An hour of breezy climbing-the-ladder banter, researched kind of well but still replete with whopping inaccuracies, Vice (2018) holds in admiration its protagonist’s uncanny appreciation of the mechanisms of power. Perfectly decent performances and a freewheeling narrative structure lost my interest just when events should have made the content interesting. It got decidedly shite by the last throes and I had no choice but to turn the farce off once the director broke the fourth/fifth/sixth wall.
Perhaps there wasn’t much human substance there to document beyond 60 mins.
For some reason I cannot and do not wish to fathom, a Mad Max ‘Easter egg’ appeared in the revolting Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) and it almost sullied my appreciation for anything Mad Max or even the name Max. Almost.
Furiosa (2024), a prequel set decades prior to the magisterial Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), thankfully does not feature a Deadpool or a Wolverine. Cunts.
Anyway, what was this movie like, you may enquire?
I was expecting a frenzied shitload of George Miller mental action which is always of the most inventive and considered (visually) kind, and he delivered. I was never in any doubt. It’s a feast for the eyes and ears, the stunt work once again mesmerising. And it actually has a deep storyline and characters for this kind of preposterous fare.
Ah, yes. It’s 1989 and Back to the Future Part II has ended on a cliffhanger and it’s a ‘To Be Concluded’. But nah, here’s a preview at the end credits to the final installment which is on its way very soon. Audacious.
It’s a promising premise that gradually feels like it’s segueing into gritty Euro thriller territory, a mature version of Taken (2008), but sadly doesn’t. We have a barely interesting character study by the end and the decisions the lad makes don’t appear logical (or believable).
I almost wished it to descend into mindless bone-crunching mayhem. Just for the ‘lolz’.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) is a severely underappreciated movie.
It is dark, gritty, and violent; I’m shocked it was released as a PG-13. I find it highly amusing that they are tutored by this fuck-off rat with a Japanese accent. It’s a demonstration of respecting your elders.
The movie perfectly captures how bad New York was during that H. W. Bush era, a post-Reagan hangover from hell with crack epidemics, failed economics, and generally being surrounded by cunts. The picture, incredibly, almost approaches Scorsese in this regard.
John Woo in his Hong Kong heyday made the most insane actioners of his time, movies that defied categorisation to the extent that he created a new genre. His pictures were somehow operatic and you could absorb real feeling from them. That and the mayhem, the bullets, the exploding heads, the carnage which seemed to have been concocted by Hannibal (psychiatrist, not conqueror of the Alps).
He ventured into the States and helmed the barking Face/Off (1997) and sadly never topped that, but how could he?
Now we’ve got a remake, for whatever reason, of one of his indelible HK masterworks.
It was depressing in its pointlessness, visually as dull as these things come. The scenes are shot and edited just like I would expect from your standard hacks for hire. Not a shred of artistic imprint was on this vacuous yarn. I didn’t think it could get any worse but then Eric Cantona turns up, looking away with the fairies and perplexed, which I found most perplexing. Fabulously talented football player. But he has the acting talent of a Wookie interviewing for the Third Reich.
Movies concerning sharks are usually a bit of fun, aren’t they?
The material will either be masterpiece-level cinema (Quint monologues), or guiltily enjoyable schlock (genius sharks swimming backwards). Actually, there is no middle ground in what is after all a genre about sharks.
And this frightfest from the deep?
Brainy people acting most stupidly through their unchecked arrogance, the treat their comeuppance.
I jettisoned the subtitles for the dubbing, just so it would be that wee bit more amusing. It was rubbish but funny, even if the premise trumped the end result.
Hated this, absolutely with unbridled passion hated it.
It’s about a shoe designer (of all professions to put in movie) who fouls up. There’s lots of quirky scenes and grating use of obvious songs the director plonks on top of them. It’s Jerry Maguire-lite – very lite. It’s for some reason beyond my comprehension rammed with solid acting talent, but they all phone it in.
Orlando Bloom is the big cheese and not only can he not act, he can’t even summon the internal forces to compose a voice-over without sounding like a wee fanny. He has got to be the worst thespian that has ever been shat onto celluloid, and I’m happy that I don’t have to see him these days on those posters you get on the side of buses. I’ve seen junkies with sob stories and they are more convincing than Orlando Bloom.
The director’s infuriating obsession with a character saying something offbeat and then cutting to blank stares of a group of extras – this was the worst stylistic choice in a movie rammed with suffocating whims.
I didn’t buy a single moment of this joke of a film which has BIG THEMES but treats them with the facile delicacy of a flick featuring Orlando Bloom.
It’s even worse than Garden State (2004), and Bloom makes Zach Braff look like that movie’s Marlon Brando 2.0.
Sourced this from IMDB as I couldn’t be arsed typing it:
‘At the end, Drew’s voiceover says, “The motto of the British Special Service Airforce is ‘those who risk, win’.” The unit is actually called the “Special Air Service”, it is a special forces unit and not an air force at all, and the motto is “Who Dares Wins”.’
That defines the movie for me. The cunts who made it can’t even get their facts right.
Mental movie and in a good way. It has a lot to say about media and brainwashing but in typical Cronenberg style it’s through humans disintegrating or losing their marbles. It’s not as bad as Dr. Ian Malcolm vomiting on a sweet delicacy and metamorphosing into an insect, but it approaches it. One would always confuse the Davids Lynch and Cronenberg. They are thematically so similar, but Lynch veering more into dream territory and Cronenberg the flesh. This could have been a Lynch movie, though.
Videodrome (1983) is some experience, and I had to watch it twice to figure out what I thought was going on. It’s never boring and always … well, nuts.
I didn’t know what to make of this. Nothing happens but it does. The ‘conflict’ isn’t about anything important; zero character arcs. It got a bit dull. The quotes are memorable. It looks fabulous.
I saw it in the cinema in 2007 with a bucket of Blue WKDs. It was a masterpiece back then.
I’ll give it another whirl in a few weeks. With some Blue WKDs.
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Wanderings and ... wonderings. 