Netflix And Chill: No Country For Old Men (2007)

Sometimes you revisit movies and they hold up even better than you remembered. I find that happens to me often when I go back through the filmography of the Coen brothers. I'd seen No County For Old Men before (I would call it an essential viewing, but almost all of their features feel like essential viewing), but it had been a very long time. All that was left in my mind was a fading echo, sometimes made louder again by a clip shown online or a meme. Revisiting it this week was a real pleasure, and a reminder of how often I can seek cinematic comfort in so many of their works.

Josh Brolin plays Llewelyn Moss, a man who thinks he may be in luck when he stumbles across a bag of cash left at the scene of a drug deal gone wrong. Nobody would just accept that much cash going missing though, and Llewelyn soon finds himself being pursued by the relentless and ruthless Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem). Other people are also interested in where the money is, but the main game of cat and mouse is played out by Moss and Chigurh.

Adapted from a novel by Corman McCarthy, this is a bleak and brilliant slice of neo-noir that somehow allows the characters to continue feeling very much alive and ready for anything thrown their way . . . until death puts an end to their plans. The Coens take their time, especially in moments that show Chigurgh either killing people or letting their fate be decided by a coin toss.  

While it would be easy to spend all of my time praising Bardem, he does such a great job of portraying such an iconic character, everyone does well in their respective roles. Brolin is solid as the guy hoping to turn a bad situation to his advantage, Kelly Macdonald handles her accent well in the role of his wife, Carla, and both Tommy Lee Jones and Garret Dillahunt get some good scenes as two law enforcement officers who end up on the very edge of a horrible mess. There are also welcome roles for Woody Harrelson, Stephen Root, Barry Corbin, and Beth Grant.

It's hard to think of anyone watching this and not being able to appreciate it as a cinematic masterpiece, but I would say that about many of the Coen brothers movies. You have to accept a slower pace, as well as some idiosyncrasies, but the whole thing feels like some gorgeous piece of classical music all about life, death, chance, and fate. It doesn't necessarily build to a crescendo, but there's certainly a build up to something tremendous before the music then starts to gently fade out.

No Country For Old Men is a modern classic. If you don't agree with me then maybe you can agree that, to paraphrase a character in the film, "if it ain't, it'll do till one gets here."

10/10

If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing.
It also costs nothing to like/subscribe to the YouTube channel attached to the podcast I am part of - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErkxBO0xds5qd_rhjFgDmA
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews
Or Amazon is nice at this time of year - https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/Y1ZUCB13HLJD?ref_=wl_share 

Prime Time: Being The Ricardos (2021)

Written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, Being The Ricardos is a film I was keen to watch for the past few years. A look at the career and relationship between Lucille Ball (Nicole Kidman) and Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem), I was interested in everything to do with this. Lucy and Desi were huge stars who helped to reshape the landscape of television comedy, the casting intrigued me, and Sorkin is often a brilliant writer able to convey a lot of information in entertaining and sharp dialogue. 

The framework here is quite simple. We are shown a hectic time, and an important time, in the lives of Lucy and Desi. We also cut to some footage of people in the present talking about what they remember from their days witnessing the power couple make their show. Alongside our main stars are a couple of important supporting characters (played by J. K. Simmons and Nina Arianda), there’s a young writer (Alia Shawkat) who looks up to Lucy, but also has an idealism that doesn’t always take into account the diplomacy sometimes required to get the show made, and Jess Oppenheimer (Tony Hale) keeps trying to find a balance between the instincts of his stars and the feedback from the money men.

I won’t say that this is a bad film. The structure is a good choice, the key moments stringing the plot together work well, and it manages to celebrate the two main characters while also showing their problems. It isn’t great though, and that comes down to both the casting and the writing.

I really enjoy Kidman in many of her movie roles, but there’s a reason why she hasn’t had much success when trying her hand at comedy. Admittedly, this isn’t a comedy, but you have to believe how funny Lucille Ball can be when you see some of her famous moments being recreated onscreen, and Kidman just cannot manage it. Perhaps wary of looking too silly, or maybe not directed well enough by Sorkin, Kidman never really feels like Lucy when she has to be LUCY, although she does a perfectly good job of showing us the woman behind the TV persona. Bardem has a similar issue, although he also feels a bit weak whether portraying Desi the performer or Desi the man. The better performances come from Simmons and Arianda, both convincing as people and comedic performers, and Shawkat, who spends a lot of time being depressed by the constant crush of reality as she attempts to convince those around her of the importance of their platform. Hale is fine, but his character is the least interesting of the main bunch.

Sorkin’s dialogue just doesn’t work here though, and perhaps he would have been wise to get the structure in place and then pass the framework along to someone else. Everything that reveals actual truth about our leads is often presented in a heavy-handed and underlined way, and the mention of how Desi helped to revolutionize the TV sitcom is so horribly shoe-horned in that it feels like a clumsy segue in an improvised skit. The direction is disappointingly flat and lifeless, ensuring that Sorkin can be blamed for this being far below par for almost everyone involved.

There are still moments that work, especially when everything starts to tie together on the way to the final scenes, and Lucy and Desi are certainly worthy of the 131-minute runtime, but I won’t ever want to rewatch it. Maybe a book or documentary will serve them better, and I intend to find out when I have the time (so any recommendations are welcome).

5/10

If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing, and ALL of the links you need are here - https://linktr.ee/raidersofthepodcast
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews
Or Amazon is nice at this time of year - https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/Y1ZUCB13HLJD?ref_=wl_share

Dune: Part Two (2024)

The film that fans of Dune: Part One were forced to wait an extra five months to see in cinemas, that delay seems to have done nothing to dampen the enthusiasm of those eager for more visually gorgeous sci-fi on the big screen. It certainly gave me time to FINALLY watch the first instalment and join those who were eagerly awaiting the concluding part of the tale. Except, and I feel it’s important to say this somewhere in this review, this isn’t really a conclusion to the tale. It’s another lengthy chapter, and I was disappointed as the end credits rolled after an ending that didn’t feel like a proper ending. It might be in line with the source material, and there is certainly more to come from Denis Villeneuve working in this world, but that didn’t help me when I was underwhelmed by the way in which things just started to move towards the next part of the epic tale.

I will give a brief, and very poor, summary of the plot. After the events of the first film, Paul Atreides (Tinothée Chalamet) and his pregnant mother, Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), are living with the desert-dwelling Fremen on the planet of Arrakis. Powerful people still want to destroy the Fremen, all to control the spice and become even more powerful, but Paul may well be the secret weapon that helps to end the ongoing battles. Or he may well cause even more destruction and bloodshed. There are strong bonds forged, and broken, there is a prophecy that many start to doubt, and there is a need to learn how to walk without rhythm in order to stay safe from the giant sandworms.

Although a visual feast from start to finish, as well as an aural feast too (thanks to Hans Zimmer and everyone working in the sound department), Villeneuve and Jon Spaihts have once again done a magnificent job of compressing an epic tome into a digestible and entertaining movie. It has a slightly different tone from part one, mainly due to the fact that we are witnessing Paul exploring his true potential, but it’s often the equal of the first film.

The cast are perfect, as many of them already proved last time around. Both Chalamet and Ferguson get to be a bit stronger and meaner this time, which is an interesting change to their characters, Javier Bardem has a bit more fun in his role, and Zendaya gets to do a lot more than just be some mysterious woman in a vision. Christopher Walken and Florence Pugh are sorely underused, as is the wonderful Léa Seydoux, while the likes of Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, and Josh Brolin are given just time to stay involved in the ongoing plotting and scheming until Austin Butler comes onscreen and threatens to steal the entire movie away from everyone.

I have less to say about this than I had to say about Dune: Part One, but only because it is so perfectly in line with the groundwork set out a few years ago. Villeneuve is arguably one of the best directors around when it comes to creating an entire world in which to immerse viewers (imagine the worlds we could see if he ever worked alongside Guillermo del Toro), and this is incredible stuff. It’s grandiose, it seems to emanate dry heat from every frame, and the prospect of getting to spend more time in this world is the silver lining to the small cloud that is that non-ending.

Much like the spice featured at the heart of the tale, this is pure and powerful stuff. And that’s without even mentioning how depressingly it parallels events in our reality that have been ongoing for decades. 

8/10

If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing.
It also costs nothing to like/subscribe to the YouTube channel attached to the podcast I am part of - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErkxBO0xds5qd_rhjFgDmA
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews
Or Amazon is nice at this time of year - https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/Y1ZUCB13HLJD?ref_=wl_share

The Little Mermaid (2023)

I have been wanting to see The Little Mermaid ever since grown adults started crying and spitting their dummies out over the fact that the lead role had gone to a young black woman. Because, apparently, mermaids can appear onscreen in various incarnations, but making them non-white is an affront to the firmly-held beliefs people suddenly claimed to have about fictional citizens of the sea. Despite wanting to see it, I didn’t make time for it while it was at the cinema because I just cannot work up any enthusiasm for the ongoing Disney remake factory (some may claim this is less a remake, more a reworking of the source material, and I have to politely disagree).

People should already know the story, but here is the very basic summary. A mermaid named Ariel (Halle Bailey) keeps spending her time thinking about humans and the world above the surface of the sea, much to the chagrin of her father, King Triton (Javier Bardem). She then falls in love with a human, Prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King), and ends up signing up to a Faustian pact with the scheming Ursula (Melissa McCarthy). Ariel gets to walk on land, giving her a chance to meet the Prince, but she has her lovely voice removed, as well as the memory of the deal made with Ursula.

Directed by the very capable Rob Marshall, The Little Mermaid has a number of pleasantly surprising positives. The casting of Bailey is one of the biggest, with the actress proving to be a wonderful choice for the lead role, presenting herself as believably lovely and tuneful (when she has her voice). The production design throughout, the overall look of the film whenever showing the underwater world, is very good, and there are a number of fairly realistic CG creations accompanying our lead character on her journey. It’s also worth mentioning that there are supporting roles for the excellent Noma Dumezeni and Art Malik.

The script isn’t particularly great, with David Magee responsible for the thankless task of updating the animated film while trying to balance the familiar and the fresh. He doesn’t succeed, sadly, with the familiar moments just ensuring that viewers will remember how much they love the earlier incarnation, and he’s also hampered by the fact that things have to come crashing to a halt at one point for a horrible and lifeless song to be sung by the bland Prince Eric. A few other songs work better, but they’re mostly the ones lifted from the earlier film (although Awkwafina, who voices the seagull named Scuttle, gets a very fun number).

Dull Prince aside, I enjoyed almost everyone else here, whether just in voice form or more fully shown onscreen. Daveed Diggs is a decent Sebastian, Jacob Tremblay is a good fit for Flounder, and Awkwafina is a lot of fun. McCarthy is someone I always tend to enjoy onscreen, and I am happy to say that her portrayal of Ursula is as entertaining as I expected it to be.

All in all, despite this feeling just as unnecessary as every other time that Disney does this kind of thing, The Little Mermaid is enjoyable enough. It has a better variety of representation and cultural texture than the animated film, but it suffers from the inherent disadvantage of turning cute cartoons into “real-life” imagery.

6/10

If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing.
It also costs nothing to like/subscribe to the YouTube channel attached to the podcast I am part of - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErkxBO0xds5qd_rhjFgDmA
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews
Or Amazon is nice at this time of year - https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/Y1ZUCB13HLJD?ref_=wl_share

Prime Time: Dune (2020)

It's a bit of a running joke sometimes, but I tend to mention the fact that I've not yet read the source material in a lot of my movie reviews. Films and books are two very different mediums, of course, but knowledge of one can inform your opinion of the other, which is why I try to let people know the full context of my opinion. And it feels even more important than ever to mention it here, considering how many sci-fi fans seem to love the franchise kick-started by Frank Herbert back in 1965.

With the memory of the 1984 film still looming large in my subconscious, I kept delaying a viewing of this film for as long as I could. The cast seemed good enough, the visuals looked great, and I hadn't yet been disappointed by director Denis Villeneuve. I just couldn't bring myself to give it 2 1/2 hours of my life though. Until I could.

Timothée Chalamet plays Paul Atreides, the son of Lady Jessica Atreides (Rebecca Ferguson) and Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac). This noble family are sent to the planet Arrakis, a hostile environment that also happens to be the home of the most valuable resource in the universe, spice. Spice makes interstellar travel possible, among other things. Arrakis has some hostile native inhabitants, in the shape of both humanoids and the huge sandworms, but the House of Atreides hope to use diplomacy and respect to make the best of their situation, ignorant to the fact that they have been set up for failure. Aside from the political manoeuvring, Lady Jessica spends time helped Paul develop his power, known as "The Voice", and preparing him to fulfil his prophesied potential.

Adapted for the screen by Villeneuve, Jon Spaihts, and Eric Roth, the latter two with very mixed filmographies that wouldn't necessarily lead you to think of them as first main choices for this, Dune is a dense viewing experience that admirably does enough throughout to keep viewers up to speed with the developing intrigue and treachery. It's part one of two, and that was definitely the right choice. In fact, the more of the source material that comes through in each main scene, the more you realise what a fool's errand poor David Lynch was on when he tried to pack everything into one feature back in the mid-1980s.

Packed with gorgeous visuals from start to finish, Villeneuve makes sure to once again build a completely believable and fully-formed environment for the characters to inhabit. The production design, make up, wardrobe, etc, are all absolutely stunning, and displayed beautifully by cinematographer Greig Fraser, and there's a superb Hans Zimmer score to accompany the flawless visuals.

While Chalamet plays the lead role, it's an extra delight to have the rest of the cast so stacked with great performers and familiar faces. Not that Chalamet is bad, but his character is, certainly in this first half of the tale, a bit weak and passive, for the most part. Ferguson and Isaac are effortlessly impressive though, and they have a couple of reliable advisors/warriors in the shape of Jason Momoa and Josh Brolin (both excellent, the latter disappointingly under-used). Stellan Skarsgård is almost unrecognisable, at first anyway, as the repugnant and cold-blooded Baron Harkonnen, Dave Bautista turns up just long enough to play his nephew, and there are excellent contributions from Chang Chen and Sharon Duncan-Brewster. You also have small roles for Javier Bardem and Zendaya, both playing different Arrakis natives who could end up helping our lead to fulfil his promise.

This is the kind of big-budget sci-fi that fans deserve. It feels more mature and intelligent than the usual mainstream releases, it has been crafted with a real care and attention to detail, and Villeneuve and co. have taken care to punctuate the ethereal and meditative mood with enough livelier set-pieces to ensure that the lengthy runtime doesn't feel like an unendurable slog. Many fans will have already seen this, and been won over by it, but I recommend it to anyone else who has been as hesitant as I was. It's worth your time, and I hope everything comes together for a satisfying concluding instalment.

8/10

If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing.
It also costs nothing to like/subscribe to the YouTube channel attached to the podcast I am part of - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErkxBO0xds5qd_rhjFgDmA
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews
Or Amazon is nice at this time of year - https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/Y1ZUCB13HLJD?ref_=wl_share

Prime Time: The Counsellor (2013)

After all of these years hearing about The Counsellor, about how awful and bonkers it is, I finally got around to watching it. It is certainly bonkers, but it's also consistently entertaining throughout, simply giving viewers a great combination of a director and cast having fun with material that always seems poised to go in a dozen different directions at any one time.

Written by Cormac McCarthy, best known for writing the novels that both No Country For Old Men and The Road were based on, this is the tale of a counsellor (obviously) who decides to get involved with a potentially-lucrative drug deal. Things don't go according to plan, however, and the counsellor soon finds out that some actions can never be undone. He had been warned by people around him, but he assumed that there weren't any risks. How wrong he was.

Directed by Ridley Scott, this is a wild ride that clocks in with a runtime just shy of two hours. It doesn't need to be that long, a 90-minute movie would probably have worked just as well, but there's nothing here that isn't either intriguing or visceral and brilliant. I wanted to rewatch this as soon as the end credits started rolling. Although sometimes messy, it's always ready to show you something nasty in the most cinematic way possible, whether that is by keeping certain elements offscreen to make everything more palatable or by showing you some imagery that feels like it hasn't been depicted in movies before.

It also helps that the cast are very game in their performances, with Cameron Diaz seeming to have the most fun she's had in a long time, playing a character who is always a number of steps ahead of the other main characters around her. She's also involved in the weirdest and wildest scene in the film, as Javier Bardem's character watches her "make love" to his car windscreen, and I have to give kudos to her for committing to a script with that moment in it. Bardem is hilarious in that moment, as well as being fairly amusing in many of his other scenes. Fassbender plays the titular counsellor, excellent at being all cool and confidence until things start to unravel, and Penélope Cruz is perfectly fine in the rather thankless role of his unwitting partner, Laura. Brad Pitt has a decent little role, someone who is also involved in the drug deal, but who seems much more aware of the high stakes, and there are excellent moments for Rosie Perez, Sam Spruell, Richard Brake, and some other familiar faces.

I can't quite explain why I loved this so much though. The script isn't great, not in terms of the actual dialogue anyway, and the randomness detracts from what should have been a coiled spring of a dark thriller, but it all worked. Maybe my low expectations helps (I try to keep things balanced, but it's difficult when a film has a solid reputation already, good or bad), or maybe the majority of people just didn't recognise this for the slice of brilliance that it is. Yeah, it must be that. There's no other possible explanation. I'm not sure I would recommend this to others, but I hope some people give it a chance, and maybe they'll unexpectedly love it as much as me.

8/10

If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing.
It also costs nothing to like/subscribe to the YouTube channel attached to the podcast I am part of - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErkxBO0xds5qd_rhjFgDmA
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews

Noir-vember: Collateral (2004)

It’s something we have seen happen in movies before, the businessman with a busy schedule who offers to pay a driver for a whole night of work. All the driver has to do is get the passenger to various places on time, wait, and receive a nice bonus at the end of his shift. This particular businessman is Vince (Tom Cruise), and the taxi driver is a man named Max (Jamie Foxx). Vince has five jobs to do, but Max becomes alarmed after the first job, when a dead body falls on his taxi. That’s when he finds out that Vince is a hitman. 

Directed by Michael Mann, and written by Stuart Beattie, Collateral is best described as, to use the technical term, an absolute beast of a film. Set mainly during one night in Los Angeles, it’s a two-hander that makes the most of two fantastic leads delivering performances up there with their best work.

It also makes the most of L.A. Mann gets the right people working with him to put his vision onscreen in the way that best showcases his eye for cityscapes, and how human animals move around them when being pursued, or even trapped. This is a gorgeous and glossy film, and it manages to avoid claustrophobia, even when a number of scenes simply show Vince and Max talking while the cab is driving around. Mann doesn’t put a foot wrong, and when the action beats hit, well, he once again does what he seems to do best. The nightclub scene in this film holds up as a flawless bit of entertaining violence, a precursor to the visceral thrills of the John Wick movies.

Sporting an uncharacteristic grey head of hair, Cruise is perfectly fast as the cool, calculating killer who lives by his own moral code. He’s a terminator, but one affected by elements of the human condition. Foxx is just the right mix of comfortable chat, nerves, and quick thinking as he gets drawn deeper and deeper into a nightmare scenario. Around the two leads, you get one hell of a supporting cast all giving great performances. Mark Ruffalo and Peter Berg are two cops trying to figure out what is going on, Jada Pinkett Smith is a lawyer who stands out as Max’s favourite client of the shift, and there are a number of familiar faces elsewhere, from Barry Shabaka Henley to Bruce McGill, Javier Bardem to the briefest turn from Jason Statham.

Maybe not as successful as it wants to be when really trying to push the urban jungle and predator/prey analogies, Collateral does everything else pretty much perfectly. From the pacing to the soundtrack, the set-pieces to the foreshadowed final moments, this is gripping, very cool, and arguably the most fun film that Mann has delivered within this subgenre.

9/10

If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing.
It also costs nothing to like/subscribe to the YouTube channel attached to the podcast I am part of - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErkxBO0xds5qd_rhjFgDmA
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews
Or Amazon is nice at this time of year - https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/Y1ZUCB13HLJD?ref_=wl_share