I don't even understand what you're saying. Do I wanna piss with you?

The Big Bounce

(2004)

I have a lot of love for George Armitage's Miami Blues and Grosse Point Blank, but this never fulfills its potential. It looks fantastic, George Clinton's score is very nice, Owen Wilson's easy charm is a good fit, and he and Morgan Freeman have great chemistry.

There's also good support from Charlie Sheen, Bebe Neuwirth (always a pleasure) Gary Sinise and Vinnie Jones (actually alright here, though it may be because he gets wailed on with a baseball bat by Wilson in the opening scene and becomes progressively more infirm as the movie progresses).

But the pace never really picks up. It's clearly looking for the laidback groove of Get Shorty - also Elmore Leonard - but the result is only slightly more involving than Shorty's anaemic sequel Be Cool.

**1/2

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Joker (2019)
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Django Unchained (2012)
(MINOR SPOILERS) Since the painful misstep of Grindhouse/Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino has regained the higher ground like never before. Pulp Fiction, his previous commercial and critical peak, has been at very least equalled by the back-to-back hits of Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. Having been underwhelmed by his post Pulp Fiction efforts (albeit, I admired his technical advances as a director in Kill Bill), I was pleasantly surprised by Inglourious Basterds. It was no work of genius (so not Pulp Fiction) by any means, but there was a gleeful irreverence in its treatment of history and even to the nominal heroic status of its titular protagonists. Tonally, it was a good fit for the director’s “cool” aesthetic. As a purveyor of postmodern pastiche, where the surface level is the subtext, in some ways he was operating at his zenith. Django Unchained is a retreat from that position, the director caught in the tug between his all-important aesthetic pr…

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