Tag Archives: Cinema

Sep 02 2021
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Art, Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

The Tree of Life (2011).

I barely understand half of the stuff that went on but the movie somehow reaches an inexplicable transcendence in its last 30 minutes. I believe Terrence Malick is some kind of anomaly. He didn’t make a movie for two decades and now he’s putting out a picture every other year.

I’ll let Roger Ebert do the talking on this one:

‘Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” is a film of vast ambition and deep humility, attempting no less than to encompass all of existence and view it through the prism of a few infinitesimal lives. The only other film I’ve seen with this boldness of vision is Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” and it lacked Malick’s fierce evocation of human feeling. There were once several directors who yearned to make no less than a masterpiece, but now there are only a few. Malick has stayed true to that hope ever since his first feature in 1973.’

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Aug 25 2021
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Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

The Last Crusade (1989). Oh my.

The chemistry between Ford and Connery is magical and even if the other components weren’t there, it would still be a memorable film because of the relationship. However, the prologue is still fabulous. Donovan’s ultra-ageing after sipping from the gold cup is still nightmare worthy. The action is still fast and inventive. It’s such a relentlessly entertaining yarn, and even the bad guys have something about them. The SS lad somehow rocked up in Braveheart (1995) and … of all things, Corrie Street as a member of the Gail Platt outfit. And Grange Hill’s Mr. Bronson plays Hitler here.

And Marcus got lost in his own museum.

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Aug 19 2021
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Art, Cinema, Crime, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

The Equalizer (2014) is bloody brilliant.

I mean, it’s bloody, as in baddies die and it’s graphic (which violence is). It’s Denzel doing his best Denzel; the opening sequence hilariously exposes his OCD by having the lad use a toothbrush to manicure his sneakers. You see him at work in a Walmart factory or whatever and he’s dedicated to the job. You get the feeling he’s hard as nails, though. And he turns out to be in the most Denzel way feasible.

The antagonist has a personality and is interesting; this is a rarity in the current action-thriller landscape. The soundtrack/score also works.

And Denzel utilises a nail gun.

Also, I’ve never seen the Edward Woodward TV show. It’s too late now to bother with it.

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Aug 14 2021
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Cinema, Film, Movie, Uncategorized

Alexander (2004) the not-so-great.

I’ve been on quite the Oliver Stone binge of late and it was inevitable that I arrived at a certain disaster. This is a complete train wreck of celluloid.

The accents are all over the place, for some unfathomable reason Macedonians from antiquity possessing Irish, Scottish, and Russian dialects. And dreadful ones at that.

The film is rammed, at the expense of drama and thrills, with pointless tactical information about the battles on display. In the nauseatingly constructed Battle of Gaugamela, Stone keeps cutting to an eagle surveying the scene. It’s a mad decision and I recall half the cinema howling at the time. There’s another bit with Alexander taking on an elephant and it is hilarious. The film apparently has like 18,000 different ‘Director’s Cuts’. They will all be shite, I guarantee you.

A nuts and utterly unwatchable motion picture. How can you make one of the greatest military commanders and statesmen in history so irrevocably boring? This movie achieves that impossible feat.

You honestly need to see it to believe it.

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Aug 11 2021
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Cinema, Film, Movie, Uncategorized, United States

I came quite late to the party that is Something Wild (1986).

Ray Liotta has always looked both young and old at the same time, which is a hard act to do. Even in his thirties he appeared both 50 and 18. He’s had a very good career but lacks that marquee performance; Goodfellas (1990) isn’t really an astounding acting job because he’s unchanged throughout and overshadowed by you-know-who. Unlawful Entry (1992) is a trashy corker but Something Wild (1986) is strangely peak Liotta even though he’s just getting started. Also, I’ve seen Narc (2002) twice and don’t think much of it.

He is scary in this. It’s so rare to see an actor pull off scary but he is that, like Willem Dafoe as Bobby Peru.

The movie seamlessly tap-dances between genres, and the (very real) violence never appears out of place amidst the comedy. It reminded me of Grosse Pointe Blank (1997), which is fitting as that undoubted masterpiece is an ’80s throwback. This film felt like it could go anywhere at any moment, a freewheeling adventure. And it was. The unpredictable is hard to design or even pull off in fiction.

Fantastic.

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Aug 05 2021
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Art, Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Music, Uncategorized

The Thing (1982) is a riot and defines John Carpenter.

There exists an incredible canon of Carpenter movies from the ’70s and ’80s – Carpenter pulling out one sublime picture after another. A wee bit of snobbery swirls around commentary on him, that he can’t do a period drama or handle anything another other than horror and thrills, which is making an obvious point. And I keep referring to him in the past tense. Because I haven’t seen a new movie from the lad for decades.

As much as I would ascribe the term ‘auteur’ to the truly multi-skilled Carpenter, folk read way too much into these films, always seeking for the allegorical or the profound statement. They are all cult B-movies where very little acting nuance is needed, high-concept affairs elevating the primacy of the image and the economy of the edit. You’re in it for 90 minutes and then afterwards that’s that. It’s not Antonioni.

And to The Thing (1982) and that score, the landscape, the constant menace, and yet with the wackiest visual effects, brilliant for their time and curiously not dated at all.

The Thing is his peak.

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Jul 16 2021
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Art, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

Hostiles (2017) should be seen by more folk.

I usually hate revisionism because it’s almost always ‘crafted’ through the lens of ridiculous zeitgeist lefty reevaluations of a now controversial time. Artistry comes second with this crusade. They are just message movies and aesthetically worthless.

This one looked ominous. However, it was surprisingly almost brilliant. Bale was … Bale. He is titanium. He cannot be broken. This did baffle me a wee bit as with a lot of these flicks we have the flawed protagonist die at the end because of his sins and he somehow finds catharsis in this. Not so here. Which is just fabulous.

I say almost great. There aren’t any memorable moments or sequences which wander out of formula. But it’s masterfully shot and put together. And I hate most movies.

A strong 4/5.

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Jul 07 2021
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JFK (1991) is a masterpiece of garbage.

The Kennedy ‘Camelot’ worship is just pathetic, a whitewashing of some truly horrific folks. I just don’t get it and the only explanation I have for the adulation of that pampered clan is that when you’ve got Nixon or Goldwater you have to pick the lesser of two … something like that. Anyway, the outright lies in this movie are audacious in their temerity. The director quite literally makes shit up. No wonder the amenable masses think everything is a conspiracy these days.

But what a cast, what style, what editing razzmatazz. If you could define bravura it would be peak Oliver Stone. He’s the best kind of worst propagandist. What does the lad get up to these days aside from interview dictators? His last masterwork was Any Given Sunday (1999). I saw a film he made about Alexander the Great. It was worse than one of my shites after tanning a vindaloo.

“Back, and to the left. Back, and to the left. Back, and to the left.”

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Jul 02 2021
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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.

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May 27 2021
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Art, Cinema, Film, Uncategorized

If you designed the perfect blockbuster The Mummy (1999) would be it.

There’s a deep and thoughtful longing – which I very much approve of – at the moment for the return of Brendan Fraser, and it appears to have been massively aided by this GQ article, the piece a rarity of this sort in how well written and insightful it is. The lad is captivating, refreshingly honest, and an actor who was simply great in everything – believable, relatable, but with an edge. He always gave me the impression that he had been parachuted into the film and we were there to follow him on his journey. A stoic naïveté was strong with this one. Is that not what a reluctant hero is?

The Mummy (1999) is awesome, Fraser pulling off the Indiana Jones role with aplomb. It was awesome at the time but now it has been elevated. I’d sum the never-boring riot as good old-fashioned popcorn entertainment which uses CGI in a productive way, i.e., you can see the point of its use. It works and without it the movie wouldn’t succeed to the extent that it does. A fine juggling act is mastered between live action, the digital effects, pacing, and characterisation. It is a silly affair but a good silly.

Even John Hannah isn’t that annoying. And he annoys me in everything. Aside from this, where he is only slightly annoying. Special mention to Kevin J. O’Connor whose Beni Gabor steals the show, an apparent weasel of greed, self-interest, and opportunism, yet somehow in the most underwritten role he squeezes out the comedy and, dare I say it, the pathos. Almost everything he does, I’d do the same in his shoes.

I would recommend this movie to just about anyone.

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