Movie Update 15

A bunch of movies this weekend, as several were about to disappear from my Netflix streaming queue. Let's get right to it.

Bananas


One of Woody Allen's earliest films, starring him as a sort of a deadbeat who moves to a South American country in the middle of a revolution after his activist girlfriend dumps him. This movie was quite strange to me, as it mixes Allen's natural film technique and some pretty Woody Allen jokes like the giving and receiving conversation with a lot of really silly and over the top gags that don't quite fit. Stuff like his dad making him assist on a surgery when he's saying goodbye or the whole courtroom scene would feel more in place if the whole thing was a wacky spoof like Airplane!. I did enjoy the movie, though. Lots of great gags prop up a simple story.

Defiance


On the one hand, Edward Zwick should be commended for finding a way to tell a story about a Jewish resistance against Nazi occupation in Belarus with a Hollywood budget. On the other, after seeing movies with similar subject matter like Come and See, I kind of wish he had taken a smaller budget and just made a slightly better movie. I respect him for focusing on unexplored parts of history in his work, but Defiance as a whole feels kind of whitewashed. It's a pretty decent movie, but too much is just standard American war movie stuff. Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber give very good central performances, and their Belarusian accents sounded pretty good even if I still don't like the compromise of having a non-American character speak with an accent rather than his actual language. Really nice cinematography, too.

Jerry Maguire


This movie had a huge impact on popular culture at the time, and was nominated for a bunch of awards, but I don't think it really holds up as a great film. It was on AFI's list of the top 10 sports movies, but they must have been stuck at 9, because it's not actually a sports movie. Yeah, Tom Cruise plays a sports agent and a big part of the movie is his relationship with Cuba Gooding Jr's wide receiver character, but it's much more a romantic comedy, and a story about a man learning how to connect to people. He could have been in almost any other kind of business and it would have been the same movie. There are several iconic lines in the movie that are kind of entertaining to watch unfold, especially when Cruise is overselling them. The whole movie is sort of overly sappy and emotional, but it's slick and amusing enough to keep it watchable for most of the time it's on. Gooding is really quite entertaining too, though it doesn't strike me as the typical award winning performance.

A Night at the Opera


This is the Marx Brothers' follow-up to Duck Soup; their first film at a new studio and without their brother Zeppo. The plot is less out-there than Soup's, featuring Groucho, Chico, and Harpo as a few guys who travel with an opera company to America and try to help a down-on-his-luck singer score with someone else in the company and get the break he deserves. What really interests me is how the brothers continue to be giant assholes to everyone, even if they don't deserve it. The only people resembling antagonists here are the boss who doesn't want to give the singer a job until he has a better reputation, and a man who is his rival professionally and personally. But the first is just making a smart business decision, and the second never really does anything wrong, he just has more status as a singer and is also attracted to the same beautiful woman. It doesn't matter though, the film considers them the bad guys, and they get their shit ruined by the brothers constantly. The crowning moment comes at the end when the boss finally agrees to sign their friend, and while Groucho and Chico are debating the contract, Harpo tears open the boss' tuxedo jacket for no reason. God, I love the Marx Brothers.

Scarface


Most people probably don't know that the Brian De Palma film starring Al Pacino is actually a remake of this, which is loosely based on the life of Al Capone. It comes right out at the beginning and denounces both organized crime and the government for not doing a better job of fighting it, and then tells the story of a man's rise to prominence and eventual downfall in the 1920s underworld of violence and illegal booze. It's an early film by Howard Hawks, and I think I would have liked it a lot more if it wasn't for Paul Mini's performance as the titular character. I really can't stand it. Tony Camonte bounces around, getting overly confrontational, pursuing his boss' girlfriend while flipping his shit when his sister so much as looks at a guy (what, is he hoping she'll join a convent?), and generally acts like a jackass. I'm aware that crime movies are built on their central figures being bad people, but they're supposed to be redeemable or at least likable in some way so we don't get annoyed whenever they're on screen. It's something they just hadn't figured out yet. Important and fairly well made movie, but a hard one to enjoy.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

There are aspects of this movie that make it seem like it might not be that bad. The director and at least one of the writers have both been involved with some good or at least interesting projects. The last X-Men film was pretty bad, but it could have been the influence of Brett Ratner rather than a trend for the franchise. Hugh Jackman and Liev Schreiber are both good actors, and do some solid work in this movie. And really, there are parts that aren't bad at all. Honestly. But then there's everything else. Basically, anything actually related to the fact that this is a comic book movie.

After the opening scene which recreates the most startling moment from Origin but robs it of any emotional weight, they ignore the rest of that story, put Logan and Sabretooth farther back in time so they can fight through a bunch of major wars in the opening credits, and then have them hop on a team of super powered special forces. The movie then embarrasses the shit out of itself with a sequence where several of them show off their powers in ludicrous ways that just look silly rather than the cool effect I'm sure they were going for. Agent Zero still uses guns but is apparently magic now, Wade Wilson is not only skilled with swords but capable of manipulating them faster than the speed of bullets (he's not a mutant yet what the fuuuuuuuck), and instead of a pilot they have Dominic Monaghan playing a dude who can control the plane with his mind because uh... they think it's cool I guess.

So anyway Logan leaves the group after some differences and meets a telepathic chick, but a while later someone starts going around and killing his teammates and blah blah it's Sabretooth obviously and Stryker recruits him for Weapon X. I don't really get it... this movie's supposed to be a prequel for the existing movie series, but they sort of change and ignore things for some reason, changing the cast, adding in the bone claws, mixing up the reasons for things to be happening, et cetera. So then some more stuff happens, a lot of it totally stupid looking, and Logan, now Wolverine, confronts Stryker in his secret lair. There's a pointless plot twist that just adds some artificial drama for a few minutes, a bunch of cameos by some other mutants, and Stryker reveals what he's done to Wade, now Deadpool, for Weapon XI.

Oh my god that is not Deadpool. Yeah they did use what they got from Wolverine to experiment on him, but that was it. What they make him into is completely ludicrous and not Deadpool and I just don't understand the point of changing what a character is THIS much. Who is it serving? It's an uninteresting villain, and one unfaithful to the memories of people who actually know and possibly care about who he is. What an amazing combination of wasting my time and spitting in my face. Also, in case you were wondering, even if you have an incredible accelerated healing power, if you fall from a high enough distance your head will pop off, and any skin grafted over your mouth will be removed. Good to know. So they take away Wolverine's memory as necessary and the movie ends without much of a resolution to anything. God, this could have been a pretty decent movie. Why did this come out of it?

America: The Story of Us

I don't usually watch the History Channel regularly. I'll turn it on from time to time when I'm bored, and usually I'll catch something interesting. I did this around the Memorial Day weekend a couple months ago, and caught an opportunity to sit through this whole series. It's twelve hours about the history of America, and while it wasn't quite as comprehensive as I'd hoped, it was still a very well produced look at the last four hundred years in this country.

The general format is Liev Schreiber narrating over some actors in period dress pretending to do something sort of interesting, accompanied by flashy computer generated shots of some sort of technology spreading across the country as the music swells. A random collection of celebrities, some more suited for discussing history than others, will put their own two cents in on various topics, and every fifteen minutes Liev declares that some new idea or device would change the course of history forever, and then they'd cut to commercial. The writing was a bit overwrought like that, and it seemed to focus more on specific important events than giving a more complete overview of history, but while it wasn't really comprehensive it was still an interesting watch. It definitely brought up a lot of memories of US history class in high school, if nothing else.