Category Archives: Cinema

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991).

How to describe Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) to someone yet to have ‘the experience’ – it’s nuts.

Kevin Costner is in it with a receding hairline/mullet combo. He leads a gang of Midlands-based Bolsheviks with American accents who spend their time chilling in Sherwood Forest and robbing successful people of their hard-earned cash – it’s an unintentional allegory.

Morgan Freeman is also in it, and he seems to have adopted an accent that’s straight outta Cool Runnings (1994). The best bit of the yarn is when they get from Dover to Nottingham, Alan Rickman’s domain, via Hadrian’s Wall.

It’s an insane movie and looks like it was made merely to test whether an insane movie could be a success.

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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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Trading Places (1983).

A comedy with … you know, wits … that even has a bit of a brain. This was 1983, though, when you were allotted a bit of ‘lolz’.

This is a scattershot sociological satire (accidental alliteration), The Prince and the Pauper (1881) meets a raucous, but never annoying Eddie Murphy. The lad was on fire back then, a veritable motormouth meteor on stage and screen.

I ran out of metaphors.

There are spooky harbingers here: one’s dependence upon financial institutions, and how easy one can be ‘cut off’ from access to ‘legit’ money, the speed of the downfall from mansion to slum dwelling.

I found some of it quite disturbing in its foreboding, and the unfunny periods at least have these serious elements.

Top movie.

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They Live (1988).

John Carpenter – and what happened to him? – is almost a student filmmaker with a broad canvas. He makes, or made as he’s seemingly retired from the director’s chair, entirely self-contained movies that are immediately identifiable in their style, and it goes without saying but I’ll say it, anyway – the music. He defines the B-movie and I could never imagine him making anything outside the parameters of the genre.

This is a good one. The social commentary and allegorical play on industrial decline isn’t exactly subtle, but it doesn’t matter. Piper’s sunglasses revealing pernicious subliminal content disseminated by the powers that be – I was almost expecting a Marshall McLuhan cameo, à la Annie Hall (1977).

Top movie. Daft, but with chuckles.

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Khartoum (1966). Why does this exist?

I mean, just look at Laurence Olivier.

What were they thinking? What was he thinking? Were they thinking?

I lasted 14 minutes.

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I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead (2003).

Atmospheric, moody, and highly promising. For the first 15 mins.

Then it’s just a series of badly acted conversations. And Clive Owen is a zombie. For no reason. What else? The dialogue is dire and horrible to listen to. A thriller devoid of thrills, this was a fucking drag.

The entire movie is pointless.

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Blue Velvet (1986).

How to describe this truly spellbinding picture without reeling off every platitude there is?

It’s a movie that is entirely relatable and in the ‘real world’, yet is so divorced from conventional narrative it may as well be non-cinema.

It’s a new kind of artform.

Is that cliché enough?

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Fences (2016)

In what is for the most part The Denzel Show, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a character in a movie talk so much as this garrulous, perpetually pished bit of rough. A wonderful script laden with occasionally profound insights and asides, it’s another tour de force from Denzel.

You’re in the presence of greatness.

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Napoleon (2023). It’s worse the second time.

I gave it another bash.

I lasted 28 minutes.

It’s like a movie that has been concocted from the Earth’s crust and skipped the Dinosaurs and is somehow with us.

It’s a rotten motion picture.

Bye for now.

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A Complete Unknown (2024).

A perfectly reasonable and noble biopic, so totally in awe of its subject that I lost interest and inevitably pulled the plug due to how tame and by the numbers it was.

But that hour wasn’t torture; I spent most of it on the topic’s Wikipedia entry, a few mumbling song renditions in the background.

So, thanks for the wee boost, for I can now hold a five-minute conversation about Bob Dylan.

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