Tag: Jeremy Irons

  • Watchmen (2019) s01e09 – See How They Fly

    I’ve been trying to gin up enthusiasm to write about this “Watchmen” finale all day. Though, if I think hard enough, I’m sure I’ll be able to come up with a compliment. Something like… thanks to “Watchmen: The Series,” Robert Wisdom’s most… unappreciative recent casting is no longer “The Alienist.” Wisdom shows up in this…

  • Watchmen (2019) s01e08 – A God Walks into Abar

    This episode of “Watchmen” gets, quite nicely, to the heart of the matter. As the episode goes through its meme-ification of Dr. Manhattan (albeit prestige HBO series starring recent Academy Award-winner Regina King memes), where King and Dr. Manhattan—who’s always visibly obscured when he’s not assuming the appearance of his surprise reveal identity—sit and talk…

  • Watchmen (2019) s01e07 – An Almost Religious Awe

    Seriously, they couldn’t come up with anything better? This episode has a bunch of reveals and every time it’s… really, this reveal is the best thing presumably well-paid writers could come up with. Worse, it starts like it’s going to be a Regina King episode and therefore safe but… no. King doesn’t get her own…

  • Watchmen (2019) s01e05 – Little Fear of Lightning

    Everyone gets everything they want. I wanted a Tim Blake Nelson “Watchmen” episode. And for my sins, they gave me one. Turns out Nelson was in New York for the giant squid attack; as a youth he looked like a cheaper, slightly nerdier Tom Holland and was a Jehovah’s Witness out to preach last minute…

  • Watchmen (2019) s01e04 – If You Don’t Like My Story, Write Your Own

    I’m not sure what would be a more unpleasant way to spend an hour, listening to “Watchmen”… “creator” Damon Lindelof talk about Alan Moore or listening to him talk about way too influential screenwriting professor Robert McKee. McKee has some profoundly insipid advice on writing and the creative process in general, which Lindelof seems to…

  • Watchmen (2019) s01e03 – She Was Killed by Space Junk

    So the first couple episodes of “Watchmen” have only hinted at having an actual Watchmen character in it; it took until this episode for the show to confirm, in fact, Jeremy Irons is playing architect of the end of the world and therefor its savior, Ozymandias. He even puts on the costume. And, you know…

  • Watchmen (2019) s01e02 – Martial Feats of Comanche Horsemanship

    As good as “Watchmen” gets at dissecting the comic book, learning from its anatomy, figuring out how to adapt it to live action—though this episode is nowhere near as uncanny as the previous one with composition—the show, pardon my French, fucks with the viewer. Alan Moore comics don’t fuck with the reader, they explore and…

  • Watchmen (2019) s01e01 – It’s Summer and We’re Running Out of Ice

    The only times “Watchmen” doesn’t feel calculated are when you can’t imagine the shot as a David Gibbons comic panel. Every couple minutes you can feel how the sequence of shots would feel as a Watchmen comic, showing how just because DC Comics could never figure out how to do it without the original creators…

  • Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995, John McTiernan)

    Until the tacked on finish, Die Hard with a Vengeance can do little wrong. It doesn’t aim particularly high, just high enough–it’s a symphony of action movie action (and violence) set in New York City; the city’s geography (at least movie familiar geography) plays less and less of a part as the runtime progresses, but…

  • Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016, Zack Snyder), the ultimate edition

    The extended version of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice isn’t just the extended version of Batman/Superman, it’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice: The Ultimate Edition. There’s a second subtitle on the thing. It’s doubling down on the idea the extended cut in the post-DVD era. It’d be desperate if anything added in the…

  • Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016, Zack Snyder)

    Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is, as a film, just as unwieldy as that title. Director Snyder, through a strange, comforting overconfidence, gets the film through its two and a half hour run time. By the end, when Snyder teases a cliffhanger, teases various comic book references, it’s a deceleration process. The viewer has…

  • Moonlighting (1982, Jerzy Skolimowski)

    I’ve been trying to see Moonlighting for ten or eleven years… first forgetting about it, then putting it off for a widescreen DVD (remember the excitement, back in 1999, when all of a sudden… films were going to come out OAR? No longer a question of if, just of when?), and finally further putting it…

  • Kafka (1991, Steven Soderbergh)

    Pointless outing from a disinterested Soderbergh about Franz Kafka (Jeremy Irons) finding himself in a very Kafka-esque (wink wink) mystery involving a secret organization and various kinds of intrigue and corruption. Irons is fine in the lead, whereas sidekick Jeroen Krabbé is excellent. Love interest Theresa Russell is godawful. Soderbergh’s technical work is great, he…

  • The Man in the Iron Mask (1998, Randall Wallace)

    Now here’s an interesting Stop Button pick. (It was the fiancée’s choice, actually). Most of what I know about Wallace’s 1998 adaptation. It knocked Titanic out of the top spot in the weekend box office… That’s it. And the preview was bad, playing up DiCaprio as… a bad guy? The bad king and the good…