Tremendous film. Very original.
Great acting from Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson's voice - so sultry and warm - is perfect casting. I cannot even imagine Samantha Morton's voice now.
The story in 2013, when it came out, felt overly futuristic. Rewatching in 2019, it feels just round the corner. The incredibly dumb Alexa assistants are everywhere, Google and Siri try to listen to us at all times. Somehow a personal AI like this feels just a year or two away...
It paints a picture of us all disappearing into technology. A couple of years ago, I would have agreed. Today I feel the small uprising of people who realise they are the there'd to electronics and that a boundary line is needed. We still crave human connection - even if we want to augment ourselves with tech.
This is a clever, beautiful, insightful and reflective piece of work. A fine film indeed.
8.5/10 (8 stars)
Really enjoyed this season, which I hope is the first of many.
I'll be rewatching the films shortly because it has renewed my love for them.
If I had to nitpick I'd have cast someone a little closer to Mark Wahlberg purely for continuity sakes but otherwise there isn't much to dislike.
The subjects are very modern day despite the 1990s setting, which is like a nod and a wink to the audience.
But it rises and falls on John & Ted - and we have nothing to fear there. It is consistently funny, finds its feet proper around episode 4 and shows that there is plenty of life in the format.
Bazed through all the episodes in short time. Bring on season 2!
It is always a pleasure to hear Sly. And it's always a pleasure to see him behind the scenes.
This is a fitting document to the relationships he has had with the silver screen, the writer's pad, his family, as well as fame and his own ego.
Overall however, I hoped for a treatment similar to 'Arnold' - chapters and more exposition. I would have liked one episode about the career and the other about the family man. This all felt a little quickly passed over.
And most noticeably, there was a melancholic tone to the whole thing. Though age means Sly is on the latter half of life's lap, he's nowhere nearing passing on. It didn't need to feel like the finality of a career for a man who is still so active.
Let's reassess this film shall we?
Rather than thinking of it in the vein of Indiana Jones, let's see it for what it really was... The genesis of the 'Uncharted' video game series.
And to anyone who just watched that film with a pleasant Tom Holland and a limp Mark Wahlberg, then you need to watch this instead.
This is the closest you'll get to a true "Nathan Drake" if it took 15 years to bring Uncharted to our screens.
Little did we know that the best Uncharted film had been made 2 years before the game.
Practical effects, a swashbuckling soundtrack, humour, locations... It has them all. The plot could be a little tighter and Penelope Cruz's accent could be a little less one-dimensional but they're by the by...
This film deserves reappraising.
7.5/10
Poor overall. It feels like someone wanted to create a Tarantino film after watching In Bruges.
It is humorous in parts but not a comedy. There is comedic violence. It has several criminals depicted but it doesn't really feel a crime caper.
There is a stellar cast and for the most part they deliver above and beyond what is a very tenuous plot. The one oddity seems to be the lynchpin leading man, Colin Farrell. He seems intent on "realism" acting but falls totally out of sync with the OTT Sam Rockwell and the caricature-of-himself-for-several-decades-now Christopher Walken.
If Farrell had sold it, the editing tightened up a little for pace, and a little more gravitas to the plot added, then this might have approached something close to a weaker imitation of Out Of Sight or - if all the cards fell perfectly - even True Romance.
5.25/10
Now this film gets a bad rap and that's unfair...
I'm going to spoil here and I'm going to make direct comparisons to the McQueen/MacGraw original.
This is a remake so to throw shade on it for that isn't right. It cannot reinvent too much without affecting the plot. And it tries it's best to do so - stock car magnate here, a dog track heist not a bank job, more integral part for the Carol McCoy character in all the killing.
Now that said, it is inferior. In some ways it is superior though.
Inferior -
- No minimalist Quincy Jones soundtrack. A standard 90s bombardment of sound when it isn't needed.
- Baldwin isn't McQueen. Charm, yes. Inherent danger, no.
- The shoot out with the small town sheriffs is a brilliant sequence in the original. Here it has no momentum or flow of brilliance.
Superior -
- The cruel relationship between Rudy and The Vet's wife is portrayed here better. Jennifer Tilly was a perfect casting. The original was just too cold-blooded.
- The finale in the hotel. Having Basinger play more of an equal footing was a good choice.
For what the original loses in 70s pacing and now "out-of-time" plot choices, the remake gains some ground back.
I'd recommend the original but I wouldn't dissuade if folks want to watch this one. It was overly maligned due to the real-life coupling of the leads. As was the original. Both need re-examining on merit.
7/10
Bigger scope, longer runtime, bigger budget, bigger cast... But not better.
The first 30 mins are in keeping with what you want from a sequel. The middle hour though goes way off the rails with a chaotic script and poor plot line - all to set up a somewhat predictable finale.
I don't want to say it but I think Ryan Reynolds is the problem with the chaos. Too many one-liners and quips are jammed in. And the majority land but the minority don't and should have been left out to calm the volume of the script down.
There is a lot of humour in here but this time it feels forced and a little tired.
I prefer the first despite its issues and lacklustre ending because it was original. This one just tries to give you a headache.
7/10
I'd heard rave reviews about this film and I was very glad to have watched it.
However, it's not going to blow you away. It's a very nice film with good performances. But it isn't a 10/10 by any means.
The concept is a wonderful one. Yet it seems to limp to an ending in the last act - and not the one you'd think.
It's charming, well acted, has plenty of heart, seems an accurate depiction of Chinese beliefs - so it's well worth a watch. Best to taper expectations though.
7.5/10
This is a review in two parts - I watched the International Edit back when it was released and several times since... But there's also the Director's Cut with an extra 20 mins of footage.
Ratings wise - International Edit is 9/10, the Director's Cut is 7.5/10.
Let's go with the vanilla edit first....
Brilliant film. Jean Reno is nuanced and extremely capable in this role. Natalie Portman is fantastic as such a young actress delivering her performance. Gary Oldman is an absolute genius and this is one of the building blocks for that reputation.
It is a very cool story, with more flesh on the bones than Besson's earlier gritty film like Nikita, and it has cleverness all the way through. For me it's Besson's best film.
It's a little rushed in parts and that's likely due to how the editing had to occur. For this, it's not quite perfect - but it's pretty close! So 9/10
The Director's Cut. A much more fleshed out 2nd and 3rd act. To its own discredit... Here's where we start to get into some serious lolita territory and it's very uncomfortable to watch. At times, I did wonder what Natalie Portman's parents were thinking when she had to say/do some of the things in this version. It's very in your face and it actually takes a lot away from the enjoyment of what is a very cool, thoughtful, stylish, and entertaining film. So 7.5/10
I've just stepped out of the cinema having watched the worst movie of the year. I feel like the director has played me for a fool. I feel like the joke here.
Joaquin Phoenix must want to shake Todd Phillips till his eyes pop out his head for he went 100% down the rabbit hole to create this performance - only for a horrendously bad director, languid editing, and a screenplay-by-numbers to fail this picture into the miserable, sodden, car-crash of a film it is.
The last time I felt so vitriolic after a 'much-hyped' film was Guy Ritchie's Revolver. Another stinker for the ages.
I particularly feel like a joke has been had at my expense by the presence of Robert De Niro, who must have had deja vu cashing his paycheck reminiscing back to his (actually a good film) The King of Comedy.
This film tries to marry that Rupert character to Taxi Driver and comes up with garbage. Much like the garbage epidemic denoted in the plot itself.
I paid 8 pounds to see this. You'd have to pay me 800 to watch it again.
It almost worked for a few minutes during the scenes with Bobby D's Johnny Carson bit. Almost. The rest was as predictable yet immensely tedious as it could be without me being handed a copy of the script on the way in.
Do yourself a favour... Don't ruin your opinion of Joaquin Phoenix by seeing this. It doesn't feel like he is to blame here. But it's best to just steer clear of the movie altogether. It offers nothing to the DC universe. It offers nothing to the Batman legacy. It actively dishounours the greatness of Heath Ledger, Jack Nicholson, Cesar Romero and all future Jokers.
This film itself IS the joker.
Utter crap.
3/10 - for the attempts made by Joaquin Phoenix saving it from 1/10.
This is much the same content as featured in Forks Over Knives, Vegucated, and the plethora of similar 'vegan' documentaries that talk of a 'plant-based' diet.
It wasn't as potent as the aforementioned documentaries.
There was no real science offered to show whether the athletes were better. They just said they felt better.
I totally agree as I feel better since going plant-based. But I also don't have access to the same level of stamina when working hard for long periods... This could be related to the difficulty in accumulating the same amount of calories. So what does a vegan powerlifter do? He eats mountains of fake meat. Hardly whole food plant based when it's highly processed fake meat products.
I also felt a little shortchanged that the superstar names used to produce the movie - Lewis Hamilton, Jackie Chan, et al - did not feature in the documentary either at all or for more than a passing moment.
There's a massive list of interviewees who weren't used in the credits. They really had nothing more interesting than the ones who were interviewed? Firefighters reducing cholesterol isn't what a docu about 'athletes who go vegan' should be focusing on. There are other (better) docus on that.
6/10
Let's be real here. This isn't a good film. And it's flawed from the get-go.
The casting. Dreadful. Hanks is a creation from Batman Returns. Priscilla has none of her beauty. And the most fundamentally unforgiveable issue - Elvis doesn't look like Elvis. Who signed off on an actor to carry this film where the eyes nose and mouth are absolutely incorrect?
The editing. Horrendous and overdone. There is barely a moments peace from the onslaught. However, for this catastrophe of cinematography to only cost 85 million USD is a triumph.
The pov aspect. Why in the hell would you base this around the ridiculous story of Colonel Tom Parker only to then leave out half of the facts? And it's not short on time at 2hr 30.
And finally, the pacing. When Elvis is washed up prior to the 68 Comeback special we haven't been fed enough of him at his peak for the rise and fall to make sense. When he passes, the bloatedness isn't shown and then arrives unexplained but for a single line of voice over. Periods that needed to be shown are glossed over and periods of relative unnecessity are dragged out.
But the real crime is the music. I counted 2 uninterrupted performances. The rest were manic collages or mixed in with - wait for it - modern hip hop... What egotistical mind decided that was a good idea...?
I watched. Now I'll hope to forget. And for anyone who wants an actual representation of Elvis from an actor who actually looks like him and tells the actual story, look for the Jonathan Rhys Meyers TV miniseries biopic.
To paraphrase a Bill Burr routine... Elvis was the first to be a major superstar. He made all the mistakes because he had nobody who had led the way.
Why is that not spelled out?
The 'theft' of black music. The 'child' marriage... I get that 2022 eyes see the world differently but a film like this shouldn't pander to the modern trend for rewriting history. It should provide perspective.
If Elvis hadn't grown up surrounded by black culture and organically witnessed that music, he'd be Pat Boone. But he wasn't. He was a true child of the musical influences. If he hadn't had his career, then it might have been another 20 years before black music found white ears... And it wouldn't have been a black artist who brought it. That's the sad truth. There needs to be a conduit and Elvis was that.
To labour this point... Tom Hanks being cast as a gay man afflicted with HIV (Philadelphia) opened the door to films of that nature being mainstream. Nowadays a gay man must be cast in that role. But you don't get to where we are without Tom Hanks being the conduit. That seems to be lost on people these days.
Progress is a series of incremental steps.
And look at the Priscilla marriage. The age of consent and the times and the location were all a world away. Don't be outraged at this, be outraged at Jerry Lee Lewis or Chuck Berry.
How sad the film was so overwhelmed by its desire to create ridiculous camerawork that it failed to deliver any of the impact of the first major superstar.
5/10
Terrible premiere episode for this new season. Just tired, uneventful and pointless... I'll always watch for the beautiful Candice Patton but it's sad to see what this show has become. It just limps along now waiting for a multiverse crossover episode.
I feel like I don't want to be too harsh on this film but I have to be sadly....
Boring. Slow. Uninvested. Unoriginal.
A very slow and predictable plot. Uninspiring turn from Tommy Lee Jones, who phones in his performance with all the class of a 1980s Motorola cell phone! I couldn't have cared less about whether this father/son relationship had any development. Why? Because Brad Pitt's character is also boring. He's a machine - we get that spelled out to us several times.
Now... Brad Pitt acts well. The visuals are good - but in a world of Interstellar and Gravity, they're underwhelming.
I liked the view of Moon travel. That's the only positive.
For a 2 hour film though, it felt like 3. That's a bad sign for any film. I'll be avoiding this one when I see it advertised on TV.
I'm settling on 5/10 because of Brad Pitt's performance and some of the visuals (particularly the Moon). But I could have gone as low as 3/10 or 4/10 based on my mood leaving the cinema!
Starts with some overly glossy filmography that looks staged and threatens to undermine the whole thing.
It goes on though to make some extremely compelling arguments.
The solution is to eat less or no seafood. Just as the solution to wildlife destruction is to eat less or no meat.
I feel all of these documentaries are missing the point. We are responsible for the planet yet we corrupt our decision-making through capitalism and greed.
There is a way to feed everyone. We shouldn't be forced to give up meat because it is tasteless or harmful through modern farming. And we shouldn't over fish the seas such that they are breaking down.
Let's have some proposed solutions to tackle all that and the economic fallout it would lead to, that sadly is what the headlines would highlight...
If every person made better decisions, we'd still be damaging the planet. We need coordinated efforts on how to harm it the least.
7.5/10
Meh. Not liking the viciousness of Superman fighting. Would he really be such a bully once he has the upper hand? Then there's the stupidness of Lois and the magic clicker. The whole thing just feels too 'CW by Numbers' for me. I do think Tyler is a good choice to play Superman but can we have some genuine heart and believability in the characters please! Oh, and the elastic band theory of superpowers is already happening. He can hear the other side of the world but not his two kids shouting at each other about playing football...?
After-thought... As someone old enough to remember Lois & Clark, I cannot help but think of the reveal of Lois Lane. S&L's Lois did not look like a Lois he would fall in love with immediately. L&C's Lois was spellbinding. Teri Hatcher was every man's dream as she turned to the camera that first time. I don't like the Lois casting here at all.
Christ almighty, what a catastrophic mess.
If you ignore that it is a remake, then it is an overblown, generic, piss-poor CGI laden, irredeemable, straight-to-streaming pile of crap.
Add in that it is meant to be a remake of a cheap-but-lovable 80s classic and it takes on a sinister twist.
Suddenly the lead character is a psychopath who kills for any old reason, not to mention waits until the bar he is hired to protect is smashed to smithereens before intervening, and is plagued with a sketchy set of morals.
And the equally homicidal nemesis this time isn't genuinely fearful, he's a cartoon steroid rooster with a terrible set of veneers. Oh and he can't act his way out of a paper bag. And he's playing himself - which is, in case you haven't worked it out, a total prick with an arrogance problem.
It's an insult to the viewers from start to finish. From the first "oh look I just got stabbed and the blade is sticking out of me, isn't that something" to the final killing spree with 180-degree changes of behaviour from all involved... It's just a pointless tedious exercise.
None of the charm of the original exists. None of the peril. None of the character.
Hollywood and Amazon should be rightfully ashamed.
Between 1983 and 1997, Jim Varney gave us the Ernest anthology of films. This series was seemingly resurrected by Martin Scorcese, in this unofficially subtitled addition "Ernest Tap Dances On My Last Nerve For 3 Hours".
Come on folks, this is a Scorcese film. The man who gives us endlessly rewatchable films like Goodfellas, Casino, Wolf of Wall Street. Fantastic pieces of work that will last forever.
This is not such a film.
It is bloated. Poorly paced. Starved of any real emotions for much of its duration. And when the end comes to finally put it out of its misery, it lacks any punch. Much to the chagrin of the director who casts himself in an overly-wrought cameo.
It isn't a catastrophe. De Niro puts in a great day's work, Di Caprio is consumed by the role. There are plenty of fine actors around them doing fine work. It's just a mess of edits and lacking focus.
I struggle to see a great film in this even if the fat was taken off it. It just isn't a masterpiece in hiding. And that's sad because the bones of the story itself is well worth telling.
They say every great fighter has one great fight left in him. I wonder if we have seen that already from Scorcese and this is one fight too many...
Season 2 isn't a patch on the first... Admittedly I'm about 7 or 8 epsiodes in. But still, a lot of my time has been misused by the series so far.
Too many episodes given to side stories. Not enough of Rob and Ryan. Duration is all over the place.
But more importantly not enough football being shown. It should be mandatory for each episode to feature the league pursuit on the pitch.
3 things...
1) in this day and age, with all the woke snowflakes looking to be offended by every little thing, how the hell did this even get made?
2) Jennifer Lawrence is a beautiful woman. Not sure we needed a film like this for her to prove that to us or what her motivation for taking the role was...
3) it's just not clicking enough for it to be a full-blown comedy. It's hardly American Pie for this generation. It's a damning indictment of helicopter parenting and kids being overly sheltered these days though.
I won't remember anything about this film within a week. Except for the JL getting unnecessarily naked on the beach scene.
Well well... This is a tough one isn't it? Quite a predicament we all face.
The worst season of the 3 - gave way to a lot of wokeness and ridiculous script by well-being committee. Once Ted needed the shrink in season two, it seems it opened the floodgates.
On the other hand, we do get the redemption of Nate. The rounding out of Roy.
But for all that, the awkwardly wedged-in lesbian relationship that ends just as awkwardly. The teasing of Rebecca's future that is alluded to as an after thought...
See, it's just a minefield of wrongs and rights isn't it?
So let's just go with how I felt at the final moment of the credits.... I felt that it wasn't an egregious wrap up like so many shows. I was content with the Ted thread but very happy with the Roy Kent/Nate/Beard one.
I honestly don't know though if I'd recommend this show to people now. After the first season, it was all I could do to not tap on strangers' shoulders and tell them to run and watch this. After season two and that god awful Beard After Dark episode, it was a qualified recommendation that it is very good but there's a bit of nonsense creeping in and also that episode should be avoided like the plague.
Given season three from episode three to nine is a cluster bomb of wokery and 'tv by social media approval' then the whole series became something of a chore.
It'll be a while before I settle on this one.
Criminals? Aren't they... Surely? Criminals.
An often difficult watch that is, at best, your cup of tea directorially or not - or at worst, a disgraceful smearing of an icon for the sake of supposed high-brow art.
I lean more to the latter. I'll explain.
Let's put aside the fact it depicts someone who actually lived...
Now let's add in that it is someone who actually lived.
-unconvincing casting. Ana De Armas is a fine actress, one of the absolute best working today. But two issues here - likeness, not great. Accent - lifts you out of her performance.
- why besmirch her memory with an unfounded threesome... Or belittle her with sexual acts. That they occurred there is no doubt but it only makes her out to be cheap to show them whereas the men involved get away with the depiction almost scot-free.
It's almost unwatchable. I wanted to switch off within 20 minutes but persevered due to opinions from other viewers I highly respect. It just didn't come to life for me - but more so, I didn't get much of the tension or societal commentary that other reviews are pointing to so vehemently.
I just found it underwhelming, poorly constructed and a difficult viewing out of being non-plussed. And Norma Jeane deserved a lot more than that.
Whereas Elvis was a mess for totally different reasons, I'd have to say it is slightly superior to this one in relative terms.
The true irony will be that the Oscars are dominated by both films. Films about people from its own industry that were killed by their own successes and then were 'honored by biopics' in extremely poorly taste.
4/10
So right off the bat... As a movie, this is pretty shit. Maybe a 6.5/10 overall if you had to rate it honestly.
It's mildly funny, predictable, overacted, arrogantly and self-righteously American.
But that's not what the sum of the parts is.... That is exactly what it is trying to be.
What you have here is a searing indictment of modern humanity. Self-obsessed, intellectually inept, molly-coddled Americans who - when faced with the end of the world - decide to turn it into a political battleground, attempt to milk it for profit, hand it over to sociopathic billionaire industrialists as the government officials are too incapable to handle the situation, who ultimately pay the price for their decisions.
It's a sadly accurate depiction of where the West stands at the moment. Crippled by 40 years of mind-numbing entertainment that has depleted our intelligence, our ability for critical thought and common sense.
I wouldn't rewatch this if you paid me. And it is 30 minutes too long. But it is the most realistic holding up of a mirror to society as I have seen in a decade.
The most reasoned and insightful view of how messed up we are as nations today is coming from satirical comedy. Just as it always has.
7.5/10
This isn't his best work.
This was personal for him and something he felt he had to do.
It isn't, however, high on laughs. As a consequence of needing to clear his chest and speak to criticisms, it feels drawn out. And as somebody who does care either way about much of the subject matter, it felt labored.
It ends on a sad and poignant story. Chapelle's own feelings and the telling of the story came across - to me at least - as a touch contrived and had a vague whiff of insincerity lurking in there.
As a stand up special, this cannot stand next to something like Bill Burr's last 3 or Chris Rock's first 3 and be considered strong. It just isn't in the same ballpark.
Dave has made a resurgent career on speaking wisdom under the guise of stand up. Until now, he was excelling. This one just didn't tie together.
6/10
Highly anticipated as we would all like to know what condition the man is in. That he isn't in daily pain and was it the right decision to keep him alive after such an accident.
This tells us nothing. We get many indirect comments that infer his state but nothing direct or concrete. What is inferred is that he is in a very poor state of health - and personally, I think the decision to keep him alive in those early moments after the accident would appear to be dishonourable to a strong, successful, powerful man like him...
As a documentary, this isn't Senna. There are many liberties taken with the truth of circumstances around his racing decisions. We all know he was a nasty racer and would rather crash to win than allow a competitor the rightful chance.
It does a reasonable job of humanising him. Gives a nice insight to his marriage. But the constant economies with the truth - for the bits where I knew the colour - are tiresome.
It was a shame he had the accident he did. If he passes in the next 12 months as whatever palliative care he is being given is withdrawn, I sincerely wonder if this is an honest enough tribute to the man...
6/10
I'm fairly enraged at this moment... This was shit.
A weak plot that tries to be clever with a dozen double-crosses. Not only that but it limps along for the first 2/3s and then tries its hand at a 'get out of jail free card' with an unexpected cameo... Unexpected if you didn't realise that the cast of this thing is whoever is not jaded after Ocean's 13...
Terrible pacing, silly plot, lacklustre script, and that fish-eye lense was a ridiculous choice. Just pointless - achieves nothing yet irritates the viewer.
If this had the cast originally chosen, then it'd be trying to do Ocean's 1965. But it didn't and it feels like Baby Driver with the driving and music removed.
But shit movies appear all the time, and good directors lose their touch - as Soderbergh has this last decade... The thing tat has me hopping mad is that it closes with some righteous nod to the corruption of the automobile industry. Ha! Talk about a damp squib.
4.5/10 - for Don Cheadle being a classy guy and Benicio Del Toro for at least showing up to set each day.
Good for what it is - but it's still just an animated movie.
7.25/10
Interesting article that fact-checks some claims: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/56660823
