Continuing Bingo’s theme of “hammer party” being used by his oh-so-clever clique of ‘varsity-educated chums to describe movies with an exceptionally dislikeable lead, I thought there may be a few clicks in it as a thread, especially if I add “Afterword” to the title, which is, like, like catnip.
I’ll get this ball rollin’ with perhaps an unusual, even shocking (!) suggestion: Tom Hanks.
Seeing his doughy performance recently in Bridge Of Pies – wupes, Spies – reminded me how he only takes roles that will make him seem a likeable and honourable man. To make this really obvious in this movie, we see him warming to a Russkie spy. We can’t actually like the spy himself, that would detract from Mr Hank’s role as “like magnet”, so he’s presented as a pencil-neck, speccy geek with a funny (Scots) accent. But we like Hanks more because he finds something to like in the spy. We admire his ability to find something to admire in the man he has to defend.
This is a movie that would have been improved immeasurably by having Hanks die messily in a hammer party, rather than traveling home to his perfect American Values home and family. It could also have performed better at the box office – it could hardly have done worse. There are other Hanks movies where his pathetic need to be liked deserves the toolbox treatment, but Bridge Of Pies will do for now.
So, Afterworders! Over to you!
I was going to add a nice twinkly photograph of Tom Hanks’ face here so you could imagine the hammers splitting it open in a frenzied bloodbath, but can’t be arsed to wrestle with Photobucket. So use your imagination.
Agree. Tom Hanks (rhymes with ‘wanks’) has never made a movie which shows him in anything but what he wrongly perceives to be a ‘good light’.
Take the risible Forest Gump which has singlehandedly set back the cause of slow-witted ingenues in the movies for evermore. Whilst making the goofy star a cool $40 million.
Guilty as charged.
He got hammered by the Hun pretty comprehensively in Saving Private Ryan. I though he was adequate in that. On the whole I’d rather watch a Hanksfest than a Cruisefest, given the choice.
That’s very laudable of you, Mike, very positive. Can you think more negatively, though? Perhaps a movie that IYHO might be improved if the lead got slaughtered by someone wielding a Stanley claw hammer? It doesn’t have to be a hammer, though. In a kaisfatdadian spirit of whoring out the thread to anybody at all for any reason, I think we can read “hammer” as any domestic or industrial tool not designed specifically for murdering somebody but effective none the less in that capacity.
I was ‘engaging’ merely. But all right, No Country for Old, in which a bunch of actors you’ve never heard of get zapped with a cattle slaughtering gun. They probably deserved it.
Men
Still not one hundred per cent sure you’ve quite got the hang of this one yet, Mike …
All right then, Jennifer Aniston. Happy now?
In what movie?
Well, I’ve only seen three.
Derailed, a horribly dank and depressing crime movie in which she plays a trollop who seduces unsuspecting businessmen and pretends to be raped by her partner in crime. Walked out.
He’s Just Not into You, “based on the self-help book of the same name by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo, which in turn was inspired by a line of dialogue in Sex and the City”, chick flick to which we were dragged by Mrsthep’s sister. Walked out.
Horrible Bosses. Horrible. Switched off.
Three crappy movies, all starring Jennifer Aniston. I rest my case.
Stanley Tools, who made the emponymous hammer of which you speak, are a Sheffield company whose business was all-but ruined by cheap Chinese imports. The 25 quid Stanley hammer will now cost you around a quid as a Chinese knock-off
Eponymous, even.
Or emporious.
We sell those very same Chinese knock-offs in our emporium. Don’t knock the knock-off!
Although it’s tempting to get all misty-eyed about bluff no-nonsense Sheffield steel hammer forgers, I have to say that a hammer is one of the rare cases where a quid hammer works just as well as a 25 quid hammer. And Stanley tools are now Chinese knockoffs anyway.
I know, you’re right. But an entire city was brought to its knees when the 200 year-old steel industry was all-but closed down in Sheffield. As in every other field the Chinese work cheaper than anyone else and we can’t get enough of their cheap goods.
I can offer you a Stanley (genuine Chinese) hammer for about a quid. Simply add twenty pounds for postage/packing and it’s yours.
I’m in. Send me your Paypal details
Gary Oldman in Prick Up Your Ears…certainly a hammering in that one
Great film! Opened me up to Orton [so to say]
Castaway is one of the worst films I’ve ever seen. I don’t want to see Tom Hanks talk to his ball, thank you very much.
I’d like to welcome Ricky Gervais into proceedings. He’s a genius – but why does he keep appearing in films? “Oh…er…hello, I’m…er…(insert character name here)…I’ll just…(fangy smile)…yeah?”
I’ve only ever seen him in the Muppets, but he was great in that.
Watch The Invention of Lying and you’ll realise why it’s best that Gervais never moves beyond TV and cameos.
Ricky is great on TV but he laughs too loud, too readily and too often when interviewed. It makes me cringe.
Let’s cover all the categories:
Men – John Hannah in Sliding Doors. This is a man who’s idea of wit is to say, ‘No,no. – not the comfy chair!’
Women – Julie Delpy in Before Sunset. I know this one will cause howls of outrage here. It’s only seeing so many people recommend the film that made me pick it up in a charity shop, but really …. Non stop emoting with her eyebrows while every line makes it clear that her only interest is me, me, me! The only mitigating factor is that Hawke is almost as bad.
Kids – Austin O’Brien in Last Action Hero. He gets a pass because he was a kid and I assume he just followed directions (sample direction, ‘OK Austin, let’s go again but make it even more irritating this time.)
*applause*
There actually is a hammer party in Legend, the new film about the Hardy boys. It’s held in a pub, but typically no one’s read the invite properly and only one person – it’s one of the Hardys, either Tim or Tom – turns up with any hammers. And he doesn’t want to share them! So the other brother, either Tom or Tim, buys everyone a pint, and then they get hammered.
Hmm.
Denis Hopper in everything he’s ever been in but if I have to pick one it’s Apocalypse Now. He’s just so Denis Hoppery…
See also Elliot Goulding in everything bar Capricorn One…
…and Sally “Applecheeks” Field in everything, especially Forest Gump…
This is quite therapeutic.
Dennis Hopper? The Hopster? The Hopmeister? That’s a little harsh. And if you mean Eliot Gould, then yes, if only for his self-conscious “lookatmeI’mwonderful” (lack of) style. And Sally Field. God, yes. Forrest Gump – the last scene is now a hammerfest. Sally n’ Tom get hammered to bloody pulp by a marauding gang of … er … anybody, really …
Nicole Kidman – can clearly “act”, but is simply a dislikeable presence on camera… has 2 basic performance levels, 1) WHERE IS MY AWARD? WHERE?, and 2) LOOK AT ME! I’M IN A KID’S FILM! I’M NOT REALLY AN AWARDS JUNKIE! SEE HOW LIGHT I CAN BE? SEE? SEE??
Angelina Jolie – she can’t help looking that perfect (depending on what floats your boat), but she’s simply unbelievable in every role she’s in, and her move into “important” film directing is even less endearing…
And he’s an easy target, but Russell Brand, too…
(PS Off-topic-ish, and not that Michael Dougles isn’t fine in the movie, but how much better would “Falling Down” have been if Robert Duvall & Michael Douglas swapped roles…?)
Tom Hanks? TOM HANKS?!
What a horrible misuse of the Hammer Party concept. The man is a national treasure, regularly voted among the most popular and likeable Hollywood actors ever to have felt the roar of the greasepaint.
Being perennially and congenitally likeable doesn’t qualify you for a Hammer Party. Hammer Parties are for movie casts who are supposed to be likeable but, for whatever reason, provoke intense feelings of loathing in the audience, thereby generating a pleasing cognitive dissonance. Examples below.
As for Bridge of Spies: yes, it’s a schmaltz-fest, but the Russian spy is in no way, shape or form dislikeable. For openers, he’s played by Mark Rylance, whom everybody adores, but he’s also so thoroughly stoic and decent in the face of the mob that the audience can’t help but sympathise with him. That’s why we get that “shown the back seat” stuff about him at the end. I salute his indefatigability.
As for proper Hammer Party candidates, here are a few:
1. Ben Affleck. The King of the Hammer Party. I like Affleck, but he has “asshole” written through him like a stick of rock. This works fine when he’s used properly (say, as an asshole best mate in Good Will Hunting), but it makes him a horribly and fascinatingly unpredictable leading man. Take Pearl Harbor, for example. One of my favourite movies. Yes, it’s a car crash, but a deeply compelling one, in part because Affleck gives a performance as a romantic lead/war hero which makes the audience positively pray for extensive torture at the hands of the Japanese.
There is something of the schoolyard bully in Affleck, and he can never shake it off. Very often, he’ll turn on “the charm”, but you will always get the sense that, bubbling just below the surface, there is a molten river of rage and cruelty, and that he is mentally sizing up which of his co-stars to take lunch money from first. Funnily enough, it’s this quality which makes him a potentially excellent Batman, but it’s also the quality which makes it scientifically impossible for an audience to ever sympathise with him.
I would point to two roles in evidence of all of the above, both in Kevin Smith movies. The first is his early appearance in the ill-fated Mallrats, in which he plays the manager of an outlet store named “Fashionable Male”, sports a quiff that stretches to the heavens and beats up the heroes virtually every time he sees them. The quintessential Affleck.
The second role is in Jersey Girl, the movie that sent Smith’s career into steep decline. In it, we are supposed to sympathise with Affleck’s character arc (high flying Manhattan music exec/wife dies in childbirth/loses job/forced to move back home to Jersey to live with George Carlin and newborn baby/attempts over a period of years to get old life back/finally realises he’s happier living poor with salt of the earth people around him), but we never do, because the scenes in which he behaves like a complete and utter asshat (most of which involve yelling in rage at a baby) are far more believable than the later scenes in which he gazes, twinkly eyed, at his progeny. Instead, we spend the movie waiting for this total fuckstick to get his comeuppance, and find ourselves confused when he never does.
Put simply, Affleck is never more authentic than when yelling at or threatening somebody. So when you ask him to be the focal point of audience sympathy/affection, the results are extraordinarily volatile – it’s like watching a spin off about a Bond villain’s slightly tortured love life, which is to say: all wrong. And that’s why I love his movies.
2. The movie Due Date – Aka the movie which proves beyond doubt that Steve Martin and John Candy were comedy geniuses.
Released about five years ago, Due Date is essentially a remake of Planes, Trains and Automobiles, starring Hollywood’s current most charming man, Robert Downey Jnr, and also including bearded man child Zak Galifanifaiffaniakis (henceforth “ZG”). Basic premise – two men find their paths painfully entwined as they attempt to cross the country, one of them trying to get home before his wife gives birth. Hilarity and pathos ensue.
Except they don’t, because – for all RDJ’s magic – neither of these actors is good enough to pull off the trick of being simultaneously irritating/irritated and likeable.
In the original Planes, Trains, we totally buy Candy as an irritant. But his essential decency means that we never roll our eyes in disgust – we’re still sort of rooting for him. The same is categorically not true of ZG in this movie: he’s just an awful human being, without any redeeming qualities, to whom we would quite like bad things to happen. Ditto Downey Jnr, who lacks Martin’s range and is therefore unable to move beyond sheer irritation and anger.
What we’re left with is a bad tempered, heartless movie in which a despicable half wit and an extremely angry and superior man drive across the country bickering. It isn’t fun. It isn’t amusing. All the gags fall flat and we don’t care what happens to either character, unless it’s something bad, in which case we hope there’s slow-mo.
In the hands of Martin and Candy, this exact same premise was sheer celluloid gold. With Downey Jnr and ZG it’s a Hammer Party.
3. Others I don’t have enough time to write lengthy screeds on, but whose innate horribleness always guarantees a Hammer Party: Katherine Heigl (the girl next door, if the girl next door was a stage school harpie with a reputation for treating the little people, and even some of the big people, like shit); Actual Cannibal Shia LaBeouf and the majority of the cast of HBO’s Girls.
I’ll give your comment the attention it desreves later, but for now (“for the nonce” as we used to say):
Is Tom Hanks “perennially and congenitally likeable”? He’s built his career on wanting and trying to be likeable, but some of us (well, me, I, at least) find him grating and groan-inducing and absolutely hammer-worthy. He always plays his own idealised version of himself – good old likeable, admirable Tom. He’s Spielberg’s ideal leading man – cornball, All-American, shallow as the [SOME METAPHOR RE THIN-NESS HERE PSE]. And certainly Bridge Of Spies would have been a much better movie with a long-shot of Hanks’ bloody corpse spread-eagled in the Berlin snow, nicht war, meine strüdel?
Right. It seems my interpretation of your Hammer Party criteria isn’t quite, er, nuanced enough.
If I’ve got it right, you mean films where the audience is willing for the lead(s) to be killed horribly. Said leads are oblivious to this, think themselves likeable, sympathetic etc.
My interpretation was, right, movies which would be improved by hammering the stars at the end. So, for me, Bridge Of Pies definitely counts, because I spent the entire five hours wishing and waiting for something terrible and sickening to happen to Mr Hanks.
Nuance, innit?
It’s your thread, baby, take it wherever you want.
I’m just clarifying how we do; basically, you’re looking for movies where you’re supposed to like a character or characters, but you actually hate them, which gives the movie an angle that wasn’t actually intended.
Also – just hating the character because you hate the actor in absolutely everything isn’t really enough. That’s just disliking an actor. This is about the actual performance (see Due Date – I love RDJ, but he cannot make that movie work).
Au contraire, mon frere.
Here’s a report from two weeks ago in which it was found once again that Hanks is, bar none, America’s favourite movie star: http://variety.com/2016/film/news/tom-hanks-favorite-movie-star-1201691227/
He’s a famously pleasant man in real life – he gives an excellent interview, is courteous and polite to his fans and also sent this response when the Nerdist podcast attempted to bribe him into coming along for an interview with the gift of a typewriter:
http://imgur.com/vMP4bXq
I’m not saying he’s literally everyone’s cup of tea, or that all his movies are great, but he’s empirically a well liked actor and human being.
All of the above said, I do know exactly where you’re coming from on Bridge of Spies, which rather laid it on with a shovel at times.
If we want a Hanks movie that’s a real Hammer Party candidate: how about Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close? The kid who plays the lead in that… dear god, there aren’t enough hammers to go around.
I take it all back. Except Bridge Of Pies. And Forrest Gump. And that one where he talks to a basketball and grows a beard. All of which would be improved by a hammer party under the closing credits.
I was always very impressed by his input to That Thing You Do (my favest Hanks movie), writing some of the music, loving attention to detail etc. That one wouldn’t have been improved by him being bludgeoned to death. Hence my preference for a movie-by-movie consideration.
With you 100% on TTYD.
If we really must go there, my candidates for Hanks being beaten savagely with hammers, in full glorious 4K, with shots switching to slow motion x-ray to lovingly catalogue each and every break and fracture, would be The Terminal (watching it, the title felt apt) and The Ladykillers (because: the front of even attempting such a thing).
In both cases, I think there’s an argument that Hanks took his massive pot of goodwill and overplayed it badly.
I’m actually OK with the Gump: it is what it is, and an argument can be made that it’s the most ferociously misanthropic film ever to capture the hearts of cinema goers as a mass. I also think it’s interesting that Hanks somehow walked away from the catastrophe that was Bonfire of the Vanities (which all but ended the careers of Melanie Griffiths and Brian De Palma) without so much as a scratch.
In “Being There”, Peter Sellers plays a slow-witted numpty whose befuddled pronunciations are seized upon by the people he encounters as pearls of wisdom, and he is hailed as a man of great foresight – the audience sits back and thinks “What wallies they are!”
In “Forrest Gump”, Tom Hanks plays a slow-witted numpty whose befuddled pronunciations are seized upon by the AUDIENCE as pearls of wisdom, and he is hailed as a man of great foresight.
Exactly. Seen from a certain vantage point, Gump is actually an extremely mean-spirited movie about the corruption of the American Dream, the gullibility of the American people and the stupidity of cinema audiences.
Being There is a great point of comparison.
Life is like a box of chocolates. Neither lasts long if you’re fat.
If we’re moving on to actors whose entire careers make your hammer fingers itch then Affleck’s pal Matt Damon surely deserves a mention. I don’t have to go into detail about his shortcomings because Team America nailed it. (Perhaps they should have HAMMERED it instead, readers. Eh? Eh? Mwah-ha-ha! Mwah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Oh, suit yourselves.)
Re Affleck: we’ll put you down as a “don’t know.”
Doesn’t “Argo” put a bit of a spanner (SWIDT) in the works of your argument? His hammer rating seems negligible in this one to me.
Just to be clear, I’m saying I really like Affleck. I think he does certain things very well, it’s just that being a point of sympathy isn’t one of them.
His casting in Argo (an overrated, but pleasant enough movie) works perfectly – the group he’s trying to get out of Iran are the focal point of our sympathies. His character is cold and seemingly emotionless, with a hint of unpleasantness beneath the surface. Perfect Affleck country.
See, this is where the nuance comes in. Hammer Party invitations for individual actors based on lifelong success at being irritating, or awarded to individual movies? I prefer the second option, because I can picture the improved ending, whereas the individual actor thing – that’s just another hate thread, right?
It’s individual movies. I’m just offering up Affleck as a man who has a hell of a lot of hammer-worthy movies in his back pocket, due to the essential limitations of his range.
Can I throw two names into this mix? One is Jack Black. The other is Jim Carrey. Both try far to hard to please by being what they think is wacky, when all either needs is a good whacking.
You’ll have to be more specific, Archie.
Both Carrey and Black have delivered some horribly wayward performances in their time, but there are also occasions where – in the right role – their schtick works beautifully. I’m thinking specifically here of Me, Myself & Irene and School of Rock, respectively.
I think Archie’s not alone amongst the more elderly contingent of the blog in not quite getting the premise which we’ve now hammered out nicely.
Performances in individual movies; movies that would end far more satisfactorily with the lead(s) being hammered to death.
So it’s about miscast leads, then? Is that it?
A Series of Unfortunate Events, in which all the thunder of his very large array of wacky characters was effortlessly stolen by a kid biting a table).
King Kong In which entirely the wrong character was shot up by the Sopwith Camels.
King Kong is the exact movie I had in mind for Black. He’s badly miscast and a tremendous distraction. Definitely hammer-worthy.
Have you seen The Holiday?
So called “rom-com” where four awful people played by four annoying actors (Jack Black, Kate Winslet, Jude Law and Cameron Diaz) are mis-cast and mis-matched and the happy ending isn’t actually a happy ending at all, they just decide to ignore the huge problems facing their relationships and dance to some cute music to make it seem like a happy ending.
Their final scene’s New Years Eve party would have been mightily improved by hammers.
Jack Black must be the least charming rom-com lead ever, with that death stare of his!
I am familiar with this movie and I heartily endorse both your description and your suggestion of a hammer-powered alternative ending.
Yes, yes, and thrice yes. Saw it on cable and it put my guts in a three-day knot.
This concerns me, as I have been told I look a bit like Mr Black 🙁
Jim Carrey. You are so right, Archie.
The merest thought of that ridiculous face, which looks as if someone has already jammed a 32oz Stanley ball-pein into his gob sideways to wedge it open, and I’m looking for something else to watch.
Andie MacDowell – Four Weddings. She’s supposed to be the object of longing and desire. Instead of which, she’s the object of loathing. HAMMER PARTY.
Jar Jar Binks – Currently undergoing something of a renaissance, but previously history’s greatest hammer target.
Mark Wahlberg – Planet of the Apes, The Happening, many, many more. We’re supposed to be rooting for the trees (ho ho ho) and monkeys, right? HAMMER PARTY.
The entire cast of Deep Blue Sea – Halfway through filming the director realised that he had a Hammer Party on his hands and took the decision to make LL Cool J (henceforth a bit part character, with about ten lines) the movie’s ostensible lead. Saffron Burrows gives a masterclass in hammer invitation.
Robin Williams – Patch Adams. HAMMERS.
Swing the Stanley for Robin Williams in Mrs Doubtfire.
Now we’re talking:
And Dead Poets. And Jumanji, Good Morning Vietnam, What Dreams May Come, Night At The Museum, Being Human, Toys, Hook, Awakenings… in fact the only movie in which his take on “niceness” elicited exactly the required response from the audience was One Hour Photo.
Dead Poets? You’re out of your mind. He’s wonderful in that. Also: Good Will Hunting.
The rest, I can take or leave. But he was a very funny man, who could be great in the right role. Made some absolute stinkers too.
“Made some absolute stinkers too.”
Yes indeed.
Exhibit A: “Patch Adams”. Yikes!
It was that simpery, whimpery grin, wasn’t it? If he hadn’t done that, he would have been okay. But he always did that. Even as Mork he did that. He probably had board rubbers hurled at him in primary school for doing that.
Robin Willizams played two roles – the mugging-to-camera schmaltzmeister, or the manic we’ll-let-him-improvise-and-watch-him-crack-us-up joker.
His only two decent roles in my book were in “World According To Garp” and “Moscow On The Hudson” – both were early on in his career before he had enough influence to get his way, or establish his two schticks mentioned above.
Have you seen One Hour Photo, Sniffsville? His schmaltz (and the baggage that comes with it being him) is perfect for the role. Creepy overdrive. Good movie too.
Bingo, you like Black Hawk Down. I rest my case. In fact, I rest all my cases and have a nice little nap by the baggage carousel.
Do I? That’s news to me.
The only thing I like about Black Hawk Down is that one of my brothers once took a girl to see it as a first date. It’s basically 120 minutes of death, swearing and gunfire. There was no second date.
I meant Peal Harbour. Same thing though. Same film in fact.
What’s not to like about Pearl Harbour? It’s a horrible misadventure with an awful cast, running three hours long and climaxing with FDR getting up out of his goddam wheelchair.
Brilliantly, it released in May 2001, leaving the cinema in early September. Guess what happened in mid September that would have sent its box office absolutely stellar…
I’m obviously not suggesting it’s good (or event decent) film making, but it would be a cold heart that could derive no enjoyment from this particular travesty.
It’s more believable than Dead Poets Society, I’ll admit that.
I still haven’t seen Moscow on the Hudson, and I still want to.
He was pretty good as that Alaskan serial killer in that movie about that Alaskan serial killer. Or did I dream that?
I think that was 2002’s Insomnia.
I can’t allow that. If Wahlberg got hammered for those then he wouldn’t have been around for Pain & Gain.
Have you SEEN Wahlberg’s “performance” in Planet of the Apes?
Here’s Mark Wahlberg, realising he forgot to get his shirts dry cleaned.
http://imgur.com/vNG3R2A
Here’s Mark Wahlberg encountering a magical talking teddy bear for the first time:
http://imgur.com/wIb6luA
Here he is, discovering that the plants are trying to kill him:
And, finally, learning that he’s just crash landed on a planet of super intelligent monkeys, who have forced humanity into a state of slavery:
http://imgur.com/JxckukQ
He gets hammered, no doubt. He has access to the best plastic surgeons currently working on the face of the Earth, and he’d have nearly a decade to get himself right for P&G.
Leave Mark Walmart ALOOOOONE! I don’t think you understand the dedication he brings to every role – working out in the gym, skipping, protein shakes, shadow-boxing on Venice Beach in a hoodie, pumping iron, pressups, crunches, salad lunches – nor the masterly nuance in his expressions. Yes, his face always looks the same. And his hair. Oh, his fucking hair … oh fuck … the HAIRCUT, the Walmart brushy-spiky-can’t do a thing-with-it-twelve-year-old-schoolboy HAIRCUT.
It’s HAMMER TIME!
Hmm. Rethink. You can’t give Walmart a lifetime achievement crossed hammers award, because we’d lose The Other Guys, which is not only the best film he ever made but nearly the best film anyone ever made.
Here’s a slightly odd one, but has Laura Dern ever had a role in which she wasn’t intensely annoying (often written as such, admittedly; I’m sure she’s a delightful person – as, of course, is (was?) her dad, of whom to this day I can do a killer impression, albeit assisted somewhat by everybody’s inability to remember what he sounded like).
Jurassic Park. Everyone is great in Jurassic Park, and she holds her own alongside the likes of Sam Neill and Jeff Goldblum. She’s also very good in the TV show Enlightened, which plays to her strengths.
“She holds her own alongside the likes of Sam Neill and Jeff Goldblum.”
Wow. That’s some stiff competition she has there. Mr Woodentop and Mr Doggy-Eyes. But JP wouldn’t have been improved by a hammer party finale.
Harsh.
Watch JP again. I did recently, and it’s a far better movie than I remembered it to be. The leads are all great.
Every role created through CGI is great. The humans seem Ray Harryhausen in comparison.
Dern is hot as hell playing Lula Fortune in Wild At Heart.
Closer. The Patrick Marber thing. Four beautiful people (Roberts, Portman, Owen and Law) smug it up something awful. It’s a quadruple whammy just crying out for a Stanley showdown. Stop! Hammer time!
This is an absolutely perfect Hammer Party movie. All of the leads have done good work elsewhere, but they’re completely insufferable here.
Ha ha – I saw the trailer for this and immediately decided never to watch it. The inclusion of Damien Rice’s “The Blower’s Daughter” did not help.
I liked Bridge Of Spies. I did see it on a plane but it was a good way to spend 2 hours being entertained.
I like about half of the films Tom Hanks has been in (I call these the Tom Hanks films I’ve seen because the premise of the film seemed ok). The other half (Castaway, Forest Gump, Airport – or whatever it was called) I just don’t bother with.
To the premise of a hammer ending http://- both Cocktail and Buster could do with a grim ending. Preferably about 10 minutes in as well.
An obvious one – Ben bloody Stiller. About as funny as a wart on the end of your knob but continues to play comic parts – if there really is no better comic actor we are in serious trouble.
The other one is a character as opposed to the actual actor. Let me just say that Fargo is one of my all time favourite films and William H Macy is a pretty decent actor. However his over acting as an inept car salesman I found to be quite irritating upon repeat viewings. I know that there was a strong dose of black humour but my wife’s comment that ‘surely no-one is that stupid’ was pretty bang on the money. For his sappy personality I would happily administer the hammer blow myself.
I have never warmed to (inevitably soon to be Dame) Kate Winslet in anything I’ve seen her in. Yet the award nominations keep on coming.
That bloody shampoo ad was the last straw with Dame Helen. National treasure? I think not.
I love the way that these threads, which start out with a half decent premise, devolve, with a crushing inevitability, into your Standard AW Hate Thread (TM). There really ought to be a Godwinesque meme for this. Maybe there is.
Remy, and all the rats, in Pixar’s ‘Ratatouille’
So, a rat has a palate and can cook. Yes.
Kill them all. Kill them. The storyboard for that should have been one post-it.
Nah, that one gets a pass because I once a heard a young kid say “Ratatouille? A mouse that likes cooking?” in a thick Birmingham accent and it was incredible.
Tilda Swinton: a joyless PC luvvie who makes Emma Thompson seem like Barbara Windsor. People say “she’s so beautiful” – no; she is wan and lacks human warmth. “She’s clever”: no, she is in movies people who are not clever think are deep. Her connections (well-established to arties and the entitled) mean after a couple of years slumming it with a massive safety net, a life of boho sophistication and credibility followed. A good friend of the UK fashion and brit-art scene dontcha know? That and £3.50 will buy you a pint of beer.
Hammers are for p*ssies. You want a cricket bat with a breeze block attached..
I’m going for an entire oeuvre rather than a specific role here, but James Nesbitt. A man for whom the back of a second class stamp would be ample space for a public book of condolences after his horrific hammer murder.
Oh, but he’s so *cheeky* looking.
Only because they had to transplant skin from his buttock cheeks to get his face anywhere near presentable enough for an open casket job once I’d exorcised the memory of Cold Feet with my Chinese Stanley knock-off.
I might be getting carried away here
No real actors were harmed in the making of this thread etc
Tsk. Robin Williams died. Can we REALLY say it was unconnected?
Williams not only died but was much grieved here on the blog, in a wailing and hair-shredding sob-fest only surpassed by Bowie’s demise. But now we can all go back to hating the bastard a bit. Patch Adams has the gold crossed-hammers award.
Don’t you tell me when I have to stop grieving. I’m still wearing my chest merkin and going full Doubtfire at the weekends. Prayers go out to Zelda.
Also, credit where it’s due, etc
Notting Hill, Shirley? Hugh Grant’s hair-ruffling diffidence seems more autistic than charming, and Julia Roberts giving him a sympathy shag stretches this viewer’s gullibility to breaking point.
Director’s Cut (Tobe Hooper, that is) features the enraged starlet raining hammerblows on Grant’s boyishly pleading face, again and again and again, in glorious slo-mo, as the audience erupts in happy vindication.
I know it’s become a bit passé, but why not just head directly to Love Actually?
Bloke who’s making hair dolls of his best mate’s wife? HAMMERS. Leering BT ad simpleton who goes to the States to get laid? HAMMERS. “Hilarious” and “cheeky” shy porno actors? HAMMERS. Tragic, airport sprinting, drum learning muppet child? HAMMERS. Prime Minister Grant, who completely and publicly fucks a major strategic relationship because he fancies the tea lady, then throws a party to celebrates? HAMMERS. That bird who follows Alan Rickman around licking her lips and humping the furniture? HAMMERS.
I could go on.
The Notting Hill sympathy shag would never have happened if the appropriate ball-peen intervention had taken place earlier in the film. The dinner party where they’re all sitting about seeing who’s life is the most shit ends with Julia Roberts’ impassioned description of a rich, gorgeous film star’s desperate unhappiness. It should end with Gina Wotsit rising out of her wheelchair – to gasps of astonishment from him from Blackadder and her from Four Weddings – and laying about them all with a splitting maul. I’d watch the thing again if it did.
The perfect soundtrack for your quite excellent proposal…
That girl deserves a hammer party all to her own self just for destroying Break Stuff.
Bitch doesn’t even throw away her mic at the end.
OH DEAR GOD! SHE’S DONE MILLIONS OF OTHER COVER VERSIONS! SHE’S MY NEW FAVOURITE PERSON!
Crazy In Love
Creep
The bit at the end of Sex & The City 2 where the niqab-wearing Muslim women all gleefully reveal to the patronising New York dress up dolls masquerading as characters that -guess what?- they are all also wearing designer gear under their religious dress? NOT ENOUGH HAMMERS IN THE WORLD. NOT EVEN IF EVERY FACTORY IN CHINA GOES ON A 24 HOUR EXCLUSIVE HAMMER PRODUCTION SCHEDULE.
You watched Sex and the City 2? Jeez!
It’s a total masterpiece. Never has a movie so catastrophically and completely terminated a franchise.
That implies you saw the first film too!
I’ve only seen bits of it. I was drawn to SATC 2 like a moth to a flame when I learned of its awesome destructive power and era-defining shitness. Nothing pleases me more than a great Hollywood folly.
You must have loved The Lone Ranger.
Yep. But not as much as I loved Jupiter Ascending.
Ninja bike girl redux! And dinos in biker jackets….what do you mean Jupiter Descending is cancelled…
Probably my favourite cinema experience of 2015. So much fun.
Whilst I agree that the Sheffield Shillelagh is the proper utensil of choice for job, I’m feel we need an expert exponent to perform the necessary.
Someone local with runs on the board.
I’m proposing bearded Yorkshire truckie Peter Sutcliffe.
What?
Jesse Eisenberg in anything, but especially that awful Facebook film, which should have begin with a hammer party, thus sparing us all that followed.
Kathryn Bigelow for crapping all over the legacy of Near Dark and Point Break with Zero Dark Thirty.
Not enough up arrows in the world for this post.
THE SOCIAL NETWORK
by AARON SORKIN
SCENE ONE
FADE IN / INTERIOR NIGHT: A HAMMER PARTY
FADE OUT
CREDITS
That’s a film I’d happily
download from Pirate Baypay to see!Throughout the thread we’ve been deploying our trusty traditional nail-placement utensils towards the end of the last reel of the flicks in question. May I suggest – as a special case and with no wish to create a precedent – a strike at the very moment of the first appearance of each member of the cast – sorry, of course I mean the “ensemble” – of that atrocity that was Peter’s Friends?
I’ll be honest, the poster alone for The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel set my hammer finger twitching.
The Grand Budapest Hotel. I would genuinely sit through that simpering, self-conscious, unsufferably twee, precious, gem-like masterpiece again if there was a hammer party at the end.