A very weak Costner performance, especially when you consider that the real-life Kenny O’Donnell had little bearing on these events. The role stinks of ego and the movie is better when he doesn’t feature. Sadly, he’s never off the screen.
The actors playing the Kennedy brothers are also fucking dire.
Several things about this movie annoyed me prior to watching it: it’s a reboot of a disaster flick that isn’t any good, it features that immensely vexing bloke from Top Gun: Maverick (2022), and I hate films about the weather – aside from Groundhog Day (1993), which is weather as MacGuffin.
Barrels resembling Quint’s annoyed me. It’s an opening wee scene and a protagonist introduces herself via one of these vlogs and there are barrels in the frame. At least be subtle in your references.
Dialogue was from the dustbin and I could predict almost every other line a character was about to say.
Some of it is good – the effects are splendid. There is at least chemistry between the leads.
But one of the characters is the spitting image of Noah Tannenbaum from season three of The Sopranos, so this loses half a star.
The intro could not be more pure ‘80s in its gratuitousness, Rob Lowe puck action synced to cheese. The bloke has not aged in 40 years (paper rounds did not exist for him). Keanu Reeves is in it as the goalie and he hasn’t aged, either. Patrick Swayze features also and he munches on a rose. This is not a metaphor.
The family breakfast scene a few mins in is straight outta A New Hope (1977), almost word for word, action for action; I had to rewind and repeat because, yes, I am that sad.
I don’t know what this movie thinks it is or what the intention was, but it’s an amusing, entertaining breed of shite, a silly primary source from a silly time. But they appear simpler times.
It’s the Mighty Ducks on drugs. Any and all kind of drugs.
What a load of shite this was, but it’s another ‘must see’ movie off my bucket list.
The premise is ludicrous, as is almost everything that takes place. And it’s pure cringe, from him taking a streetwalker into a fantasy hotel, the wincing reactions of the staff and the guests, the squirming montage of her on Rodeo Drive trying on the outfits to ‘Pretty Woman’ (how clever), to the tedious board meetings.
And the bloke who played George Costanza from Seinfeld is in it and he is rubbish.
On the Waterfront (1954) is a silly, preachy film with a garbled message but it has a sweeping score and I didn’t know it was a Leonard Bernstein work.
Quite the kerfuffle surrounded Maestro (2023), cooked up by the usual whining lot – the lead actor doesn’t share the same ethnicity as the real-life musician(!). Such hysterics are par for the course these days.
The movie:
All the sycophantic wee groupies grinning away pissed me off, as did the constant smoking; it was tiresome even if accurate. Bit too long, torporific pacing, quite boring.
But I recommend it merely for showing a time when famous people were exemplary talents who had something that most mortals couldn’t do.
The outrageous pointlessness of The Revenant (2015) annoyed me the most.
It borders on both the bathetic and pathetic, a twin cannon of self-imposed misery propped up with needless sequence shots for the sake of aping some Cobacabana club. But here the aesthetic is redundant as the story is a nothing matter and there are no characters for the duration. A bear makes an appearance and it’s the most colourful personality.
Such a terrible movie. It’s cold out there and the wilderness is cruel – we get it.
In almost everything, he quietly steals the show. No histrionics or chewing the scenery, but an impeccable talent to convince in every role – mob boss, downtrodden miner, creepy CIA handler. I suppose that’s acting. He excelled at projecting an inscrutable authority, rarely perturbed, but you can see that he’s seething.
Go-to performance, a remarkable gig in Todd Field’s quite brilliant In the Bedroom (2000):
The opening voice-over reeked of amateurishness – John Lithgow narrating shots of our heroes playing football, describing a wee bit of superfluous info about them all – so I turned it off and watched a documentary about the bomber instead.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 