This is why:
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/wall-street-douglas-48f38baebf014be6a8155f5cfed5030a.jpg)
Michael Douglas was a bona fide box office bonanza for a decade.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Fatherland (1994).
This is a made-for-TV adaptation – with many alterations – of a book I’ve never read but is alleged to be the crème de la crème of its genre.
It’s not bad at all. It has a chilling atmosphere and the premise more than believable. It works as a wee TV movie than a big-budget bonanza (alliteration overload) that would undoubtedly flop.
It’s on YouTube for free and kills 90 minutes and may initiate 20 mins on Wikipedia.
And Rutger Hauer, a lad from the Netherlands, goes remorseful SS and convincingly so.
That’s impressive acting.
Drop Zone (1994).
Another John Badham movie?! This bloke directed everything, your journeyman hack for hire. Talented, though.
Here we have Wesley Snipes and the frankly barking Gary Busey in the same movie. It’s hokum but good for what it is. The action is splendid, and it just about makes up for a highly annoying performance from ‘90s resident oddball Michael Jeter.
It’s also a shame what happened to Snipes as he’s a decent actor.
It’s alright. Just don’t be expecting anything deep.
The Adjustment Bureau (2011).
I saw this in a hotel room once, but I don’t know when or where, only recalling it was okay.
And it is.
Terence Stamp is in it and he is just wonderful. As he is in everything.
The Last Starfighter (1984).
I dreaded this viewing as it’s never a splendid idea to revisit a childhood classic.
Imagine my surprise upon enjoying this charming little flick. You know what I liked about it the most?
It isn’t shite.
In the Company of Men (1997).
The first entry in a Neil LaBute unofficial trilogy of cruelty – Your Friends & Neighbors (1998) and The Shape of Things (2003) follow – that established the template for stories of bored, financially secure, thoroughly nasty people do thoroughly nasty things to weaker species for their own wry amusement. There are dozens in this sub-genre now, and this is worth the watch just to see the more naive of the two sadists get his just desserts.
The most perplexing of all of this is the fact the director made the frankly batshit The Wicker Man (2006), a remake so unnecessary and atrocious that not even Nicolas Cage can salvage it. Actually, he’s at least a good sport and makes it funny.
Highlander (1986).
A first viewing of this odd, quite daft, and extremely watchable slice of hokum. It’s the kind of script a wee kid would write, and it’s somehow a movie. The camera work was so ridiculous, outrageous in the angles.
The music is also the best kind of cheese.
And Sean Connery has an earring.
Deadpool & Wolverine (2024).
Dragged to this and thoroughly did not like it.
Galling one-liners and self-referential in-jokes and dull characters constantly referencing they’re in a multiverse. What else? Superhero cameos galore, and fight scenes set to pop hits (how clever). And Ryan Reynolds and his inability to shut the fuck up for even 20 seconds. I suppose that’s the point, but his voice is too annoying to endure for a full movie.
I waited outside for the last half hour, so I don’t know how it ended.
And I don’t care.
Son of Saul (2015).
Aesthetically perfect movie with a protagonist’s tunnel vision style that works, an actual reasoning behind it – it’s the antithesis of the self-indulgent. Much more than a ‘noble’, culturally significant picture, it’s as honest with its brutality as you can get, and vice versa. It did recall for me One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and uses all the tools of cinematic technique to tell a story so gripping, relentless, and powerful in its immediacy.
A searing portrait of Hell on Earth, this is not a film you’ll forget.
Proper art.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 