true story good reviews
I just watched Cleaner with Daisy Ridley and Clive Owen. Very much a Die Hard clone, but not beat for beat. Full of clichés from top to bottom, though, and nothing you haven’t seen before done much better. It was fine, and if you like action without graphic gore, it’s good fun. It’s certainly missing something, though, as the third act doesn’t ramp up as well as it should have. Lots of opportunity to escalate the jeopardy are overlooked in a rush to get to a disappointingly bland conclusion.
However, I do want to see Daisy Ridley in more action-oriented roles. I keep saying she’d be a good Modesty Blaise, and this just confirms it for me.
Peter Ustinov was originally signed to play Clouseau but for some reason walked off the film days before production began. Sellers was a last-minute substitute. Niven was still a big star at that point. Sellers was not, but the spin he put on the character was so unique that he became the breakout “star” of the movie. (Niven must have been so pissed!) Ustinov might have played Clouseau as more subdued and less physical, and it wouldn’t have been half as funny or iconic.
Fountain of Youth is playing on Apple+ and has gotten a lot of hype. My take: pass on it. It’s an Indiana Jones wanna-be with none of the wit and charm. It’s got some good special effects but comes off rather dull and unworthy of the talent involved. It’s just a couple of hours of mindless entertainment if you can’t find anything better to watch. Totally forgettable.
Have any streaming services figured out how to make genuinely good movies? I can’t think of one.
Havoc, a disappointing Tom Hardy action film. Timothy Olyphant, Forest Whitaker, a fairly trite plot and a ridiculous body count. After the second gory fight scene, I didn’t care much about what happened next.
Yours and a previous review of Havoc are spot on. My wife likes these action films. She asked if I wanted her to pause it when I left the room, I said, “Nah, it will still be going on when I get back.”
Yes, this is a major waste of talent. Absolutely horrid dialogue, stupid plot and a persistent undercurrent of misogyny. It makes National Treasure seem like Citizen Kane in comparison. Skip it, for sure.
Runaway Jury, 2003, Netflix. Jon Cusack leads, Gene Hackman chews the scenery, and Dustin Hoffman is rather subdued in this New Orleans-based film about a gun case. It’s OK, perhaps a bit hokey (well, more than a bit at times), can recommend if you’re a completist about certain actors. Lot’s of ‘That guys’ in this movie.
IIRC, in the book, it’s a cigarette lawsuit, and the author actually has one of the characters mention why a given argument wouldn’t work in a gun lawsuit.
This is a preview review of MISSION IMPROBABLE.
We’ve got lay down seats, great location for Monday.
I EXPECT nearly 3 hours of non-stop incredulity.
NO character development or growth - I know these folks already, let’s not waste time.
TOM will periodically perform his, “That’s the only look I’ve got” emoji.
TOM will hang from a plane (I did see a trailer - a bit cheating).
There will be an implacable evil genius AI, possibly sentient, competing organizations, liars, rubber masks, multi-crossings.
I EXPECT impossible tasks matched against equally absurd intricate plans destined to fail under cursory examination only to be saved by TOM on a motorcycle. TOM and the crew will die (almost) several times.
There will be dense plot holes you can fly a submarine through. I will regularly suspend my disbelief - for art.
I INSIST on digital countdown timers (glowing red preferable), radar screens with missile tracks - up, down, intersecting.
At the orgasmic conclusion, my grandchildren will stack Coke glasses on my body, add hundreds of Mentos, then spread buckets of popcorn adulterated with copious quantities of ersatz butter over my corpse. I should make the news on Tuesday at least until noon.
All the stars.
Mission: Impossible- Final Reckoning
Tom Cruise, sorry, Ethan Hunt back for another (perhaps final?) mission, along with some of his usual gang and one or two newer additions.
As usual, very much enjoyed the thrills and spills, some spectacular, and of course self-performed, stunts, although this one did have more of a talkie feel to it at times, especially during the middle where being nitpicky it did perhaps start to feel it’s full 170 minute run time. The standard techno babble was all present and correct, so I did sort of lose the full detail of what they were actually doing once or twice, but that’s really just a sideshow for the action in a Mission: Impossible film.
The highlight for me was the section in the submarine, talk about tense. With the dramatic action finale a close second.
Loved it.
PS FAO Jeff Bezos: this is what I want from my James Bond films, please!
I assumed it was the trick Alan Garfield was selling at the convention at the beginning of the movie.
I found this movie engrossing and unsettling. It’s not an obvious movie, but very subtle with a creeping sense of paranoia. I think it deserves all its accolades.
I expected to, but didn’t. No problem, not everything is for everyone.
Absolutely.
Most of the movies you watch I’d run a mile from!
That was beautiful.
Oh, come on!
Yeah, that was needlessly harsh. I have disagreements with @Mahaloth from time to time as I do with virtually any movie reviewer, but I appreciate his/her prolific input in this thread and find it very useful
No, I took it as I think it was intended. He probably means movies like Hereditary and the like, which are very scary. I don’t think an insult was intended.
Thanks for the compliment, though.
That wasn’t meant to be harsh. It just seems that the majority of the films you watch are in the horror genre, which doesn’t appeal to me at all. I like movies that scare me, but more in a suspenseful way. Gore, blood, torture – anything like that is something I avoid.
Yes, sorry I didn’t see your second reply until I posted. Does Hereditary have a lot of blood and gore? Not my cup of tea then. And definitely no insult intended.
P.S. I’m a she.