Author Archives: Ben Gould
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.
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:
