blenderdumbass . org
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.
โฉ Reply
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.
โฉ Reply
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.
โฉ Reply
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.
โฉ Reply
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.
โฉ Reply
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.
โฉ Reply
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.
โฉ Reply
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.
โฉ Reply
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.
โฉ Reply
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.
โฉ Reply
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.
โฉ Reply
Happy Hacking!!!
โฉ Reply
0
Find this post on Mastodon
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)
Blender Dumbass
๐ 11 ๐ฌ 103
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
Con Air 1997 is Bayhem! but Rick-Rolled
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1d/Conairinternational.jpg)
Blender Dumbass
๐ 12 ๐ฌ 2
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
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)
Blender Dumbass
๐ 14 โค 1 ๐ฌ 2
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.
#mandy #nicolascage #panoscosmatos #nwr #horror #film #review #movies #cinemastodon
Dissecting Chernobyl 2019 episode 1
![[thumbnail]](/pictures/user_upload/Troler/J0QVIYWKZ8DDTSDQ.png)
Troler
๐ 7
This is why I'm going to speak about the Nuclear Power Plant of V. I. Lenin 2019 historical drama television miniseries called Chernobyl. But It'll be done differently. There'll be no description of how the screenplay was adapted, only the plot and script itself.
#HildurGuรฐnadรณttir #JohanRenck #JaredHarris #Chernobyl #HBO #miniseries #CraigMazin #screenplay #disection #film #review #movies #cinemastodon
Final Destination 3 is a return to form
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b2/Final_Destination_3.jpg)
Blender Dumbass
๐ 12 ๐ฌ 1
Final Destination 3 is yet again directed by James Wong who is a very needed return. The second movie in the franchise seemed almost like the parody of the genre. With the third film, came back the suspense and the good acting and most importantly, the movie suddenly hits again.
#finaldestination #jameswong #film #movies #review #cinemastodon
Layer Cake 2004 explains Kingsman
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/e8/Layer_Cake_Poster.JPG/250px-Layer_Cake_Poster.JPG)
Blender Dumbass
๐ 11 ๐ฌ 3
In my review of She Rides Shotgun I briefly commented on the performance of Taron Egerton who you may know from the 2014 British Spy film Kingsman: The Secret Service by Matthew Vaughn. Today I gonna present to you a sort of half assed theory about how Kingsman happened due to a different Matthew Vaughn picture: 2004 Layer Cake. And alternatively how Tarantino brought to us the Daniel Craig era of James Bond.
#layercake #DanielCraig #MatthewVaughn #JamesBond #film #review #movies #cinemastodon
What "Zero Motivation" tell us about the self-awareness of the IDF?
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/81/Zero_Motivation_POSTER.jpg/250px-Zero_Motivation_POSTER.jpg)
Blender Dumbass
๐ 14 โค 3 ๐ 1 ๐ฌ 8
Due to the renewed interest of the public in the conflict at the middle east, some filmmakers tried pushing and pulling a political pendulum when it comes to accepting / boycotting Israeli film-makers. It is known that film-makers ( being in the art of empathy ) usually tend to be on a progressive side. That makes a concept of an "Israeli filmmaker" a rather strange thing to fathom. But since we see filmmakers from far more restrictive parts of the middle-east find ways to speak their true minds about complex topics, despite heavy censorship, there is no shortage of progressive Israeli films. One of them Zero Motivation ( ืืคืก ืืืืกื ืื ืืฉ ), a tale about IDF itself, has some rather interesting points. No... Not the ones you might expect.
#ืืคืก ืืืืกื ืื ืืฉ #zeromotivation #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)
Blender Dumbass
๐ 14 โค 2 ๐ฌ 2
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.
#alita #alitabattleangel #robertrodriguez #jamescameron #film #review #movies #cinemastodon
Frankenstein 2025 is... wow... just wow!
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/94/Frankenstein_2025_film_poster.jpg)
Blender Dumbass
๐ 26 โค 1 ๐ฌ 1
Let's get this out of the way: Guillermo del Toro knows how to make a movie. The man is a fucking genius. And yet it seems apart from just being technically proficient, he is also a master of making corruption of the audience emotionally satisfying. Let me explain.
#Frankenstein #GuillermodelToro #film #review #movies #cinemastodon
Taken 2008 is Luc Besson's revenge for Man on Fire by Tony Scott
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ed/Taken_film_poster.jpg)
Blender Dumbass
๐ 11 ๐ฌ 2
On the surface, the 2008 movie Taken directed by Pierre Morel and written by Luc Besson ( he was busy directing Arthur cartoons ) is about how it is dangerous for little girls to be in the world. And about how awful the human trafficking is. And about how good, people who fuck up human traffickers are. But then, out of nowhere, it makes people cheer when a guy is buying an underage girl at a human trafficking auction. As if, it makes you think: Is Luc Besson just trying to show Quentin Tarantino that he is a master of corrupting the audience?
#taken #liamNeeson #LucBesson #film #review #movies #cinemastodon
Max Fleischer's Superman flew to the Sun and didn't fall
![[thumbnail]](/pictures/user_upload/Troler/HZP91B02YOJ1O5W3.jpg)
Troler
๐ 27 โค 1 ๐ฌ 1
Oh Superman, who hasn't heard the story of the classic American superhero? Even in this coming-to-close year Superman still stories are being told. Knowing that 2038 the superhero is going to be a century old, it would be good to reflect on history, where it really started. It was born in the head of then 24 Jerry Siegel, child to American immigrant Lithuanian Jews, who fled oppression. Growing up in a Jewish neighborhood, made up of immigrants who fled oppression, meant he heard a lot of stories about their suffering. The competitive character common amongst Judaic culture, is not always well regarded. In a negative environment, they had to adapt and blend in the crowd. This sort of environment together with his love for Science Fiction meant the young Siegel had a particular worldview, a Jewish one. To what extent it was present can be seen in his first major breakthrough โ Superman.
#Superman #MaxFleisher #Fleisher #1941 #ClarkKent #film #JerrySiegel #MyronWaldman #BudCollyer #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)
Blender Dumbass
๐ 27 โค 5 ๐ 1 ๐ฌ 1
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
Godzilla (1954) is a choir of destruction and loss
![[thumbnail]](/pictures/user_upload/Troler/HHIY42R9INXOV48T.jpg)
Troler
๐ 41 ๐ฌ 4
What can be said about Godzilla? It is an icon to name icons. Looking at IMDb, it is unfortunate, although expected, to find 2014 release of Godzilla has 10 times as much ratings as the original 1954 version. Even though some scenes do look pretty goofy, a lot of love was undoubtedly put into it. That love is not always felt when viewing with modern sensibilities. I attempt to remedy the poignant feeling by calculated and logical reasoning and arguments... or more so my own acuity of the work.
#Godzilla #Gojira #IshiroHonda #EmikoYamane #SachioSakai #film #movies #review #cinemastodon
Powered with BDServer
Plugins
Themes
Analytics
Contact
Mastodon