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 16

I've built up a huge backlog of movies I haven't talked about yet. This post doesn't even cover all of them.

Blowup

Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni made his transition to English-language films with this, a combination of a look at the culture of "swinging London" in the 60s and a The Conversation-esque plot about a photographer who slowly realized that he accidentally shot evidence of a murder. That part of the movie takes a long time to really get going though, and a lot of the focus is definitely on just seeing what this guy's life of shooting models and buying strange antiques for his apartment is like. Much like the director's previous L'Avventura, I appreciated the visual style of the film more than I enjoyed watching it. It's also notable for being one of the movies involved in the industry's transition from a restrictive code to a rating system, which is something.

A Hard Day's Night


This is sort of an early prototype of a mockumentary. It stars the members of The Beatles as themselves, on the road during a tour. They crack jokes, use a variety of techniques to escape from their ravenous hordes of young female fans, and pretend they're playing a lot of the songs from the album of the same name. There's not much substance to the movie, it's just a fun little romp with some talented guys at the peak of their popularity. Of course, they're more talented musicians than they are actors, but none of them are bad enough to really make the movie hard to watch, and they're not exactly going for Shakespeare here.

Nosferatu


F.W. Murneau cements his status as my favorite silent drama director with this, an unofficial adaptation of Dracula set in his native Germany that is easily the earliest example of actual horrific imagery in a film that I can think of. Max Schreck as Count Orlok in full vampire makeup is a truly creepy and interesting sight. The movie drags a bit in places, but mostly it's 80 minutes of remarkably watchable 1920s filmmaking. I don't know how much of the plot was taken directly from Dracula, but it's a cool little story.

Raise the Red Lantern


Zhang Yimou has been known recently for directing historical action movies like Hero, but before that he worked on period dramas. I disliked To Live when I saw it in school, but I wonder if I might appreciate it more now, because I really loved Raise the Red Lantern. Anytime a movie can get banned in its own country for how it depicts life, it will probably be interesting. It stars Gong Li as a young woman who is forced to leave school and become a wealthy man's fourth mistress when her father dies. It made me once again glad that I wasn't born as a woman more than forty years ago. The film's strongest asset is its cinematography, which makes brilliant use of color throughout, and helps make the interrelations of the several wives of one man fascinating. Just a gorgeous movie, and Li is fantastic in it.

Rebel Without a Cause


I didn't like this very much. I guess it does say something about teen angst, but that's just not a subject that really interests me, and the rest of the movie isn't entertaining enough to make up for it. James Dean did have a real screen presence, but he honestly wasn't the best actor in the world, either. I don't know. I found myself unaffected by the whole thing. Some good scenes, but it never came together in a way I appreciated. It's a real tragedy how none of the three leads lived to see 45, though.

Sophie's Choice


At times this movie felt too obsessed with being a tragedy, like it got in its own way somehow. I liked all three central performances a lot, especially Meryl Streep's, who had to do some of the most emotionally devastating scenes any actress would ever have to do, on top of having to do some of them in a language besides her own. Really amazing work. A lot of the horrible stuff in this movie is self-inflicted though, and I wasn't quite sure it justified itself in these instances. The only thing worse than an unearned happy ending is an unearned sad one. Again, I mostly thought it was good, I just had a few problems with it.

Swing Time


Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers made a bunch of musicals together, and this is the most famous. I felt like the industry still hadn't fully figured out how to do the genre yet though, less than a decade after the first talkie. There's some really good dancing and a couple of the songs are good, there's just something a little awkward about the whole production. It also has one of those really annoying romantic comedy plots that can only continue going forward because one or more characters refuses to actually discuss the situation honestly for no real reason. I find that stuff to be less realistic than movies about aliens or something, if they're written better.

Yankee Doodle Dandy

America: the Musical. Yankee Doodle Dandy is a combination biopic and musical that does both pretty well. Dandy was Michael Curtiz' film directly prior to Casablanca, and while it doesn't reach the heights of one of the best movies ever made, it's still worth watching. James Cagney was known for playing tough guys, but here he does brilliant work playing George M. Cohan, a man who made the theater his life and composed a number of famous patriotic songs like "You're a Grand Old Flag" and "Over There". The movie was timed perfectly, coming out only a few months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and reminding people how cool America is I guess. Lots of solid song and dance numbers, and it's a nice little story about one of the country's musical heroes.