Posts Tagged ‘David Thewlis’
Friday, September 11th, 2026
August 23, 1996
I don’t remember knowing anybody else like this, but I loved THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU at the time. It was a big summer movie, hugely expensive by New Line Cinema standards, but it was sci-fi horror, and rampant with outstanding Stan Winston makeup effects. It had more of Fairuza Balk fresh off of THE CRAFT, but this time she grows cat fangs. I knew that Ron Perlman (CRONOS, THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN) was under the makeup of the goat man called “The Sayer of the Law,” and Mark Dacascos (CRYING FREEMAN) was the leopard man Lo-Mai, but I didn’t know who Temuera Morrison (BARB WIRE) was yet so I didn’t know it was motherfuckin Jango Fett as the dogman Azazello. A great character I’ll come back to in a bit.
The crucial thing about the movie is that it was defiantly, extravagantly weird. Watching it now I realize how much of it tonally and texturally reminds me of NIGHTBREED, but since it starred two big time movie stars it wasn’t marketed as weirdo shit. It was marketed toward a mainstream crowd, and they didn’t like it. Nor did any of the other crowds. But sometimes you gotta stay away from crowds.
There are many possible criticisms of the movie, a few I might even agree with, but the popular one that to this day infuriates me is the claim that Marlon Brando is bad in it as Dr. Moreau. Unsurprisingly he won the Razzie and Stinkers Bad Movie Awards for Worst Supporting Actor, so for the record that’s the company you keep if you hate this performance. The way they talked about it at the time it seemed like it wasn’t a performance, it was documentary footage of Marlon Brando misbehaving. Why is he on set wearing white makeup and a weird hat, riding a popemobile, making weird speeches, playing a piano duet with a little mutant pal? How unprofessional! He was supposed to be the normal version of this character. Why did he do it unlike anything we’ve ever seen? Why must he be so captivating and bizarre and hilarious? What an embarrassing bungle, that they accidentally did this. I want to talk to the manager. I’m calling the cops. I’m going to sue.
Gary Thompson in Philadelphia Daily News: “with comical dialogue that can only have been meant to elicit laughter.” Oh, you think so? You think so? (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: David Thewlis, Fairuza Balk, H.G. Wells, John Frankenheimer, Marco Hofschneider, Mark Dacascos, Marlon Brando, Richard Stanley, Ron Perlman, Stan Winston, Temuera Morrison, Val Kilmer
Posted in Reviews, Monster, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 8 Comments »
Wednesday, June 3rd, 2026
May 31, 1996
DRAGONHEART is directed by Rob Cohen. I have enjoyed several of Cohen’s movies, especially the one before this (DRAGON: THE BRUCE LEE STORY), and I’ve had fun joking about his specific brand of weirdo hackiness over the years, but since he has been accused of sexual assault by at least three people including his daughter I won’t joke about him or talk about him anymore. But I will talk about DRAGONHEART.
Sir Bowen (Dennis Quaid, JAWS 3-D, WYATT EARP) is a knight who mentors the Saxon Prince Einon (Lee Oakes), the little shit son of King Freyne (stuntman Peter Hric), who also has another right hand man called Brok (Brian Thompson, ALIEN NATION, MIRACLE MILE, LIFE STINKS). Brok calls Bowen “nursemaid” when he commands him to bring the prince to witness his father’s “noble victory” over rebelling peasants. Bowen tries to teach the kid “the Old Code” so he won’t be a massacring bastard like his no good father, but it really doesn’t take.
During the massacre the dumbass king wanders away from his army to personally set fire to a village he assumes is empty, then the peasants mob him and start to beat the shit out of him but for no reason their leader (Terry O’Neill, CONAN THE DESTROYER) says, “Stop! The battle is out there!” and then everybody leaves? What the fuck. So the prince may have a window to heroically save his father, but instead he pries the giant crown off of his head and slinks away just in time to be clumsily bumped by the peasant leader’s daughter Kara (Sandra Kovacicova), causing a wound that will slowly kill him.
Queen Aislinn (Julie Christie, NASHVILLE) comes up with a plan: carry the little twit to a dragon. They go to a cave to find a dragon who will later be called Draco (voice of Sean Connery between FIRST KNIGHT and THE ROCK). Einon has to swear to “live and rule with mercy” and come to the dragon to “learn the Once-ways.” Then Draco does some kind of magic to give half of his heart to the prince, healing him. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brian Thompson, Charles Edward Pogue, David Thewlis, Dennis Quaid, Dinah Meyer, Julie Christie, Patrick Read Johnson, Pete Postlethwaite, Phil Tippett, Rob Cohen, Sean Connery, Terry O'Neill
Posted in Reviews, Fantasy/Swords | 14 Comments »
Tuesday, December 23rd, 2025
I’m not gonna waste your time pretending you need my opinion whether to see AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH or not. If you don’t like these movies, no, don’t bother. If you do, obviously you’re gonna see it, it’s a new AVATAR! A new James Cameron! You’re not a heathen. And he’s still pretty much undefeated. The streak continues.
If I were to offer viewing advice it would be to avoid HFR (high frame rate) projection at all costs. I recklessly decided to see it at my favorite theater (SIFF downtown, f.k.a. Cinerama) despite my hatred for that format, and as soon as it started my heart just sank. When projected in this format, what seems like the majority of the movie is presented with the ugly screen saver sheen of 60-frames-per-second, but it repeatedly switches back to aesthetically pleasing 24 fps and if you’re like me you sigh with relief until it goes back and then you start grumbling to yourself again. It felt like I spent the whole 197 minutes fighting over the remote control with some guy who wants the motion smoothing on, so my level of concentration was not ideal for maybe the first 45 minutes. I was so taken out of the movie that a James Cameron directed air battle dropped dead in front of me like some Stephen Sommers clatter. Should be illegal. I’m never doing HFR again. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Amanda Silver, Britain Dalton, David Thewlis, Edie Falco, Giovanni Ribisi, Jack Champion, James Cameron, Jemaine Clement, Josh Friedman, Oona Chaplin, Rick Jaffa, Sam Worthington, Shane Salerno, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Zoe Saldana
Posted in Reviews, Action, Fantasy/Swords, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 29 Comments »
Wednesday, June 7th, 2017
Remember when they first announced Gal Gadot would be playing Wonder Woman, and people complained? I remember, because to those of us of the Fast & Furious faith, we knew her as Gisele, and it offended us that they would disrespect her like that. We knew she could be good.
Turns out she’s great. I can’t imagine a more perfect actor for this interpretation of the character. She’s the best thing about an overall sturdy movie.
In a quick prologue, young Diana – they never call her Wonder Woman, but I will, because I don’t feel like I’m on a first name basis with her – gently defies her mother Queen Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen, SOLDIER, DEMONLOVER, 3 DAYS TO KILL) to train with her badass aunt General Antiope (Robin Wright, BEOWULF, MONEYBALL, THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO) to become a great warrior. She lives a good life of training montage and power discovery on the all-female island of Themyscira, until one day a fuckin dude floats up on shore.
It’s Steve Trevor (Chris Pine, SMOKIN’ ACES), a WWI flying ace and Allied spy shot down while trying to escape with stolen plans for a deadly chemical weapon. German soldiers attack and feel the wrath of the Amazons, a great action scene where Antiope gets the most badass move: a flip and mid-air simultaneous firing of three arrows that hit three different foes. So clearly Wonder Woman learned from the best. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Chris Pine, Connie Nielsen, Danny Huston, David Thewlis, DC Comics, Gal Gadot, Patty Jenkins, Robin Wright, WWI
Posted in Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 184 Comments »
Tuesday, February 16th, 2016
ANOMALISA is a sad, sometimes funny story about loneliness and petty, ugly human nature. If I told you it had some bizarre, seemingly unfilmable premise then that would all add up to tell you it was a Charlie Kaufman film, but it actually doesn’t have that. It’s just about a guy who travels to Cincinatti to speak at a convention and the night he spends at a hotel. Nothing crazy. It’s mostly very realistic, a frank look at relationships between men and women. It’s animated, though.
It’s all done in a beautiful and unique form of stop motion. Other than being made with small materials it’s almost entirely an attempt at naturalism, no cartoonish stylization at all. One exception is that they left the seams between the mouth and eye sections, which in other movies done with this technique such as PARANORMAN or THE BOXTROLLS were digitally removed. But this is a Charlie Kaufman movie so pretty much everything that seems a little strange – those seams, the androgynous facial structure of most of the characters, one actor providing most of the voices – turns out to be intentional and thematic.
We could compare this to Wes Anderson’s THE FANTASTIC MR. FOX as another unusual stop motion feature that fits naturally into the filmography of its live action auteur. But that one emphasized the hand-made-ness, showing off the imperfections in animating fur, using cotton balls for clouds and puffs of smoke. ANOMALISA miraculously mimics human intimacy in rubber. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Charlie Kaufman, David Thewlis, Dino Stamatopoulos, Duke Johnson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, stop motion animation, Tom Noonan
Posted in Cartoons and Shit, Drama, Reviews | 7 Comments »
Thursday, May 31st, 2012
I remember when this movie came out everybody said it was terrible, then the longer director’s cut came out and it started to build up a reputation as underrated. Just to be safe I wanted to allow some time for that rep to foam over and then dry up and harden into a solid surface. The effects of oxygen on the polished surface create the ideal viewing circumstances. So I watched it 7 years later. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: David Thewlis, Edward Norton, Eva Green, Jeremy Irons, Kevin McKidd, knights, Liam Neeson, Marton Csokas, Michael Sheen, Orlando Bloom, Ridley Scott, The Crusades, William Monahan
Posted in Fantasy/Swords, Reviews | 124 Comments »
Friday, February 3rd, 2012
Steven Spielberg’s WAR HORSE is the story of a horse named Joey. He is distinguishable because he is brown with a white mark on his head and above his hooves. Otherwise I’m not sure I could pick him out in a lineup. He’s just a horse. Doesn’t talk or do math problems or anything.
The story begins with Joey’s birth and ends with his ascension to the stars like E.T. (note: some facts have been altered) and in between he goes through a harrowing journey in turnip farming, WWI, etc. His primary equine-human relationship is with a youth named Albert (Jeremy Irvine), who is there at his birth and later becomes his owner and trainer. Despite going way beyond anyone’s expectations in his indentured servitude, the purchase of non-plow-ready pretty boy Joey financially ruins the family, their lives are destroyed and they have to sell him for cheap to the army for even more cruel and unusual treatment by different noble, handsome Englishmen. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: David Thewlis, Eddie Marsan, Emily Watson, horses, Steven Spielberg
Posted in Drama, Reviews, War | 60 Comments »
