It kicks off with a most annoying opening to the extent that even the presentation of the credits pissed me off. Beyond this bad omen, the critter at least was a cute wee hippo … thing, but this aside it was simply too much of an effort to follow what was happening. It was also unnecessarily loud, a bombardment of racket. Remove the elephant/pig/hippo creature and it’s just needless noise. Boring.
I wouldn’t bother.
This really was a wasted opportunity, the gift of a premise – two snipers in a dance of death amidst the backdrop of the bloodiest battle in history – compromised by a pointless romance, daft politics, dodgy accents, and a complete misunderstanding of the time and place depicted.
It would have been better to not tackle the complexity of it all and just show the antagonists facing off, with allusions to the wider ideological foes.
The first 10 mins, though. Watch those and then turn it off. Here you go:
The funniest episode of any show ever. It’s not just the quotes but the brilliance of the situation. Big-shot mafia goons go a few miles outside of their comfort zone and they don’t know what to do.
They get lost and almost die in a two-mile stretch of woods. Useless/hopeless/pointless individuals. That’s the genius of the writing.
Imagine them on an Ant Middleton show.
Bit of a trivial non-story this one but what else do you expect from a rejig of a silly caper?
It starts off all kitsch and almost in awe of its prototype, but it gets much better once the police corruption is exposed; it ended up delivering more than I expected.
Christian Bale is a Very Bad Bale, just a slimy, smug yuppie, and as shameless as it gets, but he somehow imbues the scumbag with vulnerabilities; it’s just before his Full-Bateman turn before he went Full-Batman. But the big kudos go to Jeffrey Wright’s wannabe socially protean drug baron. He’s a ludicrous Tony Montana imitation. And extremely funny.
The small pleasures from these movies mostly consist of spotting the actor. We’ve got George Costanza’s boss from Seinfeld, Dan Hedaya (the bloke who is in everything), and both Kima Greggs and that annoying prat Bubbles from The Wire. And the mom from The Sixth Sense (1999).
Good theme tune.
It’s not bad.
This was just plain annoying, featuring a very annoying protagonist with a very annoying voice. I realised it’s one of the blokes from Narcos and the reason I stopped watching that show. Michael C. Hall is also in this and he also has an annoying voice. We also have Bokeem Woodbine, who possesses the softest, suavest voice, but he’s not in it enough for the movie to be decent.
I lost interest in it all after half an hour and doubt I’ve missed anything worth writing about. It’s just an array of annoying voices.
Next.
I know very little about any of this; I quite simply do not care for the yarn, and I never will. So such Biblical inaccuracies are of no concern to me, much as a filmic deviation from a comic book also rouses no faux-incredulity on my behalf.
Visuals here were impressive. The rest, absolute shite, from the horrible characters to the bombast, and the general tedium of it all.
Pish.
Bye for now.
Another week, another slice of Netflix mayhem, this series says a lot about the power of cults and how disturbed, megalomaniac manipulators make it to the top in these organisations.
A docu of a pre-digital age, the vintage nature of analogue broadcasting and videotape puts it in another century, which it is, but it’s no less contentious because of it. By default, one of its major concerns is the news media’s obsession with and reaction to havoc, co-dependent symbiotic twins. The Second Amendment is surprisingly given little focus, nor is just how this fits into any broader narrative of Carnage Americana.
Decent enough as a basic history lesson.
Waco, more like WACKOS (plural).
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I think I’d wander into the spurious were I to declare Hannibal the best TV show ever made, but for its sheer entertaining unpredictability, the majesty of its visuals, and the simply captivating Mads Mikkelsen, it’s up there and not quite such a ludicrous statement.
In many a show I have moaned like a wee bitch about constant switching allegiances and a deus ex machina chucked in the mix every other episode, but with Hannibal it’s like this from the off so never feels desperate. You’re living in a world of absolute loons here and it’s a perverse pleasure to be exposed to the nether regions of the human experience.
It’s as flawlessly engrossing as anything I can think of in recent years, and even the dialogue exchanges are cutting edge; I found myself googling just exactly what the fuck the characters are alluding to in their psychobabble exchanges, but it’s never pretentious in the way they do it. The show defines world-building.
What a treat.
Watched this again after a decade-long hiatus. I didn’t like it at all, mainly because I wasn’t really paying attention. I knew something was wrong with my approach, mainly that one should actually concentrate on the potential cinematic treat instead of fiddling with an iPhone.
The documentary triumph of it stems undoubtedly from the director’s expertise behind the camera, a rarity in that the helmsman can indeed operate one. The colour schemes for the narrative strands make sense, and nothing about it feels dated at all, even if seeing Catherine Zeta-Jones in a movie is a strange experience. I genuinely forgot she was ever in films.
A message movie and an education piece which works as a thriller.
And stay off the crack.
I personally find him extraordinarily inspirational.
His ego must be bananas but it’s justified – he started from zilch and made it to the summit through body and mind. I would buy him a pint. I’d vote for him also.
Despite some big boo-boos that he openly admits to, he remains the definition of hero.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 