Even operatic in moments, this is beyond the ridiculous and enters into the realm of the post-surreal. I suppose one could call it a treatise on acting. Or just a Cage-Fest.
It’s simply … the most Cage that Cage has ever been.
Which is a good thing.
The definite article annoys me. I don’t like it. At all. Anyway, the movie:
It’s all very well designed and shot. The music choices, from Nirvana to what sounds like a variation of ‘The Imperial March’ from The Empire Strikes Back (1980), are inspired, and a car chase respectfully lifted/stolen from To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) works as well as anything in the Batman canon.
You get to see the lad actually doing detective work, and the role of that nefarious news media we all know, think we need, and varyingly hate is given proper weight in the narrative. It drags a wee bit towards the end, but that’s to be expected with this fare. It’s … interesting. Not bad at all.
And Andy Serkis is a fabulous actor. He’ll most likely be canonised for Gollum and a raging gorilla, but he’s just as good as a human. Most actors are garbage yet succeed because of market forces. The bloke with the Gollum voice needs a leading role.
If Seagal can make it, Gollum can.
What a cracker this is!
Bill Pullman just disappeared for a decade and a half, but here he is in his prime, a remnant from the James Stewart acting school of nonchalance. He really should have graduated to the role of troubled leading man, a jaded cop or something.
One would deem this an archetypal neo-noir, but your femme fatale here is the protagonist for once. The multi-faceted, polymathic, boozing, smoking, shagging, utterly obscenely ridiculous Linda Fiorentino running rings around every idiot she meets.
Marry me?
We also have J.T. Walsh and his sleazy voice.
And a jazz soundtrack that doesn’t feel like a desperate bolt-on feature.
Riot of a film.
A well-acted shitter (Toni Collette is marvellous in everything) but this descended into farce after about 30 unexpectedly disturbing minutes – I thought this was meant to be one of those quirky coming-of-age dramedies which can be quite therapeutic on occasion. The horrific MacGuffin had me almost turning the show off, such was its realism and relevance. I give it some kudos for that.
Things got messy thereon, however, and I’m referring to the script. It wasn’t going anywhere and I was losing interest with every gnawingly predictable moment, a pile-on of scenes from other thrillers. By the second episode I was lost in the world of far superior stuff demanding a second viewing.
I pulled the plug.
I hope you follow my lead (see what I did there?).
Rubbish.
This is Guy Ritchie but Ritchie without most of the silliness, as in it’s silly but less silly than his usual fare. It’s actually quite entertaining, and at least shows some interest in how crime works, its structures and ins and outs. It’s also quite accurate in its depiction of gentry and their stately manors, and the lengths they will go to maintain their country estates. Additionally, there aren’t many Jack the Lads loitering about the frame, a standard Ritchie annoyance.
The movie peters out but it’s a not entirely wasted 90 minutes. There are a few grisly scenes which capture the omniscience today of horrifying YouTube videos luxuriating in street violence, and the movie builds to the extent that you wait for a deus ex machina but unfortunately it never happens, which is kind of irritating because you’re expecting an audacious twist.
Matthew McConaughey is excellent as always, and there are lots of bunnets, a.k.a. flat caps. I like bunnets.
Worth a bash.
Shockingly not shit and occasionally great, Villain (2020) isn’t a make-believe gangster movie with fake tough guys à la Guy Ritchie. It feels real. And that’s down to the understated performances and the atmosphere of simmering menace. And the fact it’s actually shot with competence and not edited to within an inch of its life.
Craig Fairbrass has been around for decades and I never thought him a bad actor and he does have a physical presence. But I never knew he had this in him. He’s not his usual direct-to-video/straight-to-streaming lead here; it’s a long-awaited starring role in a proper movie that isn’t balls. The Rise of the Footsoldier movies, and I’ve lost track of how many of them are kicking about now, have their moments of entertaining mindless carnage but enough is enough.
I’ve never seen the Richard Burton film from 1971 and I don’t think it has anything to do with this. I won’t bother myself with it.
He is nuts in this, a total riot, and clearly loving his epic life. Some scenes approach a scale of madness, and it’s almost a parody of a Jack Nicholson role, but not quite. The masterpiece revolves around the whims of this lad, every other character in awe of him. Even if he goes full-Joker, he still manages to imbue Frank Costello with pathos, and dare I say it, tragedy. You can’t picture anyone else in the role, and it’s a tragedy in itself that Scorsese and Nicholson only tangoed for the one motion picture.
Best scene? Jack impersonating a rat. A decent impression.
Edward Norton was the last zeitgeist of the 20th century.
It sounds risible but it isn’t if you look at the body of work – he somehow captured everything, hit every nail. It was most likely by accident; that or he was incredibly good at choosing projects. He’s not really hit those heights since but the talent remains. He just needs a director to take a chance on him.
This is a sometimes horrifying movie and there are moments you almost have to skip. The film is biblical in its capturing of the transitory nature of happiness. These very real characters are stuck there with no escape. But they have a few wee happy moments. A few. It’s a long time since 1998 but not really, in the sense that someone said to me the Berlin Wall has been down longer than it had been up. You couldn’t make a movie these days with Ed Norton emerging from a cathartic shower with a Big Bertha-sized swastika on his chest. Today, this narrative would have the compulsory strong-willed female, a disabled character, obvious life lessons, and a happy ending. Cinema today is essentially and only social politics.
Derek Vinyard is the pre-eminent example of charismatic authority – everything he says at the dinner table is incorrect but he captivates through the intensity of the delivery. Bloody hell, who got Best Actor (when the Oscars were relevant) over this lad?! I think it was that exasperating Italian bloke who thankfully disappeared from cinema after his Academy Award.
And what the fuck was happening with the director calling himself ‘Humpty Dumpty’? My research is limited.
He’s off the charts in this, he really is. It’s the most self-effacing acting job in years. He defines scumbag ‘junkie’ but by the end you realise the bloke does have a heart and everything he does is for a reason, though he usually fucks it up. It’s a redempton story and one of the best because it’s REAL.
That last fight scene is the damage. It’s drama and technique. And it actually happened.
Let the clips commence!
And the perfect movie. Disturbing, very clever, incredibly paced. Acting off the charts.
It defines ‘slow-burning drama’, and there is a joy in every scene with its peculiarities and what-you-think-are-pointless details. The explosions of violence are exactly that because they rarely happen but when they do they … do. It’s a noir that like the best of noirs becomes more than a PI job, ’30s Los Angeles the personal and the metaphorical. Best scene – J. J. “Jake” Gittes winding up the batty secretary to no end with his seemingly … pointless questions. Nothing in this movie is pointless.
It’s cliché to talk about masterful portraits of ugly capitalism. But this is one of them.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 