Sometimes I like to put a filter on my iPhone and pretend I’m shooting an album cover for an indie band.
Category Archives: Britain
St James Quarter.
I’ve seen worse, but I’ve seen better. In all honesty, I just miss the stinking thing which signposted the gateway to Leith. Same shops, but fancier. Welcome to Hell.
Munich – The Edge of War (2021). What a dire experience this waste of a movie is.
I was a bit dubious of this because it’s a British production about WWII, which are typically dull, mannered, mawkish, and entirely made-for-TV fare. It saddens me to report that Munich is all of the above and worse. It’s fucking atrocious. I don’t know where the tendency came from to depict these world-historical events from the POVs of superfluous (and entirely made up) secondary characters, but it’s vexing. Maybe just make a movie involving the actual statesmen, nah? This pointless, drama school-level acted show even has its forgettable range of third-wheels hog the screen time.
The screenplay is annoying to the max, every line of dialogue straight out of an alleged quote stemming from an alleged secondary source. One accidental highlight: I was taken aback by a smug-as-fuck SS character who appeared to be doing a very bad impersonation of the August Diehl bad boy from Inglorious Basterds (2009) – he had his voice and mannerisms and looked like him a decade on. It’s a truly embarrassing copycat acting job. And then I realised it was actually him. It’s the only what-the-hell and almost interesting moment of a placid and pointless excursion into revisionism.
Trash. But even cruddier than your usual sort because the topic is important. I’ve read a few reviews and it’s highly regarded, with a whopping 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. What are these critics on?
Jules et Jim (1962) is on.
I’d like to think that the truly great François Truffaut would be disgusted with this sneaky snap I took from behind a bus window, a wee ‘Ned’ at the back of the vessel screaming into his mobile the pros of beating a rival thug into a “fuckin’ bin”.
The Gentlemen (2019).
This is Guy Ritchie but Ritchie without most of the silliness, as in it’s silly but less silly than his usual fare. It’s actually quite entertaining, and at least shows some interest in how crime works, its structures and ins and outs. It’s also quite accurate in its depiction of gentry and their stately manors, and the lengths they will go to maintain their country estates. Additionally, there aren’t many Jack the Lads loitering about the frame, a standard Ritchie annoyance.
The movie peters out but it’s a not entirely wasted 90 minutes. There are a few grisly scenes which capture the omniscience today of horrifying YouTube videos luxuriating in street violence, and the movie builds to the extent that you wait for a deus ex machina but unfortunately it never happens, which is kind of irritating because you’re expecting an audacious twist.
Matthew McConaughey is excellent as always, and there are lots of bunnets, a.k.a. flat caps. I like bunnets.
Worth a bash.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 