Category: Movies

10 Best / Worst

Movies

Here’s a list of movies I can get behind:

10 Brilliant British War Films That Completely Tanked
(That Are Now Classics)

I’ve seen all but one or two (I have got to watch Colonel Blimp at some point in the near future), and all I can do is offer a ringing endorsement.  That they all failed at the box office just reinforces how good they really are.

I have DVD copies of A Bridge Too Far,  Aces High and Charge of the Light Brigade, and having been reminded by the video, I think I need to look at acquiring a couple more — The War Game and Zulu Dawn, especially.

Do ye (y’all) the same.

Not Really The Best

Literature, Movies

Okay, I admit I was caught by the headline to this article:

‘Masterpiece’ period drama based on ‘best book ever written’ is free to stream on Netflix

Ignoring for a moment the inherent inability of Netflix to make a “masterpiece” anything, I was nevertheless curious to see what constituted the “best book ever written”.

Alas, no.  While One Hundred Years of Solitude  isn’t a bad book, it’s nowhere close to being the best book ever written — hell, even in the “magical reality” genre (to which it belongs) John Fowles’s The Magus  has it beaten all ends up — but while One Hundred  may entertain, it’s not going to change your world in the same way, perhaps, that Les Misérables  might.

Feel free to discuss in Comments, or to nominate your own submission for the greatest.  (Oh gawd, here come the Heinlein / Pratchett groupies…)

Surprising Turnaround

Movies, Music

…from me, that is.

I’ve made fun of that skinny little Brit actor with the fey name, Timothee Chalamet, currently the bonker of one of the Kardashian coven (Kimmy, Kluless, Kunty, whatever).

But the other night I watched him play a young Bob Dylan in  –Out Of Nowhere   A Complete Unknown  and his performance blew me out of my socks.  And I’m not even a fan of Dylan’s, to put it mildly.

Not only did Chalamet nail Dylan’s speaking voice and attitude, he also got the singing voice almost perfectly.  And the movie was a gem:  a little time capsule of the early 1960s — the best compliment I could pay it is that I wished it was longer.

Do yourself a favor, and watch it, and him.  (I can’t remember which channel it’s on, but whatever.)

R.I.P. Val

Movies

I’m sorry to see that the Big C finally ended the life of Val Kilmer, who I’ve always thought was a fine actor.  If he’d played no other part, his role as the dying Doc Holliday in Tombstone  would make a hell of an acting legacy.  In The Saint, Heat  and even the silly Real Genius:  likewise brilliant.

As for the rest… pick your favorites.

(Apparently, according to some directors, Kilmer could be a total asshole to work with, but I don’t care about that.  Sometimes, talent excuses a few peccadilloes, a.k.a. the Barrymore Exception.)