Category Archive: FILM
12 Killer Quotes – The Godfather Saga
A colleague and friend suggested a bunch of lines from The Godfather saga: [Part I] Don Corleone to Buonasera: “You found Paradise in America, you had a good trade, made a good living, police protected you and there were courts of law. You didn’t need a friend like me.” Michael Corleone to Kay Adams: “My father made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.” Kay: “What was that?” Michael: “Luca Brasi held a gun to his head, and my father assured him that either his brains or his signature would be on the contract.” “It’s not personal, Sonny. It’s strictly business.” Don…
Continue Reading →Brooklyn
(Dir. John Crowley) (2015) This film looks lovely. 1950s Ireland and Brooklyn were never more sumptuous. Here we have a story by the massively respected Colm Tóibín and Nick Hornby, with decent actors and competent direction. It is a sad and moving account of an Irish lass who is sponsored by her parish to work in New York, where she finds love and herself torn between two countries. Now for the bad news – it is possibly the most boring film in recent memory. The Varnished Culture, and two highly cultured friends, Grant and Melanie, fell asleep at various times during the…
Continue Reading →Pulp Fiction
(Dir. Quentin Tarantino) (1994) It’s flashy, it’s funny, it’s overly literate. Styled after comics and melodrama magazines, it hops about a series of vaguely interconnected vignettes. The thugs trade Tom Stoppard-like wit…a portmanteau potboiler unravels, and whilst everyone self-consciously shoots from the hip, no-one’s hip when they shoot. This film is great fun, don’t get us wrong, it has some memorable scenes, some top rank stars thoroughly enjoying themselves, and it dumps all over 90% of films made by man, but actually, it shows more talent than brains. No one talks like that in real life and few act that way. To put it another way, in a more…
Continue Reading →Killer Film Quotes – The Classics
No CGI, often in glorious black-and-white, but here’s a bunch of reminders why the old films can still be music to the ears: Q (Peter Lorre): “You despise me, don’t you?” A (Humphrey Bogart): “If I gave you any thought, I probably would.” [Casablanca] (see our link for more quotes from the typewriters of the Brothers Epstein and Howard Koch) “The Children of the night…what music they make!” [Dracula] Rufus T. Firefly: “Go, and never darken my towels again!” [Duck Soup] “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” [Gone With the Wind] Private Eye Sam Spade to gunsel Wilmer:…
Continue Reading →Stuck in the Middle with You
Reservoir Dogs (Dir. Quentin Tarantino) (1991) Pound for pound, Tarantino’s first film is easily his best, a tight, hip and brutal slice of underworld life, as a diamond robbery goes awry and the question is whether there’s a rat in the ranks. Full of flash-backs and flash-forwards, it fills out the back stories with real wit and fervour. And the performances crackle. Lawrence Tierney as the crime boss is scotch over gravel. Harvey Keitel, stoic as Mr White, is perhaps the central character, along with rookie Mr. Orange (Tim Roth). Steve Buscemi as the snakey Mr. Pink is terrific – so is…
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