Tag Archives: Movie

Sep 10 2021
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Art, Cinema, Crime, Film, Movie, Uncategorized, United States

Killing Them Softly (2012).

Andrew Dominik is the real deal – Chopper (2000), The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007), and this hidden gem.

This is such an unusual crime thriller with its entirely unexciting shoot-outs and dearth of brash or loud moments. The movie mostly comprises a lot of miserable criminals engaging in very convincing conversations about their jobs; none of this standard mafioso talk. And it’s especially memorable for James Gandolfini losing the plot in one of his last roles. It says a lot about the quality of the actor that Tony Soprano never once popped into my head throughout his scenes.

Despite coming out in 2012, the film exists in a weird Great Recession/2008 United States presidential election bubble, and for a reason. If a clue was ever needed as to the movie’s statement, Pitt’s furious monologue at the end is for you:

‘My friend, Jefferson’s an American saint because he wrote the words, “All men are created equal.” Words he clearly didn’t believe, since he allowed his own children to live in slavery. He was a rich wine snob who was sick of paying taxes to the Brits. So yeah, he wrote some lovely words and aroused the rabble, and they went out and died for those words, while he sat back and drank his wine and fucked his slave girl. This guy [Obama, acceptance speech on the TV] wants to tell me we’re living in a community. Don’t make me laugh. I’m living in America, and in America, you’re on your own. America’s not a country. It’s just a business. Now fucking pay me.’

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Sep 02 2021
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Art, Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

The Tree of Life (2011).

I barely understand half of the stuff that went on but the movie somehow reaches an inexplicable transcendence in its last 30 minutes. I believe Terrence Malick is some kind of anomaly. He didn’t make a movie for two decades and now he’s putting out a picture every other year.

I’ll let Roger Ebert do the talking on this one:

‘Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” is a film of vast ambition and deep humility, attempting no less than to encompass all of existence and view it through the prism of a few infinitesimal lives. The only other film I’ve seen with this boldness of vision is Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” and it lacked Malick’s fierce evocation of human feeling. There were once several directors who yearned to make no less than a masterpiece, but now there are only a few. Malick has stayed true to that hope ever since his first feature in 1973.’

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Aug 28 2021
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District 9 (2009). Crikey!

I stayed away from this for years. The title annoyed me in its seeming vagueness. I thought it was either about freejumping or a prison escape, neither of which I find particularly arresting.

Elysium (2013) brought me here. It’s a decent movie that doesn’t really fulfill its initial promise, and Jodie Foster’s dreadful impression of Christine Lagarde is just embarrassing (why did this happen?). But the wildly entertaining histrionics of Sharlto Copley were enough to lure me to District 9. He is mesmerising in it and his transformation into something resembling a human being (by weirdly becoming an alien) is a shocker. But it’s not just the out-of-nowhere star turn, it’s everything. The style – this may be the only time that a found-footage aesthetic works in a film – the action, the boldness with which the picture realises the potential of its premise and runs with it, how a Predator-lookalike alien can be a fully-fledged character.

District Six actually happened. It’s movies, aye, but they say art imitates life.

I should have seen this a decade ago. But I have no regrets. A 5/5 movie.

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Aug 25 2021
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Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

The Last Crusade (1989). Oh my.

The chemistry between Ford and Connery is magical and even if the other components weren’t there, it would still be a memorable film because of the relationship. However, the prologue is still fabulous. Donovan’s ultra-ageing after sipping from the gold cup is still nightmare worthy. The action is still fast and inventive. It’s such a relentlessly entertaining yarn, and even the bad guys have something about them. The SS lad somehow rocked up in Braveheart (1995) and … of all things, Corrie Street as a member of the Gail Platt outfit. And Grange Hill’s Mr. Bronson plays Hitler here.

And Marcus got lost in his own museum.

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Aug 14 2021
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Cinema, Film, Movie, Uncategorized

Alexander (2004) the not-so-great.

I’ve been on quite the Oliver Stone binge of late and it was inevitable that I arrived at a certain disaster. This is a complete train wreck of celluloid.

The accents are all over the place, for some unfathomable reason Macedonians from antiquity possessing Irish, Scottish, and Russian dialects. And dreadful ones at that.

The film is rammed, at the expense of drama and thrills, with pointless tactical information about the battles on display. In the nauseatingly constructed Battle of Gaugamela, Stone keeps cutting to an eagle surveying the scene. It’s a mad decision and I recall half the cinema howling at the time. There’s another bit with Alexander taking on an elephant and it is hilarious. The film apparently has like 18,000 different ‘Director’s Cuts’. They will all be shite, I guarantee you.

A nuts and utterly unwatchable motion picture. How can you make one of the greatest military commanders and statesmen in history so irrevocably boring? This movie achieves that impossible feat.

You honestly need to see it to believe it.

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Aug 11 2021
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Cinema, Film, Movie, Uncategorized, United States

I came quite late to the party that is Something Wild (1986).

Ray Liotta has always looked both young and old at the same time, which is a hard act to do. Even in his thirties he appeared both 50 and 18. He’s had a very good career but lacks that marquee performance; Goodfellas (1990) isn’t really an astounding acting job because he’s unchanged throughout and overshadowed by you-know-who. Unlawful Entry (1992) is a trashy corker but Something Wild (1986) is strangely peak Liotta even though he’s just getting started. Also, I’ve seen Narc (2002) twice and don’t think much of it.

He is scary in this. It’s so rare to see an actor pull off scary but he is that, like Willem Dafoe as Bobby Peru.

The movie seamlessly tap-dances between genres, and the (very real) violence never appears out of place amidst the comedy. It reminded me of Grosse Pointe Blank (1997), which is fitting as that undoubted masterpiece is an ’80s throwback. This film felt like it could go anywhere at any moment, a freewheeling adventure. And it was. The unpredictable is hard to design or even pull off in fiction.

Fantastic.

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Aug 05 2021
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Art, Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Music, Uncategorized

The Thing (1982) is a riot and defines John Carpenter.

There exists an incredible canon of Carpenter movies from the ’70s and ’80s – Carpenter pulling out one sublime picture after another. A wee bit of snobbery swirls around commentary on him, that he can’t do a period drama or handle anything another other than horror and thrills, which is making an obvious point. And I keep referring to him in the past tense. Because I haven’t seen a new movie from the lad for decades.

As much as I would ascribe the term ‘auteur’ to the truly multi-skilled Carpenter, folk read way too much into these films, always seeking for the allegorical or the profound statement. They are all cult B-movies where very little acting nuance is needed, high-concept affairs elevating the primacy of the image and the economy of the edit. You’re in it for 90 minutes and then afterwards that’s that. It’s not Antonioni.

And to The Thing (1982) and that score, the landscape, the constant menace, and yet with the wackiest visual effects, brilliant for their time and curiously not dated at all.

The Thing is his peak.

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Jul 16 2021
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Art, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

Hostiles (2017) should be seen by more folk.

I usually hate revisionism because it’s almost always ‘crafted’ through the lens of ridiculous zeitgeist lefty reevaluations of a now controversial time. Artistry comes second with this crusade. They are just message movies and aesthetically worthless.

This one looked ominous. However, it was surprisingly almost brilliant. Bale was … Bale. He is titanium. He cannot be broken. This did baffle me a wee bit as with a lot of these flicks we have the flawed protagonist die at the end because of his sins and he somehow finds catharsis in this. Not so here. Which is just fabulous.

I say almost great. There aren’t any memorable moments or sequences which wander out of formula. But it’s masterfully shot and put together. And I hate most movies.

A strong 4/5.

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Jul 07 2021
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JFK (1991) is a masterpiece of garbage.

The Kennedy ‘Camelot’ worship is just pathetic, a whitewashing of some truly horrific folks. I just don’t get it and the only explanation I have for the adulation of that pampered clan is that when you’ve got Nixon or Goldwater you have to pick the lesser of two … something like that. Anyway, the outright lies in this movie are audacious in their temerity. The director quite literally makes shit up. No wonder the amenable masses think everything is a conspiracy these days.

But what a cast, what style, what editing razzmatazz. If you could define bravura it would be peak Oliver Stone. He’s the best kind of worst propagandist. What does the lad get up to these days aside from interview dictators? His last masterwork was Any Given Sunday (1999). I saw a film he made about Alexander the Great. It was worse than one of my shites after tanning a vindaloo.

“Back, and to the left. Back, and to the left. Back, and to the left.”

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Jun 30 2021
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Cinema, Crime, Film, Movie, Soviet Union, Uncategorized, United States

Red Heat (1988). I’m sure it must have (maybe) been a hoot back then. It’s a stinker.

Walter Hill invented the buddy cop action movie with 48 Hours (1982). This is the same premise but with looser plotting, fewer thrills, and zero chemistry between the leads. Arnie is the best thing in it (as he always is) and does a creditable job as a Soviet policeman, but Jim Belushi is hopelessly miscast and it doesn’t help that some of the dialogue he’s given is humiliating. There’s a bus chase of sorts near the end and for almost the entire duration Jim Belushi simply wails at what’s going on in front of them and the general situation. It is the most boring chase in a film I’ve ever seen. The bad guy is almost intriguing and Ed O’Ross does possess a certain charismatic quality. But the movie is simply pointless.

It’s so desperate to be something more than it is that Arnie as a stoic commie cop is its go-to place. Almost every gag, every joke, every line of dialogue between the crime-fighting duo is this schematic clash of cultures nonsense but in a mostly non-threatening way. It’s like the filmmakers looked at Reagan and Gorbachev and the thawing of relations and thought it a good idea to have Arnie as a Soviet rozzer in a shitty movie.

Probably.

The most interesting thing on display here is the cast. It is Kevin Bacon territory. Everyone is in it. I even spotted Kurt Fuller. Who has also been in everything.

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