DVD review: What Richard Did
What Richard Did is a small but intense piece of psychological drama about pampered teenagers from a well-heeled district of south Dublin. Â Â Â Â
April 6, 2013
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What Richard Did is a small but intense piece of psychological drama about pampered teenagers from a well-heeled district of south Dublin. Â Â Â Â
If the Lord of the Rings trilogy didn’t exist, then Peter Jackson’s bloated fantasy blockbuster would seem impressive indeed. Â Â Â Â
BBC’s wildly successful Sunday-night entertainment is certainly preferable to the cloying Lark Rise to Candleford and it doesn’t flinch at portraying domestic abuse in late 1950s Poplar.
JRR Tolkien’s sweet, 320-page fantasy has presumably been turned into a monstrous three-part film in order to make as much moolah as possible. Â Â Â Â
David O Russell’s Oscar-winning comedy stands out from the Hollywood crowd by having a polished and punchy screenplay, rather than acres of self-indulgent improv, and a hero (Bradley Cooper) who has genuine mental-health issues, rather than simply being an arrested adolescent.
This is as rare as Javan rhinos, an absorbing, beautifully acted romantic comedy featuring recognisable humans: Bradley Cooper’s bipolar Pat, who is fixated about getting back together with his cheating wife, Jennifer Lawrence’s resentful widow whose cop husband has recently died and Robert De Niro’s volatile, OCD gambler who struggles to comprehend his son.
David Ayer’s buddy movie, apart from the found-footage gimmick that underpins the storytelling, is extremely plausible.
I admired rather than enjoyed Paul Thomas Anderson’s demanding drama on first viewing, but in the four months since then it’s refused to leave my head.
Finally, thankfully, Twilight comes to an end and it appears, given the sloppy acting, to be a relief for everyone.
Two poor, plucky teenagers (Lynne Frederick and Garry Miller) are visited by a mysterious 19th-century lawyer, Mr Blunden (Laurence Naismith), who, straight off the bat, asks the duo if they’d “be afraid to see a ghostâ€.