Movie Update 38

Hey, how about I write a little bit about some movies I saw recently and then you can decide whether or not you agree with me.

Lethal Weapon 2


I have to admit I kind of miss movies like this - big summer blockbusters that don't rely on high concept science fiction to get their thrills. It's not that I don't like science fiction, obviously, I just miss action movies that aren't about superheroes or robots or vampires or whatever. Lethal Weapon 2 isn't even that spectacular - it's just a solid buddy cop movie with a enjoyable rapport among the main characters and some fun, bloody action scenes. But that's all it really had to be. I'm glad I watched it.

Peggy Sue Got Married


I don't know how many times I can keep saying that Francis Coppola had a strange career after the 70s, but it's still true. Back to the Future got the lasting attention, but Peggy Sue Got Married is another time traveling 80s high school comedy thing, starring Kathleen Turner as a woman who loses consciousness at her 25th high school reunion and wakes up as a 17 year old again, determined to make different choices and not even sure that any of it is actually real. The movie plays up the drama a fair bit and is less wacky than most movies of its sort, but its highlight is definitely Nicolas Cage, from his hair to his bizarre voice to his whole demeanor. Odd, but more fun than most of Coppola's other odd movies.

Shane


I believe this is the final film from AFI's revised version of the 100 best American movies that I've seen, and it's a pretty good one. Alan Ladd stars as the titular character, a gunman who tries settling down with some farmers out West, but finds he is unable to escape his past when they get increasingly harrassed by men who want control of the whole territory. There's an annoying kid who comes close to ruining the movie on a number of occasions, but it manages to survive as a classic example of a solid but not great 50s Western.

Speed


Another fine example of a blockbuster action movie that didn't need an impossible concept to work, although it does rely pretty heavily on a gimmick. I know I'm one of the last people to see this movie, and I don't need to tell you what it's about, but I will say the movie does a pretty good job of adhering to a traditional and workable story structure despite a great deal of it taking place on a speeding bus. There's very little in the way of real human on human violence, but due to the clever exploitation of the plot's strange circumstances and the chemistry of the main cast it remains exciting for most of its duration. I liked it more than I expected to in any case, and Keanu Reeves' bad acting is in fine form.

Movie Update 31

Crank: High Voltage


Remember when I said that the original Crank was actually less over the top and insane than it advertised itself as? This sequel, which brings back most of the significant characters in some way and attempts to escalate on everything the first movie did, corrects that issue. Instead of having to keep his heart rate up by doing things like getting into fights and having sex with Amy Smart, Jason Statham's heart has been replaced with an artificial one and he must keep its battery charged by doing things like electrocuting himself and having sex with Amy Smart (because it generates static electricity through friction, obviously). There's a lot more violence and nudity and general zaniness in this movie, so it succeeds at surpassing the first movie in that way. It does have a different problem though, which again prevented me from really liking the movie - it just seemed too mean-spirited. People don't just get hit in the nuts, their genitals get destroyed. A man is forced to punish himself for messing up by graphically cutting off his own nipples. Just lots of messed up stuff like that, and I thought it was usually more gross than entertaining. Otherwise, it's as kinetic and crazy as advertised, with a few moments of inspired originality.

Hoosiers


Hoosiers is as predictable an underdog sports story as you're ever likely to encounter. Gene Hackman comes to a small Indiana town to become the high school basketball coach, and he struggles to gain the acceptance of the locals before molding the team into an unlikely winner, more successful than they've ever been before. Dennis Hopper plays the father of one of the players, a drunk and embarrassment to the town who actually knows a lot about the sport. Barbara Hershey is a teacher at the school who questions Hackman's methods but eventually warms up to him. There's a kid who's supremely talented but unwilling to play, and a bunch of ignoramuses who have it out for the interloper. Though it's nothing you haven't seen a bunch of times, Hoosiers is still a charming and well-executed version of that formula. The acting is solid, and the basketball scenes are authentic and exciting. It was a bit weird for the only black people in the movie to appear at the end as players for the big bad final opponent (the movie takes place in the 50s), but otherwise there's not much to really hold against the movie. Pretty likable stuff.

The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming


A weird mix of comedy and politics, The Russians Are Coming tells the story of a Soviet submarine crew that accidentally runs aground on an American island and attempts to get back in the water without causing an international incident. Unfortunately, they run into difficulties, and things are exacerbated by the locals who are alarmist about the threat and quick to gossip. Things almost totally boil over in a remarkably tension-filled stand-off before the film remembers it's a comedy and deflates it in a pretty cheesy, feel-good way. It's a likable movie, with some frustrating side characters and maybe too long a running time but not much else to complain about. The best part is probably Alan Arkin's lead performance as one of the Russian crew members, who doesn't actually get a ton of dialogue but when he does always manages to make a lot out of very little. I'm honestly not totally sure what it was trying to accomplish, but it's a pretty good movie.

Tom Jones


There's something about 18th century England that is just inherently interesting to me. The British accents, the horrible class inequality, the technology still stuck in the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, it's just... I don't know. Interesting. Tom Jones is based on a serialized novel published during that period, and features Albert Finney playing a bastard who's been raised in kind society and grown up to be a womanizer, well-liked by many but hated by some. The movie actually won Best Picture, which seems kind of strange, but I guess movies could do that back then without being dramas about serious issues or mediocre. Wow that was pretty harsh, I've actually really liked most of the recent winners of that award. Oh well, whatever. Tom Jones is funny, has an intriguing little plot about the secrets people sometimes keep, and has some nice performances. It also frequently features characters talking to or just looking at the camera, which somehow never gets old. And now that the movie has expired from Netflix streaming, the site doesn't have it at all. What's up with that, Netflix?

Movie Update 30

Here are some Alfred Hitchcock movies! And a couple others too I guess!

Blackmail


Alfred Hitchcock's first sound film is a pretty decent one. It features a lot of elements that would become his signatures - normal people in great distress, tension building as the result of bad decisions, dramatic climaxes in famous locations. It also seems remarkably dark for the period, with the plot kicking into full gear as the result of murder to avoid a sexual assault. It still feels like a silent movie in some ways, with many scenes going on for ages with little happening, but Hitchcock shows a lot of ability in not just his first attempt at a sound picture, but one of the first ever.

Chicago


Chicago is a pretty poor choice for Best Picture, not just in its year but probably most. Laughable, even. But it's not a bad movie. I have a feeling the voters wanted to give the award to a musical again, and the most acclaimed one since Cabaret was a decent opportunity. It's actually sort of the opposite of that film stylistically, with most of its musical numbers being fantasies in the protagonist's head rather than regular performances at an actual music club, but that's not really terribly important. The plot is simple and I have no idea why I'm actually supposed to be sympathetic with Renée Zellweger's character, and some of the pieces being a bit simple for the medium of film. But the acting is pretty good and there's an energy to the movie that's enjoyable to watch. Definitely not bad.

Easy Virtue


An even earlier Hitchcock movie, still stuck in the silent era, and unfortunately this one doesn't show a whole lot of skill from the Master. My main problem with the movie is that nothing happens in it. It begins with a woman going through a messy divorce, and then she meets a new man somewhere else, but eventually her past catches up to her. There's nothing really interesting about any of it, the fallout isn't exactly dramatic and the movie doesn't even really seem to care if you're sympathetic or not. All it really seems to be saying is that women shouldn't do inappropriate things if they want to be happy. Which uh... okay?

Foreign Correspondent


Released the same year as Rebecca, Foreign Correspondent isn't as good, but it's still a solid example of what Hitchcock could pretty much do in his sleep. A reporter gets caught up in a web of spying and secrets that could eventually lead to a World War (paralleling the one that was actually happening), but his ability to tell the truth is compromised when he falls for a girl who's a little too close to the conspiracy. It's one of the weaker American films I've seen by him, but I eventually warmed up to it, especially after its surprisingly exciting climax. It's really more comedic than his work tends to be, maybe because Joel McRea is the lead, and it took me some time to adjust, but it's a fine little international caper.

Rumble Fish


Boy, Francis Ford Coppola's post-70s career is hard to get a bead on. It almost seems like he's a different person. A lot like Tetro, Rumble Fish is a black and white film with splashes of color that partially exists to examine the director's own relationship with his older brother. Matt Dillon plays a young punk who looks up to his brother, played by Mickey Rourke, and who has difficulty finding a way to fit in with the world around him. He hangs out with friends at a pool hall, gets into gang fights,  and treats his girlfriend played by Diane Lane like crap. Eventually things start going badly for him, and I can't say I really minded. It's just kind of a weird movie, but some parts worked well enough that I wasn't bored.

Blue Velvet

Twin Peaks is still my favorite David Lynch project, but Blue Velvet is my new favorite film that he directed. Mulholland Drive is a popular choice, and I liked that movie a lot, but it veered a bit too far into purely strange-for-strangeness'-sake territory for me in places, and I thought Velvet had just the right balance between bizarreness and comprehensibility for me. It really clicked when I realized that the movie was basically Lynch's take on film noir, which is a great concept, and something I thought he really did well. Kyle MacLachlan stars as a plucky young man who stumbles his way into a criminal investigation when he discovers a human ear rotting in a field. Laura Dern plays the daughter of a cop, and he gets her help to get a lead in figuring things out on his own, and they do some amateur sleuthing.

Things take a hard turn though when he actually meets a woman involved in the case and finds out about the psychopath played by Dennis Hopper who's been abusing her. The film becomes a lot harsher and strange at this point, ramping up the sexuality and the violence (and the language, as Hopper's character is the only one who really swears) and making a clean break from the mostly acceptable material it was before. Lynch has a talent for making intensely memorable moments out of a small number of elements, and the entire sequence of MacLachlan interacting with Hopper and his gang is some of the best stuff by him that I've seen. It leads up to the climax, which has the film's most striking and brutal imagery of all. I love the movie plays with the nostalgic, all-American ideas of older movies while coating them in the twisted thoughts that seem to come out of Lynch's mind with regularity. Very much the work of a man with a clear vision and an ability to present it. I definitely need to see more.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

The second game in the vaunted trilogy. It didn't make the same leap from 3 as 3 did from 2 or San Andreas did from it, but it was still an important addition.

After 3, some wondered where the series would go from there. Not many expected it to go back in time. 3 was basically contemporary, but you didn't get that much of a feel for the setting or main character. That was probably Vice City's biggest contribution to the series. Instead of a nameless, voiceless criminal, you played Tommy Vercetti, a person with goals and opinions. It was refreshing to play someone who could think for himself and often took matters into his own hands instead of just taking orders. Sometimes he was still doing grunt work, but he was in charge of his own fate. Along with the character, the game's radio played a huge part in placing you in the world. Instead of some generic house and pop music, there was a variety of stations playing a bunch of real music from the 80's. It set the mood about as well as it's been done in a video game. The music, along with the general aesthetic of the city and people in it went a long way. I don't have that much nostalgic attachment to that decade, being three years old when it ended, but it still made the experience more entertaining. The talk radio wasn't quite as good as 3's Chatterbox, but there were two stations and they were both good.

There were a lot of small gameplay tweaks and improvements that made the experience better. The addition of motorcycles might not sound that significant, but they were quite useful, and I still usually pick them over cars unless I know I'm going to be taking heavy damage. They're more maneuverable, allow you to fire straight ahead, and can be bailed from without injury. The only problem is that crashes can be pretty hazardous to your health, especially when you go flying over a railing and into the river, which Tommy still couldn't swim through. There were much better boats though, and helicopters and planes were a fun way to get around quickly. The variety of melee weapons instead of just the bat was cool, although it stifled the more dangerous part of your inventory quite a bit. There was more freedom progressing the story, too. You had to build up a criminal empire by taking over and improving various businesses like a club or marina, And it was cool buying up safehouses all over town. The story was more interesting than 3's, easy when your protagonist is so much deeper, and the missions featured more variety and complexity. My only problem with the gameplay was the design of the city itself. Part of the fun is always the car chases, either pursuing traitors or evading the cops, banking around tight turns and barreling down hills. There just weren't that many hills to be found. There were nice jumps sprinkled around, but it was all just a little flat in places. Still, it was a fine game that improved over 3 in almost every way.