It is quite shit, and thoroughly unpleasant on almost every level, yet I’m still strangely pleased I took the time to watch it.
I guess one thing I liked is that they tried to do something different, this wasn’t just a shit attempt at replicating the work of someone like Scorsese. But I’m not sure it really worked.
I think the film could have done with more flashbacks to him in his glory days, interspersing the film with bits like that would have helped a lot I think, instead of 2 hours of Al Capone basically shitting his pants and chomping on carrots like Bugs.
It might have helped of they had done a bit more to develop the “is there $10 million dollars hidden somewhere by this man?” plot thread, I think intentionally that just didn’t go anywhere in the end. Likewise with the bastard child thing.
Its a shame as I really liked the cast. A few ex Sopranos actors which I love to see (Charmaine Bucco and Mikey Palmice with his fuckface-itis) and Kyle MacLachlan is a screen presence I always enjoy. Linda Cardellini did good work too.
Overall, the film was a let down, because it felt like it had a lot going for it potentially.
Also, I really like Tom Hardy but it would be refreshing if he did a film in which his character spoke clearly and was easily understandable , its starting to feel like he doesn’t take roles unless he’s allowed to put on some sort of impenetrable accent lol
An American journalism student in London is given a big scoop that could kickstart her career by the ghost of a recently departed journalistic heavyweight.
The scoop being the belief that the son of a well known upper-class Englishman is a serial killer known to the press as the “tarot card killer”.
This is easily Scarlett Johansson and Hugh Jackman’s worst performances.
EDIT:
LOL !!!
Charles Dance claimed that writer and director Woody Allen didn’t give any direction for his performance, and further claimed that he was asked to arrive on-set in his own suit and tie, upon which he filmed his scene and left.
Why didn’t you like it? Was it all a bit too “pretentious, art house bollocks” for your tastes?
I first saw it when I was 13 or something similar and remember it being one of the weirdest premises I’d ever seen in a film and I’ve loved it since.
We do often have similar tastes, but it seems there’s a certain kind of surreal, meta type of film we disagree on. Cos I also quite liked Sorry to Bother You lol
I like a few of his films, like Annie Hall, Midnight In Paris and didn’t even mind Play It Again, Sam. But I think this whole “1 film a year” (they’re mostly bleh) thing is only possible because he’s still dining out on successes from 40 years ago and perhaps his theatre work, too.
Yeah, I think there’s definitely something in this, and I can see how someone might feel that way about BJM, or a film like those you mentioned.
Only a side note, but my other half hadn’t seen The Usual Suspects until a couple years ago. I’ll respect spoilers just in case, but like half an hour in she turned to me and revealed she’d totally sussed the famous twist at the end.
It was all I could do to mask the pure annoyance I felt and keep neutral as to not confirm her suspicions haha
Part of me feels like she’s probably had it spoiled multiple times in her life and on some sub conscious level knew it without even knowing it. It’s probably the most commonly spoiled secret in film portrayed in mainstream media, I can’t imagine anyone could go through their lives without hearing it as least once.
Either that or she’s Batman levels of detective. Also entirely possible the premise doesn’t hold up as much as I thought it did as I watched it like 15 years ago.
I’ve got to say, she is actually really good at predicting where a TV show or film is going, she’s done similar on quite a lot of occasions. This was just the most annoying example as a large portion of the film’s appeal lies in its infamous twist (not to say I don’t think its cool as fuck regardless of that)
But you could totally be right about the subconscious knowledge that might have existed, kind of thing that happens but would be super hard to ever pin down and prove either way, obviously.
It could also have just been that she knew there was a famous twist, even if she didn’t know exactly which characters were involved in the twist, and she just guessed it because that was the most obviously SHOCKING twist you could imagine half an hour in. Which it kind of is, when you look at each character and their likelihood of being the twist.
I was actually going to mention something like that and I kid you not I was going to use The Sixth Sense as an example, as seeing it in the cinema would be much harder to predict the twist than seeing it now even just knowing who the director is and what he’s famed for.
I also think in the 90’s twists weren’t really as mainstream as they are now and I think it’s why I remember The Usual Suspects so fondly, now every piece of hot trash that gets a cinema release has to have some convoluted shock ending that feels entirely as an afterthought. Whereas Sixth Sense and Usual Suspects the twists were the entire foundation of the story arc.
Still though fair play to her, I’d have probably been seething too and rage quit the film, always awful when the nostalgia factor let’s you down a little.
Hahah, I half wanted to rage quit, cos its one of those films you want to show someone and then take in their reaction as their mind is blown at the death, and that was fucked 30 mins in.
This is kind of a tangential point to what you were saying, but I think it also helped that the internet was not in widespread use at the time, you could quite easily rock up to the cinema to see a film and not feel like you’ve already been bombarded with the key plot points and the coolest/funniest lines in the film or a boatload of fucking tweets about how amazing/shit the film is.
When I first watched Seven I had no idea Kevin Spacey was in it and I believe they intentionally kept him out of the marketing around release time, and didn’t list him on the dvd case when I bought it years later, so I just popped the disc in and settled down for a film starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman and didn’t expect anyone else of that kind of stature to pop up. So when he turns up half way through it was a massive shock and fucking awesome.
A lot are cliche now. “OMG, I never expected my super best friend bit part character was the bad guy all along… and now for the flashbacks explaining how it was all done”
