Author Archives: Ben Gould
The Equalizer (2014) is bloody brilliant.
I mean, it’s bloody, as in baddies die and it’s graphic (which violence is). It’s Denzel doing his best Denzel; the opening sequence hilariously exposes his OCD by having the lad use a toothbrush to manicure his sneakers. You see him at work in a Walmart factory or whatever and he’s dedicated to the job. You get the feeling he’s hard as nails, though. And he turns out to be in the most Denzel way feasible.
The antagonist has a personality and is interesting; this is a rarity in the current action-thriller landscape. The soundtrack/score also works.
And Denzel utilises a nail gun.
Also, I’ve never seen the Edward Woodward TV show. It’s too late now to bother with it.
Alexander (2004) the not-so-great.
I’ve been on quite the Oliver Stone binge of late and it was inevitable that I arrived at a certain disaster. This is a complete train wreck of celluloid.
The accents are all over the place, for some unfathomable reason Macedonians from antiquity possessing Irish, Scottish, and Russian dialects. And dreadful ones at that.
The film is rammed, at the expense of drama and thrills, with pointless tactical information about the battles on display. In the nauseatingly constructed Battle of Gaugamela, Stone keeps cutting to an eagle surveying the scene. It’s a mad decision and I recall half the cinema howling at the time. There’s another bit with Alexander taking on an elephant and it is hilarious. The film apparently has like 18,000 different ‘Director’s Cuts’. They will all be shite, I guarantee you.
A nuts and utterly unwatchable motion picture. How can you make one of the greatest military commanders and statesmen in history so irrevocably boring? This movie achieves that impossible feat.
You honestly need to see it to believe it.
I came quite late to the party that is Something Wild (1986).
Ray Liotta has always looked both young and old at the same time, which is a hard act to do. Even in his thirties he appeared both 50 and 18. He’s had a very good career but lacks that marquee performance; Goodfellas (1990) isn’t really an astounding acting job because he’s unchanged throughout and overshadowed by you-know-who. Unlawful Entry (1992) is a trashy corker but Something Wild (1986) is strangely peak Liotta even though he’s just getting started. Also, I’ve seen Narc (2002) twice and don’t think much of it.
He is scary in this. It’s so rare to see an actor pull off scary but he is that, like Willem Dafoe as Bobby Peru.
The movie seamlessly tap-dances between genres, and the (very real) violence never appears out of place amidst the comedy. It reminded me of Grosse Pointe Blank (1997), which is fitting as that undoubted masterpiece is an ’80s throwback. This film felt like it could go anywhere at any moment, a freewheeling adventure. And it was. The unpredictable is hard to design or even pull off in fiction.
Fantastic.
The Thing (1982) is a riot and defines John Carpenter.
There exists an incredible canon of Carpenter movies from the ’70s and ’80s – Carpenter pulling out one sublime picture after another. A wee bit of snobbery swirls around commentary on him, that he can’t do a period drama or handle anything another other than horror and thrills, which is making an obvious point. And I keep referring to him in the past tense. Because I haven’t seen a new movie from the lad for decades.
As much as I would ascribe the term ‘auteur’ to the truly multi-skilled Carpenter, folk read way too much into these films, always seeking for the allegorical or the profound statement. They are all cult B-movies where very little acting nuance is needed, high-concept affairs elevating the primacy of the image and the economy of the edit. You’re in it for 90 minutes and then afterwards that’s that. It’s not Antonioni.
And to The Thing (1982) and that score, the landscape, the constant menace, and yet with the wackiest visual effects, brilliant for their time and curiously not dated at all.
The Thing is his peak.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 