August | 2019 | the m0vie blog

145. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels – Summer of ’99 (#137)

Posted on August 31, 2019 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guests Babu Patel and David Singleton, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released every Saturday at 6pm GMT.

This time, continuing our Summer of ’99 season, Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.

1999 was a great year for movies, with a host of massively successful (and cult) hits that would define cinema for a next generation: Being John Malkovich, The Blair Witch Project, Go, Cruel Intentions, American Beauty. The Summer of ’99 season offers a trip through the year in film on the IMDb‘s 250.

Four young men in London find themselves in the middle of an elaborate scheme involving half a million bounds, mountains of marijuana, a shady sex shop proprietor, and two antique shotguns. As the situation rapidly escalates outside of their control, can these four young men keep their heads above water?

At time of recording, it was ranked 137th on the Internet Movie Database‘s list of the best movies of all-time.

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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: babu patel, Dexter Fletcher, film, guy ritchie, Jason Flemyng, Jason Statham, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Movie, podcast, summer of '99 | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: The Informer

Posted on August 29, 2019 by Darren

The Informer is essentially three films packaged in one.

While it’s hard to precisely outline these films without giving too much away, The Informer begins as a sleazy urban thriller about a police informer before morphing into a gritty prison drama before escalating into an elaborate hostage film. There’s nothing inherently wrong with any of these central premises. In fact, as fodder for film making goes, they are very reliable. Each of those three basic premises comes with stakes built in, and would be ubiquitous enough that the audience can follow along without the need for too much exposition or context.

🎵Oh Kinnaman, where’d you run to?
Oh Kinnaman, where’d you run to?
Oh Kinnaman, where’d you run to?
Kinnaman… where you gonna run to?🎶

Unfortunately, The Informer never quite settles on a particular tone or mood as it breezes through each of these three set-ups. The film runs just under two hours, which is a respectable run-time, but it does mean that each of those three genres ends up compressed. The film arguably spends more time on the transition between that initial urban thriller and subsequent prison drama than it does in either setting, creating the impression of a film more interested in visceral movement than a larger journey.

None of the three genres get enough screen-time or development to truly work, instead feeling like rough drafts rather than compelling set-ups. The characters and the storytelling are similarly rushed, often feeling flattened or sanded down in order to ease the movie’s transition from each type of story to the next. The result is a movie that only fleetingly engages, never holding its gaze long enough to deliver on any of its potential.

Poor (in)form.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: ana de armos, film, joel kinnaman, Movie, non-review review, review, Rosamund Pike, the informer | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Extra Ordinary

Posted on August 27, 2019 by Darren

Extra Ordinary is very Irish ghost story.

“Irishness” is a very nebulous quantity. It can be very hard to precisely quantify. In humour, it tends towards a blend of irony and irreverence, often a surreal juxtaposition of the mundane with the surreal. As such, Extra Ordinary feels like a very Irish ghost story. It is a film anchored in the tropes and conventions of ghost stories – possessions, exorcisms, hauntings, satanic pacts – but which contextualises these things as just another minor frustration of country living. As the title implies, Extra Ordinary exists at the junction of the familiar and the uncanny. If the team produce a sequel, they should call it “Super Natural.”

Driving curiosity.

Extra Ordinary adopts a uniquely Irish approach to its premise, wondering what happens to those ghosts that are a bit less dramatic and lot more mundane than the usual spirits. There’s something engagingly quirky in Extra Ordinary’s depiction of the eccentricity of country living, and how so much of that eccentricity just goes on as a fact of life; the dancing lead attached to a discarded toaster, the tree branch that sways without even a breeze, the wheelie bin that just keeps flapping through the night. This is just the way that things are in this part of the world, and the locals have (mostly) made their peace with it.

Despite its supernatural premise, the most endearing aspect of Extra Ordinary is how perfectly it captures the smaller and more intimate eccentricities of the Irish countryside.

Now I seance you…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: comedy, extra ordinary, film, Ireland, maeve higgins, Movie, non-review review, review, Will Forte | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The Time is Now – Season 1, Episode 18 (“Lamentation”)

Posted on August 26, 2019 by Darren

As ever, a delight to stop by The Time is Now to talk about Millennium, this week as part of triptych with the great Kurt North and the wonderful Christopher Knowles.

An interesting installment this week. Kicking off a loose two-parter that effectively serves as Millennium‘s version of a mythology episode, Lamentation offers a clear escalation in the stakes of the first season. It’s a fascinating episode that seems to mark a clear transition in what Millennium is about, a strong signalling of creative intent from the production team. It’s a weird and eccentric episode of television, a real showcase of what Millennium could do when it set its mind to it.

I was pleasantly surprised at the variety of opinion on here, with each of the three of us having very different takes on the episode’s strengths and weaknesses. As ever, you can listen to the episode here, subscribe to the podcast here, or click the link below.

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Filed under: Millennium, Podcasts! | Tagged: evil, frank black, hannibal lecter, home, house, lamentation, legion, lucy butler, millennium, serial killer | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The Time is Now – Season 1, Episode 17 (“Walkabout”)

Posted on August 26, 2019 by Darren

As ever, a delight to stop by The Time is Now to talk about Millennium, this week reteaming with the fantastic Christopher Knowles.

As the show moves through the second half of its first season, it becomes progressively more adventurous and ambitious. While complaints about the “serial killer of the week” format might be a little unfair to the first fourteen or so episodes, the final stretch of the season embraces a more experimental aesthetic. Walkabout centres on a drug trial, one in which Frank appears to have been a participant. His memory foggy, Frank struggles to figure out what he might have been doing there. As tensions rise with both Catherine and Peter, Frank becomes convinced there’s more to the situation than meets the eye.

It was a joy to discuss the episode with Chris. As ever, you can listen to the episode here, subscribe to the podcast here, or click the link below.

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Filed under: Millennium, Podcasts! | Tagged: chris knowles, drug trials, frank black, millennium, pharmaceuticals | Leave a comment »

144. La Vita è Bella (Life is Beautiful) – Summer of ’99 (#26)

Posted on August 24, 2019 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guests Ethan Shattock and Gerard Rooney from Disconnected Talk, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released every Saturday at 6pm GMT.

This time, continuing our Summer of ’99 season, Roberto Benigni’s La Vita è Bella.

1999 was a great year for movies, with a host of massively successful (and cult) hits that would define cinema for a next generation: The Matrix, The Blair Witch Project, The Sixth Sense, 10 Things I Hate About You, Fight Club. The Summer of ’99 season offers a trip through the year in film on the IMDb‘s 250.

In mid-century Italy, lovable fool Guido embarks on a courtship of the beautiful Dora, a woman far outside of his station. As Italy descends into fascism, Guido hopes that his optimism will allow himself – and his family – to endure in the face of unimaginable evil.

At time of recording, it was ranked 26th on the Internet Movie Database‘s list of the best movies of all-time.

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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: comedy, concentration camp, Disconnected Talk, Ethan Shattock, evil, film, Gerard Rooney, holocaust, La Vita è Bella, Movie, nazis, robert benigni, summer of '99, The 250, the day the clown cried | Leave a comment »

143. Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood – This Just In (#127)

Posted on August 20, 2019 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guest Phil Bagnall, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released every Saturday at 6pm GMT.

This time, Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.

It’s February 1969. Everything is changing. Hollywood itself seems to be facing an inevitable collision with the turmoil that has engulfed the rest of the world. Against this backdrop, lives intersect and collide. Returning from the United Kingdom, Sharon Tate moves in next door to washed up fifties western star Rick Dalton, both completely unaware of how profoundly their lives will impact one another.

At time of recording, it was ranked 127th on the Internet Movie Database’s list of the best movies of all-time.

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Filed under: This Just In | Tagged: ambiguity, bruce lee, Charles Manson, Harvey Weinstein, hollywood, memory, Movie, nostalgia, once upon a time in hollywood, phil bagnall, podcast, quentin tarantino, uma thurman, violence | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: UglyDolls

Posted on August 13, 2019 by Darren

UglyDolls exists in the “uncanny valley” of modern children’s animated films.

Films like UglyDolls are a reminder of how profoundly Pixar has altered the cinematic landscape, and shifted expectations in terms of what audiences – young and old – expect from these sorts of films. Most obviously, the basic premise of UglyDolls echoes that of Toy Story; in much the same way that, say, The Emoji Movie mirrors Inside Out. This is a film about sentient toys trying to find an existential justification for their existence, often defined in terms of their relationship to a child. UglyDolls is a movie aout misfit toys cast out from the factory assembly line, wondering if they will ever be worth of love.

All dolled up with nowhere to go.

To be fair to UglyDolls, it is much better than The Emoji Movie. At the very least, UglyDolls understands that the film needs to be ordered around a strong central theme. UglyDolls has a solid conceptual basis, a familiar children’s movie allegory, and a very straightforward narrative structure. That said, although somewhat less crass in its materialist ambitions than The Emoji Movie, the film feels cynically calculated in other ways. The casting of performers like Kelly Clarkson, Nick Jonas, Janelle Monáe and Blake Sheldon seems designed to move the film’s soundtrack album. And the premise is obviously toyetic.

Still, UglyDolls comes closer than most of these sorts of films to working, largely failing because it ultimately underestimates the maturity and intelligence of its target audience.

A glass apart.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: animated, cartoon, cynicism, film, janelle monae, kelly clarkson, merchandising, Movie, nick jonas, non-review review, pixar, review, soundtrack, ugly dolls | Leave a comment »

“… You Wanna Get Nuts?” The Unique Legacy of Tim Burton’s “Batman”…

Posted on August 12, 2019 by Darren

Tim Burton’s Batman is thirty years old this year, having opened in Irish cinemas thirty years ago this weekend. It leaves a complicated and underappreciated legacy.

To be fair, at least part of that is down to how the series ended. Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever and Batman and Robin count among the worst blockbusters of the nineties and the worst comic book movies ever made. Taken together, they were responsible for killing not only that iteration of the cinematic Batman franchise, but also for effectively killing the superhero as a blockbuster genre until the triple whammy of Blade, X-Men and Spider-Man kick-started it again at the turn of the millennium.

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Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: adaptation, batman, batman 1989, batman forever, bruce wayne, comic books, joel schumacher, joker, tim burton | 6 Comments »

142. American History X – Summer of ’99 (#34)

Posted on August 10, 2019 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guest Charlene Lydon, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released every Saturday at 6pm GMT.

This time, kicking off our Summer of ’99 season, Toby Kaye’s American History X.

1999 was a great year for movies, with a host of massively successful (and cult) hits that would define cinema for a next generation: The Matrix, The Blair Witch Project, The Best Man, Cruel Intentions, Fight Club. The Summer of ’99 season offers a trip through the year in film on the IMDb‘s 250.

Danny Vinyard finds himself called to the principal’s office after submitting a salacious and controversial essay citing Adolf Hitler as a civil rights hero. There, the school principal Doctor Sweeney sets Derek another assignment: a personally essay exploring his relationship with his white supremacist brother Derek. Derek Vinyard was just released from prison that morning, and is about to discover that putting his life back together will not be as easy as he might have hoped.

At time of recording, it was ranked 34th on the Internet Movie Database‘s list of the best movies of all-time.