MOVIE INFO
In a broken city rife with injustice, ex-cop Billy Taggart (Mark Wahlberg) seeks redemption and revenge after being double-crossed and then framed by its most powerful figure, the mayor (Russell Crowe). Billy's relentless pursuit of justice, matched only by his streetwise toughness, makes him an unstoppable force and the mayor's worst nightmare.
I've come to realise it's one step forward two steps back with Marky Mark. For every Boogie Nights theres's a Contraband or a Happening. For every Fighter there's a Max Payne or an Italian Job. I was never bored whilst watching this film but in years to come no one's going to be sitting around in a party and suggesting, 'Hey shall we put Broken City on?'
Russell Crowe sure does get about, and he's pretty good in this. The televised political debate was his outstanding moment, the best written part and the highlight of the film.
Over than that the only thing I learnt from this event was that my buddy Rico likes to order 2 dinners from Macdonalds and then debates a third after he's wolfed down both. An unbelievable display of gluttony.
Tomato Meter - 30% critics
Tomato Meter - 48% audience
Peter Meter - 62%
Last weekend I rented Badlands from the local library and watched it in stages during the week whilst eating my salmon dinners.
MOVIE INFO
"He wanted to die with me and I dreamed of being lost forever in his arms." A young couple goes on a Midwest crime spree in Terrence Malick's hypnotically assured debut feature, based on the 1950s Starkweather-Fugate murders. Fancying himself a rebel like James Dean, twentysomething Kit (Martin Sheen) takes off with teen baton-twirler Holly (Sissy Spacek) after shooting her father (Warren Oates) when he tries to split the pair up. Once bounty hunters discover their riverside hiding place, Kit and Holly head toward Saskatchewan, leaving dead bodies in their wake. As the law closes in, however, Holly gives herself up -- but Kit doesn't hold it against her, as he basks in his new status as a momentary folk hero. Inaugurating the use of voice-over narration that he would continue in Days of Heaven (1978) and The Thin Red Line (1998), Malick juxtaposes Holly's flat readings of her flowery romance-novel diary prose with the banal and surreal details of their journey. Singularly inarticulate with each other, Kit and Holly are more intrigued by mythic celebrity gestures, as Holly peruses her fan magazines and Kit commemorates key moments before orchestrating a properly dramatic capture for himself (complete with the right hat). The sublime visuals lend a dreamlike beauty to the couple's trip even as their actions are treated casually; Malick neither glamorizes Kit and Holly nor consigns them to the bloody end of their fame-fixated predecessors in Bonnie and Clyde (1967). With the couple's opaque dialogue and Holly's fanzine dream narration, Malick further denies an easy explanation for their crimes. Made for under 500,000 dollars, Badlands debuted at the 1973 New York Film Festival, along with Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets, and was released within months of two other outlaw-couple road movies, Steven Spielberg's The Sugarland Express and Robert Altman's Thieves Like Us. Although Badlands did not make an impression at the box office, its pictorial splendor and cool yet disquieting narrative established Malick as one of the most compelling artists to come out of early-'70s Hollywood
It's been one film that has escaped me over the years, and I was fuming to find that the first ten minutes were skipping due to a damaged disc. Come on Braintree Library, what am I paying my taxes for? (I'm joking. Actually when people tell me how shit Braintree is I always defend it by saying it has a fantastic library, just check out the comic book selection, it's incredible).
So this is one of Terence Malik's earlier work and I have seen and loved both Thin Red Line and Tree of Life. So this was a treat for me. First off, it should be said that so many films have riffed off the imagery and theme from Badlands. Natural born Killers owes this film a debt, as does Moonrise Kingdom which I saw recently. The term 'Badlands' literally means Bad Land. The Spanish would refer to is as Tierra Baldia meaning 'Waste land'. It adds to the destitute and hopeless of the characters, General Lord Melchett would describe it as a "baron featureless desert'.
You might be interested to know even though it says it's a work of fiction, it is loosley based on a true story of a young couple that went around killing people in 1958. AND the character that Martin Sheen played said that the girl (played by Sissy Spacek) initiated some of the killings, even though the film paints her in an almost innocent light throughout.
Tomato Meter - 98% critics
Tomato Meter - 89% audience
Peter Meter - 87%
Last night I did a DJ slot with Rob Jones down at The Loop in Chelmsford. It was an Indie night which they are doing the start of every month. Rob showed incredible verve during the set, bouncing up and down and ordering the girls on the dance floor to reveal their breasts. Fun times had by few. He also managed to fill 3 glasses with his own piss whilst maintaing complete control of the decks. We are hoping to make it a regular slot. So WATCH Rob and I DJ down The Loop in Chelmsford every month, and NOT Broken City OR Badlands.
@thepeterbrooker
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