Tag Archives: Cinema

May 20 2024
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Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

Pirates of the Caribbean (2003). What a farce.

This is one atrocious movie completely without merit, devoid of any talent, and all involved should be ashamed. And Johnny Depp is a nuisance, a pain in the arse, and one of the worst actors to have ever been somehow relevant. He’s captivating in Donnie Brasco (1997) and Black Mass (2015), but nothing else in the litany of his cinematic crimes galore is worth bothering with. He was in a movie once about a lad with scissors for hands. It was painful viewing.

Pirates is an overwhelmingly horrible film made by prats for prats, and as for the only justification I can make for watching it … I felt like torturing myself a wee bit.

Bye for now.

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May 14 2024
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Art, Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

Megalopolis (2024). Please, PLEASE, be good.

This teaser trailer is bonkers. Here’s hoping this, legendary in its gestation period, movie is more of the same:

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May 07 2024
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Art, Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

Michael Collins (1996) is an almost masterpiece.

A stirring slice of still-contentious Irish history masquerading as a thriller, this is a biopic meets The Godfather (1972).

Tywin Lannister is in it. As is Julia Roberts with the worst ‘Irish’ accent since … the birth of cinema. But she doesn’t ruin it; her role is window dressing, a star name to pump up the box office. 

Its like the anti-Richard Attenborough biopic, and thank the gods his perfunctory talents were never let near this kind of material. 

Oppenheimer also turns up as an assassin. And the poster is sublime. 

4/5. 

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May 06 2024
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Art, Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

Dersu Uzala (1975).

I’ve never seen Seven Samurai (1954), or Throne of Blood (1957), or Yojimbo (1961), or Ran (1985), though I did own the latter on DVD but lent it to an actor who was in one of my shitty – or sublime if you’d imbibed a gravy boat of amaretto during the viewing – student films and he clearly took it as payment for featuring in something so spectacularly awful/amazing. I bumped into him in a bar years ago and he ignored me. Charming.

This movie, Dersu Uzala (1975), was great, Kurosawa approaching his Indian summer, a proper epic with a soul. It’s long but it doesn’t matter as it’s lengthy for a reason.

Wee treat for you:

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Apr 29 2024
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Congo (1995). Ha!

For a very long, rotten, and delusional time, I thought this movie was a companion piece to 12 Monkeys (1995). It isn’t. I was confused by the reality of primates featuring in both flicks, and that 1995 was another parallel between them. The ‘similarities’ end there.

Congo (1995) is bonkers because it’s shite, wholly serious, and has a cast of actors you’d never imagine sharing a scene together. This is another one of those movies you wish had a lengthy ‘making of’, tea breaks (or whatever) consisting of grainy zoom shots of the mortified actors hiding away behind the crew and props department, slumped on a stool beside a half-tanned 35cl of Scotch, head in hands, and muttering “What the fuck have I done?” over and over.

One would, if pressed, describe this as an action-adventure film, but we all know it’s just … tosh.

Worth a watch.

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Apr 27 2024
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Art, Cinema, Crime, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

Presumed Innocent (1990).

Ford’s haircut, what might feasibly be deemed a Caesar, is the feature attraction but he pulls it off. 

You can tell from two mins into this brutal courtroom gig that it was shot by Gordon Willis, his unmistakable visuals a pallet of shadows and claustrophobia; when cinematography had character.

No faffing on your phone during the Caesar Attraction for you must pay attention. And it’s got that genuinely shocking ending that defines the era of the glossy star-powered thriller. 

Wildly entertaining, impeccably acted, Raul Julia rocks up and somehow becomes the most interesting character. What an inscrutable face, what a voice. 

The last great Alan J. Pakula movie.

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Apr 15 2024
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Art, Cinema, Crime, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

The Other Guys (2010).

It’s risky with some of its jokes but they are actually funny (most comedies are joke-free affairs) and stem from the growing characterisation and chemistry of the two leads, and the bizarre credibility of the bit-part players, some of whom appear to have wandered off from the set of Lethal Weapon (1987). 

Michael Keaton, eh. He can do no wrong in his Indian summer (I don’t wish to hear of this Batgirl … thing). 

For a comedy/satire, it’s well choreographed in its action scenes, even more so than the majority of buddy cop movies out there.

And the late Ray Stevenson pulls off an Aussie accent. X. 

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Apr 14 2024
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Enemy of the State (1998).

Kim Newman in a review decades ago drew parallels between Harry Caul from The Conversation (1974) and this thriller’s deuteragonist (Brill), and the observation inadvertently lifts Enemy of the State (1998) above the generic. That and it’s ahead-of-its-time commentary on domestic surveillance. 

Another Gene Hackman powerhouse. And the normally irritating and minimally talented Will Smith is at least serviceable in this, a star vehicle from his pomp years. 

It’s got style and is never dull. And it’s funny. 

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Apr 08 2024
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Art, Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, United Kingdom

Lady Macbeth (2016).

I do hope to never view this film again. This is not because it is in any way rubbish; the images are striking, the story clenching you from the off. It’s brilliant but oh so brutal, an exercise in putting the viewer through the Victorian wringer. And the protagonist manages to be both monstrous and worthy of your sympathy at the same time, a bona fide Lady Macbeth, I suppose. She reminded me of a far less avuncular, much more sinister approximation of Clint Eastwood’s quote in Gran Torino (2008) when he declares, “Ever notice how you come across somebody once in a while you shouldn’t have fucked with? That’s me.”

Just don’t bother with the popcorn for this one.

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Mar 25 2024
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Art, Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

L’Emploi du temps (2001).

It was difficult to compare this movie to another, such was the singularity of it. But the works of Éric Rohmer come to mind with their mood, pacing, and thematic concerns.

It’s a joy to watch and never dull despite the monotony of the subject matter, all held together by a quite exceptional leading performance and the unpredictability of events. You do wonder, knowing it’s based loosely on a true story, if this bloke is going to end up going crackers.

Exquisite cinema.

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