Bad Boys, Michael Bay’s first film, was a statement of intent – an argument for Bay as the inheritor to the traditions of Tony Scott and Michael Mann. It draws on the Miami of Miami Vice and Manhunter as the cutting-edge of 80s hyperreality, and then hyperbolises it further to produce the origin’s of Bay’s trademark post-continuous style. Before we meet any of the main players in the film, we’re introduced first and foremost to Miami as a confounding of…
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Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls 1995
Ace Ventura 2: When Nature Calls was probably the peak of Jim Carrey’s unmitigated weirdness before he fully crossed over into the mainstream – and that’s really saying something. Whereas the original Ace Ventura had a fairly cohesive narrative and set of characters, this plays more like a collection of skits, a series of out-takes or a fractured emanation of Carrey’s unhinged comic mind. Ace himself is also less of a character this time around and more an expression of…
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12 Angry Men 1997
Although Sidney Lumet’s 1957 film may be the most famous version, 12 Angry Men actually started out as a teleplay, which Reginald Rose subsequently adapted for the theatre and cinema. Released in 1997, William Friedkin’s telemovie aims to get back to that original moment, if only to open up the story for a new generation. To that end, he more or less discards Lumet’s immaculate tracking-shots and unbroken takes, replacing them with a loose, languorous Steadicam that rides the waves…
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The Wolf of Wall Street 2013
The Wolf of Wall Street is based on the bestselling memoir by Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), which describes how he became one of the richest people in America through sustained security fraud. One of Belfort’s most prominent strategies was to sell worthless stocks to inexperienced customers – in effect, to sell nothing to nobodies – meaning that it was a career that subsisted less on providing goods than in raising the process of circulation itself to a fever pitch. As…