Tag Archives: John Travolta

May 29 2023
Leave a comment
Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized, United States

Look Who’s Talking (1989). What the fuck have I just watched?

Classic songs you’d expect in a Scorsese movie ruined by their despairing accompaniment to threadbare scenes of Travolta and Alley mugging it, that’s Look Who’s Talking (1989) summed up.

I don’t get the point of any of it. It’s coarse, crude, cheap, and frankly just a minging watch. How is the interior monologue of a baby amusing? Oh, Bruce Willis does the voice of the critter. What genius! 

A movie that can’t decide if it’s family fare or an R rating, it’s somewhere thrashing in the middle, daft and pointless. I suppose this got Travolta through his ‘wilderness years’ as it beguilingly scooped up a fucking fortune. But audiences know nothing.

I watch a lot of shite. I seem to enjoy it.

Tagged , , , , , , , ,
Sep 28 2022
Leave a comment
Cinema, Crime, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

A Civil Action (1998).

James Gandolfini is the scene-stealer once again. It’s as if in every role outside of Tony Soprano, he went out of his way to demonstrate his range and ability to walk off with the movie.

A non-showy courtroom drama more concerned with characterisation than your standard John Grisham, there are also no Aaron Sorkin-style third-act histrionics. The subtle tête-à-tête is the big spectacle here, Travolta and Duvall making sure to keep it low-key but always interesting.

Rather than the melodrama, this is more concerned with how law works and how it can be manipulated. The good guys don’t always win – it’s not a profound point but so few of these pictures make it. Or have such an out-of-his-depth protagonist.

Better than most.

Tagged , , , , , , ,
Apr 01 2021
Leave a comment
Art, Cinema, Crime, Film, Uncategorized, United States

Get Shorty (1995). Not bad at all.

The official narrative is that Get Shorty (1995) fits into the vanguard of that John Travolta mid-’90s comeback which lasted all the way until Battlefield Earth (2000). I’ve never seen the latter but hear it’s atrocious; it’s on my list.

Get Shorty is wildly entertaining, if not especially revelatory about its subject matter, nor does it offer anything new. It’s an exercise in style and the merits of characterisation, amusing without being particularly laugh-out-loud funny. Most of the fun derives from watching Chili Palmer charm his way into the movie business and outwit everyone else. He doesn’t really know what he’s doing but appears to. There’s a lot to be said for that.

And Gene Hackman, once again, is superb. He really wasn’t (he’s apparently retired now) afraid to play the ‘loser type’ despite being your definition of the macho male. It’s almost uncomfortable witnessing his antics here, especially his attempts to play the hard man to Dennis Farina’s Miami mobster.

We miss you, Gene.

Tagged , , , , , , ,