This was deeply uncomfortable to watch.
I know barely a thing about the people concerned but I felt like I was on the inside for the duration of the grisly unearthing of a sordid series of manky acts by one rotten creature. And an industry enabling it.
The movie is accomplished in this regard, though it was a box-office bomb (not exactly a shock) despite the talent involved.
Another example of journalism accomplishing what law enforcement should but does not.
Hell or High Water (2016) is very much the industry’s modern Western, luxuriating in a morbid obsession with the past and lost causes, the usual broken-home narrative and the criminals bred from it, a swipe at ruthless capitalism to boot.
But it looks outrageously cinematic, despite the galore of clichés on display. Jeff Bridges is in it and it’s his worse performance; he’s so grating I muted his dialogue and admired the visuals instead of listening to him. He’s some kind of revered ‘treasure’ these days and I have never understood it. He’s been phoning in his shaggy-dog act for two decades now and it’s sadly a guarantee you’ll have to endure this tired schtick in any movie he features in.
A shite actor of limited gifts in a good movie with better actors to salvage it. And your thrilling carnage.
And the incredible cinematography.
Few motion pictures from the oeuvre of Orson Welles can be presumed as being fully realised, such is the vivid literature of production chaos accompanying each project. We have anomalies in Citizen Kane (1941) and Touch of Evil (1958) – and this the 1998 re-release that celebrated technical whiz Walter Murch translated from Welles’ 58-page instructions. Every other movie from Welles is a mess, though usually a daring and admirable work.
The enfant terrible of a hundred biographies was indulged one time only; he seldom again had the money to finish productions, or manage them, or bring his visions to satisfactory fruition. It’s one of cinemas great tragedies and there are more than plenty. He exists in this liminal world of half-realised dreams, grandiose what-might-have-beens, stunted ambition, self-sabotage, a proclivity for playing Icarus.
And The Lady from Shanghai (1947)? It’s a hoot. Despite the confusing plot (probably by design), it is technically cutting edge, with Welles’ virtuoso camera taking us on a wild ride up there with the most lauded noirs of the era. A highly funny film that verges on self-parody, especially in the courtroom scenes, it’s as weird as a Welles movie gets.
Worth watching for his ‘Irish’ accent alone.
An attempt to watch Gotti (1996) reminded of what I hate about ex-mobsters, or ones on the margins of that world, who segue to ‘acting’. They cannot act a lick and it’s embarrassing to watch.
This has Big Pussy and Paulie Walnuts in it and their mere presence had me reaching for the remote. Uncle Junior even appears; The Sopranos survived despite this.
Then Anthony Quinn reels off one of his worst performances, which defines the last 20 years of his career.
So I turned it off because it’s shite.
Stick to Scorsese. Avoid crap like this.
It’s less clunky, and not as downright annoying as Clones. Visually, it’s a joy to behold and Ian McDiarmid is having a laugh. But it’s bereft of invention, laughs, and those operatic and iconic moments that elevated the original trilogy above its matinee inspirations.
Anakin is so weakly written that any actor would struggle with imbuing his transition to the Dark Side with any conviction. Painful viewing for all concerned. And only George Lucas could make Samuel L. Jackson boring.
You’re left with the impression that the film’s sole purpose is to wrap everything up smoothly and lay the groundwork for A New Hope (1977), which is all quite pointless as no backstory is needed.
Adam Driver is in most of his output a horrendously insufferable watch, but he’s good in this film. You don’t have to attempt to muster the minerals to take him seriously or put up with his Emo masquerade and he emerges as quite the comedian.
It’s just a shame that in other flicks he appears to think he’s James Dean.
A passable, occasionally amusing movie.
Roughly 43 minutes into this semi-charming, fully pedestrian tale about a cynic humanised by a penguin, I said to myself: “Why the fuck is this a movie?”
And then I went to sleep until I heard the sound of departing footsteps.
I’m sure it was worthwhile for those in the audience who resisted the temptation to nap.
What trivial pish.
Bad auguries from kickoff in the script department when a security guard (or whatever) emerges from a ship that’s just nestled on a landing pad and smugly announces, “We made it.”
You’re kidding me?! You just gave the impression you didn’t make it.
What an unbridled farce it all is. But the dialogue especially is the worst of any Star Wars outing ever, characters unable to go 30 seconds without spitting nonsense or telling us what they are doing as if we are at the blind school, imperative piled upon imperative.
The editing is amateur hour. I sat incredulous, legit open-mouthed at most of the cutting choices – why Lucas cuts to another angle for no apparent reason, why he inexplicably holds a shot for an age after someone has finished speaking (gibberish).
And Yoda wielding a lightsaber is a sequence that belongs in a skip. All mystique was sucked from the green dwarf right there in a classic case of jumping the shark Yoda.
Oh, it’s a bloomin’ awful car crash of a flick and I watched it because there is something wrong with me. There’s a lot wrong with me.
It’s the hallowed ’90s, it’s pre-internet (mostly), something called television existed, much of it the retreat of the freaks, and watching the box was all folk seemingly did in their spare time.
And there was a show called The Jerry Springer Show, this staple of ‘Trash TV’ hosted by a lad named Jerry Springer. And chairs were flying.
This is a good nostalgia trip into total pish. But nothing much has changed; it’s a smorgasbord of pish out there presently and that’s not likely to improve. As a contributor in this says, “Anything goes.”
Anyway – Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!
An intolerable movie, this was a noisy affair, so unnecessarily loud, repetitive, wholly unimaginative, and just plain boring.
I hated it and hope you do too.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 