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Reviews
by Blender Dumbass
Aka: J.Y. Amihud. A Jewish by blood, multifaceted artist with experience in film-making, visual effects, programming, game development, music and more. A philosopher at heart. An activist for freedom and privacy. Anti-Paternalist. A user of Libre Software. Speaking at least 3 human languages. The writer and director of the 2023 film "Moria's Race" and the lead developer of it's game sequel "Dani's Race".
From 1 years ago.
Information or opinions might not be up to date.
7 Minute Read
What is it with Jerry Bruckheimer of the late 90s and early 2000s and with Nicolas Cage? First in 96 we get Michael Bay's The Rock. A year later in 97 Jerry puts Cage in Simon West's Con Air. And then in 2000 Dominic Sena under the supervision of Bruckheimer puts Nicolas out of his Cage and into a driver's seat of 1967 Ford Shelby GT500, in the subject of this review, the loose remake of H. B. Halicki 1974 film Gone in 60 Seconds.
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26% Rotten Tomatoes rating doesn't seem like a good indicator. The film must have been stupidly terrible. Right? Well if you read my other reviews you sometimes may see that ratings are not necessarily the best predictor of enjoyment. A lot of the "best movies" are dull as fuck. And a lot of the "worst" ones are entertaining as hell. And Gone in 60 Seconds is not an exception. Yes it is a bit rough. But so is Con Air and so is The Rock and so are most Jerry Bruckheimer produced films. But Jerry Bruckheimer is Jerry Bruckheimer and Jerry Bruckheimer has a very fucking good sense for entertainment value.
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Like in Con Air this film has an ensemble cast. We obviously get Nick Cage showing us the unbearable weight of his massive talent. We get Robert Duvall who helped Cage's uncle Francis Ford Coppola win some Oscars on The Godfather films. We get Angelina Jolie who you may know from other Angelina Jolie movies. We get Giovanni Ribisi who worked with Steven Spielberg on Saving Private Ryan and will work with James Cameron on Avatar. We get Will Patton who had the most emotional arc in another Bruckheimer movie, Michael Bay's Armageddon.
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We get an evil British character in the form of Christopher Eccleston who played an evil British character in a Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later. We get a nice British character ( that sometimes can be a little intimidating ) in a form of Vinnie Jones who you may know from early Guy Ritchie films like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. Which is by the way an interesting Bruckheimer moment here. I discussed on my review of Bad Boys how Michael Bay apparently got inspired by Tarantino to change the dialogue in the movie. And that prompted Bruckheimer to actually hire Tarantino for dialogue touch-ups for Tony Scott's Crimson Tide and Bay's The Rock ( giving us a film where Michael Bay directs Tarantino dialogue spoken by Nicolas fucking Cage ). But then Tarantino apparently had enough of this job and quit working on other people's movies. So poor Jerry has a problem now.
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In that same time, on the other side of the globe, young Guy Ritchie was imitating not just the dialogue of Tarantino, but his entire writing style altogether with his first few films. Which coincidentally are also starring... you guessed it, Vinnie Jones, who gets then hired by Bruckheimer, probably chasing some remains of the Tarantino sauce. Even if it's Pepsi.
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But the cast doesn't stop there. We get Scott Caan who appears throughout the Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven franchise. We get Timothy Olyphant who actually ended up working with Tarantino on Once Upon The Time In Hollywood. We get Chi McBride who worked with the legendary Alex Proyas alongside Bad Boy's Will Smith on I, Robot. We get Frances Fisher who worked with Cameron on Titanic and we even get Arye Gross who played the husband character Howard Marks in 2002 Steven Spielberg epic ( which ended up being the cause for Michael Bay to quit Bruckheimer and join Spielberg ) called Minority Report.
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The plot of the movie is simple: our protagonist needs to GTA 50 rare cars in one night, for a mafia boss, unless he wants his brother to die. It feels a little bit like Ocean's Eleven heist, but not because of some big game money ambitions. The reason is personal, in an attempt to paint the characters as morally right. Maybe that was what the critics thought was kind of weak. The entire cast of thieves are either inexperienced teenagers who didn't start doing anything illegal yet. Therefor they are innocent. Or old car thieves who decided long time ago that this sort of thing isn't for them. And now are forced to do it, to save a live of somebody near and dear to them. Perhaps the movie could work emotionally a lot better if the protagonists just wanted to steal those cars, because they just wanted to steal those cars.
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The director Dominic Sena is actually quite good. The opening sequence moves with pretty compositions. And the action in this film is a bit less rough than the stuff Bay and West were putting out in those days. I do think, though, there is one major flaw to Dominic Sena. He tries to take the characters seriously and then goes for a Bruckheimer action scene with them, with a cool techno track playing as the characters chase each other or something. This doesn't quite work. Bay uses a more traditional score which works a lot better. At least at that time. If you look at something like 6 Underground ( a fairly recent Michael Bay film with a very mature action direction from Bay ), you can hear him use a mixture of no-music, a score or a known pop-song, for the most interesting moments. Dominic Sena in Gone in 60 Seconds just uses a bad techno-beat bullshit which is just cringe to listen to.
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There are good music action scenes in the film. The ending with the Ford Mustang is scored properly. And the main moment of that sequence ( the jump ) has some proper tension building score which explodes into a crescendo of orchestral magic. Good stuff. But sometimes you just roll your eyes from the tonal whiplash the music gives you in this movie.
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The movie is far from being a bad film. It doesn't have this bad movie vibe, that something like Ultraviolet, or The Room might have. It looks and feels like a proper summer blockbuster ( from that time ). And yet there is this feeling of slight weirdness to it. I cannot put it into words. Some shots and sometimes entire sequences feel a bit strange. I have this gut feeling that something about it doesn't quite work. But I can't see what exactly.
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Perhaps it is the lack of tension building, for most of the action scenes. We just go-go-go, but why be excited about it? Good film-makers will always build toward something like this, even a little bit. Here oftentimes we have nothing at all. The action just starts out of nowhere. It doesn't mean that the movie isn't ever building to anything. It surely does. But not as well as other Bruckheimer films. Not as well as Simon West did in Con Air. And surely not as well as Michael Bay does.
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Happy Hacking!!!
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Con Air 1997 is Bayhem! but Rick-Rolled
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1d/Conairinternational.jpg)
Blender Dumbass
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Producer Jerry Bruckheimer didn't only work with the legendary Michael Bay. He worked with other legends too, like Tony Scott and in the case of Con Air Simon West who directed the Rick Astley music video Never Gonna Give You Up. Yet probably due to it being the first collaboration of Bruckheimer and West ( because it is West's directorial debut when it comes to feature films ), Bruckheimer steered him a bit to copy a style of another director he worked with. Michael Bay.
#conair #nicolascage #simonwest #film #review #movies #cinemastodon
Schindler's List 1993 and how Spielberg was perfect to tell this story
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/38/Schindler%27s_List_movie.jpg)
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As a kid I did not understand the need for movies like Schindler's List. Growing up Jewish I knew about the Holocaust. I knew about the Nazis and heard stories about stuff they did. But movies in my childhood brain were firmly just a form of entertainment. What entertainment is there if you are watching people suffer? Yet as I explain in my other article at about 14 I got to a rather strange point in my life, when everything dark and real became important. That's when I saw Schindler's List for the first time. That's when a film that is not made for entertainment suddenly started making sense.
#schindlerslist #oscarschindler #stevenspielberg #spielberg #holocaust #film #review #movies #cinemastodon
The Taking of Pelham 123 ( 2009 ) is Tony Scott continuing to mess with Michael Bay
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/cf/Taking_of_Pelham_123_%282009_film%29.jpg/250px-Taking_of_Pelham_123_%282009_film%29.jpg)
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Tony Scott's 2009 film The Taking of Pelham 123 is a remake of a 1998 TV movie with same name, which is a remake of a 1974 movie with the same name, which is an adaptation of a 1973 book, with the same name. Strangely enough, apart from Denzel Washington playing the hero and John Travolta playing the villain, the film also prominently shows John Turturro and RamΓ³n RodrΓguez which, the same year, also appeared in a Michael Bay film Transformens 2: Revenge of the Fallen.
#TheTakingofPelhamOneTwoThree #TonyScott #movies #review #film #cinemastodon
Mandy 2018 tries to out-do the weirdness of Only God Forgives
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9a/Mandy_%282018_film%29.png)
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In 2019 on the Cannes film festival director Nicolas Winding Refn ( the director of the 2013 film Only God Forgives ) released episodes 4 and 5 of his ( then ) new multi-episode picture Too Old To Die Young. Episode 5 titled "The Fool" contains a car chase scene. Some argue it is one of the most romantic car chases in cinematic history. The joke is, that the car chase is set to a romantic Barry Manilow's 1974 hit "Mandy", making the juxtaposition rather hilarious in nature. But given the ass-born theory specialist that I am, I must suggest an interesting twist to this whole ordeal. During the principal photography of the first episode of Too Old To Die Young another film-maker Panos Cosmatos released a film, strangely similar in style to whatever Refn is doing. And his film was called Mandy. We can theorize that maybe Refn responded, in his strange way, recognizing the stylistic similarities, so to speak.
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Backdraft 1991 is a HOT film
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a1/Backdraft_poster.jpg)
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Ron Howard is a hell of a director. He knows how to get the image that he wants. And he knows how to do it so that it will hold up practically forever. His 1991 fire-fighters movie Backdraft is not an exception. The fire sequences are so real and so visceral in this film, despite being done 3 decades ago, that perhaps this film is even better when it comes to planning shots that hold up than his Apollo 13 movie ( where he used real weightlessness to shoot the space scenes ).
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Parallax at Max: Billie Eilish β Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 3D)
![[thumbnail]](/pictures/user_upload/Troler/WPA11XXZK2DCU22T.jpg)
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Am I bad guy for being so positive about a movie of a person I do not care much about? Well, there is nothing to fret, as the 3D film directed by Billie Eilish is palatable for everyone looking for entertainment. Certainly no masterpiece, the film still hold water in its flow. 3D doesn't work if there is no parallax. And parallax just out there doesn't work if there is no reason for it to exist. The documentary provides ten times that.
#BillieEilishHitMeHardandSoftTheTour #BillieEilish #JamesCameron #horror #film #review #movies #cinemastodon
Is Strange Days 1995 about James Cameron's personal life?
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0c/Strangedays.jpeg)
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So in 1989 James Cameron divorces his second wife, the film producer Gale Anne Hurd, opening for her an ability to marry Brian De Palma that just divorced Nancy Allen. The same year Cameron marries Kathryn Bigelow ( the director of 1995 Strange Days ). They make the 1991 Point Break kind of together. But then that same year in 1991 they divorce. Yet, his script Strange Days about strange love dynamics and stuff ends up being actually made by Bigelow in 1995 ( four years after their divorce ). Hm...
#strangedays #KathrynBigelow #jamescameron #film #review #movies #cinemastodon
A Sacrifice 2025 is a bit amateurish
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a8/A_Sacrifice_poster.jpg/250px-A_Sacrifice_poster.jpg)
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Ridley Scott has a full family of filmmakers. His brother Tony Scott is a legend. But Ridley also has kids. His son Jake Scott is a bad ass music video director that started already branching out into feature films. Luke Scott directed a cool little 2016 sci-fi horror film Morgan. And was a second unit director on a lot of recent Ridley Scott films. And then there is Jordan Scott, Ridley's daughter that wrote and directed the 2025 thriller A Sacrifice.
#ASacrifice #JordanScott #EricBana #film #review #movies #cinemastodon
June and John is Luc being Besson with a smartphone
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/49/June_and_John.jpg/250px-June_and_John.jpg)
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It was nice to take a short break from the grind of trying to make CGI stuff all day long and watch a movie. And who could be a better film-maker to casually enjoy, but Luc Besson, who after all these reviews I did of his films, I start to feel like I understand, similarly to how a therapist might understand his client? His 2025 low budget film June and John is undeniably Luc Besson, even if the fact that the film was largely shot on a smartphone makes it look kind of weird and slightly amateurish.
#JuneAndJohn #LucBesson #film #review #movies #cinemastodon
The Sudbury Devil is when you mix Nicolas Winding Refn with Wes Anderson
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/40/The_Sudbury_Devil_poster.jpg/250px-The_Sudbury_Devil_poster.jpg)
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Andrew Rakich's self-distributed 2023 film The Sudbury Devil is quite a piece of cool horror film-making. Made for a mere $25 thousand, the film is surprisingly good. It is tense and intense. It is rather fucked up. And it is smartly written and directed.
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Spontaneous 2020 invented a way to get horror fans to watch a teen drama.
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/fb/Spontaneous_%28film%29.jpg/250px-Spontaneous_%28film%29.jpg)
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The premise of the directorial debut of Brian Duffield ( the director of an amazing horror film about aliens called No One Will Save You ) is, on paper, very Post Cringe. It is about a class of teenagers who spontaneously explode out of nowhere, and how little those same teenagers care about the fact that their friends blow up.
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Rush 2013 is not the same as F1 2025
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d0/Rush_UK_poster.jpeg)
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After seeing a somewhat of a racing movie called American Graffiti starring Ron Howard, the next movie to watch was an obvious choice. A directed by Ron Howard 2013 racing film called Rush, which might feel like a predecessor of 2025's Joseph Kosinski film F1. But watching it I found this movie to be closer to Scorsese's The Wolf Of Wall Street rather than F1.
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Gone in 60 Seconds ( 2000 ) is better than it's rating suggests
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/2/2a/Gone_in_sixty_seconds.jpg/250px-Gone_in_sixty_seconds.jpg)
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What is it with Jerry Bruckheimer of the late 90s and early 2000s and with Nicolas Cage? First in 96 we get Michael Bay's The Rock. A year later in 97 Jerry puts Cage in Simon West's Con Air. And then in 2000 Dominic Sena under the supervision of Bruckheimer puts Nicolas out of his Cage and into a driver's seat of 1967 Ford Shelby GT500, in the subject of this review, the loose remake of H. B. Halicki 1974 film Gone in 60 Seconds.
#goneinsixtyseconds #nicolascage #angelinajolie #film #review #movies #cinemastodon
Alita: Battle Angel is Robert Rodriguez's Pearl Harbor
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ee/Alita_Battle_Angel_%282019_poster%29.png)
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In my review of Michael Bay's Bad Boys II I brought up an interesting theory people have about the film. The amount of Bayhem! it holds in could be a direct response to the out-of-the-comfort-zone feel Bay must have had experienced making Pearl Harbor. Basically, the film was so different from what Bay usually does, he had to crank the next movie's Bayhem! up to 11, to make it feel right again. After Robert Rodriguez directed Alita: Battle Angel with an estimated budget of about $200 million, he had to come back to his comfort-zone too. And 3 months later ( that same year in 2019 ) he released Red 11. A micro-budgeted horror film made on almost exactly $7,000.
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