David Lynch – master of the surreal, pioneer of pastiche, maestro of the grotesque, visionary purveyor of all things weird, mood magic man, subterranean cinematic dreamcatcher. His movies were events, labyrinth journeys into the unconscious.
Thanks for the memories. And there are a lot.
A remarkable cast wasted on this wholly unremarkable drivel, the script fished from the residue of 1,000 superior crime dramas. It was a mightily depressing watch, such is its tendency to wallow in muck, everyone in it a miserable bastard with complementary chip on shoulder. It’s also not even well made. I can see what it’s getting at – Rust Belt setting, forgotten communities, crime the only way out, etc. But it’s so identikit and dull and the whole thing is by the numbers. Stick on Killing Them Softly (2012) instead, similar themes but far superior writing.
Interestingly (barely), the makers were sued by an indigenous tribe negatively depicted in the movie.
My contention is that everyone involved in this should have been sued for it being so shite.
The first Chuck Norris movie I’ve seen – I don’t count Dodgeball (2004).
This movie is exactly like all of the parodies that followed. It defines the jingoistic ’80s but operates at a much lower level than the fare of Arnie and Sly. I turned it off after 15 mins and tried the sequel (originally planned as the first outing) but had to also turn that off after the following exchange:
“I’m just not tough like you,” a fellow soldier exclaims to Chuck.
You just know that Norris inserted that into the ‘script’, which is just a revenge fantasy for a lost war.
Shite, as expected.
This is from that cringe McConaughey era when he was the next big thing, 15 years before he became a thing, before that a slew of insufferable rom-coms which appeared to be his modus vivendi.
McConaughey is the dashing Texan with easygoing charm, and despite initial misgivings on behalf of the damsel in distress, she begins to detect an inner soul behind the one-dimensional Southern gent – welcome to the McConaughey template.
And Contact (1997)?
It’s shite and I turned it off. This almost saddens me, as I have a lot of time for William Fichtner, James Woods, David Morse, Tom Skerritt. It’s a hell of a cast, unfortunately wasted in a movie that drags, is boring, and has no reason to exist.
It’s painful watching movies all day long.
Ah, a mid-career Roland Emmerich disaster movie (he has done very little else in terms of genre).
It has Dennis Quaid in it and I’ll watch him in anything. A young(ish) Jake Gyllenhaal also features. It’s an almost intriguing casting mix.
The movie: I found the special effects to be balls. The ecological stuff didn’t make sense to me, but then I failed all science subjects at school so what do I know, eh. The blatant politics annoyed me – it was all rammed with attacks on the environmental nonchalance of the then-Republican administration.
Not much characterisation and the dialogue consisted of folk giving other folk directions or ‘scientific’ info. It ends up with wolves chasing the cast around because the writers couldn’t think of anything else to put in the script. But some of it was funny. Dennis Quaid dons an epic bunnet, for example.
I have nothing else to add.
Another Alien movie, more trepidation.
I was seeking a film that wasn’t stupid, and this wasn’t as stupid as recent Xenomorph shenanigans. The opening credits set an eerie atmosphere. I liked the throwback production design, this nestled between the first two (only great) movies in the franchise. The cast are okay. It’s not too long. It’s mostly fun.
However, a de-ageing job – this is the trend now when filmmakers get lazy – is done on Ian Holm and it’s truly terrible. I’m not even delving into the ethics of it; it just looks ridiculous, ropey, and fake as fuck.
Kind of ruined it all for me.
I wasn’t expecting this to be any good, another remnant from the Channel 5 days – it must have been on 20-odd times during that channel’s infancy.
It’s quite brilliant and executes its simple premise with so much momentum, the thrills never letting up. The movie has an arthouse feel, or at least a sensibility one wouldn’t associate with American cinema, with a stunning use of the landscape and the characters’ minuscule role in it.
And we also get to witness another impenetrable Jon Voight ‘accent’.
Forever synonymous with Medusa, the terror of a million childhoods.
For this alone, Clash of the Titans (1981) is a work of iconography. It does, though, have a bit more to it than this terrifying batshit gargoyle (or whatever) with a barnet of vipers, something you’d find hammered in a weekend taxi queue, honking of kebab and drenched in voddy & Coke. Or maybe I’ve spent too many hours in the seedier parts of Scotland.
One can appreciate it as the Ray Harryhausen Show, a highlight reel of his charming delights. The cast, too, are having a right laugh, all of them very much aware they’re slumming it in a bloated porker of a production made 30 years too late. Stupid, cheesy, unabashedly so, the movie is a big clunking mess and all the better for it.
It’s good rubbish – it’s fun.
I thought this would be total crap, a patronising ‘message movie’.
But it was fine. It held interest and serves as a gateway to a historical time and place that continues to be contentious. The main actor passed away recently, which is a shame as he was tremendously good in this. It’s nothing special but as a genre piece it’s a decent watch.
Bogart’s Sam Spade is fascinating to watch. His business partner is murdered and he doesn’t seem particularly bothered by this loss, but his jaded schtick runs the full gamut, distorts itself, the lad by the end a kaleidoscope of emotions (some real, some not so) in this riot of a film noir. I’ve never been so engrossed by the pursuit of an ornament. There is a grand metaphor in there somewhere.
Pristine deep-focus cinematography, mainly of conversations between shady characters in rooms cocooned by Venetian blinds, the occasional appearance of a pistol, typifies this period of noir. But this is as riveting as it gets. You remain captivated as you’re constantly trying to interpret what a person really wants and what their words actually reveal about themselves – you become a detective, deciphering signs, actively reading language.
This is a deserved classic. You cannot take your eyes off Bogart as he’s so unusual in look and delivery.
And Peter Lorre’s deranged eyes were born for celluloid.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 