Author Archives: Ben Gould

Brussels by Night (1983).

I am most familiar with Brussels by night – a vignette from real life that was the glorious Eurotrip of 2010. Belgium was my Waterloo (1815), hell but like a dreamland in retrospect. I’ll never go back. No point.

This was most interesting as a documentation of a time and place as well as for its drama and peculiar narrative style

The protagonist has quite the rugged and haggard face, unusual for a film, aye. He isn’t likeable but you still keep engaged.

The seemingly random progression of scenes and their emphasis on the mundane – everyday tasks which accompany our hissy fits – do a proper job of drawing you in to this wholly unpredictable and almost peak Godardian semi-banger.

It reminded me of Last Tango in Paris (1972) a bit, but without the psychobabble and the creepiness.

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Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003). Garbage.

Let’s get this over with quickly.

Claire Danes’ daft performance is … daft. She just stands and stares, and clearly can’t act at all.

A dreadful antagonist in a movie which is derivative to the max and for some reason mocks itself (lack of any other scripting ideas), even the action is badly choreographed.

The ending is decent. But this is mainly because you’re on fire because the torture is done.

Total shite.

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The Courier (2020).

The pull of this being a true story is enough for one to recommend it, but it does have more than that, capturing the fear and suspicion of the time in impressive ways, the claustrophobia seeping from every room. The casting and performances also elevated it above your standard spy fare. The premise appeared ripe for the pedestrian BBC-style treatment, but it was a surprise to see a riskier exercise in the spycraft genre.

The actor Merab Ninidze who plays Oleg Penkovsky. He needs to be in more movies. He’s simply excellent here.

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Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022).

I trust most renowned film critics, so I’m sure the glowing reviews of this are accurate.

I couldn’t make it beyond 30 mins. It was beyond boring. Hopeless filmmaking. Apparently there’s kick-ass action. But I won’t be watching it.

Will win Oscars.

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The Guest (2014) is a phenomenal homage to cool.

It’s silly and ludicrous and daft and nonsensical but it works because of the music cues and the overarching unapologetic style of it all which screams ‘This is the 1980s’.

But it isn’t. We can, however, pretend otherwise.

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Love, Death & Robots.

Sonnie’s Edge from season one of Love, Death & Robots, a truly spellbinding visual feast. This was something else. And I don’t just mean the Glaswegian ring announcer. Animation done right.

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Limitless (2011).

The concept is a bit better than the end product but still, this is a movie deserved of revisiting from time to time, despite the inevitable thriller elements that take over towards the denouement. It’s an intriguing premise, what you can achieve when you reduce thinking to its salient elements and get rid of the background noise.

It excels in its exposition and depiction of the cutthroat financial arena as a den of thieves with half of them on some variation of the gear (NZT-48). I hear it got adapted into a TV spin-off that was cancelled after a season, which sounds about right. There’s only so much you can squeeze out of the story.

But De Niro is a gift in this. He always is. 

“Don’t make me your competition.” 

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Volcano (1997) isn’t exactly volcanic.

Volcano (1997) has it all – highly convenient money shots, ludicrous dialogue, every character intro cliché in the book, and the usual late ’90s anything-goes-because-logic-doesn’t-matter action. 

The effects are sometimes great, sometimes shite, and usually just ordinary. Anne Heche is in this and looks like she was made to by her agent. Tommy Lee Jones looks bored off his tits in another one of those “It paid the bills and got me a yacht” performances. And an armoured division of fire engines defeat lava. 

Better than Dante’s Peak (1997), though. 

Testament to a looney age.  

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Under Siege (1992).

Early Seagal is almost as ludicrous as latter-day Seagal. The cut-off point is everything after On Deadly Ground (1994), an incomprehensible riot of a shitter which somehow stars Michael Caine. 

His Casey Ryback displays no vulnerability, is never once close to losing a violent encounter, doesn’t break a sweat, and appears to give zero fucks about anything going on around him. The funniest motif is all of the other ‘characters’ informing the audience at every opportunity that Casey Ryback is not mortal.

Supremely entertaining movie with quite the catchy score which totally isn’t a rip-off of JFK (1991) ….

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