The Many Saints of Newark (2021).
This was surprisingly very good. I was expecting a desperate prequel but it had a purpose behind it and was about something, giving a credible background to Tony Soprano and the wider historical environment of the Mafia in their heyday. It is occasionally thrilling and unpredictable and though it’s nothing really like The Sopranos in tone (no psychoanalysis or dream sequences), it revels in characterisation.
The only thing about it that really annoyed me were the two shoddy acting jobs by the actors playing Paulie Walnuts and Silvio Dante. It was something out of Saturday Night Live but a particularly bad episode.
But overall, a pleasant surprise, and it reminded me a little bit of A Bronx Tale (1993).
And this has one hell of an ending. I recommend.
Gran Torino (2008). Don’t mess with Clint (or his car).
Clint – we all go by first-name basis with the living legend (LL) – has perfected the ultimate grizzled angry old man with latent empathy. He long ago (even as early as the late ’70s) mastered fading masculinity and here especially he is thoroughly believable because of the asshole that he is. I’ve read many times that he goes for the ‘PC brigade’. I really don’t think he does; he’s just making movies about what he knows, the type of characters he does best, and he simply runs with his instincts as a filmmaker. He’s not exactly going to star in or direct a sequel to The Birdcage (1996).
He is extremely funny here, and the jokes don’t come from the racial slurs; it’s the fact he’s this hard-as-nails old geezer and no one in the movie either expects it nor can handle it.
“Ever notice how you come across somebody once in a while who you shouldn’t have fucked with? …. That’s me.”
He’s quite hit and miss as a director, but when he stars in a film, or one of his own, it’s usually very good.
He must be pushing 100 now. He’s incredible.
Newkirkgate, Leith.
It’s a grim milieu but not without its charms. The Athens of the North and all that.
This bloke was/is both Han and Indy. Which is some statement.
Ford created the art of ‘non-acting acting’. In everything he’s effortless. Everything is effortless. He’s incapable of a bad performance. Even when he’s in a shitter he’s still interesting, … even if he doesn’t look interested.
A self-effacing lad, a proper hero. He apparently even lives on a ranch and flies planes. He probably built his own house because he can do anything.
Jesus was a carpenter. And so is Harrison Ford.
Oktoberfest: Beer & Blood. Meh ….
Certainly ambitious in conception, but it all feels so rehashed and by the numbers, kind of half-baked and jaded by its own pretensions.
There are moments when you think it’s finally going to throw off the shackles and descend into proper depravity and capture the macabre, but it never does, like it’s constrained by committee. And there’s not enough of a portrait of Oktoberfest or Munich or … Germany in general, and those times were wicked times.
I was expecting a Bavarian Red Wedding. It never happened. Plenty of beer, but not enough blood.
Oh well, the intention was there.
48 Hours (1982). The best.
This is just great, the original and best buddy cop flick. And the best casting, Nolte and Murphy with a rapport never equalled in this genre. This was peak Murphy, a time when he could do no wrong. The bit when he lights up the country and western bar is quite simply … awesome. Everything works, in fact. The carnage, the score, the story, the setting.
What else have I missed? Oh, James Remar. For once, you’ve got a bad guy who is actually scary and just slightly unhinged. He’s a very bad dude.
As an action comedy, it’s numero uno.
28 Weeks Later (2007) is rather scary.
It’s when Begbie goes zombie-Begbie and becomes a raging, snarling contagion, spreading the virus in the safe room in what is quite possibly the most terrifyingly claustrophobic sequence ever put on film.
And then immediately after this a certain Stringer Bell therefore decides to shoot them all.
It’s better than its precursor. Much better, and this is despite it getting a bit too silly towards the end. And I have no interest in the undead genre.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 