Category Archives: Crime

Bull (2021).

This was just your usual shite and defines what’s so crap about British cinema.

I hated every minute of it, from the moment the director films a moving car in the most irritating way. The writing was frankly ghastly, and I despise, again with the vehicle stuff, scenes of characters looking all serious in cars at night with classical music inevitably playing on the radio. It’s the worst kind of writing. It was all pathetic. There’s even a bit in here involving parents arguing about murder as they are gobbling down fish and chips. TV-quality acting as always; these folk should just stick to Corrie Street.

Another disgrace to cinema this. But check it out if you want some torture.

Next.

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One False Move (1992).

The cutting, the stark directness of the style, the quite astonishing framing, this is a movie that demands your attention. The violence is visceral and brutal, and you get the feeling that anything can escalate out of nothing, which it often does. The cast are are all on the top of their game, Billy Bob Thornton a revelation in one of his earlier roles, and the late Bill Paxton once again proving that he’s incapable of a bad performance. And who on Earth was the very bad lad with the tash? Why haven’t I seen this bloke Michael Beach in anything else?

It’s such an unpredictable drama and grips the whole time. It’s also a horrible movie to watch … but for the right reasons.

And there’s a visual reference to North by Northwest (1959) that is simply magical.

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Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998).

It’s some experience, and not just as a kaleidoscope, a who’s who of ‘lads’ from yesteryear. Worth a viewing aside from Vinnie Jones in his worst performance. One loses track of the sighing at his antics.

To steer clear of the alleged football player, the movie is a gem in places. Not much of a script, premise a bit desperate, but if you mute the pratfall happy-to-be-here frolics of half the ‘actors’ in half the scenes, the rest of the sequences are an inspiration, a compendium of short movies shot like a bloke who studied Scorsese and saw how to use a song for a character intro.

It’s entertaining as hell if you skip 50% of it all. And Vinnie Jones.

Razors from The Long Good Friday (1980) wielding a rubber willy is also amusing.

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William Friedkin. Maestro.

Now is as good a time as any to watch To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) again. There you go:

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Dragged Across Concrete (2018).

What rubbish this was!

The lines weren’t delivered with any conviction at all. It’s just the writer/director shoehorning his own real-life monologues into every scene. The movie is essentially a rant. 

Nice bit of attempted world building but it’s all superfluous. And lots of stoic, emotionless men sighing. Over and over and over. 

Worst movie I’ve seen in quite some time. 

Watch it if you enjoy shite.

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John McTiernan. Someone give him a job.

The Holy Trinity (Predator, Die Hard, Red October) with the Bruce Willis gem at the centre, McTiernan redefined or perhaps created the modern action film, a wee cradle of movies with wit, imagination, state of the art pyrotechnics, and an unnerving ability for shot selection. You can’t lose that talent, despite the Odysseus-long hiatus from a camera-wielding exploit.

He’s back from Shawshank as a model ex-prisoner.

John, just get a camera, sound kit, and a few pals together and make a short your new calling card.

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Superman (1978).

Why is Marlon Brando in this? I’m confused. He appears lost, like he’s doing King Lear and not a man-in-a-cape flick.

Anyway, it’s an okay movie once the boring prologue ends, and I don’t mind the rubbish special effects. They kind of add to the charm. 

This is what a superhero movie can be when it doesn’t feel the requirement for daft political subtext or the shoehorning in of a fashionable theme of the day. Just tell the fucking story! 

It doesn’t half drag on but it’s a good template for that kind of movie. But I’ll never watch it again.

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The Big Man (1990).

This has the most insane sudden shifts in style and tone. It fees like a student movie, and then you have some ludicrous sentimental schmaltz – strong Rocky (1976) pretensions – thrown in the mix. It’s certainly unpredictable and often entertaining, and the confidence of it all is twinned to an actual story with proper societal issues. Visually, it has some impressive and daring scenes, and the physical specimen that is peak Liam Neeson. 

But, unfortunately, Hugh Grant turns up. I don’t know what accent he’s speaking in because I’ve never heard anyone talk like that.

I didn’t believe a minute of this movie. But I’m not bothered. 

I’m more perplexed as to how and why Ennio Morricone scored this to tunes that sound like the b-side of The Untouchables (1987). 

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Croupier (1998).

Atmosphere from the gods here.

It doesn’t even matter what the subject matter is – this is ridiculous in that it’s just Clive Owen narrating a few events. It’s so magisterial in its framing, the shot syntax, the subtext of the bare-bones screenplay, that I was kind of engulfed in it all despite not actively being engaged in the story. A brooding exercise in style.

Casino (1995) is the best movie about a casino, but this casino-based film isn’t about a casino; it could be set in a Lidl.

If that makes any sense. 

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Ah, the majesty that is Pine Barrens.

The funniest episode of any show ever. It’s not just the quotes but the brilliance of the situation. Big-shot mafia goons go a few miles outside of their comfort zone and they don’t know what to do. 

They get lost and almost die in a two-mile stretch of woods. Useless/hopeless/pointless individuals. That’s the genius of the writing.

Imagine them on an Ant Middleton show.

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