Sean Bean is the villain. And he dies. This isn’t even a spoiler as it’s a given, for we are in the ’90s and this Mr. Bean was the go-to bad boy when a thriller needed a bit of Sheffield rough.
He’s actually okay in this, despite his wandering accent.
But Harrison Ford looks bored as hell. Everyone else looks bored. The Irish Peace Process looks bored.
I was also bored.
Boring movie.
I watched this abomination of a movie because someone (British) said “blank cheque” on the bus, but that’s by the by.
The viewing was a major mistake, for this was definitely one of the worst nostalgia trips I’ve subjected myself to.
Horrible little film.
The master of the slow zoom and the overlapping conversation, frequently several happening at once, Robert Altman’s very amusing, freewheeling thriller is half satire, a director taking the absolute piss and slandering his own environment.
It’s peerless entertainment and one of his most enduring works.
Thank you, IMDB. This has bothered me for decades:
It’s definitely not Scream (1996). It’s certainly not I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997). It’s not even Cherry Falls (1999). This is not good in any way, as derivative and formulaic as they come, a copycat slasher from the late ’90s churn-them-out age. These pictures are meant to scary, or at least attempt to purport to be. This mess isn’t, but remains a peculiarity because tripe like this was once made. And continues to be shat out in great buckets.
The movie’s risible/mad premise is that all these students of a certain university campus sit around chatting constantly about urban legends in a movie called Urban Legend, even discussing urban legends with a class lecturer who looks scarily like Freddy Krueger. How postmodern! With all the urban legend-inspired murders of thoroughly stabbable ‘characters’ played by C-list irritants, there isn’t time for anything else; not a single conversation in this pointless morsel of trash alludes to the wider world, a reality outside of their wee sorority of … urban legends.
Regrettably, Brad Dourif stutters up regurgitating his Billy Bibbit act from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975). Weird.
I hate urban legends but I hated this movie more.
With the films of Alan J. Pakula, The Conversation (1974) sits right in the middle of Watergate as a dark inspiration, and you couldn’t get a more clinical, claustrophobic portrait of paranoia.
Hackman is masterful. His character’s job and the perfectionism he demands is his entire life, and once he makes mistakes, succumbing to emotions that compromise his skills, he is at a loss, a petrified wreck, playing his saxophone in a torn-to-pieces-apartment.
It’s one of Coppola’s few original scripts and one wonders at the output if he did more of that. There is so much going on in this film, from the moody low-key jazz score to the extraordinary sound design, and it’s a movie obsessed with the peculiarities of its era.
The twist ending is just shocking and I must confess I never saw it coming.
And Harrison Ford is in it.
How this lad is somehow an ‘actor’ will never cease to beguile me.
Bye for now.
First viewing after years of hearing the most scathing reviews, and they’re not wrong.
I thought Brian De Palma was meant to engulf daft, badly scripted projects with his patented style; whatever happened, the movie is that of visual neglect, as anonymous as the work of the next hack.
I didn’t get any of it. Was it satire? Was it meant to be funny? Was there an underlying point to anything?
I didn’t believe a moment of the picture and even the title vexed me.
It’s as shite as they say, and Tom Hanks is as awful here as he has been anywhere else.
Rubbish.
Lots of fun in this sequel, which ramps up the mayhem in a fairly inventive way.
In this tired, post-Taken (2008) period of the genre, you don’t really expect much beyond heads (among other body parts) being smashed, but it had some depth to it. I was reminded of A History of Violence (2005) in the lad’s inability to escape the ‘sins’ of the past, and that you can’t deny your true nature when confronted with the wrong ‘uns. And the redoubtable John Ortiz features – one of the best character actors out there.
Unfortunately, Sharon Stone was mostly annoying in a limp, unconvincing turn as a demented big momma crime lord, but I suppose that’s the point.
You’re rooting for Saul Goodman to tear her a new one.
This is what it’s all about.
A work of pure cinema with a mastery of style, I felt I was in the presence of Bernardo Bertolucci, Stanley Kubrick, and Martin Scorsese all at once.
Even the opening credits are some of the most enthralling I’ve seen; their arrival is unexpected, their form unorthodox in this monumental drama. It feels like a throwback to a time when a film was an event, but this marries the grandiose with the human element, searing, mind-blowing images sans any spaceships or capes.
The air of dread that simmers in this magnificent work is startling. You’re aware it’s all building to an unfathomable crescendo but can’t look away.
It’s always a privilege to watch a fucking amazing film.
This is one of them, privilege and film.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 