Category Archives: Movies

About Schmidt (2002).

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.

Jack has been missed.

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Nuremberg (2025). This was so bad I wished to put the cast and crew on trial.

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.

Avoid this pish like the plague and all that.

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Monkey Man (2024).

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.

Recommended.

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Blank Check (1994).

I watched this abomination of a movie because someone (British) said “blank cheque” on the bus, but that’s by the by.

The viewing was a major mistake, for this was definitely one of the worst nostalgia trips I’ve subjected myself to. 

Horrible little film. 

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The Player (1992).

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. 

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Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983).

Just brilliant, absolutely magical scenes, and that score is quite special:

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The Conjuring (2013).

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.

Impressive movie.

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Urban Legend (1998).

It’s definitely not Scream (1996). It’s certainly not I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997). It’s not even Cherry Falls (1999). This is not good in any way, as derivative and formulaic as they come, a copycat slasher from the late ’90s churn-them-out age. These pictures are meant to scary, or at least attempt to purport to be. This mess isn’t, but remains a peculiarity because tripe like this was once made. And continues to be shat out in great buckets. 

The movie’s risible/mad premise is that all these students of a certain university campus sit around chatting constantly about urban legends in a movie called Urban Legend, even discussing urban legends with a class lecturer who looks scarily like Freddy Krueger. How postmodern! With all the urban legend-inspired murders of thoroughly stabbable ‘characters’ played by C-list irritants, there isn’t time for anything else; not a single conversation in this pointless morsel of trash alludes to the wider world, a reality outside of their wee sorority of … urban legends.

Regrettably, Brad Dourif stutters up regurgitating his Billy Bibbit act from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975). Weird. 

I hate urban legends but I hated this movie more.

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The Conversation (1974).

With the films of Alan J. Pakula, The Conversation (1974) sits right in the middle of Watergate as a dark inspiration, and you couldn’t get a more clinical, claustrophobic portrait of paranoia.

Hackman is masterful. His character’s job and the perfectionism he demands is his entire life, and once he makes mistakes, succumbing to emotions that compromise his skills, he is at a loss, a petrified wreck, playing his saxophone in a torn-to-pieces-apartment. 

It’s one of Coppola’s few original scripts and one wonders at the output if he did more of that. There is so much going on in this film, from the moody low-key jazz score to the extraordinary sound design, and it’s a movie obsessed with the peculiarities of its era. 

The twist ending is just shocking and I must confess I never saw it coming. 

And Harrison Ford is in it. 

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