JCVD is fine here, which I find sort of shocking. He displays levels of vulnerability that Seagal couldn’t even consider. The Brussels lad (I can’t be bothered spelling his name) can act if given the right role.
An intriguing premise that is fulfilled, decent action, JCVD doing the splits for a reason, a slimy Ron Silver, Bruce McGill who seems to be in everything, and two female leads who aren’t annoying.
This was a decent movie.
But not as good as this:
The concept is a bit better than the end product but still, this is a movie deserved of revisiting from time to time, despite the inevitable thriller elements that take over towards the denouement. It’s an intriguing premise, what you can achieve when you reduce thinking to its salient elements and get rid of the background noise.
It excels in its exposition and depiction of the cutthroat financial arena as a den of thieves with half of them on some variation of the gear (NZT-48). I hear it got adapted into a TV spin-off that was cancelled after a season, which sounds about right. There’s only so much you can squeeze out of the story.
But De Niro is a gift in this. He always is.
“Don’t make me your competition.”
Some movies you just ‘don’t get’. I don’t get Arrival (2016).
It’s boring. It’s derivative. It’s inordinately and agonisingly slow for no reason. It’s not even pretentious but wants to be; if you fail at that then you’re rubbish. I didn’t hate it … which just made the experience even worse. If I despised it then at least I would enjoy ranting about it. It’s merely pointless.
And so is this review.
Bye for now.
A total clichéfest after an almost absorbing first 10 minutes and admittedly impressive set design, this is one of those ‘cult movies’ that quite a few renowned movie critics admire. I believe they have been bribed by the producers or blackmailed or something. It’s the worst kind of B-movie in that everything in it is lifted from everything else, even down to the bizarre appearance of an Eddie Murphy lookalike as one of the ship’s crew; I did a double take and it took about a minute to realise it wasn’t him.
Not a developed character in the picture, the script bafflingly tries to compensate with constant jargon that the characters relay to the audience in order to inform us that we are stupid and not crew members on a spaceship. And it’s all so rushed it feels like the editors took speed during the latter half of the cutting sessions.
Only reason I’m moaning about such a shitter is that a few cinephiles whom I respect have said it’s great.
They are very wrong.
Andrew Dominik made Chopper (2000) and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007), so I’ll watch anything he makes, despite a batch of bad reviews for this one. I don’t know what these critics are on because this movie is dazzling from the get-go, an opening sequence featuring a Golden Age Hollywood in flames.
It’s a fascinating, absorbing watch, and you’re pulled right into the tapestry with the magnificent sound editing and cinematography, Dominik a master of his canvas. And it’s one dark canvas, Monroe a bullied, manipulated, tragic figure, less a character than a metaphor for Hollywood itself. I can see why so many folk hate this movie – it’s realism at its most brutal, the myth busted.
How to summarise it? An NC-17 anti-biopic with more visual treats than most of the crap pumped out by the system it lambasts.
I’ll be watching again in a few weeks.
I’ll leave it Roger Ebert to summarise the master: ‘Godard is a director of the very first rank; no other director in the 1960s has had more influence on the development of the feature-length film. Like Joyce in fiction or Beckett in theater, he is a pioneer whose present work is not acceptable to present audiences. But his influence on other directors is gradually creating and educating an audience that will, perhaps in the next generation, be able to look back at his films and see that this is where their cinema began.’
Scorsese brought me here:
Further reading/viewing:
https://variety.com/2022/film/columns/jean-luc-godard-tribute-remembered-breathless-1235371061/
https://loeildelaphotographie.com/en/in-memoriam-jean-luc-godard-1930-2022-dv/
It started so well and the jam they are in certainly has its enthralling moments initially but the series soon ran out of ideas, each successive sticky situation more risible and repetitive. Though the characters remain credible, their incessant switching allegiances started to grind my gears, and so too did Laura Linney’s Lady Macbeth impersonation; probably the most embarrassing I’ve seen, I’ve been more terrified of an unflushed shite in a KFC.
There isn’t really anyone worth caring about, especially as they all get increasingly Walter White. Unlike Breaking Bad, this, aside from a bit of Harris Yulin banter, is bereft of humour of any kind.
The most vexing: the characters’ addiction to addressing one another by name EVERY FUCKING SENTENCE.
“Listen, Marty.”
“I am listening, Wendy.”
“I don’t think you are, Marty.”
No one speaks like this.
Like the later seasons of House of Cards (US), I lost interest in everything so committed the Wikipedia thing.
No regrets.
This movie is more interested in visual trickery than the characters or plot, of which there are none. I didn’t see the point of any of it, and it took an age to get going. It was also needlessly violent, the worst cartoon kind, Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn whacking each other with shovels particularly daft. Some of the reviews from the time describe the film as cruel and heartless, which is entirely accurate. It’s meant to be a comedy. I only laughed at myself for not turning the thing off.
An uncredited cameo from Sydney Pollack aside, I hated it.
Next.
I wasn’t expecting much from this, the picture released decades after the last instalment. It smelled of a desperate reboot, and all the chatter of on-set discord (to put it lightly) between the leads wasn’t encouraging. But how stunning this movie turned out to be, a nonstop thrill-ride serving as the antidote to today’s CGI-laden borefests.
It looks like it was storyboarded to the max, and thank fuck as it’s expert spectacle. So many movies give the impression that the cinematographer and director never even discussed the visuals before the day’s shoot. Fury Road, however, defines … creative carnage.
I recommend the best way to view this treat is as a double bill with Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981). Fittingly, Roger Ebert’s review of the Mel Gibson classic captures the appeal of both:
I’ll keep this short.
I lasted 54 minutes but couldn’t take any more pain.
It’s nothing but a desperate parody of the original.
I wondered why or how Keanu Reeves was in it. It’s either blackmail material or the makers of this sorry sack of shit were in possession of another sad-with-a-sandwich meme.
It’s visually so anonymous and could be any derivative movie among a thousand.
It has nothing to say.
And every character in it I wished to flush down a toilet.
It’s pointless.
Bye for now.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 