Category Archives: Cinema

May 02 2021
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Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized, Vietnam

I hated The Deer Hunter (1978) so much.

It’s so unnecessarily long-winded and frankly pointless.

I’m struggling to think of a more eclectic display of moronic and wholly unsympathetic characters in a motion picture. Everything about them is annoying; they are smug, boring, stupid, and generally just excruciating. It’s universally described in the reviews of the time as being “epic”. This consists of a few wide-angle shots of mountain landscapes in order to paper over thin characterisation; mountains act as filler.

Yet despite occasional David Lean pretensions it’s so inept from a framing perspective. Every scene is astonishingly horrible to look at, an ugly beast shot with all the artistry of a severely undisciplined student movie; there is no syntax to scenes or reason behind shot decisions. It’s a fucking mess. Vietnam has never looked so anonymous. What else? The score pissed me off. It screams of folk feeling sorry for themselves. Which is the essence of the film.

As for the famous Russian Roulette scene – who cares?

I don’t.

Absolute shite.

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Apr 28 2021
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Art, Cinema, Film, Movie, Uncategorized

Starship Troopers (1997) is an absolute belter.

It’s hilarious satire, and so smartly done. It’s also damn entertaining. And it hasn’t aged a bit.

It’s in fact way ahead of its time. The lunacy of some of the reviews of 1997. These idiotic ‘critics’ didn’t seem to grasp that everything about the movie is a joke, a piss-take, a borderline comedy. The characters are straight out of a Nazi propaganda piece, and they have legit no redeeming features. But you still watch it for their complete lack of self-awareness.

And the carnage. I like proper carnage.

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Apr 24 2021
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Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized, World War Two, WWII

The English Patient (1996) is just total crap.

I had to slap myself by the end of this because I once, for reasons beyond any understanding of my own psyche, thought it was brilliant. It’s not. It’s fucking dire. It’s SO boring. Everything about it is boring. The characters are boring. The story is boring. It even makes WWII boring. Nothing in it is even worth telling. Almost everyone on display is an imbecile; Juliette Binoche is the only one with a personality.

I don’t get the central romance on display. The Katharine character (if you can call her that) is just so … BORING. There is literally nothing about her worth bothering with because she is a cure for insomnia. And I lost track of how many times the director had to pull out a plane crash or a plane being shot in order to advance the plot. It infuriated me. Is this nonsense in the book? It swept the awards in 1996. The voters must have all been on drugs.

I must have been on drugs when I watched this a decade ago and thought it a cracker. There’s no other explanation.

Pile of shite.

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Apr 20 2021
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Art, Cinema, Film, Movie, Uncategorized

The Grey (2011) is fabulous.

I’ve read a few sneering reviews from snooty film critics taking umbrage at the movie’s existential pretensions. I don’t get where they’re coming from; if you’re being stalked and mauled by a pack of sociopathic wolves I think you’d start to think about your existence. Anyway, it’s a thrilling movie. There’s no comedy or irony or a memorable quote; what it does is action and does it with aplomb. It’s about willpower and survival. And Liam fighting wolves. That’s it.

And there’s nothing wrong with that.

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Apr 18 2021
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Art, Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

Goldeneye (1995) is the only 5/5 James Bond movie.

Because it’s not just a Bond film. It’s actually about something other than tropes and ticking boxes. I often hear the mantra, “Folk only love it because it ties in with the N64 game.” It’s a decent proposition for an argument but misses the point – the game is also amazing yet they don’t depend on each other.

Goldeneye (1995) is so well crafted, so correctly paced, so … frankly strange. The Eric Serra score is implausible yet it somehow works. Perhaps the gargantuan gap (world events) between 1989 and 1995 was for the best, because this picture at times even becomes about that End of History theme. And the villain is the only one you can take seriously in the entire cannon of Bonds. Everything 006 does seems plausible and he brings out the best in 007.

It’s a masterpiece.

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Apr 14 2021
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Cinema, Crime, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

Lethal Weapon 4 (1998) is the best way to end them.

A thrilling series comes to its end. The Lethal Weapon movies were just so good at balancing the action and the comedy, and the four of them represent the peak of the buddy-cop movie. This is the most fitting finale that they could have come up with; it winds the series down perfectly.

These are actual characters you know and have grown up with. They are strikingly real and the last chapter especially doesn’t downplay their ageing and the toils of time.

And to the epic fight scenes. It’s an overused saying that (‘EPIC’) but these really are. That fight to the death with Jet Li is shit-your-pants time.

There is no point making a fifth one; it would just waste the legacy.

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Apr 08 2021
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Architecture, Art, Cinema, Crime, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized, United States

To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) is AWESOME.

An introduction to Wang Chung could not be scripted, but here we all are. It’s such a great movie to the extent that I am impressed with the soundtrack; the music choices are usually embarrassing with these pictures and I suppose the ’80s are mostly like that. Manhunter (1986) springs to mind as an example, a film that approaches implosion through the worst possible jukebox selections.

This oozes seductive style, Los Angeles a sun-blitzed glossy furnace of cops and criminals. Friedkin has, in spite of his occasional forays into turkeys, always understood the need to carve out a credible world for the narrative and impose a vision on the environment. So few directors appear to care for how their movies look; they are merely the point-and-shoot variety. This bloke, though, has a handle on the material. And the detail without being overbearing.

And the car chase in the film is another rarity; like Friedkin’s own The French Connection (1971), it’s backed up by actual character motivation. Apparently, one of the most recent Fast & Furious … things raked in a billion. The production cast and crew shut down half of Edinburgh a few years back with their silly antics. It will no doubt make a fortune, yet To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) recouped a pittance.

Audiences know nothing.

Further reading/viewing:

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/to-live-and-die-in-la-1985

https://thespool.net/reviews/movies/to-live-and-die-in-la-anniversary/
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Apr 01 2021
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Art, Cinema, Crime, Film, Uncategorized, United States

Get Shorty (1995). Not bad at all.

The official narrative is that Get Shorty (1995) fits into the vanguard of that John Travolta mid-’90s comeback which lasted all the way until Battlefield Earth (2000). I’ve never seen the latter but hear it’s atrocious; it’s on my list.

Get Shorty is wildly entertaining, if not especially revelatory about its subject matter, nor does it offer anything new. It’s an exercise in style and the merits of characterisation, amusing without being particularly laugh-out-loud funny. Most of the fun derives from watching Chili Palmer charm his way into the movie business and outwit everyone else. He doesn’t really know what he’s doing but appears to. There’s a lot to be said for that.

And Gene Hackman, once again, is superb. He really wasn’t (he’s apparently retired now) afraid to play the ‘loser type’ despite being your definition of the macho male. It’s almost uncomfortable witnessing his antics here, especially his attempts to play the hard man to Dennis Farina’s Miami mobster.

We miss you, Gene.

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Mar 26 2021
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Art, Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Photography, Technology, Uncategorized

Robin Williams is so creepy in One Hour Photo (2002) it’s like he never came from comedy.

And this is disturbing – back in the olden days when you took photos to Boots to be developed there will have been someone like Seymour “Sy” Parrish (Williams’ protagonist) inspecting your every shot, vicariously living his (it’s usually a creepy bloke) life through yours. I read a story years ago about some wee creep phoning the cops because he spotted a cannabis plant in the backdrop of a photo. How dignified.

Robin Williams is the business. We all knew he was hilarious yet his ‘serious roles’ really do demonstrate that he was an actor of the highest calibre, though comedy is acting too. He was in Christopher Nolan’s Insomnia (2002) in the same year and he’s creepy as fuck in that as well. It was a creepy year.

The word of the day is ‘creepy’.

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Mar 13 2021
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Art, Britain, Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, United Kingdom, World War Two, WWII

The Eagle Has Landed (1976) is a middling affair.

You standard old-fashioned wartime thriller which acts as a serviceable but inferior companion piece to The Day of the Jackal (1973), you’re aware of the outcome but the suspense is in getting there. Unfortunately, the exposition in this one is intriguing enough but by the halfway point it’s a snore. And then Larry Hagman appears as an inexperienced American colonel and it descends into silly comedy which I suspect today wouldn’t survive a pre-production script cull; we all know assassination attempts are no laughing matter.

Thank the heavens for Donald Sutherland. This is another case of Donald Sutherland being hired because only he can play a Donald Sutherland type. He’s fabulously nuts in everything and his career appears to be a personal mission in walking off with the movie. His supporting roles always suppose a spin-off picture with him at the fore. He even made the stinker that is Virus (1999) almost bearable.

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