Such a crap movie.
Not a line of dialogue seemed blessed with, well … verisimilitude. It was aimless and politically everywhere and represents the worst version of Spielberg. He excels at sharks and dinosaurs and big fuck-off boulders. This was just muddled and all rather pointless.
The writing is very weak and the whole father-son bonding thing here with Michael Lonsdale and Eric Bana was embarrassing to watch and is the most annoying part of a most annoying motion picture.
Rubbish.
A remarkable cast wasted on this wholly unremarkable drivel, the script fished from the residue of 1,000 superior crime dramas. It was a mightily depressing watch, such is its tendency to wallow in muck, everyone in it a miserable bastard with complementary chip on shoulder. It’s also not even well made. I can see what it’s getting at – Rust Belt setting, forgotten communities, crime the only way out, etc. But it’s so identikit and dull and the whole thing is by the numbers. Stick on Killing Them Softly (2012) instead, similar themes but far superior writing.
Interestingly (barely), the makers were sued by an indigenous tribe negatively depicted in the movie.
My contention is that everyone involved in this should have been sued for it being so shite.
Another Alien movie, more trepidation.
I was seeking a film that wasn’t stupid, and this wasn’t as stupid as recent Xenomorph shenanigans. The opening credits set an eerie atmosphere. I liked the throwback production design, this nestled between the first two (only great) movies in the franchise. The cast are okay. It’s not too long. It’s mostly fun.
However, a de-ageing job – this is the trend now when filmmakers get lazy – is done on Ian Holm and it’s truly terrible. I’m not even delving into the ethics of it; it just looks ridiculous, ropey, and fake as fuck.
Kind of ruined it all for me.
I wasn’t expecting this to be any good, another remnant from the Channel 5 days – it must have been on 20-odd times during that channel’s infancy.
It’s quite brilliant and executes its simple premise with so much momentum, the thrills never letting up. The movie has an arthouse feel, or at least a sensibility one wouldn’t associate with American cinema, with a stunning use of the landscape and the characters’ minuscule role in it.
And we also get to witness another impenetrable Jon Voight ‘accent’.
Even the poster annoys me.
I’m not watching this shite merely because of that poster.
Forever synonymous with Medusa, the terror of a million childhoods.
For this alone, Clash of the Titans (1981) is a work of iconography. It does, though, have a bit more to it than this terrifying batshit gargoyle (or whatever) with a barnet of vipers, something you’d find hammered in a weekend taxi queue, honking of kebab and drenched in voddy & Coke. Or maybe I’ve spent too many hours in the seedier parts of Scotland.
One can appreciate it as the Ray Harryhausen Show, a highlight reel of his charming delights. The cast, too, are having a right laugh, all of them very much aware they’re slumming it in a bloated porker of a production made 30 years too late. Stupid, cheesy, unabashedly so, the movie is a big clunking mess and all the better for it.
It’s good rubbish – it’s fun.
I thought this would be total crap, a patronising ‘message movie’.
But it was fine. It held interest and serves as a gateway to a historical time and place that continues to be contentious. The main actor passed away recently, which is a shame as he was tremendously good in this. It’s nothing special but as a genre piece it’s a decent watch.
Bogart’s Sam Spade is fascinating to watch. His business partner is murdered and he doesn’t seem particularly bothered by this loss, but his jaded schtick runs the full gamut, distorts itself, the lad by the end a kaleidoscope of emotions (some real, some not so) in this riot of a film noir. I’ve never been so engrossed by the pursuit of an ornament. There is a grand metaphor in there somewhere.
Pristine deep-focus cinematography, mainly of conversations between shady characters in rooms cocooned by Venetian blinds, the occasional appearance of a pistol, typifies this period of noir. But this is as riveting as it gets. You remain captivated as you’re constantly trying to interpret what a person really wants and what their words actually reveal about themselves – you become a detective, deciphering signs, actively reading language.
This is a deserved classic. You cannot take your eyes off Bogart as he’s so unusual in look and delivery.
And Peter Lorre’s deranged eyes were born for celluloid.
Oh my! This was shocking melodrama, so turgid and pointless I wished to not be compelled to watch it but I was most compelled – there must be a term for this.
Alain Delon does his best. But then, how can you cast Richard Burton as Leon Trotsky? It’s a shocking performance from a bang-average actor. I suppose there are financial reasons behind these casting decisions, or why one would make a honking movie about such a creature like that in the first place.
The veneration of ghastly things. That’s the 20th century.
This movie was fucking appalling.
Please, don’t watch it.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 