Brendan Gleeson is one of the finest out there and even in a stinker he’s never the one doing the stinking.
Jon Voight, best known these days as an outspoken MAGA acolyte, has his considerable talents on display as our protagonist’s Gardaí nemesis, the Nineties his thesp Indian summer. This and his barking turn in Anaconda (1997) is a mighty double bill I would recommend to anyone.
The black and white works, it’s frequently thrilling, and he’s a very funny character who maintains your interest.
Despite some well-written scenes built around awkward moments, this is a hollow tragedy wholly dependent upon flashback structure as a means of keeping the audience attuned. And with a protagonist who doesn’t deserve our sympathy, or attention, or any kind of movie made about him, and he’s a lifeless fucker at that.
You understand, with an unsympathetic lad, the brutal approach with the likes of Taxi Driver (1976) or Raging Bull (1980), but these movies were made with exceptional grace and a magnetic, kinetic urgency.
This was just a derivative, bubbling affair, the extended, longing shots of troubled souls staring at one another lifted from a thousand playbooks. I was bored with every character in this film, as was I with the reliance on rote soundtrack choices I’d expect to be made on a student production.
And Kyle Chandler is in it with one of the most exotic versions of a Massachusetts accent I’ve ever heard in a movie. These folk are American actors and can’t even do a dialect properly from a state in their own country.
Paul Verhoeven excelled at satirical splatter. Then he made Black Book (2006) and it was a sort of solemn drama and departure from corporate critique, and very good despite the absence of jokes.
Arnie is incredible in this. For a good decade he could do no wrong, the best of the hulking beasts.
This is about one of those retired characters who keeps on turning up to a workplace he’s no longer invited to. Or has nothing to do unless it’s scripted. The director excels at the awkwardness of human interaction and it’s the running theme of his oeuvre.
I’d like to imagine there are conscious, intended connections to Five Easy Pieces (1970), as it does feel like a companion piece, how the lad found his destination after the gas station pit stop.
It’s phenomenal work from Jack Nicholson in one of his last roles. He is a force of nature, and he doesn’t even have to shout. He’s just there with his presence and that’s enough, building a sad, bitter character into one with dimensions as the chap gradually learns to cope with his situation.
A history lesson in every utterance of dialogue, you can’t go a minute without the filmmakers reverting to the Third Reich elementary textbook, because, as audience members, we’re of course incapable of reading.
So much about this trite, lightweight, run-of-the-mill drudgery infuriated me, but just to illustrate, here’s an example of its level: The nauseating alleged psychiatrist in this train wreck of a motion picture performs a card trick to pick up a lassie on a train. I found this rather amusing and thought the writers were taking the piss. But then he does another magic trick. And then another.
I think I’ve seen this in a dozen motion pictures, and they were all shite. But this one is curiously honking given the gravity of the events depicted.
The hammy ‘acting’, especially by the untalented, non-talented, talentless Rami Malek (Remi Maplin) pratfalling around like a tormented hipster, is a wee bit of an insult considering the subject matter. A snoozy exposition that takes an epoch to get going, the narrative has no choice but to truncate the Göring cross examination, reducing it to a five-minute ‘gotcha moment’.
A stupid movie made by folk who should know better, it’s an utter slog.
And the thoroughly wooden Colin Hanks is in it, the Pinocchio-like thesp quite possibly an even more glib actor than his father.
I’ve seen worse films, but if Tom Hanks is near celluloid, even if he doesn’t feature, you’re going to be in huge trouble.
What a title for a movie and this is what caught my flagging attention when sieving through the shambolic content we have for streaming. The crap littering the landscape is rather outrageous and this needs to stop.
I was dubious Monkey Man (2024) would be any good – but then one, that is I, never approaches a movie with an open mind and I refuse to watch a film if the poster insults me.
A rags-to-relative-riches yarn, our resourceful hero surmounts the shackles of social stratification (accidental alliteration) by using his primary skill: the fact that he’s lethal, a Jason Bourne type … donning a monkey mask. The action is hair-raising stuff; seldom has brutal hand-to-hand scrappage looked so soothing, if you’re into that kind of thing. The movie has a heart, though. Our lad loses the mask – the beatings he takes imbued with elements of latent masochism – and becomes all he can be.
The master of the slow zoom and the overlapping conversation, frequently several happening at once, Robert Altman’s very amusing, freewheeling thriller is half satire, a director taking the absolute piss and slandering his own environment.
It’s peerless entertainment and one of his most enduring works.
I’m always dubious when it comes to horror as there is so much detritus a mere click away; this genre is uniquely positioned to beat a successful premise to death, a running theme for all of celluloid and beyond.
This shocked me (horror!) by not being shit. It was disconcerting from the very start, an expert lesson in how to develop a creepy atmosphere and build chills. The director evidently studied the winning tropes of modern horror and all the usual pitfalls were avoided, as there are genuinely terrifying moments.
Cinemas are suited for fare like this, not a laptop screen smaller than a squirrel. I can only apologise.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 