Top 10 Tom Hardy Performances – Motion Picture Maniac (with Venom Teaser!)

Top 10 Tom Hardy Performances – Motion Picture Maniac (with Venom Teaser!)

by Motion Picture Maniac A Blog Motion Picture Maniac

So the standalone Venom movie got its very first teaser trailer today (as I am writing this anyway) and while it didn’t give us a look at the big black beastie himself it did give us an excuse to laugh at all those heartbroken web articles, demanding answers like a bunch of football fans on the losing side as to why the studio ultimately decided not to unveil his new look. Pretending, for a moment, that the potentially post-production related answer isn’t as obvious as picking a fight with Tom “shut the f**k up you c**t” Hardy is a bad idea, or that French kissing Carnage will get your face slurped off, or – OR, get this, or that maybe, just maybe, CGI motion capture characters need to be RENDERED AND ANIMATED FIRST! HUH?

On that note, what satisfied me about the trailer was hearing Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock and REALLY liking the sound of his voice, it’s not much to go on, this being a teaser and all, but it does sound like he’s got it down and I’m really looking forward to it. So I felt like putting together a list for him, my favourite performances of his, like I really need an excuse, he’s one of my favourite actors ever and I think I’m more excited for seeing his performance rather than the fact this could be Venom getting the cinematic justice he deserves; let’s get on – here are my top 10 favourite Tom Hardy performances.

Eames – Inception: “Mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger darling”

Farrier – Dunkirk: “I’m on him”

Max Rockatansky – Mad Max: Fury Road: “*grunt*”

James Keziah Delaney – Taboo: “Good day”

Ivan Locke – Locke: “I am the father”

John Fitzgerald – The Revenant: “I found God, and I shot and ate that son of a b**ch”

Reggie/Ronnie Kray – Legend: “Oh, I prefer boys/Hello Ron, cheers mate, f**k you”

Michael Peterson/Charles Bronson – Bronson: “What do I want…? What have you got?”

Bane – The Dark Knight Rises: “Shadows betray you because they belong to me”

Tommy Riordan Conlon – Warrior: “You owe me 200 bucks”

 

 

 

Motion Picture Maniac 

Grosse Point Geek – 2016 In Review (And a look to 2017)

Grosse Point Geek – 2016 In Review (And a look to 2017)

by Will Strong A Blog Grosse Point Geek Year In Review

2016 – in short, a terrible year for big movies – in fact i struggle to remember another time where the Hollywood studios produced so many blockbuster films as badly made, boring, and lacking in imagination as what we were subjected to over the last 12 months.

To begin with were subjected endless numbers of superhero films  – one of which (Captain America: Civil War) was so contrived it was painful, then there were the dull and at times terrible sequels to long dead franchises (ID4:2 Jason Bourne, The Huntsman, Blair Witch), crap comedies (Bad Moms) iffy fantasies (Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children) shoddy remakes (Point Break) and yet another godawful game to film adaptation (Warcraft).

Mercifully there were some shining lights among the inky darkness – mostly for which we have to thank the many smaller budgeted productions, such as Room, The Nice Guys, Hell or High Water, Spotlight etc. These were the films that probably struggled to get made for years because the likes of Michael Bay, Roland Emmerich and the other sell outs were hoovering up all the money that the studios could throw at them, just so they could vomit their shoddy, franchise prolonging, zero imagination celluloid turds on Joe Public – bastards.

To be fair though not all the biggies were rubbish  – Star Trek Beyond was pretty good, so was The Revenant, Deadpool was awesome,  Creed rocked, London Has Fallen and Doctor Strange were great fun  and Rogue One completely blew us all away to become one of the best entries in the Star Wars franchise since Return Of The Jedi.

So here it is then – my rundown of the best and worst of 2016 and a look at what I think will be worth seeing next year.

 

Top 10 best films of 2016

  1. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
  2. Room
  3. Deadpool
  4. Creed
  5. Spotlight
  6. Eddie The Eagle
  7. Arrival
  8. Eye In The Sky
  9. The Magnificent Seven
  10. London Has Fallen (i’m gonna burn in hell for that one)

Top 15 Honorary mentions of 2016

 

  1. Doctor Strange
  2. Hell or High Water
  3. The Nice Guys
  4. A Street Cat Named Bob
  5. Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice
  6. Ghostbusters
  7. Conjuring 2
  8. Purge: Election Year
  9. Ben Hur
  10. The Revenant
  11. Jungle Book
  12. Star Trek Beyond
  13. The Siege Of Jadotville
  14. Bridget Jones Baby
  15. Midnight Special
The Top Ten Performances of 2016
  1. Brie Larson (Room)
  2. Jacob Tremblay (Room)
  3. Felicity Jones (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story)
  4. Benedict Cumberbach (Doctor Strange)
  5. Ben Affleck (Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice)
  6. Luke Treadaway (A Streetcat Named Bob)
  7. Ryan Reynolds (Deadpool)
  8. Mark Ruffalo (Spotlight)
  9. Sylvester Stallone (Creed)
  10. Alan Rickman (Eye In The Sky)
The Top ten Best Action Scenes/on screen fights of 2016
  1. That utterly incredible, pant wettingly brilliant last 20 minutes of Rogue One – ive seen it twice now and i still cant believe it.
  2. The monumental, bullet riddled arse kicking that Gerard Butler and The SAS throw the terrorists in the climax to London has Fallen.
  3. Will Smith (guns and all) vs the Meta-Human mutants – Suicide Squad (i hasten to add it was that films one saving grace)
  4. Wonder Woman, Batman and Superman’s big face off against Doomsday in Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice.
  5. The edge of the seat finale to Eye In The Sky
  6. Little Jack’s escape from the room – Room
  7. The one take, no edit boxing match – Creed
  8. Leonardo DiCaprio vs The Bear  – The Revenant
  9. The Chariot Race  – Ben Hur
  10. The big finale – Magnificent Seven
Grosse Pointe Geek’s 2016 Hero of The Year
Gareth Edwards –  for finally giving us the Star Wars film we’ve all been waiting for with Rogue One – well done my son.

The Top Five Biggest Disappointments of 2016

  1. X-Men: Apocalypse (someone needs to grab this franchise and give it a bloody good shake)
  2. Suicide Squad (one of the best trailers of the year – just a shame it couldn’t translate into a better film – God this one had SO much potential!)
  3. Bone Tomahawk (how in the hell a western featuring Kurt Russell as sheriff going up against a bunch of psychopathic cave men could end up so dull beggars belief)
  4. 10 Cloverfield Place (another brilliant trailer  -and a complete sell out of an ending)
  5. The Hateful Eight (undoubtedly well made but Tarantino disappeared up his own arse with this one)

The Top ten Worst Films of 2016

  1. Independence Day: Resurgence (a message to Roland Emmerich –  Dear Roland, i and every film geek on the planet sincerely hope that you and Dean Devlin rot in the pit of direct to dvd hell for the rest of your miserable careers – yours sincerely – The Film going public)
  2. Warcraft (a CGI monstrosity and a complete steaming dung pile of a film)
  3. Hardcore Henry (i hated this so much i thought i was going to need therapy)
  4. Bad Moms (i’ve had more fun cleaning cat puke off the kitchen floor than i did watching this)
  5. Allegiant (a franchise killer that deserved to be the gigantic flop that it was)
  6. Point Break (pointless remake and an insult to the original -all i can say is that Patrick Swayze must be turning in his grave)
  7. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (good idea, utterly crap film)
  8. Gods Of Egypt (so laughably bad i cant believe it got a cinema release)
  9. Bastille Day (probably the most unoriginal and most torturous to watch “action” film i’ve ever had the displeasure to sit through)
  10. Blair Witch (total pants  – scariest movie of the decade my distended arse)

 

and finally..Will’s 2017 most anticipated films:

  • Star War Episode 8
  • Guardians of The Galaxy Volume 2
  • Wonder Woman
  • Justice League
  • The Mummy
  • Kong: Skull Island
  • Manchester By The Sea
  • Geostorm
  • Ready Player One
  • Spiderman Homecoming
  • Thor Ragnarok
  • Blade Runner 2049
  • Alien: Covenant
  • War For The Planet Of The Apes
  • Dunkirk
  • John Wick Chapter 2
  • Fate of The Furious (aka Fast 8)
  • Logan

 

So there we are  – my round up of 2016, overall a pretty poor year  – still never mind, Rogue One and the smaller films did alot to make up for it plus 2017 is looking very good indeed. As ever id like to thank anyone and  everyone who read my reviews (whoever you are!) and visited this fantastic website, plus a big thanks to the illustrious Mr Phillip Hobden for continuing to let me vent my spleen upon the movie going world.

I wish you all a very merry Christmas and a peaceful and prosperous new year

 

My name is Will Strong and I’ve been Grosse Pointe Geek.

 

Author: Will Strong aka Grosse Point Geek

 

Blog: The Revenant – A Quick Capsule Review

Blog: The Revenant – A Quick Capsule Review

by Phil Hobden Quick Review

Phil’s Quick Capsule Review:
The Revenant is an amazingly produced film, with an equally amazing production story.  It also, now officially, features and Oscar winning film by multiple nominee and oft snubbed Leonardo DiCaprio. It features two of the best sequences you will see in cinema this year and uniformly is a beautiful film to look at.  It’s also really long and, at times, feels it.  For me, personally, as much as I appreciate the craft and the artists on show here, the simple revenge story is one that could have been told in sub two hours with and even greater effect.  At pushing close to three hours, The Revenant just doesn’t have the depth of story to keep me engaged.  Still worth a watch however.

Best Bit: Bear! 

Buy, Stream, Avoid: Stream

If You Liked this Try: The Hateful Eight, Wolf Of Wall Street, Alive

IMDB Rating: ★★★★★★★★★★

 

Author: Phil Hobden

Blog: All Things Film – The Revenant Reviewed

Blog: All Things Film – The Revenant Reviewed

by Andrew Mackay All Things Film Blog Other Cr*p Uncategorized

Not since Mel Gibson put poor ol’ Caviezel through the endless whips and chains as Jesus Christ in The Passion of the Christ have we seen one man being put through umpteen ways of nearly being killed. In fact, I am sure Hugh Glass, DiCaprio’s character, dies at several points in the movie. There’s not much distinction between that and hallucination, for my money.

The Revenant is set in 1823, where a bunch of furriers are scaling the nether regions of deepest, coldest terrain to hunt and kill animals for their fur. Along for the ride if Tom Hardy, torn straight out of the Penguin Guide to Bad Guys Who Love Money series, and Domhnall Gleeson who’s the arbiter of everyone’s safety. Leo’s son is along for the ride.

It’s not long before Leo gets mauled to tits by an angry bear and left for dead by his gang. Hardy commits an indefensibly predictable/silly/nasty* act and hightails it off back to safety. Leo can barely move, and for the remaining two-and-a-half week run time, he’ll get kicked and punched, buried alive, dive off a cliff on horseback and – in the film’s strangest moment – enact his favourite scene from Freddy Got Fingered and spend the night inside a horse carcass.

Alejandro González Iñárritu is the director once again of what is surely going to win Leo his best actor Oscar. Birdman was my favourite film of 2015. Now, with The Revenant, we can see his distinct trademark style; the roving camera that likes to seamlessly blend all sorts of action and intrusive closeups to draw attention away from the machinery. The cinematography is astounding, considering they only used natural light.

Less astounding is the length of time it takes to cram this survivalist fable, along with its incessant insistence of shoehorning what can only be described as the Guy Ritchie version of existentialism (remember Revolver?) into the narrative to underscore the fact that the Glass character needs to survive in the face of loss and extreme weather conditions. It could have been done in a clean 120 minutes. Alejandro wants his cake and, not only eats it, but buys another and punches it down his own throat.

There’s an undeniable gritty and raw sense of machismo in The Revenant. It’s no more deep than your average revenge movie of the eighties. But, there you have it – only on the big screen will you be immersed (I’m sure it’ll lose something in *other* avenues of screening) – it’s loud, it’s cold and it’s biting… and the 150+ minute run time will only add to the survivalist, endurance-soaked nature of the content. If (like me) you’ve spent a large portion of your adult life wanting to see Leonardo DiCaprio being repeatedly twatted, then this is the film for you.

 

Author: Andrew Mackay

 

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