Author Archives: Ben Gould

Aug 20 2026
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Tango & Cash (1989).

A first viewing here for this shitter featuring an odd couple in Sly and Kurt, odd in that they’re both disturbingly similar in delivery and demeanour, though Kurt Russell can emote with less awkwardness and the writers try to make him seem wild by having a mullet. Great screenwriting ….

My only prior knowledge of the flick stems from a lad I used to work with who expressed perpetual regret for choosing this over Goodfellas (1990) at a cinema showing. That’s profound.

And Tango & Cash (1989)?

It isn’t even a curiosity. It’s not even memorably rubbish, just pointless. And boring. A great nothing, it should be wiped from the historical record.

Bye for now.

Aug 19 2026
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Art, Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies

The Jackal (1997). Madness.

The highlight of The Jackal (1997) is seeing Bruce Willis’ inscrutable assassin inhabit a range of progressively goofy disguises and get away with it. In a rare villainous role, you never know what elaborate wig he’s going to don from one scene to the next.

One wishes it would just focus on this promising procedural stuff, as did its progenitor, instead of the needless Richard Gere IRA backstory. And his entire character arc. And his ‘accent’. Our funny intro to him is of the lad shadow boxing in his cell. How original! What writing! This movie also pushes the absurd fallacy that the Russian police – in the epoch of peak Yeltsin state gangsterism – were trying to smash the mafia. Give this motion picture points for trying too hard.

Sidney Poitier adds the expected gravitas in a role that would have worked better with him as the deuteragonist.

It’s entertaining trash and I recommend it. But I don’t think Roger Ebert liked it much:

‘There was never a moment in “The Jackal” where I had the slightest confidence in the expertise of the characters. The Jackal strikes me as the kind of overachiever who, assigned to kill a mosquito, would purchase contraband insecticides from Iraq and bring them into the United States by hot air balloon, distilling his drinking water from clouds and shooting birds for food.’

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Aug 17 2026
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The Enemy Below (1957).

However you fully define the dimensions of screen presence, Robert Mitchum had it. Few other actors – and this lad has variously been described as languid to lazy – have injected so much of his own personality into characters. This in a way contradicts the nature of acting, but if he were merely being himself, then Cape Fear (1962), The Night of the Hunter (1955), and Out of the Past (1947), must have all been different personas of an overall self.

‘His laid back, sleepy eyed intensity, has hypnotized audiences for decades.‘ – Halliwell’s Film Guide.

That’s The Enemy Below (1957).

Intense.

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Aug 13 2026
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The Fighter (2010).

This is a great movie because it achieves a rarity in cinema today.

You get sick to death of the characters and their antics but end up quite liking them because of the sincere, absolutely believable changes they make to stop being annoying.

Incredible scenes.

Aug 10 2026
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Art, Cinema, Crime, Film, Movie, Movies

Catch Me If You Can (2002).

An inconsequential bore, pointless in its totality, and I didn’t buy a word of it. It smelled of a fake movie about a fake man with fake stories, and the stories have been proven to be just that. This is riddled with unfunny jokes, facile attempts at characterisation, and it’s way too long.

A surfeit of irritating bimbos permeate this pathetic farce, and it’s embarrassing to see them swoon over Leo’s facepalm-inducing pick-up lines straight out of the depths of cringe.

What annoyed me the most was Spielberg’s attempts to inject a fake story with a fake father-and-son melodrama, with surrogate dad Hanks and real dad Walken. The latter is fine, the former is not as nauseating as usual but he is still a pain.

The movie was there so I watched it. I won’t be doing so again.

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Aug 08 2026
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Art, Cinema, Film, Movie

The Fifth Element (1997).

Another sensommer viewing of this marvellously mental movie (accidental alliteration).

It exists entirely within its own orbit and every frankly daft facet of it works because it’s congruent with the overriding narrative of stylised stupidity.

A feast for the eyes, the ears, … maybe not the brain when Chris Tucker is screaming. There is not a dull moment in this fervidly imaginative slice of peak Luc Besson, the pioneer of cinéma du look.

And Eric Serra should have done more film scores.

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Aug 05 2026
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The Odyssey (2026).

Some movies are event movies, such is the dearth of auteur cinema on the big screen today. Christopher Nolan, for better or worse, might just be the last director making epic blockbusters who is able to inject them with any kind of personal stamp and aesthetic idiosyncrasies. 

The Odyssey (2026) is, I am relieved to write, mostly pretty fucking awesome and a technical marvel. The only gripe I have is that the underwhelming denouement consists of the generic battle-infused run-of-the-mill crawl to the finish line that characterises hundreds of these flicks. 

That aside, the good stuff is fabulous, the episodic fantastical elements more then mere monster-of-the-week subplots, instead seamlessly embedded within the recognisable reality of a historical fiction, with its director’s preoccupation with time and fate.

And how does one top Brian Cox’s riotously unhinged Agamemnon in Troy (2004)? You go the opposite way and have him as a mute, full armour-clad beast the size of a Klitschko brother, even his warrior satraps – Odysseus included – quivering at his presence.

And Sleaze of the Year award goes to Robert Pattinson. I read that he based his performance on the redoubtable James Woods as Lester Diamond in Casino (1995). What an off-kilter but apt tribute. 

The Odyssey is the best version of Nolan. 

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Aug 04 2026
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Art, Cinema, Film

Be Cool (2005).

Painful and embarrassing, this is the very definition of one of those movies where no one ever told the people making it some home truths, namely that they were making an epic spectacle … of themselves.

The lack of self-awareness on display is mental.

A truly shocking movie in its awfulness, it’s not cool. It’s frankly uncool.

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Aug 03 2026
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Cinema, Film, Movie

The Illusionist (2006).

I hesitate to use the term old-fashioned or old school (‘skool’ if we’re appropriating street slang), but it’s how I’d best describe this charming movie. It has a genuine warmth and innocence about it, a throwback to one of those risible but irresistible fairy tales.

The period continues to fascinate, and the film captures with elan the brittle precariousness of the era. Pre-war Vienna, that gilded pan-European late age of modernism, decadent Austria-Hungary’s last-chance saloon before the Great War and destroyer of empires. Something like that.

And the wonderful Eddie Marsan is in it.

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Aug 01 2026
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The Train (1964).

This director made some fucking belters, Seconds (1966) and Ronin (1998) your blogger’s personal faves from Frankenheimer’s treasure trove of thriller goodies.

The Train (1964) belongs in the wee basket of bantz. It features a train, didn’t you know? It’s a riot, with sublime cinematography replete with anachronistic experiments that somehow manage not to retract from the drama, the thrills, big Burt Lancaster, the rarely seen Paul Scofield as an art-loving Nazi, Jeanne Moreau, and lots of steam. Good steam.

John Frankenheimer made the type of movies that Brian De Palma couldn’t accomplish.

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