David Lynch | Dune

I remember being underwhelmed watching Dune as a teenager when it came out and it's even worse today. Hard to believe but it's 7 years older than Star Wars and about 70 years behind in effects.

I thought I might enjoy picking up on David Lynch's Direction of the movie but to be honest he's totally out of his depth. The acting sucks and the props are often comical. 

The books though are very trippy.

For Whom The Bells Toll

I recall the book "For Whom The Bells Toll" lying around the house as a youngster and I read it but don't have too many memories apart from Greek partisans who fought against the Nazis and whom I later learnt were the first victims of the CIA installing the same Fascists they had been fighting against when the war was over as the "New" enemy was communism.

All this goes to show what a load of shit war is and how the State just uses people to keep on to their wealth.

Anyway Ingrid Bergman is an 'off-the-charts' boyish looking beauty in this movie, and the old mother who looks after the partisans is a character but the rest of the movie is a honker. It's full of cliché rough types who need a good shower and some fluffy towels instead of living like armpits.

Silkwood

I wanted to like Silkwood as it's an activist movie and there is a connection to the whole Israeli nuclear smuggling deal. 

However in the final analysis, even though there are some quintessential white trash 70's scenes by cute couple Kurt Russell and Meryl Streep, the movie hasn't aged all that well and arguably Cher is the best actor in it.

Anchorman

I've included above, the funniest scene for me, but Anchorman is the same joke over and again. ....Television news is dangerously shallow. 

Which it is...  so the movie is not so funny after a while.

Iron Sky

I've written a ton of stuff about the Nazi space program over at Punk Planning, usually under the Joseph Farrell tag or Douglas Dietrich so I was looking forward to checking out this movie from the conspiracy angle or predictive programming angle.

Sadly Iron Sky drops like lead. 

It's American knock-off cheese made in Finland. You get the picture.

Chariots of Fire - What a Shit Movie

I've been curious to watch Chariots of Fire for some time, as the producer is Dodi Fayed who was murdered in a Boston Brakes accident with Princess Diana in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel in Paris. 

I wanted to know if this multiple Oscar winning film had stood the test of time and the short answer is, it hasn't.

There's some fine DOP and Merchant Ivory style Englishness in the scenes throughout the film with country mansions, Oxbridge colleges and so forth but all the characters are paper thin 'for he's a jolly good fellow' type clichés. 

The script is a honker with superficial struggles presented for one character as the trials of being Jewish in England as well as an athlete, or for another character, a Scottish Christian who wont run on the Sabbath. Both are easily resolved as being Jewish places no restriction on running and even elicits significantly less abuse than a Pakistani receives in England today, and running on the Sabbath for the Christian needed only a change of races to the 400 metres to be held during the week. The Sabbath is Saturday anyway but don't let quaint lingo spoil the cricket sweaters plot.

It's hard not to think that Dodi Fayed merely picked up this script because it glorifies Jewish struggles perceived or otherwise because that's the only way to be recognised in Hollywood. Good luck to him if that's why he made the film as it won a fistfull of Oscars, but he never made anything recognised globally after.

I'm just calling it as I see it and don't mind being corrected if the film won awards for any other reason.

The other premise for watching this film last night is because Nigel Havers also stars in it. He has recently come out in defence of his Aunty, Elizabeth Butler Sloss as an excellent choice for the VIP paedophile inquiry even though she covered up the Cleveland Child Abuse inquiry to such an extent that she never asked any of the 121 child victims if they had been sexually abused, and undermined all the evidence put forward by all the professionals apart from a discredited American doctor who defended the paedophiles and not the victims.

In short this film exemplifies that all patriotism is ego stoking and pernicious to the ascendant path.

Ring of Bright Water

I was forced to read the book for my English Literature O Level. I thought it was a boring book at the time but it's been so long I downloaded the movie in case that was any better. 

Ring of Bright Water starts off OK with familiar London scenes including the pub at lunch time but after an hour of Otter malarkey set to tedious clarinet music I'd had enough.

Defending Your Life

The last thing I want in a movie is to be entertained. I was entertained to death by Hollywood around the end of my teen years so if you are dull and need a rapidly aging 90's movie with every contrived cliché in the RomCom movie book, go ahead, knock yourself out.

The Lone Ranger

Jeff Rense recommended this so I now know he likes entertainment for movies and the last thing I need is entertainment. 

Haven't we been entertained to death?

I wont be taking Jeff's recommendations seriously again.

Unusually for Johnny Depp The Lone Ranger really is a shit movie and his character doesn't work for me. I should have known though. It was directed by Jerry Bruckheimer who made government war propaganda faux news Saving Jessica Lynch.

The Wolf of Wall Street

There's not one likeable character in The Wolf of Wall Street. Childish scriptwriting and cliché after cliché after cliché. 

Possibly Leonardo DiCaprio's worst ever performance apart from one notably funny Lamborghini Scene.

Must have done it for the money.

Even Dwarfs Started Small

Maybe you have to be stoned to watch this movie but I couldn't last till half way. I usually like Werner Herzog though. You might like it. I didn't.

Spartacus

I couldn't enjoy this knowing that Kirk Douglas raped Natalie Wood. It's an early Kubrick but it's still Hollywood Cheese though there's an interesting scene with Lawrence Oliver's bisexual advances (oysters and snails analogy) on Tony Curtis who looks like he bluffed his way into movies because of his good looks.