Film | Wanderings and ... wonderings.

Jun 19 2019

Britain, Cinema, Edinburgh, Film, Movie, Movies, Scotland, Tourism, Transport, Travel, Uncategorized

Mark Renton Street, Edinburgh.

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Calton Road this afternoon. It struck me today that I’ve never once snapped this Mark-Renton-gets-run-over spot, the manic laugh he offers to the driver an iconic snippet from Trainspotting (1996).

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I was an employee (an actual ‘trainspotter’, no less) of East Coast Railways a decade ago and used to sneak out the back of Waverley Station to this Renton hideaway for a cheeky fag and a can of Monster, my walkie-talkie in hand just in case my absence was noted. Come to think of it, 30% of my ‘working day’ consisted of either this filmic interlude or listening to Kanye West tunes in the ScotRail bogs.

“Where are you?”

“Just having a shite, I’ll be on the platform in a minute.”

Those were the days.

Tagged Calton Road, Edinburgh, Film, Mark Renton, Movie, Scotland, Train station, Trainspotting, Waverley

Jun 18 2019

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Britain, Cinema, Edinburgh, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

The Phantom Menace (1999) two decades on.

I recall the incident well – HMV, Princes Street came to a standstill as the trailer was broadcast on a Sunday afternoon. “Jesus fucking Christ, this looks epic,” I said to myself. The matter is, I did indeed think it was a belter of a movie, viewing it four times that summer of ’99.

The overwhelmingly negative reaction to the movie is perhaps the first case of fanboys going ape, sending shockwaves through an industry a bit slow to catch on to the power of the internet with its bloggers and keyboard warriors.

It’s 2019 and I legit believe it’s not a bad film, and some moments in it are up there with the first two movies: the pod race, Anakin’s farewell to his mother, the climactic Darth Maul brawl, cracking scenes underpinned by substantive character development. You take out Jar Jar and it’s immeasurably better. And I don’t get why fans were complaining about this childish Binks cretin yet conversely whinged on the detail dedicated to taxation and trade wars, an adult domain buttressing the magic and the wonder.

I treasure it as a nostalgia piece, a cinematic madeleine cake taking me back to a time when my standards were low and I was easily amused.

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Art, Cinema, Iceland, Movies, Uncategorized

Arctic (2018) is your proper minimalist survival thriller.

Arctic

I was mightily impressed with this, and it’s most refreshing to watch a flick without a one-liner or a wooden numpty in a cape. No pointless dialogue, no heavy exposition, no pretensions; just life-and-death struggle in a daunting environment, and Mads Mikkelsen’s terrifyingly alluring cheekbones. What a strange occurrence those things are.

The movie reminded me of The Grey (2011) with Liam Neeson, except this one without a sadistic pack of looney wolves.

Tagged Arctic, Film, Iceland, Mads Mikkelsen, Movie

Apr 28 2019

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Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

Leon (1994) is one of the best shot (no pun) movies ever made.

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Leon (1994) is a Sergio Leone aesthetic with a chunk of Lolita chucked in the works. The dodgy-as-fuck paedo spectacle aside, its images are pure art, Widescreen as perfection. Luc Besson is an aficionado for the inchoate screenplay, but as a pure thriller this really reaches the summit. And seldom has a movie set in New York City had literally nothing to do with New York City; it could be set in Marseilles, Edinburgh, Reykjavik. There’s something to be said for that, such are filmmakers’ obsession with the place. Personally, I don’t get it. I’ve been twice and wasn’t overly impressed; it felt like a cauldron of reprobates. And loud people roam the streets clutching fast food. Awful.

It’s just a cool-as-milk film, visuals off the scale. It doesn’t matter that the ‘Italian’ assassin sounds like Charles de Gaulle on methadone; it’s all about the framing. And Gary Oldman off his tits.

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Bringing Out the Dead (1999).

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Scorsese’s last movie of the ’90s is curiously his weakest work. It’s a lazy narrative that seems enamoured with MTV standards/trends of cinematography. It also suffers from ‘The Affliction’: the liberal use of popular music tracks to paper over deficiencies in the script.

It’s a promising concept: Nicolas Cage’s paramedic, physically and emotionally drained, drives around an early ’90s Manhattan – by all accounts a crack-strewn cesspit at that time – in search of the high of saving a life, and a broader redemption as he’s haunted by those he couldn’t save.

By the one-hour mark the picture sadly has nowhere to go. There are a few moments of transcendence, particularly the final shot, but it’s all rather boring, from the cartoon character supporting roles to Cage’s … bored performance. One suspects it could have worked better as a small-scale picture, Mean Streets (1973) with a defibrillator.

The life of an ambulance driver has never looked so torporific. One of the very few Scorsese pictures I’ll pass on should it ever crop up again.

Tagged Ambulance, Bringing out the Dead, Film, Martin Scorsese, Movie, Nicolas Cage, Nineties, Paul Schrader, Scorsese

Apr 20 2019

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Art, Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Tourism, Transport, Travel, Uncategorized

Lost in Translation (2003) is garbage.

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Saw this in the cinema when I was 16 and thought it was incredible, my generation’s bit of peak Bertolucci or something. It’s been a long hiatus but I caught it again the other day. My god, it’s fucking appalling, an arty-farty piece of silly, trivial gibberish, and unbelievably racist. The characters are one-note, self-obsessed twats, and the picture depicts the Japanese as a mass of hysterical idiots. About 20 minutes in I couldn’t believe what I was watching. It’s concocted anthropology à la Nanook of the North (1922). Never again. Sad!

Tagged Film, Japan, Lost in Translation, Movies, Shite, Tokyo

Mar 26 2019

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Cinema, Edinburgh, Film, Movie, Movies, Scotland, Uncategorized

Adjuster – a cheeky short.

A shitty wee movie I have made. Uploading the beast took longer than making the actual thing (seven hours of shooting). The sound ‘design’ is fucking awful, but some of the visuals look decent.

Tagged Amateur filmmaking, City Centre, Edinburgh, Film, Movie, Short, Short Film

Mar 09 2019

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Cinema, Film, Germany, Movies, Uncategorized, World War Two

The Das Boot reboot is awesome.

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What an experience this spin-off was.

I first saw the Wolfgang Peterson stunner (1981) in April 2000, purchasing the VHS tape with The Phantom Menace (1999) in HMV, Princes Street. I had no idea what it was about but the movie was £4.99 and Empire magazine called it scintillating in a retrospective. The writer wasn’t wrong, unlike their four-star review of the Jar Jar Binks fiasco.

The movie works within the most claustrophobic milieu of pre-Nuclear warfare. It was apolitical, much like the Kriegsmarine’s attempts to portray themselves after the conflict, this despite them nonchalantly torpedoing ship after ship.

This reboot more expansively amplifies upon the rampant extremism of the submariners, their appropriation of ideology as an alternative to the Allies’ eventual superior resources and sound tactics. There are also thriller elements, La Rochelle, home of the U-boat pens, the backdrop to French Resistance efforts to disrupt the German occupation. This place also has a special meaning for me: on a French exchange trip the police chased us around the town centre because one of our party set off a firework in a gift shop. Ah, the memories.

That score as well, used in both the film and this masterwork. Oaft.

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Cinema, Film, Movies, Uncategorized

Creed II (2018) is gash.

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A bit disappointed in Creed II (2018). Not that the Rocky movies didn’t regurgitate the same stale stuff (accidental alliteration) over and over and over, but the OTT formula worked for the majority of chapters in the franchise. My personal ranking is: Rocky, Rocky II, Rocky IV, Rocky Balboa, Rocky III, Creed, and the total shitstorm that is Rocky V, a movie that is clearly mentally ill.

Sadly, this new episode is also rubbish. Stallone is basically the same ‘will = win’ verbatim figure as always – every line he spews out is Rocky Balboa (2006) and Creed (2015) put through a Microsoft Word thesaurus – but seems totally out of sync with the the hip hop Kendrick Lamar-soundtracked reboot surroundings. He’s an incredibly boring actor at times, and he sleepwalks through this.

And there’s not enough Drago. There are so many opportunities to develop dimensions in this character, but they are wasted. He remains a one-note villain, a snarling mute who may as well be a brick wall.

However, seeing Brigitte Nielsen look like a pancake chucked in acid was a highlight. Something out of a Brazil (1985) facelift, it’s the only item of curiosity in the snoozefest.

There is no reason for this movie to exist.

Bye for now.

Tagged Boxing, Creed, Film, Movies, Rocky, Rocky Balboa, Stallone

Jan 16 2019

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Cinema, Film, Movies, Uncategorized

The 1999 movie vault is something special and scary.

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1999 produced some truly cracking movies, dare I say two-in-one arthouse entertainments. They were from the sunny prism of the Clinton-era dot-com bubble, but laden with doom, premonitions of a darker age, and concerned with the very nature of reality itself – its comforting distractions of material consumption and conformism. 9/11 changed everything; apathy was suddenly pummeled. The Y2K bug turned out to be fuck all and instead actual shit hit the fan. These movies – American Beauty, Fight Club, and The Matrix – capture that pre-9/11 unease with elan.

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They’re films of their era yet transcend the age because of the superior artistry on display. It’s not exactly fashionable today to laud the acting chops of Kevin Spacey, but he is superior in American Beauty, middle-aged melancholy defined as he squirms his way around suburban hell. The Matrix heralded a new dawn in special effects – bullet time and all that – yet was also one of the first pictures to probe with caution the digital landscape, 20 years before possessing a talking robot called Alexa was considered a normal pursuit.

In Fight Club, peculiarly a flop at the time (the pitfalls of bad marketing, they say) we find an Americana in the throes of an existential meltdown, angst-ridden males looking for something to fight for, a purpose or quest, amidst the dreariness of normalcy. Every generation needs a war.

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Though products of corporations, American Beauty, Fight Club, and The Matrix do not hesitate to bite the proverbial hand that feeds. There is a deep skepticism and paranoia running through them, that of the office as enslavement and deindividuation, the Michel Foucault Panopticon theme quite rampant. There’s also the sanguine at work here, that with mental and physical self-sacrifice and by disconnecting oneself from the cultural hegemony there is light, self-awareness, … happiness.

Wanderings and … wonderings.

Tag Archives: Film

Mark Renton Street, Edinburgh.

The Phantom Menace (1999) two decades on.

Arctic (2018) is your proper minimalist survival thriller.

Leon (1994) is one of the best shot (no pun) movies ever made.

Bringing Out the Dead (1999).

Lost in Translation (2003) is garbage.

Adjuster – a cheeky short.

The Das Boot reboot is awesome.

Creed II (2018) is gash.

The 1999 movie vault is something special and scary.