Movies
A startlingly simple western stretched out to its limit, so much in fact that it passed the two-hour mark. Even after having watched the film I'm still not entirely sure how they actually managed to do it, though obviously the film did feel tepid and slow in places. Hawks really made a bad call there. Wayne is a really poor actor and the more dialogue there is, the less appealing his performance. While the setup could've worked for a simple, short genre flick, the excess dialogue and the prolonged scenes really screw with the pacing. The ending is pretty cringeworthy too, making this a pretty confusing western.Read all
Another mother of all gangster films. There seem to be a couple of films around were given that badge of honor, I usually come to a very similar conclusion watching them: I'm not a huge fan of classic gangster films, so I'm not really all that impressed with the early blueprint of those films. Even though Underworld is a true silent, it already feels pretty focused on the narrative. Maybe it just comes with the genre? The cinematography was pretty bland, the score forgettable and the performances rather basic. The plot is a real bore and even though the film is quite short, having seen a trillion versions of this story already makes the 80-minute runtime at least 40 too long.Read all