Avoid this lifeless pish, which doesn’t even have the B-movie charm to recommend it.
I wasn’t expecting much, but a tiresome episode of TV’s Goosebumps is more fun.
Or just watch Arachnophobia (1990) instead.
Sting (2024).
Category Archives: Movies
The Bikeriders (2023).
My attention was drawn to this as my ears were piqued, tickled even, by Tom Hardy’s bonkers accent in the trailer – whatever accent it’s meant to be, I was intrigued. That or the feeling it was picking up the aesthetic mantel of The Wild One (1953), that seminal exploitation movie that barely merits a second viewing because it’s shite. But it does have Brando being a committed Brando.
Sadly, and this is where my faith in peculiar accents was misplaced, I was annoyed beyond composure with the lead lassie in this and her grating, stomach-churning voice, Marge Simpson scraped down a blackboard with a bit of Karen Hill from Goodfellas (1990) chucked in the vernacular mix. The entire 30 minutes I could manage this film I was telling myself, “This is so bad. My ears are in pain. I hate folk on motorcycles.”
Nice bit of scenery in the picture, open landscapes and all that; it would have been better if you just jettisoned the shitty accents, all the motorcycles, and the story, which I gave up on.
This will be the only movie starring both Tom Hardy and Michael Shannon that I’ll turn off. Sorry, lads.
Alien (1979) pioneered the epic trailer.
It’s the original trailer for Alien (1979), and it is up there with the best of them:
Sometimes trailers are art. If you watch the Star Trek (2009) one, for example, with its Two Steps From Hell accompaniment, it’s more accomplished than the actual movie.
There should be awards for trailers.
Far from Heaven (2002).
’50s Americana here looks like a repressive white-picket hellhole, and the trivialities of the dialogue lays bare the desperation of the characters in their staid conformity to societal norms. The style, all lush colours and impeccable static takes, has a refined and absolute purpose with nothing superfluous in the frame. It engenders a stillness which is rare in most of cinema.
A movie intent on capturing dignified sadness in its characters, and moments of quiet bliss all too fleeting, you come away from this feeling that you’ve been right in the middle of something special.
An outstanding work, 5/5.
Nosferatu (2024).
Wow.
The exquisite and sweeping shots here, the depth of field, and attention paid to the sound design were an anomaly to see in a movie within this genre, which isn’t much of one. A breathtakingly beautiful film to look at and listen to, Gothic horror done right. This is how you do it (sorry, Montell).
This is proof that plagiarism can work.
And just so you know, Chris Finch from The Office is in it.
Megalopolis (2024).
A barely cobbled together assortment of various grandiose ideas and sketchy performances, the acting is baroque, the standard mental stuff you get in a Baz Luhrmann film, except he generally makes interesting cinema. Some of the images here catch the eye, but they never coalesce into anything resembling a coherent narrative.
The characters have arguments you can’t even connect with or understand; they bicker for the director’s benefit, in a story based on the Catilinarian conspiracy but without any intrigue, political element, or a Cicero. If ever a movie needed an editor, or someone to just tell the director to grow up a wee bit, it’s this one.
I tried to give it a go as the lad has made some classics, but I was compelled to turn it off at 56 minutes.
Life is too short for this shite.
I’m off to watch Jack (1996) with a Blue WKD.
High Plains Drifter (1973).
This was rubbish.
Sorry, Clint.
Quills (2000).
With its soft-focus palette of muted colours, this is a ravishing picture to look at, but the script doesn’t deliver on the talent or the favourable premise – the limits of freedom of expression, the extent to which life imitates art, these addressed through the last days of the Marquis de Sade.
Michael Caine plays it straight as the libertine’s nemesis, with no attempts on his part at scene stealing. He is the best for that, no petty grandstanding from Sir ‘My Cocaine’. Geoffrey Rush is fine, but what could have been a diabolically entertaining performance is squandered by the speed with which the movie descends into repetition and tedium.
It got so lightweight past the hour mark and the Phoenix character’s theological hang-ups served more of a distraction than anything else, shoehorned in with a Kate Winslet romantic subplot that trammeled what looked like a promising showdown between Messrs Rush and Caine.
A wasted opportunity, and it all ends with a whimper.
The Place Beyond the Pines (2012).
The biggest compliment I can bestow here is that Bradley Cooper isn’t annoying for one time only.
In addition to this magisterial feat, it’s a movie about misery that’s somehow captivating, and the third act is rather breathtaking in its audacity.
We have a proper movie on our hands.
Legends of the Fall (1994).
A bombastic scene-setting voice-over braces the audience for a long-haul melodrama of middling attributes.
The poster for this film couldn’t be more ’90s with the leads glaring, almost begging us lot to pay the price of admission. It was Brad Pitt mania so the box-office returns were handsome, just like the movie’s primary stud with his L’Oréal locks that would make David Ginola envious.
Julia Ormond from First Knight (1995) is in it, which was a wee surprise as I thought she was in that solitary film before vanishing like a fart in the wind (sorry, Bob Gunton). Sadly, she is wasted here playing an upper-crust village bicycle who goes through the three brothers like wildfire. And Anthony Hopkins, playing the pops, has another strange accent but that’s his modus operandi.
This is one of those movies that must have been pitched as ‘SWEEPING EPIC’, which it is, with complementary James Horner score, which it has.
But none of it is any good.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 