Category Archives: Movies

Jan 03 2025
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Art, Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Technology, Uncategorized

Alien: Romulus (2024).

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.

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Dec 27 2024
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Art, Cinema, Fantasy, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

Clash of the Titans (1981).

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.

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Dec 20 2024
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The Maltese Falcon (1941).

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.

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Dec 12 2024
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Art, Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Technology, United States

Sleeper (1973).

Woody Allen has eight great films. And double figures in stinkers. I mind Barry Norman listed this picture among his 100 GREATEST MOVIES OF ALL TIME. He was so wrong (with most of his list) and must have lost his mind or been on the gear or something.

It’s okay, but not brilliantly hilarious or breathtakingly original, and often just plain annoying.

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Dec 11 2024
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Art, Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, United States

Bull Durham (1988).

A movie ostensibly about baseball. I know nothing about baseball aside from the name Babe Ruth. This movie almost piqued my interest in the sport of baseball. 

From a time when Kevin Costner could do no wrong, hit after hit. 

This movie is good and if made today it would most likely have to have a ‘message’ or token member of a downtrodden minority. Or a lesbian.

Something like that.

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Dec 09 2024
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White Squall (1996).

This movie was fucking appalling. 

Please, don’t watch it. 

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Dec 02 2024
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Tár (2022). Wow.

This hypnotic, mesmerising motion picture had me awestruck at the phenomenal confidence and skill of its director, his obsessive style and editing mirroring its progressively maniacal protagonist in the throes of a cancel culture out of her control, unable to dig herself out of a mess of her own making. It demands your complete focus and thus draws you deeper into its muddied internal maze of things blatant and intimated, of a pivotal backstory that is captivating despite us seeing none of it.

The movie could be mistaken for peak Michael Haneke – the clinical aesthetic, the foreboding mood, and all-pervading sense of surveillance. The director (and our monstrous subject) attaches an increasing primacy to sounds within the frame and off-screen, these impinging on the character’s unravelling ego. It’s so well executed that it’s unbearable; you really are along for the ride in a way that recalls Polanski’s Repulsion (1965). And on that filmmaker, Tár (2022) broods over the still-contentious debate: Can we ever forget the person and honour the artist for the art only?

One of the most violent movies ever that has no bloodletting in it, a violence of barely concealed fury and scorn, this is a truly original work.

There are few films like it and I suspect won’t be.

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Nov 14 2024
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Art, Cinema, Crime, Film, Movie, Movies

From Russia with Love (1963).

For sheer entertainment alone this is a 5/5 but it’s suffused with added value because of its influence on its 007 progeny. More so than Dr. No (1962), this is the prototypical Bond, all the ingredients coalescing but not at the expense of plot or pacing. It’s a Bond 101, and few subsequent entries have been up to scratch.

Stunning vistas, flawlessly executed set pieces, it’s at its core a glorious spy thriller with intentional, which always helps when the jokes are not by accident, comedic elements that aren’t too outlandish. Even a scene as basic as Bond checking into a hotel and casually scouring the room for listening devices somehow dazzles.

And Lotte Lenya whacks Robert Shaw in the stomach with a knuckleduster.

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Nov 11 2024
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Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

The Intern (2015).

Another De Niro film from his comedy vault, the two-hour running time put me off, but Tarantino speaks fondly of the movie, so that sealed the deal. It’s terrible. Shame on you, QT.

It does have a wee something to say about ageism, but it’s barely even believable. And it’s another stomach-churning movie about American office culture, with its sycophantic, annoying-as-fuck employees who couldn’t be more boring and who live for the pleasure of working for boring cunts. 

And I was bored.

Hated it. 

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Nov 07 2024
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Art, Cinema, Crime, Film, Movie, Movies

The Hitcher (1986).

The landscape offers a lot to work with, ripe vistas aplenty, but there’s no enduring image from the cinematography side of things. 

I was expecting tension and chills; this was mainly boring and unimaginative. Nothing seemed to be at stake despite all the bloodshed, and the lack of any dynamic between the driver and the demented hitchhiker is a letdown. I couldn’t locate a personality in anyone here in what in essence is a variation of the same violent road encounter occurring every 10 minutes.

The laziness of writing pisses me off, be this in a slimy thriller like we have here or a mega bucks operation. It’s not difficult to insert a few character traits and attempt to build depth but nah, apparently it’s too much of a Herculean task. 

Rutger Hauer could be a scary man, though. And what happened to C. Thomas Howell? 

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