It’s funnier than all its considerable attributes as an action movie. For the carnage, it’s top tier, but it’s definitely more of a comedy than any other description.
Maybe it’s because so much of this ilk is a slew of totally witless dirge, Die Hard (1988) appears smart and a bit of an outlier.
And you see a character sparking up a fag in a limo.
This was inordinately entertaining and galling and frankly nuts and by the last 30 minutes unwatchable, so draining I had to turn it off. There’s only so much of this lad you can take.
The Roy Cohn Playbook seems to work in this lopsided political sphere. And it’s been appropriated by thousands of pygmy politicians.
I’m sure that was the point of this riotous slog of a movie.
Even a funny Anthony Hopkins can’t salvage this bombastic, pompous shitter that is by far the most boring film I’ve seen this year. Hopkins, playing a demented King Herod with an insatiable lust for life, knows it’s a joke of a film so decides to deliver some hammy lolz in exchange for his no doubt sizeable cheque.
And why not? Keep ’em coming, Mr. Hopkins.
Watching this again was a fatalistic regret because it’s absolute rubbish and bloody tedium defined. It’s another one of those movies that I convinced myself was good.
It isn’t and takes so long to get going I thought I was viewing one of those indulgent director’s cuts.
This funny flick (for the most part) revels in its own silly wee world and knows how ridiculous it is.
Several chuckles along the way, even if the last 20 minutes are unbearable in their noisy-as-hell mindlessness, as if all the self-aware comedy was building to a doll on a dull rampage.
An outright entertainment and, let’s be fair, an out-and-out total fantasy, this sweet, wittier-than-most teen comedy features generally violence-free classrooms, with an almost respect and rapport between teachers and students. There is not even a hint of a mass shooting, and everyone is self-aware.
No teenagers are on the verge of being sectioned despite their peccadilloes, and we have Orbital’s ‘Halcyon On and On’ from Mortal Kombat (1995) finish proceedings, just to confirm this movie is all a fantasy.
A very fetching fantasy.
I was dreading this movie would be too reliant on the standard As Good as It Gets (1997) OCD schtick to drive the narrative but it smartly sidestepped all the easy mechanisms. A highly entertaining dramedy with two plots going on seamlessly, a con and a character study intertwined, this is another solid entry in the Cage compendium.
One wishes Ridley Scott would make inconsequential but breezy fare like this rather than all his insipid train wrecks of late, which are too numerous.
And Bruce McGill is in it, showing once again that he’s in everything.
An intro to Aronofskyisms, who in his exceptional debut feature pulls off the remarkable feat of making mathematics sort of interesting, theory relayed to us via the characters in their gripping exchanges; in these moments you end up taking notes for a Wikipedia binge.
The director draws so much from a conceptual premise through stylistic verve and repetition, and doesn’t run out of steam. There’s always something going on, the plot presenting successive obstacles for Max Cohen in his hopeless search for meaning where there frankly isn’t any to be found. The dirtiness of his domain (it’s like Abel Ferrara territory), the fact he’s living (barely) in squalor, the cocoon lifestyle, seems to further convince him that he’s deep in the shit and on the verge of an Earth-shattering discovery.
Great film, wild ride, the Aronofsky template.
Lovely wee comedy. It’s not hilarious or anything but it’s witty and clever. What happened to Alicia Silverstone? Was it Batman & Robin (1997) that robbed her of a career? Or maybe she just belongs in the ’90s.
A sad shame.
Bill Forsyth could have made this charming flick, which is surprisingly well shot and not the TV movie aesthetic that I was expecting.
Nice wee story, characters you can root for, and the consummate thesp Ian Bannen gets a late career-defining role. The bloke was in literally everything, even turning up in Braveheart (1995) as the leper pops of Robert the Bruce.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 