important movie you may ever see" out there, but I can't imagine this one being undercut. I mean Armageddon really impinges on a broad demographic. I read that somewhere.
5/5
< Message edited by demoncleaner -- 22/6/2011 12:04:36 AM >
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Countdown To Zero - 
I wouldn't be the person perchance who's currently being patronised by David Hughes...or his mum? 
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