Author Archives: Ben Gould
Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps (2010) isn’t as dreadful as I thought I remembered once.
I hated this when I first saw it. I had expectations that were way too high (life advice: never do this). It’s really not that bad of a viewing experience, and to the extent that it could have been great.
The casting is mostly spot on, Josh Brolin doing a sneering, charmless version of Gekko, and Douglas playing the veteran raider as a wily fox slowly getting his groove back. I don’t mind Shia LaBeouf despite his arty-farty antics. He’s a fine actor – witness him in Fury (2014).
Sadly, this movie is saddled with a pointless love interest much like the first, though in the 1987 capturing of ‘Loadsamoney‘ the airhead female was at least a symbol of soulless social climbing. Charlie Sheen also makes an appearance here in perhaps the most nauseating and unnecessary cameo ever. Thank fuck the Donald Trump cameo was culled (yes, this happened).
It does get the financial crisis so right, though. It’s just a shame that Stone – usually the nailer of the zeitgeist – is a few years too late. Eli Wallach being very weird is also a hoot. And the movie is a worthy watch for the visuals alone. It’s more of an introduction to the wonderful Wall Street (1987) than an experience on its own terms. Peak Stone was both a product of an era and a stylisation of it, when Stone was the Bret Easton Ellis of celluloid.
Banging trailer here, though:
Hostiles (2017) should be seen by more folk.
I usually hate revisionism because it’s almost always ‘crafted’ through the lens of ridiculous zeitgeist lefty reevaluations of a now controversial time. Artistry comes second with this crusade. They are just message movies and aesthetically worthless.
This one looked ominous. However, it was surprisingly almost brilliant. Bale was … Bale. He is titanium. He cannot be broken. This did baffle me a wee bit as with a lot of these flicks we have the flawed protagonist die at the end because of his sins and he somehow finds catharsis in this. Not so here. Which is just fabulous.
I say almost great. There aren’t any memorable moments or sequences which wander out of formula. But it’s masterfully shot and put together. And I hate most movies.
A strong 4/5.
JFK (1991) is a masterpiece of garbage.
The Kennedy ‘Camelot’ worship is just pathetic, a whitewashing of some truly horrific folks. I just don’t get it and the only explanation I have for the adulation of that pampered clan is that when you’ve got Nixon or Goldwater you have to pick the lesser of two … something like that. Anyway, the outright lies in this movie are audacious in their temerity. The director quite literally makes shit up. No wonder the amenable masses think everything is a conspiracy these days.
But what a cast, what style, what editing razzmatazz. If you could define bravura it would be peak Oliver Stone. He’s the best kind of worst propagandist. What does the lad get up to these days aside from interview dictators? His last masterwork was Any Given Sunday (1999). I saw a film he made about Alexander the Great. It was worse than one of my shites after tanning a vindaloo.
“Back, and to the left. Back, and to the left. Back, and to the left.”
I don’t understand this.
Why does Kiss from a Rose (1994) have anything to do with Batman Forever (1995)?
The best tune. The worst film.
For one extended moment in time Nicolas Cage was some kind of god.
It happened somehow – Cage became the best action movie star ever.
He, or a group of wise men, created the Cage Blockbuster Event. Name me a better trilogy than The Rock (1996), Con Air (1997), and Face/Off (1997). He is pure charisma, 100% mental, and in desperate need of a decent bout of hair surgery. These are extraordinary action pictures, repeat viewings, … action art. It’s the Golden Age of Cage.
He makes so many stinkers these days, the same shit over and over again. But just when you think he’s consigned himself forever to the straight-to-video dungeon, he pops up in something like Mandy (2018), away with the fairies, off his tits, barking mad, Extreme Cage. It has to be method. But it probably isn’t.
“In Cage’s hands, cartoonish moments are imbued with real emotion and real emotions become cartoons. Everything – from individual scenes down to single lines of dialogue – feel like they have been embraced as opportunities for creation. Cage is usually interesting even when his films are not. He is erratic and unpredictable; he is captivating and he is capricious. He is a performer. He is a troubadour. He is a jazz musician.” – Luke Buckmaster in The Guardian.
Indeed.
Red Heat (1988). I’m sure it must have (maybe) been a hoot back then. It’s a stinker.
Walter Hill invented the buddy cop action movie with 48 Hours (1982). This is the same premise but with looser plotting, fewer thrills, and zero chemistry between the leads. Arnie is the best thing in it (as he always is) and does a creditable job as a Soviet policeman, but Jim Belushi is hopelessly miscast and it doesn’t help that some of the dialogue he’s given is humiliating. There’s a bus chase of sorts near the end and for almost the entire duration Jim Belushi simply wails at what’s going on in front of them and the general situation. It is the most boring chase in a film I’ve ever seen. The bad guy is almost intriguing and Ed O’Ross does possess a certain charismatic quality. But the movie is simply pointless.
It’s so desperate to be something more than it is that Arnie as a stoic commie cop is its go-to place. Almost every gag, every joke, every line of dialogue between the crime-fighting duo is this schematic clash of cultures nonsense but in a mostly non-threatening way. It’s like the filmmakers looked at Reagan and Gorbachev and the thawing of relations and thought it a good idea to have Arnie as a Soviet rozzer in a shitty movie.
Probably.
The most interesting thing on display here is the cast. It is Kevin Bacon territory. Everyone is in it. I even spotted Kurt Fuller. Who has also been in everything.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 