Saw this for the first time in decades and bloody hell is it dull. It’s just so boring, which I find rather mental because it’s about UFOs and all that, and Spielberg is a master craftsman. It’s shot here like a TV movie, its depiction of suburbia painfully tedious. Even when the weird-looking critters arrive at the end it’s underwhelming. The only curiosity to be found is the casual appearance of François Truffaut, who is eminently more interesting than those around him.
Something else bothered me about it. It’s so naive, with government agencies portrayed as even being benevolent. What a weird decision, this just after the twin calamities of Watergate and the American involvement in the Vietnam War.
Never watching it again and I do not understand why it’s lauded.
Not my generation’s star man, which was Zidane, the ‘Original’ Ronaldo, and then latterly CR7 and Messi. I will still maintain that Cristiano Ronaldo over the broad spectrum of his career is the greatest football player of all time, yet Maradona at his peak from 1984-’89 was playing the beautiful game from another planet.
I don’t think anyone has ever had an impact on a World Cup as he did in 1986. He was not just an attacking midfielder with five decisive assists and goals, which is an astonishing feat in itself; he was a talisman, a wee warrior, a leader, and was hard as fuck. If you watch the matches again he dominates every one of them, carrying an average team over the line each time.
This was back in the day when the ‘art’ of defending consisted of trying to break legs. Coaches would drill it into the centre-backs before kick-off – it was legalised GBH. How he managed to make it through games beguiles me, even more so with the artistry on display after being booted up and down the pitch for 90 mins.
One in a million, and if he were playing the modern game with today’s diet, nutrition, sports science bonanza (and protection from referees) he’d be on an iron throne with a fat cigar in his mouth.
These lads of course have every right to fiddle to their hearts’ content with pictures they’ve made, but it’s getting out of control now. I don’t even know how many different versions of Blade Runner (1982) there are (I’ve only seen one), I hear there is now another edition of Apocalypse Now (1979), and I was yesterday informed that The Godfather Part III (1990) is now being re-released this month but with a completely different structure and with an alternate title. What is going on?
For me, the art that was produced at a specific stage is what it is (for lack of a better phrase) and all it will ever be. I have no time for tweaking, chopping, changing, re-editing, and periodic revisionism. Stop trying to fix what was at that moment your best or worst effort, move on, come up with a new idea. It’s got something to do with grasping for perfection, but the problem is that the films I’ve mentioned are far from perfect. Even the films I rate as ‘transcendental’ (The Third Man, Vertigo, Lawrence of Arabia) have giant flaws but that just adds to the appeal; I hate to appropriate an Oasis song, but true perfection has to be imperfect.
This terrible movie is just replete with so many clichés I thought it was a joke – within 10 minutes you get the failed dad who never turns up to his kid’s game because of work (I will never understand how kids think this is a ‘thing’). I think I’ve seen that leitmotif in a thousand motion pictures. And here we go again, the sudden white-collar psycho who has suddenly become unhinged!
This is like Falling Down (1993) but without the social commentary or the complexities of that protagonist who had motivation and a character arc, and who seemed to think he was doing the right thing. This is just a portrait of one-note unbridled rage. It’s a pathetic screenplay, something out of a student movie.
There is, however, a kind of life lesson here: never, ever fume at idiots you don’t know because there are A LOT of unhinged folk out there walking the streets; the Travis Bickles, the potential serial killers, the incels, the nutjobs. They don’t act and react rationally and they are capable of anything because they aren’t bound by anything.
Anyway, Crowe is brilliant in this shitter. It’s like he’s back in his Romper Stomper (1992) days before he hit the jackpot. He’s a legit fat bastard now but I guess he’s earned it. He was once on the verge of a sort of magical, era-defining pantheon of films but after Gladiator (2000) he just opted for the middling scripts and the trivial. He’s almost better as a supporting character these days.
In summary, this movie is pure garbage but desperately wants to be relevant. Which is commendable.
Somebody give Russell something to do. He needs a Brando renaissance moment.
Not much of a heroic individual on display but bloody hell is Eric Bana funny here; it remains to this day his best role by a country mile. The bloke is just nuts, so quotable, and yet it’s allied to a singular style that is up there with Aronofsky or Scorsese. You need a dynamic treatment with material like this.
It is now 20 years since its release. I first saw it on DVD around 2005; it still holds up today. Like the best films, they don’t date because they were made in such a way which precludes this. It’s up on YouTube, by the way.
For many reasons, but I’ll just stick to a brief summary. The Edinburgh Napier University student halls, three strip clubs, and the local job centre are lined up next to each other. The castle towers above, watching over the flock. It’s like a life lesson, evolution and all that.
22 November, 2010 and this ridiculous … thing came into the world.
For me, it’s the Greatest Album Ever Made. And I find Kanye West nauseating, an attention-seeking baby who needs muzzled. Not the tunes, though. These are simply glorious, the album track-for-track mastery without equal. It’s the production, the melodies, the bombast, the deepthinking at work. Like all art, you can appropriate the material and line it up with something personal.
The (Stranded in) Belgium Odyssey of December 2010. Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong, but it was all very life-changing and I’ll never forget some of the epic moments. And no one died, which is also great. This album was played quite literally 125 times in 11 days and every track I associate with an image.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 