Category Archives: United Kingdom
Munich – The Edge of War (2021). What a dire experience this waste of a movie is.
I was a bit dubious of this because it’s a British production about WWII, which are typically dull, mannered, mawkish, and entirely made-for-TV fare. It saddens me to report that Munich is all of the above and worse. It’s fucking atrocious. I don’t know where the tendency came from to depict these world-historical events from the POVs of superfluous (and entirely made up) secondary characters, but it’s vexing. Maybe just make a movie involving the actual statesmen, nah? This pointless, drama school-level acted show even has its forgettable range of third-wheels hog the screen time.
The screenplay is annoying to the max, every line of dialogue straight out of an alleged quote stemming from an alleged secondary source. One accidental highlight: I was taken aback by a smug-as-fuck SS character who appeared to be doing a very bad impersonation of the August Diehl bad boy from Inglorious Basterds (2009) – he had his voice and mannerisms and looked like him a decade on. It’s a truly embarrassing copycat acting job. And then I realised it was actually him. It’s the only what-the-hell and almost interesting moment of a placid and pointless excursion into revisionism.
Trash. But even cruddier than your usual sort because the topic is important. I’ve read a few reviews and it’s highly regarded, with a whopping 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. What are these critics on?
Jules et Jim (1962) is on.
I’d like to think that the truly great François Truffaut would be disgusted with this sneaky snap I took from behind a bus window, a wee ‘Ned’ at the back of the vessel screaming into his mobile the pros of beating a rival thug into a “fuckin’ bin”.
Glen Clova getaway.
It’s the Overlook Hotel/the Dumb and Dumber (1994) palace with a surrounding … nature.
Great Outdoors Mission Accomplished.
Gunpowder, Treason & Plot (2004) is Robert Carlyle at his most Robert Carlyle.
For the exposition, I thought this one of the worst performances I’d ever seen. It was like Carlyle watched Richard III – play or any movie – and decided to limp about like Crookback for the duration of a gunpowder plot. And spice it up with a bit of Begbie. His James VI/I is a foul-mouthed little bastard with no grace or manners, an opportunistic cockroach who would murder an OAP for a bag of sugar.
I was thinking this and then I thought: this is 1603+. These creatures chucked one another onto bonfires and ripped their entrails apart. And the same sort would do the same today if they could. And then I got the genius of the performance.
Carlyle is keeping it real.
This is the only place I could find it. It’s very good, and with a young(ish) Michael Fassbender as Guy Fawkes:
Howard’s End (1992). Oh my!
This movie quietly defines the quietly adventurous. It’s so basic Mise-en-scène and placid and it should be boring but it isn’t because there’s a reasoning behind the dull stylistics. These were Edwardian times; apparently you couldn’t say what you think and lived a life of repressed longings (to speak) or whatever.
Hopkins is out of this world here; he is incapable of ‘normal’. He can barely hold a conversation with another actor; almost everything he does is a monologue. He is unique and he didn’t become Hannibal for no apparent reason.
Despite their apparent quaintness, Merchant–Ivory did make some crackers. The Remains of the Day (1993) is their undoubted masterpiece, a Hopkins masterclass again. This is the prototype for these type of movies, of which there are more and more these days because they are a safe bet. None are any good, however. I took one look at a recent upstairs-downstairs thing and turned it off after 178 seconds.
Most of this shite is just … shite we send to our former colonial subjects. They think we are actually like this.
Nonsense.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 