Author Archives: Ben Gould

Junior (1994).

I don’t get it. Is this supposed to be funny because Arnie is pregnant? Is that how the premise was pitched? It’s not even remotely amusing.

I was disappointed in myself for watching this shit, one of the flattest movies I’ve seen.

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The Blair Witch Project (1999).

The minutiae and the level of detail is incredible, overloaded with seemingly inconsequential pish that isn’t relevant– the bickering, and the … bickering – and then it descends into the unknown.

If you lived in a world without the internet, you’d think this was ‘real’.

It’s scary, scary in a way in that you can vicariously experience the nightmare scenario the three ‘characters’ lose their shit in.

This is the American version of Man Bites Dog (1992).

Masterpiece.

Sadly, it spawned a lot of shite.

But that’s life.

Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) is mortifying.

I tried.

Scorsese always deserves a second change of pants.

This movie is fucking atrocious. The needless, meandering, wholly unmemorable dialogue was the worst element of this unimpressive stinker.

You get the impression they are all about to drop the bombshell. And there isn’t one.

And it’s not even funny.

I hated it and hope you do too.

Sorry, Marty.

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The 51st State (2001) is one of the worst you’ll ever see.

Pathetic movie, in every single facet of its putrid being.

Here we have a slapdash piss-take excuse for a motion picture, the apex of post-Lock Stock rip-off … whatever this giant bucket of crap was or wished to be. Folk swear incessantly because the writer can’t think of any dialogue.

Visually it’s bollocks, and not even in a quirky way. Every single manky British actor in this is an embarrassment, a wee college acting course scrotum barely worthy of a TV soap. Even Robert Carlyle started to grate.

I’m so happy this movie bombed at the box office because I like to see bad things on this planet fail. Samuel L. Jackson appears to feature as he wanted to conduct a bit of anthropology.

Fucking awful.

F1 (2025).

Jerry Bruckheimer. Hans Zimmer on score duties. A beautiful leading man. Is this another era? I’m torn: it’s either the late 1980s or early ’90s.

A perfectly good movie here, throwback feel revved up to suitable levels of nostalgia but with cutting edge pyrotechnics.

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Final Destination Bloodlines (2025).

How a gruesome series of sadistic slashers whose sole concern is setting up, with our complicity in the premonition, chain-reaction sequences of unfettered butchery can be … fun is entirely testament to the filmmakers.

And this is by a mile the best yet.

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The French Connection (1971).

This is a flawless film.

I tried to be a bit sneaky and identity a flaw in it, but I couldn’t find anything.

Well done.

Natural Born Killers (1994).

Horrible movie, and much like JFK (1991), an acrobatic display in baroque style and technique, for no reason.

It appears to aim to be a condemnation of mass media and its obsession with lurid violence, yet luxuriates in the mayhem committed by our murderous couple. Decent soundtrack. However, another painful Robert Downey Jr. performance ruins any hope of a watchable movie emerging.

Definitely one of Oliver Stone’s worst, but it’s not down there with Alexander (2004).

The Alto Knights (2025).

About 34 minutes into this derivative drivel, I understood that Robert De Niro playing two non-related characters for no reason summed up the movie: POINTLESS.

Avoid like the plague (or anything).

Back to the Future Part II (1989).

It’s brilliant.

Complex but not too much so, at breakneck pacing the internal paradoxes of time travel have seldom had such thrilling treatment. It’s all a bit depressing as well, with one wrong move ruining future generations, but it’s done in an enjoyable way. Dumping Jennifer, Marty’s beleaguered girlfriend and soon-to-be wife, in an alleyway (and then a porch) is a bit naughty, though. That’s not aged well.

As for it’s prediction of 2015, much of it was accurate, but I don’t recall hoverboards a decade ago. Even today, members of Edinburgh’s shrieking underclass community are still pounding it along pavements on pink scooters (stolen), with lifted cleaning goods from budget supermarket Aldi shoved down their tracksuit bottoms.

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