“Hey,” I announced, walking into the living room which is currently acting as a holding zone for our beautiful new son-cat Casper. “I’m writing an article about unpopular opinions I have, can you-“
“You think Den of Thieves is better than Heat,” Replied Kevin, my delicious co-editor and life partner, without looking up from his book. And it was at this moment that I realized that said article – one regarding the naughty and wrong TV opinions that I hold so close to my chest – would simply not be enough to exorcize my demons. No, I had no choice – none – but to put together this one on movie opinions, too. I’ve already shared a few with you already – that Quentin Tarantino sucks, that Rob Zombie’s Halloween is actually great, that The Shining is a dreadful horror movie – Kevin is benevolent enough to join me in this endeavour, and his article on his illegal movie opinions will be going up later this week – but in the meantime, it’s been too long since my last confession, and bloody hell, have I done some sinning.
Den of Thieves is Better Than Heat
Look, I had to start with this, okay? Given that it’s the same issue that has nearly torn our relationship asunder more times than I can count, let me divest myself of this guilt and admit the truth. Well, you already know that I despise Heat, that trudging, boring, Kilmer-filled waste of a movie, but I have something even darker to confess: I think the dreadful, stupid Den of Thieves rip-off of Heat is far better. It was one of my first introductions to our fine gentleman Gerard Butler as a proper beloved star, and yes, it’s silly, yes, it’s boated, yes, it’s has Gerard Butler just playing the most abjectly absurd version of Pacino’s crooked cop character, but my God, at least it’s fun, you know? I would rather sit through a couple of hours of daftness than three straight weeks of the person next to me leaning over to whisper
“can you believe they got Pacino and DeNiro in the same movie?” while I fight the urge to slip into a coma.
Silence is Scorcese’s Best Movie
Obviously, as a woman of taste, class, and all this ass wit, I love a whole lot of Martin Scorcese’s back catalogue. King of Comedy, GoodFellas, Raging Bull, Mean Streets, the lot – I’m a fan, down to the nitty-gritty, down to the several hours of The Irishman (though I will never forgive him for how dreadfully dull Gangs of New York is). And I know that Silence, his sonorous, lengthy, period-piece religious epic, isn’t exactly a popular pick for his finest work – I know plenty of people who’ve seen it find it boring and self-righteous and too serious, and I don’t even necessarily disagree with those things, in a lot of ways. But my God (pun intended), Silence just has this maturity and depth and absolute confident control of the craft that’s never been matched in any other of Scorcese’s films. It’s one of those movies that burrowed into my brain and just never left, and I’m still obsessed with every little detail of it years later.
The Mission: Impossible Movies – and Especially Fallout – Are Simply Quite Bad
Okay, fair enough, part of this opinion comes from the fact that I find Tom Cruise almost unwatchably awful – his acting, his presence, everything but his apparent intent desire to die live on camera doing stupid stunts, I can’t be doing with him, and I am distraught that in 2021 I still have to go to the cinema and see him do things. The mediocre mid-noughties action and dull character work applied over the top of his tenuous stardom was just never enough to sell me on these films, and honestly, that wasn’t
But when the latest Mission: Impossible movie came out, I was ready to have my mind changed on this. People were hailing it as the greatest action movie of the decade, and hey, I am not even in the least averse to some silly action-movie-action, am I? But Fallout…look, I don’t know how to say this, but everyone else in the movie world is wrong except for me and I’m the only person who can see the truth about it.
Fallout is a bad film. It’s too long, it’s predictable, the action is fine but only particularly impressive when you remember that Cruise did a lot of the action himself – but let’s be honest, you shouldn’t have to know behind-the-scenes details to improve the quality of the final cut. Add to that the stinking charisma-void that is Henry Cavill, and Fallout is just a punishingly uninteresting, lazy addition to an uninspired and overrated franchise.
What are your unpopular movie opinions? Are you ready to fight over some of mine? Let us know in the comments below!
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By Louise MacGregor
(header image via Variety)
No But Listen 