No.247 : The Gentlemen

 The Gentlemen at the IMDb

I wasn’t relishing this trip to the East End in the company of Guy Ritchie’s cadre of mockney Cockneys but it was actually really enjoyable.

Matthew McConaughey stars as Mickey, a poor American kid who earned a scholarship to Oxford University. Whilst there he supplemented his income by selling weed and eventually turned his talents into a large drug empire. In his voiceover he describes his plans to sell up and get out of the business but his plan is rudely interrupted when he’s shot in the head - or so we think. The pickled egg is ruined, that’s for sure.

We flash back to Charlie Hunnam out of ‘Sons of Anarchy’ getting an unwelcome house guest in the shape of Hugh Grant. Hunnam is Mickey’s right hand man and Hugh has a proposition for him. Hugh has gotten wind of the plan to sell the empire but has information that will assist them - the trouble is he wants £20 million for his data.

The film jumps back and forth and we see the marijuana set up, that sees Mickey befriend improvised Lords and set up large plantations on their properties. They get a cut of the profits and the operation can flourish without the ‘cunts’ who ramble chancing upon the illegal weed.

The empire is up for grabs for £400 million and it looks like Mickey has a willing buyer in Matthew a non threatening businessman type gangster. Mickey explains all his business practices, including a site visit,, but things start to go awry when the site is turned over by a shell suited gang who are trained by Colin Farrell’s ’Coach’.

Other players such as the Asian ‘Dry Eye’ are also in play and the film rattles along with the narrative device of Hugh describing what’s happening and how he’s gleaned his knowledge. Eventually we return to the pickled egg outrage - why are the Russians now involved, who is upsetting the applecart and can someone else be described as a cunt before the film…oh there we go.

There wasn’t an awful lot of plot here to sustain a two hour film, but that was easily compensated by a load of colourful characters and some cracking dialogue. I wasn’t convinced by McConaughey’s quiet menace or by Hunnam’s thoughtful consigliore, but Grant was excellent as the slimy Fletcher and he essentially held the whole film together. It was kind of him to explain the labyrinth plot of double crosses to me, and the editing and on screen captions kept the info dump going and the entertainment at full pelt.

Farrell was good fun as the foul mouthed coach and it was good to see Eddie Marsan, albeit in an underwritten role. The film wasn’t a comedy as such but was certainly played for laughs with one funny scene of Grant and Humman voicing some video footage a standout.

The violence was pretty comic book and even when people were getting bits chopped off the film never made me look away - such a big softie. The language on the other hand was fucking deplorable and they should all be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

Previous Ritchie efforts haven’t worked for me with ‘Revolver’ in particular being incomprehensible. Lessons have been learned however, and this film was excellent and easily understood without the plot being spoon-fed to the drooling audience. The style and locations were excellent and you got the sense of a fun time being had by all. Not one to take too seriously but worth a look for the snappy dialogue, fun and scary situations and Hugh Grant calling everyone a cunt.

I would also suggest that ‘the gentlemen’ is an ironic title as this lot were just a bunch of cunts. Oh I’m at it now too…

THE Tag Line : Blow Me Away 80%

No.236 : The Overnight (2015)

First world problems now, as four yuppies spend a night worrying about their genitals and whether the bottle of wine they’ve brought is an acceptable gift.

Adam Scott and her off ’Orange is the New Black’ star as Alex and Emily, a Seattle couple who have recently moved to L.A. with their young son. They are having trouble with their sex life due to their kid bursting in at the wrong moment and for reasons that are explored later on.

They have had trouble making friends in their first two week as Angelinos, but things look up when they are approached by Jason Schwartzman after his and their kids start playing together. Jason seems a bit of a douche but they agree to go over to his later for a playdate with their kids and so the adults can enjoy some pizza - and a night they’ll never forget!

Things start out OK,  but gradually get stranger as Jason shows off his ‘butthole’ paintings and his wife’s hit breast feeding video. The hipster couple notice some reticence on the part of Alex and Emily when they refuse to go skinny dipping with them, especially when exposed to Jason’s extra large, and clearly fake dong. Alex admits he has a small penis and is ashamed of it. After some illicit substances and a pep talk from Jason he bares all and the couples get closer and closer.

How will the long night end and what will we learn about those involved?

This was an enjoyable if somewhat slight film that was shot over 12 days and takes place almost exclusively in a fancy L.A. house. There are no big set pieces or special effects and it is basically the four characters hitting off each other and gradually giving more and more away. I liked the slow burn with the breast feeding DVD the first inkling that things may not be as mundane as we initially thought.

The skinny dipping scene was funny, but they shouldn’t have used such obviously fake cocks as that took us straight out of any reality the film had earned. I’d imagine the two name actors wanted it to be clear and obvious that the tackle on display was not theirs.

There were a couple of laughs though, and not too much focus on relationships, which was a relief. I liked how the weirdness of the L.A. couple was just taken as a given with each outrageous revelation being met with barely a shrug.

The ending was somewhat unexpected and quite brave given what had gone before. Our uptight heroes did unwind very quickly but I guess a mixture of space cake and built up repression will do that for you.

Overall an enjoyable ensemble piece with good performances and a funny script that zinged along, without too many life lessons being offered.

THE Tag Line : Rubber Chicken? No, It’s a Cock  67%

No.178 : The Wackness (2008)

The Wackness at the IMDb

Although made in 2008 this film looks to capture those crazy days of 1994 when pagers and mix tapes were all the rage.

We follow our hero Luke through a hot New York summer as he deals with issues and has a romance with Judge Anderson, no less. The film has chapter cards showing each month in a graffiti tag style which was also used to vandalise the ‘Sony Picture Classics’ logo at the beginning, in what was a fun touch.

Luke kills the time before he heads for college by pedalling dope from an ice cream cart whilst staying out of the way of his parents who are constantly fighting and about to lose their fancy mid town apartment. Luke also engages in therapy with his slightly offbeat shrink played by an excellent Ben Kingsley. He is a bit off the wall but offers solid advice in exchange for packages of pot.

Luke is still a virgin - must be the only drug dealer who is! - and has no friends. He doesn’t always charge for his drugs but is still left out of the party invites and of the trips abroad. Things look up however when he meet’s Ben’s stepdaughter, the lovely Olivia Thirlby. She is a free spirit and agrees to start seeing Luke, an event that leads the pavement to light up Billie Jean style as he walks home.

The two enjoy an idyllic beach house weekend and despite Luke’s hair trigger the two get it on before Luke spoils it all by saying something stupid like ‘I love you’. Olivia has a different agenda and cuts him off. Meanwhile Ben and his wife Famke Janssen are splitting up and as a result he's taking up hard drugs and suicide attempts.

With all this disfunctionality on show, who will survive the summer and what will the fallout be? Can Luke embrace the dopeness (good) and forget about the wackness (bad)?

I really liked this film despite not being a fan of the drugs culture or of the hip-hop music that permeates throughout. The two leads are great and their long chats are good fun as are their experiments in bad behaviour.

The whole melancholy mood is well realised and I got the vibe of ‘The Royal Tenenbaums' of lives being on hold waiting for something to happen. New York looked great with the hot, claustrophobic elements of the city brought to the fore.

The ending was satisfying - hopeful but not Hollywood. Overall this was an enjoyable outing to a more innocent time when drug busts, mobile phones and Covid-19 were all the things of a madman’s dreams.

THE Tagline : Dopeness Achieved - 75%

No.97 : The Runaways (2010)

 The Runaways at the IMDb

Rock bio-pic time now as the little known band ‘The Runaways’ get the Hollywood treatment in this by the numbers effort.

It’s the seventies in Los Angeles and punk is taking off. Joan Jett is keen to get in on the action and harasses record producer Kim Fowley for a deal. He’s hesitant at first but when he spots 16 year old Cherie Currie he starts to put together the band. As you’d expect the band start out rubbish, get a bit better and into drugs before jealousy and musical differences break them up.

The two leads played by Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning don’t convince as the trailer trash bad girls they are meant to be and although they make a good effort I didn’t buy into either. Michael Shannon who is great in ‘Boardwalk Empire’ is miscast as the producer and his mad eyes and dominant presence are shamefully underused.

I did like the grungy 70s vibe and some of the music was good although not that of the band, which was a total racket.  The characters were thinly drawn with troubles at home and being an outsider the usual suspects when a bit of depth was sought. Some bits like Joan pissing on some guitars didn’t add to the appeal of the film  and the whole rites of passage idea was rushed and unconvincing.

The three acts were well defined with the ‘rise to stardom’ bit overlong. Basically you get an hour of them fighting and singing in a caravan before ten minutes of modest success and drug use before a half an hour autopsy of what might have been. The formula will be familiar to anyone who has ever seen a rock film and you knew the writing was on the wall as soon as Dakota got a solo photo shoot.

There will be a certain dirty old man element who’ll love this film with lots of shots of the teen girls dancing around in their pants. There was also a strong lesbian vibe too with Joan in her leather pants quite keen on the pre-pubescent Fanning. I found some of it more creepy than sexy and I doubt it was coincidence that Gary Glitter featured on the soundtrack.

I read that the girls played their own instruments and did their own singing and that would certainly suggest they made the right choice in acting over music! The only decent song was ‘Cherry Bomb’ and even that’s down to the hook alone. I see that the band never had any real hits and you have to wonder why they merited a bio-pic given their story was so run of the mill. In ‘Wayne’s World’ terms ; they’re not worthy!

As the film draws to a close there is the inevitable fall out and the band starts to splinter. Joan forms her own band and has a hit with ‘I love rock and roll’ the only familiar song from the whole enterprise. As they go in different directions and have the odd awkward reunion you have to wonder why you should be interested and by the time the film ends you certainly won’t be.

 THE Tag Line - Runaway From This One!  53%

No.96 : The Diplomat (2009)

The Diplomat at the IMDb

The title of this made for TV but repackaged as a movie thriller is a bit misleading - there is no diplomacy going on at all just some running about and some solid work for the Australian tourist board.

Dougray Scott stars as the titular official who on returning home from his posting in Turkmenistan is arrested for having a stash of souvenir guitars stuffed with heroin in his diplomatic bag. He was undone when his scam was uncovered by a police raid that had some minor gunplay and a broken window.

Scott’s arrest causes a bit of upset in the higher echelons of Government as Richard Roxburgh tries to minimise the fall out. We aren’t sure if Roxburgh is bent and he and Scott are working a scam - or is this a secret mission to entrap those darn Russkies? We think it’s probably the latter as Scott is so damn hunky but he’s such an arrogant prick that it’s hard to decide.

Back in Turkmenistan the bad guys plan to free Scott and his mysterious key. They obviously think he’s working with them but is it a trap or is Scott playing one side off the other? Soon a deal with the Aussie tourist board kicks in and Scott and his lovely ex-wife are transported to Australia to stay in a variety of fancy houses that are no doubt available to rent. The English police woman who is pursuing the case, who is in fact an Australian, heads East to confront the bad guys. After this turns out to be a waste of time she too heads to Oz and stays in a hotel overlooking the Sydney Harbour Bridge - if they put up holiday prices it wouldn’t be more blatant!

We learn that Scott and his ex-wife broke up when their son drowned but slowly they start to heal the wounds and get back in bed as a bunch of henchmen get shot in some poorly planned rescue/assassination/hostage taking raids. As the bad guys start to load a bunch of ‘suitcase bombs’ onto an Australia bound plain and the Government gets nervous - can Scott save the day and clear his name?

This was an OK film but it’s TV origins were plain to see with it’s ‘Co-Production with Australian TV’ credentials obvious from the off. The three sites for the action watered down any tension there could have been and it does seem that plenty was lost in the edit when it became a movie from a TV mini series

Scott can shout and swear and drink all he likes but he doesn’t convince as a leading man. He tries to play it cool and enigmatic from the off but just comes across as a complete tool. He lacked any empathy whatsoever and the character development of the dead son did nothing to soften our approach towards him. Scott’s real life partner Claire Forlani played his ex-wife and although she did oblige by running about in her skimpies her duck face expression but her limited range did nothing to add to the couple’s appeal. I’m sure they are lovely in real life!

The background activities of the scheming Government officials and the police doing a hapless investigation were intended to add some layers of sophistication but the film only really worked when the bad guys and the coppers had one of their numerous shootouts.

I think if you caught this over three nights on ITV you’d feel it a decent offering, but if you chanced upon the Blu-Ray you’ll feel as swizzled as someone who bought a souvenir guitar from a Turkmenistan gift shop.

THE Tag Line - Plead Diplomatic Immunity From This One  51%

No.31 : The Crop (2004)

The Crop at the IMDb

We’re having a short season of Aussie films that are definite articles, have four letters in that definite article and they begin with ‘C’. As you may guess this will be a slightly short season and certainly one with variable quality.

We open with ‘The Crop’ which seems to be a bit of a mystery title, well it is if you use the IMDb for your information. ‘The Crop’ is listed as a futuristic film about a man in a car crash. I must of missed that bit as ‘The Crop’ I saw, which has the same cast, is about a lot of Aussie slobs growing dope. The other film described sounds like far more fun that this pile of crap however.

That said ‘The Crop’ sounds OK from the synopsis point of view, with it having the simple story of a strip club owner trying to get out of debt by growing drugs. I think I can spot the reason for his woes from the off however, as he appears to run the only strip joint on the planet that has a full live band and strippers who seem reluctant to take their tops off. Well ‘Blues Brothers 2000’ had the same idea but that got burnt down by the Russians for being shit. The club, not the film.

When you have a strip club owner / drug dealer as your protagonist you’d think that the producers would seek out a sympathetic and likable lead. It seems strange therefore that they went for an unlikable fat tit instead. Our man has troubles with his tit free titty bar and has the strange moral compunction to let his girls keep their pants on while his rivals go for the full value show.

Added to his troubles are a needy girlfriend and a pair of dozy stereotyped cops on the take. As a means to get out of his financial hole our hero decides to rent a remote farm and grow drugs. So far so morally wrong but let’s go with it, it might be fun with a few lessons learned along the way. Sadly, no. The drugs are seized by bent coppers as soon as they are grown and our man’s partner in crime is nicked. Strangely the cops let the drugs be stolen back and there is an endless chain of events while the drugs are intercepted, treated, stolen, sold etc. etc. We are left to wonder if our sleazy hero will get the cash to save him from the cops and loan sharks or will he get his just desserts in the form of 20 years hard labour.


This is a really terrible film with nothing to redeem it at all. It’s billed as a comedy but there are no laughs at all, as a bunch of nasty characters scrabble about in the dirt for a few bucks. The script is totally witless with the character bypassed lead with the unfeasible pretty girlfriend the least likable front man you’ll ever see. I don’t know if we’re meant to be cheering him on, but I for one was hoping the shot gun blast had taken his head off rather than predictably sprayed him with ketchup.

To flesh out the running time a couple of sub plots are thrown in involving stoners and someone else’s clingy girlfriend - laugh? You never will. The production seemed reasonably well financed with a half decent car crash near the end, but when you can see the stage hands pushing the kangaroo on set you know you aren’t dealing with the next Spielberg here.


I know I come across as a bit moral here and to be honest I don’t like drugs or films that make them seem like comedy currency. I’m not a total wet blanket and enjoy films like the Harold and Kumar adventures, but what they did was make drugs seem ridiculous and funny. This film makes them out to be an economic escape route and totally unfunny. A nasty, negative piece of rubbish that you’d need a pound of reefer to stay the course with. Man.

THE Tag Line : The Crap Is A Failed Harvest 23%