I saw this in a hotel room once, but I don’t know when or where, only recalling it was okay.
And it is.
Terence Stamp is in it and he is just wonderful. As he is in everything.
The Adjustment Bureau (2011).
Category Archives: Movies
The Last Starfighter (1984).
I dreaded this viewing as it’s never a splendid idea to revisit a childhood classic.
Imagine my surprise upon enjoying this charming little flick. You know what I liked about it the most?
It isn’t shite.
Deadpool & Wolverine (2024).
Dragged to this and thoroughly did not like it.
Galling one-liners and self-referential in-jokes and dull characters constantly referencing they’re in a multiverse. What else? Superhero cameos galore, and fight scenes set to pop hits (how clever). And Ryan Reynolds and his inability to shut the fuck up for even 20 seconds. I suppose that’s the point, but his voice is too annoying to endure for a full movie.
I waited outside for the last half hour, so I don’t know how it ended.
And I don’t care.
Son of Saul (2015).
Aesthetically perfect movie with a protagonist’s tunnel vision style that works, an actual reasoning behind it – it’s the antithesis of the self-indulgent. Much more than a ‘noble’, culturally significant picture, it’s as honest with its brutality as you can get, and vice versa. It did recall for me One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and uses all the tools of cinematic technique to tell a story so gripping, relentless, and powerful in its immediacy.
A searing portrait of Hell on Earth, this is not a film you’ll forget.
Proper art.
Prizzi’s Honor (1985).
Yet another doozy from the ’80s starring Kathleen Turner. She is synonymous with the decade and doesn’t exist outside of it in a cinematic sense, a fate shared by a rarefied club of period-tied stars like Burt Reynolds (1970s), a heyday of hits followed by relative obscurity and the occasional flourish. This movie is a swansong of sorts from the great John Huston; it’s a testament to his talents that he somehow made it from the The Maltese Falcon (1941) all the way to this, a career spanning, indeed making, the history of the superlative decades of cinema as we know them.
It’s a fine wee movie, even if the cast have way too much gravitas about them for starring in what is a bit of black comedy fluff. The score by the renowned Alex North is okay, the soundtrack less so. It’s a recycling of tunes popularised in other movies. Why do filmmakers do this? If a musical piece is in a seminal flick, just don’t bother appropriating it again.
Does my tits in.
Jurassic World Dominion (2022). More pish.
The dinosaurs looked ‘lovely’ and I’m positive they continued to be so throughout this motion picture, but the 25 minutes I managed to endure were a pronounced pain in the arse – boring, derivative, pointless, and I suppose scraping a barrel that was no longer there.
News flash: dinosaurs aren’t interesting, people. Spielberg, once upon a time, made them so for 90 mins. And that’s the end of it.
This was shite. The next dozen will be shite as well.
A Beautiful Mind (2001). Dross.
For all the exceptional talents of Russell Crowe, he is simply wasted here in one of the most unwatchable biopics … ever. It’s a painful experience for many reasons, and the lackluster direction doesn’t help proceedings. The script, though, is fucking mince. The bloke here, John Nash, actually has his mental illness explained away with an imaginary pal in the punchable Paul Bettany and a make-believe government spook in Ed Harris.
If this embarrassing writing wasn’t enough to make you desire to gouge your own eyeballs out (or those of one of the muppets on screen), the movie has our resident genius’ mathematical theory put to the test in a bar scenario, with him and his wankpot pals applying their classroom discipline to pulling the local lassies.
Throw in some romantic schmaltz and a supporting cast of mainly irksome ‘characters’ and you have a really tedious, quite pointless, and completely shite movie that should be forgotten about.
Which makes this review seem quite unnecessary.
Youngblood (1986).
The intro could not be more pure ‘80s in its gratuitousness, Rob Lowe puck action synced to cheese. The bloke has not aged in 40 years (paper rounds did not exist for him). Keanu Reeves is in it as the goalie and he hasn’t aged, either. Patrick Swayze features also and he munches on a rose. This is not a metaphor.
The family breakfast scene a few mins in is straight outta A New Hope (1977), almost word for word, action for action; I had to rewind and repeat because, yes, I am that sad.
I don’t know what this movie thinks it is or what the intention was, but it’s an amusing, entertaining breed of shite, a silly primary source from a silly time. But they appear simpler times.
It’s the Mighty Ducks on drugs. Any and all kind of drugs.
I.D. (1995).
This was shockingly not crap. Which was a bit funny. A decent wee movie.
You’d call it The Football Factory (2004) of its age, that and a who’s who of almost-made-it British acting talent. Spot Jay’s dad from The Inbetweeners in that snap.
The tale is what it is, to adopt the cliché. Ah, the ‘90s – when swaggering gremlins (sans Gizmo) on the sauce kicking the fuck out of each other in boozers and the terraces for no reason were bonding through a bit of the ol’ fisticuffs. How we’ve grown up since ….
And the bloke from Corrie who was based on the Lord Lucan-wannabe John Darwin plays the protagonist. He’s very good here and I’m mildly surprised he hasn’t been in anything better.
#Shadwell.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 