Author Archives: Ben Gould
I hated The Deer Hunter (1978) so much.
It’s so unnecessarily long-winded and frankly pointless.
I’m struggling to think of a more eclectic display of moronic and wholly unsympathetic characters in a motion picture. Everything about them is annoying; they are smug, boring, stupid, and generally just excruciating. It’s universally described in the reviews of the time as being “epic”. This consists of a few wide-angle shots of mountain landscapes in order to paper over thin characterisation; mountains act as filler.
Yet despite occasional David Lean pretensions it’s so inept from a framing perspective. Every scene is astonishingly horrible to look at, an ugly beast shot with all the artistry of a severely undisciplined student movie; there is no syntax to scenes or reason behind shot decisions. It’s a fucking mess. Vietnam has never looked so anonymous. What else? The score pissed me off. It screams of folk feeling sorry for themselves. Which is the essence of the film.
As for the famous Russian Roulette scene – who cares?
I don’t.
Absolute shite.
The Last Samurai (2003). Well done to everyone involved.
An Edward Zwick movie – when I hear that I think workmanlike and solid, but this surprised me by how exciting and gripping it was. Adventure, thrills, history, and Hans Zimmer. The bad lad from Ghost (1990) is even quality here. Ghost is terrible, by the way, an unholy mess. I cannot stand Whoopi Goldberg. Acting talent of a Wotsit.
Back to this, and Cruise, as always, is epic. You always believe in what he does because he gives his all every time. The voice-over is a tad annoying and ventures into spelling out the obvious but this aside the picture is a stunning achievement. And I love Japan. It was one of those trips that couldn’t be scripted. And I did do the karaoke thing and was so appalling it has gone into semi-legendary folklore.
Starship Troopers (1997) is an absolute belter.
It’s hilarious satire, and so smartly done. It’s also damn entertaining. And it hasn’t aged a bit.
It’s in fact way ahead of its time. The lunacy of some of the reviews of 1997. These idiotic ‘critics’ didn’t seem to grasp that everything about the movie is a joke, a piss-take, a borderline comedy. The characters are straight out of a Nazi propaganda piece, and they have legit no redeeming features. But you still watch it for their complete lack of self-awareness.
And the carnage. I like proper carnage.
The English Patient (1996) is just total crap.
I had to slap myself by the end of this because I once, for reasons beyond any understanding of my own psyche, thought it was brilliant. It’s not. It’s fucking dire. It’s SO boring. Everything about it is boring. The characters are boring. The story is boring. It even makes WWII boring. Nothing in it is even worth telling. Almost everyone on display is an imbecile; Juliette Binoche is the only one with a personality.
I don’t get the central romance on display. The Katharine character (if you can call her that) is just so … BORING. There is literally nothing about her worth bothering with because she is a cure for insomnia. And I lost track of how many times the director had to pull out a plane crash or a plane being shot in order to advance the plot. It infuriated me. Is this nonsense in the book? It swept the awards in 1996. The voters must have all been on drugs.
I must have been on drugs when I watched this a decade ago and thought it a cracker. There’s no other explanation.
Pile of shite.
Snatch (2000) is great until a certain former Wimbledon footballer makes an appearance.
This admittedly amusing movie is not about a single thing aside from how the narrative strands collide, and they are loose connections at most. It is merely highly entertaining, brimming with energy and giggles, though we mainly laugh at how stupid and un-self-aware most of the characters are. It’s a lot of fun until Vinnie Jones turns up and sinks the joys. He’s just awful in everything, but especially this.
For some reason he transitioned from being a dreadful footballer to a dreadful actor. I blame that whole late ’90s ‘lad culture’ … thing, the heyday of Loaded magazine and the milder second renaissance of the beer-swigging hooligan. Only back then could someone so talentless be glorified for thuggery. He’s a former football hardman turned hardman ‘actor’ and this is meant to be hilarious. Sigh.
But it’s cracking until he turns up.
The Grey (2011) is fabulous.
I’ve read a few sneering reviews from snooty film critics taking umbrage at the movie’s existential pretensions. I don’t get where they’re coming from; if you’re being stalked and mauled by a pack of sociopathic wolves I think you’d start to think about your existence. Anyway, it’s a thrilling movie. There’s no comedy or irony or a memorable quote; what it does is action and does it with aplomb. It’s about willpower and survival. And Liam fighting wolves. That’s it.
And there’s nothing wrong with that.
Goldeneye (1995) is the only 5/5 James Bond movie.
Because it’s not just a Bond film. It’s actually about something other than tropes and ticking boxes. I often hear the mantra, “Folk only love it because it ties in with the N64 game.” It’s a decent proposition for an argument but misses the point – the game is also amazing yet they don’t depend on each other.
Goldeneye (1995) is so well crafted, so correctly paced, so … frankly strange. The Eric Serra score is implausible yet it somehow works. Perhaps the gargantuan gap (world events) between 1989 and 1995 was for the best, because this picture at times even becomes about that End of History theme. And the villain is the only one you can take seriously in the entire cannon of Bonds. Everything 006 does seems plausible and he brings out the best in 007.
It’s a masterpiece.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 