This channel is what the Internet was made for (aside from cat videos and staged pranks). The wealth and detail of info in these vids, the animation, the music, the narrator and his redoubtable voice.
Category Archives: Technology
The Exorcist (1973). Total garbage.
I desperately wished to like this because of William Friedkin and his mostly fabulous work but it wasn’t meant to be. I absolutely hated it.
It starts with this film-within-a-film narrative and the suggestion appears to be that making movies is a sin and invites possession. Or maybe I’m reading too much into it.
There were extended shots of leaves falling in this for no reason and it bothered me, like the leaves were attempted symbolism. Maybe it was an augury for bad things, like how the writing progressed. The most baffling aspect of this whole escapade was the fact you have a wee child on the verge of death in a cushty Georgetown house of a famous actress and not a single cop, nurse, social worker, doctor ventures into it aside from a chain-smoking Priest and his spiritual benefactor.
The horror? It’s not scary, just nasty. You’re merely viewing sadism, with very boring actors and a story so nonsensical there should be a Muppet waltzing in with a musical number. Lighting was terrible, framing something out of a TV show (a bad one), and the sound mixing was crushingly theatrical, but not backed up by anything visually memorable.
Horror is some poor bloke getting stabbed over an argument about football teams or having to work 37.5 hours a week in a supermarket, not this shite.
Pointless motion picture.
Anyone who thinks it is good needs their head examined.
John McTiernan. Someone give him a job.
The Holy Trinity (Predator, Die Hard, Red October) with the Bruce Willis gem at the centre, McTiernan redefined or perhaps created the modern action film, a wee cradle of movies with wit, imagination, state of the art pyrotechnics, and an unnerving ability for shot selection. You can’t lose that talent, despite the Odysseus-long hiatus from a camera-wielding exploit.
He’s back from Shawshank as a model ex-prisoner.
John, just get a camera, sound kit, and a few pals together and make a short your new calling card.
Superman (1978).
Why is Marlon Brando in this? I’m confused. He appears lost, like he’s doing King Lear and not a man-in-a-cape flick.
Anyway, it’s an okay movie once the boring prologue ends, and I don’t mind the rubbish special effects. They kind of add to the charm.
This is what a superhero movie can be when it doesn’t feel the requirement for daft political subtext or the shoehorning in of a fashionable theme of the day. Just tell the fucking story!
It doesn’t half drag on but it’s a good template for that kind of movie. But I’ll never watch it again.
Oppenheimer (2023). Meh.
The Trinity Test is the centrepiece, and what a magnificent, wholly cinematic build-up and pay-off it is, pure controlled mayhem in its visuals and sound.
The rest? I was bored shitless. Most vexing, and this includes seeing the bumbling Tom Conti as Albert Einstein and Gary Oldman as Harry S. Truman in two of their most cringe performances to date, was the unbearable reliance on appointment hearings and that security clearance interview, and the incessant cutting back and forth, an overlong spy-chasing vignette which I found mostly tiresome. We all know politicians are vile; there’s nothing especially innovative in showing us all over again.
I craved more spectacle as well as insight into how this deadly weapon was actually made, that and a longing for a Terrence Malick approach to the material. It was so talky but with no memorable dialogue, and I got a bit sick of it – I was genuinely disappointed. As for the eponymous protagonist, I simply found him boring, and every time the camera lingered perversely on his sunken cheekbones a sense of resigned ennui is how I would describe the atmosphere.
A stunning technical achievement though it all is, I didn’t find it particularly revelatory, and I won’t be watching it again.
It also didn’t help matters that I was sadly sat beside a large, rather whiffy individual who breathed like an asthmatic hippo, ate like a gannet, and decided to take his shoes and socks off. I had to endure this for almost three hours.
This is why I rarely go to the cinema.
Ah, the majesty that is Pine Barrens.
The funniest episode of any show ever. It’s not just the quotes but the brilliance of the situation. Big-shot mafia goons go a few miles outside of their comfort zone and they don’t know what to do.
They get lost and almost die in a two-mile stretch of woods. Useless/hopeless/pointless individuals. That’s the genius of the writing.
Imagine them on an Ant Middleton show.
In the Shadow of the Moon (2019).
This was just plain annoying, featuring a very annoying protagonist with a very annoying voice. I realised it’s one of the blokes from Narcos and the reason I stopped watching that show. Michael C. Hall is also in this and he also has an annoying voice. We also have Bokeem Woodbine, who possesses the softest, suavest voice, but he’s not in it enough for the movie to be decent.
I lost interest in it all after half an hour and doubt I’ve missed anything worth writing about. It’s just an array of annoying voices.
Next.
Melancholia (2011).
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The personal narratives – mega meltdowns – linked to an Extinction Level Event (ELE) is a lofty ambition but the director cannot be faulted for his audacity, and this film has a preternatural quality from the start with its striking opening and inspired use of Wagner (Tristan und Isolde).
We also have an acidic Charlotte Rampling, a plastered John Hurt, and Kiefer Sutherland doing his best ‘Fuming Mode’ in quite some time. There are scenes of such awkwardness in the first act that it’s a genuine feat to have put them together in rapid succession. Then we get all apocalyptic and it somehow works. There are so few movies like this, one toils to put it in a category.
It’s fucking depressing but in a good way.
Further reading/viewing:
Terminator: Dark Fate (2019). Urgh.
The reasons multiple, I put off watching this for a long time.
My two cents:
Again, the needy references to superior fare, the sheer desperation of bad writing, the mindless action with seemingly nothing at stake.
The ‘characters’ here buy the premise so instantly that you’re immediately questioning their validity, and as they have no dimensions it’s doubly irritating. They are chucked into unimaginative shoot-outs from the get-go. Who are these people? No idea, so I don’t care. There’s an antagonist who is as threatening as a poodle slurping a bowl of Bacardi Breezer, a hero sent from the future who is just plain dull, and Linda Hamilton looks more bored than I was watching her being bored.
I got to 48 mins. I couldn’t take any more torture and turned it off before Arnie arrived. So boring, so without logic or merit, so pedestrian on every level. This has to be the end of this extended shower of shit.
No more.
Street Fighter (1994) is special.
I don’t care what anyone says, this movie is entertaining as hell and that’s all that matters.
Aye, it’s a pile of shite but it knows it’s a pile of shite; no one is splitting the atom here and that’s a wise decision considering the ludicrousness of every situation, character, line reading, fight sequences, … everything. A nice wee companion piece to Mortal Kombat (1995), which does take itself seriously, but not too seriously, this movie defines the burgeoning video game era, nonsensical attempts to translate a new(ish) medium to another.
In a way, it wouldn’t survive on its own as a movie; it’s game-dependent in that every facet of it is explained by the game.
Aside from JCVD’s accent.
Further reading:
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 