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.
This movie was fucking appalling.
Please, don’t watch it.
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.
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.
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.
It’s a cliché now to describe this film as “mature Tarantino” amidst his pop culture works with a compulsory cultural allusion every few seconds. It’s a restrained affair but not as great as the wise critics would make you think it is. The style works and the images are memorable, but it’s far too reliant on its music soundtrack.
De Niro pops up and does a sort of bumbling semi-Falstaff, the rest of the cast looking happy to be there. Michael Keaton plays an ATF agent called Ray Nicolette, and reprises the role in Out of Sight (1998). This harbinger of what cinemas are awash with today – multiverse overkill – is my predominant takeaway from the movie.
It’s okay, but feels forced, for long stretches simply dull, and I can’t recall a single line of dialogue.
But it’s not shite.
Another De Niro film from his comedy vault, the two-hour running time put me off, but Tarantino speaks fondly of the movie, so that sealed the deal. It’s terrible. Shame on you, QT.
It does have a wee something to say about ageism, but it’s barely even believable. And it’s another stomach-churning movie about American office culture, with its sycophantic, annoying-as-fuck employees who couldn’t be more boring and who live for the pleasure of working for boring cunts.
And I was bored.
Hated it.
The landscape offers a lot to work with, ripe vistas aplenty, but there’s no enduring image from the cinematography side of things.
I was expecting tension and chills; this was mainly boring and unimaginative. Nothing seemed to be at stake despite all the bloodshed, and the lack of any dynamic between the driver and the demented hitchhiker is a letdown. I couldn’t locate a personality in anyone here in what in essence is a variation of the same violent road encounter occurring every 10 minutes.
The laziness of writing pisses me off, be this in a slimy thriller like we have here or a mega bucks operation. It’s not difficult to insert a few character traits and attempt to build depth but nah, apparently it’s too much of a Herculean task.
Rutger Hauer could be a scary man, though. And what happened to C. Thomas Howell?
This was a low-key semi-thriller, a slow-burning affair that worked perfectly for a bit. For an entire 80 minutes, it was genuinely unpredictable and with a fleeting romance that convinced. Then it got boring and I was bored.
Last 20 minutes were hard work. I wish I turned it off.
Next.
It wasn’t my choice to watch this ugly tripe.
And I’ll never watch it again, or any movie featuring anyone involved in it.
Unfunny, painfully coarse to the level of beyond cringe, and just plain annoying.
If someone gave me a DVD of this, I’d use it as a weapon to assault them with.
Bye for now.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 