Category: Movies

For longer than seems feasible, people in the 1980s couldn’t imagine the buddy-comedy formula growing old and in the same way I will forever and always enjoy the knowing-intertextual-referential faux-sentimental comedy formula wherever it appears.

Your Correspondent, His life is actually like the accounts office on the set of Die Hard

England and her film industry which is so patently incapable of making anything really good never came close with this one, especially in the closing scene that features the inexplicable appearance of a random girl from school at Christmas dinner.

Your Correspondent, Looks forward to the John Cusack Hollywood adaptation which will be miles better

Squandering a stellar cast including a very funny Colin Farrell, this movie becomes tiresome very quickly because I suspect its director is horrible at being the boss of directing things well.

Your Correspondent, What he just did?- Yeah they’ll offer him a screenplay writing contract for that.

“What would I do with Jessica Biel?”

Thus said Wife-unit at the end of Total Recall and I again remembered how pointless marriage is because invariably the other person says things like this and you just have to wonder what the hell goes on in their heads.

She added to the crimes against the imagination:

“She’s just that crappy boyish-looking actress from a dreadful sitcom about American Christians.”

Let’s be honest, and admit that there is something fundamentally immoral about remaking movies after only 25 years. If we don’t oppose this now, we’ll have a remake of Jurassic Park in three years with Peppa the Pig playing Lex and Justin Bieber as Hammond. But if the film studio has gone to great lengths to go and make the damn thing I suppose the least we can do is pay to watch it. And in this case really enjoy it. And actually decide it is much better than the original.

The design of the movie is a visual treat. If you are a fan of the stupendous blog Fuck Yeah Brutalism then you’ll enjoy the sets in Total Recall. Brutalism in the sky! Also, Colin Farrell is made for these kinds of gigs. He hasn’t got the acting chops (one presumes) to star across from Philip Seymour Hoffmann in an adaptation of a Philip Roth novel. But he can look moody and leap at things as good as Tom Cruise (and much better than Arnie).

The plot of Total Recall is truly ingenious, as one would expect for a story by the insane Christian storyteller, Philip K. Dick. And its sleek little premise is handled pretty well right up till the end when epistemology is dumped in favour of Oprah style follow your heart shite. But let me be clear, especially for Declan, if you are going to this movie to inspire a philosophical conversation about ethics, then you will be very annoyed because 43% of its running time consists of Kate Beckinsale glowering down the camera lens with immaculate hair.

The auld lad from Love Actually is a Messianic rebel leader. Thankfully he isn’t in it long enough to ruin the fun.

In the end, a film about the permeability of memory achieves a certain classic status by being perfectly enjoyable in the moment and hard to remember a day later.

Your Correspondent, Happiness is good health and a bad memory.

This is nothing on The Guard but sure its grand and you should give it a goo but don’t blame me if you also get annoyed and distracted by the way they composite in landscape scenes from all over the western seaboard in an effort to tease some dumb tourists to come over on holiday.

Your Correspondent, In all me years I’ve never seen anything like it.

This is really a lovely, funny, knowing movie and when you have just had a general anaesthetic the songs and the colours make it a sensationary delight!

Your Correspondent, While writing this review all he could say was “Maniacal laugh!”

The most amazing thing about this horrid, stupid, laughless mess of a fiasco is how a police captain can afford such a massive apartment.

Your Correspondent, Always thought re-booting was an annoying chore the future would render irrelevant.

A movie not without its merits marred by sentimentality, no less so than in its outrageously patronising treatment of “gypsies”.

Your Correspondent, The noisy neighbour who shatters sobriety’s peaceful slumber

For the first time in my life, I crossed my arms and admitted “Television can be better than movies.”

Your Correspondent, If he can’t build a robot, he’ll be a robot

It is pretty telling that the most interesting aspect of this passable, occasionally funny film was that it was set partly in the town where my little brother lives.

Your Correspondent, Made his first million writing horoscope columns