Project Hail Mary is the Feel Good science fiction film of the year, decade, and more, a hopeful unlikely buddy film well done, with winks to 2001, Intersellar, ET, Close Encounters of 3d kind and of course Rocky ;). Ryan Gosling is at his most charismatic and Rocky is a hoot ! Import Deutch Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall, Zone of Interest), does a good job, and also karaoke ;) Nice songs on the soundtrack (Kris Kristofferson, The Beatles, Dennis Wilson, Ike and Tina Turner) and effective score by Daniel Pemberton. It does what Mission 2 Mars and The Martian (also based on an Andy Weir book) did not manage to do, meanwhile touching the Grace ;)
See it on IMAX if you can, all the space sequences are shot in the format.
This is Film Noir, dark comedy, thriller, and most of all an homage of Kind Hearts and Coronets (1959), the classic Ealing comedy with Alce Guiness es ;), based on the novel , it says on the credits. "Insiperd by" those two.
Also has an 80's air, it's cynical and politically incorrect, stylish and crisp.
Finally a good part for Glen Powell as Becket Redfellow (cool names in this family !), after the huge misfire of new Running Man-Liked the guy in his SNL episode, I think he has more comedic potential than action chops, definetly romantic too.
Jessica Henwick is the romantic interest, Ruth. Bill Camp has a nice part as Warren Redfellow, also Topher Grace as one of the Redfellows (Steven) and Zach Woods (from Sillicon Valley) another one (Noah). Also Ed Harris' part as the patriarch Whitelaw Redfellow is more like a cameo, but he's effective as ever.
Amazingly enough this was shot in South Africa instead of New York and New Jersey !!!
Great score by Emile Mosserri and effective soundtrack-The Clapping Song (Shirley Ellis) , the Brazilian classic Take Me Back to Piaui by Juca Chaves, No Fear by Inflo, etc.
...when in Rome...just landed and in the taxi I hear the news, celelbrissimo attore Robert Duvall, etc..surely I get it. Gone. I mean he was 95, lived a great and long life and his films are immortal.
But why everytime I go somewhere this kind of news get heavier and harder?
Duvall was one of the Greatest, like Hackman. As as kid I knew him first by name, my father showed me, he was in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most versatile actor of the '70's. Opposed to Hackman he was the quintesential Character Actor. Capital A.
He was in over 100 films and television series.
He got an Academy Award (for the forgotten Tender Mercies-1983), a BAFTA Award, four Golden Globe Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Screen Actors Guild Award.
His film debut was as Boo Radley in the book adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird (1962).
His shot at Movie Mythology came with Consigliere Tom Hagen in The Godfather and more for Coppola, a bit part in The Conversation-uncredited-where I saw him last-last year, as a Gene Hackman homage series of films), lt. Kilgore "love Napalm in the morning" in Apocalypse Now. He refused to reprise his part in The Hodfather III doe to a salary quarrel.
Loved his parts in Lucas' debut THX 1138, Jesse James in The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid, the gangster in The Outfit, based on the Donald E. Westlake book, the German colonel in The Eagle has Landed, the baddie in Sam Peckinpah's Killer Elite, a TV producer in Sidney Lumet's Network, Dr. Watson in The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, the cop in True Confessions, another cop in Dennis Hopper's Colors, then later on Tony Scott's Days of Thunder, written by Robert Towne, Joel Schumacher's Falling Down, Kevin Costner's Open Range. Also Sling Blade, Get Low, the part of the Old man in the adpatation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, The Judge in 2014, last bit in 2022 Scott Cooper's Netflix flick The Pale Blue Eye.
He directed five films films, most notably The Apostle in 1997 and in 2002 in Argentina, Assassination Tango. I gotta catch-up with that last one, never saw it.
He lived in his ranch in Virginia, surrounded by his family. Never will be gone, just left this stage and sets...
"Somebody once said that the best life in the world is the life of a second leading man. You travel, you get a per diem, and you’ve probably got a better part anyway. And you don’t have the weight of the entire movie on your shoulders.”
1st film I saw on 2026 it's one of the best of 2025 and one of Park Chan-wook's best. No Other Choice aka Eojjeolsuga eobsda. It's also the offical Korean Submission for Best International film at the Oscars and it's nominated for 3 Golden Globes Awards. No Other Choice premiered in the 2025 Venice Film Fest Competition. It won Best Director in Sitges FF.
It's limited in Romanian Cinemas now, so try to see it on the big screen, it's worthy. Just peropeare for slower development, the film has 2h19 mins.
I follow the Korean director for 25 years, ever since he came to Bucharest with his 1st feature, JSA (Joint Security Area) at the 1st Festasia fest edition. That was before Oldboy, Mr. and Mrs. Vengeance, Thirst, Handmaiden and Stoker. Saw most of his oeuvre, also the HBO series The Sympathiser, so I can say that this one it's one of his best.
Lee Byung-hun who is South Korean leading man is here a Paper Man, formerly "Pulp Man of the Year 2019." He was also in PCWook's JSA, in A Bittersweet Life, Squid Game series, even in G.I. Joe. He gets back at working with PCW after 25 years. Here he is a plain family man, with a desperate will to get back to his job that was downsized. Son Ye-jin is great too as his wife Miri, and so is the son Si-one and the daughter Ri-One- playing cello. And the two dogs (Si-Two and Ri-Two). And all the supporting characters. Great supporting characters !
It's a Korean Le Coupert / The Axe, based on Donald E.Westlake 1997 novel. It was made before by Costa-Gavras in 2005 as The Ax, a great black comedy, merciless, starring José Garcia. But Wook-Chan goes even further in absurdity and satire. He co-wrote this with Don McKellar, they worked together before on The Sympathiser. The film is produced by Costa-Gavras family and it's dedicated to the Greek director, who kept the rights of the novel and gave them to Park Chan. The film was supposed to be in English first (starting 2009) but kept developing.
Via IMDB: During a live discussion with Costa-Gavras at the 2019 Busan International Film Festival, Park told audiences that he was still working on his adaptation of Westlake's novel. The film was described by Park as a "lifetime project" and that while he hadn't begun filming it yet, he wished "to make this film as my masterpiece." Gavras, who still held the rights to the book, had helped Park to develop the project. The film was set to be an English-language picture, with Don McKellar co-writing the script alongside Park.
The design is fabulous too, from the bonsai and the greenhouse to the seasons change, going from summer to winter (it was shot in a period of five months, from August 2024 to January 2025). The colors are very important for the transitions and the story. Impeccable widescreen (2.35 : 1) cinematography (by Kim Woo-hyung who worked before with the director on The Little Drummer Girl series) and editing (Kim Sang-bum, Park's editor since JSA), adding to the plot points and directing.
Great score too, and great idea of a cello subplot, by Chan-wook Park's collaborator, Cho Young-Wuk. The score includes incidental classical music, Mozart piano concerto (no. 23!), Marin Marais and pop hits, Korean and American (Hold On I'm Coming by Sam and Dave -1966), edited and directed on camera (one set-piece might as well be the best Cinema scene of 2025!-and the funniest -with subtitles too ;).
4 out of 5 / 8 out of 10 !!!
“I've always been trying to follow the footsteps of the great masters of cinema, most of whom have passed away today. I've tried very hard to reach their level. And I think in certain scenes or certain films, I might have reached a similar level, but there's still a very long way to go. So, when I think about how many more films I can make for the rest of my life, I feel very rushed.”
Tom Stoppard was one of the greatest playwrights of the last century, screenwiter and script doctor and author of the play Rosenkrantz and Guilderstern are Dead (1966). In 1990 he directed also a film based on his play, the film won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival as well as the Fantasporto Directors' Week Award. He co-wrote Brazil with Terry Gilliam and Charles McKeown, for which he was nominated for an Oscar. He won the Oscar (and Golden Globe) for a lesser film, Shakespeare in Love, in 1998. His forte were the adpatations.
The new Running Man, is not a remake pre se of the Ahnuld 1987 vehicle, but a more faithful adaptation of Stephen King as Richard Bachman novel, written in 1973, published in 1982. That novel happened in the year 2025 and actually today it happens, with the Squid Game series and a Korean Reality show named exactly Running Man. So Ben Richards is in a banal world, becoming more real every day. I mean, it's like Y-day news after the Hunger Games series and all the Tv/straming fare of this kind.
Running man is of course influenced by Rollerball, which still stands up as one of the best film of its era (not the shitty unnecesaary reamke) it's even worse tha n its remake.
Everyone's commenting, oh, it's an Edgar Wright film. Ok, that is like a certified value for a big budget blockbuster Sf action (110 mill. $). surely not. I was also very dispointed by Lst Night in Soho, his take in gialllos, very pretentios and shallow. The most action Wright directed was in Baby Driver, which I enjoyed most of his all films, and he's better in making quirky, funny, heartfelt little films, not Hollywood fodder.
Also Glen Powell, which I've just seen in the lastest SNL edition, can't carry the film., at all. Not a problem with the guy and he tries hard but neh.
This would've worked as a Snake Plissken adventure, like Escape fromn the Dome. I guess Wright gave a few nods to John Carpenter.
There's also a problem with the duration which is overlong, 2h13 min, oi, the film doesn't start until we get to the show and no matter how good Josh Brolin and Colman Domingo are, they can't help much.
Also this world, used and dirty, used to cost less to produce on the screen. Here they went to Bulgaria for exteriors and day shots. Somehow doesn't look like America. The rest of it was hot at Warner Bros' studios in England.
Now for the music, unimpressive loud score by Steven Price. And as Edgar Wright ia great fan of songs to use on the soundtrack (yeah, great in Baby Driver), here most of them are wasted. Rolling Stones' Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker), Sly and the Family Stone (Underdog)-on the main credits, Iggy and the Stooges (Search and Destroy), The Allman Brothers (Revival) , Miles Davis (Red China Blues) and Tom Jones (Keep on Running) on the end credits. Including a riff of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (last heard appropiately in One Battle After Another). And Jamie XX, far from my desk ;)
It's been Stephen King's year all over, from Life of Chuck to Welcome to Derry, the IT prequel that runs now on HBO MAX, MGM's The Institute series, passing through The Monkey and another Bachman opus, The Long Walk (which I liked best of these all, my review here).
Wright's film is full of King references /Easter eggs for the eyes of King's fans and King himself, credited as an executive producer. Of course King was happy with the film, as I know his tastes in film (ex: how much he hated Kubrick's The Shining and managed to to a sequel just to get rid of that Kubrick hangover, I don't care so much about what he likes or does not cinematically...hey, what about that Maximum Overdrive?
2 1/2 out of 5
*I opened recently a Letterboxed account in order to write down the films I see which I hardly can here, and my "reARviews" will be isssued there. Same ratings apply.
Diane Keaton was 79. Except Woody Allen's muse, friend (and girlfriend) and confidante (eight films together, from 1972's Play It Again Sam, ending with Manhattan Murder Mystery in 1993), she was Al Pacino's Michael Corleone's wife Kay in the three Godfathers, from fiancee to divorcee (also his girlfriend in real life), and exceptionally radicalist Louise Bryant in Warren Beatty's 1981's Reds. A very smart, intellectual. witty woman, personified best in Annie Hall (1977), character that used Keaton's manierisms, also her true family name is Hall, film that brought her an Oscar for best actress. She was also a feminist and an avant garde personality. And a great protograper (book Reservations). She never married and had two adopted kids.
I think the last time I saw her was in Something's Gotta Give, the 2003 Nicholson weaker comedy... She was in a lot of romantic comedies (Father of the Bride), heartfelt films (The First Wives Club), dramas (Marvin's Room). But for me she will always be The Little Drummer Girl, in the excellent George Roy Hill film from 1984, based on the John le Carré book (not the 2018 series), where she plays a wannabe groupie terrorist, ideologically brainwashed and used, in a film that is more actualt today than Woody Allen's NY fantasies or the politics of Reds.
She as also great in Richard Brooks’ audacious drama with a sex twist, Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977).
Diane Hall / Keaton was also a director, most famously for Be Unstrung Heroes (1995), she also directed Belinda Carlisle's hit video Heaven is a Place on Earth. She also produced Gus Van Sant's Elephant. She wrote memoirs thrice: “Then Again” (2011), “Let’s Just Say It Wasn’t Pretty” (2015) and “Brother and Sister” (2020).
2017 Lifetime Achievement Award from the AFI/ American Film Institute.
`There are two kinds of people in this world, those who know who Shane Black is, and those who don't!. Those can dig ;)
NALD
Well Shane Black is back as a writer/director, this time on Amazon Prime & theirs MGM 100 mill. $ streaming extravaganza.
It's a Parker film named Play Dirty (not to be confused with the 1969 André De TothWW2 actioner, the title comes from Black's unfilmed script for Lethal Weapon 2, unseen til today -Black's most proud and gritty work, or so they say ;).
It's based on the Richard Stark (aka Donald E. Westlake) iconic novels started in the 60's. Not one novel but `novels`. I guess they're trying to build a franchise but this won't happen I guess cos' the film is the weakest of Black's career as a director (and that includes the reshot troubled 2018's The Predator).
Mark Wahlberg is Parker, an obnoxious choice. He can't handle the character dark charisma and dry wit, a dangerous man with a code of its own. Stark's Parker is an Anti Hero, Steve Mc Queen would have done him justice. Or Kris Kristofferson. Even today's Brad Pitt cos' Russell Crowe's too overweight...
Robert Downey Jr. was supposed to play him but he backed off, remaining on board as a producer. Not sure even about Downey but definetly a better choice, Parker's before were Lee Marvin (Point Blank-1967- the most menacing), Jim Brown (The Split-1978, the black one), Robert Duvall (The Outfit-1973, the most aloof), Peter Coyote (Slayground-1983, the most unlikely), Mel Gibson (Payback-1999, the coolest, but meanest to his director-check out only the Director's Cut), Jason Statham (Parker-2013, bleh..). I'm not adding two these the two Frenchie freejazzin', Made in USA (Jean Luc Godard, 1966) and Mise à Sac (Alan Cavalier, 1967).
Back to Play Dirty. Would've been better to play it cool tho. The film itself is a self indulgent mess, combo of action scenes, comedy and VFX gone awry.
Too many characters, too much useless plot, not a lot of chemistry between the actors. Rapper LaKeith Stanfield shines as Grofield, Stark's character that has his own novels. Would've liked more of the Thomas Jane character, and someone else for Tony Shaloub, the guy plays a caricature of the mob boss of a ridiculous corny and cartoonish Outfit. Think a James Coburn, even in Hudson Hawk or Kris Kristofferson (he was the boss of The Outfit in Payback, but not in the Director's Cut !!!). Also for the Latin country (unanamed but it's Peru), some finer actors, plus Rosa Salazar as Zen is kinda unmemobrable and not at all a Femme Fatale type.
The running time (2h03) is overlong and the film loses steam in midstream.
+++The Plus:
Great score by Alan Silvestri, reminionscent of those he did for Predator and The Long Kiss Goodnight (based on Shane's script), jazzy and funk, dramatic and menacing where it needs to be. For me Silvestri's score is a great comeback to form. A bit of 007 Bond-sist swagger, Lalo Schifrin and The Taking of Pelham 123 by David Shire, the percussion points.
Also the opening credits are very cool, 60's like. They were made by Daniel Kleinman who did all the title sequences for James Bond starting with GoldenEye back in 1995. Amazingly he is not credited with imdb and Anca found this for me, thanx ! Her piece on the art of the opening credits is here.
And here's the whole title sequence.
Production values-high -especially the first action scene at the racing track.
The cinematography (superb 2.39:) by legendary Phillipe Rousselot (he's 80 now!), a lot of shades, shadows, reflections, in a NYC shot this time in Sydney, Australia !!!! Rousselot and Black worked together before in 2026's The Nice Guys.
Some of the wisecracks work better than the plotholes and the action. Also there are many references to Black's scripts and films, from the Christmas setting (Duh !) Lethal Weapon (the fall from the rooftop), The Long Kiss Goodnight (the House of Gretchen Mol, the chase in the snow, the scene by the water), Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, The Nice Guys, etc. Liked the Mark Cuban pun ;)
Shane Black's influences on this one are great films, from Bullit to Dirty Harry, Marathon Man to the obscure Hickey & Boggs (1972), you can check the interview here on Letterboxed.
French 75 resurges for one last call...Do you remeber the code ? "What time is it?" / It's Time for REVOlution (again ?)
One Battle After Another is Paul Thomas Anderson's biggest film to date (you dpon't wanna know the budget, out of which a quarter is Leo's salary..). Most expected and already lauded as film of the year. Sean Penn is in for an Oscar nod surely-best supposting. Di Caprio does a OUIH bit imo. He's like Rick Dalton playing the fried brains revolutionary recluse Bob Ferguson aka Ghetto" Pat. Benicio Del Toro is also superfunny as the Sensei, shades of him in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas...but Sean Penn's performance as Col. Steven J. Lockjaw is surreal. One for the books !
Chase Infiniti's big screen debut as Bob and Perfidia's daughter Willa is intense. Special mention to Eric Schweig as Avanti.
Plus the Christmas Adventurers Club, man, kudos for this one off ;)
I'd call this No Country For Any One...
It's a relentless ride, shot beautifully on 35 mm film in VistaVision (second film in this format in this century, after The Brutlalist), by Michael Bauman (his second film with PTA after Licorice Pizza), his first feature credit !
The film should be read through his soundtrack -I mean the overall score, again by Jonny Greenwood, his faithfull composer, this time a psychotronic overpulsating paroxistic one. I expect his Oscar next March.
The soundtrack includes great songs, from Steely Dan (Dirty Work), to Jackson Five (Ready Or Not Here I Come), Tom Petty's American Girl on the end credits (you will know why, "she was raised with Promises"), Ella Fitzgerald and The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, thge classic and still subversive Gil Scott-Heron proto-rap from 1970, which plays a role also in the plot.
Thomas Pynchon's book Vineland (1990) was the inspiration of PTA, who did a crazy looney tones political bonanza. Reminde me a lot of Eddington. It's somehow PTA's funniest film to date. Some bits reminiscent of the weed haze of Inherent Vice, his adaptation of Pynchon's other counterculture book.
There is also a big connection (and inspiration) with Gillo Pontecorvo's revolutionary classic Batle of Algiers (1966).
Epic duration, 2h41, but it goes fast, on this one I would've liked to be even longer, more Christmas Adventureres, Billy Goat, Beegee, Comrade Josh and Talleyrand.
The film is dedicated to Adam Somner, the legendary second unit director (Gladiator, Phantom Thread) and producer of 5 of PTA's films from There Will Be Blood, The Master, Inherent Vice, Licorice Piza to this last, OBATA. Somner died last year in November after completing this film...
4 out of 5, 8 out of 10 !!!
*Defintely it's a film that you can revisit, plus very TODAY in the actual political climate.
The Bride, Maggie Gyllenhaal's second film after The Lost Daughter (2021) is a revisonist retelling of Bride of Frankenstein (1935, James Whale), with Jessie Buckley (Fargo sez, IV) as The Bride, Christian Bale as Frankenstein's Monster, and Jake Gyllenhaal, Penelope Cruz, Peter Sarsgaard, Annette Bening.
Just fyi, there was another The Bride, starring Sting, Clancy Brown as the Monster aka Viktor and Jennifer Beals as "Eve", directed by Franc Roddam, in 1985.
Francis Lawrence never struck me as an auteur director. The Long Walk is his closest to a a personal filmmaking effort.
Constantine was probably his best flick, the man directed tons and tons of music videos, a sh***y version of I Am Legend, Red Sparrow, four Hunger Games, those probably qualifying him for this film.
Stephen King's novel The Long Walk was published in 1979 under the name Richard Bachman, same as The Running Man, Rage, etc.
It is set in a dystopic America, as in Hunger Games or recently in Civil War, in which young men participate in a race, without stops, until one remains. Same principle as Turkey Shoot or The Running Man (which was remade this year). You have to keep walking at 3mph, steadily. You get only three warnings, one erased per hour if you march on.
The camera moves and moves and moves all along with the protagonist. The whole film is in movement. Belgian cinematographer Jo Willems, who worked with Lawrence on his Hunger Games films and Red Sparrow shot the film anamorpically on 2.39.1. The whole thing was shot in Manitoa, Canada, for 20 mill. $.
The ensemble young actors are convincing, it helps they are not known. They are all called by their numbers. Cooper Hoffman (#47 / Licorice Pizza), David Jonsson (#23, Alien: Romulus), Garrett Wareing (# 38/ God is a Bullet), Charlie Plummer (#5 / All the Money in the World). Mark Hammil does a career best villain as The Major. Judy Greer is the only woman in the cast, as Cooper Hoffman's mother. The racial aspect, white, black, white, white, Asian, Indian. Let's say that is not the "woke" or globalism problem, welll, no Mexicanos, hispanics.
Problem is the language, they all swear non stop, I guess they said, oh, it's Rated R so we can swear all the time we want. But f**k every three words is gratuitous to say the least, and they all talk the same swearing game, the boys as well as the major.
Script by J.T. Mollner (Strange Darling), the lastest on a series of aborted adpatations, from George A. Romero to Frank Darabont.
Pulsing and dramatic score by Jeremiah Fraites, end titles have a country/Americana song composed for the film by Shaboozey & Stephen Wilson Jr.- Took a Walk (not on the soundtrack). A rendition of Oh My Darling Clementine is sung by the boys at Mile 260 !!!
Reminded me of the WW2 war films, Sidney Lumet's The Hill (1965) in particular. And as they were running, of the final run of Black Hawk Down.
7 out of 10 / 3.5 out of 5 !!!
*would've been more but I'd cut 15 min from the 108 min. running time, it loses its rhythm and has repetitions, most of the 50 "walkers" are just extras (in King's original there were 100 participants).
The premise is as absurd as it gets and you got to believe it, also the lenght of the march is beyond belief...
Highest 2 Lowest is Spike Lee's reimagining of Akira Kurosawa's 1963 masterpiece High and Low, based on Ed McBain's book, The King's Ransom. It's about a kidnapping gone wrong and a moral decision and dillema of a rich man on the edge of losing all his money. The 1st act is slow as in Kurosawa'a original (the script for this is credited to the Japanese master and his collaborators, the film itself is dedicated to him). Then the pace changes and it becomes energetic until the end.
The film premiered in Cannes this year, out of competition (with Denzel Washington receiving an impromptu Palme d'Or for his 1st !!! visit to the Croisette) and it's an Apple+ film-for streaming with limited release in the US by A24.
Denzel in his 5th collaboration with Spike plays a music mogul, "the best ears in the business" David King (the King from King's Ransom, in Kurosawa's film is Kingo Gondô as played by a magnificent Toshiro Mifune). His second, friend and driver is Paul, a great restrained and dry humored performance by Jeffrey Wright.
Shot by Matthew Libatique, who went back to back in NY locations with Aronofsky's Caught Stealing (in cinemas now, go and see) in glorios widescreen. Libatique worked before with Lee on four films, including another NY flick, Inside Man .
H2L is a colorful love letter to Spike's beloved New York., Manhattan, Brookyln Bridge, Puerto Rican parade, Yankee stadium.
Complete with 2 lengthy train /subway chases that quotes and hatsoff s Friedkin's legendary The French Connection.
Also lots of art, from Basquiat to sports memorabilia and a lot of Muhhamed Ali stuff, to a painting entitled "Billie, Lester, Fats and Duke" by Frederick J. Brown. This painting was featured in "The Spike Lee 'Creative Sources' Exhibition" at the Brooklyn Museum. The title refers to prominent jazz musicians: Billie Holiday, Lester Young, Fats Waller, and Duke Ellington.
The soundtrack is a symphonic Howard Drossin score, then rap songs by A$AP Rocky (in the film Yung Felon) and some James Brown mean rhythms.
The opening credits are shots of new NY buildings getting to King's skyscraper penthouse / terrace on classic musical Oklahoma's Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin', sung by Norm Lewis. A live performanced of Eddie Palmieri's Orchestra and Aiyana-Lee Anderson (as newcomer singer Sula) playing the title song (cos you goota too ;). Read comments and reviews about the worst score - I don't get if they meant the score or the songs, but personally I find the score excellent and a breakthrough-Drossin worked as an orchestrator for Spike's regular Terence Blanchard and with Lee since The 25th Hour, also with RZA and making videogames music.
Might be Lee's most commercial film 'til Inside Man and the disastrous Oldboy and it's uneven but flavoury.
Revisited Kurosawa's film this spring and it's a timeless masterpiece! Lee's version plays more like a cover song, in color and with vivid wipes and tumult.
6 out of 10 / 3 out of five !
Kurosawa's 1963 High and Low is a 9/10 for me ! Could've been a Ten tho ;)
Darren Aronofsky is an arthouse favorite from Pi to The Whale, passing through The Fountain, Black Swan and The Wrestler), and this Caught Stealing might be his most commercial film yet. But that's not a bad thing. At all.
Taking cues from the Coens and Guy Ritchie, he revisits New York of 1998 in a dark irreverent comedy thriller complete with an English Punk mohawk, a cat, Russian mobsters and two Rabbi killers.
Written by Charlie Huston, based on his book from 2004. It's actually the 1st book in a series of three, about the character Hank Thompson. If Caught... (great Romanian Title, Prins cu mata-n sac....NOT) is a hit. Hopefully it will and Butler will carry on.
A major influence, as also checked is After Hours (Scorsese, 1985), see the video in the comments.
Very cool cast, including Griffin Dunne from After Hours, who could be actually the same character, Paul, Village bar owner, mentioning Lou and Andy ;), Austin Butler (his third important lead, after Elvis and The Bikeriders), Zoë Kravitz (Blink Twice), Regina King, rappers Bad Bunny & Action Bronson and brit Matt Smith. Plus the fantastic duo of Liev Schrieber and Vincent D'Onofrio. Another fantastic duo, the Russians -Nikita Kukushkin (Microbe) and Yuri Kolokolnikov (Alexei). Also featuring Carol Kane. But the absolute highlight is Bud the Cat, played by Tonic.
Shot by Aronofsky's regular, Matthew Libatique in 1.85: 1. Some impressive camera moves and angles, great location value, NY truly lives in every shot. Lots of graffiti dressing. Libatique shot this back to back in NY locations with Spike Lee's Highest 2 Lowest.
Songs by post-punk band Idles, score by Rob Simonsen. Including a cover of Police and Thieves, made famous by The Clash in 1976. Some Bowie references, a lot of pop culture around, all soundtrack songs here.
Mouring one of the greatest British Icons, made big by Italian cinema and American popcorn (und more). Terence Stamp was 87. He was Toby Dammitt in Fellini's sketch of Poe's omnibus Histoires Extrraordinaires/ Spirits of the Dead. He was in Pasolini's Teorema, as he was general Zod ;).
He won best actor in Cannes in 1965 for The Collector.
From his film debut in Billy Budd (1962, where he received his onbly Oscar nomination) to his last bit in Last Night in Soho (2021) he was a cool, silent, sometimes very menacing presence.
For me it was at most fun as the perverted host of the short-lived series The Hunger (1997-98).
Other highlights: Modesty Blaise, The Hit, The Limey (featuring Poor Cow).
1st ime I saw him as a kid as the badguy Wazir in the Clive Donner's Thief of Baghdad (1978, actually a made for TV film).
New Yorker James Foley started in the Biz with Reckless, a rom com, in 1984. Sean Penn takes him to direct At Close Range in 1986. Great noir drama, featuring a magistral Chris Walken part. Penn, then Madonna's husband, tintroduces him to the music diva. He directs music videos for her, then he directs Madonna in Who's That Girl, a catastrophy.
Then Foley does another film noir, based on the book by Jim Thompson, After Dark, My Sweet in 1990, one of his best flicks.
Then in 1992 came the adaptation of David Mamet's play, Glengarry Glen Ross, with a superb cast of actors, from Al Pacino to Alec Baldwin, Jack Lemmon, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin, Kevin Spacey and Jonathan Pryce, as an all male ruthless salesmen in an existential piece. Unebeliavable, the film was nominated for only One (!) Academy Award.
Pacino gave him his next project, Two Bits, in 1995.
Next on, Fear and The Chamber, with Gene Hackman, after John Grisham's novel, both in 1996.
And Confidence, a flawed con men movie in 2003.
Then nothing much, routine thrillers, a lot of TV. Like he lost his enthusiasm for good projects.
James Foley died on May 8th, 2025. He was 71. RIP.
Richard Chamberlain for me was Edmond Dantes, Aramis, Jason Bourne, the Shogun and my faved, Allan Quatermain. Twose two cheesy movies from the late '80's, featuring young Sharon Stone and James Earl Jones, Herbert Lom and Henry Silva. B movie Heaven & Royalty. Unfortunately the second Quatermain flick was such a flop they never completed a Trilogy :).
The character, an Indiana Jones adventurer, but more Camp, was based on the H. Rider Haggard character from his Pulp novels. Ironically, Indy was inspired originally also by Alan Quatermain. The character was resurrected for Sean Connery in the malignant The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen/LXG (2003), which convinced Sir Sean to retire from acting...
Richard Chamberlain was more one of my mother's favorites, than mine. She watched the Thorn Birds on the video dayz (& Nites;)
He died March 29th 2025 at 90 years of age. RIP...
I said/wrote before that Osgood Perkins' films are creepy, the atmosphere there is hard to breathe, tense, uncanny. There is something unpleasant about them. Longlegs tho was overrated, it came to me sold as the horror of the decade, century, millennium, etc. While it's not the case the film is ok, a superior thriller, veeery creepy and Nicolas Cage performance of the year 2024. Also being highly successful Perkins was asked to do The Monkey, a long belated project, adaptation of an old short story by Stephen King, published in the anthology Skeleton Crew (1985) . The Monkey was first in print in the November 1980 issue of Gallery magazine. Then, revised and updated, in 1985's Skeleton Crew (story # 3). Inspired by the old classic The Moneky Paw by W. W. Jacobs., but with more twists and shouts.
King's original Monkey played the cymbals as the toy monkeys do. However due to Disney's copyright of the Monkey cymbal playing (from Toy Story 3), the Monkey plays now the drums !!! It's called the -Organ Grinder Monkey, "lifelike", there is no grinder and no organ, actually organs get grinded :)
King's original story was a simple one, and not a real funny one. Osgood (who also has a cameo in the film as Uncle Chip :), changed most of it, the scope, the deaths, the atmosphere, the characters and the vibe, giving it a most dark humor side, the forte of the film starring Theo James (The Gentlemen series) in a dual role, the twin brothers. The duration is pretty cool too (a tight 98 minutes), and so are the references, from King's novels (The Shining, Misery), to the Maine location (also Kings') and the Psycho (motel, stuffed birds, creepiness) and even Vertigo. The ending rises the value of the film at least a Notch. Osgood kinda exorcises himself on this one, big time ("and there was a pale horse whose named..."). Read his bio and see what I mean here.
Results, a great little film that I hope will not be transformed into a lame franchise-James Wan produced the film through his Atomic Monster banner, surely there will be more drums to bang.
The highly expected (and most postponed release) new film of Bong Joon Ho, Mickey 17, with Robert Pattison in Multiple roles, is so-so. Frankly I don't get the enthusiastic positive reviews. The humor is lame at best with Pattison taking his ques from Jim Carrey's performance in Dumb and Dumber ! It's the Multiplicity Effect all over, clones (or how they're called here, "expendables" ), are getting dumb and dumber...duh. The film finally premiered at the Berlinale Film Fest in February with a worldwide release of March 7th.
Budgeted at 118 mill. $ (!!!), this is surely a flop for Warner Bros. whom imo did not put a lot of faith in the finished project. The whole thing feels uninspired, the jokes are and you don't care much for Mickey or the Mickeys. Bong's humour is very personal and it worked in all his films prior to this, from The Host to Mother, also the social commentary, class commentary, leftism, was much better in Snowpiercer, which was his 1st external project out of Korea, then a flop, now a cult film and a s***ty cash-in neverending TV (streaming) series. That is why I am gonna go gloves off on Bong here. Wasting four years on this film when you were on top of the world, able to do any film you'd like, totally free of charge (he had final cut on this!).
The source book is entitled Mickey 7 !!!, not to be confused with the 60's Mickey One ;), the material was customized by Bong for a more personal film for him, his 1st in the USA (shot in the UK Warner Leavesden studios), a follow-up to his all winning Parasite (2019).
Shot impeccably by Darius Khondji. Dark as his TM and white -ice (the planet Nifleheim) and claustrophobic industrial corridors and chambers. Music, some of it uninspired, some good, by Bong's collaborator Jung Jae-il (Okja, Parasite/ and the Squid Game series).
Mark Ruffalo plays over-the-top, same Grand Guignol style as in Poor Things but here he is more like an impression of an Vincent D'Onofrio but she surely channels Trump. Toni Colette too, operatic hysteric evil lady. The aliens/monsters "creepers" are cool, but I pretty doubt they'll make a merch out of them. Starship Troopers "bugs" came to mind, but with the cuteness required. The Korean designer did work before for Bong on The Host.
L'amour Ouf /Beating Hearts in English, Iubire fara limite in Romanian. In competition (!) at last years' Cannes film festival, French star Gilles Lellouche adaptation of a Neville Thompson novel is in Romanian Cinemas now.
Great on the big screen (widescreen!), operatic, with a superb score and soundtrack, great cinematography, this is the most American French film in a long time, and that's a good thing imo. In Cannes they kinda hated the film -of course, oh la la), way too commercial for them to enjoy it if it's not made by Tarantino or James Grey...
Epic running time: 2h46. 1st cut was 4 hours though.
It's based (loosely) on the 1997 best-selling Irish novel "Jackie Loves Johnser OK?" by Neville Thompson, whose French title is "L'Amour Ouf" ( a pun on the expression "L'Amour Fou", also a film by Jacques Rivette from 1968).
Uneven, pastiche, but highly energetic and frenetic this is not a prefect film, far from it, but I loved the energy, the musical rhythm (greta songs, from The Cure to Billy Idol, to Sirius by Alan Parsons project, cuts from John Carpenter's from Escape rom New York score, closing on Foreigner-Urgent!!!), from the opening lettering and the pulsing dramatic score by Jon Brion (with whom Lellouche worked on his second film as director, Le grand bain/Sink or swim).
Shades of Tarantino and Wild at Heart. And of course West Side Story. And Scorsese's touch. And maybe Lelouch too ;)
original poster with announcement of coming out in 2023.
*Alain Chabat won best suppoting actor at 2025's Cesar awards.
now, this comes to close to home as we had the Bluesferatu project already in the third year now !
so I was expecting more, not more length (an overlong bloated 2h12), the original Nosferatu is 95 min, out of which intertitles and Eggers' is more Dracula than S-feratu. Says on the end credits, the film is based both on Henrik Galeen's 1922 script and on Bram Stoker's novel (1897).
Note on Jan. 23d, Nosferatu is nominated for 4 Oscars, Costume design, make up and hair stilling, cinematography and production design.
"years later" and generous budgets spent, here we go...Germany 1838.
Lilly Rose Depp is nympho Ellen (a somnambul), Nicholas Hoult is the victimised Thomas Hutter, Bill Skarsgård (or should I say his shadow?) is Count Orlok, Willem Dafoe is the mad professor alchemist, Simon Mc Burney is Knock (this tale's Renfield), Ralph Iverson is the other doctor, Emma Corrin, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, are useless new characters, also from Stoker's Dracula and Coppola's film (plus two wasted girls that should've bite in the end).
All Romania settings , the gypsy's, the monastery, The Hundedoara Castle (looks like the one from Van Helsing, why shoot exteriors there?), the language, I couldn't care less. Shot in Czech Rep. , the interior castle is exactly the one from the original Nosferatu), on a lavish budget (50 mill. $) , with beautiful costumes, shadows, exquisite snow and desaturated colors.
The cinematography, by attired Eggers collaborator on all his films, Jarin Blaschke, is the major plus of the film.
I didn't like the Nosferatu look at all, a Hungarian Husssar, a Moustache (yes, Vlad the Impaler had it..), the whole decrepit, pandemic look, reminded me of Pampon (Victor Rebengiuc) in the Caragiale adpatation, De ce trag clopotele, Mitica?/Carnival scenes (1981). And the whole schock extreme close-ups, cuts, sound effects, double tracks, way overdone. And let's not even start arguing about that prosthetic penis, It got me in a real whirlwind argument about if vampires can have sex the regular way...imo NO !
Eggers says he's inspired by Zualwski's Devil, Bergman's Cries and Whispers, Paradjanov and other rusky obsurish cults, but I see more a rehash of Herzog's Nosferatu and Coppola's Dracula. And Rose a far cry from her imatotaion of Adjani in Posession.
Also, I did not like the music (by Robin Carolan, his second film for Eggers after The Northman), reminiscent of Wojchiek Kilar's Dracula, but without that panache.
