Category Archives: Film

Bad Lieutenant (1992) and Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009).

If you’re going to watch ‘companion piece’ movies then these two barking mad features are the ones for you.

The only thing really connecting them is the title, the film from 2009 the most loose ‘remake’ ever. Harvey Keitel goes Full-Harvey and Nicolas Cage goes Full-Cage. You can’t choose a winner. The films aren’t about plotting or themes; they are just an opportunity for the actor to do a Brando, go a wee bit nuts. And it’s a joy to watch. Stay off the drugs, people!

Somehow, Kietel and Cage both wound up in an appalling feature named National Treasure (2004), phoning it in in the worst way. They look bored shitless. As was I. But one has to pay the bills so I forgive them.

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The Dumb and Dumber (1994) soundtrack is an event.

The movie is a masterpiece that would not get made today; can you imagine what the hysterics would do to Twitter? I will write all about this some other time.

The soundtrack, though. Oh my. It’s quite possibly the best compendium of ‘tunage’ ever. 1994 was a grand year for all involved, even if Jeff Daniels got blown up by Dennis Hopper.

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Sunshine (2007) went apeshit.

And for no apparent reason.

An hour in and you’re thinking that if the movie can keep it together the experience could quite possibly be up there with the best of them, a thought-provoking sci-fi masterpiece for the ages. But then it descends into sub-slasher ridiculousness, a third act that feels like the team behind Event Horizon (1997) rejected it. This happens quite a lot with these movies, and even more so when it comes to TV shows. There’s so much expertly paced build-up that goes … nowhere. Why try and turn it into a horror? The makers simply didn’t know how to fulfill all the promise or how to end it so resorted to cheap genre ‘thrills’, frenzied cutting and pointless bombast.

But for 70 minutes this is great. I highly recommend turning it off once it gets silly. And then proceed to stick 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) on.

Sorted.

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If you designed the perfect blockbuster The Mummy (1999) would be it.

There’s a deep and thoughtful longing – which I very much approve of – at the moment for the return of Brendan Fraser, and it appears to have been massively aided by this GQ article, the piece a rarity of this sort in how well written and insightful it is. The lad is captivating, refreshingly honest, and an actor who was simply great in everything – believable, relatable, but with an edge. He always gave me the impression that he had been parachuted into the film and we were there to follow him on his journey. A stoic naïveté was strong with this one. Is that not what a reluctant hero is?

The Mummy (1999) is awesome, Fraser pulling off the Indiana Jones role with aplomb. It was awesome at the time but now it has been elevated. I’d sum the never-boring riot as good old-fashioned popcorn entertainment which uses CGI in a productive way, i.e., you can see the point of its use. It works and without it the movie wouldn’t succeed to the extent that it does. A fine juggling act is mastered between live action, the digital effects, pacing, and characterisation. It is a silly affair but a good silly.

Even John Hannah isn’t that annoying. And he annoys me in everything. Aside from this, where he is only slightly annoying. Special mention to Kevin J. O’Connor whose Beni Gabor steals the show, an apparent weasel of greed, self-interest, and opportunism, yet somehow in the most underwritten role he squeezes out the comedy and, dare I say it, the pathos. Almost everything he does, I’d do the same in his shoes.

I would recommend this movie to just about anyone.

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Point Blank (1967). How fabulous this is.

Lee Marvin had a bonkers year in 1967, this thriller and The Dirty Dozen representing the peak of his cult, not that your random audience member knew it at the time. They are a curious twosome as Point Blank appears a blueprint for a future style of film aesthetics and the Robert Aldrich ripper a throwback or definition of the classical form, if not in its then-graphic onscreen violence. It’s a watershed 52 weeks. I wasn’t alive back then, and thank fuck. But it looks eventful (just watch The Graduate).

What a seductive picture, and even the jarring time jumps work to reinforce the dreamy atmosphere of the film. The precise framing and use of colour, it LOOKS AMAZING (CAPS LOCK ALERT). The overlapping sound is pre-Robert Altman but betters those seminal works because it’s more than a silly afterthought or accident. There are scenes in this which require so little dialogue they may as well be Godard in a traffic jam. It’s an exercise in stylistics. You get this with first-time filmmakers or those in the early throes of the game – the bold choices, the going with the instinct. Peckinpah retained it almost to the end. Scorsese – the last man standing – still has it.

This is peak Tarantinto three decades before peak Tarantino. But without the feet obsession.

It’s also hilarious. Marvin has to be the coolest bloke to ever be off his tits. He retains throughout a semi-plastered hangdog expression and even in his quietest rage barely looks interested in proceedings. It’s all too easy for Marvin. All he wants is his cash but not even the corporate pyramid semi-responsible for his fate are even capable of doing the basics. Almost everyone in this movie is useless. It’s a life lesson.

Point Blank is a relic and a template.

P.S. There is no relation between this and Point Break (1991), which I watched a few weeks ago.

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Point Break (1991), I like you.

A Friday night last month was the first time I’d ever seen this. I really should have done so before but I was too busy in my youth crawling around the arty-farty remnants from Fellini’s nightmares.

Gary Busey was the main draw, someone I’ll watch in anything. I have always retained an admiration for his white chompers. He is a kind of human shark.

It’s an impressive movie from the off with its immediate characterisation – you know straight away what the players are all about, and the dialogue sounds like it’s satirical but it isn’t. A template for satire is on display.

The weird Zen thing which Swayze and Reeves have between them is hilarious. Swayze knows the lad is FBI but just strings him along for the banter and to better the both of them. How do you connect EXTREME SURFING and the rest of it with robbing banks?

And the director Kathryn Bigelow has rather the unique message going on for her with her approximation of women being just as solid as the lads and kicking the fuck out of them, and the boys giving it back. It’s a non-gender-nonsense movie. All rather refreshing, and then you realise it’s from 1991, WAY ahead of its time.

So much energy; within every frame is a zest for the kinetic. It’s not exactly ‘deep’ but an attempt is made. It’s only a bank heist/surfer movie after all.

Outstanding.

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I hated The Deer Hunter (1978) so much.

It’s so unnecessarily long-winded and frankly pointless.

I’m struggling to think of a more eclectic display of moronic and wholly unsympathetic characters in a motion picture. Everything about them is annoying; they are smug, boring, stupid, and generally just excruciating. It’s universally described in the reviews of the time as being “epic”. This consists of a few wide-angle shots of mountain landscapes in order to paper over thin characterisation; mountains act as filler.

Yet despite occasional David Lean pretensions it’s so inept from a framing perspective. Every scene is astonishingly horrible to look at, an ugly beast shot with all the artistry of a severely undisciplined student movie; there is no syntax to scenes or reason behind shot decisions. It’s a fucking mess. Vietnam has never looked so anonymous. What else? The score pissed me off. It screams of folk feeling sorry for themselves. Which is the essence of the film.

As for the famous Russian Roulette scene – who cares?

I don’t.

Absolute shite.

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Starship Troopers (1997) is an absolute belter.

It’s hilarious satire, and so smartly done. It’s also damn entertaining. And it hasn’t aged a bit.

It’s in fact way ahead of its time. The lunacy of some of the reviews of 1997. These idiotic ‘critics’ didn’t seem to grasp that everything about the movie is a joke, a piss-take, a borderline comedy. The characters are straight out of a Nazi propaganda piece, and they have legit no redeeming features. But you still watch it for their complete lack of self-awareness.

And the carnage. I like proper carnage.

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The English Patient (1996) is just total crap.

I had to slap myself by the end of this because I once, for reasons beyond any understanding of my own psyche, thought it was brilliant. It’s not. It’s fucking dire. It’s SO boring. Everything about it is boring. The characters are boring. The story is boring. It even makes WWII boring. Nothing in it is even worth telling. Almost everyone on display is an imbecile; Juliette Binoche is the only one with a personality.

I don’t get the central romance on display. The Katharine character (if you can call her that) is just so … BORING. There is literally nothing about her worth bothering with because she is a cure for insomnia. And I lost track of how many times the director had to pull out a plane crash or a plane being shot in order to advance the plot. It infuriated me. Is this nonsense in the book? It swept the awards in 1996. The voters must have all been on drugs.

I must have been on drugs when I watched this a decade ago and thought it a cracker. There’s no other explanation.

Pile of shite.

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Snatch (2000) is great until a certain former Wimbledon footballer makes an appearance.

This admittedly amusing movie is not about a single thing aside from how the narrative strands collide, and they are loose connections at most. It is merely highly entertaining, brimming with energy and giggles, though we mainly laugh at how stupid and un-self-aware most of the characters are. It’s a lot of fun until Vinnie Jones turns up and sinks the joys. He’s just awful in everything, but especially this.

For some reason he transitioned from being a dreadful footballer to a dreadful actor. I blame that whole late ’90s ‘lad culture’ … thing, the heyday of Loaded magazine and the milder second renaissance of the beer-swigging hooligan. Only back then could someone so talentless be glorified for thuggery. He’s a former football hardman turned hardman ‘actor’ and this is meant to be hilarious. Sigh.

But it’s cracking until he turns up.

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