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.

The Matrix Revolutions

Structurally, the finale of the Matrix series seems very odd. The action sequences are bigger than they've ever been, but it seems like the main characters don't actually do a whole hell of a lot. It's not that easy to even come up with a point for the first half hour - they could have easily skipped the whole Trainman part and just had the stuff with the Oracle without much changing. It's like the Wachowski Brothers looked at the script and said, "This needs to be two hours. Let's add a few more scenes in the Matrix, even though this is supposed to be a dichotomy with the second movie or something." That whole part is basically a retread - one last gunfight, one last Trinity jump kick, one more scene with the Merovingian. And that's basically all the main supporting cast gets to do for the rest of the movie.

The main conflict takes place in the real world, as Keanu goes to confront the machines while their army launches an assault on the humans' last city. The big battle largely features people we don't care about - a bunch of nameless goons in poorly-thought-out walking tanks and mildly developed bit characters running around here and there, while Will Smith's wife and a snarky crew race there hoping to help. The whole thing goes on for about twenty minutes, after which this has happened: the robots are still coming. One of the most enjoyable sequences in the movie happens before all this though, on the other ship with Neo and Trinity; where Bane, a human whose mind has been taken over by Smith, attempts to kill his nemesis. It's the only fight in the series that doesn't feature stylish martial arts or science fiction vehicles, just a couple of guys knocking each other around and using anything in arm's reach to gain an advantage. The guy playing Bane has a spot on Smith impression, and while he could have taken business a little smarter than he did, it's an important sequence for showing how Neo's powers have extended beyond the computer simulation they started in.

Unfortunately, the other scenes with Smith aren't so great. He transforms from the cold, brutal, efficient machine he was before into a typical maniacal bad guy, complete with silly menacing laughter. He seems to become more human as he struggles harder to eradicate them as a species. That's probably intentional, but that doesn't make it enjoyable characterization. The final battle between him and Neo is pretty mixed. It has some good moments, and it's interesting to see an over the top anime-style fight put to actual film, but it gets silly pretty often and, again, ends up feeling a bit pointless. The story's resolution is satisfactory for what they built up, although I could have done without the very obvious Christian imagery. The series went a while with Neo being a non-specific savior, it seemed weird for them to suddenly tie him directly to one Religion. In the end, Revolutions wasn't the redemption most were hoping for after Reloaded. They're both pretty watchable sci-fi action, but they don't come close to the simple quality of the original.

The Matrix Reloaded

I forgot to mention in the last post that the movie has good music too. Solid mix of original orchestral stuff and licensed techno and rock. Anyway, the first sequel had insane expectations that it failed to live up to. I still think it's an entertaining action movie, but it's sadly devoid of a lot of the elements that made the original good. A big problem is that most of the action seems pointless. The sense of fear and tension is missing. The first time around, Agents were scary and powerful, and the good guys were very vulnerable, just doing enough damage to give themselves time to escape. Now, Neo's practically omnipotent, and he treats them like playthings. It's not just him either; Morpheus holds his own against an upgraded model much better than he did against Smith. The danger's just gone. Neo can resurrect people and fly away from any fight, but he sticks around anyway to show off his moves. The ghost twin things chase after our heroes with an SUV and assault rifle; the gunner can fire a burst into any vehicle and cause it to flip over, but he empties hundreds of round at the good guys and nary a scratch. Every time a car crashes and spins through the air, we get treated to a slow motion glory shot from the best angle. The movie spends twelve minutes on the freeway chase, in which the following happens: they get away.

What's funny is that the advanced visual effects have aged worse than the first movie's tricks. The "burly brawl" starts out decently enough, with some interesting choreography as long as you ignore a few obvious stand-ins and the fact that the only thing they seem to be doing is grabbing Neo's shoulder, but as soon as the Smiths really start coming in the fight becomes a slow motion computer-fest as an extremely fake looking Keanu Reeves smacks around a bunch of extremely fake looking Hugo Weavings, accompanied by domino and bowling sound effects. Any time Reeves is replaced by a digital model to do something fantastic, it looks incredibly dated, and they bring the camera way too close to their sad creation. The movie is simply less believable than its predecessor. And outside the fighting, the movie's not that great either. Lots of people like to complain about the rave/sex scene, and for good reason. From when the drums begin to the final shot of Keanu's butt covered strategically by Trinity's leg, about five minutes pass. That's not a terrible amount of time to waste, but in those five minutes, we learn nothing, and the bits of dialogue only reinforces plot details we already knew.

When the movie came out, it was part of a multimedia attack featuring a video game and collection of anime short films. It was cool at the time, but now you see how it weakens The Matrix Reloaded as a film on its own. Why should we care about this dumb kid Neo rescued since the last time we saw him? Why are we just glazing over this apparently important stuff that Will Smith's wife is doing? All the other humans we meet don't really add much to the story. There's a whole fleet of hovercrafts with crews that jack into the Matrix, so how come we met none of them last time around? It kind of seems like the Wachowskis took their tight little science fiction story and wanted to make it more epic. The story works on some level, it just doesn't seem like the logical extension of the first film. I personally didn't mind the philosophizing and blunt exposition that cropped up, but it probably could have been presented more naturally. Also, the cliffhanger was fairly poorly executed. Bane is set up as a villain for the third movie, but at the time Reloaded ended he certainly wasn't memorable enough to get away with revealing him for a split second upside down. There are twists right before the break that really shake up what we believe in an interesting way, but it certainly wasn't a middle on par with some other famous trilogies.

The Matrix

For a while I called The Matrix my favorite movie, and the only reason I don't anymore is that I have a difficult time declaring a favorite anything. It's legacy was marred by the sequels, but watching it again, it still holds up as a really good action movie with a story worth thinking about. The "bullet time" effect shots aren't as impressive as they used to be and the way that they're lingered on seems kind of silly and self-indulgent now, but they don't detract too much from some otherwise excellent fight scenes. Everybody and their dog is complaining about shaky cam filming now, and it's nice to see an American movie again that shows the action in a way that you can actually tell easily what's going on. People don't like stunt doubles anymore, so it seems the compromise is to move the camera around really fast and cut quickly so it's hard to tell if it's really the actor or if he's even doing anything. The Wachowski Brothers on the other hand, say what you will about them ripping off anime and Philosophy 101, decided to take the time to train the main actors enough so they could convincingly pull off some pretty nice martial arts choreography. Nobody's confusing Keanu Reeves with Jet Li or anything, but it works well enough, and they don't go overboard on the wires either, a technique that I've come to dislike.

The movie isn't only good at Kung Fu, either. It has a really good gunfight and a really good chase that's intertwined with a really good science fiction robot monsters thing. It's still tense after all these times I've seen it. The movie's almost ten years old, but it really has aged better than many expected it would. Just the central story, the revelation of what's really going on behind the scenes, the whole crew of the Nebuchadnezzar and their camaraderie, the solid betrayal and interrogation scenes... the movie is just good. I enjoyed the sequels enough, but they're not close to the original's incredible watchability. Neo is the role that Keanu Reeves was born to play, sort of like Arnold with The Terminator. They're not very good actors, but this is a role he just seems to fit perfectly. There's not many people you could buy as a disconnected hacker (there's his woodenness) and as badass savior of humanity (he's good at looking kinda stoic). And this is where Hugo Weaving declared himself as king of the movies for nerds genre, playing a great villain with moments of both unnerving coldness and immense rage. I have no qualms with saying I love this movie.

Best Movies of 2006

I saw several decent movies in 2006, such as The Good Shepherd (Well acted, interesting subject matter, way too slow), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (Pretty much the right amount of stupid), Superman Returns (Admirably crafted but wallows in the superhero movie pit of too many special effects and not enough real action) and X-Men: The Last Stand (Entertaining but unfocused and far from the greatness of the second). I consider the five below to be the best of the year.

Best of 2006

5. A Scanner Darkly

They've made a bunch of movies based on Phillip K. Dick's writings, and they usually seem to turn out pretty good. Paycheck didn't turn out so hot, but I loved Total Recall and Minority Report, and I still haven't seen Blade Runner but from what I heard that was good too. A Scanner Darkly is a little different though, instead of just being a normal science fiction movie, it's a much more personal story, as it's based on Dick's own experience dealing with drug addiction. It has some cool futuristic ideas like the suits that distort the wearer's appearance to be unidentifiable, but instead of having big action scenes, it focuses on Keanu Reeves' character and his internal struggle.

Near the end the plot gets a little tighter and actually has a twist or two, but most of the movie is the discussion between him and his boss and doctors, and humorous interactions with his drug buddies Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey Jr., who both excellently portray uniquely hilarious and disturbed characters. They're more outwardly crazy than Reeves, but his character's addiction to the drug that's filled the streets is deeper, and he handles his role well for someone whose acting is so universally derided. You can't mention the movie without pointing out the animation that's applied over the entire picture, and I think it doesn't only look cool but also serves to illustrate the strangeness of Reeves' world. It was mostly overlooked, and I think that's a shame.


4. Little Miss Sunshine


What's interesting about this movie is how, despite the somewhat depressing state of dysfunction this family is in, it still manages to come out in the end with a good feeling. I love well-executed dark humor, and this movie is filled with sometimes painfully hilarious jabs at how crappy normal life can sometimes be. You can feel this family's frustration with each other, but they are all able to stick it out in order to bring some happiness to their youngest member. I really liked the acting, everybody seemed perfectly cast in their roles and did them well. I'm not sure Alan Arkin's work was really Oscar worthy, but he was the source of a lot of the best laughs.

3. Casino Royale


This is, in my opinion, the best James Bond movie. In my opinion, that's also not saying a lot, but it's still a good film. The James Bond series has always been about stupid fun, big action scenes, some good-looking women, cool gadgets and a few laughs. This tries to be a little more of a real movie, and it's still got a lot of the James Bond silliness, but I still think its style fits in more with the current era. I was a bit skeptical of Daniel Craig as Bond, as he didn't look the part to me, but that's kind of the point. The new Bond has a rougher edge and maybe's a little more brutal than he used to be, and is very well handled by Craig's skills. The plot is differently paced than usual as well, there are some solid action scenes, but a lot of it is focused on the characters, and the entire last act is a little unusual. Some of the characters' actions don't make much sense in retrospect, but I'd say overall the writing is pretty solid, and it's nice to look at too. Secret lairs in exotic locations will always have their place, but this is what today's James Bond should be.

2. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan


Question: How does a movie that's based on improvisation and real people who haven't even seen a script get an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay?

Answer: By being insanely hilarious and popular to the point that they probably felt they should recognize it somehow. I never really saw Sacha Baron Cohen's Da Ali G Show on HBO, but I feel like I probably should, since it's where the Borat character started. Cohen's a comedic genius, his ability to riff on people and get the perfect reactions out of them is amazing, in addition to just being great at creating a hilarious character. The movie has decent amounts of both planned out jokes and goofs on normal Americans that are played by ear, and it adds up to comedic gold. The theater was full and laughing its ass off the entire time. It's not the kind of movie that you talk about for its direction and contributions years later, but that's not what it wants to be.


1. The Departed

It's not the kind of movie I'd hang my hat on as a true, amazing, undisputed best picture of the year type thing, but it's still very good and deserving of this year's honor (Noting that I don't see a ton of movies every year). I'd like to see Infernal Affairs, the Hong Kong movie it's based on, and see how much of The Departed really came from that directly. The plot is a rock solid crime movie filled with double-crosses and whackings, and it's set in the gorgeously filmed city of Boston. Everyone pulls of their accents well, and manage to create one of the strongest ensemble casts I've ever seen. DiCaprio, Damon, Nicholson, Sheen, Wahlberg, Baldwin, and a good group of smaller names all bring their A game, and it's really just an exceedingly fun to watch affair. The world needs more movies featuring likable, good actors betraying and beating the crap out of each other.

Delayed Entries

Again, these are movies worth mentioning that were released before 2006 but I didn't see until then.

Citizen Kane

I wouldn't go so far as others as to call this the greatest movie ever made, although I can see where that distinction would come from. The directing and cinematography are amazing, every shot is beautifully planned and rendered. It really is a how-to video of interesting and meaningful filmwork. It's also brilliantly acted, all of the main players are good, and Orson Welles is great as both a young entrepreneur and an old curmudgeon. I think it definitely drags in the latter half, and I can't bring myself to honestly say I like it more than some less stately, but more enjoyable other movies.

Annie Hall

I've never been a huge Woody Allen fan, but this is definitely a terrific movie. The dialogue is very funny, and it creates a whole lot of things that will become staples of off-beat comedies in the future, like subtitled translations of what people are really saying, and breaking the fourth wall as the star directly confers with the audience. It's not just a comedy though, it's a well-filmed and acted story of love and how it can go wrong. It's not your typical story where everything turns out right in the end, it's a realistic examination of human relationships, and really admirable in its execution.

My guess is there's other movies that belong here that just haven't come to mind.