The Emperor's New Clothes

Rating: 1/10 (12 January 2019)

I generally love historical dramas, the lavish scenes, costumes, settings and so on. I was all set to be thrilled by this, considering the cast. But what was this? A case of Hans Christian Anderson's 'The Emperor's New Clothes', methinks.
I can understand why some viewers/reviewers would laud it and that is good for them, why should they not? Each to their own. I can almost hear them singing "Isn't it grand! Isn't it fine! Look at the cut, the style, the line! - The suit of clothes is all together but all together it's all together the most remarkable suit of clothes that I have ever seen". Never mind the naked truth.
Someone said that when there was a great divide in ratings, the zeros and the tens, then that indicated it was a masterpiece. Yeah, might it not also indicate it is quite the opposite? I cannot tolerate reviewers who suggest that those who do not share their views are Philistines, simply too plebeian, too uneducated, to appreciate the "masterpiece" they are watching. Well, for me the Emperor was stark naked tosh and I saw right through it.
The Favourite starts off badly and doesn't improve. Within minutes we have strong language, a guy playing with himself within close proximity of others in broad bawdy daylight. To top it all we have the weird banging-noise soundtrack which I thought was a flaw in the film for a while. The cinematography is very frequently through a fisheye lens which makes walls appear to be caving in and trees appear to be toppling towards one another. Really, it's all very style over substance, like a magician deceiving us with sleight of hand. There are lesbian scenes (ooh, how risque, how very modern!) and dialogue delivered in a way that much of the time I couldn't tell a word which was being spoken.
Yorgos Lanthimos must be laughing all the way to the bank.