Stormy Monday
Mar. 24th, 2004 10:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
muck_a_luckJust finished Stormy Monday. Best worst $13 I ever spent!
[Up front, I want to say, it's late. I can't spell worth a damn. I'm not gonna use the dictionary to write in my own journal. So bite me.]
(For laughs, check out this hilarious review. Author seems to think that SB is Irish. Or possibly his character was supposed to be Irish? If so, he wasn't fooling little American me. I can tell the difference between Maj. Sharpe and Sgt. Harper with my eyes closed. *eg*)
Anyway, a movie for fans of Sean Bean, Melanie Griffith, Newcastle, and (I presume because Sting had a hand in it) jazz. Everybody else should probably steer clear.
Moving roughly from the worst to the best...
First, I should say I have very little tolerance for jazz. Very, very little. I probably would have killed the Krakow Jazz Ensemble with my bare hands, if I had been in that airport lounge.
The opening montage made heavy-handed use of contrasting images. Old stone ruins by the river with a backdrop of industrial skyline. Horses running in green field next to industrial wasteland. And yes, Native Americans dancing in a mall (huh?). And Kate (Melanie G.) and Brendan (Beanie) waking up and going through their morning ablutions. This could have been as annoying as the doors in Sliding Doors, except that, thankfully, they gave up on this device as soon as the opening sequence was done.
Moving on, this movie was a bit of a plot mess. Something about Cosmo (Tommy Lee Jones) needing to buy Finney's (Sting') jazz club. But rather than make Finney an offer, Cosmo sends in his thugs first? Maybe to make Finney take a bad offer? Because later they apparently make him an offer he's happy to accept. Maybe it had something to do with laundering Cosmo's dirty money from his criminal organization in the United States. (Look, I was paying close attention here, people, and still not sure what the underlying motivations were for the various acts of violence in this story.)
Brendan is Finney's newest employee. He gets mixed up with the thugs who are originally sent to rough Finney up. Finney gives him the fancy car of one of the thugs. Predictably, this makes Brendan a target for further violence. First he gets fairly severly beaten up. Later, they try to kill him by blowing him up in his car.
Tommy Lee was looking very MIB. In 1988.
I just don't see casting Melanie Griffith as a sex pot. She's too girl next door, plus she's a mouth-breather. That said, she did a perfectly good job in this movie. Very workmanlike. But I gotta say while watching it I thought of two really good reasons to hate her - Sean Bean and Antonio Banderas. (Note to self: Time to watch The Thirteenth Warrior again.)
Beanie was just lovely in this. Such a baby! And spent half the movie being naked. (And the other half wearing leather jackets. Wardrobe must have been done by a woman with a fetish.) As usual, the best actor in sight. And, he survives the entire film! Yay! :) Oh. Brendan was wearing a gold band on his right hand. In the UK - wedding bands - right or left?
Sting can't act his way out of a paper bag, poor thing. BUT, he was a wonderful pure example of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
uisgich's Geordie accent, so I hung on absolutely every word. And look! I found an English/Geordie Geordie/English translator! It was also fun to scope out uisgich's hometown. So cool!
Interesting Polish interlude in this movie. Thought the Krakow Jazz Ensemble was v. annoying musically, they were a charming group of guys. They take Brendan and Kate to some party where everyone is Polish. The dialogue is entirely in Polish for this scene, and, bizarrely, not subtitled. You would think that this was a device to show the alienation of the main characters, except that the scene isn't really shot from the perspective of Kate and Brendan. Later, it is revealed that Kate at least understands Polish, maybe speaks a litte (her father and grandparents were Polish), but in all, it was weirdly out of place here. And personally frustrating. Made me remember how I really was never any good at Polish. It's tantalizing, because the words sound so familiar. But hardly caught more than Na Zdrove.
The romance between Brendan and Kate squicked my reality fetish a little. We were supposed to believe that they fell truly, madly, deeply in about five minutes. However, if you are willing to suspend your disbelief about this, I thought it was a really nicely written movie courtship. Brendan and Kate barely exchange apologies when they collide in the shopping center. In the restaurant, they don't make the sort of typical movie small-talk over the order, or really even acknowledge that they have seen each other before. I thought the acting in this scene was very good - they seemed to be sort of making eyes at each other without any obvious flirting. And after the two thugs treat Kate so crudely, Brendan slips her a written invitation to meet later. Very well done, I thought. And gotta say, girls, Brendan is a first class boyfriend. Perfect gentleman.
And, fanfare please! yes! There was the closing butt shot, made so famous by Maj. Sharpe! No, really! Go check it out! The look back! The shot of the butt! The shambling off into the (metaphorical) sunset! I almost fell off the couch laughing!
All in all, I can't really in good conscience recommend this movie, except as a vehicle to drool over SB. But, as I said above, best worst $13 I ever spent, as I'm pretty sure I will watch it again.
Can anybody tell me why it is that SB can hardly ever be in any movies that are really, really good? I can whole-heartedly recommend Lady Chatterly and Fellowship. This movie is mediocre at best. Fangirl that I am, the Sharpes really are too. Goldeneye was blah James Bond. Didn't care for the part of Ronin I managed to watch. Can't even *imagine* watching Scarlett. I suppose there's still plenty of filmography to cover, but he plays such nasty characters that there are certain movies that I wouldn't be able to appreciate just because of that - Don't Say A Word and Essex Boys both spring to mind. Am not holding my breath for National Treasure to rectify the problem.
So, as I do after watching almost any Sharpe, I am now headed to bed feeling vaguely disgruntled.
Grrrr.
[Up front, I want to say, it's late. I can't spell worth a damn. I'm not gonna use the dictionary to write in my own journal. So bite me.]
(For laughs, check out this hilarious review. Author seems to think that SB is Irish. Or possibly his character was supposed to be Irish? If so, he wasn't fooling little American me. I can tell the difference between Maj. Sharpe and Sgt. Harper with my eyes closed. *eg*)
Anyway, a movie for fans of Sean Bean, Melanie Griffith, Newcastle, and (I presume because Sting had a hand in it) jazz. Everybody else should probably steer clear.
Moving roughly from the worst to the best...
First, I should say I have very little tolerance for jazz. Very, very little. I probably would have killed the Krakow Jazz Ensemble with my bare hands, if I had been in that airport lounge.
The opening montage made heavy-handed use of contrasting images. Old stone ruins by the river with a backdrop of industrial skyline. Horses running in green field next to industrial wasteland. And yes, Native Americans dancing in a mall (huh?). And Kate (Melanie G.) and Brendan (Beanie) waking up and going through their morning ablutions. This could have been as annoying as the doors in Sliding Doors, except that, thankfully, they gave up on this device as soon as the opening sequence was done.
Moving on, this movie was a bit of a plot mess. Something about Cosmo (Tommy Lee Jones) needing to buy Finney's (Sting') jazz club. But rather than make Finney an offer, Cosmo sends in his thugs first? Maybe to make Finney take a bad offer? Because later they apparently make him an offer he's happy to accept. Maybe it had something to do with laundering Cosmo's dirty money from his criminal organization in the United States. (Look, I was paying close attention here, people, and still not sure what the underlying motivations were for the various acts of violence in this story.)
Brendan is Finney's newest employee. He gets mixed up with the thugs who are originally sent to rough Finney up. Finney gives him the fancy car of one of the thugs. Predictably, this makes Brendan a target for further violence. First he gets fairly severly beaten up. Later, they try to kill him by blowing him up in his car.
Tommy Lee was looking very MIB. In 1988.
I just don't see casting Melanie Griffith as a sex pot. She's too girl next door, plus she's a mouth-breather. That said, she did a perfectly good job in this movie. Very workmanlike. But I gotta say while watching it I thought of two really good reasons to hate her - Sean Bean and Antonio Banderas. (Note to self: Time to watch The Thirteenth Warrior again.)
Beanie was just lovely in this. Such a baby! And spent half the movie being naked. (And the other half wearing leather jackets. Wardrobe must have been done by a woman with a fetish.) As usual, the best actor in sight. And, he survives the entire film! Yay! :) Oh. Brendan was wearing a gold band on his right hand. In the UK - wedding bands - right or left?
Sting can't act his way out of a paper bag, poor thing. BUT, he was a wonderful pure example of
uisgich's Geordie accent, so I hung on absolutely every word. And look! I found an English/Geordie Geordie/English translator! It was also fun to scope out uisgich's hometown. So cool!Interesting Polish interlude in this movie. Thought the Krakow Jazz Ensemble was v. annoying musically, they were a charming group of guys. They take Brendan and Kate to some party where everyone is Polish. The dialogue is entirely in Polish for this scene, and, bizarrely, not subtitled. You would think that this was a device to show the alienation of the main characters, except that the scene isn't really shot from the perspective of Kate and Brendan. Later, it is revealed that Kate at least understands Polish, maybe speaks a litte (her father and grandparents were Polish), but in all, it was weirdly out of place here. And personally frustrating. Made me remember how I really was never any good at Polish. It's tantalizing, because the words sound so familiar. But hardly caught more than Na Zdrove.
The romance between Brendan and Kate squicked my reality fetish a little. We were supposed to believe that they fell truly, madly, deeply in about five minutes. However, if you are willing to suspend your disbelief about this, I thought it was a really nicely written movie courtship. Brendan and Kate barely exchange apologies when they collide in the shopping center. In the restaurant, they don't make the sort of typical movie small-talk over the order, or really even acknowledge that they have seen each other before. I thought the acting in this scene was very good - they seemed to be sort of making eyes at each other without any obvious flirting. And after the two thugs treat Kate so crudely, Brendan slips her a written invitation to meet later. Very well done, I thought. And gotta say, girls, Brendan is a first class boyfriend. Perfect gentleman.
And, fanfare please! yes! There was the closing butt shot, made so famous by Maj. Sharpe! No, really! Go check it out! The look back! The shot of the butt! The shambling off into the (metaphorical) sunset! I almost fell off the couch laughing!
All in all, I can't really in good conscience recommend this movie, except as a vehicle to drool over SB. But, as I said above, best worst $13 I ever spent, as I'm pretty sure I will watch it again.
Can anybody tell me why it is that SB can hardly ever be in any movies that are really, really good? I can whole-heartedly recommend Lady Chatterly and Fellowship. This movie is mediocre at best. Fangirl that I am, the Sharpes really are too. Goldeneye was blah James Bond. Didn't care for the part of Ronin I managed to watch. Can't even *imagine* watching Scarlett. I suppose there's still plenty of filmography to cover, but he plays such nasty characters that there are certain movies that I wouldn't be able to appreciate just because of that - Don't Say A Word and Essex Boys both spring to mind. Am not holding my breath for National Treasure to rectify the problem.
So, as I do after watching almost any Sharpe, I am now headed to bed feeling vaguely disgruntled.
Grrrr.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-03-25 11:20 am (UTC)Newcastle, a gritty, hilly shipbuilding town
Err, not quite. They shot most of the movie on the bank that leads down from the main down to the quayside, so not hilly!!
SB - long straight nose, big chin, thick springy wedge of blond hair - BIG CHIN - never thought of it like that before.
Was gonna copy other stuff across, but it would have been half the review - very funny indeed!
Wedding bands - left hand.
I have to admit that one of the reasons I love this movie is the connection with Newcastle. In fact, the industrial bit at the beginning, with the flame coming out of the chimney, was something I used to pass on the train between Newcastle and Sunderland when I would visit my Nana every Saturday. That whole place was leveled years ago, and watching the movie brings back fond memories.
There has been so much development in the years between the movie being shot and now, that a lot has changed. The quayside is now quite an up market place to go, and has several expensive apartment developments too. As I've said before, the restaurant was one of our haunts, but the place they used for the bar opposite was a derelict shop front. And there is a shot of kids playing football or something (floodlit) on a piece of waste ground. In reality that was literally waste ground that was usually full of litter.
Maybe next time I'm down, I can take my new camera, and take some up to date shots of the locations!
I'm really not into jazz either, so didn't appreciate the music at all. And yes, great butt shot!!
And I've book-marked the translator!! Gonna do my next post in pure Geordie!
Resort town?
Date: 2004-03-25 06:59 pm (UTC)I completely understand. I'd probably adore any movie shot in, say Chapel Hill or Charlotte.
However, refused to watch Days of Thunder, despite the fact that it was partially filmed on location in one of my former hometowns, Mooresville, NC. *stupid racing movie*
Heh. So the review was funnier than I thought. And what about this quote from IMDB, "Brendan takes a job as janitor for Finney, who runs a jazz nightclub in an English resort town." [emphasis added] What do you think? *snortle*
Sorry if the wedding band question seemed odd. The Russians do the wedding band on the right hand. Only widows and widowers wear on the left. Can sometimes create confusion when Americans travel there, apparently, and I assume for Brits, too.