felixthecat
are we there yet?
Pacific Rim
Oh dear Lord. I LIKE monster movies, but not that one.
Oh dear Lord. I LIKE monster movies, but not that one.
He should be ashamed of himself for that pile of steaming shite. No Idris, just NO.Idris Elba phoning it in hard and thinking about the money
While I don't think Elba has done anything particularly remarkable which would justify all the good will built up from his work on The Wire, I can't blame actors for doing jobs for the money. Elba isn't even the lead in Pacific Rim. The wildly overrated and perpetually disappointing Guillermo Del Toro is the one who deserves the blame. Nearly all of his Hollywood films have been shit so far.He should be ashamed of himself for that pile of steaming shite. No Idris, just NO.
Perhaps I lack the jaded palate so common among epicures such as yourself.Well. If you can't get giant robots battling aliens to interest me, a lifelong fan of robots and aliens, then its not doing its job.
Dare I check if anyone in The Valley ever got all ‘Yo, Fair Use bro!’ up in Pacific Rim's grille? Title-wise it's born to be XXXified.
Pacific Rim
Oh dear Lord. I LIKE monster movies, but not that one.
Lyndon is a shallow, callow man, so Kubrick cast one of the blandest of film stars to fit the character. From the mid-60s onwards he used to either cast actors who generally gave larger than life performances for characters who were crazy (Nicholson, Sellers, McDowell) or he cast rather bland actors for characters who were enigmas or who had limited inner lives. That's why you get the unremarkable Keir Duella in 2001, a film about the dehumanising qualities of technological progress and Matthew Modine in Full Metal Jacket and Tom Cruise in Eyes Wide Shut. They are the purposely empty cores around whom the films revolve.Barry Lyndon - Kubrick epic that is now regarded as one his best films. Beautiful looking and reminds me of Herzog's The Enigma of Kaspar Hauer. Starring Ryan O'Neal. I've only seen one other of his films; Green Ice. Some caper thing from the 70s... was he Kubrick's first choice? An odd lead, IMO.
I quite liked the Counsellor , a bit slow moving at first but gets an increasing momentum as the noose tightens. Well shot and as you say a good cast but yes doesn't really deliver a knock out blow .Weekender (2011) - fundamentally pretty pointless British comedy about likely lads getting in over their heads when trying to set up as megalarge rave promoters in Ibiza and their friendship then suffering the effects of drugs, profits and menaces from thugs. Story and script not great, but has loads of good young(ish) character actors in it including Jack O Connell (being an entertaining-but-annoying shambling Bestie Mate type, like Bez without the political intelligence) , Zawe Ashton (good as ever but criminally underused) and my new favourite 'face that gives you the fear' Ben Batt giving great nasty Manc gangster:
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(but, overall, it's still not even up to Human Traffic as a film portrayal of this world.)
The Counsellor (2013) - in which Ridley Scott obviously got paid too much money and grew too enthusiastic in trying to make a hardhitting noir about the Mexican drug inferno and international corruption, but doesn't know enough about politics to think his way out of one bizarre scenario after another. A jawdropping cast, some doing great work (Cameron Diaz is amazingly reptilian as a ruthless moll of a druglord, Javier Bardem properly loopy and has terrific hair as the nice-in-comparison druglord) and some of them sleepwalking through it in search of a plot (Penelope Cruz and - awkwardly - Michael Fassbender in the lead role, don't seem to have a clue what is going on) and some I can't really tell if they're taking the piss or not (Brad Pitt in a cowboy hat.) Even the supporting actors are of a different league (Rosie Perez, Goran Visnic, Ruben Blades, Bruno Ganz) but somehow it doesn't add up to greatness. There's a lot of studiedly outrageous dialogue - lots of it outlining "things far too terrible and gory and disgusting to actually show you on screen, but let's talk slaveringly about them at great length anyway" - some good stunts - and a nicely cynical ending, but overall this is heartless in the wrong way.
The Counsellor (2013) - in which Ridley Scott obviously got paid too much money and grew too enthusiastic in trying to make a hardhitting noir about the Mexican drug inferno and international corruption, but doesn't know enough about politics to think his way out of one bizarre scenario after another. A jawdropping cast, some doing great work (Cameron Diaz is amazingly reptilian as a ruthless moll of a druglord, Javier Bardem properly loopy and has terrific hair as the nice-in-comparison druglord) and some of them sleepwalking through it in search of a plot (Penelope Cruz and - awkwardly - Michael Fassbender in the lead role, don't seem to have a clue what is going on) and some I can't really tell if they're taking the piss or not (Brad Pitt in a cowboy hat.) Even the supporting actors are of a different league (Rosie Perez, Goran Visnic, Ruben Blades, Bruno Ganz) but somehow it doesn't add up to greatness. There's a lot of studiedly outrageous dialogue - lots of it outlining "things far too terrible and gory and disgusting to actually show you on screen, but let's talk slaveringly about them at great length anyway" - some good stunts - and a nicely cynical ending, but overall this is heartless in the wrong way.