Film Reviews by TB

When the first Expendables came out, it was a real mixed bag. There were plenty of flashes of brilliance, but the heavy & dour tone of the film dragged it down & proved to be a weight around its neck it could never fully escape from. However, with this film, 2 things have changed: as the first movie was extremely successful, there is now more money to play with/more confidence about what they are doing; secondly & most importantly, they have brought in Simon West to direct. West, who among other films, directed the brilliant & classic Con Air, totally gets what this series is about, what it needs to be & what went wrong with the first one. The result is nothing short of brilliant.

In the second film, the team are joined by a new member, Billy the Kid. He is a youthful, good-looking, moral man who became disenfranchised after serving in Afghanistan; horrified at the slaughter all around him, he decides that the only logical response is to join a mercenary organisation where he is paid eye-watering sums of money to slaughter "bad guys." He also intends to leave after his final mission with the Expendables & retire with his beautiful girlfriend. Obviously, as he has all these morals, good looks & plans, he gets slaughtered within the first 20 minutes by Vilain, the big bad of this film. The remaining Expendables then vow to avenge his death, setting off a chain of events that eventually leads to stopping nuclear material being sold to the bad guys.

Everything about this film is so stupidly funny & silly, it is brilliant. Yes, there are some heavy moments, but these are perfectly offset & complimented by the rest of the film. The stunts have been taken up a notch & it must again be praised how much of them are largely real/not CGI and many are done by the actual cast themselves, including by Stallone who has his neck broken in the first film...

But most importantly, it is so much fun to sit & watch all these old actions stars ham it up and have a ball on screen. We finally, after many many years, get Stallone, Willis and Schwarzenegger on screen in an action scene fighting alongside each other. There are also welcome additions, such as Chuck Norris, who actually quotes a Chuck Norris fact as dialogue. Van Damme is also perfectly cast, fully learning into the silliness of Vilain.

Yes, this film won't be for everyone, although I feel that as it wears it's themes & intentions so proudly/as a badge of honour, if you rent this, you should know what you're getting yourself into. Sadly, things go downhill again with the 3rd film, but this one is an absolute riot and fully uses it's premise to great effect.

Back in 2010, Sly & his producing partners came up with the Expendables series: a homage/throwback to the action films of the 80's & 90's, full of outrageous stunts, clichés & one liners, all done totally tongue-in-cheek. The first film was good in terms of laying the groundwork, although it also had a very heavy & cumbersome tone, sorely missing a lightness of touch. Then number 2 came along, took everything that the first film had created, added some new things and was one of the best/most enjoyable nights at the cinema I've ever had. So, after the greatness of that film, expectations were sky-high.

But then something happened, which totally changed the whole dynamic & I feel in many ways set the movie up to fail: it was announced with great fanfare & enthusiasm that the film was to be made to be a PG-13 rating (12A in the UK,) in effect hamstringing & completely toning down/reducing the violence in the film to become effectively a kid's movie. Basically, and this has been admitted quite frankly later on by Stallone, this decision was completely commercially driven in order to make the film be able to be seen by as many people as possible to make as much money as possible. And it wasn't only me thinking this: there was a significant backlash from fans, which was responded to by Stallone, assuring them that it wouldn't affect the movie. But, after watching this debacle, I knew that the film was not only being set up to fail, but that it would also simply not work. You cannot have a film like the Expendables, make the first two proper action films with violence (although it has to be said not gratuitously violent,) then release one which has literally had the soul ripped out of it.

So now the firefights & hand-to-hand combat have no edge to them, no real sense of suspense or danger. Almost every moment where, in a normal action film, you'd see a bullet hit someone/the effects of the violence, this has now been cut/the editing cuts away to another angle. But what makes it even more frustrating is that, again in a step up from number 2, there is more money to play with; bigger, bolder stunts; great locations ect ect. But with the limits of the rating, all this effort is mainly for nothing. So in effect, it's like watching teletubbies bouncing around in a padded room.

There are also some very annoying story changes. The theme of age is repeatedly brought up, in respect to getting in newer younger blood (although this didn't work particularly well in film 2...) so some new cast members have joined. None of them are particularly good or interesting, they are mainly just annoying. Even Antonio Banderas can't salvage this, despite his best efforts.

However, this film has an absolute ace up its sleeve in the form of Mel Gibson. In many ways this film, along with Hacksaw Ridge, was Gibson coming back into the public eye after his personal disgraces. And whatever you may think of that behaviour, this film would have totally failed without him. Summoning the gravitas & presence which made him a star, here he chews up the scenery for all it's worth, creating a megalomaniac who dominates the screen whenever he is on it.

But despite the efforts of all the cast & crew, this film's problems are just too great. And whilst the Blu-ray does add in some cut footage which bumps the rating up to a 15, it is a token gesture & does nothing to affect the story/solve the numerous issues with the structure.

The irony is that there is to be a 4th & final film and the main selling point which is repeatedly referenced in the trailer is that it has an R rating. Unfortunately, I think it's a case of too little too late. The damage has already been done.

After the misfire of his previous DVD/stand-up, which I saw live and was so bad, his support act was funnier than he was, Kevin Bridges is back with a new show.

Clearly having worked hard on his writing & act, this is full of the classic and hysterically funny observations which made Bridges an essential comedian to watch when he first exploded onto the comedy scene many years ago.

A great laugh and highly recommend.

This is an unapologetically stupid film, marketed in many ways as "Jason Statham punches a shark." And whilst it does try to go in different directions/do something new, this is only moderately successful.

The basic story (very basic...) concerns a diver called Jonas Taylor, who on a rescue mission comes face to face with an enormous unidentified creature whilst on a diving mission to rescue colleagues trapped in a submersible. Taylor has to abort the mission & becomes haunted by his failure. Many years later, another submarine also gets into difficulty & in a twist of fate and bad luck, Taylor's ex wife is trapped on board. It then becomes a race against time to rescue them, whilst also battling this behemoth of the deep.

Like with the Expendables films, how much you are prepared to suspend disbelief & allow the film massive dramatic licence equates to how much you'll get out of/enjoy it, plus also what mood you're in when you watch it. I saw this with a couple of friends at the cinema on a Friday night, with all of us knowing exactly what sort of film it was going to be & broadly enjoying it.

At times it was a bit too silly, plus it also spends slightly too much time fleshing out characters who the film tries to make you care about but who, quite frankly, you don't... Strangely though, this film does have one random issue with it: despite the fairly massive budget, the CGI is a real mixed bag. There are some scenes where it is so ropey, you feel that the filmmakers should have asked for a refund, yet at other times it is flawless.

As with many of the films I have watched/reviewed on Cinema Paradiso, this is perfect Friday night entertainment for when you want an easy watch with some stupid humour, good stunts and yes, seeing Jason Statham punch a shark...

This film is an absolute delight. It is clear very early on that this is a passion project for Kenneth Branagh, who is represented on screen by the character Buddy. For me, the best thing about it in many ways is how emphatically non-political it is. Absolutely it shows the tensions overall between Catholics and Protestants, none more so than in the opening minutes & in extremely shocking ways. But very quickly it becomes about the horror of the conflict overall & the impact on Buddy and his family's life living in Belfast.

We see Buddy bearing witness to his street and community changing before his very eyes, from happy & laughing to locked down & fearful. There are also individual & personal threats towards his family, particularly his hardworking father who, due to extreme unemployment levels, has to catch a ferry to the mainland & can only return certain weekends.

But amongst all of the horror & difficulty, there is also much brightness & humour. We see Buddy fall in love, succeed at school & get involved with a gang/commit relatively innocent but petty theft from the local sweetshop. There is also wonderful warmth & wisdom from his grandparents, who treasure their grandchildren but also know in their heart of hearts that where they are living is no place to raise children & provide everything they need.

I do genuinely love this film for all the reasons above. It is wonderfully acted, with both brilliant child actors as well as the seasoned professionals. For me, the stand-out performance was without question Caitríona Balfe as Buddy's mother. She has the almost insurmountable challenge of raising her children in the middle of a warzone which literally has meant their street is blocked off; trying to hold together her marriage despite her husband being away & bills piling up and worrying about everything else that a mother has to juggle, which would be massive without the aforementioned problems. Jamie Dornan & Ciarán Hinds are also great and of course Judi Dench is perfect as she always is.

This is a very inspiring & heartwarming film, full of laughs as well as shocks. It is also profoundly moving & I am so grateful that Branagh shared this with us all.

When it comes to tension, there are many different types of films you could go for. The standard clichéd answer is horror, with a great scary movie keeping you on the edge of your seat. Or you could go for a Paul Greengrass-type film, such as United 93 or Captain Phillips. But there has, more recently, been a breakout of the small-scale stories which are not big budget but, in certain cases, succeed better than anything with a massive amount of money to play with in making you internally scream and climb the walls with cringe-worthiness. One which I haven't yet seen but heard nothing but praise about is Uncut Gems, being among other things 2 hours of just total & complete awkwardness & tension. Shiva Baby has been in many ways compared to Uncut Gems, with good reviews, hence why I rented it.

The film follows a day in the life of Danielle, a bisexual, directionless young Jewish woman. She also has a side hustle, offering her services to sugar daddies, which is a way to earn easy money & which she is fairly ambivalent about. The film opens with her having sex with her sugar daddy Max in his apartment, before hurriedly leaving to go to a shiva (a Jewish gathering after the passing/burial of a loved one,) which she has been strong-armed into attending by her extremely controlling & overzealous parents. Once she arrives, she also find her ex-girlfriend in attendance, then to her horror Max, his wife and their newborn baby make an appearance. Alongside all of this, she is surrounded by extremely judgemental & rude family/family friends, who delight in making her feel as uncomfortable as possible.

The whole film is very well-shot, as well as satirising the vast number of stereotypes that you would find at a gathering like this. Alongside that, the Yiddish humour is excellently portrayed, particularly the Jewish mother which before I'd mainly seen either in South Park or Goodfellas. It is also unbelievably awkward, with several scenes where I felt my nails digging into my palms. Rachel Sennott makes an excellent protagonist, perfectly conveying the world-weary only child who feels she has no control over her life & who has it seems suffered an eternity of judgement/expectations being piled on top of her.

The other massively positive thing about this film is it's length: this is a very short film, mercifully not in any way trying to stretch out it's premise & ideas. It is tightly edited, with a screeching score to add to the horror on screen. When it finishes, you do let out a sigh of relief that it's over, but in a good way.

Really engrossing & well-made. Doesn't make me want to go to a shiva though...

In many ways, I cannot work out how to talk about this film. It is completely off the wall, batsh*t crazy & unbelievably sexually transgressive. But as much as I've given it 4 stars, that is mainly for its boldness, originality & sheer provocativeness. The film itself is actually quite unlikeable & I certainly didn't ever "enjoy" it in the sense of the warm feeling you get when watching a film you really connect with. It is full of cold, unrelatable characters who are completely disconnected from both the real world & you as the viewer. However, I also couldn't take my eyes off it.

The film follows, in the loosest sense of the word, a man called James & his partner Catherine. From the opening shots, both of them are shown to be extremely sexually deviant & transgressive, having sex both with each other & other people, in places where they could be walked in on/disturbed. However, they are both relatively unsatisfied with their lives. One night, James has a head-on crash with another car, seriously injuring himself & the female passenger in the other car, and killing the driver. The two then meet in the hospital, then are approached by an enigmatic man called Vaughan & realise that all of them become aroused when involved in/witnessing car crashes.

From there, the film takes a deep dive into an unbelievably strange, weird & idiosyncratic world. Car crashes are staged & caused deliberately, followed by frantic & graphic sex. And all whilst this is happening, the group of them, including a stuntman and 2 other women, keep pushing the envelope further, trying to outdo the horrific accidents they find themselves in.

Huge praise must go to the actors in this film. Bearing in mind it was released in 1996, when controversy was not as celebrated as it is now (if a film today is provocative & causes offence, it tends to propel it to great success & box office receipts,) this would have been seen by many as career suicide, especially for the explicit nudity & sex scenes. Every single one of them commits fully & completely to their roles. For me, the most "interesting" (said in quotes because none of them are really likeable,) and certainly the most courageous is Deborah Kara Unger as Catherine. She is, certainly to me, much more the protagonist than James is, simply because you watch with total fascination how she evolves over the course of the film. James Spader is also good, as is Holly Hunter.

The level of enjoyment you will get out of this film will depend completely on how much you want to buy into this world that Cronenberg creates, as well as how far you enjoy/are interested in extreme provocativeness. I like films that push boundaries, simply because in today's film/media, we are mainly given the same old turgid movies with slightly varied storylines. This film is totally unashamed in it's revelling of showing unacceptable acts, whilst at the same time being completely unrelatable & cold.

I didn't enjoy watching it, but my god did it leave an indelible impression on me and I'll never, ever forget it.

I remember when this film was released in 2014, there was a massive amount of critical praise, as well as the debate of the questions/future that this movie posed. As someone who isn't that into Sci-Fi, it wasn't a film I was clamouring to see & the only reason I rented it, apart from remembering the critical praise, was seeing that the 4K remaster had just been released.

But as much as I wanted to like it, for me it just didn't work that well. For a start, I could see within 20 minutes what was going to happen. The "twists" were so clearly & blatantly set up, the film thinking it was playing all these cunning sleight of hands, but it was obvious where things were going.

The main story focuses on Caleb, a programmer at an enormous internet search company, who wins a competition to spend the week with the multi-billionaire CEO at his luxury estate in the middle of nowhere. Once he arrives, he is then told that the real reason he is there is because the CEO, Nathan, has created a groundbreaking & completely revolutionary new android robot called Ava which he wants Caleb to "test." These tests, based around the Turing test, basically is to see if Caleb ever feels like he isn't talking to a machine with all its limits, but a real sentient being.

As the story progresses, you see Caleb start to slowly become fascinated and infatuated by Ava, as well as Nathan slowly start to play the kind of mind games which are the last bastion of someone who has more money than God & nothing else that gives his life meaning. But even though Alicia Vikander is excellent in her role, plus the set design & graphics/CGI cutting edge for when the film was made, the rest of it basically left me cold. The sort of existential big questions the film posed were powerful, but the way it was put onto the screen did not resonate for me.

For many people, this film is amazing, plus I do respect it's ambitious scope, especially for a first time director. But it wasn't something that worked overall for me.

In Bruges was one of my favourite films of the 2000's, coming completely out of nowhere and enthralling me & many others with it's jet black humour, as well as it's musings on life & death. It also, of course, featured the prominent paring of Colin Farrell & Brendan Gleeson, actors who perfectly complimented each other & whose chemistry was flawless. Over the years, there were many times that Martin McDonagh was asked by people to work with both of them again, and partly as a result of that, we now have The Banshees of Inisherin.

Set on the aforementioned titular island during the Irish Civil war, the premise itself is extremely simple: Pádraic Súilleabháin & Colm Doherty live close to each other in the close-knit community of Inisherin, spending their time chatting, usually at the local pub whilst drinking. One day (immediately as the film starts,) Colm simply stops talking to Pádraic & never wants anything to do with him again or be his friend. Pádraic cannot deal with this & is determined to keep talking to & be around Colm. When Colm is not left alone despite repeatedly asking to be, he then threatens to cut off his own fingers.

The scene & atmosphere is set very well & there are the usual McDonagh traits within the story: extremely eccentric & larger than life characters, an at times horrible/callous behaviour shown towards each other and finally the lingering threat of violence. The cinematography is beautiful & really shows how incredible Ireland is as a country, coupled with some great performances.

However, as a story & a film, I could only ever be partially engaged with it. The script is full of the excellent acidic prose that McDonagh is known for, but the actual narrative is actually quite boring at times. Nothing much really happens & at times also really stretches credulity. For example, despite the larger than life theme & overall ridiculousness, not liking someone then hideously maiming yourself to prove a point just didn't work for me. And whilst there were some quite poignant & deep musings on life at times, again it just didn't really fit the film for me. Then we come to the ending, which is a bit of a damp squib. The film just, sort of, finishes & I was left wondering "OK... Was that it?"

Having said that, I did enjoy parts of it & for some people, the gentle pace and jet black humour will be exactly what they enjoy. But it can't hold a candle to In Bruges...

In a very random way, the main thing I thought about as this film staggered & slowly inched it's way forward through its running time was Everything Everywhere All At Once. Because that, like this, had pretty much every critic falling over themselves to outdo each other in the praise they heaped on it. The only reason I rented it was because of this universal & adoring praise, from reviewers such as Empire magazine, plus the Oscar nomination for Paul Mescal.

This film effectively is just watching a series of snapshots from a holiday, inter-spliced with random clips of the main character in a nightclub dancing in strobe lights. We see Calum, who is taking his daughter Sophie on holiday to Turkey. There are hints that all is not well with Calum mentally, despite his best efforts to both hide this from everyone and also read self-help books/practice Tai-Chi. Sophie is an extremely confident & driven girl, also discovering a lot about herself as a maturing young woman.

But this film is dire. It is clear that what it is attempting to do is cultivate a gentle atmosphere where we observe in a very naturalistic way characters evolving. But these films also have a habit of slipping into boring naval gazing, as well as being unbelievably pretentious. And the only real word/emotion I can say about this film is boring. Despite several moments which had the potential to be something more, this film is just a dead loss.

Like many of the other reviews here, just don't waste your time. Unless your idea of a riveting an hour & 40 minutes is watching a father & daughter saying stilted dialogue to each other & trying to mine profoundness from nothingness.

James Cameron is in many sense one of the few directors we have who is still genuinely breaking new ground & pushing the limits of what is achievable on film, to the extent that with both this & the first Avatar, the technology simply wasn't available/ready to be able to create what it was he wanted to create. But despite the jaw-dropping & visually sumptuous images, this film is basically an extremely expensive technical exercise in what you can do if money is no object & not having a great script is not seen as a barrier.

Avatar 2 reunites us back with Jake Sully & his family, which has now grown to 4 children & 1 adopted child. Everything is well after the events of the first film, until the soldiers/Sky People return, determined to complete the mission that they started, but this time to succeed. Forced to flee, the Sully's then team up with another species who primarily exist in and under the water. But they are tracked down & forced to fight and defend themselves.

Unfortunately, despite the way this film looks (and make no mistake the visual work is incredible, literally one of the best animated visuals I've ever seen,) the rest is almost a total failure, starting with the length. This film is 3 HOURS long. That is an obscenely bloated length for a film which in effect is a rerun of the first one in many ways, but now with the confidence of the fact that the first one made megabucks, so they can pretty much do whatever they want. This film falls exactly into the same trap as John Wick 4: mistaking length for profoundness & epic. There is so much world-building & character development & location setting that the whole thing feels at the same time bloated & also undercooked: vast amounts is tried to be communicated to you & you just start not to care.

There are far too many characters, as well as plot points. Multiple times you are set up for a cliffhanger, only for the day to be saved, then 5 minutes later we're back to everything is lost again. This scenario happened probably 5 times in 20 minutes.

As for casting, Sam Worthington hasn't improved since the first film; Zoë Saldana does everything in her power to be the fierce warrior but not succeeding half of the time; the child actors are good but also given too much to do so their impact is less. As with the 1st film, the best performance is Stephen Lang as Quarich. Brought back again (because in the future people can simply be cloned, again minimising the jeopardy element of the film,) he really turbo charges the movie, although after 3 hours of this constant ratcheting up to create tension, even Daniel Day-Lewis would struggle to keep things fresh.

Another 3 films have been announced to follow this one. They'll all have pretty much the same story, do exactly the same thing, have exactly the same impact, cost obscene amounts of money and break more records for cinema takings. Whilst I'm glad that Cameron is without question keeping film theatres open & thousands of people in highly skilled jobs, I cannot recommend this film for anything other than its visuals.

Before Inglorious Basterds (IG) was released, Tarantino had frequently alluded to & talked about the WW2 action film he was going to make. After the financial failure of Death Proof, Tarantino dug out the half-finished script of IG & finished it. The result is a brilliant, although sometimes too talky film which nevertheless still to me is his best film of the most recent ones he has done.

The story, as with most of Tarantino's films, is split into several narratives. It imagines an alternate setting of WW2 & involves a French orphan, a group of Jewish American soldiers (the Basterds of the title) & finally the British undercover mission to kill Hitler. Along the way, there are many of the staples of Tarantino which are brilliant, such as Mexican standoffs, meaty dialogue & strong characters.

The thing which I did like most of all about this film & is in no way a spoiler is the rug-pull element of it: as much as it is marketed as an action film & there are some combat-scenes, this movie is much more interested in character & story. The titular Basterds themselves barely appear for a good chunk of the film & you hear much of their exploits through the anecdotes of the traumatised Nazi's who managed to survive encountering them.

The opening scene in particular is an absolute powerhouse of tension building, proving again just how much of a master of his craft Tarantino is with script & setting. We are also introduced to Hans Landa, an incredible multi-lingual character played to perfection by Christoph Waltz. Nicknamed the Jew Hunter, he is remorseless in his pursuit of the terrified people trying to escape the Nazi machine slaughtering them without mercy. Despite his absolutely dispicible motives, Landa is a wonderful character, constantly subverting expectations. And most of all, his refusal to be pigeonholed by anyone or any ideology.

Opposite him, Brad Pitt is also great as Aldo Raine, the Tennessee soldier with an accent as thick as Molasses sugar & on a mission to kill as many Nazis as possible with his platoon. His interactions, particularly with Landa, are a highlight: these two men who couldn't be more different in their beliefs seeing & respecting their shared drive. Raine looks at what is going on around him with horror & disgust, further emboldening him to complete his mission.

And finally, Melanie Laurant as Shoshanna is a worthy & compelling character, the orphan who is determined to track down & kill as many of the people responsible for killing her family as she can. Her interactions with Landa are also, once she recognises him, filled with tension.

Unfortunately, amongst all this good stuff, there is also a lot of bloat, particularly in a scene set in a coffee shop. Tarantino cuts away from the story to obsessively watch a group of Germans eating cake & talking at great length, slamming the brakes onto the narrative. Although the film does manage to pull itself back, it was an unnecessary & quite frustrating interruption, making the film longer than it needed to be.

Then we get to the ending & in true Tarantino style, everything goes crazy, but enjoyably so. It is a bonkers but also deliriously silly finale, setting just the right tone & giving us the payoff we wanted.

As for performances, they are all great, including the cameo's from people such as Mike Myers. Everything else, from the uniforms down to the locations is also excellent.

A riot of a film and one which, despite some flaws, I loved & feel probably won't be bettered with whatever QT makes next.

Katherine Bigelow has had an incredible & chequered career, filled with interesting films as well incredible ones. Even when they don't work as a whole, they are still filled with ambition, such as Strange Days, which was so far ahead of its time, today it is scary to watch it.

After the disappointment & serious financial failure of K19 The Widowmaker, there was a 6 year gap before she resurfaced with, in comparison with the massive budgetary opulence of K19, a tiny film made fairly quietly in the Middle East about bomb disposal experts. And, having seen both films, I am actually pleased in a way that there was the failure of K19, because it forced her to go back to the small film world, where often the best films are created.

The Hurt Locker is incredible. Even though it has come into some criticism because of the various elements of it that are absolutely not in any way based in fact, that has to be overlooked when you factor in that this is a piece of entertainment using drama to effectively convey it's message. It opens with a tight-knit team lead by Guy Pearce, defusing a roadside bomb in Iraq. Starting as it means to go on, it starts relaxed & jokey then flips within a second to fear, panic & horror. Pearce's character is killed & then a new Sergeant is brought in to lead the team.

Sergeant First Class James is a totally different kettle of fish: rude, abrasive, refusing to follow orders, communicate with his team or just be a team player in general. He is also addicted to the rush of war & conflict, actively seeking it out, even though he puts everyone else in danger. Thankfully, in the hands of Jeremy Renner, he is also horrifyingly gripping to watch, even though in battle you wouldn't want him anywhere near you, despite his extensive skill in bomb defusal.

The other team members are also extremely diverse & complex characters. Sanborn is the brash, tough-talking sergeant who after losing his close friend in the opening credits, then has to balance that grief with trying to manage someone as unpredictable as the bombs they are defusing. The aggression & disagreements between them are electric. Finally, Eldridge is the young Specialist, wracked with PTSD & totally on edge after the horror of the opening. He is probably the character who could most be seen as us the audience, giving us that portal into an unforgiving & everlasting nightmare you never wake up from.

As the 3 men brave danger together, they start to work together better, although the joy of the story is the total unpredictability of what could happen. There are also some welcome cameo's, particularly from Ralph Fiennes as a highly strung & very English bounty hunter.

But what makes this film work more than anything else is how well it is directed & scripted. Bigelow's mastery of film is shown here as second to none. Whether directing small moments where there is silence but also emotion screaming out of the screen, through to full on action scenes, it is perfect. The look, colour palette & sound especially are also brilliant. The casting is perfect & this was the film that in many ways launched Renner & Mackie's careers.

A film that grabs you, doesn't let go & then leaves you breathless at the end, wanting more. Just like the greatest films should do.

The title pretty much says it all. This film is perfection. The most staggering thing about it in many ways is that it works at all. If you say the plot to someone, it sounds like the worst film ever: 2 down-on-their-luck/penniless actors escape their filthy flat in London for a weekend in the country after finding favour with the camp uncle of one of them. The holiday is a complete disaster, then things get worse when they receive an unexpected & uninvited guest. They then return back to the flat & nothing much has changed. But, as was said wryly by Ralph Brown, "it just goes to show that sometimes you don't need a good plot!"

The best thing about Withnail is it's script. Written by writer/director Bruce Robinson out of desperation & depression when he was living in conditions like in the film, this is one of the funniest stories ever created. Filled with line after line of endlessly quotable dialogue, it has become a cult favourite, particularly amongst students who relate to its alcoholic & poor protagonists.

The performances are note-perfect, especially Grant as Withnail. Based on one of Robinson's friends, Withnail should be an absolutely revolting, horrible character who you wouldn't want to have within 100 miles of you. But yet he is utterly charming, a totally deluded & vain man who is constantly getting himself into unmentionable & excruciatingly embarrassing situations, sometimes by his own making.

Paul McGann is also perfectly cast, playing the "I" character, although his proper name is Marwood. Effectively a composite of Robinson himself, Marwood is a ball of nerves, the man who usually ends up at the sharp end when things go wrong, constantly worrying about things, mainly what new issue Withnail will cause the pair of them. Marwood is also a gentle soul, the water to Withnail's fire. It must be said without him/McGann's performance, the film would be totally unbearable.

And rounding things off is the brilliant Ralph Brown as Danny the dealer. Speaking in a nasally voice & always carrying various hard drugs, Danny is a genius of a character. Spouting off ridiculous conspiracy theories such as hairdressers being in the employment of the government due to hair being your ariels and picking up signals from the cosmos, he perfectly rounds off the ensemble.

From a behind the scenes viewpoint, again it's a miracle this film exists at all. After the first day's shooting, an attempt was made to shut it down by one of the producers, which only failed as Robinson threatened to walk off the film and leave everyone in limbo. The film itself also looks like it was made very cheaply, which adds completely to the charm of it. Effectively, the DVD looks like a pirate copy, although I haven't seen if there is a remastered version (to be honest I wouldn't want there to be, as it'll ruin the charm.)

But complete credit must go to Bruce Robinson. His determination, talent & brilliance as a writer/director resulted in this total & utter gem. Whilst it's sad that he never again reached these heights (although The Rum Diary was a very good attempt to reclaim some lost ground,) salivate & enjoy watching one of the best small films ever made. Then find some other fans & see how long you can keep quoting it (it'll be years!)

Flawless perfection.

Robert Redford has had a glittering & unmatched career. Stunning in many of the films he has been in, he is without doubt a bonafide legend of the silver screen. In many ways it is very interesting that this is, if he keeps to his word, his last film. And I can certainly see why he would want to go out on this. 

It is a very gentle musing & true story, following a man called Forrest Tucker, who was first jailed when he was 15 and then spent the rest of his life in and out of prison, escaping multiple times successfully & many more times “unsuccessfully.” The film then shows his interactions with the various people in the town he finds himself in, as well as the knowledge that he cannot keep doing what he is doing, although this is now a deeply ingrained part of him & his life.

As much as this is a slow film, it is also nice to see an actor of Redford’s calibre in very basic & pure acting scenes, whether it is with Jewel, the woman who helps him escape from one robbery by covering for him, through to the local police chief trying to track down the suspect who he is convinced is the charming man he sees in front of him.

The film itself looks very lovely, although it is not in any way a masterpiece, hence the 3 star rating. It is also very slow, at times too slow & could have done with a bit of editing to tighten it up a bit. As much as some may hope for a massive showdown or shootout, this simply isn’t that kind of movie. This film is here to salivate & appreciate the remarkable talent of Redford, doing what he does best: acting & entertaining us for decades.