Bob Hoskins as the criminal parvenu Harold Shand in The Long Good Friday (1980).
A “testicle on legs,” as Pauline Kael once wrote of the lad. An extraordinary performance from a bloke who never gave a bad one despite not a single acting class in his life. He was a born thespian.
Bob Hoskins was quality – even in a Mario Bros. movie.
‘The Yanks love snobbery. They really feel they’ve arrived in England if the upper class treats ’em like shit.’
An expertly put together drip-feed narrative and an atmosphere from the world of peak Michael Mann keeps this enthralling to the very end, the gloom and the whispers working where most movies flounder. It demands patience and it is rewarded. A film that respects the concentration span of its audience is something to be revered these days. That, and the captivating performances. Can Joel Edgerton ever supply us with a bad one?
And what is it with Sean Harris? He is your go-to actor if one requires a creep, a bad boy, or just your general weirdo. Would love to see him in a whimsical romantic comedy.
Get this seen.
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Saw this years ago, a pal lending me it on an ex-rental VHS. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but viewing today, seeing it within the prism of the Indian summer of Jack’s film career, it’s given extra significance, the decade-long swansong exhibiting his craft and cementing his legacy.
The movie sets a grim and melancholic tone straight away, a scene of Jack on his retirement day looking forlornly out of his office window at a bloke on a zimmer, the room adorned with photographs of him in his heyday.
The film carries an air of convincing menace, the isolation of the milieu matching that of the character, the bloke always correct in his hunches but clearly losing his marbles. It’s not exactly an uplifting experience, but if you fancy dwelling in depression for two hours, this is the one for you.
Great.
The concept is a bit better than the end product but still, this is a movie deserved of revisiting from time to time, despite the inevitable thriller elements that take over towards the denouement. It’s an intriguing premise, what you can achieve when you reduce thinking to its salient elements and get rid of the background noise.
It excels in its exposition and depiction of the cutthroat financial arena as a den of thieves with half of them on some variation of the gear (NZT-48). I hear it got adapted into a TV spin-off that was cancelled after a season, which sounds about right. There’s only so much you can squeeze out of the story.
But De Niro is a gift in this. He always is.
“Don’t make me your competition.”
The first one I recall was a highly entertaining bit of hokum, a Cluedo for the big (small) screen, but a trilogy of them?
The positives: Dave Bautista is a rarity, a wrestler who can act, Ed Norton is flawless as always, and Craig is perfectly fine in the role. He’s better suited (no pun intended) to this fare than Bond. He’s a camp Columbo and great at it.
I cannot stand the term ‘disrupter’. Imagine calling yourself that. These fuckers get deservedly mocked here.
Negatives: I had to watch it over the course of three days, such was my complete indifference to any of these ‘disrupters’ and any crime committed. It’s boring and I was bored.
And I don’t know who Elon Musk is. True story.
It’s beyond hilarious and it would not be made today; there would be riots in the streets. And the sad thing is that this ‘statement’ is true.
It’s a movie so funny, it knows it’s funny and takes the piss out of how funny it is.
It’s pointless. It’s boring. It’s a waste of your time.
Another bit of rubbish.
Brutalist and utopia are never two words to be used in the same sentence without negative connotations, but it’s a recurring theme with these building projects. We did, however, experience the “aesthetically pleasing” luxuries of A Clockwork Orange (1971) because of these architectural faux pas.
Once again: “As we walked along the flatblock marina, I was calm on the outside but thinking all the time. So now it was to be Georgie the General, saying what we should do, and what not to do, and Dim as his mindless, grinning bulldog. But, suddenly, I viddied that thinking was for the gloopy ones, and that the oomny ones used like inspiration and what Bog sends. For now it was lovely music that came to my aid. There was a window open, with a stereo on, and I viddied right at once what to do.”
It’s hard to define Nolan’s style – he goes epic and wide-angle when the moment demands it, but mostly his syntax is economical and unobtrusive, non-showy. It almost always works because you’re drawn into the intricacies of the story.
He has a thing for subject matter. Like the polymath Kubrick, you get the impression he’s autodidactically researched himself into a master of the topic. Memento (2000) defines Nolan at his very best. Immediately after watching I went on the usual internet binge. He seems to know most of his shit.
The non-linear structure works to a tee because it makes sense. The complexities of the character and the realisation that he’s not some naive rookie vigilante are revealed so well you’d be forgiven for thinking this is the director’s 10th venture into movie making.
And Joe Pantoliano is sublime. He always is.
What happened to him?
This is a who’s who of 1999 – Sarah Polley, Jay Mohr, Scott Wolf, and the loon film buff from Scream 2 (1997).
It’s a wee bit annoying that the characters don’t appear to be affected much by anything that happens but then the movie does exist in this enclosed Tarantino-World with its own parameters. I’ve also never even heard of supermarket employees living such ridiculous adventures. And it’s good to once again have a movie that reveals Las Vegas for what it is – a pointless mess of a city consisting of predators and losers.
Revelation: I never knew William Fichtner could do comedy. He’s understatedly very amusing, his “ulterior motive” confession capping off the most awkward Christmas dinner ever.
Like all Doug Liman films, it’s a brisk affair, unpredictable and with a purposeful style that never wavers.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 