Author Archives: Ben Gould
Wearing a mask for the past six months made me think of Dredd (2012) because he never takes his helmet off.
That is, the 2012 version and not the mess from 1995 that always popped up on Channel 5 in the late ’90s. I was going to maintain that a movie featuring both Sylvester Stallone and Rob Schneider is a recipe for sci-fi disaster, but then Demolition Man (1993) was a decent film, probably because the intolerable Schneider barely speaks in it.
The 1995 one is pure cheese, but blue cheese. You can see the extent of Stallone’s ego during this time, his performance one of simple vanity. The film is Sly’s hero worship vehicle for … himself. And it’s so badly made, your bog-standard video game aesthetic.
Anyway, that was then, and this is the era of the pandemic and the search for cinematic treats; it’s more accurately been a period spent revisiting lost treasures. Dredd (2012) seemed to go under the radar and I can’t even remember it being released. My first encounter with the Judge’s reboot was in a Bangkok hotel room after a grand night of hammering Samsong Thai rum with a pal who broke 9/11 to me (true story).
This movie is cracking, and aye, he never does once take his helmet off, which I find baffling. I know the bloke isn’t a massive star but he’s certainly a widely respected and recognised thespian. It’s violence done right – it matters, has a visceral role in law enforcement, and is mandatory in certain circumstances. It’s so rare to find a comic book adaptation which portrays violence for what it is in all its explicitness.
One of the many reasons I cannot stand these Marvel movies is the sheer cheek of them; it is nonstop carnage but designed for kids. The audience rarely sees the graphic consequences of bludgeoning someone to fuck with a massive hammer. The cannon of silly films in essence trivialise their own existence.
Back to Dredd. It’s strikingly shot and choreographed, and the dystopian future on display seems reasonable as it merely amplifies the ghetto milieu of some present inner cities. It is also rather funny, most of the humour stemming from Dredd’s apparent complete nonchalance as to the dangers around him.
Get it seen.
Further reading:
https://www.ign.com/articles/2012/07/12/dredd-review
Another feline Spaghetti Western.
Your everyday Abbeyhill face-off … between cats. When I departed they were still exchanging stares out of a Sergio Leone Mexican standoff.
The Foot of the Walk, Edinburgh.
The FOTW, Edinburgh’s own frazzled little riviera.
Leith is classy and colourful.
Dune (2020) can’t possibly be worse than Dune (1984).
The first trailer was released the other day for the latest adaptation of the Frank Herbert classic (1965). As promising as it looks, one is wary. Has there ever been ripe source material so consistently ruined by the moving image? Aside from a few pedestrian made-for-TV films, we have the rotten behemoth, the stupor-inspiring megaflop that is Dune (1984).
Even as a child I hated it and could articulate why it was so terrible. It was like a lesson in how to make a movie boring. The screenplay is all over the place, extended scenes existing for no apparent reason, characters possessing zero capacity for thought, all washed down with ropey special effects, hammy acting, and just a general … stylistic weirdness completely out of sync with the bare bones of the story.
David Lynch, with all his auteur talents, is not a director one associates with epic spectacle and character development mirroring the vistas. He cannot help himself here, insisting on going full-Lynch. God knows why he was handpicked for this, or why he accepted the mission. And what was Sting doing there?
I convinced myself that I could not wait to watch it again for fear is the mind-killer ….
It was pathetic. I fucking hated this stinker, then and now. Everything about it is vile. It’s like Nick Cotton every time he returned to Albert Square.
This crime against humanity needs tortured.
Further reading/viewing:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/03/dune-50-years-on-science-fiction-novel-world
https://screenrant.com/dune-2020-trailer-movie-1984-differences-explained/
Roger Ebert was hilarious.
Looking at some of his movie reviews, I must confess that I was in hysterics. Talk about having a way with words. This Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic (the first glorified movie geek to be awarded such an accolade) could sum up his disgust at bad cinema like no other.
He was often ‘wrong’ when it came to his dismissal of what I would call some great movies, but he always gave reasons as to why he disliked a picture. Some of his reviews traumatised filmmakers. The director/producer team of Godzilla (1998) even bizarrely used a likeness of Ebert and his At the Movies co-host Gene Siskel as characters (Ebert as the bungling ‘Mayor Ebert’) in the film as some desperate form of revenge for their slating of Independence Day (1996). It’s all here: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/godzilla-1998
There are so many hoots to choose from, but my personal favourite of his scathing reviews is his takedown of one of those depressingly soulless Transformers movies, this abomination a certain Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009).
‘If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination.’
Wow.
Further reading/viewing:
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/76485/35-movies-roger-ebert-really-hated
I went to Harlaw Reservoir and sang Seal’s ‘Kiss from a Rose’ as a camping associate shat in a bush.
Nothing else to report, really. The main outcome of the weekend was a general consensus that Cobra Kai is better than The Karate Kid (1984).
12 Monkeys (1995) is way better than I remembered.
In the midst of a global pandemic as it grabs peak humanity by the testicles, I sat down to watch 12 Monkeys (1995) again after a decade-long hiatus. And what smashing, thought-provoking, thoroughly enthralling sci-fi it is, a Terry Gilliam movie that isn’t uneven and all over the place, which basically makes it an anomaly. 1995 was kind to movies, and Bruce Willis was at his peak in the year of the Eric Cantona kung-fu kick.
There is a mind-blowing scene in this set on the Western Front during WWI; it is so magnificent that it almost derails the rest of the film. However, the character dynamics and pacing manage to keep it together and build to a stunning denouement, that and the inspired Vertigo (1958) references.
And this is one of the few movies that actually depicts people in ‘mental hospitals’ or ‘institutions’ as actually having meaningful, occasionally profound insights into the peculiarities of the social order.
And seek out its art-farty precursor La Jetée (1962). It’s definitely not shite.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 