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.
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 has the most insane sudden shifts in style and tone. It fees like a student movie, and then you have some ludicrous sentimental schmaltz – strong Rocky (1976) pretensions – thrown in the mix. It’s certainly unpredictable and often entertaining, and the confidence of it all is twinned to an actual story with proper societal issues. Visually, it has some impressive and daring scenes, and the physical specimen that is peak Liam Neeson.
But, unfortunately, Hugh Grant turns up. I don’t know what accent he’s speaking in because I’ve never heard anyone talk like that.
I didn’t believe a minute of this movie. But I’m not bothered.
I’m more perplexed as to how and why Ennio Morricone scored this to tunes that sound like the b-side of The Untouchables (1987).
It doesn’t even matter what the subject matter is – this is ridiculous in that it’s just Clive Owen narrating a few events. It’s so magisterial in its framing, the shot syntax, the subtext of the bare-bones screenplay, that I was kind of engulfed in it all despite not actively being engaged in the story. A brooding exercise in style.
Casino (1995) is the best movie about a casino, but this casino-based film isn’t about a casino; it could be set in a Lidl.
This really was a wasted opportunity, the gift of a premise – two snipers in a dance of death amidst the backdrop of the bloodiest battle in history – compromised by a pointless romance, daft politics, dodgy accents, and a complete misunderstanding of the time and place depicted.
It would have been better to not tackle the complexity of it all and just show the antagonists facing off, with allusions to the wider ideological foes.
The first 10 mins, though. Watch those and then turn it off. Here you go:
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.
Bit of a trivial non-story this one but what else do you expect from a rejig of a silly caper?
It starts off all kitsch and almost in awe of its prototype, but it gets much better once the police corruption is exposed; it ended up delivering more than I expected.
Christian Bale is a Very Bad Bale, just a slimy, smug yuppie, and as shameless as it gets, but he somehow imbues the scumbag with vulnerabilities; it’s just before his Full-Bateman turn before he went Full-Batman. But the big kudos go to Jeffrey Wright’s wannabe socially protean drug baron. He’s a ludicrous Tony Montana imitation. And extremely funny.
The small pleasures from these movies mostly consist of spotting the actor. We’ve got George Costanza’s boss from Seinfeld, Dan Hedaya (the bloke who is in everything), and both Kima Greggs and that annoying prat Bubbles from The Wire. And the mom from The Sixth Sense (1999).
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.
I know very little about any of this; I quite simply do not care for the yarn, and I never will. So such Biblical inaccuracies are of no concern to me, much as a filmic deviation from a comic book also rouses no faux-incredulity on my behalf.
Visuals here were impressive. The rest, absolute shite, from the horrible characters to the bombast, and the general tedium of it all.
Another week, another slice of Netflix mayhem, this series says a lot about the power of cults and how disturbed, megalomaniac manipulators make it to the top in these organisations.
A docu of a pre-digital age, the vintage nature of analogue broadcasting and videotape puts it in another century, which it is, but it’s no less contentious because of it. By default, one of its major concerns is the news media’s obsession with and reaction to havoc, co-dependent symbiotic twins. The Second Amendment is surprisingly given little focus, nor is just how this fits into any broader narrative of Carnage Americana.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 