Watching this again was a fatalistic regret because it’s absolute rubbish and bloody tedium defined. It’s another one of those movies that I convinced myself was good.
It isn’t and takes so long to get going I thought I was viewing one of those indulgent director’s cuts.
This funny flick (for the most part) revels in its own silly wee world and knows how ridiculous it is.
Several chuckles along the way, even if the last 20 minutes are unbearable in their noisy-as-hell mindlessness, as if all the self-aware comedy was building to a doll on a dull rampage.
An outright entertainment and, let’s be fair, an out-and-out total fantasy, this sweet, wittier-than-most teen comedy features generally violence-free classrooms, with an almost respect and rapport between teachers and students. There is not even a hint of a mass shooting, and everyone is self-aware.
No teenagers are on the verge of being sectioned despite their peccadilloes, and we have Orbital’s ‘Halcyon On and On’ from Mortal Kombat (1995) finish proceedings, just to confirm this movie is all a fantasy.
A very fetching fantasy.
I was dreading this movie would be too reliant on the standard As Good as It Gets (1997) OCD schtick to drive the narrative but it smartly sidestepped all the easy mechanisms. A highly entertaining dramedy with two plots going on seamlessly, a con and a character study intertwined, this is another solid entry in the Cage compendium.
One wishes Ridley Scott would make inconsequential but breezy fare like this rather than all his insipid train wrecks of late, which are too numerous.
And Bruce McGill is in it, showing once again that he’s in everything.
This was just one unfathomably tedious exposition that never felt like going anywhere, and by the time the carnage commenced I patently couldn’t be arsed.
I must have sighed on a dozen occasions and this produced sighs from displeased persons in front of me, who evidently did not approve of my sighing.
Pish.
An intro to Aronofskyisms, who in his exceptional debut feature pulls off the remarkable feat of making mathematics sort of interesting, theory relayed to us via the characters in their gripping exchanges; in these moments you end up taking notes for a Wikipedia binge.
The director draws so much from a conceptual premise through stylistic verve and repetition, and doesn’t run out of steam. There’s always something going on, the plot presenting successive obstacles for Max Cohen in his hopeless search for meaning where there frankly isn’t any to be found. The dirtiness of his domain (it’s like Abel Ferrara territory), the fact he’s living (barely) in squalor, the cocoon lifestyle, seems to further convince him that he’s deep in the shit and on the verge of an Earth-shattering discovery.
Great film, wild ride, the Aronofsky template.
Lovely wee comedy. It’s not hilarious or anything but it’s witty and clever. What happened to Alicia Silverstone? Was it Batman & Robin (1997) that robbed her of a career? Or maybe she just belongs in the ’90s.
A sad shame.
Bill Forsyth could have made this charming flick, which is surprisingly well shot and not the TV movie aesthetic that I was expecting.
Nice wee story, characters you can root for, and the consummate thesp Ian Bannen gets a late career-defining role. The bloke was in literally everything, even turning up in Braveheart (1995) as the leper pops of Robert the Bruce.
My attention was drawn to this as my ears were piqued, tickled even, by Tom Hardy’s bonkers accent in the trailer – whatever accent it’s meant to be, I was intrigued. That or the feeling it was picking up the aesthetic mantel of The Wild One (1953), that seminal exploitation movie that barely merits a second viewing because it’s shite. But it does have Brando being a committed Brando.
Sadly, and this is where my faith in peculiar accents was misplaced, I was annoyed beyond composure with the lead lassie in this and her grating, stomach-churning voice, Marge Simpson scraped down a blackboard with a bit of Karen Hill from Goodfellas (1990) chucked in the vernacular mix. The entire 30 minutes I could manage this film I was telling myself, “This is so bad. My ears are in pain. I hate folk on motorcycles.”
Nice bit of scenery in the picture, open landscapes and all that; it would have been better if you just jettisoned the shitty accents, all the motorcycles, and the story, which I gave up on.
This will be the only movie starring both Tom Hardy and Michael Shannon that I’ll turn off. Sorry, lads.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 