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Reviews
Staten Island (2009)
If you've ever seen a David Lynch or Tarantino movie don't bother with this turkey.
Written and directed by an arts school student who has watched and re-watched every second of every Lynch/Tarantino movie and scrawled spidery and precise notes in an exercise book... late at night.
Blue Velvet meets Pulp Fiction. Vincent D'Onofrio does an excellent job but must be aware of the cinematic crime that's being perpetrated in every frame. I'd rather watch him in MIB.
Ultimately goes nowhere and makes no sense but is always utterly convinced of it's own art-house cool and doesn't care where all it's ideas originally came from.
Beneath the gloss and slick there is sadly no substance.
Alias Smith and Jones (1971)
corny but, yes, they truly don't make them like this any more
i'm sitting at home in London, 3.00 in the afternoon watching an old episode of the first Star Trek series when i should be working.
the episode featured Sharon Acker as "Odona" and she was so striking i looked her up on IMDb and found that she was a regular in all those truly fantastic 60s and 70s shows - her career touched my formative years intimately: Star Trek, Mission Impossible, Wild Wild West, Love Boat, Streets of San Francisco, Cannon, Rockford Files and of course, Alias Smith and Jones.
I hate to get sentimental, but suddenly the 60s and 70s seems like such a great time to have been growing up - particularly for me in San Francisco, just a little too young to be a hippy but old enough to find the whole thing hilarious.
I would be glued to every episode of Smith and Jones - why was it so good? Pete Duel's laconic, knowing character, Ben Murphy's more macho delivery. what a great piece of casting - there seemed to be a genuine bond between them that created a "buddiness" rarely seen on the screen. And there was a sensitivity and vulnerability to Pete Duel that seems even clearer given his suicide. Too far to call him a poor man's Steve McQueen? No, he was a rich man's Peter Deuel.
Then I see that Douglas Heyes, the writer, also wrote a load of episodes for Twilight Zone, Naked City and 77 Sunset Strip (now there was a series). There has to be a PhD thesis here - why were so many of the low-budget TV series of the 50s and 60s so cool, so well-written, so effective and compelling with no money, no special effects, no computer animation, no mega-stars. Oh, yeah, I see...
Pete, Ben, Sharon, Douglas - thankyou so very much.
The Island (2005)
Watch the Matrix Trilogy, smoke a spliff then watch Minority report you've now seen "The Island".
My heart grieves to see Steve Buscemi and Ewan Mcgregor associated with this (Scarlett deserves all she gets).
This really is desperately, shockingly, weepingly bad The Matrix without the style and the intellectual plot. Even our three stars' acting is wooden and stilted, like they were always aware of the crime they were committing and were trying not to think about it too much (I'm sure the dollars helped).
In fact, it's Matrix crossed with Minority Report and filtered through a zillion cheesy pop promos. Who was the DP on this schlock? The grade on the whole movie is saturated high-contrast, super bleached-out, which works great on a three minute hip-hop promo but gets seriously tedious on a two hour movie. Who, sweet baby Jesus, Mary and all the saints, wrote this? If he was more than a pre-pubescent 14 year-old, this viewer will be very surprised.
Ultimately it seems that everyone connected with it realises the full horror, Dr Frankenstein- like, of what they've created and just throw the entire remaining budget at the special effects. My friends, way too much, way too late.
And then there's the crass, hamfisted and obscenely intrusive product placement.
How did this film ever get made? Why in God's name did Steve, Ewan and Scarlett lend their name to it? We deserve to know, and director Michael Bay who also gave us the "Bad Boys" oeuvre and, indeed, "The Lionel Richie Collection" should be forced to watch it sober and straight - something he clearly never did when he was shooting it.
Bad, but not in a good way.