Tag Archives: 1994

Jul 01 2024
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Art, Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

True Lies (1994). It’s bad but not that bad.

I went to school with a lad who would scream, “The bridge is out, the bridge is out.” This was conducted at random intervals, my introduction to True Lies (1994).

Ludicrous story but pure entertainment and James Cameron gets away with it, mainly for the esoteric banter that is Bill Paxton. The lad defines enthusiasm and lights up every bit of celluloid he’s in. He has been missed.

It’s coarse and childish and it’s 1994. Stick to Bill Paxton and the action. Skip or mute anything with Tom Arnold.

And marvel at the other Arnold on a horse … in a shopping mall. 

2/5.

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Jun 09 2024
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Art, Cinema, Crime, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

The Getaway (1994).

Remake of the Sam Peckinpah half-decent flick from 1972, more famous for its tales-from-the-set production of booze chucked between production staff and off-screen hanky-panky than the actual thrills. It’s a decent movie, but I wouldn’t recommend it to a human being with a brain.

This was almost unwatchable.

The protagonist shows his own bank-robbing wife a gun as if she had never seen one before. Michael Madsen once again displays his supreme competence by necking a bottle of beer for no reason, slurring his words (for no reason) like Orson Welles in a Paul Masson wine advertisement. 

This movie was completely without wit; the dialogue was unbearable. I watched it for James Woods. I turned this off as soon as his VIP cameo ceased.

Fucking awful.

Next.

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May 08 2023
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Architecture, Art, Cinema, Crime, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized, United States

That poster.

Whiplash (2014) is a cracking movie, eh. I would say … draining. It promotes a bit of an American Dream fallacy, though, namely that hard work = success. Nonsense. I could work like a sheep dog for 19 hours a day for seven years trying to fathom how the Tim Robbins character managed to escape Shawshank State Penitentiary yet perfectly place the poster (from the assembly point of the tunnel he dug) back on the cell wall … and still have no answers.

It makes no sense.

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Apr 28 2019
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Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

Leon (1994) is one of the best shot (no pun) movies ever made.

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Leon (1994) is a Sergio Leone aesthetic with a chunk of Lolita chucked in the works. The dodgy-as-fuck paedo spectacle aside, its images are pure art, Widescreen as perfection. Luc Besson is an aficionado for the inchoate screenplay, but as a pure thriller this really reaches the summit. And seldom has a movie set in New York City had literally nothing to do with New York City; it could be set in Marseilles, Edinburgh, Reykjavik. There’s something to be said for that, such are filmmakers’ obsession with the place. Personally, I don’t get it. I’ve been twice and wasn’t overly impressed; it felt like a cauldron of reprobates. And loud people roam the streets clutching fast food. Awful.

It’s just a cool-as-milk film, visuals off the scale. It doesn’t matter that the ‘Italian’ assassin sounds like Charles de Gaulle on methadone; it’s all about the framing. And Gary Oldman off his tits.

original

Further reading/viewing:

https://www.empireonline.com/movies/leon/review/

https://www.tumblr.com/search/movie%20leon

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