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Reviews
Red Rock West (1993)
Wonderfully made, so-called "B"(?) movie... amazing middle-of-nowhere atmosphere.
Red Rock West is a brilliantly crafted low-key/under the radar crime film. It's the kind of thing you may remember catching on cable TV at about 10PM but I can't remember the last time I saw it on British TV.
RRW had confused beginnings where at first, it was dismissed from being shown at a festival presumably because it wasn't "arty" enough, but then after being shown on TV it actually became a hit in cinemas. All of that is a long time ago now but this is so well made it holds up and it's a lot of fun to watch.
A young Nicolas Cage (only 28) delivers a fine performance as the hapless but good-hearted drifter who gets in way over his head. It really anchors the movie more towards reality. Highly seasoned bad-guy actors Dennis Hopper and J.T. Walsh provide the psycho factor here.
J.T. Walsh in particular has a frightening ability for playing scumbag-types, which did not go unnoted when he suddenly died in 1998, in his early 50s. This is one of my favourite of his film roles, along with his short appearance in "The Grifters" in 1990. Hopper, as the guy who is the real "Lyle", brims with an easy going, folksy southern charm which hides the fact that he's actually a total snake. Well obviously, he's a hired killer...
Lara Flynn Boyle is definitely pretty enough to be an alternative object of contention besides the money.
In my opinion the seemingly effortless performances from the villains, and the twists, more than make up for whatever some might say the clichéd or unbelievable elements are... and this is actually a remarkably atmospheric movie. It's kind of a minor masterpiece in its "neo-noir" genre. The Wyoming desert couldn't get any dustier and the dialogue flows nicely and sounds natural unlike all those overwrought, "country"-based crime movies made by the Coen brothers.
End of the Road (1970)
A '60s riot - they'll have to spray you with a water cannon to stop you laughing.
End of the Road is a belief-defying, obscure early 70s film (actually filmed in summer '68 but took a long time in production). It stars veteran actor Stacy Keach, only in his late 20s at the time, as an emotionally frazzled young novice academic, and James Earl Jones, like you've never seen him before, as a ludicrously "unorthodox" psychiatrist who's probably insane himself.
Some parts of the movie are so crazy it's almost like a live action cartoon. But the script is also extremely clever and dark. A lot of hard but weird thinking went into this. Perhaps only people who are a little messed up can fully understand it. It contains numerous weird and ultimately hilarious things which you never thought anyone would put on screen.
After the brilliantly made opening sequence in which Keach's character Jacob Horner loses it on a rural railway station platform, Jones' character, simply known as "Dr. D", whisks him off to his asylum somewhere in the countryside of New England, where he is subject to strange, loud and obnoxious experiments & "treatment" with the aim of waking him from his stupor. The dialogue and interplay between himself and Jones is definitely one of the highlights of the film.
After his initial treatment Horner is encouraged to take up an academic job, teaching English grammar. He ends up in an uneasy friendship with the more experienced lecturer Joe Morgan, played by another veteran actor Harris Yulin (if you know him from playing authority figures in various films or TV shows, it will be odd to see him without grey or white hair). Morgan is a morbidly nihilistic jackass who lives in his own little world and abuses his wife, which is probably why she jumps all over the fresh new Horner at the first chance.
The movie from there is conducted at perhaps a more "sustainable" pace than the opening frenzy between Jones and Keach, but it still overflows with deliberate absurdity (cooked to various different degrees). No film could possibly keep up the pace of the first 20 minutes... but if you enjoyed the opening scenes even half as much as I did, you'll want to stick around for the rest of it, as it sleepwalks toward to a horrible conclusion which even the most hardened viewer would wince at.
Both the lead actors are brilliant but Jones' presence in particular gives the movie extra power. I'm not sure if there is any other actor then or now who would take on such a bizarre role. Luckily Jack Nicholson was too young to give us his annoying overdone shtick playing this role. Jones is too funny to describe, and there's already been enough quasi-spoilers anyway.
Despite the difference in the colour of the two leads the movie never attempts to tackle race. Which is good, cause it would probably be the film's only clichéd element.
But it does work with other feverish and scary aspects of American life which existed in the 60s (i.e. Nixon, the counterculture, the cold war, etc.) It's a perfectly hilarious artefact from the time, but since it is so dark and wild, maybe it's not surprising that it languishes in such obscurity.
There is an absolutely terrible trailer for this, viewable on YouTube, which makes it look like cheap schlock, that probably doesn't help either.
The Imitation Game (2014)
Pointless and small-time movie which is more of an insult than a tribute.
The Imitation Game is an extremely watered down and edited version of events made for a middle of the road, mainstream 2010s audience.
Given that it has Benedict Cumberbatch in it, I avoided it like the plague when it came out. By the time I came to watch it on TV I had kind of forgotten about how dull the overhyped "Sherlock" was and I have always been fascinated by both the legend of Turing, and the war itself obviously, I was open minded about it.
The simple fact is, he may have been "odd" but by the time Alan Turing had reached Bletchley Park he was a confident young man. He was not half way to being Rain Man like this movie wants you to think. And what's more, even though his sexuality was still outlawed and oppressed in Britain, he was open to his colleagues at the code-breaking facility. He was not awkward about his sexuality and he didn't hate himself or seek a woman to both act as a beard and take "pity" on him or something.
The early 40s was a time of total war, many people in Britain, especially those smart enough to be doing this kind of job, were afraid that the country was finished. Hitler had spent most of the last decade arming Germany to take on the world while Britain had slept and engaged in futile appeasement. The underdogs weren't stupid enough to take one of their best players off the field just because he liked other dudes.
And given his talents, he probably would have been more like a god to his colleagues, not an outcast.
If it's not really doable to make a big-grossing, "marketable" mainstream movie about a nerdy gay number genius that's fine but what the hell is the point of churning out a movie where WW2 was nearly lost by the Allies because Turing didn't know how to accept a lunch invite from his fellow math-nerds (who, by the way, all swagger around like jocks.).... and where one of the greatest technical minds of the 20th century had to justify his war-winning project to some goon from the Ministry of Kicking Down Barn Doors.
If that's an "amazing" film to you, well I'm afraid my words to you will have to be um... watered down too.
The only vaguely compelling part was when they realised that they couldn't use the cracked German code to stop or foil every attack, or the Germans would soon realise what had happened and change the code. This meant they had to give up the lives of their countrymen, out there in battlefields, for strategical purposes.
It seems to me to be part of a pattern of recent British films that, intentionally or not, trivialise some of Britain's most remarkable people, whether historical or recent. 2017 saw the release of "Darkest Hour" in which the famously determined, "bulldog"-like Winston Churchill (who was the posh son of an aristocrat) was depicted asking random yahoos on the tube whether the country should surrender to Hitler or not. Also Eddie Redmayne, who makes Cumberbatch look like the most versatile actor ever, "played" Stephen Hawking as though he was a wide-eyed simpleton who just accidentally managed to figure out all the universe's secrets by finding them in a Christmas cracker or something.
As a Turing fan site helpfully pointed out, this movie is more like an extended episode of Downton Abbey, than a tribute to a genius, but with a fresh new look into Britain's awkward and disturbing relationship with "intelligent" people, as well as its awkward relationship with its past.
American Sniper (2014)
"Gung ho" American propaganda? Uh, this movie was barely mobile actually. Try wiping the drool off your chin and breathing before you type.
This movie got an Oscar nomination but only because it was a movie about a supposed "big" or serious subject - America's wars - and because they increased the number of films which receive best picture nominations....
It is by no means a "pro-USA propaganda movie" and it's quite disturbing to see the number of reviews which say that.
Like with any movie titled "American (something)" I was skeptical that this could live up to the idea of being as grand and spectacular as America itself, or that it would give us some kind of "insight" into the American psyche, and what makes an American sniper so different from say, um, I dunno... a French one... yada yada... etc.
And unfortunately I was right, "American Sniper" hugely fails most of all to give us a spectacular visual display of why he was such a brilliant marksman or soldier. We're largely supposed to just believe he was because of the way his buddies and fellow soldiers call him "legend". Only near the end of the film does it even attempt any visual effects (some simple slow-mo), when he's taking out his main enemy. It's not surprising that this movie was so poorly and half-heartedly made, the director Clint Eastwood was already in his early 80s by the time this came out.
At the same time. his romance with his wife was not delivered really memorably in my opinion, so it failed to tug on the heart strings when she was talking to him on the phone from 1000s of miles away. None of the other soldiers make any impact as memorable characters, unlike in classic war movies such as Full Metal Jacket. Everything here is bland, mediocre and by the numbers.
There is little-to-no memorable dialogue and at one time the movie just kinda forgets which decade it's supposed to be set in - the part where Kyle says something to his wife about "people spending time on their phones". People didn't complain about people "spending so much time on their phones" back in the 2000s when this guy was in Iraq. That's a 2010s complaint, which makes the movie one which seems to zone in and out consciousness much like you would if you were in the actual desert.
This is a lazily scripted movie because the writers knows that you already know the story. We all know about PTSD (which was never actually covered), we've heard about it hundreds of times, and we all heard about the sniper being killed by his own crazy "buddy".
But seriously - how could this film be "US propaganda" when the movie both opens AND ends, concentrating on the idea of Cooper's character pointing his rifle at children? The movie is clearly either conceding ground to the idea of, (or living in the world where) the US was a big nasty human-rights-hating bully which goes around the world killing innocent foreign kids just because eeevil Bush and Cheney felt like it.
Despite being over five years old and the massive pandering that I pointed out above - lame, one-sentence reviews continue to pour in for this movie, from god knows what physical and mental locations, calling it "FASCIST UMurriCunnn Porpppraguuurnduuuuuuuuuuurgh" and the like, which is a lot more eye-opening than this weak movie was. Oh and Clint Eastwood continues to pump out yawnfests that take 100+ minutes to play out the opening paragraphs of famous/historical peoples' Wikipedia articles. That's probably one of the reasons why Hollywood now makes less money than the videogame industry, despite folks having to pay four or five times for a new game what they would have to pay for a movie ticket.
Ronin (1998)
This is not the good slice of late 90s action you're looking for, it's a joke.
The late 90s were a solid time for action flicks right? Even if it's corny it'll be exciting. And "look it's Robert de Niro and that French guy, it must be good". You couldn't be more wrong. One of the silliest and most dull movies I've seen, I had to switch it off.
This is a movie made in 1998 but wishes it was the 1960s. What with its lame spy-talk and over-long car chases. This was one of the last films by the director John Frankenheimer. What a dinosaur he comes across as here. And this will be the last time I've watched a movie written by David Mamet. House of Games was the only good movie he ever scripted.
One particularly embarrassingly out-of-date touch, is the endless beeping and electronic "twinge"ing noises every single time anyone on screen is using some sort of screen or device to track an object or person's location - you know, because the movie just has to do that to let everyone know how modern and exciting the gadgets are. Even when the movie was released that was stupid and annoying.
And at one point in this movie - I am not joking - a guy gets shot in the head and when the blood splashes on the car window it looked like tomato soup. How this happened in a movie made just before the turn of the millennium I don't know. They may as well have used the Monkees as the soundtrack.
These might be amusing side complaints if the rest of the movie was any good but it isn't. The unbelievably dull characters spew endless attempts at clever "witty" sounding lines, every other line consists of someone trying to "lay" a sleeper for the plot by seeming to suggest that they shouldn't be trusted, or something the like of that, but it doesn't make a difference cause the plot is boring and goes nowhere.
I guess the combination of Mamet and Frankenheimer shows how far it could, or can get you in the film industry, to have a 'cool' sounding name!
Nixon (1995)
Great material to chew on for the easily impressed!
A film where Oliver Stone, the mook's mook, decided that fat Welshman Anthony Hopkins was the best choice to play scrawny American president Richard Milhouse Nixon. Yeah. That totally great idea is played out for 3 tedious hours, as Hopkins hams up the "paranoid" prez.
Pretentious basement dwellers who want to act like they have some clever insight and understanding of the 70s, and/or "American power", will love this. Especially with the 192 minute running time (dear god).