I Just Watched (Films)

[Stormbringer]

The Passion of the Christ

Still the best film about the trial and crucifixion of Jesus ever made. I saw it in the cinema in 2004, and loved it then, but I hadn't seen it again since. Felt inspired to watch it last night, and was not disappointed. Absolutely stunning cinematography and performances throughout. Despite his well-publicised character flaws, this is Mel Gibson's magnum opus, and he deserves praise for pulling this off.

[Stormbringer]

The Ballad of Lefty Brown

The last time I saw Bill Pullman in a film was in 1996, playing the President of the United States in Independence Day.

In this Western he's an old man named 'Lefty' Brown who's worked as partner to a rancher/law-man, named Ed, for forty years in Montana. Ed is running for office as Senator in Washington and the ranch he's run all these years will be left to Lefty's care, much to Ed's wife's chagrin.

The main premise of the film seems to be that Lefty Brown is rather slow of mind and makes poor decisions and everyone (except Ed) sees him as stupid and untrustworthy...but even Ed isn't beyond admonishing him for his mistakes. From watching it, I couldn't really understand why this was the case, other than his rather slow way of speaking. He seems to be fast with a gun and has good survival instincts and forward-planning skills, as well as fierce loyalty to his friend Ed...so it's kind of sad to see why everyone seems to misunderstand him. The opening act of the film shows Lefty apparently making a 'mistake' when trying to apprehend an outlaw in a saloon, but the mistake hardly seems like a mistake to me, more that he gets caught out in an entirely unexpected way. I don't see how he can be blamed for it at all. There's some pretty decent acting throughout. Visually it's fine, but it's not Coen Brothers level. I enjoyed it more than Appaloosa, for sure.

[Stormbringer]

Cleaner

A crime 'thriller' film starring a very serious Samuel L. Jackson as an ex-cop, now janitor, specialising in post-mortem clean-up operations. I watched this film back in 2008 or something, and remembered it fondly. Parts of it had stuck in my head for all this time and I had somehow got the impression that I liked it. After attempting to watch a rather crap Western called Le Duel (starring Liam Hemsworth), I stumbled upon this again on Amazon Prime Video and thought: "Oh, why not? I remember liking that...let's give it another spin."

Well, frankly, I don't know why I enjoyed this back then. It's bland, boring and wholly undeserving of the 'thriller' categorisation. A convoluted plot where every major character is so closely tied to every other character it reminds me of something I would have written in my days at college when I studied TV production, except there are so many layers of buried and barely-explained complexity I found it really hard to follow. There's also a horrible and wholly unnecessary grainy, high-contrast grading effect across the whole thing which reminds me of one of the early Mission Impossible films. This didn't enhance the film in any way.