Category Archives: Movie

The Getaway (1994).

Remake of the Sam Peckinpah half-decent flick from 1972, more famous for its tales-from-the-set production of booze chucked between production staff and off-screen hanky-panky than the actual thrills. It’s a decent movie, but I wouldn’t recommend it to a human being with a brain.

This was almost unwatchable.

The protagonist shows his own bank-robbing wife a gun as if she had never seen one before. Michael Madsen once again displays his supreme competence by necking a bottle of beer for no reason, slurring his words (for no reason) like Orson Welles in a Paul Masson wine advertisement. 

This movie was completely without wit; the dialogue was unbearable. I watched it for James Woods. I turned this off as soon as his VIP cameo ceased.

Fucking awful.

Next.

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Hard Eight (1996).

Philip Baker Hall was around forever, starring in seemingly everything, the quintessential character actor, every eclipse given the opportunity to do something more than the dependable authority figure. You’ve got Seinfeld’s Library Cop and the jaded but wise Sydney in Hard Eight (1996) among the background roles, and this film would be worth it just for him alone but there are more treats (just check the supporting cast) in this first work from Paul Thomas Anderson.

Even for a debut picture, this shows his mastery of style – his films are never dull to look at, demand your attention, and there’s a reason behind every dazzling shot. And it’s the consistency that’s the key. You leave with an indelible impression of the narrative. The lad is the Scorsese of the San Fernando Valley.

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Revolutionary Road (2008).

Well, this was quite remarkable and I’m shocked it wasn’t shite because the picture stank of ‘Oscar bait’.

It probably was made with that at least in mind but it’s quality, nonetheless.

And Michael Shannon once again steals the movie.

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The Fall Guy (2024). Pointless.

This was okay, remnants of Gosling in Drive (2011), but this is the non-moody, non-existential version. It’s not funny at all, though, and completely uninspired. And I turned it off an hour in as it wasn’t going anywhere in a good way. 

But I’m sure all concerned had a laugh making it.

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Pirates of the Caribbean (2003). What a farce.

This is one atrocious movie completely without merit, devoid of any talent, and all involved should be ashamed. And Johnny Depp is a nuisance, a pain in the arse, and one of the worst actors to have ever been somehow relevant. He’s captivating in Donnie Brasco (1997) and Black Mass (2015), but nothing else in the litany of his cinematic crimes galore is worth bothering with. He was in a movie once about a lad with scissors for hands. It was painful viewing.

Pirates is an overwhelmingly horrible film made by prats for prats, and as for the only justification I can make for watching it … I felt like torturing myself a wee bit.

Bye for now.

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Interview with the Vampire (1994).

I hate the use the term ‘wildly entertaining’ but my vocabulary is rather limited today and I can’t be bothered consulting a thesaurus. This movie is a joy to watch and it’s funny as hell and appears to be intentionally so. Tom Cruise can be very funny and this is peak Cruise having a ball.

My only criticism is its lack of dramatic heft but maybe that’s intentional. I don’t know.

Anyway, I recommend.

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Megalopolis (2024). Please, PLEASE, be good.

This teaser trailer is bonkers. Here’s hoping this, legendary in its gestation period, movie is more of the same:

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Michael Collins (1996) is an almost masterpiece.

A stirring slice of still-contentious Irish history masquerading as a thriller, this is a biopic meets The Godfather (1972).

Tywin Lannister is in it. As is Julia Roberts with the worst ‘Irish’ accent since … the birth of cinema. But she doesn’t ruin it; her role is window dressing, a star name to pump up the box office. 

Its like the anti-Richard Attenborough biopic, and thank the gods his perfunctory talents were never let near this kind of material. 

Oppenheimer also turns up as an assassin. And the poster is sublime. 

4/5. 

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Dersu Uzala (1975).

I’ve never seen Seven Samurai (1954), or Throne of Blood (1957), or Yojimbo (1961), or Ran (1985), though I did own the latter on DVD but lent it to an actor who was in one of my shitty – or sublime if you’d imbibed a gravy boat of amaretto during the viewing – student films and he clearly took it as payment for featuring in something so spectacularly awful/amazing. I bumped into him in a bar years ago and he ignored me. Charming.

This movie, Dersu Uzala (1975), was great, Kurosawa approaching his Indian summer, a proper epic with a soul. It’s long but it doesn’t matter as it’s lengthy for a reason.

Wee treat for you:

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Congo (1995). Ha!

For a very long, rotten, and delusional time, I thought this movie was a companion piece to 12 Monkeys (1995). It isn’t. I was confused by the reality of primates featuring in both flicks, and that 1995 was another parallel between them. The ‘similarities’ end there.

Congo (1995) is bonkers because it’s shite, wholly serious, and has a cast of actors you’d never imagine sharing a scene together. This is another one of those movies you wish had a lengthy ‘making of’, tea breaks (or whatever) consisting of grainy zoom shots of the mortified actors hiding away behind the crew and props department, slumped on a stool beside a half-tanned 35cl of Scotch, head in hands, and muttering “What the fuck have I done?” over and over.

One would, if pressed, describe this as an action-adventure film, but we all know it’s just … tosh.

Worth a watch.

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