Talking Movies

March 28, 2020

Any Other Business: Part XLVIII

As the title suggests, so forth.

Status … Burgundy

Drip, drip, drip… It seems best to describe where we are now as Status Burgundy. We can still leave our homes without a printed and signed permission slip so it’s not quite Status Red. Yet. But as with the drip, drip, drip feed of restrictions tightening like a vise there’s a lot of ‘yet’ in the air too. Why did we not move to this crisis status immediately on March 13th? Why the sustained refusal to admit that schools would not re-open on the 30th? Fears of ‘behavioural fatigue’? It’s not like we don’t know from the experience of countries preceding us in these dominoes how this works; if you are responding to the numbers as they spike you are already too late. Uncertainty is not something stock markets or citizens appreciate. Varadkar unbelievably decided to paraphrase Terminator 2 last night following his Churchill plagiarism last week, refused to call this a lockdown when being told to ‘stay at home’ (even emblazoned under the RTE logo today onscreen) is patently a lockdown, and unwittingly combined the worst elements of Trump and Modi’s addresses. We were given three hours notice not to stray more than 2km from the house or else. But Leo, outside of Dublin it might be more than 2km to the nearest food store. And so today, presumably after howls from outside the Pale, we have a ‘clarification’ that 2km is the straying radius for exercise, you can stray 5km to get yourself a burger.

SEAL Team: Havoc has Fallen

Jessica Pare’s burnt CIA analyst Mandy has been notably underused in season 3 so it was nice to see her unexpectedly get tactical alongside Blackburn and Davis as Havoc fell the other night on Sky One and impose herself on the action in her guilt-ridden determination to rescue her kidnapped asset. Her work the problem drive and firefight skills also gave new hope to shippers that Mandy and Jason should get together, despite the awesome kismet that exists in Emily Swallow as Jason’s partner Natalie; uniting as it does Supernatural‘s Amara with Buffy’s Angel. The use of drone photography on SEAL Team has been outstanding but season 3, especially the opening episodes in Serbia, has taken it to new heights. The fact that this story of Bravo getting roughed up in Venezuela has now revealed itself as a three-parter makes one compare this trio of episodes very favourably to most action films out there. I for one would take the thrilling and legible choreography of the action in these three episodes against the choppy nonsense of Mile 22 any day.

December 9, 2018

You Have Been Listening To…

It is time to discreetly begin to draw the curtains for Christmas. There will be no more reviews by me of new releases on Dublin City FM 103.2 this year. But here’s a round-up of links to the previous editions of Sunday Breakfast with Patrick Doyle and a list of the films we discussed on each one if you’re eager to explore the back catalogue.

JUNE

Jurassic World 2

Hereditary + TV Choice Sicario + Classic The Living Daylights

 

 

JULY

Sicario 2 + TV Choice Alien + Classic Once Upon a Time in the West

The First Purge + TV Choice Three Kings  + Classic The Truman Show

Hotel Artemis + TV Choice Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation  + Classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers ’78

Mission: Impossible – Fallout + TV Choice X-2  + Classic The War of the Worlds ’53

 

 

AUGUST

Ant-Man and the Wasp + TV Choice Nightcrawler  + Classic Star Trek IV

The Meg + TV Choice Fruitvale Station + Classic Heathers

 

 

SEPTEMBER

Searching + TV Choice Vertigo + Classic The Age of Innocence

The Seagull + TV Choice Dredd + Classic Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday

The Predator + TV Choice Die Hard + Classic Superman

Mile 22 + TV Choice The Nice Guys + Classic From Russia, with Love

Cold War + TV Choice Bone Tomahawk + Classic The Birds

 

 

OCTOBER

Venom + TV Choice Hell or High Water + Classic The Dark Knight

Hallowe’en ’18 + Hallowe’en ’78 + Donnie Darko + Scream

 

NOVEMBER

Juliet, Naked + TV Choice Bridge of Spies + Classic The Invisible Man

Widows + TV Choice Goldeneye + Classic Jurassic Park

Overlord + TV Choice JFK + Classic Billy Liar

Assassination Nation + TV Choice The Martian + Classic Sherlock Holmes in Washington

 

DECEMBER

The Camino Voyage + TV Choice Gideon of Scotland Yard + Classic Rope

September 23, 2018

Notes on Mile 22

Mile 22 was the topic of discussion early this morning on Sunday Breakfast with Patrick Doyle.

Mark Wahlberg shoots and swears. The 5 word summary. But Mile 22 is not as fun as that might suggest, let down by its script and edited to shreds. Iko Uwais, star of The Raid and Man of Tai Chi, is one of the fight choreographers but director Peter Berg and his five (!) editors don’t seem unduly concerned about getting his silat showdowns on screens. And that’s to say nothing of the jarring editing of simple dialogue scenes where every few words uttered by a character precipitates a needless cut; as if Berg’s team had seen the finale of the ‘Friday Night’s Alright for Fighting’ Gilmore Girls episode and decided to imitate that.

Mark Wahlberg meanwhile plays an unlikeable jerk, alongside Laura Cohan’s unlikeable jerk, and Ronda Rousey’s unlikeable jerk. This wouldn’t be a problem, after all Wahlberg was fantastic in an incredibly abrasive part in The Departed, but that this script does not have the richness of The Departed. The constant cursing here seems an admittance of defeat; with nothing creative to say the characters simply hurl perfunctory abuse at each other.

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