Category Archives: Art

Aug 24 2026
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Art, Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004).

For a topic seemingly so universal, this movie is trivial overkill to the max. Schematic, derivative, dire in its desperation to be something elevated beyond your standard Woody-Allen-with-an-edge (the edge is memory wiping in this one) snapshot of relationships, it stinks of needy filmmaking, and I’d lump it down there with Garden State (2004) as one of the worst of that era.

The boredom levels were high. I was mostly just … bored, even if everyone in it aside from Tom Wilkinson is a vexing hysteric. In this way, the film is insightful. People who dye their hair don’t have an actual personality. In general.

The lad who just wishes to make his birdhouse, though. He was funny:

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Aug 21 2026
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Art, Cinema, Edinburgh, Movie, Movies

Trainspotting (1996).

The overriding cliché peddled about this masterly, dazzling cinema experience is that it was the mid-’90s version of A Clockwork Orange (1971). I don’t get that, but lazy film criticism like this permeates popular culture.

However, what defines this luxury work is how free of restraint and convention it is, that anything can happen in this magical realist slice of junkie hell.

Anyway, I saw the 30-year anniversary showing today and I am happy to report that everything in it works to peak levels.

A rare flawless movie, a 6/5.

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Aug 19 2026
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Art, Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies

The Jackal (1997). Madness.

The highlight of The Jackal (1997) is seeing Bruce Willis’ inscrutable assassin inhabit a range of progressively goofy disguises and get away with it. In a rare villainous role, you never know what elaborate wig he’s going to don from one scene to the next.

One wishes it would just focus on this promising procedural stuff, as did its progenitor, instead of the needless Richard Gere IRA backstory. And his entire character arc. And his ‘accent’. Our funny intro to him is of the lad shadow boxing in his cell. How original! What writing! This movie also pushes the absurd fallacy that the Russian police – in the epoch of peak Yeltsin state gangsterism – were trying to smash the mafia. Give this motion picture points for trying too hard.

Sidney Poitier adds the expected gravitas in a role that would have worked better with him as the deuteragonist.

It’s entertaining trash and I recommend it. But I don’t think Roger Ebert liked it much:

‘There was never a moment in “The Jackal” where I had the slightest confidence in the expertise of the characters. The Jackal strikes me as the kind of overachiever who, assigned to kill a mosquito, would purchase contraband insecticides from Iraq and bring them into the United States by hot air balloon, distilling his drinking water from clouds and shooting birds for food.’

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Aug 17 2026
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Art, Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies

The Enemy Below (1957).

However you fully define the dimensions of screen presence, Robert Mitchum had it. Few other actors – and this lad has variously been described as languid to lazy – have injected so much of his own personality into characters. This in a way contradicts the nature of acting, but if he were merely being himself, then Cape Fear (1962), The Night of the Hunter (1955), and Out of the Past (1947), must have all been different personas of an overall self.

‘His laid back, sleepy eyed intensity, has hypnotized audiences for decades.‘ – Halliwell’s Film Guide.

That’s The Enemy Below (1957).

Intense.

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Aug 10 2026
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Art, Cinema, Crime, Film, Movie, Movies

Catch Me If You Can (2002).

An inconsequential bore, pointless in its totality, and I didn’t buy a word of it. It smelled of a fake movie about a fake man with fake stories, and the stories have been proven to be just that. This is riddled with unfunny jokes, facile attempts at characterisation, and it’s way too long.

A surfeit of irritating bimbos permeate this pathetic farce, and it’s embarrassing to see them swoon over Leo’s facepalm-inducing pick-up lines straight out of the depths of cringe.

What annoyed me the most was Spielberg’s attempts to inject a fake story with a fake father-and-son melodrama, with surrogate dad Hanks and real dad Walken. The latter is fine, the former is not as nauseating as usual but he is still a pain.

The movie was there so I watched it. I won’t be doing so again.

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Aug 08 2026
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Art, Cinema, Film, Movie

The Fifth Element (1997).

Another sensommer viewing of this marvellously mental movie (accidental alliteration).

It exists entirely within its own orbit and every frankly daft facet of it works because it’s congruent with the overriding narrative of stylised stupidity.

A feast for the eyes, the ears, … maybe not the brain when Chris Tucker is screaming. There is not a dull moment in this fervidly imaginative slice of peak Luc Besson, the pioneer of cinéma du look.

And Eric Serra should have done more film scores.

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Aug 05 2026
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Art, Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies

The Odyssey (2026).

Some movies are event movies, such is the dearth of auteur cinema on the big screen today. Christopher Nolan, for better or worse, might just be the last director making epic blockbusters who is able to inject them with any kind of personal stamp and aesthetic idiosyncrasies. 

The Odyssey (2026) is, I am relieved to write, mostly pretty fucking awesome and a technical marvel. The only gripe I have is that the underwhelming denouement consists of the generic battle-infused run-of-the-mill crawl to the finish line that characterises hundreds of these flicks. 

That aside, the good stuff is fabulous, the episodic fantastical elements more then mere monster-of-the-week subplots, instead seamlessly embedded within the recognisable reality of a historical fiction, with its director’s preoccupation with time and fate.

And how does one top Brian Cox’s riotously unhinged Agamemnon in Troy (2004)? You go the opposite way and have him as a mute, full armour-clad beast the size of a Klitschko brother, even his warrior satraps – Odysseus included – quivering at his presence.

And Sleaze of the Year award goes to Robert Pattinson. I read that he based his performance on the redoubtable James Woods as Lester Diamond in Casino (1995). What an off-kilter but apt tribute. 

The Odyssey is the best version of Nolan. 

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Aug 04 2026
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Art, Cinema, Film

Be Cool (2005).

Painful and embarrassing, this is the very definition of one of those movies where no one ever told the people making it some home truths, namely that they were making an epic spectacle … of themselves.

The lack of self-awareness on display is mental.

A truly shocking movie in its awfulness, it’s not cool. It’s frankly uncool.

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Jul 24 2026
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Art, Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

The Dogs of War (1980).

Walken doesn’t need to explain anything in this one – why should you have an insight into his inner sanctum? He plays chess and that’s all you need to know. He’s an extremely cool lad, even when channelling his evident PTSD through some heavy weaponry in the fictional state of … Zangaro. No-one can do haunted like this actor, yet stay seemingly aloof and in control at the same time. The movie has a clinical, procedural quality about it, that Day of the Jackal (1973) disciplined narrative. The similarity is not a coincidence (Frederick Forsyth).

Fabulous film and it should be more … out there.

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Jul 17 2026
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Art, Cinema, Crime, Film, Uncategorized

Snake Eyes (1998).

After a grand opening sequence shot that showcases all of Brian De Palma’s predilection/fetish for needless aesthetics with an absence of characterisation or an acknowledgement of any world outside his own wee wanky technical exercises, this descends into a non-movie student project.

Apologies for the length of that sentence.

The most intriguing aspect of this legit pile of crap is that the excellent character actor Kevin Dunn is in it and interacts with a character named ‘Kevin Dunne’ played by Gary Sinise. But once again this is De Palma being all clever and self-referential instead of crafting a story.

Avoid.

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