I Just Watched (Films)

[Lenny Solidus]

Jurassic World Dominion

Holy fucking shit, what have you done? Why did it feel like I was watching a low rent Bond movie for the first fifteen to twenty minutes? When are the dinos coming? Has Bryce Dallas Howard discovered bras or comfortable shoes yet?

They took everything that made the older Jurassic Park movies great and threw it all out of a moving car at high speed, not even the inclusion of much loved legacy characters could save this complete dinosaur dropping. I could not take Chris Pratt holding out his arms with that dumb look on his face he seems to believe is acting - Colin Trevorrow delivers something that can only be described as a considerable vanity project one which largely disrespects or outright parodies almost everything that made us love the series back when it first began, back when it held such high promise for the future. Awful. Please, no more, let it go extinct.

[Solitaire]

The Courier

A decent Cold War espionage film, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as a reluctant British intelligence asset during the build-up to the Cuban Missile Crisis. It feels a little lacking though - Cumberbatch is great, but it doesn't really feel like he earns the respect the film is shooting for. I've no reason to doubt the importance of the real events, but although the film does a good job with the available material as I understand it, it's not exactly a James Bond-esque espionage adventure.

Just watched this and was quite impressed. After watching, I immediately searched around to see what was fact vs fiction within the context of the film. You're right, it's certainly not a Bond movie, despite how it may have been presented in merchandising and advertising - but it's just not that kind of a movie. It's more in line with "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" as a subgenre, if anything. Certainly the Cuban Missile Crisis was an event for the century, and the two protagonists are quite possibly responsible for averting a nuclear war, among many other things. After all, Penkovsky was one of the most valuable, if not the most valuable, Soviet assets ever. We may never know, in our lifetimes at least, exactly how his provided intelligence helped the West, beyond the events of this movie.

I'll spoiler a thought or two:

Spoiler

The scene where Penkovsky and Wynne meet in Lubyanka prison is a fiction. It's been said that this was a 'love letter' to Penkovsky, the idea of letting him know how his actions removed the nuclear arsenal from Cuba. That particular scene got me right in the throat, so kinda sad that it didn't happen, but a great bit of bittersweet storytelling, I must say.

Wynne divorced his wife, at some point, after coming home, and had another marriage that eventually failed. He went back to being a normal businessman, as the movie states. It would be harder to believe that his marriage would survive, after all that he endured. The PTSD from being tortured for years in Lubyanka must be truly savage to live with.

[Wrathbone]

Lady Snowblood (1973)

I'm a big fan of Kill Bill, and when I learned that Lady Snowblood is one of Tarantino's favourite films and was a huge direct influence on Kill Bill, I decided to give it a go. It doesn't disappoint - the influence is immediately apparent, with similar cinematography, blood spraying everywhere and someone quite literally born into revenge. Even the title theme is used in the Kill Bill soundtrack. The two are distinct, though, as Tarantino melded influences from many other things, but Lady Snowblood holds up well in its own right as a striking, stylised revenge drama.

8/10

[Raid]

The Book of Eli

I'll save you the trouble, yes it's

Spoiler

the Bible.

This is one of the dreariest films I think I've ever watched. It's a post-apocalyptic world, so it's never exactly going to be lush and verdant, but it comes from the end of the 2010s, and exactly why did we accept this level of desaturation in our media? It's barely more colourful than black and white. And there's very little substance to match.

I figure most people here are dimly aware that I'm not going to be that interested in the preservation of

Spoiler

religious texts

, so you'll not be terribly surprised that this didn't really grab me.

[Lenny Solidus]

Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins

Henry Golding impressed quite a bit given the genre, his accent faltered here and there but otherwise held solid and it was nice to see that he did much of his own stunt work. I unexpectedly found myself really getting into the movie the first half action was well presented characters well-developed all until that is when a terrible version of Scarlett entered in the form of Samara Weaving who I normally enjoy, seemingly poorly dubbed over and entirely missing her usual charm burning screen presence as seen in the excellent movie The Babysitter, appreciated the eye candy but honestly, what a waste.

The origin story relationship between Snake his revenge story and his clan I enjoyed, Golding and Tommy's (ShadowStorm) coming together carried some weight and everything surrounding them was building up to something that should have by all accounts been highly memorable, instead we were given a cheap shot hint of what will come next as in we know this did not satisfy but please, won't you come back for more - it will contain everything we could have offered here but didn't.

Spoiler

Snake Eyes only dons his iconic suit in the very final fucking shot of the movie when they could have put him in it during the closing fifteen minutes against a fully suited Shadow and really given the audience what it is they were clawing for the entire time. A true face off, brothers no more and a historic rivalry begins.

So much of it surprisingly worked for me when I expected literally nothing from it at all given how heavy it bombed, in the end it let itself down by not giving an otherwise acceptable origin story the finale you could tell they were fully capable of making but seemed unwilling to commit to.

[Achtung Englander]

The Untouchables (1987) 4K

The UHD in this film is drop dead gorgeos, especially in a red lite scene when Sean Connery is having a fisticuff with the chief of police.

Man this film feels dated for a period piece. Its just one set piece after another with almost zero character building or semblance of reality. After the film ended I looked up the real Untouchables and almost the entire film is bullshit, even down to the fact Eliot Ness had an adopted son (from 3 broken marriages) instead of a daughter from a loving wife. If this was made today they wholly go with the broken marriage angle. DeNiro's Al Capone is a cartoon character of cliches. The film is so dated to its 1980s sentiment that the fact it was set in the 1920s becomes meaningless.

The script was second rate, the acting was subpar, Connery is playing Connery and is not even bothering to play an Irish character (this is Dublin via Edinburgh) and unfortunately this is the worst music by Ennio Morricone. This comes very much from a place where music is desperate to make you "feel" the scene, so much so it drowns out any degree of tension.

Not a great De Palma movie imo. I could not wait for it to end.

5/10

[Wrathbone]

The Matrix: Resurrections

What a mess. If Revolutions was as exciting and awkward as trying to remove an overfilled binbag from a kitchen bin, Resurrections is that bag splitting open all over the floor. The plot is highly convoluted, even for a Matrix film, and it doesn’t result in anything interesting or wholly consistent with the previous films.

Keanu doesn’t play Neo in it - he plays a floundering version of himself that is jarring in comparison to what the character used to be. I’ll spoilerise my thoughts on other characters, just in case:

Spoiler

I don’t know what the hell was going on with Morpheus, who was played flat out weird and supposedly was part Smith? And yet there’s also a separate Smith that makes even less sense. It could have been interesting to delve deeper into the machine characters and their motivations, but it felt like the film couldn’t give a crap about that.

I don’t know which is most galling: the atrocious script that is almost a parody of itself, or the endless self-referential meta bollocks that plagues the story. I don’t just mean the flagrant nostalgia grabs, but the feeble attempts to break the fourth wall. It’s a film without skill or purpose, and like a rogue program it should have been scheduled for deletion.

3/10

[Achtung Englander]

Hollywood really is in a pickle. Its so sad that I am looking back to the 70s for good films. What a testament of how an industry has lost its way.

[Lenny Solidus]

Collateral

I've always been an avid fan of Michael Mann, Heat remains an all time favourites it's an insanely quotable and infinitely rewatchable movie and I never in a million years thought anything the director could deliver would be able to match it, then Collateral came along. My favourite Tom Cruise acting vehicle, from the fateful moment he climbs into the back of Max's cab it's nothing short of a Tomathon - charming, terrifying, intelligent, oddly emotionless yet 100% attentive of everything and everyone around him, someone who treats other humans as nothing more than either blunt tools to serve his own agenda or pure gun fodder - as Vincent states the overwhelming disconnect he feels internally he believes everyone else the same. We are all that singular person on a lonely midnight track going round in circles until we meet our maker who on this night just happens to be Vincent.

This is Hitman with a difference so much more than cold calm and collected, you witness him unravel during what he calls a work night as it aggressively diverts from everything he is so used to keeping ultimate control of, amidst it all you can feel the contempt he has for Max, the motivational attempts to push Max into bettering himself so he can better serve Vincent. There are these moments of him sat in the cab an attempt to humanise him sometimes without having to utter a word, it's that Tom puzzled look that can convey so much with so little. As sickened by him as you are it's hard not to be intrigued and captivated by not only who but what Vincent is.

Jamie Foxx of course is a worthy opposite, a man who wants nothing to do with the events initially, finally given the direct condescending motivational cause given by Vincent to begin the journey of becoming the man he always should have been and to stop holding back, wonderfully plays out into something of Vincent's very own creation. For me this is one of the most beautifully shot films I've ever seen and every time I rewatch it I spot some new detail that pulls me even further into the experience. The true wonder of Collateral is that it would be a full decade before John Wick would arrive and make us care about his dog, Tom had already done the real life weapon mastering thing and given us what I consider one of the best movie villains there ever was, deadly yet oddly alluring and a man with a clearly tragic past that forged him into something that in turn would reforge Max's character in a single fateful night. And the score, oh boy. That final piece of music that plays once everything is done and Max is finally free of Vincent's grasp - hits me like a brick to the chest every single time. Vincent's own fate - perfect, a perfect ending to a perfect film.

10/10

Note - The wonderful Coyote scene came about completely by accident and became one of the movies highlights.

[Lenny Solidus]

Addition -

Spoiler

There has always been this online discussion since its release of how Max 'ridiculously' managed to outgun Vincent in the finale, the briefcase homie scene gives you all the desired information - Vincent using the mozambique drill what many relate to as 'two to the body, one to the head' technique so as to ensure zero survival, it's clear that due to the train door positioning this technique goes poorly for professional killer Vincent while Max's own none trained on edge randomised shots meet their target. In the end Vincent's own strict adhering and instinctive professionalism directly played a role in ending him, it wasn't only Max got lucky or the scenes flickering lights as many seem to perceive it as being.

[Raid]

Aliens

I don't think there's much point in me doing a review of this; you've all seen it, right? It's worthy of its reputation, but there are a few niggles that stop it from being perfect. Some of the miniature work looks really ropey (even for the time), and honestly I find some of the marines a bit much. As soon as most of them are dead though, it's just a masterpiece of action and pacing.

One of the best things about the film is the power loader, the JCB mech that Ripley pilots. It's an incredible prop, surprisingly realistic looking for an 80s film, so I looked into how they did it. I figured it was a combination of pistons and mechanical parts operated via some sort of power and hydraulic cables that are hidden behind it from the camera's perspective, with a team of puppeteers operating it. Nope. It's a bloody costume. There's a guy in there, and I'm not talking about the "pilot" - Sigourney Weaver is basically strapped to a man, and he's just walking around (with the weight supported by a crane). I looked this up after the introduction scene, and then paid close attention to it in the finale, and you just can't tell. It looks like a real piece of equipment. I'm a big fan of prop and set design, and I just found this astounding.

[Solitaire]

Lenny, agree with your review of Collateral. I just watched it again last month. What struck me this last time was the musical score. I love how optimistic and light-hearted the songs are all through the beginning, then things turn dark not long after the score itself changes, giving a subtle foreshadowing of what's to come. Cruise is menacing, scarily efficient, and interestingly philosophical in all the wrong ways.

[Achtung Englander]

Panic in Needle Street (1971)

This is a gritty film about how a couple of druggies begin to see their life fall apart. Pacino's second film and you can see the makings of Michael Corleone. It even has Al Neary in the film, it was like watching a parrellel universe.
7/10

Day for Night (1973)

A film about a film being made. The story is kind of fun, watching all these actors pretending to make a film in a film. Has some funny moments. By god Jacqueline Bisset and Nathalie Baye were gorgeous back then.
7/10

[Lenny Solidus]

The Gray Man

Yeeesh. The Russo Brothers somehow managed to take the Bourne movies a pinch of Mission Impossible and Man on Fire with a cast most films could only dream of having (Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas + Billy Bob Thornton) then produced this poorly paced, poorly written, poorly directed and acted generic actioner the worst such offering I've seen in a long time. After enjoying the likes of Extraction, Spectral, Triple Frontier and Interceptor I was actually looking forward to this, two hours later I was left with a viewing experience that easily became fifteen minutes too much and I just wanted it to end. Blow my fingers off if I don't press stop, do it now.

Not even Chris Evans hamming it up as a bad guy made any difference and some of Ryan Goslings acting was bordering cringe worthy not something I ever thought I would write concerning one of my favourite actors - then there was the gum thing, the Thursday thing, the fucking devils horns thing, the silver bird thing - all of it, bollocks. Yet somehow this pile of absolute tripe has a 90% audience score on RT, we viewed the same movie right?

Ok, I can see how some of it in small doses could have given a slither of entertainment value if you could ever see what the hell was going on or if the constant country hopping, timeline swapping and allegiance shifting didn't give you fucking whiplash like it did me but overall this was not a good movie and a huge Netflix backed stinker - for me at least. Now I need to fire up Blade Runner 2049 to wash this particularly ghastly Gosling take from my memory banks for good.

3/10

[Animalmother]

Hostiles
A dying native American chief is escorted back to his homeland by an army officer and a small group of soldiers. Very well acted, beautiful score and stunning shots of the landscape but it just plods along and makes it all a bit dull. A lot of people with big mustaches mumbling at each other punctuated with often brutal violence. Worth a look but definitely one you need to be in the right mood for.