16 May 2021 – The Italian Job and the other Italian Job

May 16, 2021 kevinisabastardkevinisabastard, kevinisabastard.com, the italian job (1969), the italian job (2003)Leave a comment

The original idea with these weekend blog posts was that they were supposed to be longer pieces of writing but they weren’t fully intended to be film based every time. What has developed in my mind is this idea that the Sunday posts are based on film projects. The problem there is that the size of projects can take up a huge amount of time. The Marvel films took me weeks to watch and that’s not sustainable every week. The Guy Ritchie films were a good sized project in terms of the amount of prep I can put in and the amount of content I can put together about each film. So my approach now is that I have a number of large scale projects ongoing at the same time and in the meantime I’m also looking for smaller projects that seem interesting to me.

During the week, I watched “The Italian Job”(2003). It was not very good. It was bad to the point where I started to wonder why it was made. By the time it was over, I had made up my mind that good actors sometimes get roped into making bad remakes/sequels/reworks of old films because of nostalgia for the original. That made sense to me. “The Italian Job”(2003) made no sense to me. It’s not a real remake. It’s not a sequel. It’s just a heist film about stealing gold in Mini Coopers. There are some of the same names. At one point they even reference the original. It’s just a conceptual nightmare. The execution isn’t even that bad. If the film had a different name it would be acceptably forgettable. It probably wouldn’t have got the budget though. To be fair the action scenes and the car chase looked pretty decent so fair play to them for that.

The cast is peak 2003. Mark Wahlberg is a lame leading man. He pushed the plot forward but he’s just lame. I don’t fully understand the idea of romance between his character and Charlize Theron. Her father was like a father to him so that seems fairly suspect. If Seth Green’s character were around today he would be MeToo’d. Ed Norton is a pantomime villain and has criminal facial hair. He was the real mystery to me. I didn’t get why he was there and the only rational reason I could think of was that maybe he liked the original.

I really liked the original when I was a little kid and so I decided to rewatch it to see if that was enough to justify the 2003 effort. It’s probably not. “The Italian Job”(1969) is a very strange film. Very British. Very shouty. Very problematic. It hasn’t aged particularly well. The worst thing about the new version is that it makes the driving in the old one look very shitty. The car chase is pedestrian and slow and at times very pointless. Lots of the iconic scenes, like the Minis driving on to the roof of the stadium for example, are completely pointless in terms of the chase. It’s fun and cartoonish though. It makes sense that that appealed to me as a child. Any violence happens off screen. At one point, the silhouette of Michael Caine’s character gets beaten up behind smoked glass. Someone dies in a car crash in a tunnel in the dark.

It has aged terribly though and not in ways I thought about as an eight year old. Benny Hill’s appearance as a computers expert who doesn’t seem to be the full deck and has a compulsion to sexually harass larger women, is an absolute nightmare. The most unpleasant thing in the film is Michael Caine’s Charlie Croker’s threat to the mafia if he was killed. You can see it in this clip. The whole film is so pro Britain in general, that the threat of driving Italian immigrants in Britain into the sea and making them suffer made me very uneasy.

So I watched both and, to be totally honest, I could probably do with having watched neither of them. The motivation behind remaking films is an interesting idea and it makes sense to compare new and old versions. Both versions of “The Italian Job” are pretty trash. Having watched the original, I wasn’t any wiser on why Ed Norton would attach himself to the new film. It didn’t justify any real feeling of nostalgia. Then, as I sat down to write this, I did a bit of reading and it all makes sense. Ed Norton was forced to make the film due to a multi picture contract with Paramount. He didn’t want to be in the film and refused to promote it. I feel at ease in the world once more, safe in the knowledge that money is the real motivator.

09 May 2021 – Sexy Beast

May 9, 2021May 9, 2021 kevinisabastardkevinisabastard, kevinisabastard.com, sexy beastLeave a comment

This is a kind of an after thought to last week’s post about Guy Ritchie’s English gangster films. After having all the conversations that motivated that post and writing that post and then all the conversations I had from that post, I decided I had to watch “Sexy Beast”. I had never seen it before, but I’d heard about it. I knew that Ben Kingsley was in it and he played an unpleasant character. That was the sum total of my knowledge.

Before watching it, it’s a film that makes sense to be made in a post Guy Ritchie world. It was made after “Lock, Stock…” and around the same time as “Snatch”. It’s directed by Jonathan Glazer, a music video and advertisement director with considerably better credits than Ritchie in those fields, including the incredible video for “Virtual Insanity” by Jamirioquai as well as others by Blur and Radiohead and ads for a host of major global brands. It seems like an obvious choice for a film trying to replicate the success that Guy Ritchie was having. It shares a number of traits with the Guy Ritchie films. It’s a British gangster story. It’s visually slick. The soundtrack features some well known tunes, including one of my least favourite songs of all time, “Peaches” by The Stranglers. And there are some massive characters, something I’ll return to in a moment.

It changes things up in terms of setting and the structure of the story. There’s less of the messing around of a Guy Ritchie caper and obviously it’s mostly based in Spain which leads to a different visual experience. I think tonally it’s different too. In the Guy Ritchie films, everything is supposed to be cool whereas “Sexy Beast” is often a little grotesque. There’s more nuance to the context. Where Guy Ritchie would pause a film and have a voice over explain why a character is scary, “Sexy Beast” builds anticipation for the appearance of Ben Kingsley so the viewer knows he’s bad news. The behaviour of the characters changes. They’re worried. We’re grown ups, we get what’s going on.

And Ben Kingsley’s Don Logan is terrible news for Gal and the crew living in Spain. He’s incredible. In the Wikipedia article for the film, he’s described as “the feared sociopath Don Logan” and that’s putting it lightly. He’s a wonderful creation and one of the most unhinged characters I’ve seen in a while. He has three scenes that each are worth watching the film for alone. There’s his shaving scene, the scene where Gal says he might have come to Spain for more than one reason and his incident in the airport. I’ve included the clips, but if you haven’t seen the film I would suggest you don’t watch them like that. Go and watch the film and see those scenes in the their natural habitat.

The strength of Ben Kingsley shows up the rest of the film to a certain extent. The scenes he’s not in pale in comparison to the scenes he’s in. The tension during his visit to Spain is sky high and once that comes to an end, so to speak, the film peters out a bit despite the fact that the storyline should hold that tension.

“Sexy Beast” didn’t have the commercial success of a Guy Ritchie piece but I think it has a lot more street cred. There are some gimmicky visual moments of cameras following people but it’s not as indulgent. There are some twists and turns and little things that reappear later but it’s not as goofy. More than anything else it was a vehicle for Ben Kingsley to be an absolute wizard and that’s definitely worth watching.

03 May 2021 – Guy Ritchie’s English Gangster Films

May 3, 2021 kevinisabastardguy ritchie, kevinisabastard, lock stock and two smoking barrels, rocknrolla, snatch, the gentlemen3 Comments

When I think about what a Guy Ritchie film is, there are “real” Guy Ritchie films and then some other random things that he makes. I think the “real” Guy Ritchie films are Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch, RocknRolla and the Gentlemen. There’s a possible case for including Revolver, but I would consider that an outlier. His other films seem like films for other people like studios or to impress Madonna. The “real” Guy Ritchie films share a bunch of themes and characteristics and, if I was Guy Ritchie, these are the films I would want to be known for. I’ve watched the four of them in the last while so I’ve done some thinking about them.

They’re all English gangster films. They’re all capers. They’re all based on big set pieces with twists and bluffs and double bluffs. There are big soundtracks. They’re generally a bit of a boys club. They’re generally visually a bit edgy. And they’re big on men’s fashion.

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, 1998 – The original…

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels was Guy Ritchie’s first film and you can see all the things that went on to be Guy Ritchie staples. The cuts are nice. The characters all get intros and have nicknames. There are three women in the entire film and they don’t get anymore than a line or two of dialogue. There’s capers and set pieces. It’s good fun but low budget.

Snatch, 2000 – The best one…

Snatch is the most Guy Ritchie film of all Guy Ritchie films. It looks slick. There are lots of characters with lots of storylines all crossing over and linking up. The fashion is dialled up. There’s nice coats and tweed. 2000 was a big time for British culture in terms of fashion, film and music and Snatch is a snapshot of that.

It’s the best Guy Ritchie film. It sticks to its guns. It does all the daft characters and twists and it works out as a solid film.

RocknRolla, 2008 – The step too far…

RocknRolla came after Swept Away and Revolver and it seemed like Guy Ritchie leaned a little too far back into what had worked for him before. It goes too laddish and also tries to be too poetic at the same time. The end result is fun but not as good a film as the earlier versions. Gerard Butler just isn’t Jason Statham. Ultimately, it feels like a third time trying something without doing anything new or particularly interesting.

The Gentlemen, 2019 – The version made for Americans…

The Gentlemen is a perfectly fine film but it feels like an American rework of a Guy Ritchie film. It’s fun and it’s slick but it lacks the charm of the earlier efforts. It’s carried by Colin Farrell and Hugh Grant. The fashion feels like a caricature of the earlier films.

Side notes:

Revolver, 2005 – The fever dream

Revolver could be argued to fit into the above list but I feel like it’s something different. It’s crime and there’s twists but it gets lost in philosophy and ends up just not being a great film. It doesn’t have the same feel as the others. It feels hazy, less slick and seems to be based in some generic American urban setting.

Layer Cake, 2004 – The non-Guy-Ritchie Guy Ritchie film

It would be a neat conclusion if the best Guy Ritchie film was actually Layer Cake, since it feels like a Guy Ritchie film but has nothing to do with him really. It’s directed by Matthew Vaughn, who produced Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch and based on the book, Layer Cake, by J.J. Connolly.

The truth is it’s good but not as good as Snatch. It’s good fun, but less of a caper, less visually interesting. Daniel Craig is a better lead and it’s incredible to rewatch it and see how much of an advertisement it was for the role as Bond.

In conclusion…

At this point, Guy Ritchie probably has more misses than hits, but it is a credit to him to have such a distinct and recognisable style. Some of what he did might be considered out dated now but I think that’s because so much of it has been absorbed into mainstream film.

25 April 2021 – Love and Monsters, Greta, Palm Springs and Promising Young Woman

April 25, 2021 kevinisabastardGreta, kevinisabastard, kevinisabastard.com, Love and Monsters, Palm Springs, Promising Young Woman2 Comments

The format for these weekend film posts feel like the need a bit of work so I’m going to try some things out over the next while. I watched a couple of things this week so I did a bit of a round up. In the order I watched them…

Love and Monsters (2020)

Enjoyable but forgettable. It stars Dylan O’Brien, who I know from the Maze Runner films and quite like. It’s been long enough since the height of YA apocalypse stuff for this to feel fun and it has a nice dog in it.

Greta (2018)

This film was ruined on me before I watched it because I didn’t really want to see it in the first place. It turned out to be better than I’d expected. It’s unsettling and fairly creepy. I went on my phone for parts of it but sometimes that’s the type of film you need.

Palm Springs (2020)

Probably my favourite thing I watched this week. That’s very subjective, not necessarily the best, but it is the film I enjoyed the most. It’s a classic Groundhog Day, reliving the day story line, but it’s great fun. Andy Samberg is a very likeable dude. I don’t remember seeing Cristin Milioti before but she has great chemistry with Samberg. It’s funny and silly but it’s also sweet. The time loops set up some good gags, there’s some great dancing and some good testing of the limits of the loop. Definitely worth a watch.

Promising Young Woman (2020)

Promising Young Woman is an odd one. It’s an intensely unpleasant story but a very likeable film. There are a couple of serious messages to the film about “nice guys”, attitudes to sexual assault and cancel culture but the tone of film is generally light and quite funny. Carey Mulligan is superb. Bo Burnham is surprisingly good. The casting in general is very well done. I don’t want to ruin anything so I won’t go on, but there is a lot to discuss after watching it.

18 April 2021 – I Care a Lot

April 18, 2021 kevinisabastardi care a lot, kevinisabastard, kevinisabastard.com, rosamund pike2 Comments

Sometimes I have trouble watching things when I can’t figure out who the hero is meant to be. I Care a Lot was a real case of this. Having watched it and thought about it, it’s probably a bit more like a nature documentary. There are predators and prey. Sometimes predators prey on other predators and it gets ugly, but we probably don’t need to root for anyone in that conflict.

Rosamund Pike is very good. She has a very intense haircut and she plays a good bastard. She acts as a legal guardian for older people and runs a racket exploiting the laws around that. She is made to look slick and ruthless and I felt like we were supposed to be impressed, but her business is super unpleasant. Early on in the film we see her in court, where the son of one of her guardians is petitioning for visitation. We feel sorry for this man’s situation but then when his petition is denied, he gets very nasty and misogynistic. It’s all very grim. And that’s the tone for the film, people are bad to people and those people are bad back.

The film is a wild ride. The tone is a bit all over the place. Things just get mad goofy from about half way through the film. Then the ending feels like a double cop out. However, there is a great performance from Rosamund Pike and Chris Messina as the Mafia lawyer is a brilliant character. Ultimately that’s enough to make I Care a Lot worth watching.

11 April 2021 – Saving Private Ryan

April 11, 2021 kevinisabastardkevinisabastard, kevinisabastard.com, saving private ryanLeave a comment

Saving Private Ryan is a good film. I had never seen it before and I kinda felt like people who say that it’s their favourite film were dull. It felt like a plain, safe choice. In fairness, it is very good.

The opening scene is the bit that everyone talks about. It is brutal and a little upsetting when you think about the fact that it’s based on what actually happened. I think it was what I’d expected. It has been hyped up and I think I was prepared for it. What is impressive is there are probably at least three other equally powerful scenes. I would say the scene with the sniper in the tower when they meet the French family, the aftermath of charging the machine gun at the radar tower and the hand to hand/ knife fight towards the end are way up there in terms of well written and constructed scenes.

It’s a very solid film all the way through. The current day elements could have been edited out and it probably would have improved the film, and conceptually, I feel like films about war are always gross. I had a read online about the film and people talk about the portrayal of WWII as the “good war”. Watching these things, it’s hard not to think about them as propaganda films. The idea of dying for your country in a post-9/11 world seems strange when we’ve seen so clearly how wars are fought for businesses rather than any noble causes.

04 April 2021 – Ava

April 4, 2021 kevinisabastardava, colin farrell, jessica chastain, john malkovichLeave a comment

Ava is not a good film. Jessica Chastain doesn’t deserve this. Colin Farrell doesn’t deserve this. John Malkovich doesn’t deserve this. I didn’t deserve it, but it was less than two hours long and we started looking for a film too late so our options were limited.

I feel like this film might have been made entirely based on contractual obligations. The original director, Matt Newton, has a bunch of charges for violence against women and that blew up and made things awkward for Jessica Chastain.

The film is a standard concept, executed with the minimum effort. Some dialogue is very chunky and some fight scenes are very obviously choreographed. It feels like everyone just wanted to get this wrapped up and go home.

28 March 2021 -Velvet Buzzsaw

March 28, 2021March 28, 2021 kevinisabastardLeave a comment

Velvet Buzzsaw is a a strange film. It’s stuck in between two worlds. It’s part horror film, part art world critique and probably isn’t enough of either to really work. And that’s a pity because it has a lot of good elements. I wonder if there was some heavy editing to sway the film in one direction or another.

Jake Gyllenhaal is class as usual, reminding me slightly of Nightcrawler. John Malkovich plays a character that I assume is just himself if he was an older artist. Zawe Ashton is great and I spent the whole film trying to figure out where I remembered her from – it’s an episode of Misfits. Toni Collette and Rene Russo are also very solid.

And that’s part of the problem. The cast and their performances are good. The idea is cool. The context is interesting. Everything works well independently but it just doesn’t tie together that well. It doesn’t commit to being scary or being a critique enough.

Worth a watch but what could it have been?

21 March 2021 -Sorry To Bother You

March 21, 2021 kevinisabastardLeave a comment

Did I enjoy Sorry To Bother You? Yes
Did Sorry To Bother You make me laugh? Yes
Did Sorry To Bother You make me uncomfortable? Yes
Did Sorry To Bother You make me think about things? Yes

So that’s probably mission accomplished for any film.

There’s a lot of social commentary on race, class, capitalism and business that this blog is too trivial to get into properly. It would require at least a full essay to deal with it all – black/white voices, losing homes, ethical business, the power of wealth, the individual vs the collective in the work place, existence.

I watched this film because I like LaKeith Stanfield and I had heard a buzz around it, but I hadn’t done any real deeper research. That’s a great way to see it because there are some mad bits, very surreal comedic moments and very on point social commentary that I wasn’t expecting. I didn’t know how good the cast was, Tessa Thompson is always very good, I didn’t recongnise Omari Hardwick until towards the end, and then there’s Armie Hammer. Armie Hammer’s appearance is wonderful in the context of everything that has come out about him in the last year. He’s supposed to be the likable face of new business, the start ups, the tech bros and he’s a pure mentaller. And that’s exactly what he’s turned out to be. He seemed fun and likeable but he’s probably deranged.

I like the clothes. I like the setting. I like way things are shot. I like the humour. And then there’s a lot to think about from the film which I think it handled well and definitely resonated with me, particularly the balancing act of the ethics of a job vs a person’s need to survive financially.

It’s a wild ride but definitely a must watch.

14 March 2021 – Moneyball

March 14, 2021 kevinisabastardLeave a comment

Moneyball is one of my favourite films.

So often, a film is made because of an incredibly interesting story and the film itself is an after thought. The work is done before someone decides to make a film and the rest of the process is just going through the motions. My example of this is always American Made, starring Tom Cruise, an interesting story turned into an alright film without anything too special. Moneyball is the opposite of American Made. I have no idea how a person could convince me to watch Moneyball if I didn’t already know it was supposed to be really good. A film about a baseball team who used statistics to change their fortunes is a lot of people’s idea of a nightmare. I hate sports films. I hate American sports films in particular. I hate the assumed universal relatability and Americentrism. Baseball films are the pinnacle of this bullshit and I just can’t be dealing with that. My appreciation of mathematics and statistics, systems and efficiency doesn’t out weigh my hatred of baseball films. Despite the fact that, on paper, this film sounds incredibly boring, it is incredible.

So I watched the film around the time it came out, based on the critical success and the cast. Brad Pitt is solid, but Jonah Hill is the man. I have so much time for Jonah Hill as an actor and a person. I really like his performance in Moneyball because is completely the character while adding elements of himself. I think the scene where Brad Pitt’s Billy Beane tells Jonah Hill’s Peter Brand that he’ll have to practice firing people is the best example. I’ve seen the interviews where Jonah Hill is uncomfortable and people are unpleasant to him and he is exactly the same without this seeming like a break from his character. That scene also shows Brad Pitt and the chewing tobacco which is a great detail to the film.

It’s a great film because of great writing, great casting, great performances and it’s wonderful because at the end of the day I don’t give a shit about what this film is about. It’s great despite being about baseball.