Month: January 2013

Please don’t waste your time watching Man on a Ledge

The cover is actually the best thing about the film

Lovefilm recently sent me the film ‘Man On A Ledge.’ I don’t recall ever adding it to my rental list and now I am beginning to suspect that someone who dislikes me hacked into my account and added it on there.

The first time the disc came through, it was unplayable. I should have taken this as sign. Instead, I returned it to them with a note advising them of this and they sent me another copy above my rental allowance which was nice of them.

I watched the film last Sunday and it was one hour and forty two minutes of my life that I am never getting back so I thought I would write this to prevent anyone else wasting their time watching this piece of drivel.

To give you an idea of why you might be suckered into watching this, here are a few excepts from reviews on Lovefilm:

“This clever thriller takes you on an entertaining ride and isn’t all it seems to be.”
“Intriguing thriller”
“This film, with a solid cast and a decent script, is original, intriguing, fast-paced and genuinely entertaining. I really, really enjoyed it.”
“Such a clever thought out plot!! no dull moments, a very good, gripping film, really enjoyed it. Would even watch it again”

All of these, coupled with an average rating of three and a half stars is probably enough to convince you to watch it.
The trouble is, it’s all a bunch of lies from a bunch of lying liars. If you genuinely haven’t been put off by my rants so far, I should warn you that the next paragraph will contain spoilers. Ok, here is the plot of the film:

A man is imprisoned for stealing a diamond that was never actually stolen. He escapes whilst attending his brother’s funeral and stands on the ledge of a hotel room threatening to jump using the media circus as a distraction whilst his brother and his girlfriend (who predictably become his fiancée in the final scene of the film) break into the building next door 

That’s it. Ok, there are other things happening as well, but I don’t think that counts as being “a clever thought out plot.” Seriously, I could get a bunch of eight-year olds to write a film and it would be more exciting. 

I don’t ever remember watching a film where I cared so little about every single character. None of them had anything interesting about them or were portrayed with any sort of empathy.

Then the script… the dialogue is so poor, it is almost as if the person who is writing it has never had an actual conversation in their life and had to guess at what people say in conversations.

And the acting is so so so horrendous. When I was 11, I played King Herod in my school’s nativity. My evil laugh was so poor that the audience laughed at it. In comparison to the actors in this film, however, that was a performance of De Niro or Pacino standards. 

The really frustrating thing is that I can’t stop watching something. I’m a bit OCD and when I start something, I have to finish it. I don’t know why but I do. So, after realising about 2 minutes into the film that it was going to be dull as dishwater, I knew I had a further 100 minutes of torture to endue.


I cannot stress enough how bad this film is. This has beaten You Got Served which I once forced Lewis to watch (possibly as punishment) when we were both off sick from work one day. I think by the end of that film, we were both ready to call into our respective offices and tell them that we’d had a miraculous recovery and were on our way in.

This film was so bad that it left me wishing that I was the one up on the ledge so that I could jump and end the torture.


Living on my own

This is one of those posts I meant to write ages ago but then got distracted by many things.

There are lots of things that have been distracting me since I lived on my own in fact. I seem to get caught up in awesome but largely meaningless projects, such as playing through all of the Pro Evolution Soccer games based on a pun or watching all of Battlestar Galactica so that I don’t accidentally kill people for playing in character when we play the board game.
I have been living on my own for coming up to two years now. Initially I thought the best and worst things about it were:

Best – No one steals your milk
Worst – There is no one to steal milk from when you have run out
As time went on, I realised that this things changed and that Tescos is only 5 minutes walk away so if I can’t be bothered to walk that far for milk then I clearly don’t want it enough. Which is a lot actually, but that’s largely due to laziness. However, I have also learnt that if I wake up and there is no milk for my fake Frosties then I get exceptionally grumpy.
For around 10 years after moving out of home, I had houseshared with between 1 and  4 other people at various points. There is always someone hanging out for a chat or to play a game or to “banter” with, as I believe the kids are calling it these days. I used to just call it “picking on Lewis because he was ginger*”
This is one of the things that I have missed most about living on my own. There isn’t someone around to get me out of a slump if I get into one. I have spent a lot of time just doing very little productive (see the aforementioned projected) on my own and being quite anti-social. 

As part of my new year’s resolutions mentioned on my bucket list, I am going to try to reconnect with people I haven’t spoken to enough recently and also spend more time with those around me. This is what you need to do to prevent yourself going completely crazy. 

I would say that is the main downside of living alone. The other downside I’ve found is due to having bought my flat, when things go wrong is that you have to be a Grown Up and work out who it is that you have to call or how to fix it yourself. There is no landlord to phone up and tell to fix things. 
However, having spoken to a few people who lived on their own before I did, they all said they couldn’t go back to sharing and I can see why. Having your own space is awesome. You can do whatever you want. These are some of my favourite benefits to living on your own:
  • You can go to the toilet or shower with the door open. I have no idea why this is good but it is. It makes you feel a little less enclosed, I guess.
  • You can wander around naked. Admittedly I don’t do this very often, partly because my friends Amanda and Ian moved in directly opposite me (personally I think they were stalking me very badly) and could see directly into my flat.
  • You can put up the Christmas decorations whenever you want. You don’t have to wait until Lewis has seen the Coca Cola advert or for it to be December or any other silly conventions like that.
  • You have complete control over the TV. This means there is no-one to get annoyed that you’re watching The Muppets for the 15th time.
  • No-one will take the mickey out of you when you want to listen to Avril Lavigne.

So in conclusion, I don’t think I’ll go back to sharing a home until I get married to Drew Barrymore.

* Please note that there were many other reasons why I picked on Lewis other than just his hair colour.