Like all early and peak Oliver Stone, Salvador (1986) is an unrelenting bundle of aesthetic pizzazz and energy. The bloke made movies on Steroids back in the day, his style and signature undeniable.
This is supreme storytelling, but if you take a mere cursory skim over the real-life events, and especially the narratives of Richard Boyle and John Hoagland, this is total bullshit.
So, it’s an Oliver Stone movie.
Never let facts get in the way of your politics, eh.
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.
Philip Baker Hall was around forever, starring in seemingly everything, the quintessential character actor, every eclipse given the opportunity to do something more than the dependable authority figure. You’ve got Seinfeld’s Library Cop and the jaded but wise Sydney in Hard Eight (1996) among the background roles, and this film would be worth it just for him alone but there are more treats (just check the supporting cast) in this first work from Paul Thomas Anderson.
Even for a debut picture, this shows his mastery of style – his films are never dull to look at, demand your attention, and there’s a reason behind every dazzling shot. And it’s the consistency that’s the key. You leave with an indelible impression of the narrative. The lad is the Scorsese of the San Fernando Valley.
Well, this was quite remarkable and I’m shocked it wasn’t shite because the picture stank of ‘Oscar bait’.
It probably was made with that at least in mind but it’s quality, nonetheless.
And Michael Shannon once again steals the movie.
This was okay, remnants of Gosling in Drive (2011), but this is the non-moody, non-existential version. It’s not funny at all, though, and completely uninspired. And I turned it off an hour in as it wasn’t going anywhere in a good way.
But I’m sure all concerned had a laugh making it.
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.
This teaser trailer is bonkers. Here’s hoping this, legendary in its gestation period, movie is more of the same:
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.
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:
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.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 