1997 | Wanderings and ... wonderings.

Jun 10 2024

Anaconda (1997) is an unintentional blast.

What happens here is that lots of irritating actors get munched by a snake to our perverse amusement.

You have to give big accolades to Jon Voight for gifting us the most insane dialect ever put in a film, and certainly one of the most absurd acting jobs that would normally feel out of place were the rest of the movie not so mad. As it happens, his diabolical role is merely the cherry on the top of a monster movie so unabashedly batshit it’s now lauded as an exemplar of the genre.

It’s so entertaining that you wish there were more of the snake, even if it looks akin to a Slinky toy in the Amazon.

Tagged 1997, Anaconda, Cinema, Film, Images, Movie

Dec 03 2021

Gattaca (1997).

This was way ahead of its time, and quite the clever picture. It goes for moments of transcendence rather than thrills, but it mildly feels like a wasted opportunity despite how cerebral it is. You need some thrills to go with the admittedly effective navel-gazing. The casting doesn’t help; can you imagine a proper thesp in the lead, the intensity of a peak Clive Owen?

It’s a very good movie, though, despite the stilted performances. It’s about something. This is a rarity; most of the stuff blasted into cinemas these days – I don’t even know what these movies even purport to be. There’s a glimmer of a theme but in most cases it’s 20-odd topics mashed together by committee.

This has the odd effect of being a film without an obvious style; I can’t remember a single striking shot (SSS), but it somehow works in its favour, anonymity successful.

And Michael Nyman once again proves he’s the best at … Michael … Nymanesque scores.

Tagged 1997, Cinema, Ethan Hawke, Eugenics, Film, Gattaca, Movie, Sci Fi

Jul 02 2021

2 Comments

Art, Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

For one extended moment in time Nicolas Cage was some kind of god.

It happened somehow – Cage became the best action movie star ever.

He, or a group of wise men, created the Cage Blockbuster Event. Name me a better trilogy than The Rock (1996), Con Air (1997), and Face/Off (1997). He is pure charisma, 100% mental, and in desperate need of a decent bout of hair surgery. These are extraordinary action pictures, repeat viewings, … action art. It’s the Golden Age of Cage.

He makes so many stinkers these days, the same shit over and over again. But just when you think he’s consigned himself forever to the straight-to-video dungeon, he pops up in something like Mandy (2018), away with the fairies, off his tits, barking mad, Extreme Cage. It has to be method. But it probably isn’t.

“In Cage’s hands, cartoonish moments are imbued with real emotion and real emotions become cartoons. Everything – from individual scenes down to single lines of dialogue – feel like they have been embraced as opportunities for creation. Cage is usually interesting even when his films are not. He is erratic and unpredictable; he is captivating and he is capricious. He is a performer. He is a troubadour. He is a jazz musician.” – Luke Buckmaster in The Guardian.

Indeed.

Tagged 1997, Action, Cinema, Movies, Nicolas Cage, Nineties

Jan 23 2018

1 Comment

Cinema, Film, Uncategorized, United Kingdom

Nil By Mouth (1997)

51RCE5V6KFL With Gary Oldman tipped for his first Oscar after rave reviews for his impenetrable Churchill craic in Darkest Hour (2017), I watched a few of his most lauded performances, coming away from The Firm (1989) and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) especially impressed. It was Nil By Mouth (1997), however, this his directorial debut in which he doesn’t star, which most remained.

I first saw it in 2002 at the recommendation of a classmate who broke 9/11 to me. It was because of such profound importance I attached to his statements that I rented (R.I.P. Blockbuster) this grim, thoroughly … grim movie. I’d seen Scum (1979), another Alan Clarke bit of Ray Winstone savagery, and Mike Leigh’s Naked (1993), but this was something else.

Despairing portraits of working-class life back in their Saturday Night and Sunday Morning heydey were always suggestive rather than explicit. Stuck-in-a-rut characters had their transient pleasures and, dare I say it, trivial pursuits. The Nil By Mouth (1997) equivalent to Albert Finney’s beer binges appears to be calamitous drug use, domestic terror, and injecting heroin in the back of a dirty van. This is a movie with no regard for aesthetic polish or even entertainment – it reminded me of one of those socially conscious photographs (Dorothea Lange) of the Great Depression or the slum tenements of New York in the 1890s.

I would skip the popcorn when watching Nil By Mouth (1997).

Wanderings and … wonderings.

Tag Archives: 1997

Anaconda (1997) is an unintentional blast.

Gattaca (1997).

For one extended moment in time Nicolas Cage was some kind of god.

Nil By Mouth (1997)