I felt pretty much the same about this film as I did about She Done Him Wrong (1933). This makes sense, as Mae West plays essentially the same character, just in a different setting. This one also stars Cary Grant before anyone really knew him. It was nice enough. West certainly writes very wittily and delivers her lines in a charming fashion.
I just finished season 1 of Enlightened. Thoughts:
I didn’t expect much, but yeah, this wasn’t good. I spent most of the time making Harry Potter jokes. It was incredibly easy to do actually. I still don’t think Daniel Radcliffe can show emotion on film. I like the idea of having an old-fashioned ghost story, but this was the typical modern horror movie that startles rather than scares. Plenty of things jumping out with loud music cues. I think my main problem with it was that nothing happened. The plot was almost non-existent. It was just Radcliffe’s character putting himself in scary situations over and over.
This movie has a pretty epic cast. Everyone from Sean Penn to George Clooney to John C. Reilly is in this. And apparently, the original cut of this film also had actors like Mickey Rourke, Gary Oldman and Martin Sheen. Anyway, all the actors that I actually saw gave great performances. I’ve never seen a war film quite like this one. It’s very much a Terrence Malick film, and indeed, often reminded me of The Tree of Life (2011). I thought the action scenes were very well choreographed. I won’t pretend every minute of the nearly 3-hour film kept me completely engaged, but I definitely recognise it as a beautiful piece of cinema.
Michael Fassbender is a favourite actor of mine and I thought his previous collaboration with director Steve McQueen, Hunger (2008), was brilliant. With this one, I wanted to like it a bit more than I actually did. I thought McQueen’s direction was great and the cinematography was gorgeous yet appropriately dirty. Fassbender was amazing and filled with raw emotion in this. I was also really impressed with Carey Mulligan’s performance. It was very different to anything I’d seen her do before. The film did feel a bit directionless though. It didn’t have much in the way of a cohesive story. There’s nothing wrong with that, in theory, but it didn’t always captivate me. Anyway, I think when this film is good, it’s really good and it outweighs anything negative I have to say about it.
I recently read George Orwell’s novel “1984” for the first time and I thought it was absolutely brilliant. It was so remarkably ahead of its time and I loved it. In this film version, they followed the plot of the book pretty faithfully. However, as we’ve seen in many film adaptations of books, this isn’t always enough to make a successful movie. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what was missing, but I think it had something to do with both the lack of first-person perspective and that it didn’t quite capture the atmosphere. It looked pretty good and the performances from John Hurt and Richard Burton were great. It doesn’t measure up to the novel, but it’s a decent adaptation. Also, I am so glad this was actually released in 1984. It almost makes up for the travesty which was Casino Royale (2006) not being released in 2007.
Is anyone else on Criticker? Feel free to add me as your kumpel :) My username is “damil”.
This film is only about 45 minutes long, but it totally works. Buster Keaton plays a young film projectionist who dreams of being a detective. It’s full of the humour and charm you expect from his films. The stunts in this one were also really impressive. They used some cool camera tricks too. What more can I say? It’s just pure, wholesome fun.
I’d already seen several scenes from the film, just because it’s so famous. The movie is really campy. The problem is, it doesn’t know it’s campy. It takes itself mostly seriously. Of course, this does make it unintentionally amusing. The acting is pretty bad too. The reason why this movie is famous though, is its special effects. And they really were remarkable for the time. I found it watchable because I like Greek mythology and all that, but it’s not really a good film, apart from the visual effects.
Pool is such a cool game, isn’t it? Especially in movies; it’s portrayed to be way more badass than hitting balls with a stick really is. Anyway, that’s what this film is about: a guy who wants to beat the best pool players in the country. The film definitely had a cool, charming air to it. Paul Newman is great here, like always, and the rest of the cast are good too. It was much more dark and bleak than I was expecting. It dragged a little in the middle, but overall I thought it was a pretty solid film which felt very much of its time.