Nothing else to report, really. The main outcome of the weekend was a general consensus that Cobra Kai is better than The Karate Kid (1984).
Category Archives: Movies
12 Monkeys (1995) is way better than I remembered.
In the midst of a global pandemic as it grabs peak humanity by the testicles, I sat down to watch 12 Monkeys (1995) again after a decade-long hiatus. And what smashing, thought-provoking, thoroughly enthralling sci-fi it is, a Terry Gilliam movie that isn’t uneven and all over the place, which basically makes it an anomaly. 1995 was kind to movies, and Bruce Willis was at his peak in the year of the Eric Cantona kung-fu kick.
There is a mind-blowing scene in this set on the Western Front during WWI; it is so magnificent that it almost derails the rest of the film. However, the character dynamics and pacing manage to keep it together and build to a stunning denouement, that and the inspired Vertigo (1958) references.
And this is one of the few movies that actually depicts people in ‘mental hospitals’ or ‘institutions’ as actually having meaningful, occasionally profound insights into the peculiarities of the social order.
And seek out its art-farty precursor La Jetée (1962). It’s definitely not shite.
Everest (2015) is nauseating viewing.
Based on the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, this is your generic retelling fare. I hated this movie, utterly hated it. The picture comprised an array of rather irritating archetypes feeling very sorry for themselves because they experience the harsh elements on the highest mountain on the planet. There is no drama to proceedings at all because they are barely characters and get what is coming to them. Like, what did you expect? It’s Mount Everest, not an indoor climbing centre.
What the fuck even is a ‘guided climb’? I do not understand why it is even legal. There is a quote from the only semi-interesting ‘character’ in the movie (the redoubtable Jake Gyllenhaal) which is something like, “If you need help getting up the thing you should not even be here. “
I like the sound of that and it is a rather universal statement which applies to any endeavour. The movie looks nice – well shot and framed. It’s just pointless, a fawning ode to stupidity.
Avoid.
Further reading:
Demolition Man (1993) was some premonition.
Another memorable number from the 1993 movie vault, which I often posit the ‘best year ever for movies’: Mrs. Doubtfire, Schindler’s List, The Fugitive, Jurassic Park, Tombstone, Falling Down. Am I wrong? Have I missed anything?
It’s in all honesty not much of an action movie, the scenes terribly staged and edited, another case of the viewer not having a clue what is going on. It’s as unimaginative as it gets, ADHD Eisenstein. However, as satire and social commentary it is terrifyingly on the ball about today’s nightmarish cultural landscape. It actually predicted 2020.
It nails the all-out assault on language, the SJW proscription against alternate viewpoints, the restriction of real individualism in the quest for Utopia. Who knew that offending someone could be a crime? Well, it sadly is these days. Because they (the crusading creatures) have been allowed to get away with this.
The only thing this movie gets wrong is the method of wiping one’s arse. Britons will be doing it ‘Old Skool’ until the next extinction-level event.
Miami Vice (2006) is peak Michael Mann.
It may not have the character-driven intricacies (and intensity) of Heat (1995) or The Insider (1999), but this is a technically perfect cops-and-robbers flick, pure genre. It takes itself so seriously; indeed, on this recent viewing I did not detect a single comedic moment or anything even approaching irony.
Once again, Mann displays bizarre music choices; why on earth would anyone use Audioslave/Chris Cornell in a movie? It works here, though, something one can not say for Casino Royale (2006).
It’s all about the transcendental moments. Any other director wouldn’t feature the speedboat scene at all but Mann turns it into the movie’s centrepiece. It’s here that Farrell’s Sonny Crockett illustrates everything Mann thinks a … man should be. I imagine the filmmaker would be ashamed at the sight of a grown man crying.
As visual experiences go, the movie is dynamite, action cinema as art. Mann has a thing for dance sequences; here they supplant the need for dialogue. And it doesn’t matter because they are so … cinematic.
And I’ve never seen the TV show Miami Vice so I have no idea how this movie relates to it. Am I missing anything?
Further reading/viewing:
https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/miami-vice-review/
The Empire Strikes Back (1980) is perfection.
Back to the cinema.
I first purchased this bad boy in ‘Alps Second Hand Shop’ on Dalry Road in the scorching summer of ’99, which remains to this day the greatest era of recent cinema and probably my life. The VHS was a battered, well-worn pan and scan number that cost less than today’s fare for a single bus journey on one of our ghastly maroon peasant wagons. It suffices to say that the following two hours were a religious experience. The video, if you are curious to know, looked exactly like this:
Ocean Terminal’s Vue Cinema reopened yesterday after a lengthy hibernation, the new ‘distancing epoch’ peppered with PPE and anti-bacterial spray flying everywhere. They are showing some classics, presumably because studios are unsure as to how to proceed with their new releases. £5.99 a ticket for this cinematic baptism? Yes, yes, yes.
What a BELTER it is, magically flawless, deep escapism imbued with universal themes, a compendium of genre tropes and technique. PhDs have been written about this motion picture, and I cannot pinpoint even a single thing in it that should not … be in it. One could deem the experience Citizen Kane (1941) in space. There is no point me highlighting the highlights, as we all know what those are.
“NOOOOOOOOOO, NOOOOOOOOO!”
I would just like to say that 99.9% of cinema today is fucking gash, total tripe. Pure shite.
This isn’t.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) should be essential. But it isn’t.
This is the last good Coppola movie, the last in his oeuvre made on a grand scale with sumptuous visuals.
It was always one of those films that popped up at least once a year on British terrestrial TV, and I until recently (Netflix) last viewed it in Slovenia on a hotel TV whilst dribbling over beers and multipack crisps in another failed attempt to ingratiate myself with the local culture. Anyway, what I’m getting at is that the movie is everywhere, as omniscient as Lidl.
I have never given much thought for anything in the Dracula canon but I see the potential in the source material. This film could have been an absolute belter were it not for the unnecessary campiness, the ludicrous casting, and the frankly appalling screenplay replete with cringe dialogue and baffling character decisions. Anthony Hopkins is playing it all for laughs, Gary Oldman and Winona Ryder both appear bored shitless, and Keanu Reeves once again proves that an American should not under any circumstances attempt a British accent. It is high comedy whenever he speaks.
For all of that, however, it is a delight at times from a purely visual standpoint. It just looks so lovely, every special effect and bit of camera trickery a throwback to early cinema. Indeed, the movie is better viewed on mute. What a wasted opportunity.
And I never even knew this SNES game existed until yesterday:
Further reading/viewing:
https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/bram-stoker-dracula-review/
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/bram-stokers-dracula-1992
Fawlty Towers – leave it alone!
The current liberal/woke/SJW mission – they are in the tentative throes of an unofficial alliance these days – is their war on the past, their need to chop and change, to ‘fix’ that which does not conform to their present-day ‘world view’, to erase artefacts from another age which were celebrated in that age. Their fascistic ways are influential: we have it here with the latest act of cowardice by BBC-owned UKTV in their pulling of Fawlty Towers episode The Germans, an iconic staple of British TV originally aired in 1975 yet now derided by the aforementioned Axis of Intolerance. It has since been reinstated following counter-protests by what must be, and I hate to appropriate a Nixonian term, the Great Silent Majority.
Someone is offended! Phone the police! This war on … everything is the modus vivendi of hysteria culture. In the middle of a pandemic we now have folk trying to tear down statues of slave traders, these protesters (or whatever) wearing clobber made in Indonesia by slave children. The lack of self-awareness is almost funny.
I expect the following will soon appear on their proscriptions: anything Nazi-related, lauded TV series The Wire, the Crocodile Dundee movies, motion pictures featuring cross-dressing, The Silence of the Lambs (1991) because Buffalo Bill likes to put his willy between his legs, and Gone with the Wind (1939). Oh, wait a minute ….
What a horrible time to be alive. Plonkers.
Further reading/viewing:
Good Bye, Lenin! (2003) revisited.
I saw this movie many years ago and thought it rather great, but time distorts things. Goodbye Lenin! (2003) is an occasionally semi-funny insight into global changes impacting on the small scale; here, day-to-day life as experienced by an East German family going to increasingly elaborate lengths in maintaining the illusion of the GDR’s omniscience. The director’s stance as to reunification is a bit too ambiguous for me, the movie more concerned with a broad view of how the personal and political interweave, assessing the extent to which the society we live within affects us.
Why bother with such a contentious subject if you sit on the fence? This happens again and again.
It is at times a nauseating watch, almost an apologia for state tyranny. The film’s premise, pure Ostalgie, is that the economic and social constructs of the GDR, because of its restrictions on private wealth and public expression, harnessed a deep sense of togetherness felt by families. Wow. I won’t be watching it again. And all the Kubrick stylistic homages in it irritated me immensely.
If Lenin! refrains from showing the horror of life in East Germany in vivid detail by opting to examine why in recent years it has been de-emphasised, it has paved the way for a more meticulous and exacting probing of the Stasi state in contemporary cinema through devastating films such as The Lives of Others (2007), with all the GDR’s greed, hypocrisy, paranoia, and corruption laid bare.
It is 2020 and some folk (I call them “social spastics”) identify as communists.
They are the walking demonstration of why society is forever crumbling.
Anyway, I fucking despised this movie. HATED it. Stay away.
Further reading/viewing:
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2003/jul/25/artsfeatures.dvdreviews
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/goodbye-lenin-2004
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2007/apr/13/worldcinema.drama
Knives Out (2019) is splendid.
This is one terrifically entertaining whodunnit with an unexpected political undercurrent that comes to the surface in the third act. The time flew by, mainly due to Daniel Craig’s outrageous PI southern shtick. His voice is so uncannily like that of House of Cards’ Frank Underwood, I closed my eyes and pictured Kevin Spacey and all the resultant grisly news following the accusations about the bloke. It didn’t ruin the movie, only giving it a creepier edge.
Most films of this ilk hark back to Agatha Christie and are mere pale imitations of those superior yarns; Knives Out (2019) is something more than that, with its contemporary setting and subtly subversive reworking of the genre. You also believe these characters.
Even Chris Evans failed to vex me.
Further reading/viewing:
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/knives-out-2019
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 