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 Godfather: Part III

The Godfather: Part III probably shouldn't have been made. It's really not a bad movie at all; it has a decent cast and a few worthwhile moments. It also provided pop culture with one of its favorite lines about being brought back to something you thought you were done with. But all that probably wasn't worth putting a dent on the near-perfect reputation of the first two films. Francis Ford Coppola himself calls Part III an epilogue rather than the end of the story, and it's so distant from them that it hardly seems related in some ways. If I didn't know better I might have guessed that someone else directed it, and Al Pacino changed so much between the 70s and 90s that he might as well be a different dude.

The film depicts the transition of power from an aging Michael Corleone to his bastard nephew (who shouldn't actually exist according to the book) played by Andy Garcia, who takes on the same sort of role Michael had in the first film. Garcia's pretty good, but I think it's fair to say he's no young Pacino here. The rest of the original cast that bothered to show up does fine, and the new characters are okay too. Eli Wallach, best known as the Ugly part of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, plays an old mob boss seemingly near the end of his life (amazingly, Wallach himself is still alive twenty years later) but still with a bone to pick, and is the most significant addition besides Garcia. The most infamous though is Coppola's own daughter Sofia playing Michael's kid, and while she's gotten a lot of praise for her direction in the last decade, there's a reason she sticks behind the camera now if you know what I mean. She isn't take-your-breath-away awful in every scene she's in, but she's bad enough to drag the film down, especially the end, which went in a totally idiotic direction that it didn't earn or execute properly.

The whole plot sort of ties into a couple real-life scandals involving the Catholic church around 1980, and the stakes just seem less important and interesting than anything from the first two films, while trying to be controversial or something. The other conflicts with mob families are resolved too easily, leading to the Vatican being positioned in a weird antagonistic way. I don't mind sequels to silly comedies and action movies as much as some people, but with something like this, I honestly don't get the point. Like I said, it's not a properly bad film. But I would say you should watch the first two movies, read the book to fill in the blanks, and if you're interested in seeing how Coppola and Mario Puzo decided the story should end, check this out, but only if you're willing to accept that the greatness that came before simply won't be there.