http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Sat, 21 Feb 2004 04:30:00 EST http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding. Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/02/21/043000.php Stephen ReidYou'll believe a boy can fly! Again. Sumptuous, earnest, altogether serious - just not that much fun. And, honestly now, you've seen it all before. Video13008@blogcritics.org Sat, 21 Feb 2004 04:30:00 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/02/21/042614.php Stephen ReidFreaks, geeks, kooks and spooks... this is Burton-by-numbers, like taking a peek into Forrest Gump's weirdest dreams. Self-centred, odd, fascinating, but inconsequential. Video13007@blogcritics.org Sat, 21 Feb 2004 04:26:14 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/02/21/042233.php Stephen ReidAl writes... Stephen wrote about Narc ages ago, when the trailer was just a wee bairn, and the movie's release date was some far off distant point, where a mooring post hadn't yet been erected. Promises were made between me and this tough-looking Ray Liotta/Jason Patric cop movie; promises to turn up at the cinema, to watch it in the medium it was born to. But, of course, it slipped by my multiplex, maybe getting a Wednesday afternoon student showing on its way through, and leaving me probably watching something like Daredevil with the masses and wondering if I'd just seen the most subversive S&M movie ever...So we met, at last, on DVD - and it's great, but don't just take my word for it, check out the ten minute "Ode to Narc" that William "French Connection" Friedkin delivers during one of the many extras. He says all the things you 70's cinema aficionados will tongue at like hungry little chicks, "it reminded me of... the only comparison can be with that era..." And so on. He's so generous with his praise that Narc's director, Joe Carnahan (who's slated for producer Tom Cruise's M:I-3), is calling him Willy by the end of it, but I'm sure a man like Friedkin would have bitch-slapped him upside of the head once off camera. It's got all the worst cliches of a cop movie, the shouty black police chief, the battle-weary detectives with the fucked up family lives, dirty cops, cops trying to atone for past mistakes - an absolute roll call of any theme or character device used in a cop movie since films started rolling - except for the Keystone Cops, there's no running around in circles chasing each other. But it still works. If you've read any of the reviews you might be expecting me to flag up Ray Liotta's performance right now, and he's very good, but you kind of expect that. In fact you kind of expect both Liotta and Patric to be good (if you've seen any of Patric's rather obscure flicks, excepting Speed 2 which didn't mean to be obscure), it's much like going to see Celtic - you know they're brilliant, you just want them to put on a performance to match their talent. Liotta is all psycho-stare then, interspersed with much psycho-shouting. Again proving that he lost himself in the more addled parts of his role in Goodfellas and never resurfaced. He's "on the edge" and "burnt-out" and what not, according to his captain, but he's still allowed to walk around with a billiard ball in a sock and beat the shite out of suspects - 'cos it's the code or something. Patric is the cop-atoning-for-a-past-mistake, an event that takes up the movie's opening scene, and he's suitably fucked-up. In fact, Patric portrays some of the best I'm-so-fucked-up emotions I've seen for a long while, effortlessly pissing on the turns other thesps like Ethan Hawke and Brad Pitt made in cop flicks. He's a great one for primal noises see. Jason Patric grunts and howls like no actor alive right now, except possibly for Michael Douglas in Basic Instinct, and it all kicks off with the first scene where *SPOILER* Patric, his undercover alias blown, is chasing after a lethal-syringe-wielding maniac who kills one innocent bystander and then grabs a toddler in a park. *SPOILER ENDS* Leading to two mighty fine banshee howls from Patric as he's torn between what he has to do on instinct and the consequences of his actions. Honestly, this sequence is so good (and there's a whole DVD extra devoted to it), I put it straight back on once the flick as a whole had finished - I don't think I've done that since Betty Blue. From the interviews with Patric and Liotta it seems that the two went method on the ultra-cheap shoot, electing not to talk to each other outside of their scenes together. It lends the subsequent screen time the kind of tension that Al Pacino and Robert De Niro fumbled around so badly for in their one scene in Heat. So tense are some of the standoffs (come, you knew there'd be lots of those) that at one point I actually thought Liotta was going to rip off Patric's head and shit down his neck - I don't know, there was something in his eyes when he caught Patric questioning someone he shouldn't have been, maybe Jason asked Liotta what he'd been doing since 1990. What's it about? Well, Liotta's partner has been killed, no-one's saying nothin', and Patric is just the right last-chance loser to put on the case. Everything looks really cold (Detroit-as-filmed-in Toronto), and you know the extremes of temperature always look boss on film. People don't finish their sentences, there are long pauses in dialogue, the violence scares the beejesus out of you, and Patric carries off a beanie hat with studied aplomb. Dirty mother probably didn't even take it off his bonce for the whole shoot. Video13006@blogcritics.org Sat, 21 Feb 2004 04:22:33 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/02/21/041723.php Stephen ReidAl writes... I guess all the chat has died down over Matrix Revolutions now, high time we waded in with some poorly sketched comments and jokes about the sci-fi trilogy, like every other critic out there. I think Stephen alluded to this earlier, but you could smell the backlash coming for Revolutions. After Reloaded didn't explain the meaning of the universe like people expected it was just the signal needed for critics and fanboys to start dusting down their chosen bon mots..."The Revolution Is Dead!" "Revolution With A Whimper" blah, blah, blah. I liked it. Just couldn't help myself, liked it from start to finish. I'm not saying I was blind and would have enjoyed the final part, no matter what happened. But I was entertained, I was left asking questions (mainly, "you answered nothing!"), and I was surprised - you can't ask much more from a movie really. People say there wasn't enough 'Matrix-stuff' in Revolutions, I was glad about that. Don't know about you, but all Reloaded's slow-mo, acrobatic kung-fu started to bore me after a while - especially when there was no point to the fighting, like Neo taking on hundreds of Smith's when he could have flown off whenever or the Oracle's bodyguard throwing down with Keanu. Please - you know who he is, don't fight just because it'll get the fanboys snorting "cool" into their jumbo cokes.And it was Kay-nu's finest hour! The man emoted like never before, all underneath a mass of eyeball swaddling - and while you tried to not snigger at how over-the-top Trinity's impaling was. "Shall we have one random spike? Nah, let's have five!" I don't think I've seen someone so thoroughly impaled since Cliffhanger. Those hovercrafts obviously weren't checked out in crash scenario's, or someone would have noticed all the friggin' sharp objects that were usually left jutting around. "It's funny, the five seconds after a crash seem the most dangerous.." And two Zion-spods saw the sun. Not exactly how we predicted way back when, but there nonetheless. Also, if the machines can't fly above a certain distance, as seemed apparent when Neo and Trinity made a break through the clouds, then the obvious next move for the humans in this time of peace is to build a cloud-city, a la Bespin, right above the machine city. Get their new-found machine buddies to help out! "Uh, you really need to build this right above us?" "Yeah, we like the view - could you hand me that bomb - I mean, you're the bomb for helping out, could you hand me that kettle?" "The one that's ticking?" "That's right." Video13005@blogcritics.org Sat, 21 Feb 2004 04:17:23 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/02/21/040938.php Stephen ReidSo what was the big fuss? I mean, really?Yeah, Lost in Translation is a nice little movie. But jeez, what a 'damning with faint praise' comment that is - 'nice'. I've thought about it though, and while it's not exactly stretching my vocabulary to say that, it is at least honest. Something I'm not sure every critic was with themselves when they sat down to review this flick. Who knows, perhaps it was Scarlett Johansson's distinctly Lolita-like qualities that got them. More likely it was a big wish fulfillment exercise for those critics who've served time in foreign hotel rooms, staring at four walls, surfing through indecipherable TV stations before adjourning to the hotel bar to order hard liquor, then charging the bar tab to their hosts. And don't forget the in-room porn, too."If only," they may have muttered to themselves before slipping into a booze-induced coma fantasy, "there was a sexy... young... cute... bored... photographer's wife here in the hotel. That I could meet by accident... she'd be enamoured by my wit, my devil-may-care-attitude, my receding hairline and most of all - my saggy face... mmuwwrph."Not exactly outside of the realms of possibility, is it? That the Eberts and Denbys and Knowles' of this world took a look at rumpled Bill Murray up there on the screen and said "If only".They do say write what you know, and I guess it applies to the film as well as the criticism of it - I doubt Sofia Coppola or Bill Murray had to think too hard to imagine themselves stuck in a foreign hotel room somewhere, their every whim paid for, only leaving the womb to experience the natives or attend press conferences. At times like those, you start to wish that someone - anyone - interesting would walk into your life.It's a common fantasy. I know, I've been there myself - in fact I've been in a hotel in Tokyo myself, and admittedly, that's one thing Sofia Coppola got spot on. Tokyo, that is (and it's hotels) which couldn't have been that hard considering she went to Tokyo to film it. No cheap Warner Bros. backlot for this young lady - she took her camera crew all the way to the other side of the world to film the foreign people.Didn't much understand what she found there either, it seems, and I have to agree with Odeon's Damien on this one, that's what bugged me most for about the first hour. Yes, I get it, Japan is an odd place, people there don't speak English too well, their TV is weird, there's lots of them, they have strange arcades and bars, there's plenty of neon.... I didn't learn much more than I might watching You Only Live Twice on a wet Sunday afternoon. What I did learn is that apparently Jim Morrison is still influencing screenwriters, as his maxim "People are strange, when you're a stranger" could be applied to the whole film.Almost all of the incidental details are bang on, of course, like the frenzied business card exchanges, the hundreds of hotel staff who greet you (even if they don't know you're a big-shot movie star), the restaurants where you order by pointing and the lush hotel bars with low lit tables and sinister looking businessmen. Plus crap English speaking support bands. I saw it all in my week in Tokyo on business, and Lost in Translation brought it flooding back. The only things missing were the toilet with the heated seat and hose that squirted up my bum, the free Japanese newspaper that gave me a headache when I tried to read it and the fact that I seemed to get fish at every meal, regardless of what I ordered.Honestly, given just a small twist Lost in Translation could have been National Lampoon's Japanese Vacation (with Rusty and Audrey now played by DJ Qualls and Anne Hathaway, respectively; we'll have to see if there's a hole in Chevy's schedule), complete with Rusty getting drunk and doing karaoke, Audrey getting felt up on a rush-hour train and causing a near riot, and Ellen ending up in a Love Hotel with Clark, getting her key swiped, then bursting in on a party of salarymen in her underwear. Let's shoot this sucker!Unfortunately Lost in Translation stays firmly in 'bittersweet, thoughtful drama' territory, with Bill's movie star Bob (sadly lacking his aquatic partner Gil) being so thoroughly confused by the Japanese habit of replacing 'R' with 'L' ("Lip my stocking" etc), that he has a mid-life crisis, which means cruising Tokyo's streets with Scarlett Johansson's pouting, intellectually underappreciated Charlotte.She's bored because she's got a rich husband and she's in one of the most fascinating cities in the world, so obviously she has nothing to do except sit around her room all day listening to self-help books on the search for the soul. Little does she know that the key to inner happiness is hovering behind her in the lift one day, and before long Bob gets up the nerve to talk to her - the rest is your movie.I sound bitter. But if I am at all it's just because of the big, Oscar-talk-fuelled build up this has gotten. It's good, it just ain't great, is all I'm saying; it gets extra points because it's got Bill, and because it's set in Tokyo (which, let no-one tell you otherwise, is one of the coolest places on the planet). It just loses a bunch more points for portraying the Japanese so typically, and for refusing to raise its tourist observations above the level of 'Let's Go Japan'.However, when the camera's trained on the actors Lost in Translation is nicely observed (there's that word again) pleasing to the eye and very well acted. It just doesn't linger in the brain. If anyone other than Sofia Coppola was making it you'd either have Bob 'n' Charlotte eloping together at the end, or more likely you'd cast Bob a whole lot younger (Ethan Hawke?) and call the whole thing Lost, Like, in Tokyo. They'd get together before reel three, then.As it is, Lost in Translation felt to me like the last few moments before you fall dead asleep, lying on a hotel room bed drunk after a sponsored bar excursion - wondering just what the hell you said to that rather attractive PR girl, and deciding that one way or the other it doesn't matter, because booze is great and so are you.At the time it feels nice, but when you wake up you only remember things in flashes, and you tell yourself you won't do that again - but you know, deep down, that you'll end up in exactly the same situation before too long. Video13004@blogcritics.org Sat, 21 Feb 2004 04:09:38 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/09/30/170201.php Stephen ReidAl writes... Blow Out was on late Saturday Night, and I love this movie. Why? It's got John T at his prime for one, and I'm not talking slim-as-a-punctuation-point John, like Saturday Night Fever - this was early 80's John, slightly paunchy but still great looking and rocking that too-cool-to-fuck attitude. This was right after Urban Cowboy, where all John does is drink beer and get the shit kicked out of him by Scott Glen, and a couple years before the greased-up steroid show that was Staying Alive. Some people might love this film because it has Brian De Palma directing, but Carrie five years earlier, and Scarface straight after show him off better. There's even a slow motion chase up a long flight of stairs at the end of Blow Out, foreshadowing The Untouchables, which he messes up. As you have no idea if John (racing to save an innocent victim who's about to get offed), is anywhere near the damsel in distress that he's pushing through a crowd of revellers to get to. Actually, maybe that's the way it was supposed to be shot. Damn, he's good.It's got Nancy Allen as the lead actress; putting on a Barbie Doll voice almost identical to the squeaking prostitute babe Steve Martin is going to murder in The Man With Two Brains. Slightly annoying in other words, and a little comical. But it makes what happens to her even worse, because she really is innocent and unwitting. The man doing these bad things is John Lithgow, a go-to stooge for shadowy business hired to embarrass a politician out of running for office, but decides to just off him instead. And then kill a lot of women to distract the police into thinking the one woman in particular that he wants to kill, is a victim of a serial killer. He loco. John Travolta is the thing in Blow Out though. Watch this, Urban Cowboy, Grease, Saturday Night Fever and then think of what he's done lately, and I say you will shed tears. Something happened to poor John during the 80's. If you wanted to be succinct you could say "Perfect and Staying Alive" - but I prefer to think that Richard Gere snaffled the parts John would have been great in (and I think, may have done so after Travolta passed). Stuff like An Officer And A Gentleman and American Gigolo. Definitely not No Mercy though. The ultimate reason to love Blow Out however, is the end. What a masochistic downer for the viewer. Look away if you haven't seen it yet... In a previous career John wired up an undercover cop incorrectly and got him killed. Now, he does the same thing again, wiring up the innocent Nancy Allen and sending her into the clutches of the unhinged contract killer. The wire doesn't kill her, her card's already marked, but the messed up thing is - John hears her getting killed through his handy ear piece, and can't do anything about it! He can't get there in time! All he can do is grimly stab John Lithgow to death when he does arrive, and then scream like a banshee in anguish while cradling Allen's corpse - all to a typically overblown De Palma background, in this case, some national holiday fireworks display. Then, it gets dark. You see, John earns his crust as a sound effects man on crummy slasher pics, and throughout the movie he's been plagued by his director to find the perfect scream for one of the pics numerous murders. So, in the final scene we hear Nancy Allen's blood curdling death scream dubbed over a crummy tit-shot, slasher movie death, the director exhorting how brilliant it is, and then John - John sitting in the stalls, eyes hollowed out, wreathed in smoke, practically rocking back and forward - bangs his ears shut repeatedly as the girl's last scream gets played back over, and over again.A downer in the fine traditions of 70's cinema then, 'cept this was made in 1981. It'll make you think twice when remarking (if you ever) on a truly chilling movie sound effect and want to join my private retrospective praying group - wishing that John T had quietly slipped into retirement after returning to glory with Pulp Fiction. Scour those late-night schedules and have a watch. Video8788@blogcritics.org Tue, 30 Sep 2003 17:02:01 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/09/29/174242.php Stephen ReidSlimmer stuff than Boogie Nights, lots less crying than Magnolia, and really strangely intoxicating. Sandler obliterates all you knew about him. Uncomfortable and beautiful too. Video8767@blogcritics.org Mon, 29 Sep 2003 17:42:42 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/09/29/173450.php Stephen ReidTakes everything good from El Mariachi/Desperado and flogs it into a formulaic and bewildering plodder. Rodriguez can write this shit - but it's just shit. Video8766@blogcritics.org Mon, 29 Sep 2003 17:34:50 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/09/28/155347.php Stephen ReidEasily the most demented film I've ever seen. Ludicrous frat boy antics that aren't as gross as you'd expect, but funnier than they should be. Video8738@blogcritics.org Sun, 28 Sep 2003 15:53:47 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/09/28/154557.php Stephen ReidIf imitation is the sincerest form of flattery... what the hell is bad imitation? Yup - it's an insult to the original. Ultimately, just downright dull. Video8737@blogcritics.org Sun, 28 Sep 2003 15:45:57 EDT