Even when I was watching it I was consumed with 100% hatred.
Why does it exist? Like, what? I was lost for words at times. A near scene-for-scene, shot-for-shot remake of a movie that set a new benchmark for cinema. Psycho (1960) isn’t about horror; it’s an exercise in film syntax and narrative. The shower scene is a joke. I find the whole thing totally hilarious. It’s the most ‘self-aware’ film of all time.
This Gus Van Sant bloke doesn’t get it. I cannot stand his films – they are weak, preachy, stylistically anonymous – and I don’t wish to see one of his hideous endeavours ever again. I had a wee look at some of the contemporary reviews and this one had me howling: ‘Literary critic Camille Paglia commented that the only reason to watch it was “to see Anne Heche being assassinated”.’
She is just terrible. I mind she came out as a lesbian or something and then years later said she didn’t get roles because she ‘came out’ as a lesbian.
No one cares about your private life, pal. You just CAN’T ACT!
I was in my relative infancy when this shitstorm happened and I still struggle putting it together in 2021. In essence, a lot of greedy folk got very greedy and fucked the whole economic foundations of the world, and governments in almost every country – mostly your alleged left-wing or centre parties trying to get big business on their sides – let it happen.
The setting is clearly Lehman Brothers but I think it’s a bit too kind on them as there are folk in this, boardroom members, with consciences, albeit they still tow the line. It’s riveting drama, a movie with such tense exchanges they are gripping even if you don’t understand what the characters are referring to. You’d need a glossary at times if it weren’t for the Zachary Quinto character who thankfully acts as a conduit to the financial layman amongst us.
There are few histrionics, mainly just rational, coldly logical decisions based on the almighty $ and it’s chilling. You get the scene with the cleaner in the lift oblivious to how the blokes in the foreground are about to crash the system and somewhere down the line she is going to get shafted, i.e., end up paying for it, yet she did her job. It’s never polemical in the Oliver Stone sense, and it isn’t a stylistically razzmatazz event. And it’s Kevin Spacey’s last great film role. He is pure Spacey here and I’m not going to get into the legal stuff because I … will, like all filmgoers, never know the facts. But it’s a shame he departed.
Trying to relate this to a reality I can understand: this Irishman living in the States and his rant for the ages.
This film is pretty much unique in its mastery of tone, a sense that you really don’t know whether it’s a drama or a comedy or where it’s going – it’s almost two or three genres in one and it’s informative to read the director’s quote about how they managed to achieve this no small feat: ‘With Grosse Pointe Blank I shot three movies simultaneously. We shot the script as written, we shot a mildly understated version, and we shot a completely over-the-top version, which usually was what was used.’
There’s a sweeping theme here of trying to recapture something that was never really there in the first place, the most thoughtful treatment of nostalgia ever to feature in what is ostensibly a comedy with gunfights. Only a peak John Cusack – the only ’80s geek to graduate to the postmodern – could carry it off. And as High School reunions go, ‘Mirror in the Bathroom’ should accompany each event:
A flawless movie. Even Dan Aykroyd is great in it and I generally cannot stand the lad.
I’ve never seen it in the cinema, which is a personal and public tragedy considering the following have been witnessed to a munching of popcorn and the intake of a sneaked-in batch of Blue WKDs: a Transformers movie, a crime-against-humanity Predator crapper, Cuba Gooding Jr. looking after kids, the list goes on and on.
The weirdest protagonist to ever feature in a movie of this kind. For 1962 it’s crazy the stuff on display – his sadomasochism and homosexual leanings, the rampant ego for a hero, his being a conduit for others’ ambitions, a conflicted symbol of British Imperialism, a puppet and a master. You have to read a bit about the context of the depicted period and ’60s Britain to understand the movie beyond its sheer scope and spectacle, the beauty of every frame. It’s also one of the few examples of the great man theory of history actually being given the full treatment. This bloke was certainly someone special yet David Lean in no way kowtows to the legend.
There is not a single female character because there simply weren’t any in the story. These days you’d have a token love interest or a signposted lesbian (or whatever) operating field artillery from the back of a camel. It’s what separates then from now. The insertion of silly politics into storytelling will be the death knell of this genre. I also imagine today we’d be subjected to a CGI bonanza replete with a script dumber than ….Wait a minute, Peter O’Toole was in Troy (2004) and that horrible film pretty much defines the post-Gladiator (2000) historical epic barren landscape.
This one-of-a-kind experience, though, can’t even be emulated. It’s a journey, a narrative about a hundred different things, even stuff you project onto by convincing yourself that’s what that scene means. For me, it’s always been about losing your marbles in an unfamiliar land and taking it back home with you for the banter and the scrapbook.
My favourite scene: the wondrous Claude Rains running his pinky across the table to inspect the dust on it. It’s so subtle and hilarious and just incredible. I am praying for a cinema release. The intermission, that bonkers sequence of black with Maurice Jarre’s bombastic score from the outer regions of audacity, that’s where I’ll sip my Blue WKD.
For years, I forgot this existed. Then someone sent me a snap of Hamburg and I remembered a rather excellent wee spy thriller set in the city. Philip Seymour Hoffman, or THE HOFF, was magnetic in everything he did but with The Master (2012), this is his masterpiece. There’s something so sincere and likeable about his ability to get real, and what I mean by that is a gift to portray what one would deem as flawed character traits, warts and all, what humans are actually like.
Hamburg on film is a daunting task. This film really does capture the international feel of the city. I just remember it being absolutely fucking freezing. I went for a jog around the port one afternoon and ended up in a political rally. It was cinematic. Anyway, to Hoffman. You were the best.
One might deem it ‘the genesis’, a foundation of style and themes. There’s a sacred quality to the pre-digital age and this is why they are better movies – one had to really think about how to construct the visuals and it wasn’t a case of throwing the camera around and waiting for something to happen. It’s a basic non-point to make but films today are beyond pathetic because they are so far from artistry it’s a 1,000-crewed ‘collaborative effort’. There have been several exceptions but almost everything is identical, every film conforming to the same storyboard.
A time machine quality swirls around this flick. Whether it’s the throwback cinematography that apes Gregg Toland or the peculiar sound recording that could be lifted straight from the seminal Citizen Kane (1941) or merely the endlessly fascinating subject matter – Kane’s production history, its bonkers cast and crew. The movie was a joy to watch. It captures ‘Old Hollywood’ like no other; not that I was there, but it’s how I’ve always pictured the era. The sleaze, the smoky rooms, the shameless greed, the debauchery, the magnates and barons mixing with screenwriters and journalists, a glorious melting pot with movies the rarefied outcome.
It’s not just a portrait of an untouchable epoch, though. The … tribute is married to actual human stories, the individual struggles that inspire and spark creative output, the roman-à-clefs that writers as omniscient as Herman J. Mankiewicz soaked up like a sponge. When you read into types like this – Ben Hecht also comes to mind – you can’t help but admire the way they dipped into Bohemian Grove.
This might also be the most unusual movie David Fincher has made. I will have to view it again for I did not detect any ‘Fincherisms’.
Saw this for the first time in decades and bloody hell is it dull. It’s just so boring, which I find rather mental because it’s about UFOs and all that, and Spielberg is a master craftsman. It’s shot here like a TV movie, its depiction of suburbia painfully tedious. Even when the weird-looking critters arrive at the end it’s underwhelming. The only curiosity to be found is the casual appearance of François Truffaut, who is eminently more interesting than those around him.
Something else bothered me about it. It’s so naive, with government agencies portrayed as even being benevolent. What a weird decision, this just after the twin calamities of Watergate and the American involvement in the Vietnam War.
Never watching it again and I do not understand why it’s lauded.
These lads of course have every right to fiddle to their hearts’ content with pictures they’ve made, but it’s getting out of control now. I don’t even know how many different versions of Blade Runner (1982) there are (I’ve only seen one), I hear there is now another edition of Apocalypse Now (1979), and I was yesterday informed that The Godfather Part III (1990) is now being re-released this month but with a completely different structure and with an alternate title. What is going on?
For me, the art that was produced at a specific stage is what it is (for lack of a better phrase) and all it will ever be. I have no time for tweaking, chopping, changing, re-editing, and periodic revisionism. Stop trying to fix what was at that moment your best or worst effort, move on, come up with a new idea. It’s got something to do with grasping for perfection, but the problem is that the films I’ve mentioned are far from perfect. Even the films I rate as ‘transcendental’ (The Third Man, Vertigo, Lawrence of Arabia) have giant flaws but that just adds to the appeal; I hate to appropriate an Oasis song, but true perfection has to be imperfect.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 