All my Movie Reviews under One Roof
I haven't written a blog in a while. This is mostly down to winning the odd playwriting competition, going into rehearsals on a few sketches for the Spiegeltent, and generally taking life as easy as humanly possible.
I want to get back into it, so as a palette cleanser I thought I'd gather together all of the movie reviews I've done under my Facebook guise of Tazer McFictionzap. Some are angry, most are negative, but hopefully they're funny too. As ever if you disagree, want to start a fight, or just have something to say the comments box is right below. Come and have a go - if you think you're smart enough...
Covering 2013, from June onwards, these were my micro-reviews, before I really got interested in deconstructing movies through critique and piss-take. So mostly, these ones are just piss-take.
I've added the odd postscript, here and there, sometimes to add context, other times just to justify my tone.
Enjoy...
This is 40 - June 2013
Thank you "This is 40" for
stealing nearly three hours of my life without offering me any
comedic or dramatic dispensation within that time. You know what's
worse, "This is 40?" I am now three hours closer to being
able understand what being 40 feels like. Would I only had those
three hours back, think of the things I could do with my now aged
shell of a life.
I had been a big fan of Judd Apatow's style of comedy, mixing the coarse with the human in Forty Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up. But with each new film he makes, he seems to become far more whimsical and far more indulgent. His sense of humour has disappeared, as has his empathy with reality - as evidenced by the above image of Paul Rudd spreading his legs over a mirror to check his rectum. His films are now completely cut off from reality, in favour of his moneyed and upper-middle class Schtick.
Collatoral - September 2013
Have just watched Michael Mann's
Collateral - a film populated by the stupidest characters I have ever
seen, taking the stupidest actions humanly possible, in the stupidest
movie I've sat through since The Dark Knight Rises.
A hitman who dresses completely in Grey Armani ( topped off by an entirely grey head of hair ); police men who'd rather believe that a previously law-abiding cab driver is operating "on his own" than being coerced by a villain; a "hero" who tips his car upside down to prove he's in control of his own destiny and who then proceeds to handcuff the ONE police officer he could actually utilise to assist him ( even if it is at gunpoint ) and proceeds to try and tackle the hitman single handedly to rescue a woman he only met THIS MORNING ( and a hero who, rather than telephoning the police on his way to rescue same, actually waits until he is on the roof of the building opposite the one she works in and phones HER to tell her someone's coming to kill her. She should be all like, "what?" Instead she's all like, "oh no! It all makes sense!" ). Then there's the wolf scene where Tom Cruise comes to terms that he is a metaphorical wolf by seeing a real wolf and having a really flirtatious eye-contact scene with the real wolf and then thinks, hey that's me only instead of being a real wolf, I'm a metaphorical wolf. Played by Tom Cruise. The most conspicuous and obvious hitman since Leon. Stupid, stupid, stupid movie. Wasted, wasted, wasted morning.
Elysium - September 2013
Well, Elysium is the biggest pile of
shite I've seen in a long, LONG time! If you thought District 9 had
cartoon politics, wait til you get a load of THIS ridiculous wank.
Dreadful, dreadful movie with hilariously childish politics clashing
with embarrassingly awful writing and disgracefully stupid action.
Just awful. No Spoilers but one question - why, if it's that easy for
people to slap an exo-skeleton onto people, why aren't everyone on the
planet walking around in one?
I forgot to mention Jodie Foster and Sharlto Copely's hideous performances, the stupidity of the Total Recall-esque Robocop robots, and the terrible, terrible christ allegory. Man of Steel eat your heart out.
Snow White and the Huntsman - September 2013
Dear Snow White and The Huntsman - I
guess you've already guessed that I hate you. You remind me of a
twelve year old's compilation tape of all the best bits from their
favourite movies. You lack context. You're awful. Your favourite Lord
of the Rings movie is The Two Towers, that's how misguided you are.
However, you're lucky - this is the week I sat through Elysium, so
you're NOT the worst movie I've seen since the weekend; and note
to Peter Jackson - check out the dwarves in this movie. They are
AWESOME!!!! No massively awful continuity shifts between real actors
and midgets. No wibbly wobbly dwarfy walks in inappropriate moments (
see end of Return if the King when everyone's been crying and it's
all sad and look how fat Samwise looks then we cut to a hilarious
shot of Bilbo's double flibbling onto the boat ). Kudos Snow White
and the Huntsman. Kudos. Still hate you though.
I was forced to sit through this gargoyle of a movie by two women. They received a perverse joy not only from this film, but from my increasing anger at it.
Iron Man 3 - September 2013
Dear Iron Man 3 - just wanted to let
you know that, whilst I enjoyed your company, I'm afraid Iron Man 2
is better than you. Let me qualify this, Iron Man 3, if you please.
It doesn't have a really stupid ending, like you do Iron Man 3. It
also doesn't spend almost the entire running time proving how clever
it is by continually "confounding" it's audience with
easy-to-spot twists to the point that there actually doesn't
appear to BE a plot. And even though Iron Man 2 asks us to believe
that Mickey Rourke can create laser/electrical whips ( where do the
lasers start and end Rourke? WHERE? Laser is just light, so unless it
has a very definite point to reflect, refract, or absorb it, it's
just going to keep on going ), it doesn't have your ridiculous
flambe-people conceit - the questions that brings up Iron Man 3, the
questions. You also wasted the following actors - Rebecca Hall, Ben
Kingsley ( sir ), Jon Favreau, William Sadler, Miguel Ferrer and Don
Cheadle. In favour of a child-actor. And Guy Pearce. Also - you had a
pointless and stupid narration. Like I say, I enjoyed your company
Iron Man 3 - you just outstayed your welcome. After the first twenty
minutes.
Spoiler alert - Rebecca Hall gives a sassy, comic, dark, and ultimately emotive performance in Iron Man 3. She's awesome. The last performance Paltrow gave like that was in Shakespeare in Love. Why kill off Rebecca Hall in favour of that gimlet eyed coldplay groupie?
Gangster Squad – September 2013
Dear Gangster Squad - I enjoyed you. I
really did! Honest, I'm not lying. I know you think everyone hates
you and underneath that glossy well-made--up surface you're just a
bundle of self-loathing nerves and as such when someone compliments
you, you think it's a veiled attack. This is what happens when you
test the waters of fame with more than just a big toe and I
understand that people have been unnecessarily cruel about you.
But I really did enjoy you. Honest. It's just - and I say this as a
friend - most remakes at least have the bald tenacity to call
themselves what they are. Total Recall, Robocop, Elm Street, Fright
Night, - all anemic and painful remakes trading on a brand name for a
quick buck while exercising contempt for the very audience it's
aiming at. So when someone said hey, let's remake The Untouchables,
they should have at least had the balls to call it that. Especially
when this one's actually bloody good! Oh well.
Public Enemies - September 2013
Public Enemies - you're dull. How can
you squander a cast that includes Depp, Bale, Batman's sort of french
girlfriend, the weird villainy guy from History of Violence, Giobani
Ribisi, that guy from Dazed and Confused who tried to avoid
typecasting by joining CSI Miami only to end up typecast as that
character ( except in right at your door which is awesome ), and
Stephen Dorff? You look like shite, you creep along boringly until
your dull ending, you just faff around wishing you were Lawless. But
you're not. You're NOT Lawless, Public Enemies. You're that Indiana
Jones movie those kids made on their camcorders.
Sometimes I can be quite cruel. In Michael Mann's case I'm never cruel enough. Like David Lynch, this was a director who was a master of visual form, creating lush and striking visuals for film such as "Heat," but who picked up greasy-looking digital cameras and turned amature. Shame.
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - October
2013
Dear David Fincher's Girl with the
Dragon Tattoo - why do you dress the way you do? Are there deeper
underlying psychological reasons for your overt slickness and by the
numbers grim rainy visage? For your plinky plonky vacuous "creepy"
NIN score? Do you dress the way you dress because you believe it
makes you seem unique and unusual?That it allows you to stand out in
the crowd and declare : "I AM ME! And if you have a problem with it,
that's YOUR problem." Probably. But I think you just know how empty
and shallow and pointless you are. It's sad really, and I would
suggest you speak to someone about your deeper mysoginistic problems.
If you had any depth. You may go now.
I love Fincher's style, he's one of my favourite film makers but there's just something terribly pompous about him, and especially in this movie. He's far more interested in Daniel Craig than anything else going on, and uses very quick editing techniques when shooting the otherwise excellent Rooney Mara either because he wants to emulate a person afraid to look at her ( which is dumb - look at her, she's fucking striking looking ) or is unsure of whether her look actually works. The film is glossy and pulls a lot of punches, afraid to hint at a sequel so trying to close it off without really succeeding. The rape scene is brutally unpleasant, and contextually unnecessarily so. It's a good movie but, not good enough to justify its own existence. And you kind of get the impression Fincher knows it.
World War Z - October 2013
Well. World War Z. So the book had a
faux political satire of a skeleton on which to hang some gory muscle
and splatter. The movie has neither; it just sort of floats along
doing very little as inexplicitly as it can, while focussing on Brad
Pitt doing that squinty lemon thing as hoards of CGI pixels run
around a lot shrieking like raptors in heat. And yet - YET mind you -
I still enjoyed it. Maybe it's friday, maybe it's wine. But I enjoyed
it. One thing though - the whole point of zombies is to be a
terrifying mirror image of "us" - so that every time we
destroy one we feel it. When they're just swarms of featureless
creatures you remove all humanity and emotion from the equation, and
render the use of zombies as pointless. Crap plot, too, by the way -
but that's the books fault. The book was crap, incidentally. Ooh,
Transformers 2 is on!
Midnight in Paris – November 2013
Dear Woody Allen - just watched
Midnight in Paris. Delightful. Just delightful, all those great
characters from the past meeting Owen Wilson of Shanghai Knights fame
and introducing themselves to him by their full names so we the
audience can know who they are. Classic conceipt. Just like that
sitcom starring Rodney from Only Fools and Horses, you know the one
where he lives between modern days and World War 2.
Couple of observations though, just a few bits and pieces - I know you probably see yourself as the Owen Wilson character, with the whole leaving his cunt-wife for a seventeen year old girl thing, but the truth is you are in fact the hateful know-all, lecture-spouting obnoxicator played by that David Frost impersonator ( did you know he was English? Is that why he's the bad guy ? ) Why are all the women in your films so bitchy and hateful? Why is EVERYONE in your films so hateful? Except the seventeen year old girls who end up with the aged protagonist at the end. Why have you made me hate every classic author of the twenties by making them all seem conceited, ugly, self-absorbed, and nasty. Is that because YOU are, and that's how you see everyone else? I guess you have to be a little on the defence given your history.
Anyway, great movie - just delightful. Except, you know, the characters. And the writing. And the awful jazz score. And your hate for everyone around you.
The World's End – November 2013
The World's End : what the hell was
everyone complaining about? It's not Shaun of the Dead? A fitting end
to the Cornetto trilogy, funny, sad, ridiculously silly and with an
over-the-top, really, really utterly shite ending, what more do you
want? Okay so it's sort of a best of Spaced, it completely squanders
the talents of it's excellent male cast, let alone pootling the
usually excellent Rosamind Pike in a disgracefully underwritten
cypher-girl role, the self-referencing becomes a little smug, and
Edgar Wright is still one of the worst directors on the planet - but
even with all that against it, it's pretty god damn good. Certainly
better than This is the End! Stop complaining and enjoy!
The Impossible – December 2013
So here I am watching Tsunami Titanic
rip-off The Impossible - starring possibly the most uncomfortable
Naomi Watts nipple reveal EVER. A strange movie - one of the most
strikingly shot worst scripts ever written based on real events the
film manages to make seem completely unbelievable and seemingly
sponsored by Coca Cola - a company happy to sponsor a movie about
white folks struck by a Tsunami, while seemingly unwilling to spend
money on helping those poor foreign folk that actually lived through
it. Yay Hollywood! Yay thirst quencher ( and nazi business partners -
see Fanta's history for more ) Coca Cola. Still, at least they're
using real water. And a real Naomi Watts nipple.
Breaking Bad - Dec 2013
Tazer's BREAKING BAD Diary - season 2.
Okay, so I LOVE chowder. Aside from Lasagne, Chowder is my favourite
meal. The best I ever had was in San Francisco, eaten from a sour
dough bowl. Most chowders I taste I hope for the best, while
expecting the worst, especially based on that one, perfect chowder I
had.
Cully and Scully do a Chowder. It costs €2.59 in Tescos. It's cheap and bland and each packet contains basically the same dull, overcooked ingredients, package after package, most of which are what you expect, sometimes with a little more, sometimes a little less, but never enough to really satisfy until the last sip makes one think the next one might taste a little better. It's homogenised, created for a mass consumer who - having tasted most of Cully and Scully's other, similar soups - sort of want something new but essentially the same. There's an idea that Chowder is all about the fish, so Cully and Scully hint at the fish from time to time without really understanding what Fish is supposed to taste like; but that's not really what Cully and Scully's Chowder is about. That's just the hook, if you will.
It's about easy, inoffensive mass consumption. Even as one is eating Cully and Scully's Chowder, one is thinking about that Chowder in San Francisco, almost zoning out as the bland syrup slips past the taste buds almost un-noticed. It just reminds one of a better Chowder, appreciated in a different time, when Chowder wasn't so readily available or talked about.
Breaking Bad season two then. There's a shot in episode 5 that's pretty cool. It's of a stick insect. I kinda liked that bit.
till season three then
Tazer
Needless to say I detested Breaking Bad, partly for the hype surrounding it as the best thing since sliced bread, and partly because it was a genuinely terrible program that became distressingly popular amongst the TV hipsters. Not badly made, not badly acted, just really, really stupid, inconsistent, dull, and hilariously ignorant of reality. By the last season it was head-throbbingly thick, gave the impression that - like Lost - the showrunners had kind of forgotten the point they were trying to make, and were just making this shit up on the fly. Jessie was good though.
So that's it for now, I'm compiling part two - which will encompass some of the longer reviews from Jan 2014 onwards, and should be posting it in the next few days.
In the meantime, hope you've had a chuckle and or an angry response to the mini-reviews above.
From this point on, the bile flows slower and more freely!
Till part two...
Dominic
