Author Archives: Ben Gould
Beef (2023-).
Anxiety, extreme pettiness, and cascading psyches in the suffocating urban nightmare that is modern living, which is a mission at times. You really don’t know what might happen next in this show, and it has a Magnolia (1999) quality to it. The last two episodes approached the ludicrous but then I did consider the overwhelming evidence that these rivals frequently teeter on the barking mad classification, so it all sort of works.
And where would these series be without smartphones? I suppose it’s an accurate reflection of things.
Black comedy with some pathos, and it doesn’t outstay its welcome. Better than most offerings out there.
Crimson Tide (1995).
Crimson Tide (1995) is fucking amazing, and it’s not just for the extended screaming stand-off between Gene and Denzel. It’s a film about an issue, a rather big issue, yet is shot with such electricity, edited and paced as good as any action-thriller, and with a Hans Zimmer score sounding like it was composed when he was conducting an esoteric shite. Even the intermittent pop culture references, weird as they are, kind of work, a way to relieve the unbearable tension.
You have five heart attacks watching this movie.
Barbie (2023). I bit the bullet.
I didn’t mind it at all, and just watched it for the daftness and the epic tunes.
I’m not going to read much into a movie about dolls. I got the the whole intention of the male/female power-dynamic/divide or whatever. It’s nothing I’ve ever thought about. Or cared to. Or ever will in this moment of time.
Never seen a Barbie or Ken doll in my life, never wanted one, and have no interest in these creations.
I’m sure there is a massive yet subtle subtext to everything in this film, but I’ll leave that to the ‘professionals’.
It was entertaining. It has made a billion. Is that how easy it is? Movie about Bagpuss next. I want to see Bagpuss on a cocaine binge that Jordan Belfort would clap at.
Meow.
And ‘Barbie Girl’, THE tune of the ’90s, made an ‘appearance’. In a way ….
In the Mood for Love (2000).
Talk about the transcendental. In its artistry and superior articulation of its themes, this really did remind me of the works of Yasujirō Ozu, and Toyko Story (1953) in particular.
It’s also a devastating watch and not something you’d stick on every year as it’s too accurate, too affecting, too profound. The ending is as haunting as anything I’ve seen.
It’s ranked 5th in Sight & Sound’s “Greatest Films of All Time” critics’ poll.
They’re not wrong.
Bull (2021).
This was just your usual shite and defines what’s so crap about British cinema.
I hated every minute of it, from the moment the director films a moving car in the most irritating way. The writing was frankly ghastly, and I despise, again with the vehicle stuff, scenes of characters looking all serious in cars at night with classical music inevitably playing on the radio. It’s the worst kind of writing. It was all pathetic. There’s even a bit in here involving parents arguing about murder as they are gobbling down fish and chips. TV-quality acting as always; these folk should just stick to Corrie Street.
Another disgrace to cinema this. But check it out if you want some torture.
Next.
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938).
Wow, flawless entertainment. It knows exactly what it is and delivers on every level; it’s so immaculate that you can see hundreds of subsequent movies in its accidental blueprint, a formula before there was one. More impressive, if you don’t exactly get to luxuriate in blood and guts, are the shots framing folk actually dying. It sounds a bit daft, but I wasn’t expecting that for a movie of 1938.
Claude Rains once again runs off with a film. There’s something both immediately accessible and conversely abstract and untouchable about him. It’s the extraordinary voice, the alien demeanor, the coolness, and all of this given the fact he’s awfully short. Not sure if he was ever a protagonist in a movie. He was perhaps better as the svelte creep stealing every scene he’s in.
Anyway, a most gnarly yarn here.
Michael Mann is back with Ferrari (2023).
It’s been so fucking long, and Blackhat (2015) so unmemorable as to make the wait feel … much longer.
Welcome back, Michael Mann. I’m sure you’ve never been away but a trailer from your immense talents hasn’t been dropped for quite some time.
I have faith in you. I’ve read/seen your résumé many, many, many times.
High hopes for this one.
The Founder (2016).
A humanising of McDonald’s here. Sort of. It works as a character study and a business lesson, or a warning for small businesses when the sharks come sniffing around.
Well paced once the lengthy exposition is dealt with, mostly interesting, and with a perfectly reasonable Michael Keaton performance, but that’s always expected. There’s nothing exceptional about this but I can’t think of a bad scene, either. I also like to see folk using pay phones and paper diaries. A simpler time, aye.
As for McDonald’s, I just find it funny how a place making and selling shite can be so successful. But that applies to most things on this planet.
The Artifice Girl (2022).
There’s an interrogation at the start of this, a programmer/designer/whatever given a lecture about the use of deceased actors in contemporary movies, that CGI-pasting which seems to be the new zeitgeist. “Poor dead guy didn’t want to be in a movie.” I’d never actually considered that before, but then this film gets one thinking.
AI is terrifying; this movie was terrifying, utterly risible but scarily real. It’s Skynet from a chat room. Turn off your Wi-Fi, turn off your webcam, correspond in letters written in disappearing ink.
It’s Blade Runner (1982) and Tron (1982) territory. And with Lance Henriksen. Bishop lives.
Top film.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 