This funny flick (for the most part) revels in its own silly wee world and knows how ridiculous it is.
Several chuckles along the way, even if the last 20 minutes are unbearable in their noisy-as-hell mindlessness, as if all the self-aware comedy was building to a doll on a dull rampage.
Michael Madsen seemed to exist in this liminal space between trash and art, or how sometimes they can be intertwined. And let’s not forget the unforgettable creation, the lad who had a predilection for slicing ears off.
Scary man!
An intro to Aronofskyisms, who in his exceptional debut feature pulls off the remarkable feat of making mathematics sort of interesting, theory relayed to us via the characters in their gripping exchanges; in these moments you end up taking notes for a Wikipedia binge.
The director draws so much from a conceptual premise through stylistic verve and repetition, and doesn’t run out of steam. There’s always something going on, the plot presenting successive obstacles for Max Cohen in his hopeless search for meaning where there frankly isn’t any to be found. The dirtiness of his domain (it’s like Abel Ferrara territory), the fact he’s living (barely) in squalor, the cocoon lifestyle, seems to further convince him that he’s deep in the shit and on the verge of an Earth-shattering discovery.
Great film, wild ride, the Aronofsky template.
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The biggest pat on the back I can bestow on this middling commercial is that it makes me wish to watch Jaws (1975) again for the 148th time.
Thanks.
Lovely wee comedy. It’s not hilarious or anything but it’s witty and clever. What happened to Alicia Silverstone? Was it Batman & Robin (1997) that robbed her of a career? Or maybe she just belongs in the ’90s.
A sad shame.
I was watching a soul-splintering episode of such cretinous drivel earlier, this viewing not of my choosing, me the captive audience.
It entirely consisted of a ‘character’ with a stubborn point of view being talked into having an apostate opinion by another ‘character’ doing the convincing. This happened four times in varying damp scenarios in under half an hour, and the rest of the ‘drama’ composed of pratfalling village idiots faffing around with mugs of tea and biscuits, these additions to the narrative just a tiny step above the bracket of lobotomy IQ levels.
Absolutely fucking hideous, how these shows still exist is just depressing.
It’s the original trailer for Alien (1979), and it is up there with the best of them:
Sometimes trailers are art. If you watch the Star Trek (2009) one, for example, with its Two Steps From Hell accompaniment, it’s more accomplished than the actual movie.
There should be awards for trailers.
Survived an hour of Joker: Folie à Deux (2024).
I understand, after much research, it’s a self-reflexive flick that draws attention to the audience’s alleged complicity in the villain’s crimes, or our fascination in them – hence the tedium, the daft singing, the proverbial strangling-the-cat. If that’s the point, what’s the point? If I want karaoke, I’ll listen to any pub in Edinburgh on a Saturday.
This film is one of the most painful experiences I’ve had to endure this year. I can rustle up a more captivating, less infuriating shitter with £500, and this wouldn’t even be an arduous quest. And I’m a fabulous singer compared to these two sawdust-throated failed crooners.
I fucking hate this movie.
A barely cobbled together assortment of various grandiose ideas and sketchy performances, the acting is baroque, the standard mental stuff you get in a Baz Luhrmann film, except he generally makes interesting cinema. Some of the images here catch the eye, but they never coalesce into anything resembling a coherent narrative.
The characters have arguments you can’t even connect with or understand; they bicker for the director’s benefit, in a story based on the Catilinarian conspiracy but without any intrigue, political element, or a Cicero. If ever a movie needed an editor, or someone to just tell the director to grow up a wee bit, it’s this one.
I tried to give it a go as the lad has made some classics, but I was compelled to turn it off at 56 minutes.
Life is too short for this shite.
I’m off to watch Jack (1996) with a Blue WKD.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 