Category Archives: Uncategorized
Copshop (2021).
The ominous opening set the tone despite the humour, some of it actually funny, and this was never dull even though the Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) scenario kept most of the shenanigans indoors.
Gerard Butler wasn’t dire! He’s sometimes capable of being okay and here is one of those occasions. Frank Grillo, Cutty from The Wire, the cast is not an issue and every character was credible.
Rather thrilling hokum, genuinely inexperienced cops of mostly limited talents really struggling when up against hardened criminals.
It does, however, wholeheartedly exhibit that infuriating habit of American cinema, characters constantly addressing one another by their names during every single exchange they have, as if the audience will have forgotten who they are.
Just stop doing it. It needs to end.
99 Homes (2014).
Michael Shannon is quite an extraordinary actor, and only a Tom Hardy or Michael Fassbender could inject such pathos and reasoning in a snake like Rick Carver. It’s Gordon Gekko for the 2007-2008 financial crisis, but with more of a backstory and a wee bit more humanity in the very naughty lad. He clearly exploits Garfield from the start but also sees massive potential in his brains and work ethic; it’s a relationship built on a knife edge.
And it shows you, to a degree, how this system works – exploitation, cynicism, government and corporations working together to screw you. And the exploited bails them out. It’s shocking but not really surprising.
Gripping all the way through, a life lesson and a character study.
Fabulous stuff.
Beckham (Netflix).
There’s archive footage in episode 2 of this Netflix doc when post-Simeone lash-out you see hundreds of demented West Ham United fans outside the Man Utd team bus before a match going apeshit and baying for a public hanging.
You see in these moments how pathetic the masses can be.
That’s the big take from this series, which is beguilingly directed by the ‘Indian’ bloke from Short Circuit (1986).
Johnny 5 is alive.
Tenet (2020).
I’m sure this was about something, and that something was something other than surface sheen and pyrotechnics, but it wasn’t something that interested me in the slightest.
So I won’t be bothering with a review other than that of Kenneth Branagh’s Russian ‘accent’, which receives a 0/5 from me.
Bye for now.
Daredevil (2003) isn’t shite.
I expected something abysmal but instead found Mark Margolis, David Keith (not to be confused with Keith David), Vondas from The Wire, Joey Pants, the hulking Michael Clarke Duncan, and a possessed Colin Farrell having the time of his life, seemingly (“I want a bloody costume”). A colourful cast, folk that can act. Despite the unwatchable Jon Favreau (he is awful in everything), it’s not bad at all.
I was terribly entertained, and a sequel would have been at least pleasant. The movie has the standard silly one-liners and inevitable awkward attempts at comedy, but it’s suitably grim and grimy, and the story has some basis in a believable reality. I was also borderline shocked to see how much of this movie was appropriated for Batman Begins (2005), and the ending lifted verbatim.
Affleck is also fine in it. And the music is banging.
#WakeMeUpInside.
Das Leben der Anderen (2006).
This movie is beyond masterpiece. Exquisite in all ways. It shows how awful, petty, cruel and overbearingly nasty folk are when they’re in a system built on dogma which makes no sense … it’s essentially communism in your nutshell. Imagine having to live within this horrid wee cocoon environment?
Anyway, big kudos to the hero who makes up shit and at the end of it all gets a wee book dedicated to him. Top lad.
And Gabriel Yared should score everything in life. The opening of a door or the emptying of a bin (any bin). I’d watch that with his tunes. He engulfs the mundane with tragedy.
Peep Show.
Celebrating 20 years of Peep Show.
The indelible memory for me will forever remain Jeremy running over a dog and then eating it on a barge during Mark’s ad hoc job interview.
Because we can all relate to that.
The World at War (1973).
The incredible archive footage, the level of research, the interviews, the music, the sound of Laurence Olivier.
Sublime and unrivalled.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 