Tag Archive: Daniel Day-Lewis


BEST OF BRITISH CULT MOVIES: 20 – 11

Filed under: Books, Movies — 1 Comment
November 4, 2011

Continuing my list of the fifty Greatest British Cult Movies, here is my selection from 20 -11:

 20. KES  Ken Loach (1969)

One the most remarkable screen performances by a child actor. David Bradley plays Billy Casper, a bright, scrawny 15-year-old kid who is frequently bullied at home and at school but finds an outlet for his frustrations by keeping a pet kestrel. Based on a novel by Barry Hines, it is a moving and brilliantly observed study of hope amid the drabness of  working class life in Northern Britain.

19. SHAUN OF THE DEAD  Edgar Wright (2004)

The definitive modern day zombie movie with a fine comedy duo of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.  Good jokes about struggling to tell the real zombies from the ‘normal’ brain-dead citizens with plenty of surprisingly gory splatter effects. Continue reading →

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NINE! NEIN! NEIN!

Filed under: Italy, Movies, Music, Television — Leave a comment
January 24, 2010

You know of course - zees eez madness Daniel!!!

There is a rumour (started here and now by me) that when the star-studded cast were shown the rushes to Rob Marshall’s ‘Nine’ they campaigned vigorously for the title to be changed to NEIN!

For, make no mistake, this movie is a prize turkey of the first order!

Daniel Day Lewis was presumably lured by the chance to swagger about like Marcello  Mastroianni and to romp with Penelope Cruz but the cost is that his reputation for choosing his roles astutely now lies in tatters.

Nine is a musical remake of 8½ , a Fellini classic from  1963, and  is a movie treatment of a unfathomably successful Broadway show. Lewis was the main reason I wanted to see it , I certainly wasn’t drawn by the prospect of another musical from Marshall, whose ‘Chicago’ I loathed.

It’s hard to know where to start with this catalogue of woeful and offensively bad movie-making. Continue reading →

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There Will Be Blood

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March 28, 2008
DD Lewis

The universal critical acclaim that greeted ‘There Will Be Blood‘ led me to expect a classic to match and even surpass ‘Citizen Kane‘. The themes of the two movies are not so dissimilar with the tale of an anti-hero driven by a single minded greed and ambition to madness and isolation.
Daniel Day Lewis is quite rivetting in the lead role of the ‘plain speaking oil man’ but ultimately having to carry the movie for over two hours proves that sometimes you can have too much of a good thing.
What really lets the film down is the abrupt and unnecessarily crude finale which looks very much as if director Paul Thomas Anderson was so intent on ending up with a dramatic closing scene that he is prepared to sacrifice the patient character study that precedes it.
It’s a fine movie but not the masterpiece its made out to be.

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THE SPECTACLE OF FEARSOME ACTS

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February 3, 2008
GANGS OF NEW YORK directed by Martin Scorsese (USA, 2002)

While I was eagerly awaiting the chance to see Daniel Day Lewis in ‘There Will Be Blood’ I decided to backtrack to revisit his scary as fuck portrayal of Bill ‘The Butcher’ Cutting in Martin Scorsese’s epic ‘Gangs Of New York’. Continue reading →

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