confrontation Archives - Jeremy C. Processing

Point Break
(1991)

Director – Kathryn Bigelow – 1991 – US – Cert. 15 – 122m

*****

A rookie FBI man goes undercover with a group of surfers, believing them to be a gang of bank robbers who disguise themselves as former US Presidents – milestone action movie is out in a 4K Restoration in UK cinemas on Friday, November 8th as part of Art of Action, a major UK-wide season celebrating the artistry of real action choreography at cinemas across the UK October-November 2024

At a cursory glance, there’s nothing particularly remarkable about Point Break, a crime movie about bank robbers, surfers and undercover cops, except perhaps the juxtaposition of surfers on the one hand with cops and robbers on the other except as a route into making a film about cops undercover. Certainly, that juxtaposition pervades the film, with fresh out of training school, undercover FBI man Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves) coming up against accomplished surfer Bodhi (Patrick Swayze) and his new age-y philosophy of life, which is all about living in the moment and experiencing the biggest rush. Those two concepts happen to embody elements that could potentially make a great action film. Point Break does exactly that. Even though it’s a 35-year-old film, it feels as fresh today as it did on initial release.… Read the rest

The Critic

Director – Anand Tucker – 2023 – UK – Cert. 15 – 101m

The first four fifths of The Critic *****

The final fifth of The Critic *

In the 1930s, a London theatre critic, a flamboyant homosexual known for destroying careers with his acerbic prose, finds his job under threat from his newspaper’s new proprietor – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 13th

This originally played in the Toronto Film Festival in a 95m version, only to be acquired for UK release on the proviso that an ‘unsatisfactory’ ending be changed by way of reshoots involving the director, the screenwriter (Patrick Marber), and key cast members. So this current cinema release is the version with the ending changed, and this writer found that new ending less than satisfactory. Which is a pity, because up to about the last twenty minutes, the film impresses.

Now, one could construct a review narrative which says that the original ending must have worked better, and the film has been ruined by its UK distributor. It’s possible that that is indeed the case. However, not having seen that first cut, it is equally possible that the original ending had severe problems which this new version has attempted to fix, even if that doesn’t seem to have entirely worked, and that this new version is an improvement.… Read the rest