As the weekend was tres busy with little time to update the blog, I now present to you Luke Allen's Massive Mega Bumper Weekend Review Round-Up of Awesomeness. Four films were watched in total and they are as follows (in order of viewing):
12 Angry Men (Sidney Lumet, 1957):
Every time I watch this movie it makes me realise how few films of classic Hollywood I've actually seen. The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca and even Citizen Kane have gone unseen in my time and if any of them are even half as good as this one then I'm seriously missing out.
12 Angry Men is good, excellent, a masterpiece even and, although you need to suspend some belief (Henry Fonda is an architect yet he's able to discover events that were missed by detectives before the trial), it is an early example of how a few people chatting conspiracy in a room together can be utterly gripping. There's enough breathing space between the shouting (and there's a lot of shouting, it's called 12 Angry Men after all) to flesh out these strangers enough to make them people as opposed to a bunch stern faces and, come the final verdict, do you only then realise that not a single name has been revealed.
It does have Quincy M.E. in it though. I've seen this film many times and even now I can't see him as anybody else.
5/5
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G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (Stephen Sommers, 2009):
This film has been utterly decimated by critics but I have no problem or shame in admitting I loved the hell out of it. On the surface, it is terrible beyond belief: acting, dialogue, VFX and so on are all plain bad but what this has above that other Hasbro film of 2009 (*cough* Transformers 2 *cough*) is that it was Fun, capital F intended. It's not trying to be anything apart from a film designed to give ten year old boys an erection (not literally) and is played out as such. So we get secret underwater lairs, women in skin tight leather, accelerator suits that turn you into an indestructible bad-ass, well orchestrated action scenes where half the world gets destroyed and ninjas with a life long blood feud doing awesome ninja shit. It's ridiculous, knows it and winks at the camera at any given opportunity. What do you expect from a film based of a toy line? It's a guilty pleasure with very little genuine guilt in the enjoyment.
Did I mention it has ninjas?
4/5
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Scarface (Brian De Palma, 1983):
"This city is like one big pussy waiting to get fucked!"……What! The! Fuck!
Anyone who knows me well enough will tell you I am NOT a Brian De Palma fan and considering my favourite film of his is probably Mission: Impossible I think that tells you everything. He is a man with little in the way of restraint, the polar opposite of his contemporaries (Spielberg, Ford Coppola, et al), and whilst he may know how to make a film look good (even The Black Dahlia, a terribly boring and muddled affair, is a visual treat), his delirious nature and piss poor handling of actors cause his works to border on the ridiculous.
With Scarface, there are those that will argue its excess is a product of its 80's setting but, if anything, its excessive ways only heighten De Palma's lack of restraint and creates a film that goes beyond OTT and is consistently in your face.
Tony Montana is one of the most repugnant (and, unfortunately, one of the most recognisable) leads in film and is miles away from Pacino's corrupt yet broken portrayal Michael Corleone. From his opening moments to his death, Montana is a detestable figure. How can you possibly relate to a man this hateful? Even his attempted assassination, a scene which is supposed to ooze tension, is immediately shot down by the simple fact that we don't care if they kill him.
Unsurprisingly, Scarface is extremely popular in the world of Gangster Rap. Go figure.
2/5
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All The President's Men (Alan J. Pakula, 1976)
Continuing the recent trend with my girlfriend and I, we sat down to watch the ultimate conspiracy thriller. There is not a lot more that can be said about a movie this good (I was very pleased to see it down as this months Empire Movie Masterpiece). I find this era of Cold War America fascinating and, unsurprisingly, much has been made into terrific cinema: JFK, Thirteen Days, Good Night and Good Luck and Frost/Nixon to name a few.
There was no denying that Watergate, arguable the most famous and damaging scandal in U.S. history, would make for a good movie and, whilst All The President's Men doesn't cover the whole scandal, it covers enough to implicate the key players. Come the end, when Deep Throat has revealed that the CIA, FBI and key members of Nixon's cabinet are deeply involved, Woodwood and Bernstein may or may not be under surveillance and the integrity of the Washington Post is at stake after a damming article of there is vilified by the rest of the associate press (as well as, obviously, the White House representatives named), it really is quite shocking that this is not a work of fiction.
I also thought Redford was excellent and I am not a Redford fan.
5/5
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