Even the poster annoys me.
I’m not watching this shite merely because of that poster.
A Man Called Otto (2022).
Tag Archives: Film
Clash of the Titans (1981).
Forever synonymous with Medusa, the terror of a million childhoods.
For this alone, Clash of the Titans (1981) is a work of iconography. It does, though, have a bit more to it than this terrifying batshit gargoyle (or whatever) with a barnet of vipers, something you’d find hammered in a weekend taxi queue, honking of kebab and drenched in voddy & Coke. Or maybe I’ve spent too many hours in the seedier parts of Scotland.
One can appreciate it as the Ray Harryhausen Show, a highlight reel of his charming delights. The cast, too, are having a right laugh, all of them very much aware they’re slumming it in a bloated porker of a production made 30 years too late. Stupid, cheesy, unabashedly so, the movie is a big clunking mess and all the better for it.
It’s good rubbish – it’s fun.
Marshall (2017).
I thought this would be total crap, a patronising ‘message movie’.
But it was fine. It held interest and serves as a gateway to a historical time and place that continues to be contentious. The main actor passed away recently, which is a shame as he was tremendously good in this. It’s nothing special but as a genre piece it’s a decent watch.
The Maltese Falcon (1941).
Bogart’s Sam Spade is fascinating to watch. His business partner is murdered and he doesn’t seem particularly bothered by this loss, but his jaded schtick runs the full gamut, distorts itself, the lad by the end a kaleidoscope of emotions (some real, some not so) in this riot of a film noir. I’ve never been so engrossed by the pursuit of an ornament. There is a grand metaphor in there somewhere.
Pristine deep-focus cinematography, mainly of conversations between shady characters in rooms cocooned by Venetian blinds, the occasional appearance of a pistol, typifies this period of noir. But this is as riveting as it gets. You remain captivated as you’re constantly trying to interpret what a person really wants and what their words actually reveal about themselves – you become a detective, deciphering signs, actively reading language.
This is a deserved classic. You cannot take your eyes off Bogart as he’s so unusual in look and delivery.
And Peter Lorre’s deranged eyes were born for celluloid.
Sleeper (1973).
Woody Allen has eight great films. And double figures in stinkers. I mind Barry Norman listed this picture among his 100 GREATEST MOVIES OF ALL TIME. He was so wrong (with most of his list) and must have lost his mind or been on the gear or something.
It’s okay, but not brilliantly hilarious or breathtakingly original, and often just plain annoying.
Bull Durham (1988).
A movie ostensibly about baseball. I know nothing about baseball aside from the name Babe Ruth. This movie almost piqued my interest in the sport of baseball.
From a time when Kevin Costner could do no wrong, hit after hit.
This movie is good and if made today it would most likely have to have a ‘message’ or token member of a downtrodden minority. Or a lesbian.
Something like that.
White Squall (1996).
This movie was fucking appalling.
Please, don’t watch it.
The Wild Robot (2024).
A heartwarming, visually stupendous coming-of-age tale, this was like 20 of the best Rocky moments but with animated animals and a self-aware robot. It’s target market is kids, but it’s violent for what it is in a good way, as in there exists a real threat to our characters and we’re drawn more to them because of it.
To my surprise, I was fully involved and last time I checked, I’m not in nappies.
5/5.
Tár (2022). Wow.
This hypnotic, mesmerising motion picture had me awestruck at the phenomenal confidence and skill of its director, his obsessive style and editing mirroring its progressively maniacal protagonist in the throes of a cancel culture out of her control, unable to dig herself out of a mess of her own making. It demands your complete focus and thus draws you deeper into its muddied internal maze of things blatant and intimated, of a pivotal backstory that is captivating despite us seeing none of it.
The movie could be mistaken for peak Michael Haneke – the clinical aesthetic, the foreboding mood, and all-pervading sense of surveillance. The director (and our monstrous subject) attaches an increasing primacy to sounds within the frame and off-screen, these impinging on the character’s unravelling ego. It’s so well executed that it’s unbearable; you really are along for the ride in a way that recalls Polanski’s Repulsion (1965). And on that filmmaker, Tár (2022) broods over the still-contentious debate: Can we ever forget the person and honour the artist for the art only?
One of the most violent movies ever that has no bloodletting in it, a violence of barely concealed fury and scorn, this is a truly original work.
There are few films like it and I suspect won’t be.
The Net (1995). Oh dear.
Not to to be confused with Dragnet (1987), just in case you are like me and somehow conflate Sandra Bullock into Tom Hanks and Dan Aykroyd, this is all about that newly crowned girl next door (Ms. Bullock) in her post bomb-on-a-bus pomp showing us all manner of technological wonders in this hackneyed cyber thriller.
A promising premise – the dangers of our dependence on computer systems – that goes nowhere in particular, you know you’re in for a hard time when the opening scene features Sandra Bullock as a shy loner ordering pizza off the Internet for only herself, as an Annie Lennox remix of ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ accompanies a panning shot of her apartment.
There is a lot wrong with all of that, but the main part is that it’s 1995 and Sandra Bullock is on her own, ordering pizza from a computer that we used in primary school to play solitaire on. Yeah, right! This movie also features one of the worst chase scenes in a thriller ever, and this at a funfair of all places – an insult to funfairs because the fun was non-existent.
You’re best viewing this as a movie about 1995 and how stupid we all were. I’m certain that future generations will look upon us with such smug glee.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 