Terrifying scenes the other evening. It all came flooding back (no pun intended). This was some movie back in the day. And like most of these Japanese and South Korean horrors from the noughties, it was subject to an inferior American remake.
They need to stop doing this because they are still doing it.
Bob Dylan. Not my kind of music. I go for the atmospherics and the bangin’ beats; take me back to the Sensation White Amsterdam era of alcopops and Ajax tops.
I have seen the movie Vanilla Sky (2001) 16 times, though. I know every single facet about the feature and WHY it is incredible yet folk still slate it. Some plebs just hate Tom Cruise; I think he is the best. He puts his all into everything and clearly loves his life. He also gets stick for the Scientology thing, as if every other religion isn’t insane.
Anyway, an album cover from something from Bob Dylan features in the film. I have never listened to the album and never will but it’s a belter of a photo. I feel about Bob Dylan as some do Tom Cruise.
I like to frequent this little Anthony Burgess habitat at least once a year to remind me of one of the greatest movies ever put on celluloid. When I depart I say to myself, “I was cured alright.”
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
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
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.
It may not have the character-driven intricacies (and intensity) of Heat (1995) or The Insider (1999), but this is a technically perfect cops-and-robbers flick, pure genre. It takes itself so seriously; indeed, on this recent viewing I did not detect a single comedic moment or anything even approaching irony.
Once again, Mann displays bizarre music choices; why on earth would anyone use Audioslave/Chris Cornell in a movie? It works here, though, something one can not say for Casino Royale (2006).
It’s all about the transcendental moments. Any other director wouldn’t feature the speedboat scene at all but Mann turns it into the movie’s centrepiece. It’s here that Farrell’s Sonny Crockett illustrates everything Mann thinks a … man should be. I imagine the filmmaker would be ashamed at the sight of a grown man crying.
As visual experiences go, the movie is dynamite, action cinema as art. Mann has a thing for dance sequences; here they supplant the need for dialogue. And it doesn’t matter because they are so … cinematic.
And I’ve never seen the TV show Miami Vice so I have no idea how this movie relates to it. Am I missing anything?
Further reading/viewing:
https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/miami-vice-review/
This is the last good Coppola movie, the last in his oeuvre made on a grand scale with sumptuous visuals.
It was always one of those films that popped up at least once a year on British terrestrial TV, and I until recently (Netflix) last viewed it in Slovenia on a hotel TV whilst dribbling over beers and multipack crisps in another failed attempt to ingratiate myself with the local culture. Anyway, what I’m getting at is that the movie is everywhere, as omniscient as Lidl.
I have never given much thought for anything in the Dracula canon but I see the potential in the source material. This film could have been an absolute belter were it not for the unnecessary campiness, the ludicrous casting, and the frankly appalling screenplay replete with cringe dialogue and baffling character decisions. Anthony Hopkins is playing it all for laughs, Gary Oldman and Winona Ryder both appear bored shitless, and Keanu Reeves once again proves that an American should not under any circumstances attempt a British accent. It is high comedy whenever he speaks.
For all of that, however, it is a delight at times from a purely visual standpoint. It just looks so lovely, every special effect and bit of camera trickery a throwback to early cinema. Indeed, the movie is better viewed on mute. What a wasted opportunity.
And I never even knew this SNES game existed until yesterday:
Further reading/viewing:
https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/bram-stoker-dracula-review/
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/bram-stokers-dracula-1992
