Even when I was watching it I was consumed with 100% hatred.
Why does it exist? Like, what? I was lost for words at times. A near scene-for-scene, shot-for-shot remake of a movie that set a new benchmark for cinema. Psycho (1960) isn’t about horror; it’s an exercise in film syntax and narrative. The shower scene is a joke. I find the whole thing totally hilarious. It’s the most ‘self-aware’ film of all time.
This Gus Van Sant bloke doesn’t get it. I cannot stand his films – they are weak, preachy, stylistically anonymous – and I don’t wish to see one of his hideous endeavours ever again. I had a wee look at some of the contemporary reviews and this one had me howling: ‘Literary critic Camille Paglia commented that the only reason to watch it was “to see Anne Heche being assassinated”.’
She is just terrible. I mind she came out as a lesbian or something and then years later said she didn’t get roles because she ‘came out’ as a lesbian.
No one cares about your private life, pal. You just CAN’T ACT!
I can barely remember even seeing this before but I’m sure I would have remembered how great it is … so I suppose I hadn’t seen it before.
What a hoot! It’s a pastiche of cheese so well put together it transcends cheese and elevates itself way into the spheres above cheese. It’s what one deems a self-aware movie – it knows exactly what it is and that’s the foundation. The visuals and set design could have been absolute gash but for some reason they are not. The cartoon-like quality to them serves to amplify the admittedly silly story, but that’s what it’s all about. Not many films today have a sense of ‘world’ about them, as in a universe onscreen in which the environment and the backdrop actually means something and has a relationship, and vice-versa, with the characters. This is how fantasy should be done.
It has the psychedelic feel of a Pink Floyd music video, and for almost the entire duration I thought it was Roger Waters and chums on soundtrack duties. It turned out to be Queen. I don’t like Queen at all. But I liked them here. And Mike Hodges directed this cracker and Get Carter (1970)? I did not know this.
I was in my relative infancy when this shitstorm happened and I still struggle putting it together in 2021. In essence, a lot of greedy folk got very greedy and fucked the whole economic foundations of the world, and governments in almost every country – mostly your alleged left-wing or centre parties trying to get big business on their sides – let it happen.
The setting is clearly Lehman Brothers but I think it’s a bit too kind on them as there are folk in this, boardroom members, with consciences, albeit they still tow the line. It’s riveting drama, a movie with such tense exchanges they are gripping even if you don’t understand what the characters are referring to. You’d need a glossary at times if it weren’t for the Zachary Quinto character who thankfully acts as a conduit to the financial layman amongst us.
There are few histrionics, mainly just rational, coldly logical decisions based on the almighty $ and it’s chilling. You get the scene with the cleaner in the lift oblivious to how the blokes in the foreground are about to crash the system and somewhere down the line she is going to get shafted, i.e., end up paying for it, yet she did her job. It’s never polemical in the Oliver Stone sense, and it isn’t a stylistically razzmatazz event. And it’s Kevin Spacey’s last great film role. He is pure Spacey here and I’m not going to get into the legal stuff because I … will, like all filmgoers, never know the facts. But it’s a shame he departed.
Trying to relate this to a reality I can understand: this Irishman living in the States and his rant for the ages.
Shockingly (for me as I’ve catalogued most of these ’80s classics) I’d never seen this until last week. It could be made today, that’s how ‘undated’ it is. What an experience – genuinely a hoot and wholly relatable. We’ve all been stuck next to some annoying blabbermouth on what seems like a never-ending journey into the abyss. And who can’t relate to a transportation fiasco.
It’s also a subtle portrayal of class, the difficulties of breaking barriers, and ultimately and reluctantly working together to get where you need to be. A life lesson! This should be screened at office training days or something.
One scene came out of nowhere in its profanity, and it’s quite the spectacle seeing Steve Martin finally crack. He wasn’t going to intimate that rental agent, but he did a wonderful job in articulating the pain of dealing these sorts.
A truly ghastly, thoroughly horrible movie that I finally put myself through. I’d heard ominous things about it but figured it couldnt be that bad. Oh my, it’s fucking dire, an absolute train wreck of a film. Let me try and explain why in the shortest time possible: it’s shite. It consists entirely of schematic conversations without a modicum of interest or anything to do with the plot even on a metaphorical level. It takes itself way too seriously to the extent that even the occasional splatter of violence comes across as desperately pretentious.
Nothing in it made any sense and yet with every scene I could smell the smugness on display; I got the feeling that the cast thought they were in a peak Tarantino. So boring, so without merit, so painful to watch. Give me those actors and a mere £200,000 and I will make you a better film.
A few folk I know have said something along the lines of, “Oh, it’s Cormac McCarthy.” I have no idea who he is (I don’t read much fiction) but I can assure you that in the screenwriting realm he is on this display a talentless fellow who probably lives in a log cabin just for the existential kudos. And what in the hell happened to Ridley Scott? He seems to be dedicating himself to garbage these days. Someone needs to write him a decent script.
I hated this movie so much. It’s the worst I’ve seen in a LONG TIME.
This film is pretty much unique in its mastery of tone, a sense that you really don’t know whether it’s a drama or a comedy or where it’s going – it’s almost two or three genres in one and it’s informative to read the director’s quote about how they managed to achieve this no small feat: ‘With Grosse Pointe Blank I shot three movies simultaneously. We shot the script as written, we shot a mildly understated version, and we shot a completely over-the-top version, which usually was what was used.’
There’s a sweeping theme here of trying to recapture something that was never really there in the first place, the most thoughtful treatment of nostalgia ever to feature in what is ostensibly a comedy with gunfights. Only a peak John Cusack – the only ’80s geek to graduate to the postmodern – could carry it off. And as High School reunions go, ‘Mirror in the Bathroom’ should accompany each event:
A flawless movie. Even Dan Aykroyd is great in it and I generally cannot stand the lad.
I saw this in the cinema when it came out and thought it amusing but couldn’t quite articulate why. Now I get it: you’re just laughing at these ‘characters’ and how stupid they are. I don’t find it funny to laugh at this. Almost every scene is an extended shot of our aloof protagonist doing something unusual and not being aware of it. That’s about it. Another one of these self-consciously ‘quirky’ movies about absolutely nothing – celebrating geekdom is not a subject matter – that goes quite literally nowhere. And I hate Jamiroquai.
Another gem from yesteryear best stayed away from, Willow (1988) is embarrassing at times. There’s so much wrong going on, from a village of midgets to Val Kilmer in a dress to the ropy special effects to the overbearing James Horner score which he’s regurgitated for decades. It’s so lethargically paced, badly scripted and ultimately derivative that I’m even questioning the sanity of … myself for once thinking it a decent way to spend two hours.
The characters are some of the most thinly drawn I’ve seen, and so too is the realm or kingdom they inhabit. It’s just lakes and hills and a few castles. Boring. Shockingly, it’s a PG-certificated film. I find this rather beguiling as the violence on display is way too much for the little ones (kids, not midgets). There is one thing to recommend, though: Val Kilmer briefly metamorphoses into a pig.
I’ve never seen it in the cinema, which is a personal and public tragedy considering the following have been witnessed to a munching of popcorn and the intake of a sneaked-in batch of Blue WKDs: a Transformers movie, a crime-against-humanity Predator crapper, Cuba Gooding Jr. looking after kids, the list goes on and on.
The weirdest protagonist to ever feature in a movie of this kind. For 1962 it’s crazy the stuff on display – his sadomasochism and homosexual leanings, the rampant ego for a hero, his being a conduit for others’ ambitions, a conflicted symbol of British Imperialism, a puppet and a master. You have to read a bit about the context of the depicted period and ’60s Britain to understand the movie beyond its sheer scope and spectacle, the beauty of every frame. It’s also one of the few examples of the great man theory of history actually being given the full treatment. This bloke was certainly someone special yet David Lean in no way kowtows to the legend.
There is not a single female character because there simply weren’t any in the story. These days you’d have a token love interest or a signposted lesbian (or whatever) operating field artillery from the back of a camel. It’s what separates then from now. The insertion of silly politics into storytelling will be the death knell of this genre. I also imagine today we’d be subjected to a CGI bonanza replete with a script dumber than ….Wait a minute, Peter O’Toole was in Troy (2004) and that horrible film pretty much defines the post-Gladiator (2000) historical epic barren landscape.
This one-of-a-kind experience, though, can’t even be emulated. It’s a journey, a narrative about a hundred different things, even stuff you project onto by convincing yourself that’s what that scene means. For me, it’s always been about losing your marbles in an unfamiliar land and taking it back home with you for the banter and the scrapbook.
My favourite scene: the wondrous Claude Rains running his pinky across the table to inspect the dust on it. It’s so subtle and hilarious and just incredible. I am praying for a cinema release. The intermission, that bonkers sequence of black with Maurice Jarre’s bombastic score from the outer regions of audacity, that’s where I’ll sip my Blue WKD.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 